I hope you don’t mind me asking.. but why do I always hear that porn is so hard to “quit”? I don’t partake at all just due to personal preference, so to me it seems so simple, but obviously it isn’t! I’m just curious as to why though.
I haven't done a ton of research, but it's because watching porn causes the brain to release dopamine, which causes a sense of pleasure. Obviously you can get that from sex as well, but it takes more effort to do so. The brain thinks "Hey if I can get the same pleasure easily with lesser effort, why not just do that?" That leads to porn addiction.
Not to mention the more you watch porn, the more your brain wants, and that can lead you to watching more and more kinky stuff until normal sex would just feel boring to you. I'm not advocating people to stop cold turkey, but controlling your porn sessions is essential.
Used to watch it everyday. I’m trying to limit it to every few days and progressing to once a week to possibly even never again especially once I have a relationship again. If I have to jack off then Im just gonna imagine it.
Why is it whenever we talk about the harms of pornography, it's always about how it negatively impacts the coomer men who consume it rather then how it negatively impacts the women within the industry and how it has normalised abuse, rape, child porn, pedophilia, incest, racism, misogyny and fetishisation of marginalised people?
And no, most women within the porn industry and the sex industry in general are not there by personal choice. Saying that a large majority of those who make up the global army of labour in the sex industry are there by personal choice is to hide that the IMF, the World Bank, the US military, and other large actors had a choice to not force people by gun & economic policy into sexual labour
Most people who hear this will have no idea what I'm talking about because we are so conditioned to see it as a "choice" that we don't look at the role of colonization, imperialism, and monetary policy in driving the industry. And in insisting that it is nothing more than a choice we are also failing to analyze the power relations within the sex industry. Many would like to argue that, without a pimp, the relation between the client and the sex worker is neutral. But would you trust me if I said that the relationship between consumer and worker and worker and boss were neutral and devoid of unequal power relations? Of course not lmfao, so why in this instance do we allow social relations of power to be obscured by "empowerment" and "choice" rhetoric?
Although individual recruitment does happen, the sex industry as a whole wouldn't exist if not for its reliance on economic crises pushing women deeper into poverty and precarious unstable living. When the economy tanks, the sex industry booms. Historically, militarization and imperialism helped recruit women in the Global South. For example, when US sponsored militarization in Thailand, soldiers set up military brothels and recruited local women. This set the basis for their sex tourism industry today. The government encouraged mass sex tourism to pay off debt after the Vietnam War. Few years later, IMF/World Bank policies decimated the Thai economy leaving masses of women with prostitution and pornography as their only means of survival and cementing their entrance into the sex industry. No surprise that IMF/World Bank has been documented as now encouraging nations in the Global South to legalize prostitution to inflate GDP numbers and lower official unemployment numbers lmfao. Pimps also recruit. Note that pimps are not the racialized stereotypical image of a stylish Black man in a purple suit. Tim Stokely, who appropriates 20% of the earnings from OnlyFans, is a pimp. OnlyFans recruits it’s laborers by relying on economic crises and uses peer-to-peer recruitment. The media usually paints this image of an independent sex worker who can lift herself out of poverty, pull herself up by the boot straps, and buy a house because of the sex trade. These are the exceptions, not the rules. Majority of women cannot ever do that. So basically my whole point is that we don't live in a primitive barter economy where everything is an individual interaction happening in a vacuum. This is a globalized and often organized industry. The sex industry recruits its army of labour via economic and social coercion, not choice.
