Ex-porn user outlines the challenge of explaining porn’s genuine risks
As the hard, cold physical reality of Internet porn addiction grips more viewers, and they struggle through the distress of withdrawal, they are asking why the mechanics and risks of Internet porn addiction aren’t more evident in mainstream advice. Below, I reproduce the insights of one such observer. His words appeared on a site called www.yourbrainrebalanced.com.
For those who may not be up to speed on the field of addiction research and its relevance for Internet porn users, I’ve provided a brief recap with numerous links below his post.
How can we bring the problem of porn addiction into the mainstream conversation?
By Onanymous
Porn addiction is a problem, and the vast majority of men who are suffering porn addiction are not even aware of it. They don’t even know that there is such a thing. I got to thinking about the reasons for this ignorance after reading this comment by in another thread:
I think measures need to be taken to keep porn away from people that are underage. They seriously need to put together some laws that porn producers have to follow to keep porn out of kids view!
While I understand this impulse, I don’t agree with it. I think that politically that law would be difficult to get passed, and practically it would be difficult to enforce. Porn would have to be defined somehow (almost impossible — one person’s addictive porn is another person’s boring video of a woman in a sexy dress smoking a cigarette). And then a system would have to be invented for keeping minors but not others from accessing the porn. It’s a recipe for government domination of the Internet, and an open door for censorship of all kinds. No thanks.
I think the Your Brain On Porn emphasis on education makes a lot more sense. Think of how many guys get on the road to recovery just by discovering the existence of PMO addiction. And so many guys say, “If only I had known, I wouldn’t have let myself get hooked.” They demonstrate this to be true by working hard to get unhooked.
But education requires people to listen. And it is a serious challenge to get people to listen to the somewhat novel and complex [scientific] argument for porn addiction.
Right now we don’t look at Internet porn the right way. We’re either disgusted by it or fascinated by it, and neither side even entertains the notion that Internet porn is addictive like cigarettes or sugar water. So many conversations are derailed by one side shouting “Pervert!” and the other side shouting “Prude!” Both parties remain ignorant about what’s really happening to the brains of our teenagers while they learn that sex = Internet porn.
Promotion of the YBOP premise faces resistance from just about every group:
Liberals tend to side with science, but knee-jerk reactions to anyone talking about the dangers of any form of expression get liberals into attack mode. They’re so used to anti-porn people being religious moralists trying to legislate from the Bible that they often (quite unfairly) mistake Gary Wilson for one of these people at first glance. Liberals need porn to be harmless so that it remains true that nothing protected under the First Amendment causes harm. It’s hard to deal with the complicated reality that a certain form of expression could be both deserving of protection and also potentially harmful to the brain. It is easier to believe that there is no problem in need of addressing.
Libertarians tend to be smart and scientific as well. However, to maintain their ideology, libertarians need everything to be both legal and harmless. All drugs should be legal — and therefore any concerns about addicts running wild in the street must be dismissed as irrational fear-mongering. All food should be legal — therefore libertarians dismiss anyone even talking about the addictive dangers of our current artificially enhanced food supply as “nanny state” enforcers hell-bent on taking away our rights. And of course anyone suggesting that porn might have addictive properties that wise men should consider before consuming it is just a sex-negative loon. Libertarians have an extremely strong filter that keeps out any argument, however sound, that could conceivably lead a reasonable person to consider restricting any rights.
Conservatives seem like natural allies in promoting the dangers of porn. But that’s only because they tend to view sexuality itself as something dangerous and in need of authoritarian control. And religious conservatives approach this debate from a strongly anti-science perspective. Arguments based on evolutionary biology — the only arguments worth making, in other words — are a no-go. The delusional consensus among evangelicals is that the theory of evolution by natural selection is false and leads people away from God. Evolution is more controversial than porn. Conservatives may be “against” porn, but their reasons why, and especially their desire to use the law to turn their own morality into legislation, make them toxic allies who would only offer reasonable people another reason to dismiss all “anti-porn” arguments as religiously motivated prudery.
Feminists, an important subset of liberals, also seem like natural allies. The patriarchy has no more vivid expression than in extreme porn. The young female performers in porn are very often traumatized by their experience. And many women, including feminists, who simply want good healthy sex with their male partners are being denied this valuable life experience by male PMO addiction. But feminists have three good reasons for not wanting to enter this debate. First, “sex positive” feminists have made criticizing anyone’s sexuality controversial within feminism — anything seen as condemning sex workers’ free choices is seen as anti-women. Second, evolutionary psychology is rejected by virtually all prominent feminists; they see it as a “just so” explanation and excuse for men doing whatever they want to do. All ideologies are resistant to inconvenient science, and feminism is no exception. Third, correctly perceiving the problem here as “addiction” takes a measure of responsibility away from the individual man and also requires empathy for him. Feminism isn’t fond of either of these.
Porn users, who are in a position to benefit most from this discussion, can be extremely resistant to the idea. It doesn’t take long for ad hominem attack to become the primary defense deployed by a porn addict when confronted with his addiction, even in the abstract. Older porn users hearing about young guys suffering ED are sure that some other factor like diet must be at work, even when it is made clear that the affected guys can get it up for porn but not for hot young real-life women. It’s as if the hindbrain has a devoted army of brain cells that order an immediate, irrational, strong attack on anyone threatening the precious porn. As is common with addiction, the porn user usually must “hit bottom” with ED or severe depression before he will be open to the idea that spending hours wanking every day to extreme Internet porn might represent problematic behavior.
