Me trying to balance ATTACK AND DETHRONE GOD with getting banned for hating on religion. Either way, here we go;
It's not. There's no evidence that it is and lots of evidence that 'porn addiction' was created and propagated by anti-masturbation religious groups. Gambling works on susceptible people's brain in the same way, like the same chemical way, that alcohol or meth or opioids do. The biological process of addiction is happening. The best anyone who isn't a Graham Cracker* advocate can ascertain this does not happen with pornography or sex in general. The scientific consensus, to the best of my knowledge, is that porn addiction and sex addiction are both cultural phenomena and rooted in religion and in profound ignorance about normal sexuality and sexual behavior. I would go on the outside and suggest that some people with "porn addiction" or "sex addiction" are experiencing hyper-sexuality symptoms due to trauma, abuse, or conditions like bipolar disorder, but that's not an addiction either.
Something that's extraordinarily important to understanding why religious groups work so hard to force the idea that pornography is addictive is that religious groups hold a near monopoly on Addiction treatment. The famous Alcoholics Anonymous "12 step program" is completely unscientific and ineffective cult indoctrination. And it is overwhelmingly the dominant accepted model of addiction treatment.
First of all; 12 step programs don't work. When individuals "Succeed in the program" it's because of the individual, their community, and immediate support group. The presence or absence of the program is not a determining factor.
Secondly; The 12 step programs are a form of cult indoctrination. They'll deny it up and down but a core and mandatory step in the program is submission to the Christian god.
Step 2: Belief in a Higher Power
“Came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.”
Step 2 of the 12-Steps of Alcoholics Anonymous is centered on faith and belief in a higher power or something greater than yourself. This step can be challenging for people who feel disconnected to their faith or religion or are agnostic or atheist. However, it is an important step to find something more powerful than yourself, which can guide you and inspire you to stay sober. The higher power can be God, some other supreme being, or anything that has a lot of meaning for you, such as art, music, nature, humanity, or science.
This isn't science.
Thirdly; This submission to a Christian cult is often enforced on people at gunpoint by the state. Joining a 12 step program is often a condition of supervised release. If you want probation you have to submit to the Christian god or back in the cage you go.
If Christian Fascists can get society to believe that pornography use and masturbation are addictions they can extend their control over society. They can convince courts, parents, and individuals who believe in pornography addiction to turn criminals, their own children, and themselves over to Christian cults for coercive indoctrination in to the Christian Fascist worldview.
I hope this is all adding up to a serious problem where violent religious cults are attempting to seize control of our understanding of normative sexual behavior to extend the hand of their hateful patriarchal and misogynistic god over society, because that's very much what it is. Christian and Mormon cults seek to prohibit pornography because it undermines their ability to be the sole source of legitimate sexuality and pleasure. Their dominion over their victims rests heavily on this. They control women by denying any sexual agency at all, and they control men by allowing sexual behavior and pleasure only within the rigid confines of sanctioned marriage.
This isn't a harmless disagreement over ambiguous science. It's a campaign of dominion and control by shadowy Christian cults operating behind a psuedoscientific veneer and preying on an alienated, miserable, and frighteningly ignorant society. It directly ties in to Christian Fascist assaults on abortion and reproductive health care; Abortion empowers women to seek sexual pleasure outside of marriage. It directly ties in to Christian Fascist attacks on LGBT+ people; LGBT+ people completely shatter the false world of a ruthlessly misogynistic divine patriarchy who has the authority and right to dictate the submission of people to the cult and dole out sexual pleasure only to men and only within the strict confines of marriage. LGBT+ people completely give lie to that belief and as such must be dehumanized to the point of demonization, or else physically destroyed. It is also key in Christian Fascist suppression of sexual education. For this whole assault to work Christian Fascists and their allies must deny children knowledge and understanding of human sexuality. The ignorance of children, and society at large, is critical if Christian Fascists are to continue to act as the sole gatekeepers of legitimate sexuality. If kids grow up knowing that you can just have sex if you want to, that there's nothing wrong or unhealthy about it, that you can do it safely and joyfully, the Christian Fascists have lost their main weapon of control.
