Confronting Porn: 'Used correctly, porn can help adults in their sex lives, but it’s not for everyone'
Penny makes up to 25% of her income from OnlyFans, where she shares content to paying subscribers and offers custom sales starting at $1,000. (AP Photo/Tali Arbel)
When Dante Colle arrives on the set of a porn shoot, he typically begins by signing paperwork and thoroughly going through what he and his fellow cast members are comfortable doing sexually. The 28-year-old was the most viewed male gay performer on the popular porn website Pornhub in 2022 by a wide margin, and has won a slew of porn awards including Best Actor and Performer of the Year.
“I do all types of porn: Gay, straight, trans, bisexual,” he said from an airport in Los Angeles, on the way to New York to shoot a film.
“So I get the full scope on everything.”
A common criticism of porn is its frequent omission of onscreen consent between sexual partners, and experts suggest it’s having an impact on learned behaviours. So is sex really so forced, unemotional, and sometimes non-consensual as it is often depicted in porn?
The importance of consent in the industry is “relatively more of a recent thing”, said Dante.
He said performers frequently fill out documents outlining what sexual acts they’re happy to perform. One company pioneered better practice in the last four years, which has since been more widely adopted, but “before that there was nothing. It was just kind of expected for the performers to say something. You know, ‘If you don’t like something, you have to say it.’ Whereas now [they’re] giving you space to do it".
Those fantasies depicted onscreen are not always as spontaneous as they appear and are often meticulously scripted with safeguarding in place — in the larger studios anyway. The problem arises when teenagers, still developing and highly impressionable, look to porn for how they should perform in the bedroom.
Mounting evidence suggests excessive porn consumption can cause serious and long-lasting harm, especially when engaged with from a young age.
Of particular concern to health experts are the findings of a University of Galway study, which found most young people are using porn for sex education.
Experts speaking to the have suggested as the State syllabus on sex education is vastly ineffective and not fit for purpose, young people are sexually maturing with a skewed image of sex and intimacy — and it’s all within reach in their pockets.
So far in this series, we’ve looked at porn’s impact on children’s sexual development and spoken to those helping young people become critical consumers of sexual media. An oversubscription in limited clinical supports for those struggling with problematic porn use has led to a seven-month waiting list for a dedicated group therapy service at The Cork Sexual Health Centre, the only service of its kind in the country.
To refrain from demonising porn as a universally harmful media, what might responsible consumption look like? And, used in the right way, can it be a good thing?
When is an appropriate time to start watching porn?
“Well, 10 o’clock at night is a good time to watch porn,” joked psychologist Donal Clifford, who runs a porn addiction programme at Cork Sexual Health Centre.
“Porn can be quite healthy for adults. That’s it. For kids, fuck no.”
In an ideal world, children should not be able to watch porn before turning 18, he said. However, workshops have been introduced at schools by organisations such as Dublin Rape Crisis Centre to encourage teenagers to become critical consumers of sexual media, if they almost inevitably get their hands on it.
“Porn can actually be a great resource for some people struggling with their own sexuality,” said Donal.
“I would even prescribe it for some people. It can be helpful for couple’s therapy.”
He emphasised porn “is not for everybody” but can be educational and enjoyable.
While it can create issues, it can also help individuals or couples get over some issues they have and help people struggling with arousal, said Siobhán O’Higgins, sexologist at University of Galway.
She said porn can lead to objectification of those around you, but it can also be used to find out what turns you on in your own safe place — however, children should never watch it.
College students quoted in recent research conducted by the University of Galway were asked about their attitudes about porn.
One student said: “For a lot of gay people anyway, [porn] is used very much as a common tool for people to figure out their sexual orientation, because at that (young) age it is confusing, so I suppose porn is a go-to medium for people to find out what they’re reacting to sexually.”
Dr O’Higgins said: “Porn can be used to help people rediscover their sexuality and rediscover their bodies, but it depends on the level you’re watching. Back in the day, it would be somebody delivering pizzas to a bunch of [women] pretending to be high school girls and then having sex with them. But now it’s tying people up, strangulating them, six people all at one person, and it’s not intimate. It’s not erotic or sensual.”
She said porn doesn’t involve many senses and the intimate experience real-life sex has; “they just go right in there and hammer away don’t they?”
