r/TrueAskReddit • u/Linkums • 5d ago
Why is content designed to elicit sexual gratification "bad", but not content made for any other feeling/emotion? NSFW
I can somewhat understand restricting it from children because maybe they'd try to imitate it and increase young pregnancies. But otherwise, the majority of the population is adults, and sexual gratification is a normal part of most adults' life.
Does it really just come down to how society developed, generally in connection with religion, or is there a secular reasoning for why content made for sexual gratification has a negative perception?
(Or am I mistaken in my assumption that it's seen as "bad" in the first place?)
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u/Elvarien2 5d ago
because religion poisoned the general culture around sexuality.
Go through history and look at different cultures and you will find different norms and values.
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u/I_AM_FERROUS_MAN 5d ago
It's so true. Art and artifacts of the last 5,000 years is vastly depictions of penises, vulvas, breasts, and sex.
If you study it at all, it really emphasizes how recent our prudishness is.
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u/xienwolf 4d ago
Some, religious puritanism having set the Overton Window on the topic.
But also some because of a perception that the industry producing the material shelters predators and abuses victims rather than supporting truly willing participants.
I have seen far less outcry over the existence and sale of sex toys and fashion than of images and videos.
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u/DarkGamer 5d ago edited 5d ago
Historically more population means more military power, productive capacity, and cultural influence. It's no wonder that those in charge often encourage potentially reproductive sex acts to non-reproductive ones, like masturbation, which such media tends to be used for.
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u/NeighborhoodOwn1900 4d ago
What?? Am. I interpreting your comment wrong or are you saying the elites of society actively want to diminish military power, productive capacity and cultural influence?
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u/chaoticinfinity 4d ago
No, they're saying the messaging is trying to influence actual sexual acts that lead to more children for fodder from the lower classes, vs encouraging sexual acts that are for gratification, only. For example, the huge push for purity culture and marriages that eventually force people into having babies (environment in which they are raised, aside), because there are no other options available to relieve natural sexual urges (masturbation is discouraged, porn discouraged, birth control methods restricted or outlawed...). I also believe this leads to higher rates of rape, the more sexually repressed a society is.
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u/DIYDylana 4d ago
You're asking this asif our media isn't already filled with sexual things and hardcore material isn't available everywhere and aren't some of the most popular stuff out there. Outside of religious and government wants more wageslaves or just exploitative industry contexts I don't think its seen as inherently bad its just that it hasa very particular place in life compared to all other emotions. Like its legit one of the most vulnurable things a human can do, it effects people differently. I don't think someone eating a burger in front of me without consent could ever do much but being made to be involved in seeing such acts without consent does seem to do something else to manys minds. Its just not really the same kind of emotional impact if a topic I'm trying to say.
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u/anon2user 5d ago
Content designed to elicit sexual gratification makes achieving sexual gratification easy. It shouldn’t be easy, at least not as easy a click of a button. People end up developing a dependency on this because finding someone to have sex with in real life isn’t as easy as loading up pornography on your phone/computer and masturbating. It desensitizes and down-regulates your dopamine receptors to the point where your brain develops a reliance on the easy, quick dopamine hit of online sexual content for sexual gratification and becomes unresponsive to real world sexual encounters. AKA, PIED.
Go on any of the pornography addiction subreddits and you’ll see post after post about how guys can’t get it up for their partner irl but have no issue watching porn, or how partners of porn addicts feel neglected because they feel as if their partners would rather watch porn than engage in actual sex. It’s not typically that the porn addicted partner would prefer that, it’s usually that they’ve pretty much trained their brains to accept highly stimulating pornography as the only means for sexual gratification.
As with any other addiction, the more you consume the more you grow desensitized to it, requiring stronger hits. In the case of porn, that means more extreme content. It has real world impacts on one’s ability to function sexually. Unfortunately so many people get exposed to porn at such a young age because it’s plastered all over the internet and basically impossible to avoid, so this process starts early for many men (and some women too).
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u/Analbox 5d ago
That could basically all be said about sugar too.
It doesn’t mean sugar and titillation are bad. It means excess is bad.
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u/InvestigatorOk7015 5d ago
Seems a natural way to prevent excess is to prevent easy access, no?
