Canada- Pornography. It’s a touchy subject.

Many of us have been raised to believe triple-X action is dirty or morally wrong, and that those who consume it are perverted or sick.

Yet the adult video and magazine industry thrives and, despite the taboos, porn icons like Jenna Jameson and Ron Jeremy have risen to celebrity status.

What is it that titillates us about seeing other people doing the nasty in films with typically cheesy, inane, sub-par plots?

It’s not the entertainment value, that’s for sure. Once you’ve had a few laughs most porn gets rather boring and repetitive.

We watch it, simply, because we’re voyeurs seeking to satisfy our primal drives. It turns us on and we want to get off.

But that’s not how our fascination with porn started.

Dave recalls his first experience encountering a girlie mag.

He was eight, and he and his buddies got together to gawk at a copy of Playboy that one of them had found while snooping in his parents’ bedroom.

“What did our moms think we built those tree forts for?” jokes the 28-year-old.

His curiosity at seeing a naked woman in such suggestive positions had a lasting impression.

What they were suggesting, exactly, he was not sure, but one thing was clear: he couldn’t get her out of his head.

Soon Dave had discovered his own dad’s collection which he voraciously digested.

By the time he was 11, he was trying not to get caught in the bathroom with his porno magazines, which he’d now discovered not only fascinated but aroused him.

The seeds of a lifelong relationship with porn were planted.

Liz, his future girlfriend, was exposed to her first X-rated material around the same age on a lunch-hour trip to a friend’s house.

“We giggled like crazy, then rushed back to school with our dirty little secret,” says the 30-year-old, who wouldn’t encounter porn again until her high school boyfriend suggested they watch some together.

“He was really into it. It was a turn-on for me because it was like the forbidden fruit,” she says. “I liked the close-ups of penetration. That really got my juices flowing.”

Liz admits she still felt a little dirty watching it. She wondered if she acted like the girls in the movie, whether her boyfriend would think she was slutty.

“If that’s what turned him on then maybe I was too uptight and needed to vamp it up more,” she says.

But this presented a Catch-22 situation. Liz was a product of her upbringing, more the good girl her boyfriend fell in love with than the sleazy tramp or horny vixen. If she were to behave that way in bed wouldn’t it be difficult to go back to being a cherished partner?

Despite the arguments that porn is made for men and degrades women, a surprising number of women claim to be fans.

According to The Hot Sex Handbook by Tracey Cox, 71.8% of women enjoy or are turned on by some porn magazines and videos. Even the local Bear radio station, in a morning telephone poll this week, found Edmonton women almost unanimously fond of selective pornography.

And why not? We’re all human.

Why, then, did Liz feel shocked and a little betrayed when recently she tried to open “hotmail” on her current boyfriend Dave’s computer and it jumped to the site “hornybabes.com?” “I couldn’t help but feel inadequate and wonder if he was satisfied with me. I’ll just never look that young and thin,” says Liz. “I also wondered if maybe he was a pervert or porn addict or something.”

Dave’s reply?

“Get a grip. I am.”

The insecurity Liz feels is not uncommon. When a girl catches her guy looking at another girl, real or not, in a sexual way it can feel akin to cheating.

Naturally, we want to be all that our partner needs.

But we can’t forget how they satisfied those needs singlehandedly for years before they met us.

If Liz understood Dave’s rather utilitarian view of pornography, she might be able to relax, and even enjoy porn a little more without feeling the need to judge herself.

“It’s fast, it relieves stress and it’s at my convenience. Porn is a visual trigger, a tool, to help me get off quickly,” he says. “It’s not a replacement for my girlfriend, and I don’t wish that she looked or acted like those women. The pornography is just a catalyst to orgasm: zip-boom-done.”

Besides, nothing can replace the intimacy Dave feels when he makes love to Liz.

“I do like the idea of the woman who wants to use me. That’s a turn-on. It makes me feel sexy. But I don’t think that’s due to porn,” says Dave. “Everyone wants to feel wanted.”

Dave and Liz should hit the adult video store one Saturday night and choose some porn together that they both might like. It’s a good way to have a few laughs and start a dialogue about their sexual fantasies, which is not always an easy subject to broach, so it should be done in a non-judgmental and playful way.

If things get a little touchy, all the better.