Amanda Marcotte: No, Porn Addiction Is Not Really A Thing [View all]

[Warren DeMontague]

“Porn Addiction” Is Often Just an Attempt to Medicalize Religious Dogma


[font size=1]If this were in any sharper focus, you'd be a porn addict right now.[/font]

(emphasis added)

In this piece in Christianity Today, for instance, Shaun Groves claims that "most of my friends" are addicted to porn; the "addiction" he describes consists of subscribing to Playboy and buying a few videos. Pastor Justin Davis's apparent rock-bottom moment was when his wife caught him watching some titillating TV. On the website Every Man's Battle, addiction is defined as having private thoughts about women in skimpy clothes. Winning the war for purity seems to slap the label "addict" on you if you masturbate.

It is true, as Todd VanDerWerff explains at Vox, that conservative Christians classify all "lust" for people not your spouse as sinful and even adulterous. The medicalizing language turns a sin into a disease; it forces "addicts" to live their lives in a state of minute-to-minute dread of their bodily urges and become dependent on the church to get them through this basically impossible journey.

There are certainly men out there who use porn so much it interferes with the rest of their life, which means they need help. But these Christian "porn addicts" mostly seem like perfectly normal men who, like most people, need a bit of a private fantasy life. Instead, there's all this drama about rehab and redemption. That puts way more strain on people's marriages than simply letting people have some alone time once in awhile.

Shaming people for perfectly normal behavior.. An old playbook, to be sure, but one the fundamentalists and control ninnies are still using. "Get thee to church, and be sure to bring your checkbook!"

Yes, and how handy for culture warrior Duggar to be able blame his own hypocrisy and fucked up-ness (which clearly goes way beyond watching sex vids on youporn) on the smutty, hedonistic culture at large, i.e. "Aha! The devil made me do it".

How, as they say, conveeeeenient.