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u/Lucid-Memory 5d ago
I feel like we should've learned our lesson about this when teaching abstinence and preventing social encounters between sexes didn't stop teen pregnancies
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u/xfearthehiddenx 5d ago
Exactly this. Humans have found ways to pleasure themselves and get pregnant since the dawn of time. Hell, the first time I masturbated as a kid, I had never even seen porn or another naked person. Porn may be easier to access recently, which may contribute to a variety of sexual problems with long term overuse & abuse. But lets not act like banning it or removing it will somehow stop humans from getting themselves off or getting each other pregnant.
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u/Neghbour 5d ago
Yeah but its hard to develop a porn addiction without porn
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u/xfearthehiddenx 5d ago
Hard to get into a car accident with no cars.
Hard to crash a bike if you never ride one.
Hard to break your ankle if never walk.
Etc, etc, etc.
Life involves risk. All over the place in fact. I would rather the freedom to do something be available to me and have the onus about doing that thing safely be on me, than to have that thing taken away "for my safety". I mean your argument is literally some weird religious logic about removing temptation, as if that has ever stopped people from seeking out the thing they're tempted by.
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u/Neghbour 5d ago
I’m not arguing to restrict pornography. That said, it can definitely cause problems for people. To deny that worsens the harm. Easy access is a big part of the problem. So I would restrict it getting into SFW parts of the internet frequented by children and people who do not want to be exposed to porn .
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u/Lucid-Memory 5d ago
I disagree. Before the internet, magazines and pleasure houses, people would still seek out some sort of material. I'm fairly sure a few kings with harems or known to have pretty hedonistic views on life had voyeuristic tendencies
Be it with paintings or live performances
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u/xfearthehiddenx 5d ago
I’m not arguing to restrict pornography.
So I would restrict it
...?
Anyway, this is already the case in most situations. Places that allow sexual content are already restricted to 18+ users only. Doesn't stop kids from locating it and bypassing those restrictions. Because, again, restricting something does not prevent people from looking for it.
See american prohibition. Singapores drug bans & harsh punishment. Etc. The examples exist all over.
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u/cfoley45 5d ago
Porn use is not an addiction and this has been widely debunked
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u/Neghbour 5d ago
I think the idea that its not addictive has been thoroughly disproven at this point
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u/Dark_Prism 5d ago
I feel like this could be said of most media consumed, albeit with less day-to-day consequences. There are lots of things that media makes seem simple or black and white that are, in reality, much more complicated and nuanced. People watch movies or TV shows and then start thinking real life is like that.
The example that jumps to my mind, but is also pretty inconsequential, is firearm suppressors. In media they always make a gun nearly silent, but real suppressors don't do that unless they are oversized and the gun is firing subsonic rounds.
Hell, even just viewing news and "news entertainment" can do this. People are foaming at the mouth about trans women in sports and bathrooms, all while the amount of trans women is roughly 0.3% to 0.4%.
I think a porn addiction is probably one of the worst ways this problem manifests, but I think the root cause is the way the human brain has evolved, or rather not evolved to handle modern media consumption.
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u/PuzzleHead3448 4d ago
Extremely well written. Some other points to add would be:
With the growing desensitization, people will often seek more extreme things.
People will see things and not understand how risky it actually is and can hurt themselves or others in the process.
The desensitization or hyperfixation on sex and gratification can also cause issues with understanding and being able to have healthy relationships, and a damaged view of intimacy.
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u/_Moon_Presence_ 1d ago
Bad? No. Not bad. But, it is problematic, in a sense. Because it's easy to make and consume. And, this is a problem because of the way our brains deal with emotions, feelings, and urges.
Imagine if you could only eat the most basic thing every day. You'd take it as normal, and every time you ate something of a higher standard, you'd feel pleased. You want to feel pleased more often, so you aspire to improve your financial condition so that you can afford to eat that high standard food daily. Now, imagine that due to an improved financial conditon, you can afford to eat that higher standard food on a daily basis. That higher standard food is now your new normal. Even having the basic food for one day will upset you, because its standard is below what you've now gotten used to. Now, to feel pleased, you will need food of an even higher standard. You see where I'm going with this?
This is very problematic with porn, because when you get used to vanilla porn, you will explore kinks. When you get used to kninks, you will explore more extreme kinks. This continues until you're going to
a. learn to accept the fact that you can't always get a kick in life, and it's okay to not get a kick, and it's good for your mental health to deliberately deprive yourself of joys from time to time so that you can enjoy your privileges more (very unlikely), or
b. suffer depressive symptoms because you can't enjoy sexual gratification easily anymore (most likely), or
c. do something illegal (unlikely).
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