Humor will not be tolerated!! -Portia

There are people on here with a much more broad base in psychology, but I think the language of porn & addiction is overblown, to say the least. I think all psychologists and most people would acknowledge that someone who drinks, let alone someone who has tried drinking a handful of times, is not necessarily or even likely to be an alcoholic. Based on my experience, at the very least one in two Mormon guys has seen something pornographic, whether analog or digital. That's a vast, vast underestimate, in my opinion, but even going with that, I think medicalizing it into this really obsessive, Other-ized thing increases the allure. Not to mention the crying jag breakdowns for the girlfriends of these teenagers when they actually confess! If you want to decrease the allure of something you find to be socially harmful, don't wrap it in a shroud of mystery and act like only the most deeply perverted, screwed-up young man would Google this or that. Can't we save that for the truly perverted things, like child pornography or prostituting yourself for crack or something?

I'd want to slap my minor children upside the head if they did drugs, drank, smoked, got a girl pregnant or got pregnant themselves, but I'm not going to act like (a) alcohol doesn't exist, especially back in my day! (b) that wanting to have sex or rebel is some kind of character flaw that needs to be jettisoned. I trust the teenage boy or girl who knows he wants to do it but has the good sense not to over the one who lives in unholy terror of making any kind of misstep.

My personal feelings about porn aside, I still don't think the vast, vast majority of people are addicted to it. Unless you work for the Minerals Management Services and literally watch it 8 hours a day at work rather than doing your job . . . I just don't buy it and haven't seen any scientific evidence that ANY kind of "sex addiction" is a thing.

Wait, you haven't seen any evidence that any sort of sexual addiction is real?

UnluckyStuntman wrote:

C is for wrote:As long as the girls are dressing modestly, I guess it doesn't matter too much why they're doing it. Right?

I think it makes a difference. If a girl is dressing modestly because she has been taught that all men are perverted and have no self control, then her perceptions about men and even about her own body are likely going to reflect a fairly negative view about the world. She can't trust men because they're twisted, sinful creatures and her own body betrays her by being some kind of weird fuel for men's pervertedness. Hopefully most people don't take it that far, but I think being modest should be done for the right* reasons.

*whatever "right" means to you.

I'm going to second the infortuitous stuntman and say it makes a HUGE difference. I remember hearing in a lesson one time, "Girls, don't dress modestly to keep your brothers from sin, do it for yourselves!" I turned to a friend afterwards and said, "Am I crazy, or did he just say it's okay for me to be skanky if I want?" It wasn't until a couple of years and a whole lot of therapy later that I actually understood what he meant: If I love and respect my body as a temple of God, I will want to dress in a way that encourages others to love and respect my body as a temple of God, as well. That means that it's okay for me to dress in ways that are flattering. It means that my body is not an object of shame. It means that I am not morally responsible for guys' thoughts, but it encourages me to take them into account so that *I* am viewed the way *I* want to be viewed.

I'm not saying you're some terrible person, C4, because you couldn't steer the conversation back the way you meant for it to go ... Goodness knows I've led some discussions that got terribly out of hand, too, and you're dealing with a whole heck of a lot of cultural baggage in that sort of situation.

Portia, I'm not going into detail on personal situations, but I do know that pornography is quickly addictive and quickly leads to much more perverted things as the original, "normal" things get boring. I've seen it happen. Does that happen to everyone? No. Many, many people in the world can go just fine only looking occasionally. And absolutely, making it into this abhorrent and shocking thing makes it more alluring to some. But it is a good idea to know you are stepping on a muddy and slippery slope, instead of thinking it is no big deal at all.

Portia wrote:My personal feelings about porn aside, I still don't think the vast, vast majority of people are addicted to it. Unless you work for the Minerals Management Services and literally watch it 8 hours a day at work rather than doing your job . . . I just don't buy it and haven't seen any scientific evidence that ANY kind of "sex addiction" is a thing.

The vast majority of people may not be addicted to pornography, Portia, but a large number are. The BYU Women's Resources blog has statistics here:https://wsr.byu.edu/pornographystats.

Also, just because the majority of people aren't addicted doesn't mean it's not a big problem. The majority of people in the U.S. do not do drugs, but they are still a big problem.

(By the way, I wanted to make sure you know I'm not trying to attack you, Portia-- I just wanted to throw out a different viewpoint.)

NerdGirl wrote:I really liked Mico's answer too. Except that the part where she said she learned about sex from Degrassi: The New Generation made me feel really old, because I learned about sex from the original Degrassi High.

Hey, NerdGirl, look what they have on Hulu!

today one of the councilors told the primary children that being chaste means "not having sexual relations with anyone until you're married." Like they can understand that?

