The proliferation of relatively cheap bootleg sex DVDs, as well as increasing access to the Internet, has made it easier for some Filipinos to get hooked on porn.

by JOSE TORRES JR.

IF THERE had been anyone among the residents of ancient Rome who felt repressed, he would have had at least one chance every year to let go to his heart's content. That was during Lupercal, when everyone — including respected leaders — could indulge in whatever sexual activity his heart and other organs were craving for. That included taboos, or those that were forbidden in any other time except during Lupercal, which took its name from a cave at the foot of the Palatine Hill, where abandoned infant twins Romulus and Remus (who would later found Rome) were chanced upon by a she-wolf, which wound up suckling the boys instead of having them for dinner.

These days, there is no need for Lupercal — but not because we are less repressed than the toga-wearing Romans. One conservative church group even wails in its website, "We have Lupercal every day… Obscenity is all around us. Lust is glorified in its heathen form, pornography."

Okay, so maybe the group was a bit too, well, excited. But someone we shall call Jun — one of the many vendors of bootleg DVDs on Timog Avenue in Quezon City — says that at the very least, the local market for pornographic movies seems to be expanding. (For those who like trivia, pornography comes from the — no, not Latin — Greek words porno and graphos, meaning the writing of prostitutes. It is popularly understood as written, graphic or other forms of communication intended to incite lascivious or lustful feelings.)

Jun says, "Before only men and students would buy, but now even women and gay men buy (porn DVDs)." More older people are snapping up a lot of his erotic stock, he says, adding, "Marami nang addict, may mga pabalik-balik linggo-linggo (Many have become addicted, they keep coming back week after week)."

In the United States, some experts have declared a porn addiction epidemic, with several psychologists even appearing before a Senate subcommittee in 2004 to warn legislators about the "dangers" of porn. It's hard to say just how many porn addicts there should be to declare an epidemic, but the U.S.-based Internet Filter Review does say there are about 40 million U.S. adults who regularly visit pornographic websites. Worldwide, it also says, these websites have a total of 72 million visitors annually. It doesn't say, though, how many of those visitors are from the Philippines.

Still, it's safe to assume that there are more than a handful among us who wish for a Pinoy version of Lupercal, 24/7. And while before they had to be content with sexually explicit magazines and badly made skin flicks shown in flea-infested cinemas, now there are sex DVDs that they can buy by the dozen and watch in the comfort of their own homes, as well as the Internet, to which they can log on and have their fill (and then some) just about anytime they want to. In the past, turning into a porn addict would have to take some doing, especially in this country. But now that technology has eased access to sexually explicit materials (many of them are still badly made), getting hooked on porn has probably become easier.

Julian, who like Jun would rather not have his real name used, says he is not there yet. He thinks he never will be. Before the advent of bootleg sex DVDs and the Net, Julian used to buy local tabloids and some foreign magazines that featured erotic stories. "I don't derive much enjoyment from pictures," he says. "It's always better when there's a storyline, even in videos."

Julian says he now watches "bold" movies at least once a week, and reads erotic stories online each night before he sleeps. A journalist for the last two decades, Julian says he can live without porn, but because it's available, he takes advantage of the pleasure it gives him. "It's like a coping mechanism for stress," he says. "I can't accept it's an addiction."

ACTUALLY, THERE are some sex specialists who say there is no such thing as porn addiction. Shortly after sex experts testified before the U.S. Senate in 2004, the U.S. online publication WebMD reported on a debate that broke out between experts on the subject.

Dr. Louanne Cole Weston, a sex therapist, told WebMD that the more appropriate term is "compulsion." Martin Downs, who wrote the piece, also said that Kinsey Institute researcher Dr. Erick Janssen had trouble with the term "addiction" because "he says it merely describes certain people's behavior as being addiction-like, but treating them as addicts may not help them."

Janssen, Downs said, was concerned that "mental health professionals have no standard criteria to diagnose porn addiction."

Obviously the witnesses at the Senate hearing begged to differ. Psychologist Mary Anne Leyden of the University of Pennsylvania, for one, said therapists used the same criteria applied to other kinds of addicts. She told WebMD, "The therapists who treat pornography addicts say they behave just like any other addicts."

Psychiatrist and Princeton University professor Jeffrey Satinover had also testified at the Senate: "Pornography really does, unlike other addictions, biologically cause direct release of the most perfect addictive substance. That is, it causes masturbation, which causes release of the naturally occurring opioids. It does what heroin can't do, in effect."

Julian himself admits to pleasuring himself after getting his erotic fix. Minda, yet another porn user who doesn't want her real name revealed, says she and very close friends sometimes practice "MOs" or "mutual orgasms," which they achieve by masturbating simultaneously while watching sex videos.

"The rule is, no touch(ing of each other), just look," she says. But just like Julian, Minda doesn't consider herself a porn addict. Still unmarried, she says she continues to enjoy sex with her partner even without the aid of pornographic materials.

Filipino medical anthropologist Michael L. Tan, for his part, says that addiction to pornography does exist. Still, in a 1999 article that he wrote for Health Alert, a publication of the nongovernmental health organization HAIN, he observed, "Repeated exposure to pornography actually leads, for most people, to a decrease in interest (in it). Most people can take only so much of pornography, especially the type you get in those mindless, plot-less X-rated videos."