It Is People Not Porn: Day 16
I realize that I, like so many, throw around the term “Porn Addiction” very casually without thinking too much about its meaning or the implications of saying it. First of all, there is no such thing as a porn addiction. It is not a clinically recognized term, and there is very little research that supports using the term medically. What is more likely is that people have a porn compulsion. According to an article titled “Everything You Need to Know About Pornography ‘Addiction’”, the difference between an addiction and compulsion is whether or not the behavior is helpful or harmful. With a porn compulsion, someone may feel that they have no control over their consumption of porn but their reason for watching porn is to deal with stress or anxiety, and therefore it can actually be useful to them. On the other hand, a porn addiction would be if someone felt that they had no control over their porn consumption and they were being harmed by watching porn (ie. by losing their relationship).
In some ways I think that it can be helpful to speak of excessive porn use in terms of addiction, and in other ways I do not. Whenever I try to discuss porn addiction with my more religious friends they are very much in support of the idea that by and large porn is a bad thing. When I discuss porn addiction with my more secular friends, they do not see that there is an issue. I have been hard pressed to speak to someone who does not either take the lackadaisical approach to the issue and sees no problem with it, or who takes the very conservative approach and thinks that it is one of the biggest problems. As I see it, this lack of their being more moderate discussions about porn and porn addictions is the real issue. Again, I think it would be helpful to be more specific when using the term porn addiction, but it is difficult to have any discussion when nobody is comfortable to talk in the first place.
Moderacy when it comes to politics, religion, or social issues does not seem to be a well supported position given that most people believe being radical is what creates change. Kansas, Idaho, Utah, and Florida all have legislation which seeks to protect citizens from the dangers of pornography. To me, this is stupid. It is also stupid, however, to let everyone have access to porn. Although porn is supposed to be 18+, all you have to do is click a button that says you are 18, and most porn sites do not even have this feature. I was shown porn for the first time when I was 10 by a friend 3 years older than me. This is stupid. The point remains that an all or nothing approach to porn is currently and will continue to be ineffective. It is the same with alcohol, weed, and heavy drugs like cocaine and meth. I am not trying to say that all of these drugs are equally harmful, because they are absolutely not, but I am saying that they have the potential to cause harm. Porn is the same, it has the potential to cause harm. The question is then, what is an adequate solution that does not take the all or nothing approach which has failed for so long?
Well, this is where I think more research needs to be done. It first needs to be recognized that porn can have both positive and negative consequences, and that it is not inherently bad. Research then needs to be conducted to identify how the negative effects of porn use can be most effectively mitigated. Maybe this is by being more stringent about checking the age of people watching porn, maybe this is by setting time limits on how long a person can stay on a particular porn site, I really don’t know. Even these strategies seem futile. At the end of the day, preserving a person’s autonomy is what is most important to me, so maybe it would be best just to leave the decision making up to them. Then again, a person who is truly addicted is not fully autonomous. Still, it remains that it is the people and not the porn that is the problem.
Day 16.