"There are forms of porn that are very erotic, sensual, slow, and very beautiful which is what we want for our children and young people: to have positive sexual experiences, amazing sex, explore their intimacy with somebody they care about and have orgasms.
"I mean, orgasms are amazing, why wouldn’t we want our children to experience that [in the future] and how can they get to that point?”
She was more favourable towards “ethical porn, created to explore sensuality and erotism”, but ultimately feels it does little to reflect the reality of sex.
“I wouldn’t say children need to be watching porn. What they need to be watching is how to form relationships, the emotions, working out what their boundaries are,” she said.
“It’s about understanding our bodies and less of the shame, but also being able to talk about these things with our parents or people who hopefully have more insight than we felt when we were 12 — because it is very scary.”
For Dante, porn use among hormonal teenagers “is going to happen”.
“Most of us when we were growing up, we all watched it. We were all underage and were watching,” he said, and added that he “doesn’t condone it”.
For adults, porn can be educational in some ways, “but not to be taken to the fullest extent”, he said.
He stressed that porn should be viewed as a fantasy first and foremost, but people will always take away from it what they want.
“If people are seeing two people having sex like that, then they’re like, ‘that’s just how people do it’, at the same time it’s like: No, it’s a fucking movie. We’re making a fantasy. People watch but do you really think some dude is flying around in a metal suit? Like, no.”
California star Penny Barber started doing porn when she was 18. Now, after almost 20 years in the industry — minus a break to have two children — she regularly receives industry award nods for her work and is in the top 1.3% of creators on OnlyFans, a website frequently used for selling intimate videos and images to fans.
“I’ve worked in every sector of porn from sound mixing to editing photos, to writing — you name it, I’ve probably done it,” the 37-year-old said from her home in the US.
“Today it’s a much more creative enterprise,” she said and added that nowadays performers are wearing many hats and managing their own image on websites such as OnlyFans. Penny makes up to 25% of her income from OnlyFans, where she shares content to paying subscribers and offers custom sales starting at $1,000.
When it comes to porn’s negative impacts, she believes it’s not porn that is the problem but it’s the user’s relationship to it.
“If it isn’t dominating your life or making a problem for you, [what’s the problem] right?”
When asked about teenagers looking to porn for sex education amid a drought in effective State sex education, Penny winced.
“Please don’t!” she said.
“I think the only thing you can learn, maybe a little bit, from watching a film is filmmaking. I didn’t learn how to do anything from watching porn. Why would you do that? I’m so sorry, but if that’s all that you have, I guess that’s what you’re gonna use.”
Her two sons “are getting to that age”, which worries her.
"I don’t know what the solution is. On the one hand, I just don’t think it’s realistic for them never to look at anything.
"On the other hand, I don’t really care if they look at women in bikinis. Or if they swipe my Victoria’s Secret catalogue, I don’t care. But I do think there is stuff online that they’re just not ready to view.
“Unfortunately, I don’t think that at this time there is a societal device in place to place reasonable and enforceable restrictions on young people. I think it has to be the parents.
“I think it would cut [underage porn use] down quite a bit if you had to verify your profile. I would certainly be all for that. And I don’t know why [these websites] don’t want to. Why wouldn’t you have somebody sign up with a credit card in order to get behind the velvet curtain? But I don’t own Pornhub — maybe someday!”
She said the best way to ensure everyone in a porn film was consenting, filled out paperwork, and was over 18, was to pay for it.
“Would you buy meat off of some guy who opens up his coat or has it in the back of his Honda Civic? No, you would go to a store where it’s been approved. You buy it properly.”
In the spirit of watching porn responsibly, Dante urged viewers to “practice restraint” and try to masturbate without porn too.
“Don’t watch it every day,” he said.
“Limit yourself to maybe twice a week and be aware of your habits. Try and notice if you’re watching crazier and crazier stuff… If you’re getting into illegal stuff, you should definitely be aware of that.
“Some people will need to push themselves further and further or watch… crazier stuff just to get the rush they needed before. It can be a good thing, but I think people are using it in excess — not everybody [though].
“But I think, just like anything, it needs to be done in moderation and you shouldn’t [develop] a dependence on it.”
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