50 Shades of Pornography w/ Dr. David Ley

has a choice. Whenever somebody says no, you can't, or there's no roles for you, or you have to look like this, I go. I'll show you. I'll show you. Welcome to Go ask Ally. I'm Allie Wentworth. So this is a very tricky subject, the subject of pornography. And to be very honest with you, I don't watch pornography. I never have. It's not something that I look for in my life. I have issues with it, particularly about the subjucation of women and my fear that it damages intimacy.

And I call it a friend of mine recently and I said, is everybody watching pornography? I mean, I've been married for twenty one years and I haven't, and she said, oh, Ali, listen. First of all, pornography is pervasive, so you better get used to it. So I decided I need to delve into the subject a little bit because I am curious

and I do want to learn. So for the sake of this podcast, the pornography we are discussing in this episode is ethical pornography people who want to be there, and I also want to know personally does pornography affect long term monogamous relationships? After all, it's a huge part of our culture, and there's nobody better to talk to. The doctor David Lay. He's a clinical psychologist, sex therapist,

and author. He's written several books and research articles on sexuality, sex addiction, and pornography, including The Myth of Sex Addiction and Ethical porn for Dicks, A Man's Guide to Responsible Viewing Pleasure. Doctor Lay is a frequent guest in media, on television with Anderson Cooper, Katie Currek, Doctor Phil and others, and in print including The New York Times, CNN, and Time and Playboy magazines and now on Go Ask Galli the podcast. Well, first of all, thank you for being here,

Doctor David Lay. Thank you for having they should be a fun chet Yeah. So you know, you've written such incredible books. And one of the things I was very cognizant of was when I started this podcast, there are so many different directions I can go in. And I realized recently as I was talking to women kind of my age let's say middle age, but let's just say forty and people women particularly, we're having the same conversations with me, which basically were is pornography okay in a

long term monogamous relationship? And the interesting thing is when I talk to women, the majority of the women say it's not okay, I'm uncomfortable with it, blah blah blah. The men say, I see it as something completely different. I can compartmentalize it doesn't affect my relationship. And every one of my gay male friends says it's totally fine. It's part of our relationship. So I'm curious. Does pornography

affect monogamous relationships? Kennet. It's a good question, Allie. At first, I think we have to acknowledge not all couples are the same as you. As you identified. We see this popping up for heterosexual couples. We don't see pornography being a problem or a conflict in LGBT couples. We also, interestingly don't see it as a problem in non monogamous couples. Non monogamous couples tend to use pornography more than monogamous couples and don't have any problems or consequences related to

it for the most part. When we look at heterosexual couples, one of the things that we do find is that a hetero couple that watches porn together tend to have a healthier relationship, have more sex, have more novel sex, and have a healthier sexual relationship. Couples where one partner views pornography in a negative way, couples where one at least one partner has moral concerns about pornography are likely to have conflicts over pornography, so the pornography represents moral

attitudes about sex. One of the things that I see when I work with couples where there is a conflict about pornography is that oftentimes one partner has the idea that watching pornography is a form of infidelity, that watching pornography is somehow demeaning to them or to others. Or that watching pornography creates a competition with the primary partner, such that one partner might feel like, well, you're watching people that look different than me or are more attractive

than me, and so you're not attracted to me anymore. Well, one of the things I hear from women over and over again is what am I not enough? That is the number one thing I hear over and over. Am I not enough? Why does he or she need to go outside the relationship for arousal And I can't possibly compete with that idealized version of a sexual partner exactly. And one of the challenges is that couples are oftentimes

not talking about that. Those attitudes or feelings are there, but the couple isn't sitting down and having a conversation about their attitudes about sex and masturbation. And that's also one of those super important things, because oftentimes couples will fight over pornography when actually what they're fighting over is masturbation, and most pornography is accompanied by masturbation, but we oftentimes