So, as soon as you get married, have all the sex you like with everyone!

That's what I do!

Am I doing it wrong?

Is it really?

so, mico, how YOU doin'?

Okay, this all reminds me of one of the things that drives me crazy about how people both in our church and in other churches sometimes talk about chastity. People always seem to say things like, "I'm going to be chaste until I get married," or "I was sexually pure until I got married." And I'm like, really? Is it unchaste to have sex with your spouse? Does having sex with your spouse take away your purity somehow? (I would argue that having sex at all doesn't actually take anything away from you whether you're married or not, but that's beside my point here.) Because if chastity means that you don't have sex until you're married, then aren't you still chaste after you get married and start having sex with your spouse? It's no wonder women have all kinds of angst about sex after they get married when that's way people talk about.

We just had our law of chastity lesson in church this week. (I guess we must be behind all of your lesson schedules.) It was definitely a different viewpoint having it in a married student ward. We didn't get pounded on the "sex is bad bad bad" viewpoint, probably because we're all married and we like sex! The teacher mostly took it from the viewpoint of how to teach your children about chastity and she did pretty well. She did say that we need to teach kids that sex is not bad after marriage because we in the church sometimes pound in so much that it is bad. I did wish that she would have gone beyond "not bad" to "good," but at least it was a start. I thought the most interesting part was that someone in RS commented that for her capstone project at BYU she created a sex-ed program. After church I was discussing it with her, and she said she'd been thinking about doing a lesson about it with some of the people in the ward, if they were interested. She asked me what I thought and I told her definitely yes! She's a pretty down-to earth person and I think she'd do a good job teaching people how they can approach the subject with their kids. I'll definitely report back after the lesson.

On another random note, coincidentally this weekend I was alone with several of my sisters and we started talking about "the talk." I found out about the birds and the bees because I asked my parents and I assumed that they told my siblings as well when they were ready. Not so. It turned out that none of the sisters with me that night had heard it from my parents at all. One of my sisters told me she figured it out from the male and female ends of a plug! Wow. I definitely want to make sure my kids don't have to figure it out that way.

To those who asked, yes, I am at the very least skeptical that "pron addicts" exist in the way they're ideated within the LDS Church. "Addiction" isn't some fuzzy term like "faith" or "family togetherness" or "sin" that can be argued endlessly; it's an objective, scientific pattern of neurological stimulation. Reading, running, the Pride & Prejudice miniseries, texting . . . all of these can be immersive, but hardly cause the brain changes seen in full-blown addiction. Considering that food is required for survival of the individual, and sex for the species, it's still a controversial notion that either of these can be "addictive." However, there're new studies coming in all the time.

A recent one from the NIH: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3050060/

Addiction occurs when pleasure/reward pathways are hijacked by exogenous drugs such as cocaine or opioids, or by natural processes essential and inherent to survival such as food and sex. The same dopaminergic systems include the ventral tegmental area with its projections to the nucleus accumbens and other striatal salience centers. He wrote, “Growing evidence indicates that the VTA-NAc pathway and the other limbic regions cited above similarly mediate, at least in part, the acute positive emotional effects of natural rewards, such as food, sex and social interactions. These same regions have also been implicated in the so-called ‘natural addictions’ (that is, compulsive consumption for natural rewards) such as pathological overeating, pathological gambling, and sexual addictions.

We believe . . . it is time to begin serious discussions of sexual addiction and its components such as pornography.

The proposed DSM-5, slated to publish in May of 2014, contains in this new addition the diagnosis of Hypersexual Disorder, which includes problematic, compulsive pornography use.

If, over the pulpit, some guy wants to have an in-depth review of pornography use on the VTA-NAc pathway, and the exact bounds of Hypersexual Disorder as it appears in the new DSM, go for it. I'd prefer that my (hypothetical) young teens aren't exposed to misinformation about say, warts, gayness (completely, 100% refuted by science), inability to have a normal sex life . . . or how about we just don't talk about private sexual topics with middle schoolers with strangers at all, eh? I just find it inappropriate for a young girl or boy to be asked about anything relating to sex, at all, period, behind a closed door, ALONE. Call me a prude, but . . .

