Both his parents were psychologists.* Any psych major knows the old saw that you probably got bad stuff like this from your parents. Some of the psych majors I have personally known struck me as folks who had no clue how humans work and were hoping to get a clue by majoring in it. When I went to GIS school, this observation was reinforced by a classmate who had a Master's in Psychology and was looking to change careers because of the lunacy of the people around her.
Supposedly, Kinsey's wife said something like "I never see my husband since he took such an interest in sex". In other words, he spent so much time studying sex in an intellectual, analytical way that he stopped bothering to make time for actual sex and relating with his wife. People interested in studying human psychology frequently strike me as seriously hung up. Therapy was useful to me for a time in trying to get over my own hang ups. More useful was spending time with men who liked having actual sex with actual women rather than talking about it in some abstract, analytical fashion.
"Forever" is a really long time. Sexual preferences can change. Pavlovian response is learned behavior. If you don't like the stimulus that makes you drool currently, you can retrain yourself. I am glad the author is actually trying to do that instead of merely blaming his issue on porn/the internet as I have seen other articles do.
* (Not intending to slam all psychologists or psych majors. My observation is anecdotal and admits to bias.)
Great point. As someone who has been studying psychology for a while now, you're completely right that people tend to diverge into one of two paths. On the one side you have people like Skinner who become completely robotic and excessively scientific, on the other side you have Jung who still maintained the mystery and excitement of life in his writings and musings.
I don't think you can attribute this specifically to psychology, it's sort of applicable to every science. You have someone like Neil Degrasse Tyson or Carl Sagan to every emotionless, numbers-only physicist who doesn't sleep with his wife.
It's a personal choice, whether to accept life as a mystery and study it as such or consider it a problem that needs to be solved analytically and without emotion.
That said, yes, when I worked in a psychiatry department I worked around the most miserly, insane people I've ever met. They were more cold and soulless than the homeless people we were treating. I got out of there right quick.
I work as a counsellor and I've heard the 'therapists are all crazy themselves' stereotype a million times.
My personal experience can only be limited, but I haven't found the statement to be true. Of the dozens and dozens of mental health professionals I've studied with or worked with, most are totally typical, adjusted people.
Since most humans are messed up in one way or another, you're probably as likely to find as many 'crazy' lawyers or programmers as you are therapists. When you meet a counsellor who's off the confirmation bias kicks in.
I would confirm that from my observation and interaction over the years as well. I wonder if there has been any study in that area that proves or disproves.
Seems maybe his scientist parents didn't teach him about correlation and causation either. There are many guys who have trouble with "real" sex because of insecurity or any number of other fears that have nothing to do with/were not caused by looking at porn.
I know this is outing myself but this is my personal experience. I won't post anonymously in case anyone wants to contact me. I came to the realization about 2 years that I am addicted to porn. For anyone out there struggling with the same thing, it can get better and yes, it is probably having a negative influence on your life. Previously I would look about once per week but in the past 6 months, I have probably viewed only 3 or 4 times and am hopeful going forward that I will never view it again.
The difference between internet porn and porn from the past is just the abundance of new material that there is. Each time you view something new, your brain gives a hit of dopamine. In fact, porn addicts are not really addicted to porn, they're addicted to the chemical sensations that their brain provides. At the basic level, it really is not much different from any other addiction. Old, offline porn is different in that it gets stale pretty quickly. There are only so many times you can look at a magazine or video without it getting boring.
The problem with this is that your dopamine levels get out of whack. You need a higher and higher amount to feel satisfied. This is how people get roped in. This also caused normal, life things that were once enjoyable to become less so, such as hanging out with friends or programming. Life just becomes more dull. In fact, now that I have learned about this, whenever I see a post on HN about how someone has lost their interest in programming or other activities, the first thing I think of is probably this person has a porn addiction. It's not a far stretch seeing as how most of HN is young men. Having drastically reduced the amount I see, I have noticed many benefits in my life including better health and ability to focus better.
