Like Ani, Catherine*, first saw porn when she was a child: in her case, at nine.
“Growing up, we had one main computer in a public space in the living room,” she recalls.
“Then at school, during sex education, they mentioned the word masturbation. I didn’t know what it was, so I went home and looked it up on Ask Jeeves. I ended up on a pornography site.”
Catherine, now 33 and a stay-at-home mother and home-educator, was
“fascinated and curious and disgusted and very confused.” But in bed that night she had nightmares – after which,
“I kept going back to look it up. It was almost as if it was less traumatic looking it up on a screen than having it playing out in my mind.”
Fascinated despite herself, she kept going back, night after night.
“I became the master of secrecy. I tidied and deleted things. There were many times when my parents would ask what something was, and I would lie my way through it and say it was spam.”
Throughout her teenage years, Catherine continued to look at porn,
finding herself drawn to gay female porn, even though she knew she was straight. By the time she went to university, it was destroying her life
. “It was a point where people were starting to get into relationships – but there was no way I wanted to have sex, ever, because it was horrible and violent and degrading.” Instead, Catherine would compulsively watch porn, four or five times a day, skipping lectures and social commitments.
“I would lie in my bed all day, curtains drawn, lying to my flatmates, pretending I was ill. It felt as if the only way to stop it would be if I died.”
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