The Benefits of Porn

Published on December 25, 2025

Introduction

Nowadays, porn is universally perceived as something harmful to society. The list of wrongdoings attributed to it is long and documented: addiction, erectile problems, modification of the reward circuit, performance anxiety, unrealistic expectations, desensitization to extreme content, concentration difficulties, decreased self-esteem. Not to mention the legitimate ethical questions concerning the mistreatment of actresses and the exploitation of the pornographic industry. All of this is more or less true, and I'm not trying to deny these problems. But before definitively condemning porn, it might be useful to look in the rearview mirror and ask ourselves: what did the world look like before?

The world before porn

Porn has existed for several decades, but it only truly became popular recently with its facilitated access through the internet. What did the world look like before this revolution? Here are some anecdotes, personal or gleaned here and there, that paint a rather troubling picture.

In classical literature, brothels were widespread everywhere. In every city, there were some. Recently, I read East of Eden by Steinbeck: everyone went to the brothel — it was mundane, people went there with friends. Today, brothels no longer exist.

From ages 18 to 20, I took TGV trains back and forth between Paris and Nantes every month. On the route between Nantes station and my parents' house, the street was filled with dozens of prostitutes every evening of the week. It was "African women's avenue," and the adjacent avenue was "Eastern European women's avenue." In Toulouse, where I live now, I don't even know where the prostitutes are. Seven years ago, when I arrived in the city, I occasionally saw some in the Sesquières industrial zone, near the truckers' parking lot, or in town near the canal. But today, seven years later, I never see any.

In Bukowski's book Women , a woman mentions taking a plane. The passenger next to her was so excited by her legs that he started masturbating on the plane. She tells this as a mundane anecdote, whereas it would be absolutely unthinkable today. The guy would be considered a psychopath. Another woman, a barmaid, tells how while serving a drink to a customer at the counter, she discovered he was masturbating in front of her. In the same way, she tells this as a mundane anecdote.

Marital rape didn't exist legally. Before 1970 in the United States, it was legal . The wife had to give her body to her husband when he wanted it. It was normal. It only became a crime in all American states in 1993. Today, it's absurd: no one would find it normal to think, and especially to act this way.

In the book The Wager , the sailors are shipwrecked after rounding Cape Horn. A handful of men survive on a desolate island off the coast of Patagonia. Cannibalism, murders, mutinies: their life becomes hell. After a few months, indigenous people arrive in canoes, do some trading with the last survivors and give them some food to survive. What do the starving survivors do after certain encounters? They start hitting on the indigenous women. The latter did not appreciate this at all and never came back. It's quite mind-boggling that men on death's door, reduced to cannibalism, would suddenly rediscover their sexual urges to the point of being unable to resist courting the women of their benefactors.

I read a biography of Prince. Several times, he mentions masturbating in a bar. The guy would see a woman with a nice cleavage, it would excite him, and he would go masturbate in the toilets or, worse, behind the counter. It was described in a totally mundane and recurring way. Can you imagine today going for a drink in a bar and seeing a guy masturbating behind the counter because he saw a woman in a mini-skirt?

The book Working by Studs Terkel describes the lives of American workers in the 70s. This book is fascinating and reveals a different world. It notably discusses flight attendants who were groped by passengers during the flight. They weren't supposed to make any remarks and had to let it happen. When they brought the problem to their hierarchy, they were told to say nothing and that the most important thing was for customers to be satisfied with the flight. It was the same for other female professions: waitresses, secretaries, assistants, etc. All of them were groped by men, and it was considered normal.

This was the reality of unchanneled male sexuality. In the world before porn, men acted in a way that would be absolutely unthinkable according to our values today.

Human nature and its outlets

This reality reveals something fundamental: it's human nature. We are animals with impulses. What makes us different from other species is that we have developed a morality that contains us, at minimum. Consent only exists among human beings.

You just have to observe animals to be convinced of this. Look at dogs: we've all seen dogs reproduce. Have you seen consenting females? On the contrary, the male generally bites the female's neck until she lets him do it.

Even among our primate cousins, it's the same . The female doesn't have a say. The male growls and the female struggles. Nature isn't always pretty to see.

Men have intense sexual needs and do everything to satisfy them. This biological reality doesn't magically disappear with social evolution. It's estimated that one-third of internet traffic worldwide is devoted to porn. On Reddit, one of the biggest global social platforms, a quarter of the content is pornographic.

In our modern society where social relations are becoming scarce, where everyone is isolated at home, porn becomes an outlet, a stress reliever. When going through a difficult time, how do you change your mind? You can't go running every day, our body wouldn't support it. It's not by watching a series or scrolling on Instagram that you'll really release pressure and think about something else.

The real question

The problem isn't saying that porn is bad. I partly agree with that. My favorite quote is from Thomas Sowell: "Life does not ask what we want, it presents us with options."

This phrase is my favorite because it's applicable everywhere. The question isn't whether porn is bad or not, but whether it's worse than a world where men are sexually starved in the streets, a world with more harassment, more rapes, often mistreated prostitutes and brothels in every neighborhood.

There, when you ask this question, the answer is immediately less obvious.

Would you prefer a world with a brothel in every neighborhood or a world with women on OnlyFans? I don't like either of these two options, but I clearly prefer one.

Would you prefer a world where, entering a bar's restroom, you surprise a man masturbating, or would you prefer a world where full HD porn is accessible for free in three clicks to calm sexual impulses?

A difference in perception

It's interesting to note that porn seems to have different effects depending on gender. I think porn is more problematic for women than for men, contrary to what the popular image leads us to believe. Men are generally more rational about fiction: we know it's not reality. We play GTA, but that doesn't mean we drive the wrong way on the highway or amuse ourselves by killing police officers.

Women, on the other hand, sometimes seem to take porn more seriously. They watch porn and think that all men have a 20 cm penis, don't know semi-softness and go from rest to attention with a simple look. In porn, semi-softness doesn't exist. It's the same logic that applies elsewhere: they develop unrealistic expectations on dating apps like Tinder.

Conclusion

I am neither anti-porn nor pro-porn. But I think it's crucial to always measure the pros and cons of each situation. Nothing is all black or all white. Porn has its flaws, its dangers, its excesses. But it has also made problematic behaviors in our societies disappear that we quickly forgot.

The progressive disappearance of street harassment, the drastic reduction of visible prostitution, marital rape — all of this coincides with the democratization of porn on the internet. Is it a coincidence? It would be naive to think so.

Rather than blindly demonizing porn, perhaps we should recognize that it fulfills, imperfectly certainly, a social function: channeling impulses that, without an outlet, express themselves otherwise in public and private spaces. Society isn't perfect, it never will be. But between two imperfections, you sometimes have to choose the least damaging one.

Porn isn't the ideal solution to male impulses, but it's perhaps, for now, the least bad of the available solutions.