From the Guardian UK
by Decca Aitkenhead
March 29, 2003

Millions of men log on to adult sex sites every day. With unlimited porn just a click away, cybersex is changing the way men view real women. But what happens to their emotions when the screen shuts down?

When Pete Townshend outed himself as the rock star under investigation for downloading child pornography, he immediately said he was not a pedophile. He despised child pornography. But then he added: 'I've always been into porn. I've used it all my life.' This was a surprising disclosure for such a moment, you might
think. Townshend volunteered it without embarrassment though - not as a confession but a claim to normality, presuming public opinion to be that an appetite for Razzle is evidence of a healthy mind.

A decade ago that might have been a risky calculation. But in the current atmosphere of alarm about pedophilia, it was probably shrewd. Fears over online child pornography have grown so great they have had an unexpected moral side effect, downgrading the adult variety to the humdrum. Even hardcore, illegal porn attracts
little attention. The police are no longer interested, nor is the Government, and not one person has been sent to prison in Britain for adult cyberporn offences. Pedophilia has done for the top shelf what crack cocaine did for cannabis, re-branding what was once considered vice into an innocuous popular pastime.

This moral rearrangement has taken place almost exclusively through the internet, where the growth of porn has accelerated to a point where definitive statistics are virtually impossible to compile. Many of the numbers stretch way beyond what most of us can comprehend. Nevertheless, to give you some idea, here are some random examples. Some 200 million people are online worldwide, and studies place pornography at between 20 and 30 per cent of all internet traffic. The only words entered in search engines more often than 'sex' are 'the' and 'and'. One study recorded 98 million visits to the top five free porn sites per month, and 19 million per month to the top five paying sites.

Of the UK's 10 million regular internet users, more than a third log on to porn sites. And our viewing habits are not particularly private; 70 per cent of internet pornography traffic occurs during the 9-5 working day. Internet misuse has overtaken theft of office supplies to become the biggest cause of disciplinary action at work in Britain, and one in four British companies has sacked an employee for this
reason, the most common offence being accessing pornography. Hewlett Packard suspended 150 employees in a single day last year for 'viewing inappropriate material'.

The number of X-rated sites on the net has been put at anything up to 7 million. Beyond a certain point, these figures begin to feel meaningless. And as any statistic is likely to be outdated before it has been published, the effect of these numbers is not so much to inform as simply to awe. If they are half way close to the truth, our relationship with porn begins to seep into the banal. Pornography is treated more like fast food than sex; a casual everyday snack.

It's not surprising, then, that the debate about whether it might be bad for us has been drowned out by the issue of child pornography. We are naturally more inclined to worry whether child porn images could deprave or corrupt a minority than to draw the same connections about the material that maybe half the people we know are downloading. The more porn we watch, the less interest we seem to have in asking whether it is healthy, for healthy tends to be equated with normal, meaning common, and it is certainly that. Even the question of why we look at porn sounds like a slightly stupid one nowadays, rather like asking why we eat fast food. We look because it is there.

And perhaps it is as simple as that. But for a harmless consumer choice, pornography does extraordinary things to people.

Louis is a professional man in his fifties from the south of England. He speaks beautifully and chooses his words with such care that it can sound as if he is giving evidence in court. He has a highly developed sense of caution, and he needs it because for the past seven years he has been unable to walk down a street without
keeping his eyes trained firmly out of danger. He cannot buy a newspaper or magazine, or watch television, for fear of what he might see. If Louis were to glimpse just a picture of a woman wearing a bikini, he says, 'There is no way I could stop myself acting out, and I think I would lose everything.'

For more than 30 years he was addicted to pornography. 'I am completely powerless with porn,' he says. 'Once the thought had come into my head, I was beyond the power of intervention or willpower, and had to buy porn and act out. It was like stepping
onto a Ferris wheel. As soon as the thought was there, there was no element of choice.'

It began in his early teens. 'I didn't know if I was abnormal then, but looking back I can see that from a very early age I was completely powerless when it came to anything with any sexual content. I was fascinated by women and sex. I was like a blind dog in a meat market.' No one guessed at his compulsion, but, 'Every time I
was with a girl, even just snogging, in the process I would be collecting pornographic images inside myself.'