Porn, like other addictions, are also a way of masking stress and a way of distracting yourself from negative emotions. Dr. Gabor Mate has done great research linking addictions of any kind to stresses in the body. Porn gives a way to temporarily release the stress but puts the person in a vicious cycle of causing more long-term stress.
Personally, I use the recovery information from http://www.feedtherightwolf.org. It has been the only thing I have across which can really break the cycle.
Well, if we're all just going to trade anecdotes at each other, I may as well do so too. Unlike the author of the original piece, I'm happy to use my real name.
I looked at porn on the Internet as a teenager. I'm gay and back then I was deep in the closet. And I grew up when Section 28 was still in force. It was a law passed in the 80s that said schools "shall not intentionally promote homosexuality or publish material with the intention of promoting homosexuality... [or] promote the teaching in any maintained school of the acceptability of homosexuality as a pretended family relationship".
In practice, that meant the sex education we got in schools didn't cover those of us with a preference for what the law called unacceptable "pretended" relationships.
Back then, it it was still dialup and early broadband. No high-quality video, so it was almost all pictures. But porn gave to a lot of gay kids the reassurance and sexual freedom that society more generally was unwilling to even see or mention. Porn was a paracetamol for loneliness: it didn't solve it, but it eased the pain. You opened the newspaper and every time they mentioned something related to being gay, it was framed as some giant moral debate, a culture war, a political football. But on the Internet, there wasn't any of that bullshit, just sex and porn and other people (albeit behind screen names). If schools don't want to teach the gay kids about their sexuality, then the Internet and porn will do it for them.
My friends didn't need the Internet: probably every school in the country has an underground trade in porn, whether it's Internet-based, magazines, hacking satellite/cable TV, whatever. Heterosexual teenage boys will get their hands on images of naked ladies and distribute/trade them. That's just how it is.
Access to porn throughout my teenage years made life bearable. And, at risk of oversharing, the thing I find most attractive in porn isn't the whips and chains, as the author says, but simple expressions of real, genuine emotional intimacy.
Thank you for writing. I am pleased to see this as the current top comment. I wrote my own erotica as part of therapy in my twenties, while recovering from child sexual abuse. Generally speaking, porn does little for me, but I am not against it. I believe it plays a vital educational role in society. I think part of why it is such a controversial big deal is because people are so hung up about sex. Thank you for giving testimony to a healthy use of porn in the face of overwhelming societal baggage instead of adding to the cacophany of voices vilifying both porn and their own need in one breathe.
Regarding differences in easy accessibility of "materials" for different orientation persons, one interesting thing worth mentioning - unlike heterosexuals, homosexuals carry this "material" all the time with them - their body...
I have tried to quit porn before. In high school I tried very hard, for religious reasons. I never succeeded. In college I got to the point where 2 30-90 minute sessions daily was the norm.
I then tried to quit again. I went 5 days, and then 4 days, and then gave up on the idea, resigning myself to immense sexual activity. Every month or so, I'll go on a complete rampage with as many as 10 orgasms a day for 2-3 days, rarely coming out of my room. Sometimes it even interferes with food.
My sexual tastes have grown increasingly complex, sometimes illegal, sometimes not outwardly sexual at all (example, the thought of loneliness in a girl). It has changed how I look at nearly everything, but I'm not ready to conclude that it has been for the worse.
I had sex for the first time this week. I didn't climax. My parter had no issues but I was completely uninterested, which is interesting because I had been looking forward (greatly) to the encounter for more than a week. But when it finally happened... complete disinterest. I did my best to think of porn and at least play along, but part of me felt that was more rude than just failing to climax so I sat back and let my partner enjoy her share. ED was no issue.
It's worth adding that I had never met the girl before, seen pics and talked via phone but never met in person. I had little (if any) emotional attraction to the girl, and for this reason specifically I'm not very worried. It just caught my attention because I would never have guessed that a 19yo boy would go through 40 minutes of sex with an attractive girl and not climax.
Since then I've been more motivated to quit, but I'm still not ready to conclude that porn has been a negative or bad experience. It has consistently given me a lot to think about, especially watching my interests and needs shift over the past few years. I've noticed a better control over my need for porn but it's only been a few days.
