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Yeah, but porn addiction is a consequence I think. If all men could get laid whenever they'd feel like it with a willing partner, then porn use would plummet.

Yeah, but porn addiction is a consequence I think. If all men could get laid whenever they'd feel like it with a willing partner, then porn use would plummet. I haven't met many women into porn, probably because a one night stand is just a zero effort tinder swipe away, from the comfort of your pijamas in your living room. As a man, you end up turning to porn or paying for sex, or drinking or doing drugs, to compensate the lack of intimacy in your personal life, as that just leads to depression and lack of any self worth.

CodeSgt 4y ago
I'm not so sure. The average age someone is the first time they watch porn is 11, well before some of the issues you mentioned would manifest. When a porn addiction is developed before you hit your teens it's hard to blame a dysfunctional sex life on externalities.
- lotsofpulp 4y ago
  I do not think an “addiction” is the problem. Obviously, everyone prefers the real thing to porn. What has changed is the availability of porn introducing an extremely low cost alternative to sex, reducing the impetus for making the effort to find a partner (relative to previous times). Maybe even reducing the impetus to putting in the effort to seduce an existing partner! Of course, it is not uniform across all men of course. I suspect those who are able to attract/interact with partners more easily will opt to do that, and those that are not will opt for the easier, lower cost option (even though there may be other long term costs).
  - CodeSgt 4y ago
    > Obviously, everyone prefers the real thing to porn. That makes intuitive sense, but is far from the reality. Many men, even in otherwise healthy relationships, prefer porn. Again I really wish more data was collected on this but anecdotally I've seen hundreds on online discussions from both women who are concerned about their partner and declining sex life and from men who want to quit using porn to better service the needs of their partner. Porn addiction is real, serious, and more common than you may think.
    - lotsofpulp 4y ago
      I think what I am trying to convey is that it is not an addiction like nicotine, caffeine, alcohol, heroine, where the brain wants the substance itself. With porn, it is the brain making a cost benefit calculation that putting in the effort for the real thing is not worth the cost relative to cost/benefit ratio of porn. As in do I make all the effort to get my wife in the mood, or do I open a website and be done with it. Or do I control my diet and exercise, or do I open a website and be done with it.
      - deleted 4y ago
        [deleted]
      - CodeSgt 4y ago
        I understand what you're trying to convey and I'm sorry but it's just not true. Brain scans show the pathways for porn addiction are very similar to those found in cocain and amphetamine addicts. Perhaps this is true for you, but don't discredit porn addiction as not a "real addiction" when it's an established fact that it is one on par with substance abuse.
        huachimingo 4y ago
        An addiction can be sometimes a masked emotional need/problem. -I want porn, because I carve intimacy -I want to smoke, so I can relax or be seen as Y. -I drink a lot of coffee because I dont have time for Quality Sleep.
        CodeSgt 4y ago
        Almost every single drug addict and alcoholic has an emotional basis for their addiction. Be it childhood trauma, a predisposition to anxiety/depression, etc. The fact that these reasons exist doesn't make the addiction any less of an addiction. It's often a reason why rehab centers try to take a holistic approach and not only tackle the addiction, but the surrounding lifestyle choices that further enable the addiction. It's not "addiction is a masked emotional needs problem" it's, "addiction is often accompanied by emotional needs problems". Subtly different, but different nonetheless.
leksak 4y ago
I think that "probably" could make due with some nuance. A Tinder swipe away is a very high-risk way of having sex. There's so many men out there that truly do not treat women well, and that one wouldn't want to have sex with. Yet, nothing inhibits them from having very well-curated Tinder profiles.
- R0b0t1 4y ago
  But there's so many men out there that woman can probably find someone, at least in a normal-ish city. Most men get zilch. I think we're seeing some of the less obvious effects of that now. Men don't get to have a sexual exploration or slut phase and this is... who knows, stunting their emotional growth? Among other things. As each sex gets older, women tend to accumulate more experience, and mock men who may be lacking it.
  - pr0zac 4y ago
    The statistics disagree. Men on average have sex earlier[1] and with more people during their lifetime[2][3] and a higher percentage of people find theres negative stigma surrounding women having a high number of partners than men having a low number[4]. 1: https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nsfg/key_statistics/s.htm#sexualactivity https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nsfg/key_statistics/s.htm#sexualact... 2: https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nsfg/key_statistics/n.htm#numberlifetime https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nsfg/key_statistics/n.htm#numberlif... 3: https://www.ipsos.com/en-uk/sexual-fantasies-our-misperceptions-about-sex-lives-young-people https://www.ipsos.com/en-uk/sexual-fantasies-our-mispercepti... 4: https://bespokesurgical.com/2021/06/24/sexual-history-by-state/ https://bespokesurgical.com/2021/06/24/sexual-history-by-sta...
    - R0b0t1 4y ago
      I've found either matching numbers, small difference (as you seem to be citing?), or skew in favor of women having more partners for 90s-00s cohorts. The stigma surrounding people with a high number of partners is something I've seen applied to both, and statistically, it does seem to invert marriage length.
fttx_ 4y ago
I don't believe that's it. Plenty of men in relationships with a "willing partner" use heaps of porn, and in many circumstances prefer using porn to sex. And yes, having _sex_ is only a swipe away for women. But having decent sex that you enjoy and is another matter altogether. And that's before thinking about safety. If I was looking for reasons why fewer women seem to be into porn, I'd say it's because the vast majority of porn is explicitly made to cater to male desires.
- BlargMcLarg 4y ago
  You need to put more nuance on what a "willing partner" means, as it's incredibly important. Many stories I hear regarding "willing partner left aside for porn" boil down to a passive person expecting their partner to just pick up on clues while having a history of being denied and making zero effort to overcome it. Or worse, a passive, submissive person expecting men to just push their way through any resistance and keep trying, when men are actively taught to respect a woman's boundaries. For many of these "porn addiction" cases, there's more going on than just "he is addicted to porn and now he won't have sex with me". Communication is a two-way street and women are a little eager to play the 'passive princess who can do no wrong' without realizing most of society is training men to avoid making assumptions.
