On “Using” Porn

I’ve long viewed the phrase “porn use” as a red flag that tells me the speaker is against porn. But I never realized precisely why the seemingly-innocent phrase was so loaded. Fortunately, Dr. Charlie Glickman nails it in an article at Good Vibrations:

On one of the sex education email lists that I follow, someone posted a question about “porn use.” And while I’ve seen this phrase used more times than I can count, it suddenly seemed to me that the term implies a bias that runs so deeply that it’s effectively invisible.

I think it’s rather interesting that people often talk about “porn use” even though they don’t talk about “sitcom use,” “talk show use,” or “romantic comedy use.” Instead, we might ask someone how often they watch TV, or talk shows, or movies. We might say that we enjoy Law & Order, but I don’t think I’ve ever heard someone say that they “use” Law & Order.

But when we get into the area of porn, we sometimes shift our language away from words that we use to talk about any other media and start using a phrase that sounds like we’re talking about drugs. People use Advil, or caffeine, or cocaine. And it seems to me that when we talk about using porn, we’re framing it in the same way.

Of course there’s more.