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On Porn and Religion, Part 1

2/16/2017

Today we hope to open a discussion about porn and religion. (PornHelp neither endorses nor opposes any religious doctrine - see our statement here). This is a huge topic. Many of its facets exceed the scope of our learning and insight. So, we’re going to throw some thoughts out there and ask our readers to weigh in. Hopefully, you all will.

We resolved to try and tackle this topic after tweeting an opinion piece from a Minneapolis newspaper which makes impassioned and overtly religious arguments about the dangers of pornography use. We shared the piece because it appeared in a large-circulation publication in a major American metro area, and because the author spoke about his firsthand experience counseling young men struggling with problematic pornography use. Whether or not our readers shared the author’s religious sensibilities, we thought his piece made a worthwhile contribution to the public discussion.

Soon after we tweeted the piece, we became aware of criticism of that same article by skeptics of pornography addiction. What struck us about these criticisms was that they pointed, among other things, to the author’s religious bona fides as evidence of his lack of credibility. We’ve seen this before. Some critics dismiss concerns about porn’s impact on individuals and society at large as “moral panic”. They tend to discount individuals’ reports of problem porn use as largely driven by religion-induced shame. And, they count the pornography counseling efforts of faith leaders like the author in the piece we shared as misguided, and potentially harmful to their parishioners insofar as religious beliefs may lead them to diagnose porn use problems where none exist.

These objections raise some issues we find interesting, including the role religion does play, and ought to play, in the public discussion of pornography, how religion influences pornography use and feelings about its use, and the considerations in addressing problem pornography use through a religion-inspired lens.

Like we said, all really huge topics. So, we’re going to try to tackle this in bite-sized chunks.

Today, we start by offering up some basic statistics. These figures show (perhaps unsurprisingly) that religion and pornography both play a large role in American public and private life. (For the time being, we limit our discussion to pornography use and religion in America, because most research on the topic has studied U.S. porn users). They also lead to some baseline conclusions that we invite others to discuss and expand upon in the comments section.

Some statistics about religion in American life

According to the Pew Research Center, as of 2014, approximately 77% of the U.S. population identified itself as religiously affiliated, with the vast majority (70.6% of the total U.S. population) identifying as Christian (including Catholic), and the remainder consisting of small minorities of Jews, Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists, and various other religions.

Among the 23% of non-religiously affiliated Americans, the bulk (15.8% of the U.S. population) were noncommittal about identifying with an organized religions (though roughly half of those considered themselves religious, but merely unaffiliated), while the remainder were evenly split between self-identified agnostics and atheists.

Religion occupies a “very important” place in the life of just over half of all Americans. A large majority of Americans considers religion at least “somewhat important” in their lives.

Some statistics about pornography use in America

Pornography, defined broadly as material designed and used to stimulate sexual arousal and aid masturbation (which we equate to Potter Stewart’s “know it when I see it” standard for obscenity), is a fixture of American life, too.

According to an exhaustive survey of American pornography viewing habits and attitudes released last year by the private polling firm Barna Group (available here), 33% of all Americans, male and female, seek out porn at least monthly, 20% of all Americans seek it out at least weekly, and 6% of all Americans seek it out daily. Men comprise the greater portion of porn users. 11% of Americans males 13 and over (that’s roughly 12 million male teens and adults) use porn daily. Over half (roughly 60 million) use it at least monthly. 1% of American females 13 and over (roughly 1.4 million female teens and adults) use porn daily, and 7% (roughly 10 million) use it weekly. The vast majority of users consume porn via the internet. Personal sexual arousal is the most often cited reason for using pornography (accounting for 2/3 of men, and over 1/2 of women).

According to Barna, pornography use is higher among non-Christians than Christians, though the degree of difference in porn use habits between those groups may be difficult to pin down, given the potential for underreporting of porn use among Christians. Indeed, many of the numbers cited above, though collected by reputable organizations with long track records, risk some softness around the edges. What it means for religion to be “very important” will vary across survey participants, for example. That said, they’re the best numbers we could find thus far. If others want to cite different statistics, please do so in the comments.

Some Conclusions We Draw From These Statistics

Looking at these raw numbers leads us to a few conclusions.

First, given the prevalence of religious faith and pornography use in America, it seems logical that Americans should demand that their religious leaders weigh in on the topic of pornography use. Porn use is just too common of a human activity in this day and age to expect otherwise.

Second, given the central role that American religious institutions stand to play in the public discussion of pornography, it seems important that they be well-informed and disseminate accurate and useful information and guidance. We would expect that guidance to encompass practical and spiritual considerations, and that it should therefore be grounded in both scientific fact and religious doctrine. (The turbulent confluence of these veins of guidance, we suspect, is the crux of the issue for many critics of religious counseling about porn.)

Third, given the first two conclusions, it seems to us both illogical and counterproductive to use a person’s standing in the religious community, alone, as a basis for criticizing his expression of views about pornography. We should fully expect, and encourage, institutions that play an “important” role in the majority of Americans’ lives to participate in the public discussion of pornography. After all, if the numbers show anything, it’s that neither religion nor pornography is going away anytime soon.

This is a topic that begs for discussion. Thoughtful comments welcome.

The Time to Connect is Now

2/9/2017

We tweeted out two articles today, here and here, that are worth reading. One focuses on the stories of two men in Oregon who struggle with porn use, and how they’ve begun to tackle their problem. The other discusses pornography addiction from the point of view of mental health counselors in California. We like these stories because they reach a similar, and important, conclusion about the importance of connecting with other people as a first step to addressing problematic porn use.

