I hope we all know this and are just doing it as a bit, but sometimes I do see shit on this website that makes me go “Oh y’all are genuinely just weird prudes”
The “gooner epidemic” is not real, gooning is an incredibly niche kink that very few people engage in.
“Porn addiction” is basically non existent and affects such a small portion of the population as to not be relevant. The idea that most people have in their heads about porn addiction is propaganda made up by evangelicals.
We do not live in an overly-sexually-liberated time. There is not an excess of sexual content or exposure to it.
Most of the time when people talk about “the gooner problem” what they’re actually talking about is a mix of two unrelated things, people living normal sexually liberated lives, and undersocialized young men that don’t know how to interact with people.
Sex is good. We should be having more of it. We should encourage healthy, safe sex featuring whatever kinks you and your partner(s) consent to. Don’t fall for puritan propaganda comrades.
A lot of people also just have an unhealthy relationship with sex which makes their relationship with porn also unhealthy. Navigating sex and relationships is tough. Just doing that badly enough is enough to fuck a person up. That said, if the lens of addiction helps people manage their relationship with porn better that's great!
There’s the rub though, on a wide scale it very much doesn’t, thinking of it through the lens of addiction makes the problem significantly worse, and intensifies the feelings of shame and anxiety.
I agree, that's a huge if.
I don't personally subscribe to the porn addiction narrative. There's a lot of unhealthy socialization around sex that is not addresses in that framework at all, which I find pretty sus.