The teenage years are the time when we begin to awaken to sexuality. With puberty, hormonal surges and the transformation of the body, we discover an unprecedented sensuality. New emotions and sensations spring up and we ask ourselves all kinds of questions about sex, sexuality and romantic relationships. While discovering this new territory, we want to know more, to go further …!
First, masturbation allows you to discover this new body, explore its zones of pleasure, fantasize and prepare for sexuality for two. Some also turn to pornographic media to try both to find answers to their questions and to satisfy their desires, unload their impulses.
Why am I drawn to porn?
Most of you have probably seen a porn movie before. Some may have found it exciting, others disgusting or even a little scary … Anyway, if porn causes you to feel aroused and happy, it’s okay. As you are in the process of discovering your sexuality, it may be allowing you to experience the things that you are starting to feel. The purpose of these images is actually to elicit pleasure through the sight. Sight, like touch, is a primary cause of sexual arousal. In boys, for example, a sexy outfit can stimulate the brain and increase the production of testosterone, the hormone that helps make semen, resulting in physical arousal that can lead to an erection.
It is not so much the history of films that attracts, but above all to imagine being an actor more than a spectator. Pornography is designed to elicit quick and easy arousal in the viewer, the acting out is direct, the pleasure immediate. It’s a kind of shortcut that allows you to extract from the images what is most sexual without going through the relationship, to access sexual pleasure while avoiding an IRL meeting and the anguish that this one can provoke. Porn actually allows you to feed the imagination and escape from reality, into an ideal, fictional world where everything works smoothly, where everything seems possible. There can indeed be a reassuring side to these films: the characters never ask questions, they don’t need to seduce, interest, convince … at the risk of being rejected. They are always desired, they have no complexes or erectile dysfunction .. unlike in real life.
A forbidden universe
Pornography gives access to a forbidden universe, that of adults. Watching these kinds of films can be a way of proving yourself, of telling yourself that you are no longer a child. A sort of rite of passage to adulthood. It just feels like you’re tall. It is also an opportunity to transgress a parental prohibition: we view these images in secret, away from the eyes of the parents, which contributes to the excitement of the experience … That said, you should know that a minors do not have the right to be exposed to pornography (article L.227-24 of the Penal Code). It’s not for nothing that these films are banned for those under the age of 18. They are made for an adult audience which, a priori, knows how to distinguish between reality and fantasy, for example. These films often feature violent sexuality, practices that are out of the ordinary and can be shocking.
A staging of fantasized sexuality
The real risk in porn is actually believing that the sexuality is happening like in these movies. It is not real sexuality that he stages, but fantasies! In porn, everyone seems willing and ready for anything, all the time. All sexual practices sound good. The most acrobatic positions are multiplying, the penetrations follow one another without discussion, without preliminaries … What must not be forgotten is that these are the actors who simulate thoroughly, who act out a scenario. These are only films, fictions that are extremely far from reality. In real life, no one really wants to do anything with anyone, anytime. So don’t waste your time comparing yourself and worrying about not living up to what you see in pornography. Sexuality is not a set of actions and performances to be performed. If porn is above all an individual pleasure without return, sexuality is a shared pleasure, made up of sensations, feelings, meeting and complicity with the other.
Addicted to porn?
What to do when you can’t do without it? Over-consumption of porn can lead to feelings of shame and guilt, and even a sense of disgust with what is happening on screen and with oneself. Repeated consumption of porn can also make it difficult for sexual arousal without the presence of these types of images. Imagination alone, with its own characters, its own scenarios, is no longer enough to feel arousal.
If consumed in too high a dose, porn can also become addicting. We need to consult more and even, to have to appeal to even more intense images. As in any phenomenon of addiction, you have to increase the “dose” as with a drug and see even more raw scenes to try to regain the pleasure that you had at the beginning, without ever really achieving it.
If you are worried about your porn consumption, ask yourself what priority do you give to this consumption? Have you reduced the number of outings with your friends to go online, for example? Do you still need pornographic support in order to be able to masturbate? The risk is becoming locked into the isolation created by pornography, to the detriment of relationships with IRL people. What matters is that the porn doesn’t take over your personal love and sex life!
Article published on May 3, 2013 on the sonantéjeunes website.