Here's a completely different perspective, again from the NIH, essentially refuting the idea that porn use can make any lasting structural changes in the brain:

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3115160/

First, Hilton and Watts assert a “postulate” that “all addictions create, in addition to chemical changes in the brain, anatomical and pathological changes” which they state results in cerebral dysfunction. Depending on how addiction is defined, this is either well supported (e.g., brain atrophy arising from the neurotoxicity of alcohol) or wholly speculative as in the case of pornography consumption. A number of studies are cited in support of their position but the interpretation of the findings requires us to assume that cortical atrophy due to some type of excess (cocaine, obesity, or pedophilia) is universal and similarly distributed, and therefore the type of excess is irrelevant. Many of the studies cited merely compare groups on brain density scans in cross-sectional designs and inferences about causality cannot be made. For example, their citation of a 2007 study of pedophilia[11] that used correlational data is reported as evidence that “sexual compulsion can cause physical, anatomic change in the brain.” Even if such atrophy could be shown in relation to excessive pornography consumption, how much atrophy would actually be necessary before it would functionally impair (e.g., brain damage severe enough to cause behavioral dysfunction) a given individual? The notion that cerebral atrophy assessed through imaging is assumed to be synonymous with brain damage and therefore evidence of an addictive process is a perspective fraught with problems. For example, it is well established that cerebral atrophy occurs progressively as part of normal aging and if such a correlation is considered to be evidence of an addictive process then all of us are “addicted” to growing old.

. . . Regardless, the current literature on excessive pornography use and hypersexuality diverge in many regards from those found in studies among patients seeking help for addictive disorders such as chemical dependency or among patients with impulse control problems such as pathological gamblers. Furthermore, our research on psychological profiles of hypersexual men, including those with pornography problems, failed to find evidence of elevations on addiction indices, but instead found characteristics common in populations with obsessive tendencies.

I'm only interested in the scientific side of the porn-addiction debate, not the "let's send you to some camp in Logan to brainwash you about 'purity' and 'stripling warriors of Helaman' in an extremely skeevy, homoerotic way." If you think something is morally wrong, just come out and SAY it, don't be looking for some pop science writer to back you up. For instance, there is next to no evidence that moderate consumption of, say, tea will you do much ill or good. Just say "I don't drink tea because I believe my God is deeply concerned with my beverage choices," and others will respect you more. I don't know if this is because people are ashamed of their beliefs?

Nine in ten "normal" college guys look at porn at least occasionally, and I know Sodom & Gomorrah talk is in vogue, but trust me, that'd be a pretty high ratio for "evilness." If you don't want to partake, or your children, or your boyfriend, well that's your moral choice. I think most porn is rather solipsistic, devoid of any real content but the medium itself, and sure, I wish more teenagers would spend their time reading Kafka than w@nking off. But I was a teenager myself . . .

I'm sorry you feel that way about pornography addiction, Portia. I hope you never have to deal with a family member or close friend struggling with pornography addiction. I have, it's real, and it's not pretty. Just because you haven't seen a lot of people around you with pornography addictions doesn't mean it's not a real problem.

I'd encourage you to look at these articles. Do these sound like people who are just making up porn addiction?

http://lds.org/new-era/2007/07/my-battl ... ornography
http://lds.org/liahona/2002/10/danger-a ... ornography
http://lds.org/liahona/2011/06/i-desper ... ornography
http://lds.org/ensign/2001/02/breaking- ... y?lang=eng
http://www.theboardboard.org/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=2111

Those are just a few articles-- I'm sure I could have found TONS more if I had taken the time to keep looking. Is that enough evidence that sexual addiction is real?

Also, I think the reason that general authorities speak in such strong language about pornography is because it can be so addictive, even if it isn't for a lot of people, or even most people. Like the word of wisdom, the counsel to avoid pornography like the plague is adapted to even the weakest of us. It's better to tell everyone not to go there if it will protect those especially in danger from addiction.

Finally, even if pornography isn't always addictive, it's still very harmful. It sexualizes women and when it is viewed, even if the user doesn't become addicted, it still changes the way the user views women and sexuality. Exposure to pornography increases the user's viewing of women as objects, rather than people. I'd think as a feminist you'd be especially concerned about protecting women from becoming so blatantly sexualized. I'd also encourage you to look at these blog posts, written by a couple of sisters in Salt Lake who are getting PHds in communication, studying representations of female bodies in popular media. They've approached the topic of pornography in a scholarly, but accessible manner.

http://www.beautyredefined.net/porn-pop ... mbination/
http://www.beautyredefined.net/porn-pop ... ower-back/

You want to have a scientific discussion about porn? Fine, let's have a scientific discussion about porn.

