I recently spoke in Vancouver, Canada, at one of the city’s most progressive hospitals. Afterwards, several medical staff came up to thank me.
One doc said, “I’m uncomfortable with so many women shaving or waxing their pubic mounds. It just looks to me like women responding to cultural pressure—mostly men and porn—to look like little girls.” I disagreed, and asked…
According to the new No-Fap movement, there’s an “epidemic” of “urges” to “fap”—to masturbate. To stem this destructive rampage of addiction and self-harm, there are programs all over the web designed to help men stop masturbating.
Guys who take up the No-Fap Challenge for 30, 60, or 90 days sometimes even excludes partner sex for as much as a year. These guys, usually still in their ‘20s, say they’re looking for freedom, self-discipline, and higher self-esteem.
Great goals. Bizarre (and rarely successful) strategy.
There’s a lot of passionate talk about pornography these days. The loudest voices involve a lot of false assumptions, a lot of fear and rage, a lot of predictions about porn’s destructive aspects. Some of us insist on looking at the science of it all—exactly how much (or how little) violence there is in porn, about porn’s effects from both the neuroscience and marital counseling side, about the nature of human sexual fantasy. We’re often shouted down. We’re often accused of being “pro-porn.” When I toured after my 2016 book (His Porn, Her Pain) was published, that was usually the…
Blaming porn for what’s wrong with our sex lives is easy. But when men behave like jerks in bed, there’s are always reasons. Talking about them–instead of blaming porn–is uncomfortable, but way more productive.
The “porn addiction” movement claims that one of pornography’s biggest problems is the way it disrespects women. But the movement itself is what’s really disrespectful to women–claiming they are hysterical creatures so overwhelmed by the porn issue that they can’t negotiate like adults.
“I caught him betraying me,” wailed the email from a stranger named Mary. “He’s been watching porn. Why? And how can I ever trust him again when he watches women do anything he wants?”
I get one or more emails like this every single week.