As long as people realize that porn itself is a caricature of sex, then it's fine. Usually sex is a lot more clumsy, and a lot shorter than any of the porn movies you find on the web. Guys with huge penises that take 45 mins to climax, women with huge breasts that love to get finished on, etc, is not how most of the world is. It's certainly exciting to see, but it's totally unrealistic.
It's sort of like martial arts. Real martial arts isn't guys jumping 30 ft at each other, or fighting 10 opponents at once, doing somersaults, etc. If kids go to martial arts training expecting this, they will be sorely disappointed. Most martial arts is practicing moves over and over again. It's tedious and boring for those that are expecting Jackie Chan or Jet Li. Over the course of many years, you can get to a certain level of expertise. But the martial arts movies are essentially a caricature.
> Hopefully the kids growing up today realize this.
Martial arts - maybe. But if your never had sex and your only education on the topic is porn, then how could you know how it really looks like? And then you have your first, and second, and third time, and you feel a bit disappointed that it didn't feel or look like you expected, and even if you realize that porn is a caricature, you're still left wondering, how much of the difference between porn and real life is because of lack of realism in videos, and how much is because of your deficiencies.
It's a real problem and it's sad that the only sexual education kids usually get comes from porn.
EDIT
There was a TED talk about this topic once, [0]. While her site doesn't have much content and I don't recall the book being very insightful (though definitely an interesting read), she raises some good points so I recommend the video (it's 4 minutes).
porn — especially the porn I was watching — just had to be taboo.
The author's fetish is with the anxiety of getting caught. He's making anxiety porn by watching something so extreme that it's guaranteed to offend anyone who catches him. The author has connected the anxiety of being caught with sexual desires in his head. It's actually a very common fetish.
"
Societies eventually develop antibodies to addictive new things. I've seen that happen with cigarettes. When cigarettes first appeared, they spread the way an infectious disease spreads through a previously isolated population. Smoking rapidly became a (statistically) normal thing. [...]
As knowledge spread about the dangers of smoking, customs changed."
So yes, porn has always existed. So has smoking. But, industrial cigarettes and broadband porn streaming are "more concentrated forms of less addictive predecessors." and hence they are more dangerous.
PS: Just to clarify, Pg did not mention porn addiction in his essay. He does mention Internet addiction, though.
I find that its hard to communicate with young people about the weird way in which sexual climax is plugged into your brain. Through out history people have have exploited that link and human physiology as a tool to control people.
Growing up in Las Vegas I had a pretty unconventional view of sex, and was completely caught off guard by the emotions that came with my first actual sexual experience.
I'm sure there are people who have never watched porn that don't particularly enjoy sex either. This sounds like all other articles that generalize one anecdote to data.
Pretty sure the entire piece was anecdotal. I see no call to action indicating that he believes we need to take up some sort of communal mantle to protect our young ones. He just wonders if he blew it for himself.
100% agree and only this to add... sexual interest can go up or down depending on your partner and life situation. This is regardless of love, interest or what-not. For me, I went from one relationship where I (a male) was faking it to another where I couldn't last 5 minutes.
Porn is such a non-issue in my life. It's soulless and empty as it should be, but it's also human sexual nature at its rawest. I'm glad we live in an era where we can freely and easily experience it.
I remember reading sexual advice for couples from the pre internet era, and they cover many of the 'issues' described in the article and how to turn it into a positive experience. The impression I am getting is that he's never felt comfortable discussing it before, because of the guilt situation, hence why he hasn't realised how normal it is.
"A brain originally designed to cope with nothing more tempting than an occasional glimpse of a tribesperson across the savannah is lost with what’s now on offer on the net at the click of a button: when confronted with offers to participate continuously in scenarios outstripping any that could be dreamt up by the diseased mind of the Marquis de Sade. There is nothing robust enough in our psychological make-up to compensate for developments in our technological capacities."