  - corrral 4y ago
    > Or worse, a passive, submissive person expecting men to just push their way through any resistance and keep trying, when men are actively taught to respect a woman's boundaries. Not to go into too much detail, but I've had to seriously recalibrate my "respect women" upbringing to make my wife happy. And I'm not even talking sub/dom stuff or outright rape-fantasy things like I've heard tell of from my (somewhat shell-shocked) unattached and actively-dating friends. Sex is weird.
    - whynotminot 4y ago
      I have to admit this part is hard for me to process. I know on an intellectual level that real life and fantasy are different things. But it's really hard to hear all day long from every source how terrible men are, and how we need to be gentler creatures. And then a shocking percentage of women actually do seem to want you to be that animal they decry as soon as you get into the bedroom.
bitwize 4y ago
Women have different sexual desires that aren't met by the simple act of fucking, so just watching two people fucking is far less gratifying. For them, sexual desire is much more bound up with psychology and the unfolding of a relationship -- especially with a handsome, powerful, dangerous person. Power and danger are to women what big tits are to men, hence the thriving market in vampire/werewolf/billionaire/pirate/surgeon erotica which does play into women's desires in ways most visual porn does not.
moomoo11 4y ago
I wish there’s some discovery on another planet that makes people venture out like in the old days. Fuck it I’ll lead or be part of a crew to get on a space ship and maybe never come back. Being stuck at a laptop all day is so fucking boring now because work from home means I’d rather not. I want to be out and about. Not stuck inside ALL day (along with everyone else).
- vkou 4y ago
  People do venture out like the old days, there's never any shortage, of, say, people wanting to establish a new home across the Atlantic because they are fleeing religious or ethnic persecution, or just trying to migrate for better economic opportunities. We don't want them here, though, which is why they can't do it. If pre-contact America/Australia had strong passport controls, Europeans wouldn't have been 'venturing out to it', either.
  - moomoo11 4y ago
    I meant facing the unknown. I can find all the information about moving across the Atlantic because it’s not anything new or novel at this point. But five hundred years ago that was a journey of a lifetime and at the end were either riches or death. Worst case scenario if I move across the Atlantic is that I don’t go bankrupt because I had a medical emergency. You know what? That doesn’t sound so bad.
- imtringued 4y ago
  Try your luck in India or Africa. My chances of going there are slim though so you're going to have to do it alone.
pr0zac 4y ago
Whenever I see these "women don't need porn cause they can just go on tinder and get laid" arguments I always find they are kind of unempathetic and do a bad job recognizing the reality of sex and pornography for both genders. A one night stand is way way more risky for women in most ways whether with regard to the risk of being assaulted or catching STIs or unplanned pregnancy. On top of that, society heavily views sexually promiscuous women more negatively than the same behaviour in men. All of this means women can't treat no-strings sex as flippantly as men can and you shouldn't discount those risks and costs by saying sex is a swipe away for them. It is very much like if I were to say any man could get laid whenever they want by hiring a sex worker while ignoring the risks and costs involved. These arguments also seem to ignore that the vast majority of women are not so universally attractive that getting on a dating site immediately results in a plethora of matches that they would want to have sex with (even ignoring my first point). If they lacked any standards and were willing to have sex with anyone yes it would be very easy to find a partner, but thats true for the vast majority of men as well. The fact is most people, quite reasonably, only want to have sex with people they find attractive in situations where they feel safe, even when its only meant for physical pleasure, and this limiting factor greatly reduces the number of opportunities that are available regardless of the person's gender. These arguments also don't fit with the real world statistics. In the US men on average have sex sooner than women[1] and have sex with more partners during their lifetime[2][3]. It differs by country and its possible to find studies and demographics where the more promiscuous gender switches, but the numbers never align with an assertion like "women don't like porn cause they can just go have real sex instead". While its true a larger percentage of men consume porn, its very clear a large number of women do as well. You likely think you haven't met women that enjoy it because of stigma making them unwilling to discuss it openly. The biggest pornographic video site finds more than 1/3rd of their visitors are female[4]. Its also possibly because most discussions you see use a too narrow definition of "pornography". For instance, academic analyses often do not include types of pornography heavily preferred by women. When they do include things such as written erotica and not just images or video they find a majority (60%) of women enjoy porn[5]. And hopefully its clear I'm not trying to attack you personally. One study I came across while digging up the numbers found American men think women on average have 27 and men 21 sexual partners in their lifetime while the real numbers they found were 12 for women and 20 for men[3]. The perception that women have more sex is quite common and shared by a large number of men despite not being true. I simply hope my wasting an hour of my life writing all this up with citations will do a bit to change that. 1: https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nsfg/key_statistics/s.htm#sexualactivity https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nsfg/key_statistics/s.htm#sexualact... 2: https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nsfg/key_statistics/n.htm#numberlifetime https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nsfg/key_statistics/n.htm#numberlif... 3: https://www.ipsos.com/en-uk/sexual-fantasies-our-misperceptions-about-sex-lives-young-people https://www.ipsos.com/en-uk/sexual-fantasies-our-mispercepti... 4: https://www.pornhub.com/insights/yir-2021 https://www.pornhub.com/insights/yir-2021 5: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/30358432/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/30358432/

