Yes, Porn Can Be Healthy and Healing. Here’s How.

Most articles are written focusing on the negatives of porn, always slinging around a few good points but mostly just expressing sex– and body-phobia while ignoring the benefits. As a sex therapist and educator, my work is to help my patients use sex to heal and to also see its medicinal values. And sometimes I can take advantage of how porn heals people as well.

Not all porn is the same, and I recommend the types that focus on sexual and body diversity, honoring the sexualities of all types of people: the butch, the femmes, the skinny, the queer, the POC, the kinky, the fat and also the unhung.

How porn heals people:

1. Porn helps normalize diversity.

Not all art and media focus on the representation of sexual and body diversity, leaving those not fitting into the white, cis, masc, gym-bodied industrial complex feeling both marginalized and not eroticized or valued. There are now many porn sites that focus on diversity in both sex acts and bodies. Viewing this type of porn heals sexual and body confidence, and also helps decrease erotophobia for those who have made their sexuality rigid and narrow by only sexualizing the standard one-size-fits-all sexual body and porn performer.

2. Porn provides sex to those without partners and the solosexual.

Porn provides a sex life for those that don’t have partners or don’t want partners. Not all people have access to or enjoy sex with others, and solo sex as a lifestyle or sexual orientation is acceptable. Others don’t meet social desirability requirements and due to this oppression rely upon porn as one means of sexual health and expression. This is not a lesser form of sexuality; it’s just different.

3. Porn gives sex to the fetish sexual.

Some of us are far kinkier than our partners, and for us, porn becomes a way to engage fetishes and kinks. The ability to participate in your full sexuality is important for sexual health, and thankfully porn exists that is able to meet everyone’s needs. Anything can be eroticized, and porn for everything exists.

4. Porn helps higher-desire partners in monogamous relationships.

Monogamy is still a standard practice, which means that the sex and body limits of your partner become your erotic limits. Porn allows for access to a diverse and creative spectrum of always-available sexuality. This takes the pressure and anxiety off the lower sexual partner and allows the higher or hypersexual partner to not have to water down their sex drive.

5. Porn acts as a needed counterbalance to our sex and body-phobic culture.

We live in a culture that is both obsessed and afraid of sex at the same time. We carry far too much anxiety about sexual bodies, arousal and eroticism. The existence of porn is an act of rebellion and resistance to the puritanical and modest values many of us are raised in and oppressed by. In other words, porn heals our culture, too.

6. Masturbation empowers and increases sexual autonomy.

Due to our sex- and body-negative culture, it’s important — especially for women, the disabled, fat, POC and other minorities — to see that their sexuality is not owned by anyone, including their partners. Masturbation and porn act as practices and tools of liberation.

7. Porn is a healthy place to learn sexual authenticity.

Finding out who we are sexually is an important developmental stage that goes on for our entire lives, yet is legitimized by no one. Our sexuality is far more expansive and fluid than we realize, and sexual exploration is necessary. With your partners, and especially with porn, we can find and explore new parts of our eroticism and discover new forms of arousal.

8. Porn is a career choice.

Porn and sex work are legit forms of labor and also allow for many to further explore their sexual selves, help others explore theirs, and provide sex for healing to those that need it. Studio porn, as well as the explosion of for-fee cam and amateur sex sites, allow all diverse bodies to now make an autonomous living with sex work.

What are some other ways that porn heals and can be healthy?

This article was originally published on Aug. 15, 2018. It has since been updated.