I can definitely relate to the author. I first found porn at the age of 14. I'm 29 now, and until recently, porn has always been something I've "struggled with".
I've seen several comments that have opposed what I would call the Church & Moral perspective on porn, without really having an example of what that perspective is. Let me put forth a few claims, so those of you who would disagree with them have something concrete to which to attach your arguments.
FWIW, I'm a religious person. I've been married for 9 years, and I've only ever been physically intimate with my wife. I accept that that deeply colors my perception of the world and this issue specifically.
Here are my claims:
- Porn is designed to be "used" by an individual to satisfy themselves sexually.
- Especially when encountered at a formative age (such as the author's and my own), porn greatly influences your perception of "good sex".
- Pornography and sexual intimacy are diametrically opposed.
- Sexual intimacy is more satisfying, on the whole, than porn.
- There is no such thing as "harmless porn".
Finally, a standing invitation. If you ever want more information on the mainstream evangelical Christian viewpoint on pornography, or my viewpoint specifically, feel free to email me at donspauldingii at googlemail dot com
It's one of those things that can rapidly spiral, you start needing a bigger kick to keep it interesting. The problem being it is incredibly difficult to talk about, it's something parents will start needing to discuss with their kids straight up.
Porn isn't bad, it's a part of society now and has been for a long while, but it's the same way drugs aren't necessarily bad unless you start needing a bigger and bigger kick.
I agree and I'm the same. I can relate to many of the stories told by the author, however I find real sex immensely more exciting, to the extent that even when viewing porn I will often fantasize about sex I've actually had. I also think more about women I meet and date than I do about porn I've watched (and I've watched pretty much everything there is).
I am curious though, was your upbringing liberal regarding sex, or was it considered a taboo as well? For me, it was very much even taboo to think about it, even though I later found out this is terribly hypocritical considering those telling us it was taboo were doing it just as much as we would eventually. I even got in trouble for uttering the word "condom" once, almost to the same extent as for saying "fuck", which seems utterly ridiculous to me now. I'm curious if sex having been taboo for so many years is actually what makes it more stimulating, or if it's just a difference in sexuality from person to person.
Looks like the author was accurate in how uncomfortable we are as a society to talk about the role of porn in our lives.
I think the article speaks more to the issue with recovery and the issues surrounding "getting back to neutral."
This problem exists. He explains in laymen's terms a simple Pavlovian response that requires more and more brain stimulation to achieve the same level of dopamine needed for ejaculation.
I'm not a neuroscientist, but I bet someone out there can explain it better than I can.
Does it make sense to teach this to children? Just like "Smoking isn't good for your health."(which I believe worked for me) you could teach "Porn isn't good for you, if you want to enjoy sex."
I think the problem is our society's denigration of sex. We see it as consisting inherently of that mix of thrill and shame - when you're a teenager growing up in America, you're told to feel that way about any nudity, never mind penetration. So you come to associate arousal with this guilt - you never experience the one without the other - and then when you're looking for something to turn you on you're already feeling guilty, and there's a part of you that wants to. So you step a little deeper into the pool of fetishes, find something a little stronger (and I'm pleased that the author's actually given some realistic examples here), something that makes you feel guilty and ashamed and is all the more erotic for it. But the interest half-life for porn is tiny; what was dangerous boundary-pushing last week is pedestrian today. It's a feedback loop, one that can only possibly end somewhere unpleasant.
The author's already found the solution - we need to separate sexuality from guilt and shame, to be able to feel aroused and wholesome at the same time. But it's hard to do that after you've already fallen down the spiral. We need to make our children's first experiences of arousal feel natural and wholesome - which means more openness, more embracing of sexuality in artforms that are going to portray it positively. But that's a hard sell to middle America.
It'd make more sense to go broader and teach that due to how our brains work, all pleasure becomes diluted the more we have. Therefore, it is desirable to avoid living in unrestricted excess, be it with drugs, sex, food, or what have you. One should have control over their pleasures, not the other way around.
