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113 reviews for:
Your Brain On Porn: Internet Pornography and the Emerging Science of Addiction
Gary Wilson, Anthony Jack
113 reviews for:
Your Brain On Porn: Internet Pornography and the Emerging Science of Addiction
Gary Wilson, Anthony Jack
some might say that the arguments the author makes are a sophisticated version of the widely rehearsed nofap movement's rhetoric. even so, it's a good starting point for those who are interested in how porn effects the brain, how it shapes our views of our own and others’ bodies, how it shapes societal attitudes towards racial groups, women and our understanding of sexuality.
this book is not a religious explanation or attempt to promote abstinence or repress sexuality but science on neurological pathways and porn's impact on the human brain. it is also the explanation for why many women never feel like they can live up to their partners' expectations and why sex has become less frequent and much less joyful.
we have become so comfortable with porn in today's society that there are millions of people who are probably addicted to porn and don't even know it. we treat porn addiction like it's normal, when it isn't. to anyone who may read this and think that this doesn't apply to you or just dismiss it altogether, i challenge you to go to a porn site with a neutral, non-horny perspective and just see how fucked up the top videos and searches are. incest, violence, barely legal teens, racist stereotypes, extreme body proportions, rape-like acts (that may even be real), and rampant sexism, obviously. and things that are way worse than that that i don’t even want to name. take away the sex part and you’d be left with tons of videos of men choking, slapping, and hitting women
This is actually one of the things that bugged me: it is all about men's sexual health - about men's cocks and the fact porn "breaks" 'em, to put it more bluntly. And lest words be put into my mouth: no, it's not that I believe ED, broader sexual dysfunction or porn-related psychological distress in men are things to be made light of - if I had a partner I'd want him to be happy and healthy above and below the belt, right. But given nothing was said about the consequences women suffer, both in and out of the industry, because of porn that caters to the straight male gaze in an androcratic society, and given the book features a crap ton of questionable reddit posts from guys that clearly have an attitude problem on top of their porn addiction, my empathy wore thin pretty quickly. Like... even the Catholic dude managed to acknowledge feminist arguments in his book!
I just do not buy that all of the dudes on r/NoFap have no prior psychiatric histories or issues with women whatsoever. That being said, I would agree with Gail Dines (whose book I'm currently reading) that not every boy or man who watches gross degrading porn is a raging misogynist; but you then need to talk about the wider cultural context that surrounds and feeds into porn! It's that bloody feed-back loop I already mentioned in my review of The Porn Myth, but Gary Wilson ignores it even harder than Matt Fradd.
I'm also not entirely convinced by the author's presentation of the mechanisms of addiction and the way he frames the pornography conversation around them. I do 100% agree that one can become addicted to porn, just as one can become addicted to video games, gambling or even exercise (yes, it's a thing, I met a young women who suffered from it on the psych ward). But I'm not sure all of the underlying mechanisms are exactly the same. Just as substance addictions aren't all exactly the same when you boil it down to neurochemistry (heroin, alcohol or tobacco don't all involve the exact same set of chemical signallers or receptors, for example). Issuing a blanket statement of "It's all down to dopamine!" seems overly simplistic to me, considering how complex neurotransmitters actually are. Similarly, bringing it all back to a "need for novelty" is misguided at best, and outright inaccurate at worst. Because this isn't something you necessarily see with other addictions (alcoholics tend to stick to alcohol, and contrary to what the War on Drugs would have you believe, cannabis isn't actually a "gateway drug" for most users). Additionally, the author links this to a spurious "evopsych" argument too, which was massively meh... 😒
Stress is briefly mentioned as a physiological phenomenon similar to arousal, and the author states stress can provoke arousal (no disagreement here), but I would've liked to see this line of enquiry pushed further. Violence can cause stress, and a lot of mainstream het male porn is violent (to put it mildly)... So perhaps the rapid cycling of stress hormones and pleasure-related neurotransmitters a man gets from orgasm contributes to addiction and desensitisation? What about the role of disinhibition, often an important underlying cognitive mechanism in addiction? I feel like there's a huge chunk of data and healthy scientific speculation missing from this book, and it is most definitely a weakness.
I also thought the author's assumption that teenage boys get into porn, and increasingly disturbing porn, as a way to be edgy and stand out from the crowd was incredibly flawed. If anything, it's the contrary: boys watch porn because they assume all their peers do! Since porn has more or less gone mainstream - to the point where some men will defend their questionable porn habits with the rejoinder "Well all guys watch porn and that's that!" - it would be far more rebellious, anti-conformist and thus "edgy" for a teen to abstain from it entirely, just sayin'.
Finally, there's the glaring issue that this book contains way too many reddit posts and comments in lieu of harder and more objective data. I don't think anecdotal data is worthless, not at all. It definitely has its place, but it shouldn't take up all the available space either, and that's kind of what you get with Your Brain On Porn. The way some NoFappers make it sound, stopping porn could cure cancer! I jest, of course, but the point is that according to them, porn is the sole reason they developed depression, chronic pain, low self-confidence, social anxiety, etc... And quitting porn magically rid them of all of those things. Allow me to be skeptical here...
