Episode 82 - SACRED PORN & THE EMPOWERING USE OF FANTASY with Tammy Nelson
SACRED PORN & THE EMPOWERING USE OF FANTASY with Tammy Nelson, Licensed Professional Counselor, Registered Art Therapist, Certified Imago Therapist, mother of two children, newly married, Director of Passionate Partnerships, Author of "Getting the Sex You Want."
In this episode, Tammy discloses the path of Sacred Porn. Discover:
What has pornography be objectifying or connecting. When can fantasy increase healing and pleasure. What are the warning signs of compulsive use of fantasy or pornography. What has pornography be confusing or irritating for women. How to select pornography and share fantasies in ways that work. Get ready to ravish with heart.
Transcript
Transcript
This program is intended or mature audiences only.
Francesca Gentile: Welcome to Sex, Tantra and Kama Sutra: bringing you the soul of sex. I’m your host, Francesca Gentile.
And with me today is Tammy Nelson. Tammy is a licensed professional counsellor, a registered art therapist, a certified xxxx therapist, the mother of four children. She’s newly married, once again. Almost complete with her doctorate of sexology and the author of Getting the Sex You Want. Welcome Tammy.
Tammy Nelson: Thank you. It’s wonderful to be here.
Francesca Gentile: It’s wonderful to have you here again. And before it was “almost married”. Now it’s newly married. We’re going to keep having these updates, I can just tell. Tammy and I have a lot of wonderful topics that we’re ruminating on and various plots to bring to you, our listening audience. However, today what really perked up our little ears was pornography. We started to ask some questions about what it is, what it means, is it automatically addictive, is it hard wired, can it be sacred?
And we have a lot that we want to explore with you, our listening audience, but before we do, I wanted to get...harness a bit from Tammy who just came back from a psychotherapy networker conference and was listening to some of the leading minds in sex therapy and psychotherapy.
Tammy, what are maybe three to five key points or perspectives or research findings that you heard around pornography there before we start exploring our own perspective?
Tammy Nelson: Well, it is interesting. This is how our conversation started that I just got back from this huge psychotherapy conference which is sort of leading edge in the field, and to listen to some of the brilliant minds in the field to talk about their concerns about pornography. And I think it comes from a place where a lot of people who are seeing clients who are effected by pornography, particularly in their marriages.
There was a recent study that said that divorce attorneys are saying that up to a third of their clients are saying that Internet pornography is part of what people are complaining about in their divorce proceedings. So apparently, it’s got a wide range of facts. People are not only complaining that they have some sort of addictive symptoms to Internet pornography but that they’re...they think their partner has some sort of pornography problem. I think it’s interesting in terms of the psycho-cultural phenomenon.
What I heard at the conference was that we’ve never seen this sort of cultural growth in pornography before and that’s what’s making professionals sort of anxious about it. It used to be that you’d have to go to the store and sort of secretly sneak in, buy the brown-paper wrapped magazine, sneak it home, hide it. And now today, all you need to do is sit in front of your computer and click. Because it’s accessible and available, more and more people do it and people are starting at a younger and younger age. So the first real concern is the average age of the first exposure to pornography on the Internet is 11 years old. And what that’s doing is changing the way that people connect sexually. So in other words, when you’re about 11 or 12 you start fantasizing about people that you want to have sex with. You sort of long for someone. Maybe you masturbate about someone that you have a little crush on or someone you’ve seen in school. We develop sexual feelings towards people and by the time we’re in adolescence we’ve pretty much got a map. This love map, if you will, of who we’re going to be attracted to. So it might be tall, thin. Women with long dark hair. Might be men with beards. And that doesn’t mean that that’s what you’re always going to be attracted to but we have a tendency to be attracted to either men or women. To effeminate men or masculine women. Or masculine men or effeminate women. Part of that has to do with genetics and part of it has to do with how we grew up and our experiences as children. And that’s a whole other class. Or a whole other call. But the idea that it used to be that 11-year old kids, or 11, 12, would masturbate to these images of people that they sort of longed for. Or maybe to images they saw in Playboy magazine.