So it's critical to understand; This isn't about gooners on the internet, or no-fap weirdos trying to maximize their internal power through some psuedo-scientific bullshit. The demonization of masturbation, via psuedo-scientific notions of pornography addiction, is part of a comprehensive assault on humanity using sexuality, gender, and reproductive health as weapons.
I keep adding stuff, but consider; If as many as 99% of men and 90% of women use porn, and the Christians and Mormons can convince those people that they are sinners who have angered god and must repent and follow the orders of religious leaders to be redeemed, that grants those cults a massive amount of social power. And because what's being suppressed is normal sexual behavior those people will continue to "sin", continue to feel shame and horror at their "sins", and continually submit and re-submit to the authority of the cult, forever. It's an extremely powerful self-reinforcing system of control. It's most obvious in hard-core Christian Fascist strongholds where they have father/daughter virginity balls where girls ritually marry their fathers and make their fathers the ritual owners of their "virginity", but that intensely fucked up cult ritual is only an extreme manifestation of the wider campaign of control.
"Porn addiction" is part of a comprehensive systematic attempt to distort reality that includes;
the Virginity Cult
Marriage as the only legitimate venue for sexuality
The violent repression of LGBT+ people to defend the Christian Fascist's claim that only they can define legitimate sexuality
The destruction of reproductive health and abortion access to ensure Women are trapped within the framework of Christian sexual control
Enforced ignorance about sexual health and sexual behavior to prevent people, especially children, from escaping from the system of control.
None of these methods of attack exist in isolation. They're all part of a comprehensive program to seize control of what people believe is real and bend reality in to a cage for the glory of their God.
graham crackers were part of a trend of weird protestants inventing bland food in the belief that bland food would prevent boys and young men from masturbating. They believed that masturbation in boys and young men was an extremely important cause of what they believed was the moral decay of society. Calling these people weird freaks does not even begin to describe it.
So, uhh, hope I don't get banned, but I think it's extremely important to understand how much effort and how many resources Christian Fascists and their allies expend trying to control the definition of legitimate human sexuality.
Sure, so let me preface my response with the fact that I am an atheist and an official member of the Satanic Temple. I absolutely have no Christian agenda when coming at this. Additionally, you can look through my post history and see where I've spoken about my mother who, until I was well out of school age, was a sex worker. We are sex positive over in this house and far far far from prudish on these subjects. Hell, my mom and I are both avid fiction readers and the last novel she recommended me had multiple orgy and group sex scenes - gay, bi, and straight. When I say my household has always been sex-positive and open about this stuff, I mean it.
That said, I understand the resistance to the term "porn addiction". I'll concede that pornography isn't addictive in the traditional sense, like gambling or heroin. I have no problem being wrong there. I'll gladly accept that it doesn't play on the same kinds of neurological pathways as these other addictions. I don't know if it does or not, personally, but maybe we don't have any evidence for it and I can accept that.
That doesn't mean that there can't be sexual pathologies or pathologies surrounding porn. Or that behavior surrounding porn and sex can't be detrimental to the individual. Or that the acts depicted in porn aren't harmful to the perception of sex in the consumer which might affect these pathologies and compulsions. There are well defined compulsive and pathological disorders described by extremely knowledgeable and experienced professionals in the mental health profession. Even the professional you linked talks about this. As I read it he is against calling it an "addiction". Fine. He's the expert, I'll accept his preference to call it a "sex/porn impulsive/compulsive disorder".
So now that we can all agree that there is a such thing as a porn disorder, can we admit that this is not some conspiracy fueled by religious weirdos?
Conspiracies are when you do something illegal in secret. This is legal and they do it in the open.