People who struggle with porn use have a hard time asking for help. It’s embarrassing to admit that porn has taken control. Often, it feels like the only people trusted enough to keep a porn use problem secret are also the ones who would be most hurt by the revelation. And, for many, porn is a crutch, a shield against negative emotions that feel impossible to face.

We know that struggle firsthand. We lived the delusion of problem porn use. We made attempts to find help for years, only to give up again and again when it seemed too risky to reveal ourselves in an online forum, too painful to reveal our problem to loved ones, too impossible to get away from our lives to a treatment center or faraway therapist, too alien to talk to a faith leader outside of our background. It didn’t occur to us that “sex addiction” groups could help us, or that 12-step groups for people dealing with other addictions would welcome us. We didn’t realize that even if there weren’t any resources nearby, we could connect with people around the world by Skype, or conference call, who share our difficulties. We allowed ourselves to believe we were alone in our struggle, that telling someone about our problem would be unbearably humiliating and destructive, that if we couldn’t help ourselves, no one could.

That delusion nearly destroyed our lives.

We founded PornHelp to prevent you from wandering alone through the dark hell of compulsive porn use like we did. If you are struggling with porn use, the resources listed here exist to help you make a connection with another person who understands. It doesn’t matter which person you choose - a member of a 12-step group, a faith leader, a therapist, or a fellow problem porn user. It doesn’t even matter, for now, how you connect - in person, by phone, by Skype. The only thing that matters is that you make the connection. Now. Right. Now.

Still doubt there's help for you? Then email us at [email protected]. We’re here for you. We care about you. We will help you find someone to talk to. You are not alone.

If We Made Porn...

2/1/2017

Here at PornHelp, we spend a lot of time thinking about a seemingly simple question: what is porn? As with any question of that ilk, its minimalist construction belies its deep complexity. Answering it entails not just identifying porn’s characteristics, but also (among other things) its origin, its purpose, and its impact. There are scholars who spend careers studying porn, and for good reason. In thinking about what porn is, we can’t just begin and end with Potter Stewart’s famous observation that we know porn when we see it. Recognizing and labeling porn as “porn” is just the tip of the iceberg.

Today, we thought we’d engage in a little thought experiment by putting ourselves in the shoes of a pornographer. If we made porn, what kind of porn would we create? What would we want it to do? How would we define success? By exploring these questions, we hope to gain insight about why some people develop porn use problems.

Let’s get some basics out of the way. We wouldn’t create porn for the fun of it. Sure, everybody wants to do what they love and love what they do, but for most working stiffs, the job is about a paycheck. If we were pornographers, we suspect it wouldn’t be any different. We’d make porn to make money. Simple as that.

With profit as our basic motive, we’d approach porn as a product, no different from toasters or vacation deals or gym memberships. Our goal would be for people to consume our product in a manner that turns us a profit. And, we’d probably - at least at first - aim to develop a product that appeals to the largest market segment: young and middle-aged straight men.

We’d ask ourselves: how can we make money from porn? As we’ve written here, we’d learn that we’re not going to turn a profit by getting our customers to pay for it. That business model is dead. Instead, our money would be made mostly in ad-clicks and user data. Our revenue would depend on getting our customers to click links that result in payments to us from other sites, and on keeping them on our site long enough to reveal things about themselves that make it easier for us to predict what other links they’ll click in the future, so that we can show them ads they’ll click, or sell their data to others.

Our business, in other words, would be intensely focused on understanding and influencing customer behavior. Our success would depend on keeping customers on our site, clicking, for as long as possible now, and getting them to come back later. How would our product play into that equation? By responding to what brings customers to us in the first place: helping them masturbate. Our porn would be designed to create and sustain our customers’ sexual arousal. We’d pay close attention to variables such as the age, race and body type of performers, and the sex acts that are shown, in order to get the perfect, most reliable, mix to keep our target demographic aroused and on our site.

But, here's a hitch. Masturbation tends to culminate in orgasm, and also with our customer leaving our site. But when a customer left the site, we would lose the chance to make money from that customer’s visit. So, we’d need to strike a balance between making our porn respond to our customer’s desire for sexual arousal while also not, shall we say, pushing him over the edge too quickly. It would be like a casino - the longer the customer stayed the more money we would make, so we wouldn’t want to make him blow his wad (sorry, had to) right out of the gate. Instead, we would want our customer to have a good enough time with us to keep coming back, but not so good that we lose the opportunity to make money on this visit.

To achieve that balance, we would invest heavily in real-time customer data mining technology to track every customer’s behavior on our site. We’d measure how much time customers hovered over links, the sequence in which they viewed areas on the site, and the characteristics of the porn they seemed to prefer. This information would, in turn, help us tailor each customer’s experience to keep him on our site now, and to get him to come back later.

Ultimately, our goal for each customer would be to maximize the number and duration of that customer’s visits to our site, limited only by three variables: (1) that customer’s time constraints (which we would aim to innovate around by offering new and more convenient means of access to our product), (2) that customer’s ability to control his urge to become sexually aroused and masturbate (which we would aim to reduce by delivering satisfying - but not too satisfying - product, by tailoring ads to him, and by selling his data to others who would do the same); and (3) by that customer’s physical capacity to sustain and repeat sexual arousal (which we would aim to increase by delivering well designed porn to get and keep him aroused).

