It may have been fate that I stumbled into a Mormon anti-porn convention. The Utah Coalition Against Pornography was in the ballroom next to my eighth-grade science fair at the Salt Lake City Convention Center. I decided to poke my head in and see what was going on. With a fake name tag, I wandered the rows of booths dedicated to eliminating what the governor of Utah dubbed a “pornographic public health crisis.” Amid the overwhelming crowds distributing anti-smut fliers and t-shirts, people were holding hands and praying for the divine elimination of PornHub. Speakers who claimed to be psychologists presented slideshows of clip art brains overloaded with pleasure chemicals, leading to addiction and a loss of attraction to their real-life partners. Many of the attendants seemed to think that porn was leading society down a rabbit hole of devious desires.
I tried to get out as fast as I could before anyone caught on that I wasn’t supposed to be there, fake nametag and all. They didn’t seem to sense that I was a sex columnist. Even so, the prude atmosphere got me thinking: we cannot quantify the effect porn has had on an entire internet generation. This is the first time in human history that images of sex have been so readily and easily available. No longer must we paint erotic art on the walls of caves or venture out to the nearest adult theater to pop a dirty VHS into a semen-stained cubicle. Now all it takes is a heartbeat to type “pornhub.com” into a phone’s search bar. The only roadblock between children and the stepmom gang bangs is a button that confirms yes I am 18 years old, which can be pressed by anyone who can read.
Sometimes, we looked things up as kids for innocent reasons. I remember getting an iPad as my first piece of technology. When no one was looking, I typed “penis” into Google images because I was genuinely curious about what one looked like. Of course, I had seen one before in passing, but I always had to look away like it was Sodom and Gomorrah and I would be turned into a pillar of salt. Now I could gaze upon it for as long as I wanted in all its fleshy alien glory. In reflection on their childhood technology use, some of my friends have said they searched, “lady taking a shower” just to see what that was like. The world truly was at our fingertips.
But even if our generation wasn’t looking for porn, we were sure to find it. I used to need permission to use the family computer. Back then, the internet was a destination and not the all-encompassing bubble of today. That destination was the computer room in all of its glory where one could play Webkinz, Poptropica and Neopets for all to see. Having a private internet browser didn’t even cross my mind, and everyone in the house shared this one computer. But one day I was going through the browser history on the family computer and I saw something strange in German pop up. It said, “Wahnsinniges Anal-Orgie-Fickfest mit Doppelpenetration,” which I soon discovered meant “Insane anal orgy fuck fest with double penetration.” Maybe it is because I had virgin eyes, but the moment I saw this pile of pulsating bodies going inside each other flash onto the family computer screen, I screamed and fumbled for the exit button. Whatever I saw, it was traumatic. I think I vaguely saw people tied upside down and wearing hats?
I ran to my dad to tell him what had happened. He furrowed his brow and looked very concerned that this was on our computer’s search history. As an only child, there wasn’t anyone else to blame, but when I told my mom about it she didn’t say a word. She just walked into the computer room, opened up the browser, and clicked clear on the search history — it was like it never happened. No one ever talked about it again, but I still permanently have this phantom image tattooed into the inside of my skull.
Not all porn is created equal. There is a lot wrong with the industry concerning abuse and consent and how it can normalize sexual violence. Sometimes when I hook up with someone I can instantly tell they learned everything they know about sex from porn. They stick their fingers down my throat within the first five minutes of foreplay, their dirty talk coming straight from the lips of Italian stallions with simulated horsecocks. That’s all it is: a simulation, as art imitates life and life imitates art. Porn reflects our world and spits something more exaggerated and primal back at us, and we have to handle that raw part of ourselves.
There is certainly a healthy way to interact with internet erotica. Pornhub is sometimes the Pinterest of sex, where you can go and get ideas, see what you like, and make a moodboard. But Pinterest isn’t real life: the photos of our dream home decor rarely look like our living rooms even if we bought all the appropriate merchandise. Into my 20s, porn has treated me well for inspiration and as a late night pastime, but my brain is now mature enough to understand it is not real life. I can’t help but think about all the babies with iPads who will see titties younger and younger, those images shaping their perception of the world until they’ve already experienced a simulation of sex a thousand times before they have it for themselves. It gets to the point when they don’t bat an eye when adults show them dicks on Omegle.
The Mormon anti-porn convention had some good points, but it shamed individuals for giving into internet temptation when the real problem is structural. At this point, porn is nearly inescapable and the internet isn’t going away anytime soon. We have to come to terms with what it has done to us. As a generation, we’ve grown up faster than our minds and bodies can handle. It’s difficult to talk about without being pro or anti porn, but we should attack the issue with porn neutrality. There is nothing inherently bad about porn itself until it grooms us into early online sexual activity, making it easy for a suburban five-year-old to see enough creampies to kill a medieval peasant. We have the technological power of a god designed to please the psychological desires of a monkey; there are only so many bananas we can take before we implode.
Anya Neeze is a student at Cornell University. Comments can be sent to [email protected]. Boink! runs during alternate Sex on Thursdays this semester.