forget to talk about that now. And I think it's important because one of the things that we see, particularly in heterosexual couples that have been together for a while and are monogamous. Is that as sex frequency goes down in men especially and in women to a degree, masturbation and porn consumption goes up. So people are using pornography and masturbation as a way to compensate for the couple not having as much sex as they would really like

to have. That conversation oftentimes doesn't happen. I'm wondering too, because I'm you know again, I'm talking about a monogamous

relationship that has been going on for a while. And I wonder too with women my age, like in perimenopause and menopause, their libido goes way down, so they're already feeling insufficient, and then I would imagine their husband or their spouses or their partners porn watching and masturbation goes up, and so you then have this inequality of kind of sexual activity that I would imagine causes a lot of problems. It certainly can, as again, especially when that resentment or

conflict is there and people aren't talking about it. Now, I will say, we don't teach people how to talk about this stuff. I mean, we don't teach people even somebody you've been married to for fifteen or twenty years,

we don't teach people to talk about masturbation. Now again when we refocus this on masturbation, and I think that's an important piece because back in twenty seventeen, a colleague of mine, Sam Perry, he's a sociologist in Oklahoma, he published data that showed at the time that pornography used

predicted future divorce. Now, Sam went back and reanalyzed the data a little later when he heard from folks like me, and interestingly, he found that actually, when you separate out the variance related to masturbation, that pornography used actually was neutral to slightly positive for a relationship, but masturbation frequency

predicted future relationship problems. Now, it's not that masturbation is bad for a marriage, but masturbation increases can reflect a desired discrepancy, can reflect sexual mismatch that isn't getting talked about in the relationship. That and it's a symptom of other issues. When I see couples in my office, and I see a lot of them that are struggling with pornography, it is always the canary in the coal mine. There are other issues and problems that don't relate to the pornography,

but the pornography is a symptom of it. So, for instance, you know, one partner might have a sexual interest that the other partner doesn't share and actually shames the one partner for having an interest in, whether it's pornography or fetish behavior or BDSM or any other kind of behavior. So the partner goes to pornography to experience that kind of arousal and stimulation in a way they can't get with their partner because of the conflict and the undisclosed

or unresolved kind of mismatch. I mean, you've talked about symptoms of pornography and masturbation being abandonment and rejection. I mean, do you have to and if you did really go into deep therapy about the underlying issues, would that somehow change their pornography viewing if you really got to the root of it. I've seen that happen. Definitely. When we can get the couple to talk about the fears, the emotions, the thoughts that they are having about this issue, then

we can start addressing those real issues. Unfortunately, pornography is a it's a sexy, shiny object that distracts us from

dealing with those real underlying conflicts. And I think that's so important because you know, if the husband, and unfortunately this often is a male female kind of dynamic, if the husband doesn't really understand the degree to which his wife feels threatened by the women in porn, then he can't do the work to let her know how attractive he thinks she is, how attracted he is still to her, and that she is somebody he lust after still after

fifteen years of marriage. So explain the sexual shiny object syndrome exactly. So whenever, whenever sex is present and porn is a big, sexy, shining object, we get distracted by that and we chase it like a rabbit down a hole and blame lots and lots of problems on that instead of addressing again all these underlying kind of problems. Now, both men and women use pornography viewing as a way

to deal with negative emotions. Men in particular used pornography and masturbation of pornography as a way to kind of turn off anxiety because it is a very effective strategy for that. Well, how is it effective for anxiety? Evolutionarily? You know, we were built as a species that made it at any opportunity, and if we were nervous about that saber tooth tiger getting us, you would jerk off, Well, you wouldn't. You wouldn't jerk off, you wouldn't masturbate. And

so sexual arousal turns off anxiety. It turned you know, changes some of the function in our brain um so that we are more focused on pleasure. Pleasure feels better. It puts away you know, our discussed our even our our tendency to feel discussed for something goes down when we're sexually aroused, and then unfortunately oftentimes it comes back after our orgasm, and then people start feeling discussed even at the thing, at what they were fantasizing about or watching.