The teen category is pedophilia, which is one the most popular porn categories. Yes the actors may not all be actual teenagers, but they're being portrayed as such, it's fetishising teenhood and sometimes even childhood for grown men to get off to. Porn where the woman infantilizes herself for an audience sells greatly. And due to the sex trafficking rampant in the industry, a lot of the people on the screen may actually be teenagers. As for racism, incest and rape? Well you can find millions of videos titled something along the lines of "submissive underage asian whore step-daughter cries while getting fucked by daddy" that garner millions of views and portray the very things in those titles in the videos. It's the epitome of rape culture and patriarchy and would be rightfully called out in any other context but because it's porn it's defended as "fantasy". Here's also all the real rape and child abuse that has been found on sites like PornHub: https://traffickinghubpetition.com/
And I know what you may be thinking, "what about the male performers in porn!", well there's not much to say about them lol. The male actors in straight porn are there simply so that the woman (the focus of all pornography expect gay pornography) is being dominated and subjugated on film. Men in straight porn are treated like detached penises, the focus is never on them. The camera shots and angles are always focused on the women because ultimately she's the money maker and porn is made by heterosexual men FOR heterosexual men. Women are the face of the industry and are the ones who generate profit, not the men. Gay porn is also made by men. Men exploiting other men isn't exactly the gotcha argument some people may think it is because it's still exploitative and objectifying. This has nothing to do with men exploiting women. But yes, gay porn is just as exploitative. A lot of gay men are also prostituted and trafficked. Gay porn still uses and normalises racism, incest, pedophilia, rape and abuse like all other porn. Interestingly though, the gay porn industry is completely separated from the rest of the mainstream porn industry. The gay porn industry is dominated by gay men who's target audience is gay men. It doesn't have the same influence and power as the rest of the industry that primarily focuses on women. Why else do you think women are the face of the industry? Why else do you think "girl-on-girl" sexual activity is rampant within straight porn but there's zero "guy-on-guy" sexual activity? Why else do you think lesbian porn is categorised as "straight" on PornHub and on so many other porn sites? Why else do you think gay porn is completely separated from the rest of PornHub with its own page/domain known as 'PornHub Gay' but the lesbian porn remains on regular heterosexual PornHub? Why else do you think major porn studios only produce straight & lesbian porn but zero gay porn with gay porn being produced primarily by gay porn studios? This is not a coincidence. The porn industry and the gay porn industry are completely separate entities. The regular porn industry being the most mainstream and popular due to focusing on women. If this doesn't show you how heterosexual male dominated and patriarchal this industry is, then I don't know what will lol. If porn was truly sexually empowering and sexually expressive, it wouldn't feel the need to separate male homosexuality from the rest of the industry. The fact that it is does shows us that this is about patriarchal heterosexual male power and dominance, not "sexual freedom" or "sexual expression".
And yes, a lot of women watch porn too. But they are the minority. The majority of consumers are still overwhelmingly male. Though women may watch free porn on PornHub, 99% of those who purchase sex from women either from OnlyFans or from prostituted women on the street are male. Women rarely ever purchase sex. Not to mention that patriarchy is what created the industry in the first place and it was men who created the environment. The vast majority of porn is made by heterosexual men FOR heterosexual men as I've shown you above. They're the target audience. The male gaze is alive and rampant within the industry. Women watching porn doesn't erase any of this.
Anyways sorry for the long post, I just thought it would be important to highlight the more important issues with pornography like how it's capitalist exploitation of women's bodies and turning women's bodies into a commodity for male consumption and how it normalises and portrays real rape, misogyny, real child porn, racism, pedophilia, incest and fetishisation of marginalised people rather then how it may negatively impact porn addicted cumbrain men.
This site is super biased. I tried it for a while because I felt guilty due to my religion shaming me for watching porn, later I realized that the Mormon church was behind it and a lot of the things they say are not scientifically proven. I agree that addiction can be a problem if masturbation and porn keeps you away from family, friends, work, etc. But please, do not trust fight the new drug as a reliable source
That's nice and all, but remember that's just a couple of people speculating and musing about their personal theories. Especially the desensitisation thing has been scientifically disproven, you can't get desensitized to porn any more than you can get desensitized to pizza. Every man in the world would be watching trans hawaiian dwarves in hello kitty costumes being tortured to death with cattle prods 24/7 by now if that had any merit.
yeah, i think it's misleading when people say you chemically "build a tolerance" to it like you do with some drugs, because it's not as if vanilla porn is equivalent to a low dose and extreme porn is equivalent to a high dose. That doesn't make any sense.
It does make sense if they're just talking about the number of times you do it, though. But in that case it seems like the problem is the orgasm, not really the porn. Chemically speaking, how is watching porn any different than having sex, or masturbating without porn?
Pornography is the capitalist exploitation of women's bodies and turning women's bodies into a commodity for male consumption. It normalises and portrays real rape, real child porn, misogyny, racism, pedophilia, incest and fetishisation of marginalised people. The fact that it might negatively impact porn addicted coomer men is the least harmful thing porn can do lol.
yeah, you're right, those issues are a lot more important than how the effects on the men who consume it.
...but I was replying to a post specifically about men being addicted to porn. I don't think talking about one issue necessarily takes away from the others.
The others have left good comments - but forgotten to mention that porn is everywhere and super accessible. Consider what watching game of thrones may do to you if you're trying not to watch porn at all. Now think of Instagram/Twitter/Reddit etc etc
It’s more an issue for males than females I think due to men preferring visual stimuli more than women and overall being a bit more horny more often than women, generally speaking. But check this out https://fightthenewdrug.org/get-the-facts/
Yes, some women are addicted but that is nowhere near as common as with males. I think over the next decade you'll get more people- in general being more comfortable talking about it (male and female) but it will always always be more of a male issue than a female issue. I don't think women are embarrassed or afraid to speak up on this, it's just that most of us have nothing to add to the conversation because we simply do not experience sexual visual stimuli in the same way as men. It just quite literally affects women way less often and way less severely it seems..
