After I started watching porn videos, my creativity and concentration eroded. I became introvert and failed in exams and sports

Editor’s note: We are publishing this article, honoring the author’s requests not to mention his name, and after multiple correspondence for authenticity check.

A few days ago, Ministry of Communications and Information Technology (MoCIT) banned access to all the pornographic contents and adult websites. No sooner, the issue has been discussed on the social media. There were fuzzy comments criticizing porn ban, comparing it with kidnapping cases of school children because they go to schools, increase in road accidents because of roads and such. Many say blocking porn sites does not reduce sexual violence.

Some data shows that 35 percent of internet download is pornography which has been the largest industry in the internet world. One-third of all internet traffic is pornography and four out of every 50 sites visited in Nepal are adult websites. It means we are allowing the sex maniacs to dominate the digital world. I support the government’s decision and want to share my story.

Story of addiction

I am 19, a high school graduate and belong to a middle class Nepali family. I was thirteen when the internet came in my house, the age when I started developing interest in opposite sex. I began to view inducing pictures on the internet. I started watching sexual images and ultimately discovered pornography. I loved watching adult content behind my parent’s eyes and discovered masturbation and ejaculation. This developed into an addiction that I never noticed.

My creativity and concentration eroded. I became an introvert, shy and failed in exams and sports. I developed sexual fantasies and gradually started viewing aggressive and hardcore porn videos where a girl is beaten, manhandled, abused physically, mentally and verbally, and used like an object. Such inclination toward abusive content led my views about sexuality to be violent. I started objectifying female body. My eyes would scan every single girl that passed around me. I used to rape females in my mind. I was isolated socially and developed inferiority complex and suffered depression. I never shared this with anyone fearing the consequence. Porn was like a drug to me, a drug as devastating as heroin and cocaine.

As a regular viewer of porn for the last seven years, I can say that porn is getting violent day by day. According to The Huffington Post, porn sites get more visitors each month than Netflix, Amazon and Twitter combined. People like me find it arousing to choke a woman, to bang her to the wall, to make her cry, to abuse her mentally, physically and verbally. Around 90 percent top watched porn has physical and abusive content.

I became a sex maniac. By the time I became aware of it, it was too late. Today, I think if this lasted for a few more years, I would rot up in a prison cell in some molestation charges.

Presently, I am striving to get away from pornography and adult content. I never thought that I could even make it for a single day. I failed numerous times in this journey and my highest streak till date is eighty two days. I am fighting this addiction.

Porn and violence

People who support pornography say that porn imparts sex education and reduces sexual violence. I consider them as luddites. Pornography promotes film prostitution, drug abuse, sexually transmitted disease, pimping, solicitation, suicide and much more. It gives a hike to unusual sexual fantasies. Many porn stars have ended up their life in drugs, suicide and STDs. People are imitating porn and bolstering violence. Young girls in search of money are getting trapped to the porn agents who play with their body. Pornography is not love. It is only lust. It teaches boys that to be masculine one must break a girl down and abuse her. Likewise, this culture is teaching girls to hyper sexualize themselves.

Today, if we look to any photo shoot of a model, it is just pornified. How can these findings help porn to teach sexual knowledge and curtail sexual violence? Moreover, porn is ruining marriages and our family system. In June, 2018, after watching porn clips, four boys sexually assaulted a four-years-old minor girl in Kanpur district of Uttar Pradesh, India.

The United States produces around 90 percent of pornographic films and it has one of the highest records of violence against women. According to Crime Victims Research Centre, a woman is raped in the US in every forty six seconds. The Directorate-General of the European Commission published an article claiming that rape cases in England and Wales combined is greater than all the rape cases of the rest of the Europe put together.

Its report states that in 2015, around 35,700 cases of rape have been registered in the UK, followed by France with 12,500 cases and Germany with 7000 cases. A total of 5,500 cases have been registered just in a population of 9.8 million in Sweden. Germany sees approximately 30 rape cases registered every day. These clearly show that a country where pornography and prostitution is legal has very high intensity of violence against women. In Jerry Jhonson’s book It’s Killing Our Kids, Dr William Marshall insists that 86 percent rapists admit to regular use of pornography, with 57 percent admitting intimation of pornographic scenes while committing sex crimes.

Nothing in porn is natural. It only objectifies female body. Where are we taking our society to? With access to tube sites how will our upcoming generation work? Porn ban is the best move other nations need to follow too. I fully support the decision taken by the government. Let us create leaders and scientists, prodigies and expertise for the advancement of the mankind, and not hyper sexualized sex maniacs who rot their life like me.

(Author’s note: I have not revealed my identity for the fear of being named a pervert. I write this to spread awareness against porn)

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