I think it may be real, but needs to be studied by non religious people and actually peer reviewed.
It does feel like some guys like jerking off way too much that there has to be something. Misogyny plays a role.
On another note, a guy I knew that worked on the Bernie campaign who suddenly announced on Facebook that he had a Porn Addiction but has cured it by converting to the Armenian Apostolic Church (he isn't even Armenian). I had to cut him off because he's basically a nazi now.
one day we're going to go beyond the model of addiction which unfortunately has been poisoned by both religion and the entire addiction-industrial complex (what i call Forever Recovery)
it's going to end up being far more complex and rooted in material conditions then most mainstream realize
This so much. Addiction needs to be studied and addressed from a non-religious standpoint. I'm an alcoholic and have some issues around porn addiction and it's real but not in the sense of it being a moral failing but due to my own internalized sexism I've encountered over the years and in my formative ones and also like you said material conditions. Mental health plays a huge role too.
the model of addiction which unfortunately has been poisoned by both religion and the entire addiction-industrial complex (what i call Forever Recovery)
Wait, is recovery not supposed to be a life long journey?
I'm talking completely out of my ass here, but I feel like excessive masturbation — whatever we might define "excess" to be in practice — is often related to alienation and just terminal boredom. Which is to say, if you feel like you have no control over your own life, and no impact on anything around yourself, then you still have control over your own body, and your own impact on yourself, right? You crave stimulation, and you can give that to yourself — lo, how independent you are!
The pathology would then arise when, essentially, the signifier is conflated for the signified: when the frequent masturbation being a result of lack of control over one's own life, is reinterpreted as frequent masturbation being in itself lack of control over one's own life. This, I'd reckon, would generally occur when someone on some level does not wish to acknowledge that thon lacks control over sy own life, and therefore chooses to hate whatever represents that lack of control rather than confront the fact head-on. Alternatively, someone could've just internalized those ridiculous ideas of any amount of masturbation being harmful. In many cases, well, both.
In any case, when you believe yourself to not be in control of your own masturbation, and masturbation happens to be your coping mechanism for your lack of life control, then these will obviously only feed into each other in a very unproductive way. Badabing badaboom, you have a "porn addiction".
Now as I'm saying, I'm just talking out of my ass here, but I do feel like this would explain the general leanings of supposed "porn addiction" with regard to gender and political ideology. Because if you're the gender who's raised to feel like you're owed the world, that you should be on top and in control, then you're more likely to have a pathological reaction to not being that; and if you're the type who would project your hatred of the contradictions of capitalism onto its pool of imported labor, then you're more likely to project your hatred of your life being kinda shit, onto your own genitals. Yet the actual mechanism of "porn addiction" would be, strictly speaking, neutral in terms of gender and ideology — it would find itself anywhere profound boredom would cross paths with a lack of life control that a person for any reason just could not face...
...Except, what about ideas like supernormality and the hedonic treadmill? Why do some people meet their "porn addiction" with shame while others "embrace it"? I can't account for any of that, so I don't think I have all the answers.
Sexual arousal directly raises humans threshold for disgust. Ie something that would seem gross when you're not aroused could seem appealing or even exciting when you are aroused.
if you don't know that and end up watchong something you're normally not in to it may result in distress when your disgust threshold returns to its baseline and you can't account for why you were excited by something you usually find gross.
widespread ignorance of human sexuality makes it difficult for people to ever learn what is and isn't normalml.
In so far as I understand it has been studied, or rather attempts have been made to study it, and they have uniformly failed because the phenomena as described by masturbation-fearers does not exist in any meaningful way. It really is just mormons, catholics, and other weird little freaks trying to pathologize normal sexual behavior. It has legs because so many people have absolutely no concept of what normal sexual behavior is, and because everyone's so damn isolated and porn is stimulating enough to consistent help cope with the social and cultural wasteland of 21st century life. People think they're jerking it too much because they've been conditioned to feel intense shame for jerking it at all, and they think they're addicted because they think about sex a normal amount of the time. There's a pretty strict physical limit on "jerking it too much" because no matter what you use for lube chafing will make itself known eventually.
Depression, anxiety, and malaise also factor in - Masturbation is a very basic form of self-soothing available to almost everyone. People who are already in bad headspace and beset by religious brainworms masturbate because it makes them feel better, then once the anxiety and self loathing comes back htey ascribe it to masturbation and decide they're weak, pathetic, sinners, addicted, whatever bullshit because otherwise they wouldn't masturbate to feel better or distract themselves from the depression. And then they go a step further saying that masturbation and thinking about sex is a source of depression.
It's really just weird Christians convinced that if you eat enough bran flakes you won't think about sex, updated for the 21st century.
Semen retention and related concepts have been around for a long time. A lot of cultures think semen has magic properties of one sort or another. NoFappers just, you know, made it fucking weird.
It’s really just weird Christians convinced that if you eat enough bran flakes you won’t think about sex, updated for the 21st century.
It wasn't just bran flakes - his whole schtick was about living life in as unstimulating a fashion as possible. Food that isn't as dull and bland as possible might inflame the passions, and passion for something that doesn't taste like cardboard might translate into passion of another kind. His original flakes were unsweetened, as were his contemporary Graham's crackers in order to be as tasteless as possible.
Routine infant circumcision is a thing in the US because of the corn flakes nutter, the idea was that circumcision would reduce masturbation by cutting off a bunch of erogenous tissue without actually limiting your ability to reproduce. He also had a procedure for girls that involved burning the clitoris with acid to reduce sensitivity, but that one never took off to mass appeal and is illegal in every state now.
There was a dude at the rehab I went to who claimed to be working on, among other things, porn addiction. The first time I saw him he was wearing a shirt that said "GOONER" in big letters.
