The word “pornography” comes from the Greek words “porno” and “graphie,” which literally translate into “the writings of or about prostitutes.” Since its emergence as a product for public consumption several hundred years ago, pornography has continually evolved in form and potency based on new inventions. It got its first big push from the printing press, and then continued to expand its offerings and range with the availability of each new device from still and moving cameras to television, video players, computers, and other digital technologies, such as iPods and cell phones. The Internet has brought porn to your laptop in more ways than one.
As the road to porn has evolved into a superhighway, with multiple routes taking you to all kinds of new places at ever-increasing speeds, porn has remained true to its original association with prostitution. It consistently delivers whatever sexual activity the consumer wants, no matter how extreme, without having to take into consideration the feelings and sexual needs of anyone else. Like prostitution, porn avoids important aspects of human sexuality, such as displays of genuine affection, communication between partners, foreplay, afterplay, and concerns about safety and the consequences of sexual activity. In his 1989 book, Pornography, University of Alabama media researcher Dolf Zill — man wrote, “Pornographic scripts dwell on sexual engagements of parties who have just met, who are in no way attached or committed to one another, and who will part shortly, never to meet again.”
Over time, porn has dramatically increased in power and effectiveness as a sexual stimulant. For example, sexual drawings were like a dirt road on which a horse-drawn buggy carried sexually explicit images. Then photographs provided the asphalt, allowing users to get to sexual arousal more quickly and with fewer potholes. As pornographic films and videos emerged on the scene, the highway of porn really started rolling, finally reaching concrete superhighway status by merging with interactive chats, live feeds, Web cams, and specialized electronically coordinated sex toys. These new changes have taken porn to new levels of realism and immediacy. Pornography has evolved beyond sexual fantasy into a world of electronically facilitated sexual experience. No matter what on-ramp you take, you can get off almost anywhere these days. And with these new powers porn can easily compete with a real life partner for sexual attention.
One of the reasons so many men and women have “porn problems” these days is that there’s so much of it everywhere, and it is easy to access and afford. It has more of an opportunity to become something of significance. There are more than 400 million pages of pornography on the Internet. As Ned, a sixty-five-year-old single man who looks more like someone’s grandfather than a guy struggling to overcome a porn habit, told us, “I’ve seen pornography go from scarcity to abundance in the last fifty years. I used to have to go out of my way, to special stores and theaters, to get it. Nowadays you’d have to be a clam shell on the moon to avoid coming into contact with pornography.”
Ned’s comment reflects the reality that in recent years pornography has become big business. It is not only produced and distributed by small operations, several major U. S. media corporations have gotten in on the action, and profit. Commercial porn Web sites, magazines, books, videos, DVDs, cable television, etc., generate more than $97 billion dollars annually worldwide (an increase of 70 percent from 2003 to 2007). In the United States alone, porn revenue is larger than all combined revenues of all professional football, baseball, and basketball franchises. And you thought athletes were bringing in the big bucks.
Today’s pornography has the added advantage of easily presenting almost anything that might appeal to you. From tasteful nudes wearing lingerie to sex with a goat, it’s all there. There is definitely something for everyone these days. With so much variety, porn can offer something we haven’t seen or done before, something we often can’t get in real life. Rob, a forty-three-year-old advertising executive and former porn user explained, “I loved having access to an unlimited amount of free pornography over the Internet. Click, click, click. Wow, there it is. I wonder if this is out there? Click, click, click. Wow, there it is!”
Given that porn presents a peephole into a taboo and forbidden world of sex, to remain effective and exciting in a time when people are being inundated with explicit sexual imagery, porn has to continually push the outside limits of what it reveals. Kirk, a forty-eight-year-old postal clerk who gave porn up last year, shared, “Over the last thirty years I’ve seen porn become more explicit and edgier. The first girlie magazine I saw as a kid didn’t even show pubic hair. When I first saw porn films, soft core was in. It featured a lot of simulated sex, with few or no erections, not many close-ups, and dumb plots. Then came hard core, showing close-ups, intercourse, oral sex, and ejaculation, and no plots. Before I quit, what had become ‘standard porn’ was starting to bother me. Rough blow jobs, facial ejaculation, anal sex, coercion, sex with kids, crude talk, and kinky stuff were commonplace. I couldn’t believe what was turning me on.”