Now the first exposure to sexuality are images that they’re seeing on the Internet which are much different than just a Playboy image. Might be sex in much more dramatic, violent, sometimes more objectified ways that 11 year olds, up until recently, have never seen before. So the concern of these professionals is that these kids are changing what they feel and think and see around sexuality. And they’re worried about how that’s going to change sexuality in general as this next generation of kids grow up. Eight per cent of 15 to 17 year olds have seen pornography on the Internet. Over half the downloads on the Internet are pornography.
Francesca Gentile: And for the 15 to 17 year olds is this male or female? Or is this male?
Tammy Nelson: It’s primarily male. Eighty-five per cent of porn users on the Internet are male. There is a percentage of women and they’re saying 15%. I would say it’s higher. When I did my own rough research and had people in my workshops raise their hand, “How many people have looked at porn?” all the women raised their hand. But “porn user”, I think is a little bit different. I think what they’re saying is people that look at it on a regular basis. I don’t know what they mean by “regular basis”. But they’re saying that half of everyone that has used porn on a regular basis develop problems.
Francesca Gentile: And what do we mean by problems?
Tammy Nelson: Well, they’re saying that underneath the category of problem is the category of compulsiveness. So let’s say that if half of the viewers develop problems it would mean that some part of their viewing is interfering with their life. In other words, they’re downloading it at work when they shouldn’t be; because it risks losing their job. They’re downloading it when their partner is saying, “I really have a problem with that and it’s interfering with our relationship”. They’re downloading it when it’s a compulsion. When they don’t want to do it but they’re doing it anyway. They say that eight to 15% develop some type of compulsiveness around it. So in other words, “I can’t stop thinking about it, I really don’t want to do it but I do it anyway. I know I don’t have time to do it but I run to the computer and I do it.”
Francesca Gentile: So it’s a loss of control. And I just want to point out to our listening audience that anything can become a compulsive or addictive behaviour. It could be washing our hands. It could be the way we eat our food. It could be shopping. It could be...there are so many ways that we can start being compulsive or addictive. For myself, I’ve gone to the 12-step program around food. I’ve actually gone through the 12-step program around sex and love addiction. So I have a lot of compassion for what it feels like to feel out of control about innocent, natural urges. It’s natural to want food. It’s natural to want to acquire things. It’s natural to wash your hands. It’s natural to want to look at beautiful, sexy people naked. There’s naturalness and there’s a balanceness and then there’s what we’re looking at is what is that balance and what is out of balance. So right now, we’re distinguishing what’s out of balance. And further into the show, we’ll also be looking at what my balance look like. What my sacred pornography look like, as an inquiry for all of us who listen to Sex, Tantra and Kama Sutra.
So we’re saying this nature of compulsivity is what we’re saying is out of balance or is addictive. And is there anything else that they say about why more men than women. Is it a hardwiring in the brain or some sort of chemical that’s released more in men than women visually? What do they say?
Tammy Nelson: There’s a lot of controversy about that. They do say that one-third of women feel like it’s cheating. Women are more threatened by porn use. They feel like –
Francesca Gentile: That would be the same third that are divorcing their husbands.
Tammy Nelson: They feel like it’s threatening because that woman doesn’t look like me. And interestingly, a third of men say that their porn use makes sex less satisfying with their partner. So it does affect your sex life. But there are some indicators, you made a good point about there’s looking at porn and there’s a compulsive or addictive quality to looking at porn. And that’s really what brought up the idea to do this show today. The question is there a way to look at the use of porn as a healthy way to increase the eroticism in your relationship. And as a way to respond naturally to your healthy sexual curiosity. And the way to use pornography as a turn on. And how do you differentiate.
Dr. Howard Schaefer from Harvard said –
Francesca Gentile: I’m going to stop you right there. Hold that quote! I’m right on the edge of my seat. We need to go to break and support our fabulous sponsors and then we’ll come back and get that quote from the Harvard person. And go deeper into what is that balance perspective. What is harmony? What is health around this, when we come back from a break and a word from our fabulous sponsors.
