Hardcore View

'Everyone looks at Pornography'

"Perhaps they do, but not everyone downloads hardcore porn,' Say I

'Well' says the other person

'Someone said to me recently that if you removed all the porn from the Internet, you would be left with one page that says - Where has all the porn gone'?

I was stumped by the statement. More so that anyone could consider this to be a reasonable claim to make, particularly as none of the pages on my computer hard drive have any pornography on them. So I google 'Where has all the pornography gone'? and there are 5,410,000 pages answering that query. I cannot validate the content, since I had no desire to open them. It does blow the 'normal' theory a little out of the water.

I do not take a puritanical stance on pornography. What ever floats your boat, it is not my place to judge but there are levels in which I see it as an issue. Pornography used in a relationship is an entirely personal thing. Pornography used in a relationship where only one person is being made aware of it, represents a potential issue. Hardcore porn would be a major issue.

A long time ago, I turned up at the office of he who cannot be mentioned proffering spontaneous administration duties. Whilst it appeared not to be an issue at the time, there was an extended period of sulking after. Apparently I am a selfish person since I was only offering what I wanted myself. I couldn't disagree, since I couldn't understand why I would offer anything I didn't want.

Even more importantly, why would you want something someone was not willing to give? Which is where I have the issue with pornography used as a means of avoiding dealing with real life. Real life means that people feel crap, they feel snubbed or they feel inadequate or rejected. The answer to any of these issues is opening your mouth and not the dodgy emails in your inbox.

When someone uses pornography as a way of avoiding intimacy they achieve one of my favourite terms 'the self fulfilling prophecy.' You use porn to avoid intimacy and then you have difficulty creating intimacy since you are using the unreal world of pornography.

I am, I think - fairly broad minded. The confines of a relationship make it fairly safe to experience whatever you want, as long as you feel safe to do so. Yet this only works within a good relationship, Fulfilling someone else fantasy is perfectly fine if it is simply a fantasy. When one partner has started seeing pornography as an escape route to real life and objectifies it to a level where women are willing and able to do whatever you want without question, with a lot of grunting and the kind of facial expressions normally associated with severe oxygen deficiency, It becomes not fine. When one partner becomes aware that the real world only exists in the fantasy one and feels obliged to behave in a way that excludes intimacy, it creates humiliation. It's a high price to pay for someone else's issue.

The risk for those with a thing about hardcore porn, is the inability to separate real from some fairly strong viewing. Watch enough of the stuff and it is fairly likely that you will become deadened to reality. Good sex is about intimacy, it's about safety, closeness, being comfortable and being free to experience whatever you feel comfortable with. Good sex is about a creating a relationship where you can be one thing one day and another a next. Good relationships mean that you can have intimate loving sex or a quickie in the larder. Good sex is not about needing to pretend you are something you are not to enable someone else to enjoy what is on offer.

I profoundly hope that I never get to the stage where I do not feel I can turn up at someone else's office mid way through the day but they had be pretty damn comfortable with the fact that I am doing it because I want to.