FAKE!

And if it isn't fake, the real reason she is probably suffering and getting all fucked up about it is because she is being taught in church that looking at porn and having sex is BAAAAAAAAAAAAD.

All advice column letters are fake

Argh! Her problem isn't that she looks at porn, it's that she feels guilty about it. Abby's advice is exactly wrong.

This version of "Abby" is a fool anyway. No one should ever ask her opinion on anything.

What teenager describes herself as "friendly, cheerful, religious?" I don't think any teenager would write those words.

This letter is either completely made up, or it was written by the girl's mother.

Also, the new Dear Abby isn't as good as the old one.

when i was a friendly, cheerful honor student, i used to steal playgirls from b. dalton. i turned out alright, although i did lose all respect for guys who trim their pubes.

Go to livejournal. There you shall find thousands of porn obsessed girls. That letter is really bullshit, but yes, there are very high numbers of girls - particularly teenage girls - who spend a lot of time on porn.

Who the fuck else do you think watches Oz or Torchwood?

She probably began looking at porn because she was curious about sex. It makes me wonder if they have anything more than abstinence only "teaching" at her school.

Uh, Dan? Have you ever read any fanfics (the vast majority of which are written by females)? They're super porny, and some of them are pretty fucked-up.

Girls are obsessed with porn. Maybe not as much as guys, but nearly. And ALL kinds of porn.

Gloria @8, I think you're in the wrong fandom. Get out and explore a little, and you can quickly get away from the more freakish material.

A few years back I had a student (10th grade) who "accidentally" left a notebook in my classroom. I flipped through it, and found some of the most fucked-up hardcore erotica I have read in a while. Thats when I realized the girls are just as into porn as the boys.

Letter is reasonably plausible. If true, girl needs some deprogramming.

What was that book. My Secret Garden or somethingrather? Egads. Of course, there's a difference between fantasizing and a crippling addiction.

My advise to the girl is that she must get rid of this desire by fucking anyone who will fuck her. The desire to watch porn is best elliminated by fucking like a porn star: and fucking frequently. FUCK FUCK and FUCK! She also must try anal as well as vaginal fucking, groups, the football team and the cheer leading squad.

Maybe girls have always been interested, and the 'fact' that boys are obsessed with sex has always overshadowed it?

Well, I'm no expert, so I'm in no position to know, but it's interesting.

At any rate, what #8 said, the majority of 'Yaoi' fanfiction is written by girls, for girls. Yaoi here being a knock-off Japanese term for what often amounts to softcore gay porn based in proprietary characters.

Less important than whether you are sexist is whether you'd do anything about it if someone told you you were.

Assuming its real:
counseling wouldn't hurt but from her description of her school counselor it seems likely that she doesn't want to hear a counselor say "it's ok". nor does she want to stop masturbating to porn, which is the real issue. Unfortunately she can't even use the word masturbate (a sign of the writers or Abby's repressed sexuality. On the other hand Use of the phrase "one step from acting out" sounds a a little suspicious). forgive the shop talk but she sounds like her (pick a theoretical orientation) superego/internalized bad object/etc. wants/needs her to be punished for feeling good. This kind of issue is not likely to go away with a simple "it's ok to masturbate. It's normal for teens to be obsessed by the desired sex. blah blah blah." Bummer.

i am a girl and i have no interest in porn. none of my girlfriends are entertained by it either. not saying that girls can't enjoy it, but most of the ladies i know don't.

tiffany,

if you have no interest in porn, why would you girlfriends tell you about their interest if it existed?

The losing all respect for men rings false for me. It definitely hews too closely to porn scare tactics, as Dan points out. Even if it's true that porn makes men lose respect for women and women lose respect for men, I doubt that they'd be aware of it.

My parents had the Playboy channel and my stepdad had a HUGE collection of printed porn. I "used" it nearly every day for hours from the age of 9 or 10. I doubt very seriously I'm the only one.

Uhhh, Tiffany? News Flash: women lie. All the time. To their friends. Esp about sex.

I and all of my girl friends love porn. I got into erotica back in high school, and I wouldn't say it interfered with my grades or anything, but it certainly occupied a lot of my thoughts and free time.

How old is this girl? She probably just needs to get laid. Counseling won't help that, unless her counselor happens to be a Catholic priest or a youth pastor.

@ 22

my friends and i talk about sex and all the guesome details for hours on end. i think i probably know them better then you, and i know they're not lying.

Sarah @15, in addition to the Japanese term, most everybody uses "slash" to refer to male/male explicit fanfic.

Thank god you wrote on this, Dan. Its been bothering me since I read it last night. It wasn't just that she recommended counseling, its that she told the girl that the counselor at her school was wrong for telling the girl that she was just expressing her sexuality. How fucked up is THAT?

Moreover, she cited the degredation of the actresses as reason that porn was unhealthy. Can someone please point her to Violet Blue?

Tiffany @24 -- gruesome details? I am so sorry for your sex lives. Talking about fucking should not be akin to discussing an autopsy.

I recall a study which concluded that one out of three Internet porn surfers are female, so this shouldn't be quite that surprising. Although the letter's probably still a fake; keshmeshi@20 noted the dead giveaway.

@18: Then who the hell reads romance novels? For that matter, who writes them?

Fake!

What internet-porn addicted teen who writes to an advice column about it would write to Abby before Dan?

I find it difficult to believe a real teenage girl would write, "I'm one step from acting out." Who talks like that? Oh, right, someone pretending to be a teenager addicted to porn. (Not saying they don't exist, I just don't believe one wrote this letter.)

i'm one of "those" teenage girls and proud of it.

Ah, but my grades are still fine.... why you gotta diss on Torchwood? I watch it for the make out-- the plot.

My daughter, 19 year old college student with very good grades, started drawing her own gay and straight porn at age 15. She is a talented realistic and anime artist and sold some of her work to her over 18 peers. I warned her not to sell or give it to anyone under age 18. We never forbade her to draw what she wanted, talk about screwing someone up forever, but we did warn her not to put her sexy stuff on a computer. She does put her nonsexual or tamer (make out but no naughty bits showing) stuff on there and tweaks it with her artistic software.
She said that Abby letter was bullshit, no teenager writes like that.

I'm too old to have had the luxury of on-line porn when I was a teen, so I too stole playgirls and thought that the phrase All Day I Dream About Sex (ADIDAS) applied to me as well as the boys in my class.

I don't think the letter is real, only because it sounds too much like a cautionary tale written by a preacher who has never had kids, BUT I did know kids who wrote like that growing up...the ones who thought Anne Rice of Jane Austen were lifestyles, not genres.

@10: Why would I want to do that?

@34
Does she have an art page online?

Yes, Dan, you are sexist. But so is everybody in this society, in addition to being heterosexist, racist, xenophobic, etc. etc. etc. - it's just too deeply ingrained to avoid. The important thing is how each of us deals with it.

The idea of men being obsessed with sex/uncontrollable sex fiends with animal urges while woman are uninterested is based in puritanical notions of "purity" that is designed to keep both sexes confined to their reproductive roles - men are nothing but domineering inseminators, women are nothing but subservient vessels. This cultural value can be seen in many authoritarian agendas, be they religious or governmental, because they're fabulous for keeping a population controlled and reproducing for the cause.