How does that differ for women? Women have more effective and varied coping strategies to deal with negative emotions. You know, women from from an early age or taught to express, acknowledge, identify,

and cope with negative emotions. Guys a lot of times in my office, sitting on my couch, guys don't even have very good ability to name the negative emotions that they're feeling, so they oftentimes don't practice many skills to deal with negative emotions and because watching pornography is a great way to turn off the depression or the anxiety and not worry about those things. Right, then guys can

oftentimes overuse it. Now, if if that is going on in a relationship and we don't deal with it, we don't we don't help the guy learn other coping strategies to deal with those negative emotions. Then oftentimes what happens is we are trying to take away some of they's only coping strategies for bad feelings, and that can actually backlash and increase, right, increase anxiety and depression because now he is feeling sad or depressed or worried and he

can't go to those things to feel better. Again, if we don't deal with those underlying issues for the man and the couple and we just focus on the pornography, we're missing the point, right. Um, But it is possible for both partners to feel arousal at the same time with pornography. Yeah, oftentimes, Um, that is one of the that that that's one of the strategies when couples watch

porn together. Now, I think and in my third book about Responsible porn Use for Men, which is a great title by the way, thank you, um ethical dicks for all those guys named Richard who liked to watch porn um and and even just the idea that there is a thing called ethical pornography is oftentimes a challenge for people because they think that all pornography is inherently exploitive and if we if we then start to that is one of the things that oftentimes women fear about pornography

is that women are being exploited in it, that they can't watch it ethically or safely. And I like to say, hey, there's fair trade born out there, just like fair trade coffee, where you don't have to feel guilty. Yeah, I'm trying to be more open minded about it, particularly when it comes to couples and how it relates to a relationship. There's a lot more to come after the short break

and we're back. I just want to want to ask you right here about the men of sex addiction, because you've got very specific views about it, and one has a tendency in much of what I've read, particularly women, that when men use a lot of pornography, they are labeled as sex addicts, and that's not always true true, And I'm on record for really challenging the whole concept of sex addiction again because it distracts us from dealing with,

oftentimes the real issues. So the research actually today, over the past seven years or so, has found that there are roughly two things that predominantly predict whether a male is going to identify as a porn addict. One is whether he was raised religious or not. Two now is

whether he is highly narcissistic. And the religious conflict is coming from the fact that these are men who believe that pornography and masturbation immoral, and then they engage in that behavior, and then they feel bad for engaging in the behavior. The problem is not the pornography. The problem is engaging in a behavior that you disagree with and not ever examining or addressing or dealing with that internal conflict.

The narcissism is a new finding that is popping up in research just recently, and narcissists and narcissistic males oftentimes engage in more selfish, exploitive sexual behavior, and when they are having conflict about it, they're much less likely to take personal responsibility for it and instead blame somebody or something else like pornography, which is why you see so many celebrities in the past, that's right, who have been you know, incredibly unfaithful and a bit of a player

or a dog, and all of a sudden they're like, I'm a sex addict, I'm going to rehab, I'll be back in three months and all is forgiven. And yeah, do they address it and rehab sex addiction summer camp. No, they don't address it there. Instead they do things like ride horses and you know, engage in really unsupported kind of therapy. It's really important to know that. You know, after forty years of the sex addiction model existing, there's

no data showing that that treatment works. There's there's no evidence that sex addiction treatment is effective at addressing any of these problems. Instead, what does work for people that are struggling with pornography is cognitive behavioral therapy or what's called acceptance and commitment therapy. These are both strategies that don't try to stop the behavior, but instead try to address and explore the function and the meaning of the behavior. That again is I think the thing that gets lost

when we overfocus on the sexual behavior. We stop recognizing that this is a behavior that's occurred in a person, and in a relationship, and in a personal history of sexual attitudes and morality, and to understand that sexual behavior, we have to understand all of those things. Is there a theme that you have seen a lot in your work when it comes to pornography and couples, They recurring theme.

