The effect of porn on teenage boys and young men

[DeviTheGaelet]

Did anyone else hear the section on R5 about porn addiction the other day? They spoke to a doctor who is looking into the defects of porn on men. A study in Italy found 40% of young men were having erectile issued, of those 60% were psychologically caused ( I think those were the stats).
The doctor suggested that watching porn during adolescence is training men to be aroused by purely visual stimuli and the visual stimuli are not realistic. As a result they are not being wired to find the smells and touch of actual sex arousing. As a result they are having election issues.
He described porn as "stunt sex" and said it was creating a generation of men who's sexual relationships were with their hand and a screen rather than another person.
I found it really interesting. We talk a lot on here about the harm porn causes women and girls but I've not heard so much about the impact on boys.
I think this should be discussed in PSHE in schools. Maybe this will be the personal impact many men need to see how harmful porn can be.

You cannot "ban" pornography or effectively object to its ubiquitousness without defining it as a something that should be understood in terms of it being a human rights breach and in conflict with equal and just society. IMO.

Can you explain that further, Beachcomber?

What elements of it would breach human rights? The violent elements of it or the viewing of images that have no source provided for them.

102, I'd rather see hubs tackled, and sharing of free material, rather than social media more widely. At least if content is related to social media the viewer cannot claim they have no responsibility to acquire some information about the wellbeing, age and consent of the people involved.

For me its is less a utilitarian issue of human rights and more one of the moral and social health of our culture. Porn breeds contempt, alienation, loneliness, addiction, rage, self-disgust, objectification and commodification. It is the corruption of sex by the market. It turns sex from a thing of love and life into a thing of hate and death.

Agreed qwerty.
tartan my reasoning was that, as pp said, porn is prevalent in social media and therefore eminently accessible by any kid with a phone. Which makes me despair. If this was restricted and access available only through hubs which you needed to sign up to, it would be less likely to be viewed by ppl as a normal /common part of everyday life.

Hate and death are human rights issues though.

You don't have to sign up to hubs, and hubs mean that nobody is really accountable for content.

Ah, ok. ISWYM then!

For me its is less a utilitarian issue of human rights and more one of the moral and social health of our culture. Porn breeds contempt, alienation, loneliness, addiction, rage, self-disgust, objectification and commodification. It is the corruption of sex by the market. It turns sex from a thing of love and life into a thing of hate and death.

qwerty232, oracle

tartansnowman, pornography violates Articles 1, 2 and 5 of the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights

www.un.org/en/universal-declaration-human-rights/

From a feminist perspective, pornography is material which dehumanizes, objectifies and degrades girls and women on the basis of their sex. It is material which sexualizes women's bodies, their skin colour, their abuse, their degradation. Pornographic material normalizes sexual violence against girls and women and the exploitation and abuse of women's bodies for the purpose of entertainment. The violence and abuse in pornography is overwhelmingly gendered with men depicted abusing and degrading women, often several men will be shown abusing a lone woman. This material is sold and distributed on a wide scale and the people whose images it contains have little or no control over that and little or no legal recourse should they want the images removed from the public domain.

There are a few different ways of objecting to pornography; the main ones being on the basis of obscenity law, as a matter of public health and as a human rights violation. Obscenity laws have failed to halt the proliferation of pornography and the extremity of that pornography. Public health is the argument of this thread; that pornography harms children's sexual development and both adult's and children's sexual relationships and gendered interactions. Human rights objections are based on the seemingly radical idea that women are human and that the Declaration of Human Rights applies to us.

I’m fairly sure if they took porn off the internet, there’d only be one website left, and it’d be called Bring back the porn!

beach "pornography violates Articles 1, 2 and 5 of the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights"

Really? Write me an argument for that. Especially Article 1.

qwerty232 "Then there is the Porn 2.0 domain of open platforms in which anyone can publish anything. User-gnerated content is increasingly dominating these sites. Couples and singles make homemade videos in which there are no directors, producers or middle men at all. Of course whatever capitalist pig owns Pornhub is making huge amounts of money whenever a video is clicked on"

You actually think pornhub is making most of its money from amateur videos?

"Women are increasingly embracing porn, depressingly."

Why? Instead of dismissing it as depressing, shouldn't you be more interested in understanding?

Devi "God forbid someone should see a picture of breastfeeding yet porn is fine"

Yes, this is something I want to understand. Maybe if we infiltrated porn with videos of breastfeeding it would become mainstream and no one would get triggered if they saw it in public.

spartacus "I guess a big part women can play in changing attitudes is speaking to their sons about porn, but from my experience many won't because they have dps or dhs who use porn themselves or because they think all men watch it etc."

You are saying that these women think "since it's ok if my husband does it, it's ok for my 10 year old son"? How stupid do they have to be. If "does it" is porn it's fine but if "does it" were say alcohol it wouldn't be fine?

This really annoys me, because the men that have warped views of women were exactly those 10 year olds.

Why don't men just stop watching porn?

Why don't you stop pushing your stunted, myopic moral fetishes onto other people?

Pink, You don't understand how a culture of extreme porn and exploitation of women could possible be considered something that violates the right to equality of dignity for women?

Extraordinary to think that wanting men not to wank over degrading images of women is considered a "stunted, myopic moral fetish"

It's amazing that you think the free expression of female sexuality is degrading when outside of your personal sexual preferences.

Pink
Yes, this is something I want to understand. Maybe if we infiltrated porn with videos of breastfeeding it would become mainstream and no one would get triggered if they saw it in public.

You are joking, aren't you??

So you want to sexualise breastfeeding because ppl (usually male) are uncomfortable with seeing a natural feeding process? Yeah, I can see how that would work out well. So they don't get 'triggered' by seeing it in public. FFS.

"We need firm concrete legal action now."

Perhaps pornography should be viewed/classified the same as the stuff involving children. Progress has been made (I think) in combating those sorts of things. I mean there is a legal framework and enforcement.

Are we discussing "the free expression of female sexuality"? Is that what the multi billion dollar sex industry is founded on? I think not.

I mean, honestly; what is this but a continuation of the old victorian moral prescriptions where men wanted sex, but woman had to firmly lock sexuality within the moral limits of procreation. Where any woman who expressed sexuality beyond the limits of the marriage bed, or for any purpose other than babies, was a fallen (degraded) woman. If you want to play out such old fashioned, barbaric and oppressive gender roles in your life, keep it in your bedroom. I do.

Oh right. So online pornography should be renamed "the free expression of female sexuality".
I would laugh if I could stop crying.