Hey Bob, thanks for reading and taking the time to comment. I appreciate hearing another perspective, always, so thank you so much for that. You're absolutely right on the hypocrisy part. Banning porn but making guns more and more accessible shows that a lot of people who say they care about children really don't.
I must say, while the "10 year olds are in therapy for sex addiction" part of your comment is tragic, it's probably not for the reason you think—namely, that pornography and sex addiction are two concepts that have been rejected by science as lacking evidence. I've covered this extensively over the years and, believe it or not, I used to believe porn was addictive myself. There's still a piece I wrote on Medium that discusses it at length. I've added a correction to the top that says I was wrong and shows that the evidence has demonstrated that neither porn nor sex addiction are real. (5)
Of course, that hasn't stopped a cottage industry of therapists from cropping up who want to seize the moment to profit off of a disease that isn't real. It's tragic because these people are really suffering from something, but that "something" isn't being addressed because the therapist is treating a condition that doesn't exist. (1)
UCLA neuroscientist Dr. Nicole Prause, Ph.D. was invited onto my podcast where we discussed it for over an hour, and she said, categorically, that pornography addiction doesn't exist. She's one of the top researchers on the subject and, at the time of the recording last year, was the only researcher in the world who had a facility that could observe the human brain while people were using pornography in a, ehem, hands-on manner. She really knows what she's talking about and a lot of the "science" papers that talk about pornography addiction are theoretical.
The history is dark and twisted. Religious organizations, led by the Mormon Church (LDS Church), learned that telling people "porn is sinful" was met with only laughs. Nobody cared. But they eventually figured out that if they tell them it's a major health risk, people will listen. They created a bunch of scientific-looking non-profit organizations to spread the message, like Fight the New Drug, which is really a religious organization pretending to be a scientific one. I've covered this here. (2)
Dr. David Ley, Ph.D., is a psychologist I've welcomed on my podcast, The Science of Sex, who affirmed Dr. Prause's statements. Or, as he quipped, "A sex addict is anyone who has more sex than their therapist." By definition, both medical and scientific, what people describe as porn addiction doesn't fit. Porn lacks withdrawal symptoms, for example, which are necessary for addiction. As Dr. Ley said, "What happens if you take alcohol away from an alcoholic? They're going to get sick and might die. But if you deprive someone who's having a problem with porn of their porn, nothing bad will happen. They might get a little pissy. But that's it." (3)
None of this means that people don't have problems with porn. Some of them do. Part of the problem is called "moral incongruence," when people have conflicting moral beliefs about sexuality. When you were raised to believe that sex and porn are "bad" or "naughty" or "sinful," even one sexual encounter is "too much." Research, largely from Joshua Grubbs, Ph.D., has consistently shown, repeatedly, that self-proclaimed porn addicts always watch less porn than healthy subjects who don't say they're addicted to porn. Dr. Justin Lehmiller did an excellent three-part episode on this on his podcast Sex & Psychology. (4)
What's tragic about the concept of "porn addiction" is that there are certainly some people who have underlying conditions that cause them to behave in a way that looks like compulsive behavior. Depression, anxiety, heck, even Narcissistic Personality Disorder, all can make people act in unusual ways around porn. Bipolar disorder can make people hypersexual, more sexual than they normally are. But the treatment for these things isn't to remove the porn—each has its own treatment that's been honed in over the centuries, usually medication and therapy. Just taking away the porn, like you'd do with addiction, won't solve the problem. But, if an alcoholic does't drink, they won't have a problem with alcohol. This is why it's tragic that therapists treat "porn addiction," because these people aren't getting to the root causes of their problems.
Sorry for the lengthy write-up here, but, this stuff is pretty important and fighting disinformation and propaganda is a necessary part of living in the Information Age. Thank you so much again for reading and taking the time to comment. I appreciate both more than you know.
Cheers.