I should say largely what you really described early on is that the wife oftentimes has concerns about what the pornography use means, and the couple isn't talking about it oftentimes because the husband is ashamed. Now, I do see men who don't want to pressure their wife for sex. They know that she's not feeling particularly into it, and they're going to feel guilty if they keep hounding her to have sex, So they masturbate to porn as an experience, as a release, so that they don't have to feel

like they're pressure on her. So it's interesting that there's empathy. They're motivating these behaviors for the husbands, so they feel worse about sort of asking their wife for sex more than feeling bad about watching pornography. Oftentimes, Yeah, because because they know the wife feels pressured and they don't want to be that guy. Yeah, that can't feel good. Sexually either when you know your partner's not into it. Yeah. Yeah. Now.

The one of the other things that we are seeing in recent research and clinically is that men who experience any form of sexual dysfunction, whether it's premature ejaculation, delayed ejaculation, or a rectile dysfunction, are fifty percent more likely to experience symptoms of that dysfunction when they are attempting to

have partnered sex and not during masturbation. So the wife can get upset and say, well, you don't have problems with your sexual function when you're masturbating watching porn, but when you try and have sex with me, these problems are coming up and you can't get hard. Is there something wrong with me? Or did porn do this? But the problem is the sexual dysfunction, And again the problem oftentimes is anxiety. It is much easier to relax, watch

pornography and masturbate. You don't have to buy the internet dinner, you don't have to try and find its clitterus, you don't have to worry about giving the Internet an orgasm. But when we're with a partner, you know, we do have to be mindful, We do have to be thoughtful and pay attention to our partner's needs. And for men that are dealing with sexual dysfunction and have anxiety, that

is a recipe for struggle. So one of the things that I do with those kinds of couples is, hey, let's look at the differences between watching pornography and masturbating versus partnered sex. Now, what are some things that we can try and learn from it? Can or can we try and take pressure off? Can we increase repertoire for behaviors that are not penis focused? Can we expand the

definition of sex? I encourage a lot of these couples to engage in mutual masturbation, to start learning about how each other self pleasures, so that now we can take that knowledge back into partnered sex. Yes, because I've heard a lot of women talk about how they can't have orgasms with their husband, but they can alone with a vibrator or and so's it seems to me the problems occur when everybody's basically getting themselves off, but they're not

doing it together. And particularly as we age, you know, the sexual function you know, gets challenged by our aging bodies. And so again, can we now start to look at what do we get out of sex that maybe we don't have to have an orgasm together, but we get the cuddling, we get the connection, we get the physical touch, we get the acceptance and the affirmation, and we start valuing all of those things and we become less goal focused,

right for the sex. That's an important thing. Now. One thing that came to mind just now as you talked about the women with their vibrators. This one husband read my book Ethical Porn for Dicks, and he came to me and he said, I get it now. He said, porn is a tool for increasing arousal, just like my

wife's vibrator is a tool for increasing her arousal. And research actually supports that is that when people, particularly men, watch pornography, they're much more likely to have a more powerful orgasm to get aroused again and have a stronger

erection than when they are fantasizing without pornography. So now, nobody's ever really done a comparison between mean people masturbating watching pornography versus sex, although there is interesting research that shows that men who watch pornography more actually get more aroused with their partner and watching pornography and masturbation frequency, it's not like it takes something away from libido or sexuality, but instead it oftentimes is an indicator of a higher

level of sexual interest in libido. So, you know, there's this idea that if you masturbate, then you're taking something away from the sexual connection of the relationship outside the refractory period of maybe an hour or thirty minutes, that doesn't appear to be true. So when there is dysfunction which is based in an emotional or deeply psychological way, is the only way out to have therapy and to

dig into that stuff, not necessarily. And so you know, there's research in Canada where they looked at people longitudinally over about a four or five year period of time and found that people who identified as sex addicts or porn addicts were generally ninety percent likely to not identify that way within a year's time without having gotten treatment or therapy. What that message is to me is that oftentimes sex related problems are kind of like an adjustment disorder.

