Porn is not unhealthy. At least not by itself. What can be unhealthy are your perceptions if you end up expecting that everything in life should be like in porn. Porn is a dream, and as long as you keep in mind that porn is fantasy, then you won’t have any problems.
The “porn addiction” mantra is fashionable nowadays. Exponents of this theory purport that porn increases dopamine, which leads to a lower testosterone level which in turn leads to an acceleration of ageing. They say that men nowadays have 20 % less testosterone than similar men 30 years ago, and they explain that this is because men don’t do enough sports and watch too much porn. This doesn’t hold up well when you look at reality with cold eyes.
- Dopamine is released when one does an enjoyable activity. Yes, it can be porn, but it can be foods and it can be sports (among other things). Do we hear calls to ban chocolate or jogging ? Yet both lead to an increased level of dopamine… Still, exponents of the theory say that men should stop watching porn and do some sports instead. Dopamine for dopamine, what’s the difference ? (Being active is good for you, however, I’m not saying one should be a couch potato ! But controlling your dopamine it won’t.)
- Explaining the lowering of testosterone by greater porn consumption is an intellectual shortcut of epic proportion. First, even if we agree that men (notice that women are forgotten/not chastised in this debate) watch more porn than 30 years ago, still not all men do. Yet the testosterone lowering is generalized. So maybe a more widely impacting phenomenon is the cause of the problem ? How about pollution for instance ? That can’t be ! There is no Satan involved !
Some clinicians describe patients who report problems decreasing their sexual behaviours, such as viewing many hours of sexual films online every day, as sexually “addicted” or “hypersexual”. Our study tested whether people who report such problems look like other addicts from their brain responses to sexual images.Studies of drug addictions, such as cocaine, have shown a consistent pattern of brain response to images of the drug of abuse, so we predicted that we should see the same pattern in people who report problems with sex if it was, in fact, an addiction. We found that the brain’s response to sexual pictures was not predicted by any of three different questionnaire measures of hypersexuality. Brain response was only predicted by a measure of sexual desire. In other words,hypersexuality does not appear to explain brain differences in sexual response any more than just having a high libido. These findings represent a major challenge to existing theories of “sex addiction” because the brains of porn users did not respond to the images like the addicts’ brain to their drug of addiction.
Always be wary when certain types of pleasure are chastised. For the brain, pleasure is pleasure. For the brain, the response to pleasure is the same, whatever the source. Any two activities deemed pleasurable are going to trigger the same pleasure reaction in the brain (of course, I am not including in this discussion any activities involving drugs of any kind, because then you have an external factor changing the brain chemistry). Despite this, some people would still like you to believe that there are good pleasures and bad pleasures.
Remember how masturbation is supposed to make you blind ? The truth, however, is that on the chemical and neurological levels, the brain makes no difference whatsoever between sexual pleasure as a result of masturbation and sexual pleasure as a result of coitus. No difference whatsoever. No difference. In spite of this, the idea that masturbation is going to make you blind is still going around, truth be damned.
Always be wary, because it means that someone has something to win from your bad feelings. Because someone thinks you can be controlled once you believe you are weak and corrupt.
Of course, like anything in life, porn can also be a bad thing. A little water will give you a glass to drink. A little more will give you a bath to clean yourself up. But too much water will drown you. Looking at porn when you masturbate or to enjoy the views isn’t bad. But watching porn all day most definitely is problematic. Yet the problem here is not porn, but what you are doing with it.
In the meantime, be advised that aural porn is still porn. If it’s your style, it’ll turn you on. It’ll be enjoyable. It will increase your dopamine. Eww !
masturbatorsanctum.tumblr.com/post/150705053003/hi-i-love-your-blog-i-was-wondering-if-you-could