So, let’s recap. We’d be in porn to make money. Our money would come from our customers' ad-clicks and site-use data. Since our customer behavior would be our profit center, we’d invest heavily in understanding how to influence it. Our principal means of influencing customer behavior would be by developing and delivering porn that kept customers clicking and visiting now, and inspired them to return later. Our porn’s core attribute would be its ability to create and sustain sexual arousal reliably, but not so effectively as to short circuit the duration of a customer visit. We would monitor our customers’ behavior to gather data that would allow us to refine our product offering to maximize the number and duration of visits for each customer.

Sound Machiavellian? Maybe. But it’s hardly uncommon. There are plenty of comparisons. Vacation resorts, online retailers, travel aggregators, digital media companies - all of them invest in analytics to help them influence customer behavior. Why would porn be any different? Answer: it wouldn’t. Or more precisely, it isn’t. People don’t produce porn for the fun of it. They do it because there is money to be made influencing your behavior through the power of your sexual response.

Here's to Hope for a Change

12/17/2016

What a difference a week makes. As recently as last weekend, the internet was awash with another tiresome round of sensationalized stories proclaiming that sex and porn addiction aren’t “real”. This latest flare up owed in large part to the release of a “Position on Sex Addiction” by the American Association of Sexuality Educators, Counselors and Therapists (“AASECT”) disputing the foundations of longstanding sex addiction therapy methods. The content of these stories wasn’t anything new. But the response to them sure was.

Spurred on by some surprisingly candid revelations by one of the AASECT statement’s architects, a chorus of sex addiction therapists, advocacy organizations, and commentators (including yours truly) responded with pointed criticism of the AASECT statement and the stories it had generated in the popular press. We pointed out the questionable motives for the statement, the logical fallacies it contained, and the dumbed-down reception it received. We questioned its seeming ignorance of a body of scientific research on sex addiction. And, most of all, we decried the shame and confusion the statement sowed among the very people AASECT claimed to want to help - those suffering from compulsive, addictive behavior involving sex and porn.

On December 14, one of the most notable responses to AASECT’s statement appeared on the web site of the International Institute for Trauma and Addiction Professionals (“IITAP”). IITAP is the organization principally responsible for developing sex addiction therapy methods and training sex addiction therapists. We described IITAP (accurately, we think) in our most recent blog post as AASECT’s rival in the sexuality practitioner certification marketplace.

In its response, IITAP struck a remarkably conciliatory tone. It praised AASECT for advancing sexual rights, particularly among LGBTQ, kink and polyamory populations. It acknowledged AASECT’s criticisms of IITAP’s historic deficiencies in training therapists on issues of sexual diversity. It also noted that AASECT’s “Position on Sex Addiction” constitutes a softening of AASECT’s historic stance on sex addiction, reflecting AASECT’s own acknowledgement of deficiencies in its curriculum. For instance, IITP observed that AASECT has recently introduced training for AASECT members in treating out-of-control sexual behaviors.

Most significantly (in our view), IITAP lamented the “unnecessary intellectual rock throwing” that has emerged over time between IITAP and AASECT members, resulting in “fractionalization” that prevents “integration of knowledge between groups that could easily learn from each other”. Echoing the criticism others had leveled at AASECT’s statement, IITAP noted that this needless “rock throwing” contributed to sensationalized stories in the press that do nothing but confuse and stigmatize people suffering from out-of-control sexual behaviors. In a full-throated call for a ceasefire, IITAP urged “the various sexual health organizations to come together in the best interest of [their] clients—working to legitimize and de-stigmatize this issue, so the people suffering will know there is hope and help.”

We are thrilled by IITAP’s statement. Then again, in PornHelp IITAP is preaching to the proverbial choir. What matters more is whether folks on AASECT’s side of the fence heard our collective criticism and IITAP’s call for “cross fertilization of theory and knowledge”.

Happily, it seems that at least one prominent AASECT member did. The same day IITAP’s position appeared, AASECT Board Member Dr. Ian Kerner penned this article for CNN. Though the article avoided any mention of AASECT or Dr. Kerner’s leadership position, it read like a point-by-point acknowledgment of many of the biggest criticisms IITAP and others leveled at AASECT’s “Position on Sex Addiction.” Among other things, Dr. Kerner acknowledged that many people suffer from compulsive, addiction-like sexual behaviors, that therapists from both the IITAP and AASECT camps provide valuable and valid help for those people, that IITAP rejects harmful “reparative” therapy, and that scientific evidence exists of links between out-of-control sexual behaviors and addiction.

Of course, the article wasn’t perfect. Its title, “Is sex addiction real? Depends on whom you ask” had an unhelpfully reductive ring to it. And, Dr. Kerner devoted column space to some questionable tropes (“sex addiction is about avoiding responsibility”) and suspect voices (including Dr. Michael Aaron, whose column crowing about how he used “guerrilla tactics” to push AASECT to issue its “Position on Sex Addiction” is a shining example of “unnecessary…rock throwing”). But, on the whole, we find Dr. Kerner’s recognition that many of his clients experience compulsive sexual behaviors as addictions, and his resolve to help them despite his personal doubts about the “addiction model,” refreshing. This, to us, feels like the sort of “coming together” that IITAP’s statement encouraged.

So, what’s next? We’ve seen a week of attention (finally) being paid to helping, instead of belittling, people who struggle with sex and porn addiction. Will this nascent detente between the IITAP and AASECT camps endure? We hope so. But, even if the cessation of hostilities proves short-lived, let’s hope it serves as a lasting reminder of how calm and reasoned voices of criticism and conciliation, when they speak frequently and widely enough to be heard, can lower the temperature of a heated conflict. For all of us who share the mission of helping people with out-of-control behaviors involving sex and porn, (re)learning that lesson is a victory in itself.