With the secretive pressure of his obsession building, he worked through a series of disastrous relationships. 'Virgins were a speciality. The pattern would be to find someone who was clearly innocent, and to pursue them with great ardour and romance for about six months. But as soon as I had sex with them, I'd leave. These poor girls had been made to think they were the centre of the universe for six months, and so finally gave in, and I was gone.'

Addiction steered him through two marriages and two divorces, followed by what sounds like a nervous breakdown, during which he joined men's groups and took to banging drums in the forest and dancing around stone circles. On the verge of a wildly ill-advised third marriage, his life unraveling into chaos, he encountered by chance a member of Sex Addicts Anonymous. Within a week he had started his own group and embarked on the Twelve Steps of recovery.

Louis is still single, and now belongs to Sexaholics Anonymous, whose definition of sexual sobriety is 'No sex other than with a spouse, and progressive victory over lust'. By the time he reaches recovery, an addict will often express the depths he plunged to in spiritual terms, as though nothing less could express the extremity of
despair. Louis describes 'sobriety' as a truly divine miracle.

The language of life and death is echoed by another addict, Dominic, who is struggling to stay sexually sober. He says: 'The fantasy for me when I look at porn is that the people are going to rise off the page. But what happens is that I become two-dimensional as well, until I'm not here any more, I'm flat. It's a horrible feeling, of being somehow diminished, and losing any grip on the reality of life. But I have to keep looking. The quest is always to find the perfect image because it means I can then die happy. It is really about looking for death.'

Recovery is a remarkable process but it can never be complete. 'I still have a filing cabinet inside me full of pornographic images,' says Louis. 'Every magazine, every picture, every film I've ever seen, it's all stored in my filing cabinet. People like us have an extraordinary ability to pick up images. It's almost a photographic memory. And I can't delete it, it will be there for the rest of my life. I need to work very hard to keep the filing cabinet drawer shut. If I stop working, the drawer yawns open, and out they all come.'

Cases like these are not new. Many, including that of Louis, predate the internet. But he was lucky to find recovery before its advent because cybersex experts describe the internet as the 'crack cocaine of pornography addiction'. They claim that in the US alone there are already 200,000 online porn addicts, the majority of whom would not have become hooked on any other sort of porn. Meetings of Sex Addicts Anonymous and Sexaholics Anonymous in the UK are full of internet users, and a US centre for online addiction provides counseling by email to addicts all over the world. 'These are people who go to church each Sunday,' says the center's founder. 'These are not freaks. They are the people you live next door to.'

Over 95 per cent of addicts are men, and the catalyst for seeking treatment is usually a partner's discovery of his compulsion. One in 10 of the people seen by Relate now blame the internet for their difficulties. But if you went to your GP complaining of this addiction he would have little to offer, and the numbers in counseling or treatment remain relatively modest; which leaves most women with a choice of accommodating porn or ending the relationship.

One woman interviewed for a study into the effects of cybersex addiction on families had been married for 15 years when she discovered a pornographic history dating back five years on her husband's computer. 'He would blame me when I'd catch him masturbating at the computer. He would not do any chores when I was out, and when I returned he would throw the blinds and turn off the light really fast. He would keep looking at his pants to see if I could tell he had an erection.

'I knew he would be masturbating if I left the house. I found semen on my office chair and pubic hair on my mouse. If the kids and I were coming home from somewhere and his car was there, I would run into the house first and be loud so the kids would not walk in on him.'

Now they are getting divorced. 'My husband does not believe he has an addiction. He doesn't think it's a big deal because he says he was never with anyone else. He thinks all he needs is a more loving wife.'

Most men who use pornography are not addicts but casual enthusiasts, recreational users for whom the idea of porn as a problem would seem absurd. It was no problem to find candidates who matched this description. All that distinguished one called Simon was a willingness to be interviewed.

Simon is a sales director from Manchester in his late twenties. He shares a flat with two male friends but has a steady girlfriend. A fair example of a typical cyberporn user, he goes online maybe two or three times a week. Basically, he says, he is looking for what will turn him on, but there is a curiosity factor for the 'freak show' stuff, and the more outrageous sites enjoy a jokey currency among the
lads at work.

Simon puts internet porn in the same sexual category as lapdancing clubs; one up from magazines like Loaded but not what anyone he knows would consider offensive. It no longer holds even novelty value: 'You forget it was ever this big new thing, don't you?' Although he can't remember telling his girlfriend he uses porn, he
imagines she will have taken it for granted. He'd be amazed if anyone his age didn't.