Welcome back to Sex, Tantra and Kama Sutra: bringing you the soul of sex.
Here today with Tammy Nelson. Registered art therapist, xxx therapist, almost doctor of sexology and author of Getting the Sex you Want. And we’re talking about pornography. How it can be out of balance, addictive, hurtful to a relationship and going in the direction of how can it be helpful or nutritive, expansive or sacred in a relationship. And you had a quote for us. What was that quote?
Tammy Nelson: Dr. Howard Schaefer of Harvard talked about how you can determine if you’re addicted to porn. He said there’s three C’s. That you crave it, intensely and persistently. That you can’t control it. So that’s the part of addiction where you talk about building up a tolerance and there’s withdrawal. And that you continue to use it. So despite being aware of some harmful consequences you do it anyway. So it’s craving, you can’t control it and you continue to use it. So that’s what qualifies an addiction. Now that’s different than looking at porn for the sake of looking at porn. A lot of women use porn to get turned on. A lot of women use porn to get turned on. Couples use porn to get turned on. Sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn’t.
Francesca Gentile: Let’s also define porn. So we’re all on the same page here. What is, for our discussion, pornography? What do we say it is?
Tammy Nelson: We were talking about this the other day and I think sort of a generic description or porn is any sexual image that’s used for...what did we say? That’s used for arousal. And for some people that can be the Sports Illustrated catalogue and for some people that can be hardcore, alternative, fringe websites. So pornography I think has a wide range of definitions. I’m not sure you would agree with that or do you have a different definition?
Francesca Gentile: Let me just think about that for a moment. Yes, yes. I would agree that pornography is that. It could be writing, it could be visual of an erotic or sexual nature that when we look at that the intention is to a state of arousal. And maybe that dividing line, where is it considering erotic art and maybe is nude but we don’t consider it pornography, is where the artistic nature of it is and a sense of maybe serenity or peace or harmony. When another definition of beauty in some cultures is harmony. So when we look at this we feel a sense of ease or grace. Versus instantly queuing, or when we read it, queuing the mating behaviour.
So we’ll distinguish it as either written or visual or oral, something we listen to, that we’re specifically going to to increase that mating behaviour. To increase that arousal in us or in another. So I’m going to say that arousal’s a good thing. That in and of itself, arousal is delicious, it pumps yummy hormones into the body, it boosts the immune system and is a good thing. And we, in tantra and Taoist sexuality, we want to be in high states of arousal for from 20 to 45 minutes because it’s so good for the body. Like working out. There’s so many wonderful things in terms of blood vessels and blood flow and in immune system that happen when we’re in high state of arousal for extended periods of time. So I just want to put it that it inherently can be a good thing but in a way, it’s neutral. Is it something that goes into that compulsivity or does it go into connectivity? Let’s dialogue a little bit about this, Tammy.
What about pornography for connectivity? A way that connects us deeper to our own sensual and erotic nature in a way that we can be more sensual and erotic with others. When is it connective when we’re sharing it with somebody? So how about individually? Let’s look individually first.
Tammy Nelson: Well, a lot of people use pornography as what we call masturbatory images. So they’re just pictures that you click through one after the other after the other. And I’m talking about Internet stuff right now. And the reason that that often becomes compulsive is because it’s sort of like Skinner’s box. Every time you click on an image, you get a little hit in your brain of dopamine and testosterone. And if every time you do that you masturbate to orgasm, orgasm is the highest neurologic behavioural reward you can get. It feels the best out of anything. So if you orgasm to something you create this neurological pathway in your brain that says, “Ooo. I want to go there.” So you continue to go there. Every time you click that button, you’ll continue to click the button over and over and over. And you’ll continue to need more and more intense masturbatory images in order to get to the same place. And that’s what sort of makes it compulsive behaviour.