Decoding AASECT's "Position on Sex Addiction"

12/11/2016

We have written about the public “debate” over sex and pornography addiction, and have been especially critical of news stories that attempt to reduce complex issues into simplistic headlines. Intentionally or not, news articles blaring “Porn/Sex Addiction Isn’t Real” perpetuate the stigma of problematic sexual behavior. By dumbing down highly complicated and emotional issues, they confuse people in pain who want - need - to find help.

Late last month, an announcement by the American Association of Sexuality Educators, Counselors, and Therapists (“AASECT” for short) kicked up the dust storm yet again. In what was billed as a “historic position statement”, AASECT rejected addiction-centered treatment methods for problematic sexual behaviors. Specifically, as of today “it is the position of AASECT that linking problems related to sexual urges, thoughts or behaviors to a porn/sexual addiction process cannot be advanced by AASECT as a standard of practice for sexuality education delivery, counseling or therapy.”

Predictably, media outlets translated this as confirmation by “experts” that sex and porn addiction aren’t “real," or worse, that they're a "hoax." Absent from these stories was much (if any) analysis of the nuance in AASECT’s announcement. For instance, AASECT acknowledges that people do suffer from out-of-control behaviors involving sex and porn, and that those people do need help. But, AASECT believes there is insufficient empirical evidence to establish these behaviors as addiction-type “mental health disorders”, and therefore believes it’s inappropriate to use addiction-focused therapies to treat them. Finally, and perhaps tellingly, AASECT claims that therapists who do follow the “addiction model" lack “accurate human sexuality knowledge”.

Journalists also failed to point out an important omission from AASECT’s statement. Lost in the attention-grabbing hoopla over whether sex and porn addiction are “real” was AASECT’s tacit admission that it has no clear recommendation for how therapists should counsel people with problematic sexual behaviors. Instead, stealing a page from the official Paul Ryan “Repeal and Delay” Playbook™, after trashing the longstanding “sex addiction model” of treatment, AASECT offered only its support for a “collaborative movement to establish standards of care supported by science, public health consensus and the rigorous protection of sexual rights.” That sounds to us like AASECT kicking the can down the road.

So what are we to make of this? And, by “we,” we mean the people struggling with problematic porn use who are the consumers of the therapy services AASECT’s announcement covers. Should we use it as guidance in choosing a therapist? If so, what good is a therapist if he’s waiting for a “collaborative movement” to tell him how to go about helping us? Some background might help us answer those questions.

AASECT is a certifying body for sexual health practitioners, most notably for the “Certified Sex Therapist” (“CST”) certification. AASECT competes for prominence in the sexuality practitioner certification marketplace with the International Institute for Trauma and Addiction Professionals (“IITAP”). IITAP was founded by Patrick Carnes, the godfather of “sex addiction” treatment methodology, and a founder of the Society for the Advancement of Sexual Health (“SASH”). IITAP is the certifying body for the Certified Sex Addiction Therapist (“CSAT”) certification.

In other words, AASECT and IITAP are rivals. The "sex addiction model" AASECT has rejected is the method of therapy promoted and taught by IITAP. When AASECT took a poke at addiction-centered therapists who purportedly lack “accurate human sexuality knowledge”, it was undoubtedly referring to IITAP-certified practitioners. Seen in this light, AASECT’s announcement looks a lot like a shot fired in a (highly niche) turf war between competing professional certification bodies.

An article published on the website Psychology Today by one of the practitioners behind the AASECT announcement, Dr. Michael Aaron, gives credence to that view. Dr. Aaron holds a Ph.D. from the American Academy of Certified Sexologists, and has been certified by AASECT as a CST for “over three years.” In his Psychology Today article, he describes how he led an effort to combat “hypocrisy” within AASECT surrounding sex addiction treatment. Dr. Aaron believes the “sex addiction model” of therapy is “extremely destructive to clients” in that it purportedly addresses “sexuality concerns from a moralistic and judgmental perspective.” For this reason, he sees “the sex addiction model as directly at odds with the sex-positive messaging that AASECT ... [is] trying to project.”

Finding AASECT's tolerance of the "sex addiction model" to be "deeply hypocritical", in 2014 Dr. Aaron set out to eradicate support for the concept of “sex addiction” from AASECT’s ranks. To accomplish his goal, Dr. Aaron claims to have deliberately sowed controversy among AASECT members in order to expose those with viewpoints that disagreed with his own, and then to have explicitly silenced those viewpoints while steering the organization toward its rejection of the “sex addiction model.” Dr. Aaron justified using these “renegade, guerilla [sic] tactics” by reasoning that he was up against a “lucrative industry” of adherents to the “sex addiction model” whose financial incentives would prevent him from bringing them over to his side with logic and reason. Instead, to effect a “quick change” in AASECT’s “messaging,” he sought to ensure that pro-sex addiction voices were not materially included in the discussion of AASECT’s course change.

Dr. Aaron’s boast comes across as a little unseemly. People rarely take pride in, much less publicize, suppressing academic and scientific debate. And it seems odd that Dr. Aaron spent the time and money to become CST certified by an organization he deemed “deeply hypocritical" barely a year after joining it (if not before). If anything, it is Dr. Aaron who appears hypocritical when he criticizes pro-“sex addiction” therapists for having a financial investment in the "sex addiction model", when, quite obviously, he has a similar investment in promoting his opposing viewpoint .