That people are struggling with something in their life, maybe divorce, maybe relationship problems, maybe stress at work, and they are trying desperately to feel better and they're using sex to try to feel better. As their life changes in some of those life problems get better. Oftentimes some of those problems will go away and the sex stops being a problem. There are some issues though, erectile dysfunction, delayed ejaculation, an orgasmia,

that those are anatomical or physical. These well, we really struggle at this point to know how much of those issues are physical versus psychological. Typically it's a mix of both. You know, people men who struggle to restrain orgasm or to have orgasm when they want, you know, premature or delayed ejaculation. There is a very significant physical and genetic component to that. We can improve it to a degree with psychological treatment, but oftentimes we can't fix it entirely

because of the physical components. Now there are some medications that we can also add in to help with those things. So we have to address these issues, all of them. We are embodied people, and sexuality is both body and mind, and we have to go at it in that way. And having a good sex therapist who doesn't engage in shame and who is educated about the wide diversity of normal can help us identify how our mind is contributing to these problems and maybe give us some strategies to

explore to pull those problems away. And if you introduce pornography into your love making, isn't there a fear that you cannot then go back to having sex without the pornography. I mean, if it's so if it's so much better, how do you ever then kind of go back and say, oh shit, we're in this hotel and they don't have

moren what are we going to do? You know, sexuality is really resilient, and I think that one of the things I worry about and a lot of the social dialogue about sexuality is that we act as though it can get broken really easily. And generally sex is responsive and able to absorb these kinds of different things. The pornography just like a sex toy, just like a vibrator, just like lingerie, just like you know, chocolate and strawberries can be something that couples can enjoy as a part

of their sexuality. And typically I don't see couples where it takes over. Now, I do see couples where one partner becomes demanding, becomes kind of bossy and resentful if they can't have you know, pornography present. That's not a problem of the pornography. That's a problem of this person and their relationship style. And rather than talking about the pornography, I want to talk about why are they struggling to be empathic for their partners' needs and how can we

increase compassion, empathy and communication about needs. I'm curious about something you just said because I've never quite understood the chocolate strawberry food addition to sex, because I've never tried it. But I don't. I don't like to mix. You don't like it secks, Yeah, I just never I never quite got it. I understand the feathers and the lingerie, it's the food. I'm not excited about it. It is a sensuous pleasure. It is again one of the aspects of

our physical life where we can feel pleasure. You know, there's a reason why Kellogg's corn flakes was invented. It was invented as a bland food that wouldn't trigger people to be overly focused on physical pleasure that would lead them to masturbate or want to have sex. Kellogg was against masturbation and believed that if people enjoyed physical pleasures too much that it would take them over. This is true,

This is it. Yeah, totally true. This is yeah. Kellex cornflakes and Graham crackers now and Graham who invented Graham crackers, believe the same thing. But um didn't anticipate s'mores because if you you know, if you bring chocolate and chocolate again and marshmallows, you know, Graham crackers are pretty sell. By the way, I will take us some more over sex any day of the week. So that they failed that way, So yes, so people can by bringing those

sensual pleasures into sex. It gets to what I was talking about a moment ago, trying to expand our definition

of sex. And though as we age, can we pull away from sex has to be penis and vagina penetration to you know, tell orgasm, and can we start expanding it to include other aspects of connected pleasure And for some people bringing food in now, some people are really into it, and they engage in what they call splashing, which is like throwing food at each other or having having sex or sex play like in a baby pool filled with food, but you use the baby pool so

you don't make a mess, and then you go get in the shower. I got a lot to talk to my husband about. Okay, that's so, that's a thing. It's a thing, and it's not a thing for everybody, but it's a thing for some people. And if they do it in a healthy way, if they do it with consent and honesty and shared values and without exploitation or

negative pressure, it's healthy. And I think that's one of the things that sex therapists have really progressed on in the past decade or two is recognizing that just because I wouldn't do something doesn't mean it's unhealthy. I mean that was the That was Kinsey's definition of an infamaniac