![[CW: Misogyny, SA] You have a porn addiction. You are addicted to porn. Get help.](https://hexbear.net/pictrs/image/df4bd558-6f2c-4883-ad3d-539425c74e7c.webp){kind=link}
I think it may be real, but needs to be studied by non religious people and actually peer reviewed.
It does feel like some guys like jerking off way too much that there has to be something. Misogyny plays a role.
On another note, a guy I knew that worked on the Bernie campaign who suddenly announced on Facebook that he had a Porn Addiction but has cured it by converting to the Armenian Apostolic Church (he isn't even Armenian). I had to cut him off because he's basically a nazi now.
one day we're going to go beyond the model of addiction which unfortunately has been poisoned by both religion and the entire addiction-industrial complex (what i call Forever Recovery)
it's going to end up being far more complex and rooted in material conditions then most mainstream realize
This so much. Addiction needs to be studied and addressed from a non-religious standpoint. I'm an alcoholic and have some issues around porn addiction and it's real but not in the sense of it being a moral failing but due to my own internalized sexism I've encountered over the years and in my formative ones and also like you said material conditions. Mental health plays a huge role too.
Wait, is recovery not supposed to be a life long journey?
I'm talking completely out of my ass here, but I feel like excessive masturbation — whatever we might define "excess" to be in practice — is often related to alienation and just terminal boredom. Which is to say, if you feel like you have no control over your own life, and no impact on anything around yourself, then you still have control over your own body, and your own impact on yourself, right? You crave stimulation, and you can give that to yourself — lo, how independent you are!
The pathology would then arise when, essentially, the signifier is conflated for the signified: when the frequent masturbation being a result of lack of control over one's own life, is reinterpreted as frequent masturbation being in itself lack of control over one's own life. This, I'd reckon, would generally occur when someone on some level does not wish to acknowledge that thon lacks control over sy own life, and therefore chooses to hate whatever represents that lack of control rather than confront the fact head-on. Alternatively, someone could've just internalized those ridiculous ideas of any amount of masturbation being harmful. In many cases, well, both.
In any case, when you believe yourself to not be in control of your own masturbation, and masturbation happens to be your coping mechanism for your lack of life control, then these will obviously only feed into each other in a very unproductive way. Badabing badaboom, you have a "porn addiction".
Now as I'm saying, I'm just talking out of my ass here, but I do feel like this would explain the general leanings of supposed "porn addiction" with regard to gender and political ideology. Because if you're the gender who's raised to feel like you're owed the world, that you should be on top and in control, then you're more likely to have a pathological reaction to not being that; and if you're the type who would project your hatred of the contradictions of capitalism onto its pool of imported labor, then you're more likely to project your hatred of your life being kinda shit, onto your own genitals. Yet the actual mechanism of "porn addiction" would be, strictly speaking, neutral in terms of gender and ideology — it would find itself anywhere profound boredom would cross paths with a lack of life control that a person for any reason just could not face...
...Except, what about ideas like supernormality and the hedonic treadmill? Why do some people meet their "porn addiction" with shame while others "embrace it"? I can't account for any of that, so I don't think I have all the answers.
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Sexual arousal directly raises humans threshold for disgust. Ie something that would seem gross when you're not aroused could seem appealing or even exciting when you are aroused.
if you don't know that and end up watchong something you're normally not in to it may result in distress when your disgust threshold returns to its baseline and you can't account for why you were excited by something you usually find gross.
widespread ignorance of human sexuality makes it difficult for people to ever learn what is and isn't normalml.
In so far as I understand it has been studied, or rather attempts have been made to study it, and they have uniformly failed because the phenomena as described by masturbation-fearers does not exist in any meaningful way. It really is just mormons, catholics, and other weird little freaks trying to pathologize normal sexual behavior. It has legs because so many people have absolutely no concept of what normal sexual behavior is, and because everyone's so damn isolated and porn is stimulating enough to consistent help cope with the social and cultural wasteland of 21st century life. People think they're jerking it too much because they've been conditioned to feel intense shame for jerking it at all, and they think they're addicted because they think about sex a normal amount of the time. There's a pretty strict physical limit on "jerking it too much" because no matter what you use for lube chafing will make itself known eventually.
Depression, anxiety, and malaise also factor in - Masturbation is a very basic form of self-soothing available to almost everyone. People who are already in bad headspace and beset by religious brainworms masturbate because it makes them feel better, then once the anxiety and self loathing comes back htey ascribe it to masturbation and decide they're weak, pathetic, sinners, addicted, whatever bullshit because otherwise they wouldn't masturbate to feel better or distract themselves from the depression. And then they go a step further saying that masturbation and thinking about sex is a source of depression.
It's really just weird Christians convinced that if you eat enough bran flakes you won't think about sex, updated for the 21st century.
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deleted by creator
Semen retention and related concepts have been around for a long time. A lot of cultures think semen has magic properties of one sort or another. NoFappers just, you know, made it fucking weird.
Like this isn't new I'm afraid.
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It wasn't just bran flakes - his whole schtick was about living life in as unstimulating a fashion as possible. Food that isn't as dull and bland as possible might inflame the passions, and passion for something that doesn't taste like cardboard might translate into passion of another kind. His original flakes were unsweetened, as were his contemporary Graham's crackers in order to be as tasteless as possible.
Routine infant circumcision is a thing in the US because of the corn flakes nutter, the idea was that circumcision would reduce masturbation by cutting off a bunch of erogenous tissue without actually limiting your ability to reproduce. He also had a procedure for girls that involved burning the clitoris with acid to reduce sensitivity, but that one never took off to mass appeal and is illegal in every state now.
deleted by creator
There was a dude at the rehab I went to who claimed to be working on, among other things, porn addiction. The first time I saw him he was wearing a shirt that said "GOONER" in big letters.