It makes sense, if taught properly. But I would expect this to be yet another thing taught with the "daddy knows best" attitude that speaks in simplistic absolutes to make sure they instill their desired outcome rather than share a proper perspective with plenty of nuance and hope that the children come to the same conclusions as the person teaching. That is a very dangerous road to take. It depends on the message being correct, and the child to never rebel from that message when they wise up to the fact they weren't given the full picture and never succumb to their desires.
For me, in this day and age, its really hard to say one way or the other. How poorly done and/or wrong will it be, and is having it done that way better than nothing? I can't know, but I suspect that with societal attitudes on sex, "some porn is fine, how much is too much is different for everybody and here's how to tell where the line is" is too complicated of a message to effectively communicate. If it is even allowed to be communicated at all. Don't forget widespread acceptance of "abstinence only" rubbish isn't far behind us, I'm reminded of this every time I visit family in the South and see the big labels on every gas station condom dispenser reminding me that the only real way to avoid HIV/AIDS is monogamy and abstinence before marriage. Whereas growing up in the North, we didn't even have those dispensers. I suspect their presence is related to the greater taboos about sex in those areas, but in the north I was never scared away from buying rubbers at the counter when I was young.
No, because that is ludicrous. A porn addiction is bad for you, but watching other people fuck isn't necessarily bad. Just like certain electronic components exhibit weird properties when taken to extreme levels, we wouldn't write off using op-amps because they go funky when abused.
Porn is an instant pleasure. Enjoying sex in eight years (earlier if you're lucky but don't cross your fingers just yet) does not compare very well to that.
I've never tried to smoke so I can't really compare.
The language he uses to talk about his experiences sounds extremely judgmental and puritan. It seems to me that his problem is not pornography but guilt tripping himself.
There are people who watch a huge amount of porn but have a perfectly healthy sex life and relationship with women. It's about understanding what it is and it's context, and realising that there's a difference between that and reality.
Yes, I'm glad someone is putting the truth out there that pretty much everyone from the Millennial generation has been watching porn since our pre-teens. The vast majority, as far a s I know, havn't experienced problems from it. There is a vocal minority like in r/nofap, but considering that literally 99.9% of millions of males do it, that can't be a surprise.
[+] [-] Mz|13 years ago|reply
Supposedly, Kinsey's wife said something like "I never see my husband since he took such an interest in sex". In other words, he spent so much time studying sex in an intellectual, analytical way that he stopped bothering to make time for actual sex and relating with his wife. People interested in studying human psychology frequently strike me as seriously hung up. Therapy was useful to me for a time in trying to get over my own hang ups. More useful was spending time with men who liked having actual sex with actual women rather than talking about it in some abstract, analytical fashion.
"Forever" is a really long time. Sexual preferences can change. Pavlovian response is learned behavior. If you don't like the stimulus that makes you drool currently, you can retrain yourself. I am glad the author is actually trying to do that instead of merely blaming his issue on porn/the internet as I have seen other articles do.
* (Not intending to slam all psychologists or psych majors. My observation is anecdotal and admits to bias.)
[+] [-] rooker|13 years ago|reply
I don't think you can attribute this specifically to psychology, it's sort of applicable to every science. You have someone like Neil Degrasse Tyson or Carl Sagan to every emotionless, numbers-only physicist who doesn't sleep with his wife.
It's a personal choice, whether to accept life as a mystery and study it as such or consider it a problem that needs to be solved analytically and without emotion.
That said, yes, when I worked in a psychiatry department I worked around the most miserly, insane people I've ever met. They were more cold and soulless than the homeless people we were treating. I got out of there right quick.
[+] [-] CleverGirl|13 years ago|reply
My personal experience can only be limited, but I haven't found the statement to be true. Of the dozens and dozens of mental health professionals I've studied with or worked with, most are totally typical, adjusted people.
Since most humans are messed up in one way or another, you're probably as likely to find as many 'crazy' lawyers or programmers as you are therapists. When you meet a counsellor who's off the confirmation bias kicks in.