So if you’re doing it just to sort of compulsively get that brain chemistry, a high, you get addicted to that. If you’re doing it to get an arousal that you share with another person or that you use as a sacred way of self-pleasuring then it could be argued that it’s just another way of getting in touch with your eroticism. If you use pornography in movies to watch with your partner, which really has only been over the past 20 years that it’s been a trend that couples watch pornography together, it can be something that we suggest as a therapist that couples do to increase arousal and increase connectivity and increase arousal. Although Erica Jong said this great quote in Playboy once. She said, after the first ten minutes of watching porn, I want to go home and screw. After the next 20 minutes, I never want to screw again as long as I live.
Francesca Gentile: I’m going to jump in a little bit and say for those who are listening is that I’ve explored this with various partners and there are video companies, like Femme Videos. It really does take something to find videos that you and your partner really like. But we did explore and we have found, my beloved and I, genres or particular directors that we both felt that we could enjoy. And if anybody’s listening and they want to start creating sacred pornography, I really want to encourage you to do that. Because there’s not very much out there. There’s not very much that includes heart, mind, body, spirit and Eros. There’s a lot that suck and tuck and fuck but there’s not a lot that also includes what sensuality looks like. What love and connection looks like. What different body types look like. So I personally have a longing for a more expanded...expanded in the suck, tuck and fuck because I think that there’s a lot of that out there. So we actually, me personally, don’t feel we need more of it. But I would love to have more out there that has this other range that was possible. So anybody out there, film makers listening, please. Go do this. And it can be connective and I love that idea of could this be something that I dip into now and then just to connect with some of my own arousal.
I sometimes hear from couples that they, after the baby or a new job that there’s a lot of hours of work that people can start to lose their own sense of themselves as a sexual being. And sometimes some of these visual or oral or if you like to listen, or written if you like to read, media can reconnect us. “Wow. I do have a sex drive. I am a sexual being.” And one of my favourites is Patty Taylor has Expanded her Orgasm Tonight. And it’s actually teaching men how to pleasure the vulva of a woman. And there was one of my clients said she hadn’t had an orgasm for years, she felt like she totally lost her sex drive. I invited she and her husband to watch this video and she called me up later and said, “It was amazing! We had such a great time!” It has very close up shots of the vulva so it’s really queuing that mating behaviour. When we look at genitals, there’s just something that starts to queue.
Tammy That’s a great, great suggestion and I agree with you. I think that if you use videos or movies for own arousal or for arousal as a couple, it can be a great part of your sensuality and your sensual experience and a connective experience. I think we have to mention that a lot of porn is really objectifying to women. A lot of women that are in pornography have a sexual abuse and a trauma history and I think that comes through. So I think for those of us who have feminist backgrounds we find some pornography offensive. So I think that it really does make...particularly now, when porn is getting a little more violent. And I think that it does make sense that if we had more women directors and more pornography that combined what you do, which is combing sex and spirituality and sex and spirit, and moved towards a more unified idea of eroticism that obviously there’s a market for it.
Francesca Gentile: I think there would be. We’re going to take another break and come back so we have a chewy ten minutes left. I want to talk more about what is objectification. What is it when we do it for anyone and how do we create more, once again, connectivity in the ways that we use our bodies, our minds, the way we look at things. When we come back from a break and a word from our sponsors.
Welcome back to Sex, Tantra and Kama Sutra: bringing you the soul of sex. Here with Tammy Nelson and we’re talking about pornography. And we just talked about objectification, how this can be very upsetting for women. But I’m not always clear that we know what objectification means. It gets thrown around a lot but what does it mean when we say we’re objectifying a woman? And then I’ll talk about objectifying men too. Go ahead.
Tammy Nelson: Well we talked about that briefly when we were talking about our ideas of women and some women get upset watching pornography because they feel that women in pornography are just being used as sex objects and they’re not really in the movie as people. And that because their sexual parts are being focused on, that they’re not integrated as a whole person. There is a series of films by the Sinclair Institute that integrates the whole couple as a person that are used more for educational purposes but still show people having sex and actual couples having sex. That doesn’t do that. But I think that’s part of the reason women sometimes find it offensive.