an anybody who has more sex than the therapist. Now we recognize that about fifty percent of people have sexual fantasies or interests that we used to think were unhealthy or abnormal or aberrantn't We didn't know it was that many because they knew we thought there was something wrong

with them, so they kept their mouth shut. Right now we're finding out through the Internet and through pronography, we're actually learning a lot of things about people's secret sexuality through chronography use that we never knew before, and is because we're taking away some of that secret chain. It's interesting to look at our country historically. And I was thinking earlier when we were talking about you know, people have fetishes, people introduced things into their relationships that work

for them. In the seventies, you know, key parties were such a big part of a portion of our culture. And I'm just curious with your research. It doesn't really work to add a third person in, does it. You know, I know many non monogamous, very healthy, long lived couples that explore sexuality with other people, whether together or apart, and are able to make that work. Now, it's again, not all couples are the same. It works for some people,

that doesn't work for others. People that you know, are more neurotic, people that have greater levels of insecurity or jealousy are less likely to be able to make that work. People with greater openness to experience, people with greater emotional stability and better communication skills are able to make that work. My first book actually is about couples that brought other men into the relationship to have sex with the wife. And I got to tell you, my first reaction when

I met those couples was kind of like yours. Oh, this can't work. And then I sat down and I talked to these couples, and I found out that many of them had been making it work for twenty or thirty years, and it brought excitement and energy to the marriage. For some of the men, it took some pressure off

for them to satisfy their wife. For some of the women, it became a really interesting kind of place of empowerment where the women were able to now express and embrace their sexuality in a new and kind of novel way that they'd never been allowed to before. Wow. I mean, because you never hear, or you rarely hear about, you know, a woman and her being allowed to have multiple partners. You know, usually it's the other way around, and it's some weird cult and you know they're all brainwashed women

that you know, well, we saw it with Jerry Foldball Junior, yes, recently. Yeah, And you know, and that actually gets to the point

I was making. I Mean, one of the things that I found super interesting as I watched that documentary was that, you know, Becky had Jerry was basically her only relationship she started dating in when she was a teenager, and you know, it is at least a hypothesis that we can explore is that exploring sex with other men, including the poolboy, was a way for her to explore something that she missed by getting into a monogamous relationship so early.

Would you say it kept the relationship together, That maybe if she wasn't able to explore that, she would go off and be unfaithful unbeknownst to her husband. Possibly that is one of the things that you know, And I differ somewhat from some sex therapist who say, you know, opening a relationship in response to infidelity or to save a relationship never works. But I've seen I've seen couples

where it did work. I've seen couples where infidelity got exposed and now it led them to talk about some of the things that had been missing in the relationship and in themselves, and for some of them, exploring non monogamy became a way to a strategy to fill some of those needs. And it's time for a short break. Welcome back to go. Ask Alli talk to me about orgasmic meditation, which I just like to say, yeah, oh yeah,

don't be all I mean on Yeah. So, orgasmic meditation is an interesting kind of thing that popped up and it was kind of cult related a few years ago. And it's an interesting practice where a female lies prone and a partner wearing a glove and using lube, engages in kind of ritualized, very very stylized manual stimuli of the of the female's clarists for a period of time. And the point is not so much achieving orgasm, but

orgasm is oftentimes a component of it. For many women that that practiced it, it became a way for them to connect with their sexual pleasure in a way that many of them had never had before. And you know, one of the one of the things I see that's just super sad is women coming into my office who you know, have just been taught to be ashamed of their sexuality, of their genitals, of their orgasm um, and

they've never achieved sexual pleasure. It makes them feel so guilty, and so things practices like orgasmic me meditation are a way to for women to connect with that and to connect with their partner doing it. So there's been research looking at it and finding that it increases sexual pleasure, it increases orgasm connection or ability. The partner who is giving has to learn how to control themselves. Right, it's

not about them. They have to restrain their desire to know jump in and make it about them and focus on their partner's pleasure. And that give and take and

the focus on female pleasure I think is really remarkable. Now, there was some some unhealthy things about the group, some of the groups that were doing orgasmic meditation, and it turned into pressure and some exploitation, but there are definitely some valuable things that came out of that, right, And the other thing I'm really curious about is Hypersexual Behavioral Inventory.

