Lee Suckling: Tumblr and the pros and cons of porn

I believe that porn is helpful in understanding what you like and don't like: it can be like dipping your toe in the water with sexual ideas you're thinking about trying. Photo / Getty Images

COMMENT:

• Warning: Sexually explicit content

It's a never-ending debate: is porn harmful to society? Last week's decision for Tumblr to remove all depictions of sexual acts from its website by December 17 certainly veers into the puritanical view that porn is bad for us.

I have some arguments both for and against pornography.

For: Porn allows you to understand yourself

One core criticism of Tumblr's decision was that is disables sexually marginalised communities from coming together to share their kinks and fetishes.

I believe that porn is helpful in understanding what you like and don't like: it can be like dipping your toe in the water with sexual ideas you're thinking about trying. Porn can be useful to understand how your sexual desires can be manifested in real life. Or if they are something you want to leave on a computer screen.

Against: Porn can change your sexual appetite

Most pornography is exaggerated, loud, and rough. If it's professionally-made porn, it is acting, after all. However, what porn can do is change your sexual appetite by rewiring the pleasure centres of your brain for arousal for only what you see on screen, rather than what's realistic in real life.

This becomes problematic when your brain is signalling to your body that "extreme" sexual events are what you're accustomed to, but you are unable to have them manifest in the real world.

For: Porn improves sex positivity and sexual knowledge

Let's be honest, society tells us that there are certain "kinds" of sex and that we are weird if we stray from them. A benefit of porn is that it improves sex positivity by doing away with societally-constructed stigma about what "normal" sex is.

You can see others engaging in sexual acts you've previously thought to be a little freaky and can realise they're more common than you thought. What's more, sexual knowledge can be vastly improved through porn. You can learn about new positions, pleasure centres, and what makes other people tick.

Against: Porn is addictive

Many scientific studies about porn concern themselves with its potential addictiveness. There is some merit in these – all the forms of online entertainment, including web surfing, social network scrolling, gaming, gambling and of course, porn, can be addictive to some people.

All can produce dopamine in the brain – which makes you happy and leaves you wanting more – which creates new nerve pathways that come to expect that type of pleasurable engagement in the future. It should be noted, however, that systematic reviews of pornography addiction studies have found them to be of poor quality research and driven by personal bias.

For: Porn can improve your health and relationship

A lot of research out there looks at how porn affects a person's mental health, often concluding negatively. However, some research looks at self-reported physical effects, which include improving overall quality of life. Couples who communicate honestly about their pornography consumption tend to have lower levels of distress and higher levels of sexual satisfaction. And couples who watch porn together self-report low levels of relationship strife.

Against: Porn can be damaging to young men's erectile function

Because porn is so accessible from a young age via the internet (and everybody has a smartphone), some studies are revealing that young men find it hard to get or maintain an erection with real, live sexual partners.

I've even heard anecdotes of young men who cannot orgasm without the "death grip" of their own hand. Systematic reviews of research on erectile dysfunction (ED) and porn consumption have mixed outcomes on this. A lot of the science concludes that while pornography consumption may be one factor in ED, it is very unlikely to be the only factor.