Unfortunately this is the gross mindset that porn addiction creates.
Shame is the more important factor. I honestly think that more of this than people usually talk about is due to how NoFap and related movements have been used, often as parts of a far-right radicalization pipeline. Making people feel ashamed over something that is natural is a powerful method of social control since the "problem" that a cure is being promised before will never go away. It's not at all a coincidence that groups like the Proud Boys have this shit as a central tenet of their group. It's not a coincidence that a lot of major religions have rather strict standards on sexual conduct -- if the people following your religion always have something to repent for then they'll keep coming back.
Porn/masturbation addiction itself is also highly controversial in mainstream psychology for a number of reasons. To the extent that it is given serious consideration it is usually treated as a compulsive disorder rather than as an addiction, because addiction includes specific biomarkers which studies have not reliably found. Another concerning metric is that self-reported pornography addiction is not a good predictor for amount of porn usage, but is a great predictor for religiosity. It should also be noted that the rule for what is or is not a mental disorder is limited to things that cause distress, disability, increased risk of death, or significant loss of autonomy (with a few extra qualifiers I'm leaving out for brevity) -- this also makes the way that people usually accuse people of being porn addicts somewhat problematic, because usually the accused isn't showing signs of any of those things. It is quite likely, for that reason, that a substantial portion (if not most) people who claim pornography addiction have more of an issue with how they view porn or sexuality more broadly than they do with their use of it actually causing problems.
I did read an article some time ago discussing sex-negative trends in Gen Z from the angle of fandom culture, which I'm not sure I entirely agree with the framing of some broader cultural issues brought up, but I do think its overall conclusion that legislation like FOSTA-SESTA and its direct effects and chilling effects on social media sites made online spaces more vulnerable to the US's puritan culture to be absolutely spot-on. I am also quite concerned with these effects ending up destroying queer spaces. The article did bring up the damage done to Tumblr's queer spaces, and how a more sex-negative space filled the gaps left by explicitly sex-positive users leaving. Another well known example is the dreaded kink at pride discourse, demanding that we erase important parts of queer history just to satisfy a bunch of assimilationists and cishets. I have also seen whispers of similar currents in the furry community, which has traditionally been a sex-positive, queer majority space. While I am quite confident in the fighting spirit of the furries, and that with "become unmarketable" as our rallying cry, our horniness will be neither contained nor extinguished by American puritanism and the unnatural lifestyle it promotes... I just cannot imagine that things would be anything but worse for people with my experiences without them being the way they are, since I owe so much of my ability to comfortably explore my sexuality, not to mention my spouse, to the community being the way it is. Queer liberation relies on the open defiance of societal norms surrounding sexuality, because it relies on queer people not having to be ashamed about falling outside of sexual norms. We are absolutely not past that point yet, so why the fuck do we have people saying that it's time to start being ashamed of this shit again? I would call it a form of assimilationism.
Shame is the more important factor. I honestly think that more of this than people usually talk about is due to how NoFap and related movements have been used, often as parts of a far-right radicalization pipeline. Making people feel ashamed over something that is natural is a powerful method of social control since the "problem" that a cure is being promised before will never go away. It's not at all a coincidence that groups like the Proud Boys have this shit as a central tenet of their group. It's not a coincidence that a lot of major religions have rather strict standards on sexual conduct -- if the people following your religion always have something to repent for then they'll keep coming back.
Porn/masturbation addiction itself is also highly controversial in mainstream psychology for a number of reasons. To the extent that it is given serious consideration it is usually treated as a compulsive disorder rather than as an addiction, because addiction includes specific biomarkers which studies have not reliably found. Another concerning metric is that self-reported pornography addiction is not a good predictor for amount of porn usage, but is a great predictor for religiosity. It should also be noted that the rule for what is or is not a mental disorder is limited to things that cause distress, disability, increased risk of death, or significant loss of autonomy (with a few extra qualifiers I'm leaving out for brevity) -- this also makes the way that people usually accuse people of being porn addicts somewhat problematic, because usually the accused isn't showing signs of any of those things. It is quite likely, for that reason, that a substantial portion (if not most) people who claim pornography addiction have more of an issue with how they view porn or sexuality more broadly than they do with their use of it actually causing problems.
I did read an article some time ago discussing sex-negative trends in Gen Z from the angle of fandom culture, which I'm not sure I entirely agree with the framing of some broader cultural issues brought up, but I do think its overall conclusion that legislation like FOSTA-SESTA and its direct effects and chilling effects on social media sites made online spaces more vulnerable to the US's puritan culture to be absolutely spot-on. I am also quite concerned with these effects ending up destroying queer spaces. The article did bring up the damage done to Tumblr's queer spaces, and how a more sex-negative space filled the gaps left by explicitly sex-positive users leaving. Another well known example is the dreaded kink at pride discourse, demanding that we erase important parts of queer history just to satisfy a bunch of assimilationists and cishets. I have also seen whispers of similar currents in the furry community, which has traditionally been a sex-positive, queer majority space. While I am quite confident in the fighting spirit of the furries, and that with "become unmarketable" as our rallying cry, our horniness will be neither contained nor extinguished by American puritanism and the unnatural lifestyle it promotes... I just cannot imagine that things would be anything but worse for people with my experiences without them being the way they are, since I owe so much of my ability to comfortably explore my sexuality, not to mention my spouse, to the community being the way it is. Queer liberation relies on the open defiance of societal norms surrounding sexuality, because it relies on queer people not having to be ashamed about falling outside of sexual norms. We are absolutely not past that point yet, so why the fuck do we have people saying that it's time to start being ashamed of this shit again? I would call it a form of assimilationism.
Superb writeup, I enjoyed it a lot ty