CodeSgt 4y ago

I'm not so sure. The average age someone is the first time they watch porn is 11, well before some of the issues you mentioned would manifest. When a porn addiction is developed before you hit your teens it's hard to blame a dysfunctional sex life on externalities.

lotsofpulp 4y ago
I do not think an “addiction” is the problem. Obviously, everyone prefers the real thing to porn. What has changed is the availability of porn introducing an extremely low cost alternative to sex, reducing the impetus for making the effort to find a partner (relative to previous times). Maybe even reducing the impetus to putting in the effort to seduce an existing partner! Of course, it is not uniform across all men of course. I suspect those who are able to attract/interact with partners more easily will opt to do that, and those that are not will opt for the easier, lower cost option (even though there may be other long term costs).
- CodeSgt 4y ago
  > Obviously, everyone prefers the real thing to porn. That makes intuitive sense, but is far from the reality. Many men, even in otherwise healthy relationships, prefer porn. Again I really wish more data was collected on this but anecdotally I've seen hundreds on online discussions from both women who are concerned about their partner and declining sex life and from men who want to quit using porn to better service the needs of their partner. Porn addiction is real, serious, and more common than you may think.
  - lotsofpulp 4y ago
    I think what I am trying to convey is that it is not an addiction like nicotine, caffeine, alcohol, heroine, where the brain wants the substance itself. With porn, it is the brain making a cost benefit calculation that putting in the effort for the real thing is not worth the cost relative to cost/benefit ratio of porn. As in do I make all the effort to get my wife in the mood, or do I open a website and be done with it. Or do I control my diet and exercise, or do I open a website and be done with it.
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
    - CodeSgt 4y ago
      I understand what you're trying to convey and I'm sorry but it's just not true. Brain scans show the pathways for porn addiction are very similar to those found in cocain and amphetamine addicts. Perhaps this is true for you, but don't discredit porn addiction as not a "real addiction" when it's an established fact that it is one on par with substance abuse.
      - huachimingo 4y ago
        An addiction can be sometimes a masked emotional need/problem. -I want porn, because I carve intimacy -I want to smoke, so I can relax or be seen as Y. -I drink a lot of coffee because I dont have time for Quality Sleep.
        CodeSgt 4y ago
        Almost every single drug addict and alcoholic has an emotional basis for their addiction. Be it childhood trauma, a predisposition to anxiety/depression, etc. The fact that these reasons exist doesn't make the addiction any less of an addiction. It's often a reason why rehab centers try to take a holistic approach and not only tackle the addiction, but the surrounding lifestyle choices that further enable the addiction. It's not "addiction is a masked emotional needs problem" it's, "addiction is often accompanied by emotional needs problems". Subtly different, but different nonetheless.

