Wednesday 2 July 2008

Sam: Junk Sex Addiction

According to the latest issue of Psychology Today increasingly men are having trouble getting aroused unless they imitate or look at porn. Apparently it’s so strong that it’s like giving up smoking, they have to get used to their new non-porn related sex with tolerating unpleasant psychological withdrawl symptoms. Doesn’t sound like any fun at all.

It’s just a natural process, your brain attaches pleasure and the sense of arousal to a particular thing e.g. porn, and then if you repeat the process enough the response becomes automatic. I guess it you could call it Pavlov’s porn dog.

I suspect Mr Sex could have flagged this issue up years ago – and has.

Though I completely understand this process, it really does depress me. The bits of porn I have watched are usually pretty much lots of joyless pounding. You got about as much chance of finding some connection and love there as getting a hot chocolate at the North Pole.

To me porn seems like the junk food of the sex world. Cheap. Widely available. Mass produced. It is the staple diet of most teenagers, who then tend to make it a bad habit which carries on to later life. Leads to a web of nasty problems down the track.

But where is the organic equivalent of porn? Organic and healthy food seems to me to be a movement that is only just properly hit the mainstream. I guess in the way that junk food really kicked off in the 70s (that’s when the term was coined) and its taken almost 40 years to get organic food sections in the Supermarket. Since widespread, easily available internet porn really kicked off in the late 90s and early naughties I guess we might be waiting a while.

I know there are female directors leading the charge of a whole new style of emotional, erotic porn, but really, I hope it’s not 2030 until there is an ‘organic porn’ section in my local Anne Summers.


9 comments:

Anonymous said...

Amateur porn = Organic?

The only problem there is half the "amateur" stuff looks like regular porn... Like the organic stuff at my grocery store!

Anonymous said...

What's needed is some sort of ethical porn registry (I must confess, whilst I like hot porn, I'm even more concerned that I'm not watching coerced sex). Ethical porn, much like ethical food, is both better and less guilt-inducing.

Two recommendations on that front - if you're kinky, Kink.com are well-known as super-ethical, really cool, and strangely, at the same time, very hot. And if you're more vanilla, abbywinters.com have a very good rep, although I've never paid for a subscription.

Anonymous said...

I'm not sure I can argue against porn - I watch it myself. However, although it takes care of the short term and I really don't want to stop watching it my fantasies have become less original and varied.

The largest problem I see with porn is that its the medium by which men learn "how" to have sex, and rarely will you see a woman being properly pleasured in porn. My ex-boyfriend would do things to me that he had seen in porn, but he had no idea how to really satisfy a woman. His problem, or porns?

boohoo said...

According to the latest issue of Psychology Today increasingly men are having trouble getting aroused unless they imitate or look at porn.

Seriously? That just seems insane to me! I'm all for a bit of erotica (I'm a big fan of written porn, the dvd-stuff is aimed too much at the things men like) but I'd be seriously worried about myself and the person I'd chosen to hop into bed with if I then needed that porn to get myself horny. Or is this an exclusive-to-men problem that I just won't ever understand? ;)

Anonymous said...

I agree with cooper.

I like to watch porn, but it bores me if I have the impression that there's no real feeling behind it for the women (being male myself, I don't care about the men).

For that reason, I enjoy amateur porn the most.
Granted, it's not very polished (or often not at all), but I can emotionally connect to the fun the, um, actors are having, and I find that much more satisfying than visual perfection.

Probably the porn equivalent to vegan food ;)

Anonymous said...

While I do mostly eat vegan ;), I also like porn. And to be honest, I prefer it when it's all obviously-fake and glam. It works for me, and because it's so obviously fake I don't connect it to my own sexlife at all. I guess it works the other way around for me..

And on the ethical porn: how about a fair-porn logo or something? I'd like that!

Anonymous said...

I agree with anonymous. I never watch any of the high production value, "fake" porn that is most prevalent everywhere. I do watch the amateur home video stuff where both parties are enjoying it and it's a lot more real. For me the people really getting into the act and enjoy it themselves is the main buzz! There's a lot of websites which cater to just that. I'm not gonna post em but if anyone is struggling let the coments board know and i'll add them if thats ok to the hosts :-).

Smarty Bum said...

How very very true. Well, I for one am relieved to have been mostly fed a diet of good organic porn. Very nutritious stuff, I tells you. I think we can be hopeful... maybe another five years or so? I'd say the porn equivalent of organic shops is already out there at least, which is worth a lot. But I'm always happy to be pointed to some new good stuff that I haven't seen before...

Anonymous said...

I for one am all for "wholesome" porn, with all the natural goodness tucked in. I guess it works for lilithgirl but, quite frankly, I find the "joyless pounding" variety as much as a turn on as an enema (now, I've never had one of those, but you can imagine...no offense to those who DO find it stimulating). It would be great to see some realistic porn, where the action continues from where Hollywood flicks sign off.