So the HBI, the hyper Sexual Behavior Inventory, was created by a colleague of mine, Rory Reid, as a PhD at UCLA, and it's nineteen items that assess a range of sexual behaviors, not just pornography viewing, and it helps to identify people who are having problems as a result

of their behaviors. And that's an important thing to note because many there are many people out there who have lots of sex and have no problems at Gay men and swingers have more sex than sex addicts ever dreamed of having, but they don't have problems because they've integrated into their lives and it's part of it's part of their culture, so that it's not creating a conflict and there's not a lot of shame, probably right, exactly exactly,

And a lot of this goes back to shame. A lot of the problems related to sexual behavior come out of shame and guilt and conflict between what we think we're supposed to be versus what our body and libido wants. The HBI is a good way of assessing the level of that. Now, there used to be these these tests,

the Sex Addiction Screening Test and stuff like that. Basically, if you took the test and you've ever masturbated or had a sex fantasy that you felt a little bit of shame about, you came up as a sex addict on the HBI. It's actually normed on a general population, and so doctor Reid keeps adjusting the scoring because he's identified that there's a lot of people out there that engage in a lot of sex and that sometimes feeling guilty or having sex problems doesn't automatically make you unhealthy.

And so that that's the most important thing I think in research around this is we have to recognize we are still learning what normal sex is because it's been

so secret and so ashamed for so long. Oh well, I would say, on the other hand, too, addressing a lot of what we've talked about before, addressing sexual dysfunction, or even going so far as to you know, some of the criminal things about sexuality and predators, and you know, there's a lot of psychology to mind there, and we have a tendency just to say this is bad, put them away, or I'm bad. So I'm you know, I'm not going to allow my sexual being to be present

in the world at all. Right, So what ways can can pornography be helpful in a relationship? Is it pure arousalum? No, I don't think so. Actually, for instance, people that watch pornography tend to become more egalitarian over time, tend to become less religious, and tend to be more aware of and supportive of female pleasure. So watching pornography can expose people to a wide diversity of sexual fantasies and behaviors,

even things that don't turn you on. And that's one of the things that we see as people start to watch pornography is they become more accepting of behaviors that they themselves don't find arousing watching pornography together for a couple. One of the most positive things is that it injects novelty and sexual novelty into the relationship. Oh hey, let's try that thing that we just saw on the pornography because that looked kind of exciting and kind of interesting.

Now we saw that with fifty Shades of Gray that you know. The enormous popularity of that book in that movie led to many many women going to their boyfriends or husbands and saying, hey, I kind of want to try this because I got really turned on reading this book. Pornography is the same thing. Erotica is really pornography for women and does kind of the same thing. Increases arousal and injects kind of novelty and new ideas just asking

for a friend. I think a lot of women's aversion to pornography is that the things we talked about before, but also it's stuff being done to them. Is there a niche in the pornography world that is empowering pornography for women specifically, so it's not just a niche. I mean. One of the things that a lot of people don't actually understand is that the majority of pornography that's actually made in the United States now is made by independent

female performers who are producing their own content. Pink and White Production and Afterglow are two that I've had communications with and seeing their material, and they've participated in trainings that I do that our female lad and producing content with an eye towards female sexual arousal. And this isn't kind of the nineteen seventies and eighties, you know, soft porn.