All of this comes down to how you want to define addiction, and despite what psychology majors will tell you, there is more than one definition. If we go by the most stringent, which is that addiction is chemical dependency, based on physiological changes in the brain, then it is unlikely that porn is defined as an addiction by that measure. If we go slightly less stringent, and say that addiction is compulsive behavior following a trigger-response cycle that is detrimental to the person, then I think we have to say that porn is an addiction. For many it follows the same pattern as a drug addict; emotional trigger, indulgence, chemical high, depression, relapse, rinse repeat. This cycle in and of itself is harmful, but there is much in pornography that distorts perspectives of relationships, as Rifka pointed out, that is necessarily harmful to the individual. And if you don't think that a porn/masturbation combo is addictive, I'll remind you of a study that you're probably well aware of, in which lab rats had electrodes attached to the brain in order to simulate a sexual experience when the rat pressed a certain button. There was another button in the cage which, when pressed, released a food pellet. Guess which one the rat pressed? Almost every single rat ignored the food button, pressing the sex button repeatedly, until it starved itself to death.

Now you can argue that that isn't necessarily corollary to human behavior, and that's certainly a discussion we can have, but we can't argue that the stimulus isn't a powerful one.

Lastly, if we look at porn as an addiction, it has a higher recidivism rate than many other drugs. All but a precious few have higher, and that's mostly because once you're addicted they cause you to die without those.

Portia wrote:"Addiction" isn't some fuzzy term like "faith" or "family togetherness" or "sin" that can be argued endlessly; it's an objective, scientific pattern of neurological stimulation. Reading, running, the Pride & Prejudice miniseries, texting . . . all of these can be immersive, but hardly cause the brain changes seen in full-blown addiction.

I've personal experience that says otherwise. I've known runners so consistent in their endorphin release that being barred from running for three days produced all the physiological effects of withdrawl: if I didn't know him better I'd have had a tox screen on him. As it turned out, all we needed was to help keep him upright until he got up into a jog; from there he was self sufficient enough to get his fix.

Portia wrote:

Addiction occurs when pleasure/reward pathways are hijacked ...by natural processes essential and inherent to survival such as food and sex.

Cutting out the references to external influences, doesn't the DSM5 post put sexual addiction in the very definition of addiction?

I agree that statements of faith are stronger than appeals to 'pop science', and always will be; but I can't help but question what you call 'science' when it defies experiential data. (If you'd like another source than myself, I can direct you to multiple Human Development PhDs who would be more than glad to have you review their work) Yes, there is some horrible attempts to rationalize every aspect of faith, but the resulting impetus should not be to jump the other way and assume that all evidence supporting faith is bunk.

As an addendum; I attended a state college with an LDS population far below 1% before coming to BYU, and can say that anything claiming that 9/10 males in college viewing porn is "normal" comes from experiences are far different than mine. And considering that I happen to be male, with predominately male roommates and associates, I'm afraid I'm more prone to trust in my experience than whatever sources are trying to post such numbers.

Marduk wrote:If we go slightly less stringent, and say that addiction is compulsive behavior following a trigger-response cycle that is detrimental to the person, then I think we have to say that porn is an addiction.

I would amend your statement to say that porn can be addictive, not that "porn is an addiction." That's all I wanted to add for now.

Yes, thank you, that has to be mentioned with any potentially addictive behavior, not everyone who drinks will become an alcoholic, etc.

Would we say any behavior can be addictive, then? I mean, if we're using running as an example--yes, some people might become addicted to running and have withdrawals if they can't run, but does that mean we should shield our youth from running because there's a chance they might become addicted and cause irreparable harm to their bodies through overexertion?

I would probably have been considered addicted to porn during high school--I mean, I looked at it for several hours every day and often looked at it instead of doing homework or playing with friends. But I had no problem going on a mission and dismissing porn for two whole years without much of a desire to view it. I still occasionally look at porn, but not at nearly the same levels as I did in my youth. I think it's actually very dangerous to equate a normal sexual drive (which is usually quite high in the teenage years) and curiosity (also very high in the teenage years) with addiction.

At the same time I was supposedly addicted to porn, I was also addicted to video games, computer games, reading, watching movies, watching tv, listening to music, and playing MUDs. How I found time for it all while still getting straight A's in school is rather incredible, but somehow it all worked out. I don't think I was addicted to any of those things--I think they were all just interests of mine that I made time for.

While I do think some people can become addicted to porn (and other activities), I think the vast majority do not. Where the debate on porn becomes dangerous is in the idea that anyone who looks at porn for a prolonged period of time will become addicted, and I think that is simply not true.

I met a doctor who studied addiction, and he was very specific that BEHAVIORS are not addictions because of the levels of dopamine released. When someone is "addicted" to porn, or running, or gambling, their dopamine levels are not outside of a normal range. Only drugs and alcohol increase beyond a normal range and create a chemical dependency. He said things like porn "addiction" should really be called learned behaviors because the subject learns that doing that activity will make them feel good. They can have a lot of the same external symptoms, but are internally different.