And that, to us, is the key to understanding the real significance of the AASECT announcement. Dr. Aaron’s pride in suppressing debate and driving AASECT to reject the “sex addiction model” of therapy makes sense if we think of his efforts as an exercise in brand differentiation. Commercial motive is a common denominator for all professional therapists to some degree. AASECT-certified therapists trade on their CST certifications the same way IITAP-certified therapists trade on their CSAT credentials. But for would-be consumers of therapy services, it’s hard to distinguish between the two certifications. Both require adherence to strict sets of ethical guidelines, including non-discrimination and acceptance of sexual diversity. Both also stress the importance of promoting client sexual health. Heck, the abbreviations for the certifications are even confusingly similar.

Could it be that Dr. Aaron recognized this, too? Without a clear distinction between his CST certification and his competitors’ CSAT certifications, Dr. Aaron may have recognized that he was trading on a poorly-defined brand that could easily be confused with a viewpoint with which he disagreed. That could explain why he joined up with AASECT (“deeply hypocritical” though it was), and promptly undertook an unpopular and controversial effort to drive a wedge between AASECT and IITAP over the headline-grabbing issue of “sex and porn addiction”. Seizing on the stigma attached to the word “addiction”, Dr. Aaron pushed AASECT to discredit the longstanding methods of its competitor, IITAP. It was a clever stroke of political and marketing insight: no one wants to be labeled an “addict,” so why not define AASECT-certified therapists as people who will treat your out-of-control sexual behaviors without calling you one?

All of which would be fine and dandy if AASECT managed the rest of its message a little better. But, by endorsing the reductive message that “sex and porn addiction aren’t real”, AASECT allowed its statement to be communicated as a categorical rejection of the fact that people actually do suffer from problematic, compulsive sexual behaviors that feel, to them, like addictions. AASECT also compounded its error by punting on the most important question: how AASECT-certified therapy would be different from addiction-centric therapy. And then there's the baffling refusal of the folks on the AASECT side of the turf to so much as acknowledge the body of scientific evidence that supports an addiction-based approach to out-of-control sexual behaviors. In short, in making a big deal of its rejection of the “sex addiction model,” AASECT (inadvertently, we hope) sowed still more confusion and shame for the people it purports to want to help.

For what it's worth, those of us who have consulted therapists trained in the “sex addiction model” (CSATs certified by IITAP, mostly), have found that they are not moralizing or judgmental in the main. Our collective experience has been that CSATs do not use shame to address our behaviors. They show a great deal of empathy, in fact. CSAT therapy, in our experience, aims at helping us understand how and why our behaviors are unwanted, and at coming to terms with those behaviors that have been most destructive to things we care about. In that respect, we suspect we’d find a similar approach used in AASECT-certified therapy (and we invite anyone with experience in that regard to comment below). Yes, IITAP-certified therapists may use a vocabulary of addiction to address our issues. But frankly, by the time most of us seek help, we don’t really care about labels all that much. We just want help controlling a personally destructive cycle of behavior, guilt and shame that has taken over our lives. Many of us have even found comfort in giving our problem a name - even if the name is "addiction".

Bottom line: AASECT’s announcement may be “historic” for AASECT-certified practitioners, but to those of us who may consume their services, it doesn’t feel particularly enlightening. If AASECT really wants to make a meaningful difference in the therapy marketplace, it should advertise exactly how its therapists are trained to approach treatment of out-of-control sex and porn use issues. Instead of telling us how “bad” the “sex addiction model” treatment we’ve been receiving is (contrary to the experiences of the vast majority of us), it should tell us how its alternative treatment model will be better. And, instead of completely ignoring the body of scientific research that appears to run contrary to its position on the links between out-of-control sexual behavior and addiction, AASECT should explain why it disagrees with that research.

Until then, we're going to be wary of buying whatever it is AASECT is selling.

Of Weiner, Horses, and Recovery

11/10/2016

It’s hard to feel charitably toward Anthony Weiner these days. Anyone who has seen Weiner, the stunning documentary film chronicling the New York politician’s fall, rise, and fall again can’t help but shake their heads at the personal tragedy of his actions. More recently, it has been reported that Weiner is under investigation for allegedly sexting with a minor. Emails seized during that investigation set off a firestorm of controversy in the closing days of the Presidential election.

On the heels of the latest revelations about Weiner’s problematic sexting, he reportedly checked into a rehab specializing in sexual addictions. The press has had a field day with the news that Weiner’s rehab employs equine therapy, which involves learning to ride and care for horses as a means of contextualizing addiction and recovery. A few days ago, papers broadcast a photo of the man who has become the poster child for public self-immolation perched awkwardly on the back of a horse. In the picture, Weiner - wearing “dad jeans”, his running shoes poking through the stirrups - looks reduced, maybe even a little foolish. It might be understandable for people who see the photo to say “Gimme a break. All he needed to do was stop sending texts of his junk. People don’t need horses for that.”

Maybe not. But let’s stop and think about what we know of Anthony Weiner. He had a promising political career. Though his style was abrasive, he fought passionately for what he believed. He worked for health care reform and on behalf of 9/11 firefighters. He enjoyed a wealth of political connections. He lived in a dog-eat-dog world and had everything to lose.

And yet, again and again his problematic sexting humiliated him and his family, and destroyed his career. We heard repeated promises from him that his behavior would change. But it didn’t. In fact, if the allegations are true, his behavior worsened.

Now, maybe Anthony Weiner is just a liar, or something worse. Maybe he didn’t want to stop sexting random women. Maybe he was just putting on a show of saying he would quit. Maybe he didn’t care if he hurt his wife and his children. Maybe he wanted to trash his career. Maybe he thought he could hide from the watchful eye of the press. Maybe he rationally calculated that the humiliation he was bound to suffer in the public sphere was worth the fleeting thrill of sending explicit text messages to strangers.