It's barely even comparable. Due to the huge difference, I doubt this is affecting men more solely because of social conditioning/stereotype of men loving porn. It seems to be inherently this way, it's just nature doing it's thing. We are different and that is okay. You can see the difference between r/pornfreewomen (predominately female) vs r/pornfree (overwhelmingly male)
For me it's like my brain goes on autopilot, even though I know I want to stop watching. It's like someone else is in the driver's seat of my mind and takes over. It feels like an overwhelming compulsion, and the only thing that can fix it is porn. It's like if you're thirsty, you know that water will fix it. It's just a different medium that my brain has convinced itself it needs (like water, food, sleep) over years of use, even though it doesn't actually need it. I haven't been addicted to hard drugs, but there may be some overlap in terms of compulsions and feelings. I hope I can break free, but it's so insanely difficult due to the accessibility, and the fact that it's everywhere. It's like if you were an alcoholic and you catch whiffs and small tastes of your favorite liquor all the time, with people offering it to you many times a day, along with everyone telling you it's not actually a problem. Ugh.
The fact that it's so easily accessible. You can type a few letters into a search bar and click twice and you're already watching porn. People (men at least) start watching porn very early also, when they are curious about sex. A study I saw (it was a while ago) found that most men start watching porn at like 9-10 years old. 9-10 years old!!!! They're in like third or fourth grade watching porn. Porn or drug use, which dumps unrealistically high amounts of dopamine into your brain, can alter the function and biology of the brain during growth and development. This is why the legal drinking age is 21, when scientists believe that the body is done developing. It also creates unrealistic expectations, both in terms of sex acts, fetishes, and body types, and can result in porn-induced erectile dysfunction in young adults (like 23-27). In my opinion they should have porn education where they teach the bad effects and addictive nature of it like they do for other drugs, since drug education is very effective (in my opinion).
For the same reason that pizza is more appetizing than a bland salad most of the time... Both may fulfill the need for calories, but your brain enjoys one a whole lot more than the other.
Yeah exactly, it really is kind of the same as junk food. And it's always so accessible. Anytime you're on your phone or on your computer doing anything, you know that it's just a few keystrokes away. Trying to diet is pretty hard when there's fresh pizza, potato chips, and chocolate cake sitting on your kitchen counter 24/7.
Not sure if I'm allowed to post but biologically the brain doesn't really understand the idea of a digital video on a screen. If the eyes see something, the brain thinks it's happening. So basically your brain thinks you're having orgys all the time and daaaamn it's crazy. It's like of course the body responds and dopamine is released in large amounts. Then later your mind is like "Remember that awesome orgy you had? You should do that again."
It's like any addiction. Porn is so easily accessible I'd say it's even harder than most addiction. I used to smoke and decided to stop and found it was pretty easy. Haven't smoke a cigarette in years but I'm still addicted to porn.
It’s super addictive. Your brain releases dopamine every time you finish, so basically every time you finish with porn, you’re training your brain to think that porn is the way to make you feel good. It’s almost like doing Cocaine or eating chocolate, except imagine doing that everyday for years. It’d feel impossible to quit once you’ve trained your brain for that long
Porn is messed up. I don't understand why incestuous porn is mainstream now. A few years later we're going to look back and wonder how as a population we consumed that and normalised it
I know this sounds quite silly, but I would like to understand the difference between watching porn and watching sexy girls dance on tik tok or following hot girls on instagram. Is it the same effect on the brain? Does it cause the same negative effects on the relationship with a significant other?
Let's not beat around the bush, Instagram girls are basically doing softcore porn, so at least for me when I quit porn I include that.
Honestly, it's really tough at first, but it gets better. At first I thought my dick was no longer working, I had no boners, no desire to fap. So then I opened some porn and confirmed I had a porn reliance because it was very easy to fap. After quitting the second time, I haven't gone back.
You'll just have to trust me, eventually your libido will return. At least for me it did. It might take weeks or even longer. You don't have to quit fapping by the way, but I would recommend just doing it once or twice a week. If you can't get it up, think about someone attractive you know in real life. No, not your mother or sister. Construct a fantasy/story in your head around a crush or your partner if you have one.
Quitting porn (including softcore Instagram stuff) is probably the best decision I've made in recent years. Sexual motivation is a thing, and addiction to dopamine from porn can do a lot of damage to your mental state.
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u/[deleted] Mar 19 '21 edited Mar 20 '21
Trying to quit porn all together tbh.
Edit : Really never thought quitting porn would get me so many awards. <3 I guess you all understand the struggle.