It's still pretty hard porn. But a woman who's watching it can rest assured that everybody that's in it is consenting to be there, that they are not engaging in behaviors they don't want to engage in. And the material is produced in a way that focuses on a bit more realistic connection and arousal kind of practices. You know, it's not performative. And does it start with the men doing the dishes and the laundry because in a little

made outfit, yeah, yeah, and then they're submissive. I mean that to me would probably make billions of dollars before we go as you know, I feel like I don't feel like it. I do. I ask a lot of questions on my podcast because it's like a masterclass for me. And it's always stuff that I'm just fascinated by and interested in. But I always allow my guests to ask

me a question, ask me anything you want. So, you know, I did some googling alley and I saw that Yeah yeah, oh yeah, oh yeah you got you got a Google and I saw it. Back in nineteen when you actually talked about pornography and you said that you would watch pornography with your kids to help them talk with you about sex and what real sex is. Did that ever happen and what was that like? Ah? Yes, you know, I got a lot of backlash for that comment, and

it was actually taken out of context. I was talking about educating our teens when it came to pornography, and I made a comment about I think about if I had a teenage boy, I might if you wanted to show me what he was watching, I would be able to talk about it. But to answer your question, no, I never watched pornography with my daughters. That's a shame. I you know, I thought it was such a healthy statement.

I'm sorry you got backlash. There's a researcher, Emily Rothman in Boston who teaches porn literacy and actually has evidence based research supporting that by teaching young people about what porn is and isn't, we can take away many of the problems that porn might cause. So I thought you I thought your statement was brilliant, and I'm sad. I'm sad you got the hit. What I was saying was I think our teenagers, because pornography is so pervasive, need

to be educated. I think with girls there's one kind of education, but I do think with boys it's it's at a much younger age. Because they're all watching porn. We have to really help them understand what true intimacy looks like, what kind of pornography, particularly the dark and very illegal stuff. Kids that are already precociously sexual, kids that are already interested in sad tend to be the

ones who seek out pornography at earlier ages. Most of the problems of pornography on adolescents would be addressed and mitigated with effective sex education. But we get so focused talking about pornography and the negative messages that kids are learning from it that we kind of forget we need to put healthy messages out there. If we don't want the negative messages to stick Yeah, I completely agree. I

mean you think about you know, and night. Again, if I were a teenage boy and sex ed was like the penis goes in the vagina, it throws up, and a baby's made, and then I discovered pornography. I mean, come on, there's no comparison. So I agree with you. I think the sex education or country could be amped up a lot more, just to show them what real women look like when they're naked and what real sexual,

healthy relationships look like. So again that was sadly taken out of context, but what I was really saying was how important it is to educate our teens about pornography. But you still open the door. Yeah, and I do feel like I've educated them another way exactly. And kids that can talk with their parents about sexuality are much more likely to have healthy sexuality as adults. Yeah. I want to help people be healthy and have healthy sex. I love that. Well, that's your bumper sticker. Thank you,

thank you, thank you, thank you. This was fascinating. So I thank you so much for talking to me about this, Thanks for having me, thank you, thank you for doing this. I mean, one of the things that I see is that these kinds of conversations help all of the listeners to address the issues of shame and sexuality stigma in their life. So you're changing the world by having these conversations. Wow,

human sexuality will continue to boggle my mind. But so many great insights, so interesting to me because I have such rigid ideas about pornography and have been fascinated for a long time about how it is incorporated into a

monogamous couple. So lots of eye opening for me. And also he's got an array of great books to read if you'd like to know more, and you can find him on Instagram at David lay PhD. And thank you all for listening to Go Ask Alli, and for more information on what you've heard in this episode, check out our show notes. Be sure to subscribe, rate and review. Go ask Alli and follow me on social media on

Instagram at the Real Alli Wentworth. And Now, if you'd like to ask me a question or suggest a guest or a topic to dig into, I'd love to hear from you, and there's a bunch of ways you can do it. You can call or text me at three two three three six four six three five six, or you can email a voice memo right from your phone to Go Ask Alli podcast at gmail dot com and if you leave a question, you just might hear it and go ask Alli. Go Ask Gali is a production

of Shondaland Audio and partnership with iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from Shondaland Audio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.