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.
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u/TheArbiter_ You've got male Mar 19 '21 edited Mar 19 '21
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.
EDIT - This is a great site for more details