nofap and female porn addicts

[svnsettia]

most accessible porn addiction recovery resources have been entirely unhelpful to me, as they're all directed towards men. arguably, female porn addicts struggle a lot more than males do... but there are hardly any woman-centered porn addiction recovery resources that specifically address the needs and struggles of female addicts.

i saw a statistic in my "anthropology of sex" class that it takes four to five months for young men to recover from porn addiction. but recovery, as defined by males, refers to the ability to hold an erection without the use of pornography. even recovering addicts are not concerned with much more than their masculinity. the masculine attitude towards porn recovery is that men need to recover from porn induced erectile dysfunction, increase their willpower and confidence, and regain their sexual vitality. they only want to beat their porn addiction because they can't get hard anymore. i haven't seen many male porn addicts who are very concerned about the way they see themselves in relation to women, mending their relationships with their own sexuality, and advocating that the victims of porn (ie sex workers and prostituted girls/women) are liberated from the industry and compensated for all they've been through at the hands of porn users. and if some porn-addicted men do care about these things, their concern only seems to run as deep as their worry about their own success in interpersonal relationships with women. they want to be able to obtain a sexual relationship with a woman. it doesn't matter to them whether these relationships are healthy or respectful to the woman involved.

porn changes how you see women. men don't suffer from that because the way men see women and intimacy is already fully backed by patriarchy. they're not the ones feeling the pain of being made into a sexual object for the consumption of others. women have gotten addicted to depictions of ourselves as victims, which is infinitely more painful and difficult to recover from than the mere limp dick syndrome that porn addicted males are so loud about.

when i first started using porn, i was aware that porn degrades women, but i didn't understand the full extent of sex industry's harm to everyone involved. to avoid disrespecting women, i almost exclusively watched porn without any women in it. seeing women in porn felt like seeing myself in porn, and it was difficult for me to feel anything but discomfort with the fact that she was being made to perform her sexuality for a camera. if it was gay or solo male porn, i didn't care much about those things--i know it's bad, but i'm really not above hating and disrespecting men.

in this post, i won't get too deep into what porn did to me. that's for another time, maybe... but i'll make some broad statements: it wasn't good for me to consume depictions of casual sex without any vulnerability or love. it wasn't good for me to see such intimate imagery of people who are complete strangers to me. regardless of the sex of the actors, it was not good for me to repeatedly consume content in which sex was treated so casually. it caused me to treat my own sexuality in ways that were careless and self-destructive.

my own recovery wasn't about restoring my confidence, willpower, or sexual vitality. it was all about desiring better things for myself than porn. it was about self respect. a huge part of my recovery was based on wanting to make my friends proud, wanting to respect women more, and wanting to be a female porn addict who recovered and can talk about the experience... so here i am, talking about it!