This essay draws on my personal experience with pornography to explore how sexually explicit material helps construct men's sexuality in contemporary U.S. culture. From this personal narrative, I show how pornography was an important means of sex education in my life; constructed women as objects, which encouraged me to see women in real life that way; created or reinforced desires for specific acts; shaped and constrained my sexual imagination with its standardized scripts; reinforced racist stereotypes; and eroticized violence for me in a way that not only affected my sex life, but also gave me a sense of control over women.
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