Porn hooking more women
(Sunday Star Times April 10, 2011/ Guardian News & Media)
It was an ordinary weekday morning when Caroline first noticed how much pornography was taking over her life.
With 15 minutes to go before she was due to leave for a job interview, she opened up her laptop to print off a copy of her CV and there on the screen WA a grab she’d saved from a porn site.
“”I remember the feeling of being sucked in, really wanting that 2 minute fix, that
numbness I get when I use porn, “ says Catherine. “I was stressed out and I risked
being late for the interview, but I pressed play anyway and fast-
There is much debate about whether porn addiction even exists, but Caroline, a 21-
Having started watching porn out of curiousity when it became available over the
internet in her mid-
Then, as she entered a depressed job market after university, it became a from of escape, a default she turned to whenever she felt anxious or bored. “I’d think to myself: “It’s not going to harm.” But then I started to loathe myself for giving in and wasting so much time on it.”
While it’s accepted that women are watching -
There is little difference in the ways the genders become hooked, says Dean. There is the same pattern of exposure, addiction, and desensitisation to increasingly hardcore images. The main contrast between male and female porn addicts is how much more guilty women feel.
“Porn addiction is seen as a man’s problem -
Orgasm releases a dopamine-
Psychotherapist Phillip Hodson, of the British Association of Counselling and Psychotherapy, says women are not using porn as a quick way to have sex without emotional investment, just as men traditionally have.
For may women, it’s a phase that will pass, he says, either because they take stock,
it becomes a problem, becomes boring -