Today

What's your attitude to pornography? Harmless adult fun? Just another capitalist industry? Or a dangerously addictive drug? Malehealth.co.uk is debating the subject. Editor Jim Pollard introduces it.

Malehealth is looking at pornography - as a subject, I mean. We're running an article which argues, amongst other things, that pornography is a one way street that always ends in S&M. We're also surveying our readers about their attitudes.

The survey has only been online a few days but already it demonstrates the strangely contradictory view that many of us have of porn. While most men think the use of pornography by men is 'generally healthy', most men also think that it exploits women and makes sex crimes more likely. Two results that are not very healthy.

The article, written by Edward Marriott, includes interviews with users including self-confessed porn addicts and with psychologists and other specialists.

While the article doesn't pull its punches, it doesn't hold men responsible for porn and the problems it creates. Psychotherapists Michael Thompson and Dan Kindlon point out that the objectification of sex is something that men are born with and, indeed, wake up with every morning. They write: "By adolescence, a boy wakes up most mornings with an erection. What people might not realise when they justly criticise men for objectifying sex - viewing sex as something you do, rather than part of a relationship - is that the first experience of objectification of sexuality in a boy's life comes from his experience of his own body, having this penis that makes its own demands."

As an explanation of the origins of the rather mechanistic attitude to sex that many men have, this is pretty convincing. The result is that men can come to believe that they can separate 'sex' and 'love', can separate going to a lap-dancing club with the boss from 'normal family life'.

Marriott goes on to argue that the use of porn, and the need for it, is intensified by the way boys are raised - we're expected to be strong, silent and to compete with other men. This personality type is not compatible with talking about your emotions and creates a performance-fixated attitude to sex. Easier then, to opt out and absorb yourself in a world in which she never says 'no' nobody judges your performance.

One of the things that modern marketing is brilliant at is creating needs that we didn't know we had - since when did anyone 'need' a gaming console or a fifth wrist-watch? So when it comes to real needs like the need, as Marriott puts it, for lonely male souls for 'love, closeness, acceptance', the modern marketer can really clean up and that is what has happened with pornogrphy. Something that was once considered grubby and suitable only for brown envelopes under the counter is now on the counter, above it and over it in the brightest and gaudiest colours. Somewhere along the line porn became both cool and mainstream - a perfectly balanced poistion in marketing terms that many brands would kill for.

The sharpening of the desire to have the latest pair of trainers or MP3 player into an obsession can be dangerous enough - just talk to a teenager who has been mugged for his shoes. But do that with a basic human need like sex and you're entering very dangerous territory.

One man tells Marriott: "It got to the point where I considered having sex the way most people consider getting a hamburger. But when you try to give it up, you realise how addictive it is. It's a class A drug, and it's hell coming off it." This man was not a user of pornography as such - he 'acted' in it. But there are users quoted too including the architect who has been going to Sex Addicts Anonymous meetings for over a dozen years.

Finally consider the average sex offender challenged to justify his crimes. What does he usually say? She was asking for it; she said 'no' but she meant 'yes'; it was her fault, she led me on; she wanted it. Where do these attitudes come from? Why would a man seriously believe these things? The answer, of course, is complicated and I'm not trying to simplify it but these attitudes are found in porn everywhere from the lads mags to the internet to hard core vids and porn clubs.

What do you think? Check out the malehealth article at malehealth.co.uk and let's hear your views.