211–217 of 217 posts
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There's a reason humans have conquered the world and cats are our pets.
In their wisdom, they decided to leave the conquest to these curious bipeds, so they could relax in the sun and watch time drift by…
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>substituting titillations for profound organic satisfactions, cleverness for wisdom, and jagged surprises for beauty... ...And porn for relationships and intimacy. If there's any modern ill that has exacerbated our inability to be comfortable with boredom (which is essentially inner loneliness) it's porn. It's an escape for loneliness and a terrible salve that leaves the intrinsic desires for intimacy and connection…
I'm sorry if that's been your experience but this generalisation is a bit much. I probably watch about as much porn as I do Netflix - around 30 minutes per day on average. I enjoy it, it's very relaxing and pleasureful. I'm in a committed long-term relationship of 3 years and have had the same habits through other 3 relationships of about the same length. They've all had a full sex life and I enjoy both separately. I…
There are also a lot of people with a vastly different experience with internet porn. Since we’re sharing personal anecdotes, allow me to describe my experience. I’ve first encountered internet porn in my teenage years. A harmless habit eventually escalated to daily 1-2 hour sessions, with maybe a hundred tabs open searching for that “perfect” video or picture. I would download terabytes of torrented porn to find that one specific video. Looking at porn on my phone would be the first thing I did in the morning and the last thing I did before falling asleep at night. It has poisoned my intimate relationships and my views of women in general (when 90% of ones experience of the opposite sex is from online porn, it warps ones real world perceptions). The sessions would eventually start leaving me drained and depressed for a few days after, to the point where I had to time them around important events (like work presentations, etc.) so that I would feel up to the task. I strongly suspect it caused some dysfunction with the real thing, ranging from never quite being satisfied (I would be back looking at porn an hour after sex) to some psychological and physical issues like premature ejaculation and not being able to get aroused for days at a time.
Like many addicts, I tried quitting a few times. The first time was after a week long vacation where I didn’t have easy access to internet. I felt better and got interested in the topic (despite the above I never considered my porn usage “a problem” until then). Turns out there’s an evolving community of people sharing these issues. I abstained for maybe half a year after relapsing. Similarly how smokers who quit talk about being able to experience smell and taste in a new way, this was a revelation. What attracted me in women started to change. Things became more subtle and interesting. I also felt like I no longer needed to have sex all the time and it greatly improved the quality of my relationships. Most recently, I quit using https://easypeasymethod.org/ (a rewrite of the classic “Easy Way to Stop Smoking” but for porn) and I hope this time for good! If anyone recognizes themselves in this story please do yourself a favor and read through that website - if there’s a 1% chance of it working for you it’s worth it.
I think you can agree that my experience is not “normal” or “healthy”. I also believe a lot of people are in the same boat, as the availability of online porn is only becoming easier with time.
Knowing what I know now I wish I’ve never came across it back then and I’m dreading figuring out how to educate my children about this. The easily available, effectively infinite internet porn is the problem, not just porn in general. I don’t see getting hooked in the same way on magazines or dvds, as repetitiveness gets boring pretty quickly.
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Not just the Algorithm. Each major company has a family-xxx studio for their content. They have significant production value & popular performers, which feeds the optimization cycle. God only know's what societal effect it has when you fetish step children like that at scale.
Beyond that there are categories that I believe normalize behaviors such as transgenders, where the reasons for their increased visibility in wider society cannot be uncoupled. So it muddies the waters whether the porn, is playing any role, and prevents critical questioning of root causes. which in this case “sissy hypno genre” within trans porn directly tells viewers they want to be a girl and get fucked over and ov…
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Even more amusing to me: the number of shocks men chose to give themselves had a mean value of 1.47 and a standard deviation of 1.46. This is after excluding one outlier who shocked himself 190 times [1]. [1] https://science.sciencemag.org/content/345/6192/75
> This is after excluding one outlier who shocked himself 190 times Someone really, really hates being bored.
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> There are no penalties for making bad choices that only affect >. But almost every choice you make, good or bad, affects someone else. Sure there are, easiest one to reach for is the consumption (or even ownership) of various drugs. Beyond that there's prostitution in many jurisdictions, and no doubt there are other "victimless" crimes still on the books (basically those formed around morality - and therefore moral…
> Sure there are, easiest one to reach for is the consumption (or even ownership) of various drugs. Drug consumption is far from victimless. Even light drugs such as marijuana have negative effects on your cognitive abilities. That has an impact on others (the archetypal example being parents distraught by their children becoming drug users). Stuff such as heroin, cocaine, meth, definitely have serious side effects f…
Driving while intoxicated should certainly be a crime, as should rape, or forms of coercion like intimidation. These are one step removed from the acts themselves though.
With prostitution we should be acting to separate the violence etc from the act, and one way to do that is to not punish the victim. Provide support, reduce moral judgement.
Regarding sodomy (not just buggery, but onanism, buggery, oral sex, anything non procreative), I suspect the reason provided initially would be that it's preventing conception. This limits the expansion of a culture. The aspect of disgust came later (see ancient Greek consideration of the topic vs Abrahamic faith).
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To be fair, some people of all genders get their kicks from being sexually dominated. The issue is knowing where the other person’s limits are and having good communication. This becomes a problem when people find discussing their sexual preferences embarrassing, even with their partners. My sex life improved greatly when I started asking my partners if they have any fantasies and exploring them together. Sometimes p…
Of course there are such people. I submit though that the number of women who consent to anal and like it is much less than the number who consent and don't like it. The same for various other sex acts. I believe the research supports my position.
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To be fair, some people of all genders get their kicks from being sexually dominated. The issue is knowing where the other person’s limits are and having good communication. This becomes a problem when people find discussing their sexual preferences embarrassing, even with their partners. My sex life improved greatly when I started asking my partners if they have any fantasies and exploring them together. Sometimes p…
It’s possible though as a society we’ve lost the idea of a disordered desire. If you’ve got an authentic desire to be sexually dominated or to humiliate and dominate others, we now say “That’s ok, that’s your authentic self. It’s cool as long as everything is consensual.” But maybe it’s not OK. Maybe it’s behavior that if indulged keeps us from living and thriving and keeps us from being our best selves. I’m not maki…