Talk:Pornography

From RationalWiki
Jump to navigation Jump to search
Icon sex.svg

This porn related article has not received a brainstar for quality. Please consider expanding the article appropriately. See RationalWiki:Article rating for more information.

Steelbrain.png

Archives for this talk page: , (new)



Pornography as addiction[edit]

I was recently alerted to this study:

Neuroscience of Internet Pornography Addiction: A Review and Update.

And this book:

https://books.google.com/books?id=MTDJCgAAQBAJ&pg=PA27&lpg=PA27&sig=WHinm3ajo0zUW-Qfc_CwgbYm5vo&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjBx8_52ezXAhUCPN8KHRyJArQQ6AEIWTAI#v=onepage&q=experts%20considered%20a%20proposed&f=false

We should incorporate these results. The FCP Foundation (talk/stalk) 02:38, 3 December 2017 (UTC)

@FuzzyCatPotato I know I'm late, but this issue is still relevant, and I have added some info to the article about the debate. There have been a metric ton of studies and books written about this subject, which could fill an article on their own. So far I'm inclined to go with the APA, which as yet has no classification for pornography addiction (I've written about the ICD and CSBD in the article; CSBD is classified under behavioural compulsions, not substance addictions), but that may change over time; from my own reading on the subject, the APA's stance seems to be that there needs to be more research conducted before PA can be justified as a unique condition caused solely by watching pornography.
The study you cited is a review; they mention the Voon study as one example, but as far as I can see fail to point out its many issues, such as the fact that addiction "can’t be diagnosed with a brain scan", as well as the tiny sample size and reliance on self-reporting subjects (https://www.theguardian.com/science/head-quarters/2014/jul/14/is-compulsive-sexual-behaviour-comparable-to-drug-addiction). 2A00:23C7:99A4:5000:813A:7DC7:906F:6C0D (talk) 11:50, 1 February 2022 (UTC)

Empowerment[edit]

I think this quote should be removed: "Look, if posing naked were empowering, then the rich men who run the world would be lining up for it. We would be awash in naked dick shots of Warren Buffet and Bill Gates and Barack Obama; magazines would be filled with male politicians and financiers and moguls with their bits hanging out. Softly lit, perhaps; head coyly tilted, bunny tail on the ass. Power."

It's a gross oversimplification. If I thought for a hot second that I could make women lose their damn minds by posing naked for magazines or wearing revealing clothing, you better believe I would, and I would absolutely consider it power. When you have something people want, that is power. The fact is, women and men have different reactions. We can deconstruct why, but I think we can all agree it's so. And the naked fact (sorry, couldn't resist) is, when society tries to stop you from expressing your sexuality and shames you if they fail, expressing your sexuality is an act of rebellion. You claim power over your body and what you do with it. It's not necessarily power over other people, but it is power over yourself. Your choices.

I trust I've made my point. The quote above isn't the mic-drop moment the person who wrote it imagines it is. --ShorinBJ (talk) 00:29, 22 July 2019 (UTC)

Viewing Sexual Stimuli Associated with Greater Sexual Responsiveness, Not Erectile Dysfunction article[edit]

Concluding that there is no link between pornography and ED just because there is an article with a sample size of 280 is absurd , with such a low sample size you can prove that alcohol,nicotine,heroine is not addictive.Also Nicole Prause is highly biased in her opinions as you can see from different interviews she has. When you make a statement like this: "and contrary to some internet initiatives, pornography consumption is not associated with sexual dysfunction" it is absurd to mention only one study

There is a high amount of newspaper articles of well-known urologists who report higher numbers of young patients with ED problem , like this https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2019/mar/11/young-men-porn-induced-erectile-dysfunction

I think would be unbiased also to mention that WHO ICD-11 includes compulsive sexual behaviour (which includes porn compulsion,not addiction),while using the addiction model for pornography is still under debate .Also you can define the difference between compulsion and addiction to be more clear. — Unsigned, by: BKmarian / talk / contribs