Francesca Gentile: I would agree. That there’s a sense that when a woman is treated as tits and ass and vulva that she doesn’t have a heart. That she doesn’t have a spirit. That it’s okay to just use her body to get off. And I feel like we can just fuck ourselves, basically. We can just use our own body and get off. We can use another person’s body to get off. Or we can bring in more breath, more presence, more awareness, more connection, more heart, more spirit if we’re pleasuring ourselves or if we’re sharing pleasure with another human being. And there’s that kind of a spectrum that we get to be on.
And I just want to say, as an advocate for men, that women objectify men. And men, you already know this. We have a tendency to look at men, sometimes still to this day, like a walking wallet. Like you’re there to provide for us, you’re there to take care of us and that sometimes I hear from men that that’s their sole function. And that they’re not desired for the sexual being that they are, for the visionary being that they are. They’re just desired for one thing. So any time we look at someone in a very limited way and interact with them as a limited part of the spectrum of who they are, that’s what we mean when we objectify. So this can happen.
On the other hand, as you pointed out Tammy, we get aroused. We get aroused by looking at naked bodies, by naked genitals. Men, you know that we women can be confusing to you. Women, we know that men can be confusing to us and that we mix signals. I want to share something that I learned in a women’s group I led, body gender and sexuality, where we had a session and this was a discovery. We brought porn magazines, we borrowed them from our boyfriends, and we brought in porn magazines and we passed them around the circle and we looked at them. And then we shared how was that for us to look at these magazines? What did we notice in our body? What did we notice in our heart rate? What did we notice in our mind? What did we notice in our emotions? And this is where it gets confusing. What we noticed was that, and there was some very violent pornography, there was more lyrical or sweet or gentle kind of Playboy pornography, there was a whole range.
And what we said is that all of it had a tendency to increase the heart rate and to lubricate the vulva. So there was something primal or primate or reptilian brain that would look at naked genitals or people fucking and create a sense of very primal arousal. So what happens, my guess is for some men, is that they can notice that a woman has a physical response. I heard a man say once he that he could smell her arousal and he didn’t know why she was saying no. Why I want to bring this up to all of us is because we’re more than our genitals. Men are more than their genitals as well. And women are more than their genitals.
So here we were looking at these pictures, technically being aroused, but when we checked into our emotions, especially for some of the pictures, we felt disgust. Disgust. And for some of the pictures in our minds we definitely had judgment. Judgement, “Wow! That’s a beautiful picture.” Or “Wow. I might want to do that.” Or judgment like, “Oh my God! How would anybody even want to take a picture of that?” So there was a split. There was a split between what the mind thought, what the heart felt and what the genitals were responding. And in sacred sexuality, those of us who are listening to this show, we’re looking for an integration. We are seeking how can we line up the arousal of the body, the loving connective feelings of the heart, and the insight and planning and vision of the mind, how can we line those all up in a way that we have a sense of communion and expansion, peace, grace and ease in our sexuality.
So this is why, I think, pornography...you’re bringing this up Tammy. It can become so addictive to the primal because it presses the Goody Button over and over. And yet it can cause destruction in our lives when we’re not aware, or bring into consciousness, that we need to balance this primal nature with our emotional nature and, in this show, with our spiritual nature.
Tammy Nelson: And that’s really my biggest question. Can we have both? Can we integrate both of those things? Can we have the hot, erotic, edgy, kinky, dark fantasy, fetish, [xxx paraphelia] side of us and integrate that with the spiritual, sacred, partnered, connected, tantric part of us? And that’s I think always been my goal. It’s always been my question.
Francesca And I would say, yes. I would like to do that even more in my life. And I would say that I’ve had moments of what I would call raw sacred sex, where maybe we either read an erotic book. There’s these books...they’re actually called wet erotica or something like that. You can actually bring them into a hot tub or bring them into a bath and drop them in the water and they’re laminated in a way so you can read them in the water with each other. And that was one of my beloved’ fetishes was making love in the water. And then we would sometimes be inspired by an image or a video or even sharing the fantasy where we would be animals together. We would just growl and scratch and be very primal. And because we were in that together and there was a sense of creating it together and allowing one another to lead or inspire one another, it felt very sacred. Sacred sex doesn’t just have to be “let’s breathe and look into each other’s eyes and go very, very slowly.”