In short, almost nobody is positioned to want to have a conversation about the actual, scientifically supported dangers of porn use to the human brain. And so we’re not having the conversation.
What do you think about the cultural/media landscape I have pessimistically outlined above?
Any ideas for working around the obstacles and thrusting the problem of porn addiction into mainstream conversation?
END OF THE POST
Recap of relevant addiction research:
UPDATES
- An official diagnosis? The world’s most widely used medical diagnostic manual, The International Classification of Diseases (ICD-11), contains a new diagnosis suitable for porn addiction: “Compulsive Sexual Behavior Disorder.” (2018)
- Porn/sex addiction? This page lists 39 neuroscience-based studies (MRI, fMRI, EEG, neuropsychological, hormonal). They provide strong support for the addiction model as their findings mirror the neurological findings reported in substance addiction studies.
- The real experts’ opinions on porn/sex addiction? This list contains 16 recent literature reviews & commentaries by some of the top neuroscientists in the world. All support the addiction model.
- Signs of addiction and escalation to more extreme material? Over 30 studies reporting findings consistent with escalation of porn use (tolerance), habituation to porn, and even withdrawal symptoms (all signs and symptoms associated with addiction).
- Debunking the unsupported talking point that “high sexual desire” explains away porn or sex addiction: At least 25 studies falsify the claim that sex & porn addicts “just have high sexual desire”
- Porn and sexual problems? This list contains 26 studies linking porn use/porn addiction to sexual problems and lower arousal to sexual stimuli. The first 5 studies in the list demonstrate causation, as participants eliminated porn use and healed chronic sexual dysfunctions.
- Porn’s effects on relationships? Almost 60 studies link porn use to less sexual and relationship satisfaction. (As far as we know all studies involving males have reported more porn use linked to poorer sexual or relationship satisfaction.)
- Porn use affecting emotional and mental health? Over 55 studies link porn use to poorer mental-emotional health & poorer cognitive outcomes.
- Porn use affecting beliefs, attitudes and behaviors? Check out individual studies – over 25 studies link porn use to “un-egalitarian attitudes” toward women and sexist views – or the summary from this 2016 meta-analysis: Media and Sexualization: State of Empirical Research, 1995–2015. Excerpt:
The goal of this review was to synthesize empirical investigations testing effects of media sexualization. The focus was on research published in peer-reviewed, English-language journals between 1995 and 2015. A total of 109 publications that contained 135 studies were reviewed. The findings provided consistent evidence that both laboratory exposure and regular, everyday exposure to this content are directly associated with a range of consequences, including higher levels of body dissatisfaction, greater self-objectification, greater support of sexist beliefs and of adversarial sexual beliefs, and greater tolerance of sexual violence toward women. Moreover, experimental exposure to this content leads both women and men to have a diminished view of women’s competence, morality, and humanity.
- What about sexual aggression and porn use? Another meta-analysis: A Meta‐Analysis of Pornography Consumption and Actual Acts of Sexual Aggression in General Population Studies (2015). Excerpt:
22 studies from 7 different countries were analyzed. Consumption was associated with sexual aggression in the United States and internationally, among males and females, and in cross-sectional and longitudinal studies. Associations were stronger for verbal than physical sexual aggression, although both were significant. The general pattern of results suggested that violent content may be an exacerbating factor.
- What about the porn use and adolescents? Check out this list of over 200 adolescent studies, or this 2012 review of the research – The Impact of Internet Pornography on Adolescents: A Review of the Research (2012). From the conclusion:
Increased access to the Internet by adolescents has created unprecedented opportunities for sexual education, learning, and growth. Conversely, the risk of harm that is evident in the literature has led researchers to investigate adolescent exposure to online pornography in an effort to elucidate these relationships. Collectively, these studies suggest that youth who consume pornography may develop unrealistic sexual values and beliefs. Among the findings, higher levels of permissive sexual attitudes, sexual preoccupation, and earlier sexual experimentation have been correlated with more frequent consumption of pornography…. Nevertheless, consistent findings have emerged linking adolescent use of pornography that depicts violence with increased degrees of sexually aggressive behavior. The literature does indicate some correlation between adolescents’ use of pornography and self-concept. Girls report feeling physically inferior to the women they view in pornographic material, while boys fear they may not be as virile or able to perform as the men in these media. Adolescents also report that their use of pornography decreased as their self-confidence and social development increase. Additionally, research suggests that adolescents who use pornography, especially that found on the Internet, have lower degrees of social integration, increases in conduct problems, higher levels of delinquent behavior, higher incidence of depressive symptoms, and decreased emotional bonding with caregivers.
- For a debunking of nearly every naysayer talking point and cherry-picked study see this extensive critique: Debunking “Why Are We Still So Worried About Watching Porn?”, by Marty Klein, Taylor Kohut, and Nicole Prause (2018). How to recognize biased articles: They cite Prause et al., 2015 (falsely claiming it debunks porn addiction), while omitting over 3 dozen neurological studies supporting porn addiction.
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