'If I was actually going out to look for videos in sex shops, I suppose that might be different. I don't know if I'd want people knowing about that. But I can't see how anyone would have a problem with something you can do sitting in your bedroom.'

Sitting in the office has advantages, though. Simon explains why most cyberporn traffic takes place during working hours: internet connections at work are faster. There are about 20 young men in Simon's office, 'and I wouldn't say it was a massive deal or anything, but sometimes we do have a laugh with it.' The women roll their
eyes but seem to find it quite funny.

'A couple of the older blokes I work with, they don't make a point of disapproving, but they don't get involved. I think they just feel a bit old for it. I wouldn't come in in the morning and go to them, "Mate, you should have a look at www dot whatever, I was on it last night, fantastic tits."'

We sit at his home computer and he shows me around. It's a slightly embarrassing situation, of course, and we overcompensate by being ultra businesslike, which feels easier if slightly surreal. First up are glamour girls in hardcore action; Jordan features heavily. There are penetration shots, and her legendary all-action video with Dane Bowers - Britain's answer to the Pamela Anderson/Tommy Lee footage.

Freerapes.com offers a menu of options: incest rapes, raped virgins, Russian rapes and so on. Authenticity is at a premium in cyberporn, and many sites promise their rapes are 'real life'. Pictures of semen all over women's faces - 'facials' - are 'guaranteed to be 100 per cent 'real amateur', and if you send in photographs of your own, 'It can be your cum too!'

For an example of 'freak show' porn, Simon shows me girls covered in excrement, known as 'scat babes'. You can have any scat babe you like - Jap scat, teen scat, fat scat. One girl has a long brown beard of excrement molded on to her face. I find myself struck as much by the captions as the photos: 'She has no hope of escape. These guys are pros.' 'Cute little girls forced to be cum-slurping sluts!' 'See what one of these sluts look like after 100 Big Cocks.'

I also learn that you need a certain amount of expertise to navigate through cyberporn on account of all the pop-up ads which bombard the screen with fresh 'cum-drenched sluts' to look at. Once you have entered a site it can be tricky to get out, leaving the novice in danger of ending up with cum-drenched sluts all over his computer.

But most of all it is the volume I marvel at; not just the variety but the sheer repetition. Curiosity can only take you so far, and in crude terms, no one can masturbate indefinitely. Why does Simon surf through such quantities? He looks puzzled by the question, and answers with the comment that 'everyone does it'. But that is an observation, not an explanation. Why does even the casual user want so much?

Psychologists suggest the Triple A Theory - accessibility, anonymity, and affordability - for cyberporn's appeal, but this doesn't explain the inexhaustible appetite for more. A Freudian might say that any sexual object will always be a poor substitute for a person's original but unobtainable object of desire, and that this unfulfillable wish takes the form of an infinite succession of substitutes. Alternatively we could invoke capitalism and its creation of insatiably greedy consumers. But I think Laura Kipniss, an American professor, came closer to the truth, when she wrote: 'Perhaps the abundance of pornography simply resonates with a primary desire for plenitude, for pleasure without social limits. Pornography proposes an economy of pleasure in which not only is there always enough, there's even more than you could possibly want. That has to have a certain grab, given that scarcity is the context of most of our existences; not enough love, not enough sex, or money.'

So does this mean that everyone wants more? This question is taken seriously by cyberporn specialists because essentially it boils down to whether or not everyone could end up addicted. If you ask an addict about his insatiable drive he will often describe a yearning for perfection - the perfect image - but whether the same is true of someone like Simon is unclear. Some specialists believe not. They claim pornography addicts have absolutely no connection to recreational users - nor, for that matter, to sex - and everything to do with, say, alcoholics. In other words, their problem is not pornography but addiction. It may be reassuring for some readers to learn that Louis and Dominic both connect their difficulties to an early trauma, supporting the theory that addicts are hard-wired for dysfunction in childhood. Louis was sexually abused at seven. 'I was like this 12-volt battery operating system suddenly getting 2,000 volts going through me, and it set me up for an excessive response.' Dominic's mother became dangerously ill when he was four. 'I found that if I rubbed my genitals it felt good, and gave me a comforting feeling, and I could disappear into this fantasy world. From my fifth birthday I was masturbating every day, twice a day at least, to orgasm.'