That's a valid criticism. I'll update the page. Bongolian (talk) 17:15, 15 April 2020 (UTC)
You leave out that 280 is a huge laboratory study, not some questionnaire study. Experiments have high internal validity. Internal validity is poor in questionnaires. — Unsigned, by: EYEmorka / talk / contribs
In what universe is 280 huge? Bongolian (talk) 06:35, 15 March 2022 (UTC)
I've added info on the ICD, but there are studies conducted by researchers other than Prause which have come to the same conclusion, and that G article itself clearly states: "Studies of this are not yet extensive and results are mixed with some finding no connection." That article wasn't even written by a urologist, and doesn't quote any doctors (only a therapist; they also quote NoFap founder Alex Rhodes, which doesn't exactly inspire confidence). Mary Sharpe, the representative of the Reward Foundation (which the article alleges is not opposed to pornography, despite the fact that their mission is to "highlight the benefits of quitting porn based on the latest research and self reports of those who have"; sounds pretty anti-porn to me), claims that "What we’re hearing from clinicians, sex therapists, doctors and people dealing with compulsive sexual behaviour is that more than 80% of issues are porn-related". However, she provides no evidence to support this statement whatsoever. How can this be true when only 10-20% of ED cases are psychological in nature? Why would urologists be blaming porn for ED when for the majority of their patients the cause is physical rather than mental? (https://www.webmd.com/erectile-dysfunction/guide/ed-psychological-causes)
Sadly, I am not surprised to learn that the Reward Foundation was involved with Gary Wilson, another anti-porn activist and patron saint of NoFap who was fond of making baseless claims (https://retractionwatch.com/2018/06/13/journal-corrects-but-will-not-retract-controversial-paper-on-internet-porn/). They're even advertising his book on their site.
It's one thing to suggest correlation, quite another to suggest causation. What evidence is there that rates of ED are actually increasing? How do we know that more young men aren't simply finding it easier to disclose such issues to their doctor? How exactly can you prove that porn is responsible? It's convenient to blame porn for ED, just like it's convenient to blame GTA for violent crime, but linking them requires evidence. A 2019 study (which didn't involve Prause at all; even if it did, that's not a good reason to dismiss the results) found "no evidence that mere pornography use is associated with changes in erection function."
There's an increasing tendency to blame porn for literally everything these days, and religious zealots are eager to encourage that belief in order to censor what they don't like or profit from selling bogus cures. They know that younger generations in the USA and elsewhere are moving away from Christianity; threats of hellfire and damnation may have scared people in the Middle Ages, but these days you're just liable to be laughed at. So how do you get their attention? Tell them that watching porn is bad for you because science. Distort and misrepresent actual studies or just make shit up. This isn't new either. Doctors were making spurious claims about the supposedly harmful effects of masturbation a century ago. And if you can find the odd irresponsible psychologist like Philip Zimbardo to support you, so much the better. There's no comparison between porn and substances like heroin and alcohol. The closest meaningful comparison would be gambling, but even that's tenuous. 2A00:23C7:99A4:5000:813A:7DC7:906F:6C0D (talk) 11:59, 1 February 2022 (UTC)
This summary of nearly 50 study concludes that porn itself is unrelated, or positively related, to sexual function. It is only shame about porn that is related to ED. You do not need to change porn viewing to improve ED, it would do nothing to watch less. https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/Pornography-Use-and-Holistic-Sexual-Functioning%3A-a-Hoagland-Grubbs/a662d5cca616860fe3a5f7a02e5f721e2fb04e89 — Unsigned, by: EYEmorka / talk / contribs

Rule 34[edit]

As floppy discs are probably rather hard to find nowadays would memory sticks work better?

Some mention of fanfic (see assorted websites: all tastes from vanilla to 'what the XXXX is that?') Anna Livia (talk) 20:11, 18 December 2020 (UTC)

Pornography-induced Erectile Dysfunction[edit]

I think this actually is sort of a thing. If there are only ugly people available, that's who you bump uglies with. If you see more attractive people, you are less likely to be interested in ugly people. This is in part why, after a decade in prison most straight men will experiment, even if they normally would have absolutely no desire for men if there were women around. Porn has a similar effect; you can become spoiled with images of beautiful women to the point where more normal or homely women simply cease to be of interest. But there is another condition from porn, specifically, masturbation. Masturbation is physically different from sex, enough so that the body can become so unused to sex itself that normal orgasm becomes impossible. It can be fixed of course, but it may be worth mentioning. CoryUsar (talk) 05:39, 17 January 2021 (UTC)

@CorruptUser Sounds like you're referring to desensitization. From what I've read, the evidence is wildly inconclusive, and it's difficult to differentiate between correlation and causation. I imagine that trying to find a control group of men who haven't watched porn is next to impossible. 2A00:23C7:99A4:5000:813A:7DC7:906F:6C0D (talk) 12:12, 1 February 2022 (UTC)
From a brief sampling of the Scholar I tend to lean towards the opinion that, in general, this is not a typical problem. One issue I see with this subject is "pornography induced erectile dysfunction" is far more likely to be discussed in the negative via documents by advocacy groups (like the National Center on Sexual ExploitationWikipedia), compared to scientific journals.
I think any actual real good study on this would have to be far more granular than what I see (the term "pornography" invokes a wide range of material, ranging from your Japan softcore AV teasers to Onlyfans hobbyists to the MindgeekWikipedia crapola to the obscene bullshit of Max HardcoreWikipedia), and also factor in religious / moral views of the subject and other health factors. It would be tough to tease out the "porn" aspect. My guess is that, given that pornographic media is *very* broad in scope, it would be tough to draw any conclusions from pornography as a whole (similar to any other art form, like music, literature, or movies / television). PanGalacticGargleBlaster (talk) 16:07, 1 February 2022 (UTC)
It reminds me of the old 'movies/videogames cause violence' theory. And groups like NCOSE (or Morality in Media, to use their original name) have an extremely dubious record, to say the least. 2A00:23C7:99A4:5000:A090:C146:48A:DB9F (talk) 09:22, 2 February 2022 (UTC)

WTF is erectile dysfunction anyway?[edit]

I always thought it was having erections randomly.ASerb (talk) 08:39, 24 March 2023 (UTC)

@ASerb It means having difficulty getting an erection or not being able to get one at all. You may have been confusing it with priapism, which means having a permanent erection. Spud (talk) 08:44, 24 March 2023 (UTC)
it means ya winky dont work AMassiveGay (talk) 10:00, 24 March 2023 (UTC)
the sober and frequent whiskey-dick - Only Sort of Dumb (talk) 17:17, 25 March 2023 (UTC)