The AfterMath

Illustration by The New York Times; photograph by Jessica Lehrman for The New York Times

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Porn has become one of the most consumed forms of media in the world. Thanks to the Internet and smartphones. Porn is viewed across many nations of the world and across different social strata (religion, culture, race, education, class etc.) If there is one thing people across these divides have in common, it would be that they view porn. Porn has become a most sought after pastime for many individuals world over. These days porn seems to be in our faces even when we don’t intend to view it.

The porn industry is said to be one of the most lucrative industries in the world with sources estimating that revenues accrued annually hovered around 97 billion USD in 2018. Pornhub has about 80 million visitors per day. In an exclusive interview with Business Insider SSA, a Nigerian porn actress says a porn performer earns between 3000 to 10,000 USD monthly. Though there are no accurate figures of porn consumers in Nigeria neither is there a structured porn industry in Nigeria as porn is loosely prohibited in Nigeria, Nigeria ranks as one of the most porn consuming countries in the world. For instance in a 2016 survey, Nigeria ranked third with the highest number of searches for gay porn in the world. And that's just a section of the categories of porn available.

Many of us have affinity to porn because the industry helps us to "live a life" that we mostly fantasize about and as such we watch porn to fulfil such fantasies mentally. However within the industry - it is not as rosy as it is painted on screen. Just like a movie with scripts, porn is largely scripted not like in the conventional sense but to suit consumer demand. Now imagine this. You are on set for a porn sex...and you are having sex, and just as you get into your stride, the director says "CUT.... to the lady "you are not moaning properly, you should moan like this.... lets start all over again" With the starts and stops where is the fun and pleasure? A lot of editing is done before that "perfect" sex scene is aired. No pornster does what he/she feels like is pleasurable to them, they do what suits the demands of the consumer. Imagine having to continue with sex despite climaxing and you have to keep working in order to earn your pay cheque even when arousal is almost impossible after the climax. Then actors might need sex stimulants to augment performance. Porn actors spend 2 to 22 hours on set in the production of a DVD. Most women in porn have a life span of 6 months to 1 year because of the gruelling demands of the industry. Were you envying porn performers before? I bet you are having a rethink now.

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Shelley Lubben a former porn performer, stripper and escort between 1986 and 1994 described the California porn industry as a "destructive, drug infested, abusive and sexually diseased industry which causes negative secondary effects on female and male adult industry workers as well as the general public" California produces about 80% of the world's pornographic content. Lubben is the founder of Pink Cross Foundation that helps pornsters who want out of the industry and individuals hooked up on porn materials.

In her book titled Pornland: How Porn Has Hijacked Our Sexuality, Gail Dines opines "We are now bringing up a young generation of boys on cruel porn and given what we know about how images affect people, this is going to have a profound influence on their sexuality behaviour and attitude towards women" Let's face it. Most of what we know about sex came from porn and if there is any material that is low in sexual education, it is porn, as it offers little or no sexual education to its viewers. Many of us live in denial of its usage of its effect on us. Regardless porn has devastating effects on humans.

Firstly, consumption of porn gradually takes its toll on the brain. What started out as a mere moral issue quickly escalates into brain dysfunction. When porn reaches the addiction stage, certain chemical changes occur in the body. Chemicals like Dopamine, Testosterone, Adrenaline and Epinephrine are released during a sexual high. Excessive usage would lead to over secretion of these chemicals and soon enough over secretion leads to under secretion with devastating consequences. All these have shown to contribute to low productivity levels, low output and low concentration levels in school and at work. Prolonged usage of porn has been linked to lack of focus and purpose in life. Porn has a numbing effect on the mind. Soon enough, porn that used to be "disgusting" or too shocking to watch can become normalised in the mind. Soon enough demand and urge for more violent and obscene and more extreme forms of porn becomes normal. The more porn is being used, the more extremity you would require or rely on for sexual gratification.

Prolonged porn usage also takes its toll physically. Prolonged porn users who lean towards masturbation have issues with erectile dysfunction, low sex drive/libido, chronic back pains and hair loss.

Gail Dines opines that men exposed to porn in their early teen years are likely to have issues developing intimate relationships with the opposite sex as most porn users tend to objectify women as portrayed in porn. It also affects how a lady views her body and her perception of sexuality and their expectations in a sexual relationship. Porn has shaped the perception of satisfaction in sex and as such put pressure on people to "look like pornsters and have sex like pornsters" in order to achieve sexual ecstasy.

Pornography and sexual dissatisfaction are intrinsically linked. In an age where sexual education is mostly derived from porn and the motive behind porn production is purely profit and customer satisfaction( customer satisfaction achieved by feeding craving viewers more violent acts of sex), the mathematics as how the above submission was reached is not rocket science. Prolonged porn users tend to gravitate towards more violent forms of porn over time. The producers know this and put up a "performance" for customer satisfaction that is entirely different from the real deal. Putting it more succinctly, porn emphasizes deep, raw, rough penile penetration for sexual satisfaction but in the real sense, many sexually active women claim to experience intense pleasure from clitoral stimulation as compared to penile penetration. As such both parties with porn images floating around in their heads, come out of a sexual experience dissatisfied as expectations have grossly outweighed performance. In Fact some ladies experience serious pains, discomfort and vaginal tears from such sessions but can't talk about it because porn has made it seem like the norm. Male porn users automatically presume that women should enjoy anal sex because it is viewed as "very satisfying" in porn.

Porn is directly linked to the increase of sexual abuse and violence as opined by Dines. There has been links between child rape and child porn. Dines had interviews with men doing time for child rape and they all confessed to be habitual child porn consumers. Sexual assault centres in US colleges in times past have said that women are reporting more cases of anal rape and Dines opines that this is a direct result of the normalization of this acts by porn.

This part may be too hard to swallow but it is factual. You might be aiding and abetting sex trafficking if you have become a habitual porn user. The Trafficking Victims Protection Act describes sex trafficking as the "recruitment, harbouring, transportation, provision or obtaining of a person for the purpose of a commercial sex act" It also includes "inducing commercial sex acts by force, fraud or coercion" As a former porn actress puts it "Women are lured, coerced and forced to do sex acts they never agreed to do and (given drugs) and alcohol to help them get through hard-core scenes...... the porn industry is modern day slavery" Noel Bonchè, executive director of pureHOPE explains further "While porn contents include trafficked victims from around the world, porn consumers aren't told anything about the performers including ones which may have been trafficked from an early age. Regular users of internet porn are likely consuming porn that includes adult and child victims of sex trafficking"

On a lighter note, think about this. You must have heard on the news about men and women who died during sexual romps. Need I tell you again the cause?

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