However, other specialists find nothing unique in a pornography addict's profile to distinguish him from the casual user. Dr Patrick Carnes, who runs the world's leading sexual disorder treatment program in Arizona,, says there is no way of knowing who will have a problem with cybersex. 'This is one of the unique aspects of
cybersex. In other sexual disorders it's possible to detect patterns or common points - such as childhood sexual or emotional abuse, or a family history of addictive disorders. Not so with cybersex.' Everyone, he claims, is at risk of becoming an addict.

These two opposing theories represent the focus of all contemporary debate about pornography. And this, perhaps, is the most remarkable of all changes in attitude brought about by the internet. It is not that porn is now universally considered to be harmless. It's that what we mean by 'harm' is nothing more than 'using too much'. In all the leading literature around cyberporn 'being in trouble' or 'needing help' means being addicted, and nothing else. There is no other index of harm. The questionnaires devised to establish whether somebody has a problem are biased heavily towards the practical. Do you fail to meet commitments because of your involvement with porn? Do you spend more than you can afford on it?

Some questions investigate possible motivations; Do you use pornography in order to escape, deny or numb feelings? But the emotional consequences of casual porn use, or the effects of its cultural ubiquity, are completely ignored. Whether porn might be harmful to a non-addict is never even examined. In this straightforward formula, if you can hold down a job, pay the bills and avoid grossing your wife out, where's the problem?

The only visible group still engaged in fighting adult porn are distressed Christians, who post copious but forlorn reminders all over the net about sin. For a political perspective you would have to search to the very margins of feminist debate. It is as if an entire generation of research into the emotional effects of porn has simply been forgotten, leaving us with porn galore and not the faintest idea what it does.

Addicts do at least know they've got a problem. Most men who log on for porn could be forgiven for believing that unless they're still online 12 hours later, having blown the housekeeping money on a cyberstrip club, their real lives will remain unaffected by their virtual adventures. It is a happy delusion, but it is not one supported by evidence.

Here is some evidence. Experiments were carried out on 'normal' men, not addicts, for research by Edward Donnerstein, a prominent academic and author. 'On the first day,' he reported, 'when they see women being raped and aggressed against, it bothers them. By day five it does not bother them at all. In fact, they enjoy it.' Before long they got the feeling that women were to blame for being raped, and actually quite liked it. Even porn which wasn't violent made the men twice as likely to say they felt aggressive towards women.

This is not to say that porn turns men into rapists; it doesn't need to, for it trespasses on the mind more subtly. The evidence proves that porn invites its audience to view women differently - as inferiors, as objects, only good for sex. This is the problem with pornography; it alters the way men look at women. There is no 'at risk' profile because it affects everyone - and it even alters the way women
look at themselves. Few women have truthfully never wondered, when they are in bed, whether a part of them might be impersonating the women they see in porn, who are impersonating women enjoying sex.

In a kind of irony, the people who will admit to being damaged by cyberporn are old-fashioned pornographers. The publishers of Penthouse recorded debts in the millions last year, and speculate that magazines may soon be out of business for good. When you visit a sex shop it is easy to see why, for the truth is that few men feel
comfortable examining porn in the company of strangers. And anyway, after the free-for-all of the net, magazines cost too much and show too little.

Sex shops are beginning to have a nostalgic sort of charm, a whiff of bike sheds and innocence. There is even a sweetly old-fashioned ring to the phrase 'adults only'.

At least there are only adults in sex shops, but the same can't be said of the internet, where nine out of 10 children aged eight to 16 have seen pornography. Almost three-quarters of all British children over 10 have internet access at home, and most of their time spent online is unsupervised. Parents can install filters such as Net Nanny to screen out unsuitable material, and may find these reassuring. But tests show that less than half of them work.

Children don't need to be looking for porn to find it. Type in 'Golden Retriever' and up come 'Golden Shower' photos of couples urinating on each other. Or try 'Black Hole' for science homework - here are close-up shots of black women's vaginas. And this, you could say, is the final irony of our indulgence of 'adult' porn. Even on its own terms, defined purely by a priority to protect children, it makes no sense.

Why children should be our only concern is even more confusing - as if pedophiles held a monopoly on damaged sexuality. It's a curious position for us to have arrived at. Clearly, you do not have to fancy children for something to be wrong.

'I knew something was wrong in our intimate relationship,' says a woman who discovered her husband was using internet porn. 'And I always wondered who he was making love to because it was never me.'