Not to mention, once again, the fact a lot of those commenters just sounded like arseholes with an attitude problem, and without the least ounce of sympathy for the women brutalised in their porn. I don't want to minimise the complex problem of addiction, nor will I deny there are undoubtedly cognitive and neuro-chemical mechanisms at play that help to explain why an otherwise decent man would jerk off to violent gonzo porn; but there's a limit. If the only thing you worry about when viewing a crying woman being triply penetrated, choked, slapped, called a bitch, a cunt, etc... is your cock going soft, then you fucking deserve to have a limp dick, end of story. And yes, I include the teenage boys who, per the author, recognise there are issues with the stuff they see in porn but still ask their girlfriends, who don't know any better, to take it up the arse, even if it hurts them (of course where the fuck are the parents in this conversation... But eh, another topic for another day). Like this book basically upholds the radical feminist meme of dudes only objecting to porn because it puts their pee-pees out of working order... When the truth is there are men who quit or cut back on their porn consumption because they are decent human beings who recognise the ethical issues at play and because porn can also have nasty side effects on their sexual health - and also because, ya know, they are horrified by some of the stuff they chance upon.
I don't know... I guess whatever encourages dudes to cut back on or quit porn is a good thing ultimately, but this book left a sour taste in my mouth. The NoFap thing just... Seems like a massive mixed bag to me, not to mention it suffers from a massive confirmation bias - my ex didn't watch porn, nor even masturbate, yet he still suffered from depression and severe anxiety, so take that as you will. 🤷♀️
PS: I checked the author's website out and was surprised to find anti-pornography arguments that actually care about women and violence... So I'm a bit confused as to why they weren't present in the book? Methinks it would benefit from an updated reissue.
It is safe to say that the majority of this generation would learn a lot by books like these. Porn is the new tobacco. Few decades ago nobody suspected that cigarettes could harm their health, researchers and physicians dismissed these impacts altogether, and teens burnt through millions of smokes. Then truth came crashing.
The impacts of porn are reported a lot nowadays, but society turns the same deaf ear all over again. The rise of 'sexual positivity' has had an impact on how society thinks of porn consumption, unaware that it can lead to addiction and trigger symptoms associated with psychological disorders. adolescents and young adults are being misdiagnosed for mental illness while in fact they are in the grasp of a devastating, though treatable, behavioral addiction. This is the main thesis of the book.
Wilson combines the scarce research on the topic with anecdotal accounts of recovering porn users. Though it may seem less scientific, it is the perfect approach for this issue because people need to know they are not alone; people have gone through the same experience and made it to the other side. Facts are necessary, but we heal more by emotional support than dry information.
The book is at its best when it weaves neuroplasticity research, anecdotes, and cultural criticism. It presents its core arguments with compelling narrative and a plethora of evidence. However, the parts on recovery could have been more structured. Towards the end it seemed like a drag (no pun intended!)
This book was hard to read honestly there were moments I was completely lost, they do have a really good message about how porn effect people and especially what it does to our brain. Something I did notice how the repetition of the same issues over and over, I understand that this was design to help people with this problem but it got boring!
Wilson's biggest strength is that he cites Reddit/NoFap comments with the same seriousness as he cites hefty neurological research, resulting in a book whose breadth does justice to the wide world of pornography. As someone who was exposed to porn at an incredibly early age (I was seven the first time I chanced upon sexual nudity on the internet, and eleven when I first began watching hardcore porn), I find that very few people of older generations recognize the profound effect porn has had on my generation. But Wilson understands. When he reads Reddit/NoFap comments, he reads them not as trifles, but as data points of a worldwide affliction we are only beginning to understand. This is not Playboy, nor is it Hustler. This is 10+ browser tabs open at once, an audiovisual feast of the senses that keeps on offering more and never feels like enough. It's not an issue of religion. It's not an issue of sex work. It's an issue of the very wiring of our brains, one that we are only beginning to understand.
A self-help book of tremendous power, replete with pages i ought to tear out and tape to the corner of my bathroom mirror.
Update: For a few months, in fact, an excerpt from this book was taped to the corner of my bathroom mirror. Like the book from which I ripped it, it served as a reminder: to hold fast to my conviction that sensuality and pornography are antonyms, that pornography is like an acid capable of corroding the deepest repositories of feeling, both emotional and physical.
Additionally, this book is a good resource for people from varying backgrounds as it is not from any particular religious background. Any talk of shame and guilt related to porn use is related to how these things are typically hinderances rather than aids in helping someone trying to discontinue their use of porn. I think that’s pretty unique, at least to people coming from evangelical circles. At the same time, the book is accessible to non-religious people. I love that the book as a whole is rooted in so much science!
The only reason I’m not giving it five stars is because I felt that some of the personal accounts of porn use included in the book were a bit extraneous. I think having some in there is definitely helpful, but there were so many references, I felt like sometimes I just wanted to skip over them and just keep reading about the science behind things. However, this could be more helpful for someone battling a porn addiction, as an encouragement/testimonial. And admittedly, I’m generally a proponent of less interim talk & more straightforward science.
Albeit quite repetitive towards the end, but it really does drum the information in, I’d imagine this is especially helpful to those who are addicted to the dark side of pornography content available on the internet.
The studies are like none I’ve read before, and science is struggling to keep up with the rate that this is changing current and generations to come.