leksak 4y ago

I think that "probably" could make due with some nuance. A Tinder swipe away is a very high-risk way of having sex. There's so many men out there that truly do not treat women well, and that one wouldn't want to have sex with. Yet, nothing inhibits them from having very well-curated Tinder profiles.

R0b0t1 4y ago
But there's so many men out there that woman can probably find someone, at least in a normal-ish city. Most men get zilch. I think we're seeing some of the less obvious effects of that now. Men don't get to have a sexual exploration or slut phase and this is... who knows, stunting their emotional growth? Among other things. As each sex gets older, women tend to accumulate more experience, and mock men who may be lacking it.
- pr0zac 4y ago
  The statistics disagree. Men on average have sex earlier[1] and with more people during their lifetime[2][3] and a higher percentage of people find theres negative stigma surrounding women having a high number of partners than men having a low number[4]. 1: https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nsfg/key_statistics/s.htm#sexualactivity https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nsfg/key_statistics/s.htm#sexualact... 2: https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nsfg/key_statistics/n.htm#numberlifetime https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nsfg/key_statistics/n.htm#numberlif... 3: https://www.ipsos.com/en-uk/sexual-fantasies-our-misperceptions-about-sex-lives-young-people https://www.ipsos.com/en-uk/sexual-fantasies-our-mispercepti... 4: https://bespokesurgical.com/2021/06/24/sexual-history-by-state/ https://bespokesurgical.com/2021/06/24/sexual-history-by-sta...
  - R0b0t1 4y ago
    I've found either matching numbers, small difference (as you seem to be citing?), or skew in favor of women having more partners for 90s-00s cohorts. The stigma surrounding people with a high number of partners is something I've seen applied to both, and statistically, it does seem to invert marriage length.

fttx_ 4y ago

I don't believe that's it. Plenty of men in relationships with a "willing partner" use heaps of porn, and in many circumstances prefer using porn to sex. And yes, having _sex_ is only a swipe away for women. But having decent sex that you enjoy and is another matter altogether. And that's before thinking about safety. If I was looking for reasons why fewer women seem to be into porn, I'd say it's because the vast majority of porn is explicitly made to cater to male desires.

BlargMcLarg 4y ago
You need to put more nuance on what a "willing partner" means, as it's incredibly important. Many stories I hear regarding "willing partner left aside for porn" boil down to a passive person expecting their partner to just pick up on clues while having a history of being denied and making zero effort to overcome it. Or worse, a passive, submissive person expecting men to just push their way through any resistance and keep trying, when men are actively taught to respect a woman's boundaries. For many of these "porn addiction" cases, there's more going on than just "he is addicted to porn and now he won't have sex with me". Communication is a two-way street and women are a little eager to play the 'passive princess who can do no wrong' without realizing most of society is training men to avoid making assumptions.
- corrral 4y ago
  > Or worse, a passive, submissive person expecting men to just push their way through any resistance and keep trying, when men are actively taught to respect a woman's boundaries. Not to go into too much detail, but I've had to seriously recalibrate my "respect women" upbringing to make my wife happy. And I'm not even talking sub/dom stuff or outright rape-fantasy things like I've heard tell of from my (somewhat shell-shocked) unattached and actively-dating friends. Sex is weird.
  - whynotminot 4y ago
    I have to admit this part is hard for me to process. I know on an intellectual level that real life and fantasy are different things. But it's really hard to hear all day long from every source how terrible men are, and how we need to be gentler creatures. And then a shocking percentage of women actually do seem to want you to be that animal they decry as soon as you get into the bedroom.