But, we don’t think that sounds plausible. We’re willing to bet Anthony Weiner did want to stop sexting with those women, and that he really did try to stop. We bet he knew that his actions were destroying his life, inflicting pain and loss on everyone he cared about. We bet his behavior and failed attempts to quit caused him intense guilt and shame and confusion and self-doubt. We bet Anthony Weiner felt terribly alone.

Why do we think these things about Weiner? Because repeatedly engaging in an isolating, destructive behavior, despite repeated attempts to stop and overwhelmingly negative consequences, is the shared experience of addiction, be it to sex, porn, pills, food, gambling, booze, or anything else. Those who have experienced addiction know the searing shame of not being able to stop a cycle that destroys a person from the inside out. They remember the black loneliness of feeling like a fraud in their own lives. They have shared in the bitter irony that the more they had to lose, the further they sank into the hopeless battle of trying to quit on their own and in secret, paralyzed by the belief that revealing their problem to others meant risking everything they loved and took pride in. They have felt the crushing fear of people looking at them and saying with disgust, as one interviewer did to Weiner, “What is wrong with you?”.

So, sure, it’s easy to dismiss Anthony Weiner as just another celebrity trying to avoid "responsibility" for his actions by checking into a high priced rehab where he gets to ride a horse. And yes, it’s a little amusing to see him timidly balanced in the saddle. But remember this: despite the infamy that Anthony Weiner carries with him, and the pain he has inflicted on himself and others, the horse he rides won’t mock his terrible horsemanship. The horse won’t write scathing headlines about his repeated failures at climbing into the saddle. The horse won’t call him “sick” or “perverse” for falling off, or take pleasure in his pain when he hits the ground. The horse just wants him to get better.

As Anthony Weiner’s fellow human beings, so should we.

On Letting Porn Be Porn.

10/25/2016

Readers of this blog will be familiar with our penchant for wordsmith-ing (here and here, for instance). In today’s post, our semantic impulse fires once again to make another plaint. And it’s this: please, oh please, can writers stop using the word “porn” to describe, well, everything? Real estate porn, poverty porn, food porn, puppy porn. It goes on and on.

Look here. Porn (a.k.a. “pornography”, a.k.a. “wank mags”, a.k.a. “the internet” [just kidding!]) is a product principally designed to elicit a sexual response, most often for the purpose of aiding masturbation. Yes, we’re aware of the argument that porn constitutes a form of creative, even artistic, expression. Yes, we recognize some believe porn can be a therapeutic tool for (re)igniting passion in intimate relationships. And, yes, we know there are genres of porn that may not elicit the slightest sexual arousal in any but the most niche communities of consumers.

But to paraphrase Potter Stewart’s classic observation, we know porn when we see it, and it ain’t pictures of grilled summer squash, five-bedroom townhouses, or baby Weimaraners.

Don’t get us wrong. We have no quarrel with using figurative language. We are, after all, word geeks. Our beef with the over-use of the “porn” trope is that it’s hackneyed, and, in this increasingly omnisexual culture, fraught with potential misunderstanding. After all, there are plenty of folks for whom food porn is a real thing. That is (and forgive us if you’re triggered here), they have a sexual interest in food-oriented erotica - movies of foreplay involving chocolate sauce, for example. Likewise, one might reasonably refer to some types of BDSM content as “torture porn.” And, though we’d prefer not to dwell on it, straight-up “puppy porn” almost certainly exists out there in the deepest recesses of the inter-webs.

We get why writers choose the word “porn” to describe content their readers might linger over obsessively. “Ooh, look at that kitchen island!” “Ahh, what a searing image of urban decay!” But that’s lazy and cynical wordplay. It leverages our innate response to titillation in order to communicate non-erotic ideas. Surely, there are better ways to call attention to your snapshots of a mountainous cheeseburger dripping with savory fat than “Burger Porn”. How about “Grass-fed Glory”, or “Your Next Heart Attack”?

We admit, we’re being a little tongue in cheek. But, we’re also serious. Calling anything visually stimulating a form of “porn” trivializes eroticism. And it minimizes the significance of the deeply sexual, occasionally problematic, desire to consume actual pornography that so many of us feel. Maybe we’re stretching here, but we wonder whether teasing the collective sex drive with non-porn “porn” again and again could even have a dampening effect on people’s innate response to erotic material, and whether that effect can be accounted for in vital research being done in the realm of human sexual response. Similar to our observation about the word “addiction”, if “porn” describes almost anything, then it means almost nothing.

So, here’s to letting porn be porn, and to writers everywhere showing a little more creativity in their word choices when they want us to click on their favorite puppy pics. That is, unless, you know…yeah. We’ll just leave it at that.

On Turning Away from the Jumbotron.

10/4/2016

In honor of the beginning of playoff baseball, here’s a true story:

A group of dads took their seven year-old sons to a professional baseball game. They arrived at their seats in the right field bleachers during batting practice. The home team’s stars dotted the field, shagging fly balls and stretching out. A few even chatted with fans. Just feet away, the starting pitcher warmed up in the bullpen. The dads absorbed the setting in reverent awe, then turned excitedly to their sons to point out their favorite players. But their sons ignored them. Instead, the boys stood with their backs to the field, transfixed by the enormous video screen towering over the grandstand as it flashed images of the very same players they could watch, in the flesh, if only they turned around. Nothing the dads did seemed to distract their sons from the screen for more than a few seconds.

