Porn & Pop Culture: A deadly Combination

[seabeyond]

76. gotta defend the porn.

Liberals tend to side with science, but knee-jerk reactions to anyone talking about the dangers of any form of expression get liberals into attack mode. They're so used to anti-porn people being religious moralists trying to legislate from the Bible that they often (quite unfairly) mistake Gary Wilson for one of these people at first glance. Liberals need porn to be harmless so that it remains true that nothing protected under the First Amendment causes harm. It's hard to deal with the complicated reality that a certain form of expression could be both deserving of protection and also potentially harmful to the brain. It is easier to believe that there is no problem in need of addressing.

Feminists, an important subset of liberals, also seem like natural allies. The patriarchy has no more vivid expression than in extreme porn. The young female performers in porn are very often traumatized by their experience. And many women, including feminists, who simply want good healthy sex with their male partners are being denied this valuable life experience by male PMO addiction. But feminists have three good reasons for not wanting to enter this debate. First, "sex positive" feminists have made criticizing anyone's sexuality controversial within feminism -- anything seen as condemning sex workers' free choices is seen as anti-women. Second, evolutionary psychology is rejected by virtually all prominent feminists; they see it as a "just so" explanation and excuse for men doing whatever they want to do. All ideologies are resistant to inconvenient science, and feminism is no exception. Third, correctly perceiving the problem here as "addiction" takes a measure of responsibility away from the individual man and also requires empathy for him. Feminism isn't fond of either of these.

Porn users, who are in a position to benefit most from this discussion, can be extremely resistant to the idea. It doesn't take long for ad hominem attack to become the primary defense deployed by a porn addict when confronted with his addiction, even in the abstract. Older porn users hearing about young guys suffering ED are sure that some other factor like diet must be at work, even when it is made clear that the affected guys can get it up for porn but not for hot young real-life women. It's as if the hindbrain has a devoted army of brain cells that order an immediate, irrational, strong attack on anyone threatening the precious porn. As is common with addiction, the porn user usually must "hit bottom" with ED or severe depression before he will be open to the idea that spending hours wanking every day to extreme Internet porn might represent problematic behavior.