Tammy Right. And I think sometimes we do people a disservice. Particularly men. That we’ve taught them that we want them to be intimate and emotionally available and that we want them to gaze into our eyes and hold our face; but women are still spending $30 billion a year on paperback novels, which are basically light erotica, where the guy is ripping off our clothes and throwing us on the bed. So we’ve confused sexuality sometimes in that we want to be ravished and at the same time, we want to be made loved too. And I think it can be confusing. Women, in particular, definitely want both.
Francesca Gentile: We want both. So I just want to say this to men, “We want both. We want to be ravished with heart.” Now that may sound like how do chocolate and peanut butter go together? However, when we can get there “I want to ravish you with heart”. Imagine that. I want to ravish you with heart. I’m going to take you. I’m going to be powerful. And yet my heart is going to be so open to your beauty and actually at the same time checking in to how are you feeling with my touch, how are you feeling with the power and the strength of my arms. There’s something magical that happens when I’m staying connected to you heart, body, mind and spirit and bringing that sense of powerfulness, that sense of the primal nature. And you’re right, Tammy. We make this mistake where we lose the oomph by going too much into the heart sometimes.
Tammy Nelson: And we turn men a little bit too much into women and we lose the masculinity that we crave and that turns us on. So part of it is being able to ask for what we want. And also be able to stay in the erotic zone and at the same time maintain that connection that were longing for. Which is why I like your show.
Francesca Gentile: Oh, thank you. And I just want to say to our listening audience, there’s many ways to do this. So sometimes I might not want to see a certain kind of scenario. Maybe that would be too much for me. But if my partner says let’s say that they really love the fantasy of group sex and they’re not going to make me do, but maybe they want me to tell them a group sex story. So while I’m making love with them I say, “And now this caress is not just me, it’s Susie. And Susie’s hand is also on your body.” I can create a story. I’m the only person in the room. However, I can create a story that allows us to be imagining a group sex scenario. And it could be very tasty. And then on the other hand, maybe my partner says that they are interested.
I think we all want to make the distinction between fantasy and reality and that many of us are much more open in the realm of, “as long as I don’t have to do it I am happy to fantasize about it.” And I’ve heard from some men that they get very ashamed of what...and women too by the way, women too. We get ashamed of what of what we fantasize about or watch in pornography or read in a bodice ripper novel and we’re afraid to bring it to our partner. So it becomes this like dirty little secret rather than a pathway to connection. I recommend the phrase, “I have something I want to share with you that’s very intimate and tender about me. Are you ready and willing to hear this? And I want to share this to be more connected to you.”
Tammy Nelson: And I recommend that people buy my book because a lot of my book is about how to share those fantasies. And why sometimes sharing the fantasy can help you keep that energy going for many, many years without ever actually acting out the fantasy. Can be just as powerful, if not more so because it lasts longer without all the emotional ramifications.
Francesca Gentile: And what is your book, sweetheart? And how do people find you?
Tammy Nelson: Getting the Sex You Want is the name of the book. And my name is Tammy Nelson. People can go on my website, tammynelson.org. So it’s T-A-M-M-Y-N-E-L-S-O-N dot org. Or gettingthesexyouwant.com. And you could order my book through there and I’ll even send you a signed copy if you want. Or you can go on Amazon and buy it. And you can reach me there as well, it you want to email me.
Francesca Gentile: And I just want to thank you Tammy, so much for joining us here. You are a complete wealth of knowledge and a delight.
Tammy Nelson: Thank you. It’s so much fun to be with you.
Francesca Gentile: For you, our listening audience, thank you as well for being here with us on this show. For being on this path of inquiry of how to bring the sacred into all of our life, all of our loving. And you can find out more about Tammy, see her beautiful picture, connect to her website and her services. And also me and my website and my bio and my services at www.personallifemedia.com. That’s www.personallifemedia. Sex, Tantra and Kama Sutra: bringing you the soul of sex.