Succubus

I'm not talking about the fear based etiological myth to explain wet dreams. I'm thinking of the more well-known version, the fantasy monster, the D&D encounter you need a Will save to pass. I always thought it should be Int. based instead, I mean come on. You live in a world of gods, dragons, and actual, physical demons. You're an adventurer, out and about, tangling with sundry monsters, traps, and curses that are all out to kill you. A sensuous, mysteriously captivating woman comes out of the blue and she's desperate to ride your knob. Dude. She has ulterior motives. Of course she wants to eat your soul, you slug-witted ninny! You'd have to have the brains of a gelatinous cube to fall for it.

And yet, I did. So did you. What the literal Hell, people.

It's not a perfect analogy, but it's scary how close the parallels run between the fantasy demon that survives by consuming your sexual energy, and good old porn. You started porn as a kid, right? Virtually all of us did; no status, bad skin, a cracking voice, insecure and awkward. No real life woman would give us a second glance, but here was this drop-dead gorgeous angel, baring it all, smiling, encouraging. You can watch. It's okay. I want to do this. I want to show you.
Dude. She had ulterior motives, not to eat your soul, obviously, but she for damn sure didn't do it because she was horny. The actress did it for money, she did it for porn, then porn turned around and lied to us.
And no, porn doesn't necessarily eat your immortal soul. Do we even have one? We don't know, we can't prove it, but I'll tell you what porn does eat. We all know. Some more than others, we've all paid a price and most of us keep paying it. She eats our confidence. She eats our ambition. She promises a wet, sloppy BJ, then sucks the life right out of our dicks. She leaves us flaccid and spent, but not happy: we're lonely and sad instead.
She said we could use her until we found someone else, and then she'd leave us alone, but she lied. She promised us we could keep her on the side, that she wouldn't interfere with our real life relationship, but she lied. Porn is a hateful, jealous b****: she tolerates no rival.
She said she was harmless. The Jews and the Christians, they warned us she was evil, but who listens to them? Superstitious, sanctimonious, sex-phobic and anti-rational zealots, their objections are practically an endorsement. She's nothing! She's an idea! Just pixels and audio, at the very worst a mere waste of time. If it were so bad, why isn't this so-called "addiction" even recognized in the DSM? It's hard to know exactly what pornography does to us, because science refuses to take it seriously, but we know it does something. We know it does a lot. We come here suspecting she's stolen our erections, our self respect, and our self control. Those of us who manage to painfully cut her out of our lives, if only for a month or two, find she's stolen so much more; our clear thoughts, our strong desires, our competence, our vibrancy. Porn makes us unable to recognize the subtleties of emotion in a mate or potential mate, or unable to care. She turns kind men into selfish lovers, and gentle men into violent freaks. She turns strong, thoughtful, dependable men asking for intimacy into grovelling, self-centered "nice guys" begging for sex. Those are the lucky ones, getting off light. Those of us that fall more completely under her curse have our own natures twisted; we become sissies and slaves, shelling out our money and our dignity, feeling abused, feeling the wrongness of it all but unable to stop feeding ourselves to it and all the while, voices inside and voices without say, "This is who you are now. Maybe this is who you have always been. You will never be free. You don't deserve to be."

I don't want anyone to take this metaphor too far or too literally. Porn actresses are not succubi. Porn is the succubus and she wears a hundred thousand bodies, abusing them as harshly as she abuses yours. They don't deserve our vitriol or accusations; if anything they deserve our compassion and if we can't manage that, or the individuals don't want it, the most constructive thing we can offer is our indifference. Porn is not a person or people, it's a fantasy, an idea. You can't fight this demon with iron or holy water, or by spamming Twitter, for that matter. You fight it by quitting, and you can find the resources to do so elsewhere on the site, and support for it on the forum.

I don't know if it helps anyone else to think about it in such melodramatic, fantastical terms, but I know it helps me. One of the things I like about Fantasy as an entertainment genre, is that good and evil are often well defined, in contrast to real life which is so relative and complicated. One thing I know for sure, though, despite the scoffers and rationalists, the science apologists, pop culture, the branches of feminism that support sex work, Wikipedia, and your own supposedly forward thinking and open minded, but ignorant and possibly addicted friends and family, a seductive demon stalks among us. Her name is Porn.

 

Complicit victims. I don't mean to shift blame.

Every addiction is different. I think perhaps porn's best comparison is with casino gambling. Always addicting? Of course not. Always devastating to the user? Not catastrophically, no. But is it harmless to those who aren't addicted? No. It's a waste, for cheap thrills, and always pure poison to the addict. I've read too much in the Problematic Sexual Behavior section, too much in the Rebooting in a Relationship section, and I've experienced too much of a change in my own life, to be so easy on porn. I'm 100% for accepting personal responsibility, but I can do that while still naming porn as inherently evil.

I'm not calling for a ban, btw. Like I said, personal responsibility. I'm calling for us to fight against it in our own lives; set your own house in order before you try to save the world.