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betterthinkaboutittwice · 13 days ago

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I think the only true conclusion one could ever draw about Sabrina carpenter from her music is that she has a kinda weird relationship with gender, where she can never truly decide if being a woman is a good & powerful thing or a bad & weakening thing, and she can never decide if that’s her own fault or the fault of the male society in which she lives. this is not a criticism to be clear: that seems like a very normal way to engage with the world to me. it’s just funny to me that the seemingly most personally revealing aspect of her music is the way she seems to have no idea how to live as a straight woman. I can’t relate to this at all because I am not a straight woman, but man does it seem accurate to the experiences of straight women that I know. Straight women sound off. If you’re out there. Straight women can you hear me? Is it that me espresso?

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betterthinkaboutittwice · 13 days ago

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i have asked this before on a different page and i CANNOT get an answer but can someone pls explain how porn addiction isn’t real??

like we had someone during sex ed in school bring it up as a topic and explain that (primarily a penis haver) you can train your brain to only be able to get hard/cum to porn and not be able to with a real person… and like sex addiction is real? but porn addiction is not? r there people just using “porn addiction” as a reason to ban porn all together and demonize it? like is that why?

i’m sorry if this comes across ignorant in any way. i am genuinely asking and open minded about this. if u take the time to answer thank you!! 🙏🏻

hi anon,

so it's actually helpful, and interesting, that you mention sex addiction, because that's also on pretty shaky ground as an actual thing that can be meaningfully diagnosed. which isn't to say that no one in the world exhibits maladaptive sexual behaviors, of course, but whether those behaviors can be accurately characterized as addictions is actively debated. in many cases what's casually described as "sex addiction" (which includes the use of pornography) would more accurately be classified as compulsive sexual behavior disorder, or CSBD, which has much more in common with obsessive compulsive disorder than addiction. to my knowledge, CSBD is rarely treated as a primary diagnoses, but rather part of a larger pattern of compulsive behavioral issues.

put this way: in many cases, saying that someone is a "sex addict" is sort of like saying someone with OCD is "addicted to washing their hands," in that it's misrepresenting a symptom as the primary issue and misunderstanding the cause of the behavior to boot.

now, talking about CSBD gives us a great segue into something that I think is really important when discussing the validity of porn addiction, which I'll lead into with this quote:

In their study, Grubbs, et al., analyzed data from about 15 different studies by varied researchers (and reviewed many more), comprising nearly 7,000 different participants. Studies were conducted in-person and online, in the United States and Europe. The team found that, first, religiousness was a strong, clear predictor of moral incongruence regarding porn use. This is important, as it indicates that we can and should use a person’s religiousness as an indicator of the likelihood of moral conflict over porn use. Not all people who are morally opposed to porn are religious, but it appears that religiosity captures the majority of people who feel this way. Given that the WHO and ICD-11 recommend an exclusion of moral conflict over sex from the diagnosis of Compulsive Sexual Behavior Disorder, this finding suggests that when diagnosing CSBD, a person’s religiousness is a critically important factor.

put more simply: high levels of religious guilt contribute to so much self-reported "porn addiction" that it can make it hard to figure out who's experiencing actual, verifiable compulsive behavioral issues.

this quote comes from an article called "Science Stopped Believing In Porn Addiction. You Should, Too," in which the author argues that porn addiction is essentially an outmoded understanding of problematic consumption of pornography that's failing to take into account other factors, in this case the moral incongruence or sense of conflict that many people feel about viewing pornography that causes them to feel shameful, dirty, or "out of control" when the use it. it can be read here:

porn addiction is problematic as a classification for other reasons as well; Dr. Devon price elaborates very neatly on many of them here:

again, I don't point out any of this to argue that no one ever has a relationship to sex or pornography that's detrimental to them and their ability to function, only that branding that as addiction is a.) inaccurate b.) unhelpful and c.) deeply loaded in a culture that so often stigmatizes addiction as a matter of weakness and poor character rather than recognizing it for what it actually is. many people grow up in a cultural context that profoundly stigmatizes sexuality, which makes a lot of people worry that they're aberrant and dangerous for doing anything that brings them sexual pleasure. trust me, my own inbox is a testament to that; I spend an enormous amount of time reassuring people that they're allowed to partake in utterly benign sexual behavior.

your example of people training themselves to only get off with porn is actually a great example here. the simple truth is that it's possible for people to train themselves into all kinds of sexual behaviors whether porn is involved or not, because if you only get off one way then your brain and body will simply learn to associate that particular type of stimuli with sexual pleasure and have a more difficult time with anything else.

people with clits who have spent a lot of time getting off by putting a vibrator smack on their clitoris benefit hugely from taking breaks and varying their masturbation style, especially since human partners are rarely able to provide the same type of stimuli as a toy. folks who are accustomed to only getting off in one position, whether it's on their back or humping a pillow or whatever else, can struggle with orgasming in other other position. people who have spent years masturbating before having partnered sex for the first time often find that it's a difficult adjustment—and I can attest to that one personally, because I had trouble for YEARS finishing with partners and almost always had to touch myself to make it happen. you can't even accuse porn of being responsible for that, because I've never particularly enjoyed watching porn and can probably count on one hand the number of times I've used it to get off.

to your final question about whether people are just claiming the existence of porn addiction as a reason to ban it—absolutely yes, many are. if you dig a little beneath the surface you'll find very quickly that many of the most vocal and well-funded anti-porn groups are run by deeply conservative religious groups and other far right wingnuts who stand to benefit tremendously if they can a.) ban porn and then b.) define "porn" as "anything that includes any kind of depiction of sexuality that I personally think is yucky." you see this deployed frequently with challenges to books in schools and libraries and subsequent book banning, which frequently target books about sex education, books featuring information about sexual abuse, and LGBTQ+ books of all stripes as "pornographic."

tl;dr I'm certainly not arguing that nobody on earth has a bad relationship with porn, but I do think the words we use to talk about that are important and porn addiction is a largely unhelpful way to do so.

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betterthinkaboutittwice · 13 days ago

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