Pornography, Addiction, and Shame: Some Working Definitions When Working with Clients

Growing up in a society that demonizes porn or even bans it outright can create a lot of shame around utilizing adult entertainment videos for sexual arousal and release. That shame can produce concerns of whether or not an individual is addicted to porn, leaving them prey to unlicensed, sex negative groups who claim to be able to heal porn addiction—which is not listed in the DSM-5, nor is it recognized by sexuality professionals such as Dr. Marty Klein. The same shame can prevent people from talking about porn openly, and from engaging with experiences and intentions of porn performers and directors which might shed light on the conditions in which a given video was created—whether that porn is what we call ethical or not. And that shame can open viewers up to feeling guilt over what they’ve watched, and about incorporating certain practices—or “moves”—they’ve seen in porn into the sex they have with partners.

From OnlyFans subscribers, through people who write into Slate’s How To Do It sex advice column, to actual real life lovers, I’ve heard from plenty of people over the years who believe they’re addicted to pornography. The first question to ask is whether porn use is interfering with their responsibilities—are they letting dishes pile up over the edge of the sink, neglecting to complete work required to earn the money they need to live, or withdrawing from relationships in order to watch more porn? Often the answer is “no”, in which case a useful follow up is to ask what leads them to their belief that they are addicted. Frequently the answer to that question is some form of habituation—men may struggle to orgasm with a partner because they’ve become accustomed to a certain type of visual stimulation and, crucially, a certain grip or other masturbation technique, and women (over 25% of whom, according to multiple studies https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3044590/, may experience complete anorgasmia) who often require a specific type of stimulation to orgasm and have finally found something that works for them may fear that there’s something wrong with them for having such specific needs.

People of all genders express concerns about whether the porn they’re watching is ethical or not, and may allow fear of judgment to prevent them from talking with friends and other peers about adult video content. Due to the ways both traditional and social media censor discussions of porn—especially in the wake of 2018 amendment to the Communications Act of 1934 FOSTA-SESTA—it can be difficult for casual viewers of pornography to find discussions of the whys and hows of the porn they’re consuming. It’s hard for people outside the adult industry to connect with information about the production process and intent of the porn they see.

It’s true that most video pornography created for VHS and DVD distribution in the 1980s and 1990s had a certain perspective which we now refer to as “male gaze”. Feminist anti-porn crusaders Catharine MacKinnon and Andrea Dworkin were not making their complaints up out of whole cloth. Plenty of videos could be found which showed women in “positions of servility or submission or display”. Feminist defender of pornography and former ACLU chief Nadine Strossen recalled, in a recent interview with Elizabeth Nolan Brown of “Reason” https://reason.com/2024/04/01/defending-pornography-on-feminist-grounds-a-qa-with-nadine-strossen/, “a cover image from Hustler magazine which showed a woman being stuffed into a meat grinder.” Of course, whether publisher Larry Flynt was using shocking imagery as social commentary or with intent to arouse is up for debate. His magazine did, after all, often contain serious articles about freedom of speech and other political subjects.

At the same time, however, women like Candida Royalle were creating sexually explicit videos which showed equality in sex, directed by women and sometimes starring performers of color. Royalle co-founded her production company, Femme Productions, in 1984 and her distribution company, Femme Distribution, shortly thereafter. Annie Sprinkle’s “Linda/Les and Annie: A Female-to-Male Transexual Love Story” was released in 1989. And “Bend Over Boyfriend”, which depicted men receiving anal strap-on penetration from women and caused Dan Savage to coin the term “pegging”, was released in 1998. Women were making porn with a female gaze since the dawn of the adult video industry as we know it—that is to say, beginning with the advent of home VHS player technology. And that entirely leaves out the legacy of early internet porn, which was spearheaded by female subjects such as Dani Ashe and Asia Carrera.

From the late ‘80s to today, we’ve conflated porn-for-women with feminist porn, feminist porn with ethical porn, and used ethics as a label without ever really defining what that means. The word “ethics” is defined by Merriam-Webster as “a set of moral principles,” and “principles of conduct governing an individual or a group”. While I’m a bit reluctant to throw a wrench in what has become a very useful marketing label and shorthand within the discourse, I’ve got some complicated news: even pornographers who embraced the misogyny in their work and were successfully tried for obscenity, such as Max Hardcore, had ethics—just a very different set of ethics from those we have in mind when we talk about “ethical porn”. 

Part of the issue is that people concerned with including feminist and sex positive ethics in their work are often hyperaware of the fact that they’re doing their best to get close to an ideal. They’re also often aware of the fact that ethics are defined differently by individuals, groups like trade associations and subcultures, and by communities. Another difficulty around defining ethics in pornography is that capitalism itself has some ethical flaws, and even truly amateur porn interacts with for-profit systems at some point in the distribution process. One of my favorite writers on the subject of porn and capitalism is Lorelei Lee, whose essay “Cash/Consent” for n+1 https://www.nplusonemag.com/issue-35/essays/cashconsent/ contains facts such as “In Pennsylvania, a 2014 trafficking law that creates a civil right of action for “victim[s] of the sex trade” defines victim as anyone who has traded sex”. 

When our laws are out of alignment with sex positive morals, we cannot rely on them to dictate our ethics. Therefore, a dual intervention of connecting clients who experience shame around pornography with the writings and other analyses of actual public-facing sex workers, combined with drawing out the client’s own ethics around sexual labor through a series of questions, may be useful.

Guilt around the use of pornography as an aid in sexual release may also be alleviated through the interventions mentioned above. If not, prompts to elaborate on feelings of guilt, and to do introspection around where that guilt comes from would be the next step. 

Clients may also benefit from the knowledge that watching—or fantasizing—about certain acts does not necessarily mean they want to enact those acts in their sexual interactions with partners. And, if they do want to bring acts they’ve seen in porn into their relationships, they may find relief in the fact that—thanks to the internet—we can quickly google up whole communities who are into almost every potential kink. The way online porn allowed niche communities to find each other for both fun and profit also allows us to see how common our desires actually are, and therefore to normalize those desires.

In conclusion, shame around viewing pornography can be alleviated through communication—between coach and client, between the client and themselves, the client and their partners, and the client and their peers. As states within the US and countries around the world continue to crack down on the creation and distribution of sexual explicit media, fostering this kind of open discussion becomes that much more critical.