Yes – No (Porn Addicted)

Some say porn negatively affects men’s feelings toward women, leads to affairs and addiction, and can even adversely impact users’ attention span and memory.

It remains to be seen what kind of long-term impacts porn will have on us (and the upcoming smartphone generations who now have 24/7 access to porn), but little is said about porn’s redeeming benefits. What, if any, are the ways that porn is good for us?

I kid, I kid. But let’s not forget that we have treated women like objects for CENTURIES, long before cheerleaders began having frolicsome locker room orgies. Can we really say that porn is the cause of this objectification? Is it leading to more widespread abuse? Or is something deeper at play?

According to the Atlantic, the ubiquitousness of porn has correlated with a drastic decline in sexual abuse toward women. In fact, as pornography’s accessibility has exploded (from 1990 or so), sexual assault rates have gone down — by 55% in the last 20 years, according to the National Crime Victim Survey. “There is no more extreme or pernicious act of using and abusing women as sexual objects rather than treating them as humans. And to get rape rates as low as porn-saturated 2013 and 2014, you’ve got to go back to the 1970s.”

Furthermore, in a 2009 paper published in the International Journal of Law and Psychiatry, Milton Diamond reviewed a broad number of studies that have explored the supposed ill effects of pornography. He concluded, “If anything, there is an inverse causal relationship between an increase in pornography and sex crimes. . . . No such cause and effect has been demonstrated with any negative consequence.”

However, there are absolutely no sources cited in this article, despite claims and facts that really need the support. This article would benefit from some research, but I haven’t the means to do it. I hope someone will fill that in soon. Until then, I’ve tagged this as needing sources cited. And if you want to dispute or discuss my edits, I’m happy to engage in that conversation. Oh but please, if you want to revert something, don’t rever to the whole thing, just what you want to change back! 149.43.x.x 00:38, 19 July 2006 (UTC)

My friends were participating in NoFap, a website and Reddit community that provides accountability for people who want to abstain from pornography, masturbation, and/or sex for a certain amount of time. They took it as a simple challenge, not unlike “The Contest” episode of Seinfeld.

But the way they were talking about the pact made me think of the messages from my elementary school’s Red Ribbon Week. As the days progressed, they talked about “just saying no” when the mood struck — as though they were addicts trying to stave off a relapse by going cold-turkey.

We treated the topic with good humor back then, but for a growing population of people, porn addiction isn’t a laughing matter. Today, porn addiction remains a controversial topic — in articles but recent studies suggest that porn addiction is quickly gaining traction as a real form of sex addiction.

My friends were participating in NoFap, a website and Reddit community that provides accountability for people who want to abstain from pornography, masturbation, and/or sex for a certain amount of time. They took it as a simple challenge, not unlike “The Contest” episode of Seinfeld.

But the way they were talking about the pact made me think of the messages from my elementary school’s Red Ribbon Week. As the days progressed, they talked about “just saying no” when the mood struck — as though they were addicts trying to stave off a relapse by going cold-turkey.

We treated the topic with good humor back then, but for a growing population of people, porn addiction isn’t a laughing matter. Today, porn addiction remains a controversial topic — in articles published five days apart, the Huffington Post said porn addiction doesn’t exist, while vice said yes, of course it does. But recent studies suggest that porn addiction is quickly gaining traction as a real form of sex addiction.