[+] [-] rhizome|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] larrys|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ams6110|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mattm|13 years ago|reply
The difference between internet porn and porn from the past is just the abundance of new material that there is. Each time you view something new, your brain gives a hit of dopamine. In fact, porn addicts are not really addicted to porn, they're addicted to the chemical sensations that their brain provides. At the basic level, it really is not much different from any other addiction. Old, offline porn is different in that it gets stale pretty quickly. There are only so many times you can look at a magazine or video without it getting boring.
The problem with this is that your dopamine levels get out of whack. You need a higher and higher amount to feel satisfied. This is how people get roped in. This also caused normal, life things that were once enjoyable to become less so, such as hanging out with friends or programming. Life just becomes more dull. In fact, now that I have learned about this, whenever I see a post on HN about how someone has lost their interest in programming or other activities, the first thing I think of is probably this person has a porn addiction. It's not a far stretch seeing as how most of HN is young men. Having drastically reduced the amount I see, I have noticed many benefits in my life including better health and ability to focus better.
Porn, like other addictions, are also a way of masking stress and a way of distracting yourself from negative emotions. Dr. Gabor Mate has done great research linking addictions of any kind to stresses in the body. Porn gives a way to temporarily release the stress but puts the person in a vicious cycle of causing more long-term stress.
Personally, I use the recovery information from http://www.feedtherightwolf.org. It has been the only thing I have across which can really break the cycle.
As someone else pointed out the videos from http://yourbrainonporn.com/your-brain-on-porn-series will really help you understand what is going on in your brain.
[+] [-] tommorris|13 years ago|reply
I looked at porn on the Internet as a teenager. I'm gay and back then I was deep in the closet. And I grew up when Section 28 was still in force. It was a law passed in the 80s that said schools "shall not intentionally promote homosexuality or publish material with the intention of promoting homosexuality... [or] promote the teaching in any maintained school of the acceptability of homosexuality as a pretended family relationship".
In practice, that meant the sex education we got in schools didn't cover those of us with a preference for what the law called unacceptable "pretended" relationships.
Back then, it it was still dialup and early broadband. No high-quality video, so it was almost all pictures. But porn gave to a lot of gay kids the reassurance and sexual freedom that society more generally was unwilling to even see or mention. Porn was a paracetamol for loneliness: it didn't solve it, but it eased the pain. You opened the newspaper and every time they mentioned something related to being gay, it was framed as some giant moral debate, a culture war, a political football. But on the Internet, there wasn't any of that bullshit, just sex and porn and other people (albeit behind screen names). If schools don't want to teach the gay kids about their sexuality, then the Internet and porn will do it for them.
My friends didn't need the Internet: probably every school in the country has an underground trade in porn, whether it's Internet-based, magazines, hacking satellite/cable TV, whatever. Heterosexual teenage boys will get their hands on images of naked ladies and distribute/trade them. That's just how it is.
Access to porn throughout my teenage years made life bearable. And, at risk of oversharing, the thing I find most attractive in porn isn't the whips and chains, as the author says, but simple expressions of real, genuine emotional intimacy.
[+] [-] Mz|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] exim|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] PaperclipTaken|13 years ago|reply
I then tried to quit again. I went 5 days, and then 4 days, and then gave up on the idea, resigning myself to immense sexual activity. Every month or so, I'll go on a complete rampage with as many as 10 orgasms a day for 2-3 days, rarely coming out of my room. Sometimes it even interferes with food.
My sexual tastes have grown increasingly complex, sometimes illegal, sometimes not outwardly sexual at all (example, the thought of loneliness in a girl). It has changed how I look at nearly everything, but I'm not ready to conclude that it has been for the worse.
I had sex for the first time this week. I didn't climax. My parter had no issues but I was completely uninterested, which is interesting because I had been looking forward (greatly) to the encounter for more than a week. But when it finally happened... complete disinterest. I did my best to think of porn and at least play along, but part of me felt that was more rude than just failing to climax so I sat back and let my partner enjoy her share. ED was no issue.