"Porn addiction" is not about compulsive behavior or impulsive behavior. Those are valid clinical concepts for some people experiencing dysregulated behavior, but they are not porn addiction. As laid out in my red strings connecting news articles post above "addiction" has a very specific meaning and the agenda of Mormons and Christian Fascists relies heavily on transforming porn usage, often very normative porn usage, from a moral or religious issue to a medical issue. Making porn use a medical addiction allows them to extend their reach beyond indoctrinated adherents and out in to the secular world. It grants their religious a veneer of psuedo-scientific legitimacy, which in turn normalizes their weird beliefs in secular society.
Porn addiction does not exist. Real people invented and real people are pushing the concept for political reasons.
Here have a slew of articles about how self reported "porn addiction" is strongly correlated with christian sex brainworms
To understand the Christian sex addiction complex, a little history helps. Founded in 1977 by a longtime Alcoholics Anonymous member, Sex and Love Addicts Anonymous, or SLAA, was the first established sex addiction support group in the U.S.
I am not just making these things up. Call it proselytizing or, what's that word they use, witnessing or something? Idk. If you don't want to call it a conspiracy cal it preaching an article of faith.
The whole religious and political narrative around "porn addiction" does come almost entirely from Christian Fascists and Mormons, it is deeply tied to religious belief, and it absolutely is part of a political agenda to further religious infiltration of society and religious control.
That some minority of people are experiencing actual compulsive behavior is largely irrelevant to popular discussion and understanding of "porn addiction". Porn addiction is a specific cultural belief that pathologizes normals sexual behavior. The "compulsion" is regular, normal human sexuality and arousal. These are people who are indoctrinated to believe any interest in sex outside the specific confines of Christian Fascist marriage is a crime against god, and they are working very hard to instill that level of distorted belief across society.
And there is real money behind this. The groups pushing this shit receive a lot of cah from prominent Mormon and Christian Fascist donors.
And it's working. It's easy to see how prevalent this belief has become across the internet and how many young men have become convinced that they are hopeless addicts who have completely lost control of their lives and themselves, almost entirely due to religious brainworms or the secular projection of those brainworms.
Most of the bad shit that religious organizations do is not a conspiracy, ie a crime planned in secret. There's no law against spending tens of millions of dollars to convince vulnerable people they have an incurable sickness that can only be fixed by the intervention of a supernatural misogynist. There's no law against putting of pressure on psychologists to compromise their professional ethics and pretend that "porn addiction" is a real condition. There's no law against massive propaganda campaigns to distort public belief about normal sexual behavior.
And, again, this is a multi-front campaign. Demonization of sex work, lgbt+ people, no fault divorce, the christian fascist virginity cult, suppression of sex education, anti-abortion campaigns. All of these are part of a broad Christian Fascist, Mormon, and Catholic agenda to seize political power in keeping with their perverse and distorted beliefs about sexuality.
You can do all of these things loudly, legally, and publicly, and Mormons, Catholics, and Christian fascists do.
I'm not sure who you are even preaching to anymore. I already agreed with you that it seems porn addiction isn't real.
I've changed my view based on the information you've given me. Porn addiction isn't real. Porn and sex impulsive and compulsive disorders ARE real. And that is harmful. Even your experts agree on this. Even you agree on this.
Get off your donkey. It's a windmill, not another knight.
Also, "porn addiction" is just the latest form of this. Christians have been driving themselves to distress and disfunction over perfectly normal behavior ranging from music and dancing to something as simple as enjoying food for two millenia. Feeling fear, shame, and humiliation for enjoying any pleasure is a deeply, deeply rooted feature of Christianity and it's offshoots.
The more you drill down in to the religious and cultural origins of the "porn addiction" concept the more you will see that it is not new, but rather a re-branding of an ancient system of control and privation. They've updated their old screeds against enjoying food, sex, clothing, reading, dancing, enjoying anything but fanatical submission to the cult, by attaching these old distortions to a 21st century phenomena.
It was all bullshit in 70ad and it's still bullshit today.
