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Could you be the problem with porn?

Friday, August 12, 2011

What if porn isn’t the problem and the problem is you? Research out of Utah State University should have anybody asking this question, having found that the impact porn has on a person all boils down to the individual. In asking 299 undergraduates if they consider their pornography consumption problematic, researchers found that the more participants tried to repress their sexual thoughts and desires, the likelier they were to regard porn as a problem.

Such data should seemingly help to settle the long-standing, heated debate on the positive versus negative effects of porn. For decades, proponents and opponents of this form of erotica have fought over whether pornography harms women, makes users more sexually aggressive, hurts relationships, and promotes sexism.

Those for porn use claim that it empowers lovers with ideas, enhances self-pleasuring, and even reduces the desire to sexually assault another in providing a safe escape for deviant fantasies. Those against porn consumption say such visuals create and raise unrealistic sexual expectations, turn lovers off to one another, and incite violence.

Pornography consumption is, by far, one of the most complicated realms of sexual pleasuring and expression, especially when one’s use becomes more than moderate or the imagery involves violence. Yet the answers to questions around porn use, often fielded by sexologists, like “Is it okay to enjoy?” “How often is too often?” “What kind of porn makes me a pervert?” and “Is pornography consumption problem-inducing?” all come down to the person.

The potential problems that can come out of porn use are largely manifested by one’s own personal values and views about different types of erotica, intimacy, and sexual enjoyment. It’s your intrusive thoughts around what’s positive and good versus bad and wrong that influence your pleasuring.

What the Utah State University research indicates is that porn’s probability of becoming problematic is first and foremost directly due to one’s repression reaction. It’s this suppression of the desire to look at porn that boosts one’s longing for it. And this becomes complicated for the individual when processed against one’s personal morals system, including religious influences. It’s the conflicting feelings that arise that often ultimately lead to sexual problems.

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The Need to Question Supposed Sex “Conditions”

Wednesday, May 11, 2011

Do you have Attention Fibulitis Disorder (AFD)? Known to afflict experts, this condition involves making up information to draw attention to one’s self as an authority figure. With the potential to become a popular press plague, this ailment can strike a writer or editor desperate to solicit web page hits or promote a personal value system. Once afflicted, it can be chronic and destructive.

Sound like bull? It is. Yet, many lay readers browsing the Internet are unaware that there are experts out there willing to make up disorders in creating a catchy headliner. The latest to get called out on concocting a condition is CNN blogger and sex expert Ian Kerner, who elicited harsh reactions with Sexual Attention Deficit Disorder (SADD). This “new syndrome” affects men who consume “too much” Internet porn – to the point that they don’t care whether or not the gal they’re involved with gets enough attention.

While porn use has definitely become an issue for a number of couples, nowhere is this condition, or one like it, found in the DSM-IV (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders). Kerner devised it based on the fact that, despite a lack of diagnostic criteria, he’s “seen a sharp increase in men who suffer from it.”

With zero hard data or brain research to support SADD’s existence, Kerner has cleverly explained that these men “have rewired their brains to crave the instant gratification of porn-enabled orgasm” (a never before scientifically documented type of climax Kerner has apparently also discovered). Ultimately, a guy’s intimacy efforts hampered.

Now, you can’t blame Kerner for trying to label and explain an issue some in his audience may be grappling with. But his audacity to coin a new phrase, and use his “sex doc” status to justify it, has resulted in misinformation being sent the world over with his blog on CNN.com, his advice column for Ask Men, and any number of sites that steal content from writers.

As has been the case with the pharmaceutical industry’s “female sexual disorder,” which has little, if any, biological basis, couples are now diagnosing themselves with SADD, oblivious to the blogosphere Kerner has pissed off. Their issue: Kerner has now given guys a fictional disorder to justify their failure to perform, satisfy, or engage in mutual pleasuring. Instead of taking responsibility for being inattentive, selfish, disrespectful, or impatient in bed, men can now cite SADD for their compulsive porn consumption and masturbation-induced mental and physical exhaustion. 

All of this would be comical if it weren’t so sad and disturbing. Not only is Kerner trivializing real disorders, like attention deficit disorder (ADD), but he’s also impacting couples’ relationships in a way that could prove detrimental. With no clinical guidelines for diagnosis or resolution, couples can find themselves tormented in dealing with a condition that doesn’t exist, and one defined by someone who does not have degrees in mental health nor the expertise to define new mental or behavioral disorders.

Kerner is, furthermore, not a member of the American Psychiatric Association nor a psychiatric doctor or nurse, clinical psychologist or social worker, or licensed therapist. His PhD, in fact, comes from a non-accredited university that no longer exists. Yet, unless you scrutinize his background, he appears to be an authority thanks to best-selling books, his ‘community meet the experts’ website that’s backed by MD’s and real PhD’s from a variety of fields, and his affiliation with Johnson & Johnson as a spokesperson for their top-selling lubricant.

On all accounts, this clever marketer appears to be someone to listen to – and trust. Whether SADD or any other sex ‘condition’, be sure to get a second opinion.   
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