Porn

[idk anymore]

Hey everybody. I was in health class today and we watched a documentary called Brain, Heart, World, by Fight the New Drug. It is extremely anti-porn, talking about how addictive it is. And how it decreases libido and makes you treat women as object. I thought to myself, this is bullshit. Scarleteen talks about how great porn is. This cant be true. Would any of you wonderful moderators be willing to watch this documentary, and look into it, and tell me if this is true or not?

[Sam W]

Hi idk anymore,

I feel pretty confident, even without watching it, that this documentary is making claims that are either highly oversimplified or flat out false. Too, Fight the New Drug is a Mormon-run organization, meaning it's coming from a very specific (and usually conservative) perspective; it's not coming from a scientific body or unbiased source.

Sexual media as a general concept is value neutral: it's not inherently bad or inherently good. And it can convey lots of different messages or make people feel lots of different ways. But the same thing is true of ALL media; yes, some porn reflects incredibly bad gender ideas, but so do a lot of movies. Does that make sense?

If you want help making sense of sexual media and learning the ways in which it does (or, often, does not) reflect the average person's sexual experiences, these two pieces are great starting places: Making Sense of Sexual Media, https://www.scarleteen.com/article/poli ... n_part_one.

Too, whenever I see a source using the term "porn addiction" I get immediately skeptical. Yes, there are ways in which porn can have a detrimental effect on someone; for instance, if someone is compulsively using porn (using it even when they don't really want to) that's a bigger issue. As is someone forming all of their ideas about how sex should go based upon porn. But those aren't the same as addiction.

[idk anymore]

Okay! that's what I thought. I was very skeptical, however, the documentary cited multiple studies and researchers (I had no idea if they were true tho) and my teacher has been very open minded in the past

[Sam W]

It's tricky, because not all studies are created equal. We actually have two pieces that can help you out in the future when it comes to sorting accurate information from not-so-accurate information:
Literacy Is Power: How To Get Yourself a Kick-Butt BS Detector
Legit or Unfit? Finding Safe, Sound Sex Educators & Support Online

[idk anymore]

Thanks again!

[Heather]

I do just want to be clear that at Scarleteen we do also see and talk about porn and sexual media as something neutral here. I can't think of anywhere where we talk about "how great" it is, just like I can't think about anywhere where we talk about how terrible it is (though I can think of many places where we point out things like problems in the pornography industry, etc.).