Here’s a tricky question: is it cocaine’s fault you became a self-destructive obsessive egomaniac who physically and mentally abuses your family and friends? Well, maybe, but is it porn’s fault your marriage broke down?
ABC news says Porn Causes Brain Damage. Most of the professionals quoted in the article are careful to at least imply that a person needs to be inclined toward addictive and anti-social behaviour first before porn can have an obvious destructive effect. But not all. Some so-called experts claim porn is eeeevil and will melt your braaaaain.
Divorce lawyers report that porn use is an increasingly common factor in marriage breakups: It can cause immense pain when a wife discovers her husband’s porn habit.
It’s easy to blame a symptom for the disease.
Paul Cambria, general counsel for the Adult Freedom Foundation: …”For every couple driven apart by porn, there are others whose relationship is enlivened.”… He dismissed contentions that porn is highly addictive or brain-damaging.
“Some people lie about it…. It’s their way of excusing personally unacceptable conduct ‘It wasn’t me, it was porn.'”
I am highly inclined to agree. But does that excuse porn for being an enabler? I would have to say no. And neither can we excuse the interweb for allowing us such ease of access. And we can’t let our parents get away with being such lame role models. And what about the mainstream media, where literally everything is sold with sex?
No, porn is not the bad guy (except as a poor model of how to have great sex). There is no bad guy. Humans are just animals, sometimes prone to addictive and destructive behaviour. It’s up to the rest of humanity to temper the behaviour with understanding and harm reduction. As always, better communication and education would go a long way. A more responsible society would have no problem admitting to itself that addicts are not evil and neither is the object of their addiction. Marriages would still fail if porn were far more restricted because people get married for the wrong reasons, or don’t talk enough, or just don’t belong together. Sexual assault would still happen. Sex addicts would not disappear.
Stats, a publication of George Mason University, responds to ABC:
“The FT also cited the U.S. Senate testimony of Dr Mary Anne Layden, co-director of the University of Pennsylvania’s sexual trauma and psychopathology program, who said that “even non sex-addicts will show brain reactions on PET (Positron Emission Tomography) scans while viewing pornography similar to cocaine addicts looking at images of cocaine.”
But if anything, the fact that non sex-addicts have this reaction to porn suggests that these brain images are not good biomarkers of addiction to it (regardless of whether it does a better job in measuring cocaine addiction). Also, the comparison to cocaine is not as good as a comparison to “non-pornographic” sex, whatever that may be; for the fact that sex lights up the dopamine system may be simply Nature’s way of making sure we reproduce.
The public needs to have statistics, facts, and true science (if there is any) to make a decision about restricting or not this potentially damaging kind of free speech. Aside from quoting less biased sources, and some from both sides of a contentious issue, the authors should have asked and answered these important questions:
• What percentage of porn viewers become addicts? What is the definition of an addict in this case? How does this compare to the percentage of obsessive “sex addicts” before the advent of online porn?
• What scientific evidence is there, if any, that there is physical harm caused by viewing porn? Who is attempting to show this link?
• What percentage of porn viewers divorce? How does that compare to those who do not view porn?
• What percentage of people consume porn happily? What percentage find that it enhances their sex life, rather than destroys it?
A serious report on a contentious issue needs real science and social science. News outlets should stop alluding to science with no basis, and stop asking porn therapists about porn addiction.”
Amen.