![[CW: CSA] The use of "Porn addicted" is specifically employed to absolve him of any guilt and to transfer the guilt to the nebulous "porn" that got this brave hero addicted in the first place.](https://hexbear.net/pictrs/image/ba9ac7da-243a-43d9-a8b9-7237adbaa1b2.webp){kind=link}
It's not. There's no evidence that it is and lots of evidence that 'porn addiction' was created and propagated by anti-masturbation religious groups. Gambling works on susceptible people's brain in the same way, like the same chemical way, that alcohol or meth or opioids do. The biological process of addiction is happening. The best anyone who isn't a Graham Cracker* advocate can ascertain this does not happen with pornography or sex in general. The scientific consensus, to the best of my knowledge, is that porn addiction and sex addiction are both cultural phenomena and rooted in religion and in profound ignorance about normal sexuality and sexual behavior. I would go on the outside and suggest that some people with "porn addiction" or "sex addiction" are experiencing hyper-sexuality symptoms due to trauma, abuse, or conditions like bipolar disorder, but that's not an addiction either.
Here's an old APA article on the subject.
https://www.apa.org/monitor/2014/04/pornography
Another article that gets in to it
https://www.ashasexualhealth.org/pornography-addictive/
Something that's extraordinarily important to understanding why religious groups work so hard to force the idea that pornography is addictive is that religious groups hold a near monopoly on Addiction treatment. The famous Alcoholics Anonymous "12 step program" is completely unscientific and ineffective cult indoctrination. And it is overwhelmingly the dominant accepted model of addiction treatment.
First of all; 12 step programs don't work. When individuals "Succeed in the program" it's because of the individual, their community, and immediate support group. The presence or absence of the program is not a determining factor.
Secondly; The 12 step programs are a form of cult indoctrination. They'll deny it up and down but a core and mandatory step in the program is submission to the Christian god.
This isn't science.
Thirdly; This submission to a Christian cult is often enforced on people at gunpoint by the state. Joining a 12 step program is often a condition of supervised release. If you want probation you have to submit to the Christian god or back in the cage you go.
If Christian Fascists can get society to believe that pornography use and masturbation are addictions they can extend their control over society. They can convince courts, parents, and individuals who believe in pornography addiction to turn criminals, their own children, and themselves over to Christian cults for coercive indoctrination in to the Christian Fascist worldview.
I hope this is all adding up to a serious problem where violent religious cults are attempting to seize control of our understanding of normative sexual behavior to extend the hand of their hateful patriarchal and misogynistic god over society, because that's very much what it is. Christian and Mormon cults seek to prohibit pornography because it undermines their ability to be the sole source of legitimate sexuality and pleasure. Their dominion over their victims rests heavily on this. They control women by denying any sexual agency at all, and they control men by allowing sexual behavior and pleasure only within the rigid confines of sanctioned marriage.
This isn't a harmless disagreement over ambiguous science. It's a campaign of dominion and control by shadowy Christian cults operating behind a psuedoscientific veneer and preying on an alienated, miserable, and frighteningly ignorant society. It directly ties in to Christian Fascist assaults on abortion and reproductive health care; Abortion empowers women to seek sexual pleasure outside of marriage. It directly ties in to Christian Fascist attacks on LGBT+ people; LGBT+ people completely shatter the false world of a ruthlessly misogynistic divine patriarchy who has the authority and right to dictate the submission of people to the cult and dole out sexual pleasure only to men and only within the strict confines of marriage. LGBT+ people completely give lie to that belief and as such must be dehumanized to the point of demonization, or else physically destroyed. It is also key in Christian Fascist suppression of sexual education. For this whole assault to work Christian Fascists and their allies must deny children knowledge and understanding of human sexuality. The ignorance of children, and society at large, is critical if Christian Fascists are to continue to act as the sole gatekeepers of legitimate sexuality. If kids grow up knowing that you can just have sex if you want to, that there's nothing wrong or unhealthy about it, that you can do it safely and joyfully, the Christian Fascists have lost their main weapon of control.
