are to reality. Pornography is adult entertainment, it's sex theater; but it's not going to inherently

hurt you. Religious groups harangue the public about the dangers of porn on the body and

mind, but the evidence doesn't pan out.

A new study in the journal Sexual Medicine explored the watching of visual sexual stimuli,

or VSS and its connection to erectile dysfunction. Common sense might say that men who watch

a lot of porn might have trouble getting it up in the presence of a real person because

their expectations don't match reality, but this research found precisely the opposite!

Instead of inhibiting arousal, men who watched porn got MORE erections! And that result was

maintained with as much as 25 HOURS of porn-watching a week; which is more than three hours a day.

So wait, if porn watching hoists the mainmast, for lads, what about for lassies? Firstly,

which will come as NO SURPRISE to some of you, women DO watch porn. Though Pew Research

only found 8 percent of women in 2013 reported viewing porn -- up from only 2 percent in

2010 -- PornHub's insights team says, 23 percent of their viewers were female; and a Dutch

study in the Journal of Sexual Medicine reported a massive 45 percent! And according to that

study pornography doesn't increase sexual aggression or sexually transmitted diseases

-- lines touted by many pornographic pugilists. When adjusted for age and personality, men

who watched porn didn't see a change in the number of sexual partners, though women did,

but only by point-three percent.

As an added bonus; in a study of 400 heterosexual pornographic videos, women and men were found

to be equally represented as initiators of sex, and in positions of power. Plus, PornHub's

Insights point out that both men and women search for similar terms when on their website,

though usually at different rates, and women were 80 to 100 percent more likely to search

for "rough sex" and terms related to female-centric oral sex.

While negatively-skewed surveys about the QUOTE "discovery of partners' sexual behaviors"

are often connected to feelings of jealousy, anxiety and betrayal; A 2013 study in the

Journal of Sex and Marital Therapy found partners who were honest with each other about their

pornographic habits had lower levels of distress, and higher levels of relationship satisfaction!

Perhaps if the partners hadn't hidden their preferences, it wouldn't have been as shocking?According

to the JSMT study, mutual enjoyment of pornography increased happiness for couples as well; and

dishonesty about habits increased distrust and dissatisfaction.

In the end, while porn can have negative effects personally and relationally; some studies

on pornography are done on those already seeking treatment for sexual deviance or dysfunction,

and others are simply not representative of the actual population… On top of that, many

studies focus on heterosexual couples, or specifically men. Obviously, we need more

study of women, and non-traditional couples, relationships and so on. It's crazy to think

we humans don't really know much about how we humans are getting it on. This is still

a private behavior, and it's very difficult to openly study. But overall, visual sexual

stimuli seem to be a benefit to men and women who are open and honest about their sexuality;

how not strange at all does that sound??

How do you feel about this? Would you be upset if your partner was watching porn without

you? What

about together?