We’ve written before about the power of screen-based visual stimuli, but we think it’s a theme worth revisiting. Many who struggle with problematic porn use have a history of prioritizing screens over lived experience from a young age. Perhaps this resulted from a predisposition for compulsive behavior, evolved as a coping mechanism for trauma, or took root in something else entirely. Whatever the origin of our attraction to screens, we, too, found ourselves compelled to stare at the Jumbotron at the ballgame. We also felt panic and anger when our parents pulled us away from our video games. We relied on aimlessly surfing cable channels and web sites as a way to tune out stress. We felt an inexplicable craving to fight the losing battle of keeping up with email and social media. It’s small wonder that internet pornography, a particularly powerful visual stimulus, caught, held, and eventually demanded our obsessional attention.

The struggle against our seemingly-autonomic response to screens can feel overwhelming at times. The darn things are everywhere, and to some degree we cannot (and should not) avoid them. And yet, there’s something powerful about seeing others turn away from the lived world in favor of the virtual one that can prompt us to re-confront our predilections. Breaking out of our conditioning for screens may even require seizing on those moments and responding them with action. We might strike up a conversation about what we’ve observed. We might write a journal entry or a blog post (natch). Or, though it might pain us to do it, we might turn off the playoff game, take our child outside, and have a catch. In those moments, we weaken the hold screens once had on our lives, and lessen the chance they'll hold sway over those we love. Surely, that’s cause for hope.

If you struggle with screens or are worried about someone who does, the resources collected here may help.

Does it matter if you have it all wrong?

9/30/2016

Doctors we know sometimes lament the internet’s influence on their patient interactions. They spent years developing their medical expertise. Their patients did not. But, because medical information is widely available on the internet, patients often arrive at appointments with firmly-held, and incorrect, self-diagnoses. Research shows doctors can mitigate the tension created by these false self-diagnoses by delivering quality care. But, it’s clear the internet has the potential to interfere with doctor-patient relationships, and to cause everyone unwarranted (di)stress.

We suspect that people who seek mental health treatment for pornography use problems are as susceptible as any other kind of patient to erroneous self-diagnosis. Because the public perceives porn use as potentially harmful, and addictions of all stripes are in the news nowadays, people are bound to show up in therapists’ offices believing themselves addicted to porn, some mistakenly so. For this reason, at least one commentator, Dr. David Ley, has argued that the label “porn addiction” does far more harm to people than porn use does, and that a vast treatment industry unethically fuels “porn panic” for cynically commercial reasons.

We are not so sure. A recent article by Robert Weiss, LCSW, CSAT-S, acknowledges the potential for mistaken self-diagnosis (and professional misdiagnosis) of pornography addiction. But Weiss also posits that most porn users who seek treatment for their porn use do so because they meet objective diagnostic criteria for addiction - namely, preoccupation to the point of obsession, loss of control characterized by frequent failed attempts to stop, and all manner of negative consequences. (These are broadly the same criteria that are used for diagnosing other addictions, whether substance-related or behavioral.) Weiss emphasizes the importance of adhering to these diagnostic criteria in choosing appropriate therapy for a person who seeks mental health treatment relating to porn use.

Weiss’s viewpoint seems to echo research that seeking mental health counseling represents a significant hurdle for many people, particularly young men. Underutilization of mental health resources in the U.S. has been associated with negative attitudes about seeking help for a mental health problem. We suspect that by the time the typical (young, male) porn user seeks counseling related to his porn use, more often than not competent mental health services will tend to do him good.

Of course, the devil is in the rigor of applying diagnostic criteria, in the choice of treatment indicated by the diagnosis, and in the quality of the treatment itself. A misdiagnosis of porn addiction could harm a patient if it led to the wrong therapeutic approach, or if it caused more distress than it addressed. Then again, a false diagnosis might be harmless, or even lead (circuitously, perhaps) to positive outcomes. After all, therapy aimed at one issue often results in revealing other, previously unrecognized areas for analysis and progress.

The more salient question, we think, is whether it is societally harmful for people to be seeking treatment for a self-diagnosis of “porn addiction” in the first place, even if that diagnosis is incorrect. This, it seems to us, is a key distinction between the viewpoints we’ve linked to above. Dr. Ley sees harm in people diagnosing themselves as addicted to porn, because he believes the misdiagnosis can cause new mental health issues (depression, anxiety, etc.) in otherwise healthy people, and lead to treatment that amplifies that harm. Weiss (one of those practitioners Dr. Ley seems to decry), in contrast, unmistakably adheres to the fundamental premise that competent mental health care is usually a net positive for anyone who feels distressed enough to seek it, even if seeking it for the wrong initial reason. As Weiss makes clear, good therapy may include helping a patient who believes he is “addicted” to porn to see that he is, in fact, not. But it also must acknowledge the potential for addiction treatment as an appropriate way to address problematic porn use.

For what it’s worth, here at PornHelp we think mental health is important, and that anytime a person seeks mental health counseling for something they find distressing, they are enhancing their opportunities for positive growth. Though there may well be substandard (even crackpot) practitioners in the treatment field, we cannot subscribe to Dr. Ley’s view that only charlatans acknowledge porn use as a problem that can be addressed through established addiction treatment techniques, like cognitive behavioral therapy and twelve-step work. Indeed, these approaches, when competently applied, foster discovery and analysis of the sort of “problem behind the problem” that Dr. Ley and Weiss both seem to agree can underly a person’s feelings of distress about porn use.

If you feel distressed by your porn use to the point of wanting help, you can explore your options here.

