Can Women Turn Into Porn Addicts?

Believe it or not, more and more Indian women are surfing online pornography everyday. While mature and occasional indulgence in pornography can actually be good for a healthy sex life, excessive exposure to explicit sec can turn women into hyper-sexuals and porn addicts.

The Expert’s View

Dr Manish Jain, who is a psychiatrist at BLK Super Specialty Hospital in New Delhi, treats several women patients who are porn addicts. He believes that excessive exposure to porn can lead to promiscuity and porn dependence, often becoming the reason for healthy relationships to become strained. “Indian women are slowly bridging the gap with their male counterparts who have traditionally been leading consumers for online porn.

“Today, 30% of porn website visitors are women, as a study published in The Daily Beast in collaboration with Pornhub reveals. It can also stimulate one’s fantasy and predispose one towards risky sex behaviour”, he said in conversation with The Times of India“.

Dr Sameer Malhotra, Director of Mental Health and Behavioural Sciences at Max Super Speciality Hospital, concurs with this analysis. He says that explicit exposure to pornography is associated with an increased need for visual signals to experience sexual arousal, and often interferes with a woman’s personal as well as romantic life. “Results can vary as in some cases, it can increase libido leading to promiscuity and excessive masturbation. In others, however, it may lead to decreased sexual activity in which gratification is attained only by watching pornography,” he explains.

So, Why Is Excessive Porn A Problem?

Porn addiction leads to sex addiction. As women act promiscuously, trying to bring their pornographic fantasies to life, they become more susceptible to the dangers of casual sex. Sex addiction is never really about sex.

Often, psychologists find that the problem stems from poor body image issues (hence, the inability to enjoy sex with a real-life partner), and escape from an unsatisfactory sex life, or a need to medicate emotional pain that may or may not stem from early-life child abuse trauma.

The Bottom Line

Many people wrongly assume that only men are susceptible to sex addiction and porn addiction. Research reveals that a majority of abuse survivors are women, and that makes them more susceptible to porn addiction. Sadly, counsellors often fail to recognise the early systems of these addictions and how closely they are related to past abuse experiences.

However, as long as pornography is used for enhancing sexual experience with a partner and not just for individual carnal pleasure, it is a healthy indulgence.