bitwize 4y ago

Women have different sexual desires that aren't met by the simple act of fucking, so just watching two people fucking is far less gratifying. For them, sexual desire is much more bound up with psychology and the unfolding of a relationship -- especially with a handsome, powerful, dangerous person. Power and danger are to women what big tits are to men, hence the thriving market in vampire/werewolf/billionaire/pirate/surgeon erotica which does play into women's desires in ways most visual porn does not.

moomoo11 4y ago

I wish there’s some discovery on another planet that makes people venture out like in the old days. Fuck it I’ll lead or be part of a crew to get on a space ship and maybe never come back. Being stuck at a laptop all day is so fucking boring now because work from home means I’d rather not. I want to be out and about. Not stuck inside ALL day (along with everyone else).

vkou 4y ago
People do venture out like the old days, there's never any shortage, of, say, people wanting to establish a new home across the Atlantic because they are fleeing religious or ethnic persecution, or just trying to migrate for better economic opportunities. We don't want them here, though, which is why they can't do it. If pre-contact America/Australia had strong passport controls, Europeans wouldn't have been 'venturing out to it', either.
- moomoo11 4y ago
  I meant facing the unknown. I can find all the information about moving across the Atlantic because it’s not anything new or novel at this point. But five hundred years ago that was a journey of a lifetime and at the end were either riches or death. Worst case scenario if I move across the Atlantic is that I don’t go bankrupt because I had a medical emergency. You know what? That doesn’t sound so bad.
imtringued 4y ago
Try your luck in India or Africa. My chances of going there are slim though so you're going to have to do it alone.

pr0zac 4y ago

Whenever I see these "women don't need porn cause they can just go on tinder and get laid" arguments I always find they are kind of unempathetic and do a bad job recognizing the reality of sex and pornography for both genders. A one night stand is way way more risky for women in most ways whether with regard to the risk of being assaulted or catching STIs or unplanned pregnancy. On top of that, society heavily views sexually promiscuous women more negatively than the same behaviour in men. All of this means women can't treat no-strings sex as flippantly as men can and you shouldn't discount those risks and costs by saying sex is a swipe away for them. It is very much like if I were to say any man could get laid whenever they want by hiring a sex worker while ignoring the risks and costs involved. These arguments also seem to ignore that the vast majority of women are not so universally attractive that getting on a dating site immediately results in a plethora of matches that they would want to have sex with (even ignoring my first point). If they lacked any standards and were willing to have sex with anyone yes it would be very easy to find a partner, but thats true for the vast majority of men as well. The fact is most people, quite reasonably, only want to have sex with people they find attractive in situations where they feel safe, even when its only meant for physical pleasure, and this limiting factor greatly reduces the number of opportunities that are available regardless of the person's gender. These arguments also don't fit with the real world statistics. In the US men on average have sex sooner than women[1] and have sex with more partners during their lifetime[2][3]. It differs by country and its possible to find studies and demographics where the more promiscuous gender switches, but the numbers never align with an assertion like "women don't like porn cause they can just go have real sex instead". While its true a larger percentage of men consume porn, its very clear a large number of women do as well. You likely think you haven't met women that enjoy it because of stigma making them unwilling to discuss it openly. The biggest pornographic video site finds more than 1/3rd of their visitors are female[4]. Its also possibly because most discussions you see use a too narrow definition of "pornography". For instance, academic analyses often do not include types of pornography heavily preferred by women. When they do include things such as written erotica and not just images or video they find a majority (60%) of women enjoy porn[5]. And hopefully its clear I'm not trying to attack you personally. One study I came across while digging up the numbers found American men think women on average have 27 and men 21 sexual partners in their lifetime while the real numbers they found were 12 for women and 20 for men[3]. The perception that women have more sex is quite common and shared by a large number of men despite not being true. I simply hope my wasting an hour of my life writing all this up with citations will do a bit to change that. 1: https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nsfg/key_statistics/s.htm#sexualactivity https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nsfg/key_statistics/s.htm#sexualact... 2: https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nsfg/key_statistics/n.htm#numberlifetime https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nsfg/key_statistics/n.htm#numberlif... 3: https://www.ipsos.com/en-uk/sexual-fantasies-our-misperceptions-about-sex-lives-young-people https://www.ipsos.com/en-uk/sexual-fantasies-our-mispercepti... 4: https://www.pornhub.com/insights/yir-2021 https://www.pornhub.com/insights/yir-2021 5: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/30358432/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/30358432/