Journal Club: This Behavioral Sciences Article Rings True For Us

8/30/2016

We have written about the often contrary claims made by commentators about the current state of research on, and clinical understanding of, problematic internet pornography use (a.k.a. “pornography addiction”) and its effects. On one hand, a body of scientific literature appears to support the view that problematic pornography use qualifies as an addiction and often leads to sexual problems including, notably, erectile dysfunction. On the other hand, a vocal group of skeptics use words like “pseudo-science” and “moral panic” to dismiss research linking pornography to sexual dysfunction, and decry “porn addiction” as the invention of a treatment industry in search of a new and profitable problem to solve.

We at PornHelp overcame an addiction-like dependence on internet pornography, and as such tend to favor the former view. That said, we don’t claim to be able to vouch for the quality or reliability of scientific research that is beyond our learning. Often, we are only able to catch the general drift of articles in science journals, and compare the conclusions to our own admittedly anecdotal experiences in order to form a judgment. Still, regardless of how snowed we are by the technical minutiae, we take notice when an article captures the essence of what it was like for us to struggle with porn, particularly if it also makes tangible recommendations about ways to isolate and test factors that could contribute to internet porn becoming a source of distress and destruction in a person’s life, as it did in ours.

“Is Internet Pornography Causing Sexual Dysfunctions? A Review with Clinical Reports”, published earlier this month in the journal Behavioral Sciences, fits that bill. With seven United States Navy doctors among its co-authors, this new article pairs a review of the latest scientific research on internet porn use and sexual dysfunction with three case studies from the Navy authors’ clinical practices. It argues that current research supports the conclusion that internet pornography is a key contributor to the sharp rise in reports of sexual dysfunction among men under forty in the past decade. It also makes detailed and, we think, apt recommendations for future areas of study.

The article follows an analytical trajectory that will look familiar to anyone whose life has been consumed by problem porn use. The authors begin by proposing that research on internet pornography establishes it as a “super-normal” stimulus that is particularly effective in catching and retaining the brain’s attention, a quality known as “salience.” This is so, the authors contend, because internet porn is an “exaggerated imitation of something our brains evolved to pursue,” and because internet porn's near-infinite availability and variety feeds an equally hard-wired evolutionary preference for novelty. The authors next point to research that suggests “chronic Internet pornography use may become a self-reinforcing activity.” That is, the more you use, the more you want and need to use. If that sounds like an addiction process to you, it does to the authors also. Reviewing the symptoms reported by one of the authors’ patients, they draw a parallel between those symptoms and the criteria for internet gaming disorder, a widely accepted addiction diagnosis.

Finally, the authors review a large body of neuroscience research, including a study co-authored by one of the most prominent “skeptics” mentioned above, and posit that the findings support their hypothesis that sexual dysfunction results from “neuroadaptations” in internet pornography users’ brains. Things get a little complicated here, but the basic idea is that internet porn use can change the brain in two meaningful ways: it can make a user more sensitive to “cues” associated with using internet porn, while it also makes a user less sensitive to the “rewards” of normally rewarding activities, such as partnered sex. The authors propose that this combination of brain changes results in users’ desire to consume porn supplanting their desire to have partnered sex, and to a decline in sexual arousal from partnered sex.

People who struggle with problematic porn use know firsthand what these changes are all about. The first change is responsible for that sudden, insistent craving to use porn that arises after seeing a seemingly random image - say, an advertisement for a beach vacation. The second change is what builds up porn tolerance, prompting a need for more volume and variety to stay sexually excited and a loss of interest in real-life sexual situations. Now, as we’ve mentioned, we can’t speak to the specific evidence of “neuroadaptations” described in the research, much of which is, candidly, over our heads. But, we can say that hair-trigger cravings for porn (but not sex), an unquenchable thirst for more and different content, and a near complete loss of interest in and arousal from partnered sex, sums up the experiences of many former problem porn users pretty darn well. Ok, back to the article.

After reviewing the existing evidence, the authors suggest several avenues for future research that we think are well-tuned to advancing the discussion of how best to treat problematic porn use and associated sexual dysfunction. The authors push for more “intervention” studies, where a group of internet pornography users reporting sexual dysfunction have internet pornography removed from their lives for a period of time and are monitored to see if their sexual dysfunction dissipates. We find it surprising that only a few researchers have taken this approach, considering that widespread posts on internet forums such as NoFap.com and RebootNation.org report that refraining from internet pornography use restored sexual function and desire for partnered sex that had gone missing during a period of frequent porn use. The authors also suggest adding more nuance to correlative studies. Instead of simply using frequency of internet porn use as a variable (as many studies have thus far), the authors suggest evaluating more subtle and telling formulations, such as how many years a person has masturbated with porn compared to years masturbating without porn, the ratio of orgasms a user has with pornography to orgasms a user has in partnered sex over a given time period, and the age at which a user’s pornography use began.

We think these suggestions are on-target because they capture what many of us have experienced. Anecdotally, things take a turn toward the destructive when users isolate themselves from their lives and loved ones in order to find time to use internet porn. The variables the authors propose may help identify factors contributing to that turning point, and perhaps even prevent it.

“Is Internet Pornography Causing Sexual Dysfunctions? A Review with Clinical Reports” will not end the debate that continues to rage in the popular press about whether pornography addiction "exists" and whether pornography use can lead to problems like erectile dysfunction. But this article does make a sophisticated and hyperbole-free contribution to the discussion. For those who know firsthand the difficulty of struggling with a pornography use problem, and the frustration of trying to find useful information about their condition, that’s a welcome step in the right direction.