So it's critical to understand; This isn't about gooners on the internet, or no-fap weirdos trying to maximize their internal power through some psuedo-scientific bullshit. The demonization of masturbation, via psuedo-scientific notions of pornography addiction, is part of a comprehensive assault on humanity using sexuality, gender, and reproductive health as weapons.
I keep adding stuff, but consider; If as many as 99% of men and 90% of women use porn, and the Christians and Mormons can convince those people that they are sinners who have angered god and must repent and follow the orders of religious leaders to be redeemed, that grants those cults a massive amount of social power. And because what's being suppressed is normal sexual behavior those people will continue to "sin", continue to feel shame and horror at their "sins", and continually submit and re-submit to the authority of the cult, forever. It's an extremely powerful self-reinforcing system of control. It's most obvious in hard-core Christian Fascist strongholds where they have father/daughter virginity balls where girls ritually marry their fathers and make their fathers the ritual owners of their "virginity", but that intensely fucked up cult ritual is only an extreme manifestation of the wider campaign of control.
"Porn addiction" is part of a comprehensive systematic attempt to distort reality that includes;
the Virginity Cult
Marriage as the only legitimate venue for sexuality
The violent repression of LGBT+ people to defend the Christian Fascist's claim that only they can define legitimate sexuality
The destruction of reproductive health and abortion access to ensure Women are trapped within the framework of Christian sexual control
Enforced ignorance about sexual health and sexual behavior to prevent people, especially children, from escaping from the system of control.
None of these methods of attack exist in isolation. They're all part of a comprehensive program to seize control of what people believe is real and bend reality in to a cage for the glory of their God.
So, uhh, hope I don't get banned, but I think it's extremely important to understand how much effort and how many resources Christian Fascists and their allies expend trying to control the definition of legitimate human sexuality.
Sure, so let me preface my response with the fact that I am an atheist and an official member of the Satanic Temple. I absolutely have no Christian agenda when coming at this. Additionally, you can look through my post history and see where I've spoken about my mother who, until I was well out of school age, was a sex worker. We are sex positive over in this house and far far far from prudish on these subjects. Hell, my mom and I are both avid fiction readers and the last novel she recommended me had multiple orgy and group sex scenes - gay, bi, and straight. When I say my household has always been sex-positive and open about this stuff, I mean it.
That said, I understand the resistance to the term "porn addiction". I'll concede that pornography isn't addictive in the traditional sense, like gambling or heroin. I have no problem being wrong there. I'll gladly accept that it doesn't play on the same kinds of neurological pathways as these other addictions. I don't know if it does or not, personally, but maybe we don't have any evidence for it and I can accept that.
That doesn't mean that there can't be sexual pathologies or pathologies surrounding porn. Or that behavior surrounding porn and sex can't be detrimental to the individual. Or that the acts depicted in porn aren't harmful to the perception of sex in the consumer which might affect these pathologies and compulsions. There are well defined compulsive and pathological disorders described by extremely knowledgeable and experienced professionals in the mental health profession. Even the professional you linked talks about this. As I read it he is against calling it an "addiction". Fine. He's the expert, I'll accept his preference to call it a "sex/porn impulsive/compulsive disorder".
So now that we can all agree that there is a such thing as a porn disorder, can we admit that this is not some conspiracy fueled by religious weirdos?
Conspiracies are when you do something illegal in secret. This is legal and they do it in the open.
"Porn addiction" is not about compulsive behavior or impulsive behavior. Those are valid clinical concepts for some people experiencing dysregulated behavior, but they are not porn addiction. As laid out in my red strings connecting news articles post above "addiction" has a very specific meaning and the agenda of Mormons and Christian Fascists relies heavily on transforming porn usage, often very normative porn usage, from a moral or religious issue to a medical issue. Making porn use a medical addiction allows them to extend their reach beyond indoctrinated adherents and out in to the secular world. It grants their religious a veneer of psuedo-scientific legitimacy, which in turn normalizes their weird beliefs in secular society.
