Hooked on a Feeling: Becca Cipriani
A growing number of women are not only viewing porn, they're becoming addicted.
In decades past, pornography was considered a guy thing, involving women only as the objects of desire (playmate) or the objects of pity (housewife with addicted husband). But a growing number of women are viewing porn — and becoming addicted.
What attracts women to porn? Pornographers have become savvy marketers to women, says Mark Kastleman, author of The Drug of the New Millennium (Power- Think Publishing) and director of Education and Training at candeocan.com.
Rather than focusing on body parts and domination (the key turn-ons for males), female-targeted porn is based on relationships and mutual consent. These films offer a tender story of developing romance that eventually leads to consummating the relationship (adultery or fornication). It’s the same plot of nearly every romance novel and soap opera.
But why do women keep going back to porn, becoming addicts of what would normally disgust them? Porn sets off neurochemicals in the brain that cause addiction just like cocaine does (see “This is Your Brain on Porn” on page 47). “The addictive property cannot be ignored,” says Judith Reisman, author of Kinsey: Crimes and Consequences (Hartline Marketing). “We carry around our own drug store within us.”
“It’s a powerful form of self-medication,” according to Kastleman. “Porn rivals the power of street drugs or alcohol, but with no apparent side effects or stigma. It’s a convenient … escape.”
Women face the same work and life stresses men do. Women’s brains respond to neurochemicals just as men’s do. And so, women can get addicted to porn just as men can — for the rush, the escape, the momentary feeling of satiation.
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