It's worth adding that I had never met the girl before, seen pics and talked via phone but never met in person. I had little (if any) emotional attraction to the girl, and for this reason specifically I'm not very worried. It just caught my attention because I would never have guessed that a 19yo boy would go through 40 minutes of sex with an attractive girl and not climax.
Since then I've been more motivated to quit, but I'm still not ready to conclude that porn has been a negative or bad experience. It has consistently given me a lot to think about, especially watching my interests and needs shift over the past few years. I've noticed a better control over my need for porn but it's only been a few days.
[+] [-] kjackson2012|13 years ago|reply
It's sort of like martial arts. Real martial arts isn't guys jumping 30 ft at each other, or fighting 10 opponents at once, doing somersaults, etc. If kids go to martial arts training expecting this, they will be sorely disappointed. Most martial arts is practicing moves over and over again. It's tedious and boring for those that are expecting Jackie Chan or Jet Li. Over the course of many years, you can get to a certain level of expertise. But the martial arts movies are essentially a caricature.
Hopefully the kids growing up today realize this.
[+] [-] TeMPOraL|13 years ago|reply
Martial arts - maybe. But if your never had sex and your only education on the topic is porn, then how could you know how it really looks like? And then you have your first, and second, and third time, and you feel a bit disappointed that it didn't feel or look like you expected, and even if you realize that porn is a caricature, you're still left wondering, how much of the difference between porn and real life is because of lack of realism in videos, and how much is because of your deficiencies.
It's a real problem and it's sad that the only sexual education kids usually get comes from porn.
EDIT
There was a TED talk about this topic once, [0]. While her site doesn't have much content and I don't recall the book being very insightful (though definitely an interesting read), she raises some good points so I recommend the video (it's 4 minutes).
[0] - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FV8n_E_6Tpc
[+] [-] konstruktor|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] stephengillie|13 years ago|reply
The author's fetish is with the anxiety of getting caught. He's making anxiety porn by watching something so extreme that it's guaranteed to offend anyone who catches him. The author has connected the anxiety of being caught with sexual desires in his head. It's actually a very common fetish.
[+] [-] FrojoS|13 years ago|reply
" Societies eventually develop antibodies to addictive new things. I've seen that happen with cigarettes. When cigarettes first appeared, they spread the way an infectious disease spreads through a previously isolated population. Smoking rapidly became a (statistically) normal thing. [...]
As knowledge spread about the dangers of smoking, customs changed."
So yes, porn has always existed. So has smoking. But, industrial cigarettes and broadband porn streaming are "more concentrated forms of less addictive predecessors." and hence they are more dangerous.
PS: Just to clarify, Pg did not mention porn addiction in his essay. He does mention Internet addiction, though.
[+] [-] ChuckMcM|13 years ago|reply
Growing up in Las Vegas I had a pretty unconventional view of sex, and was completely caught off guard by the emotions that came with my first actual sexual experience.
[+] [-] unknown|13 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] jrockway|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ChikkaChiChi|13 years ago|reply
hehe. Blew it.
[+] [-] rohern|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] waxjar|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] groovy2shoes|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jarjoura|13 years ago|reply
Porn is such a non-issue in my life. It's soulless and empty as it should be, but it's also human sexual nature at its rawest. I'm glad we live in an era where we can freely and easily experience it.
[+] [-] kokey|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] vy8vWJlco|13 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] jacoblyles|13 years ago|reply
Anecdotally, I find their arguments compelling.
[+] [-] dkarl|13 years ago|reply
"A brain originally designed to cope with nothing more tempting than an occasional glimpse of a tribesperson across the savannah is lost with what’s now on offer on the net at the click of a button: when confronted with offers to participate continuously in scenarios outstripping any that could be dreamt up by the diseased mind of the Marquis de Sade. There is nothing robust enough in our psychological make-up to compensate for developments in our technological capacities."
http://blogs.wsj.com/speakeasy/2012/12/26/why-we-should-limi...