Porn addiction does not exist. Real people invented and real people are pushing the concept for political reasons.
Here have a slew of articles about how self reported "porn addiction" is strongly correlated with christian sex brainworms
https://www.apa.org/news/press/releases/2020/02/religious-moral-porn-addiction
https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/talking-apes/202008/religious-people-report-more-porn-addiction
Cw: for this article - sa, violence against sexworkers, christian fascism, discussion of 2021 shooting of Asian women in Atlanta spas
https://slate.com/human-interest/2021/03/sex-addiction-fact-check-atlanta-shooting-history.html
https://www.realclearscience.com/articles/2021/03/22/sex_addiction_isnt_actually_an_addiction__its_tied_to_religion_769223.html
I am not just making these things up. Call it proselytizing or, what's that word they use, witnessing or something? Idk. If you don't want to call it a conspiracy cal it preaching an article of faith.
The whole religious and political narrative around "porn addiction" does come almost entirely from Christian Fascists and Mormons, it is deeply tied to religious belief, and it absolutely is part of a political agenda to further religious infiltration of society and religious control.
That some minority of people are experiencing actual compulsive behavior is largely irrelevant to popular discussion and understanding of "porn addiction". Porn addiction is a specific cultural belief that pathologizes normals sexual behavior. The "compulsion" is regular, normal human sexuality and arousal. These are people who are indoctrinated to believe any interest in sex outside the specific confines of Christian Fascist marriage is a crime against god, and they are working very hard to instill that level of distorted belief across society.
And there is real money behind this. The groups pushing this shit receive a lot of cah from prominent Mormon and Christian Fascist donors.
And it's working. It's easy to see how prevalent this belief has become across the internet and how many young men have become convinced that they are hopeless addicts who have completely lost control of their lives and themselves, almost entirely due to religious brainworms or the secular projection of those brainworms.
Most of the bad shit that religious organizations do is not a conspiracy, ie a crime planned in secret. There's no law against spending tens of millions of dollars to convince vulnerable people they have an incurable sickness that can only be fixed by the intervention of a supernatural misogynist. There's no law against putting of pressure on psychologists to compromise their professional ethics and pretend that "porn addiction" is a real condition. There's no law against massive propaganda campaigns to distort public belief about normal sexual behavior.
And, again, this is a multi-front campaign. Demonization of sex work, lgbt+ people, no fault divorce, the christian fascist virginity cult, suppression of sex education, anti-abortion campaigns. All of these are part of a broad Christian Fascist, Mormon, and Catholic agenda to seize political power in keeping with their perverse and distorted beliefs about sexuality.
You can do all of these things loudly, legally, and publicly, and Mormons, Catholics, and Christian fascists do.
I'm not sure who you are even preaching to anymore. I already agreed with you that it seems porn addiction isn't real.
I've changed my view based on the information you've given me. Porn addiction isn't real. Porn and sex impulsive and compulsive disorders ARE real. And that is harmful. Even your experts agree on this. Even you agree on this.
Get off your donkey. It's a windmill, not another knight.
Also, "porn addiction" is just the latest form of this. Christians have been driving themselves to distress and disfunction over perfectly normal behavior ranging from music and dancing to something as simple as enjoying food for two millenia. Feeling fear, shame, and humiliation for enjoying any pleasure is a deeply, deeply rooted feature of Christianity and it's offshoots.
The more you drill down in to the religious and cultural origins of the "porn addiction" concept the more you will see that it is not new, but rather a re-branding of an ancient system of control and privation. They've updated their old screeds against enjoying food, sex, clothing, reading, dancing, enjoying anything but fanatical submission to the cult, by attaching these old distortions to a 21st century phenomena.
It was all bullshit in 70ad and it's still bullshit today.
Damn, good post