“I am looking at you right now in a sexual way whether you like it or not. Never mind the fact that I don’t know your name, care to know your name, or have any idea who you are. I don’t really care about you. You serve as an object for my sexual pleasure. I only care about how sexually aroused you can make me feel.”This is how a former porn user describes the way he used to look at people when he was heavily into porn.
We refer to this process as “pornifying” someone. It involves looking at people in a sexual way and essentially turning them into a character in a live ongoing porn production. Pornifying is a form of sexual objectification that tries to turn real life and real people into the same kind of fantasy that is portrayed in pornography. The more we look at porn and get sexually aroused by it, the more likely we are to experience the consequence of pornifying people in real life.
Martha, a middle-aged artist, told us that she became concerned with how her porn use was affecting her when she realized how much she was pornifying the people in her life. “It’s more than merely noticing attractive people,” she said. “I’d go for a run in the park and reflexively scrutinize everyone I saw as to how sexually stimulating they were to me. I felt like an alcoholic who couldn’t go to a sports game, enter a restaurant, or a grocery store without sampling the booze. A guy might be praying in church, and I’d wonder how exciting he would be without his clothes on. I’d do it even when I didn’t want to be thinking of someone this way.” Not only can pornifying distract you from your real life, it can also turn you off to potential intimate partners. The dating pool becomes really limited when you’re only willing to relate with someone who looks and acts like a porn star. Zane, a college senior, said, “The girls on the computer are so hot. Their bodies are perfect. I’ve spent many hours fantasizing about being with them. But lately, it seems like I can’t accept imperfection in the women I meet. I’ll start talking with a really nice girl at a bar. She’s cute and has a great sense of humor, but my interest only goes so far. She’s not a ‘ten.’ She has flaws. Her boobs are too small, her waist too thick, or her thighs too wide. I know it’s wrong to be rejecting women because they don’t look like the image of the supermodel girls I find sexy. Porn has created a huge gap between the kind of woman I enjoy being with and the kind of woman I actually desire sexually.”
Randy, a twenty-six-year-old man, explained how years of pornifying women stymied his efforts at developing a relationship with a real woman. Porn use left him lacking in skills necessary for making friends with women and showing them respect. He said, “I treated women as sex things. If she turned me on I’d talk with her; if she didn’t, I would ignore her. Most girls were turned off by my porn-inspired advances. I couldn’t appreciate a girl for being cute without seeing her as a possible sexual conquest. I didn’t realize there is a big difference between using someone for sex and sharing a sexual experience with them. Porn made it impossible for me to see women as people and treat them well. I am very sad about that.”
The more time you spend in the world of porn, the more your views and values become about using people or being used, and not about sharing and connecting with others. Too much porn can blur the line between sexual fantasy and reality and impair your ability to respond to yourself and others with empathy and compassion.