[+] [-] illuminate|13 years ago|reply
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N1KvgtEnABY
[+] [-] vy8vWJlco|13 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] papsosouid|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] notdonspaulding|13 years ago|reply
I've seen several comments that have opposed what I would call the Church & Moral perspective on porn, without really having an example of what that perspective is. Let me put forth a few claims, so those of you who would disagree with them have something concrete to which to attach your arguments.
FWIW, I'm a religious person. I've been married for 9 years, and I've only ever been physically intimate with my wife. I accept that that deeply colors my perception of the world and this issue specifically.
Here are my claims:
- Porn is designed to be "used" by an individual to satisfy themselves sexually.
- Especially when encountered at a formative age (such as the author's and my own), porn greatly influences your perception of "good sex".
- Pornography and sexual intimacy are diametrically opposed.
- Sexual intimacy is more satisfying, on the whole, than porn.
- There is no such thing as "harmless porn".
Finally, a standing invitation. If you ever want more information on the mainstream evangelical Christian viewpoint on pornography, or my viewpoint specifically, feel free to email me at donspauldingii at googlemail dot com
[+] [-] lucian1900|13 years ago|reply
While much porn isn't of particularly good quality, lots of porn is designed for couples. And it's great! You should try it with your wife.
Again, you've been watching the wrong porn. Plenty depicts beautiful sexual intimacy.
[+] [-] msluyter|13 years ago|reply
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wSF82AwSDiU
[+] [-] nicholassmith|13 years ago|reply
Porn isn't bad, it's a part of society now and has been for a long while, but it's the same way drugs aren't necessarily bad unless you start needing a bigger and bigger kick.
[+] [-] counterdatapt|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] just2n|13 years ago|reply
I am curious though, was your upbringing liberal regarding sex, or was it considered a taboo as well? For me, it was very much even taboo to think about it, even though I later found out this is terribly hypocritical considering those telling us it was taboo were doing it just as much as we would eventually. I even got in trouble for uttering the word "condom" once, almost to the same extent as for saying "fuck", which seems utterly ridiculous to me now. I'm curious if sex having been taboo for so many years is actually what makes it more stimulating, or if it's just a difference in sexuality from person to person.
[+] [-] ChikkaChiChi|13 years ago|reply
I think the article speaks more to the issue with recovery and the issues surrounding "getting back to neutral."
This problem exists. He explains in laymen's terms a simple Pavlovian response that requires more and more brain stimulation to achieve the same level of dopamine needed for ejaculation.
I'm not a neuroscientist, but I bet someone out there can explain it better than I can.
[+] [-] FrojoS|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] lmm|13 years ago|reply
The author's already found the solution - we need to separate sexuality from guilt and shame, to be able to feel aroused and wholesome at the same time. But it's hard to do that after you've already fallen down the spiral. We need to make our children's first experiences of arousal feel natural and wholesome - which means more openness, more embracing of sexuality in artforms that are going to portray it positively. But that's a hard sell to middle America.
[+] [-] readme|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Skoofoo|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] cbs|13 years ago|reply
For me, in this day and age, its really hard to say one way or the other. How poorly done and/or wrong will it be, and is having it done that way better than nothing? I can't know, but I suspect that with societal attitudes on sex, "some porn is fine, how much is too much is different for everybody and here's how to tell where the line is" is too complicated of a message to effectively communicate. If it is even allowed to be communicated at all. Don't forget widespread acceptance of "abstinence only" rubbish isn't far behind us, I'm reminded of this every time I visit family in the South and see the big labels on every gas station condom dispenser reminding me that the only real way to avoid HIV/AIDS is monogamy and abstinence before marriage. Whereas growing up in the North, we didn't even have those dispensers. I suspect their presence is related to the greater taboos about sex in those areas, but in the north I was never scared away from buying rubbers at the counter when I was young.
[+] [-] antihero|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] illuminate|13 years ago|reply
I try not to lie to children, if at all possible.
[+] [-] guard-of-terra|13 years ago|reply
I've never tried to smoke so I can't really compare.
[+] [-] konstruktor|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] antihero|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] calinet6|13 years ago|reply
Nope, it wasn't the porn.
[+] [-] cm2012|13 years ago|reply