UK: Is porn making young men impotent?

[Independent voter]

Up to a third of young men now experience erectile dysfunction. Some are turning to extreme measures such as penile implants – but is kicking their pornography habit the only solution?

In online forums dedicated to porn-induced erectile dysfunction (PIED), tens of thousands of young men share their struggles to stop using pornography, their progression from soft porn to hardcore and the barriers they face in forming real-life romantic and sexual relationships. It is hard to prove outright that pornography causes ED, but these testimonies replicate findings from the clinical literature: that if men can kick their porn habit, they start to recover their ability to become aroused by real-life intimacy.

https://www.theguardian.com/lifeands...le-dysfunction

I've always thought that there is no way real life women can compete with porn women.

Do you think watching too much porn can hurt a man's real life romantic life?

[zlygork]

Excessive use of fetish porn may indeed affect a man's ability to get turned on by the relatively more vanilla sex that they are likely to get in a relationship (depending on how extreme your porn fetishes are, evidently), but I do not think there is such a thing as "I saw so many 10/10 hotties fucking online that average women don't turn me on anymore"

On an average case, I think the problem is more that men get fetishes from porn, but are too afraid/shy or their companion is, so they don't bring up their fetishes and that leads to disappointing sex. That would only be indirectly caused by porn imo, more of a communication issue.

[Machismo]

Well, I'd look at other causes, like obesity and a sedentary lifestyle as much more likely causes for actual ED. As for having problems with relationships, that could easily be an issue of porn creating standards of conduct and behavior that simply don't apply well to real life. Now, one only need look up the average number of sexual encounters per year over time, to see if porn may be a factor. Sure, it's not necessarily a cause, but it may be.

Nope, I'm not going to google the numbers, my search history already looks rather odd.

[Dug]

Porn does a lot worse to young men than just impotency. I'd argue its the root cause of basically all the angry young dudes on the internet. The endless access to hardcore sexual fantasies they'll never live out warps their view of reality and relationships with the opposite sex.

[Reverb256]

https://www.theoccidentalobserver.ne...-brain-part-1/

Porn makes you want to become an emasculated sex slave.

[Unholyground]

I've always thought that there is no way real life women can compete with porn women.

Do you think watching too much porn can hurt a man's real life romantic life?

Doesn't effect you if you are french like me , if a breeze hits me weird I am ready to go lmao. I do last too long though sometimes which kinda sucks

[Beerbill Society]

Vanilla softcore *sick face*

Idk people claim to have studies data to back this claim up, I'm a horny motherfucker don't seem to affect me though.

Yet, I have seen some dangerous and real cases of porn addiction, like Terry Crews own statement of his condition and how difficulty was for him to accept he had an addiction.

[TheImperios]

Porn does a lot worse to young men than just impotency. I'd argue its the root cause of basically all the angry young dudes on the internet. The endless access to hardcore sexual fantasies they'll never live out warps their view of reality and relationships with the opposite sex.

But impotence is more likely to cause a reaction in young men, because it hurts our masculinity. If we were to say that porn caused sexual aggression, we would just ignore it, because, while despicable, sexual aggression is masculine.

[telygroar]

What, you mean, not all womens can do the yougouslavian wheelbarrow or the triple salto with no hands ?!?

[The Stormbringer]

If he has a hard time getting it up normally, why not just... watch porn with her in the bedroom? Once you get horny, the physical stimulation of sex with someone you find attractive should be more than enough to keep it going.

[Ubermensch]

I think that porn addiction is a pretty serious phenomenon that can cause many problems for people. When you create new fetishes because the old are simply just not good enough, they have to be more extreme. And sometimes extreme can start shifting into things that you never originally found attractive or erotic, your brain is literally creating artificial attraction and eroticism to things in order to allow you to climax so you can perform your role in nature which is to procreate.

Personal experience has made me very cautious to how much I partake in masturbation. I once developed fetishes so bad that they began approaching borderline illegal boundaries and I became afraid of what would come after that, when I got bored of those fetishes. So I stopped, I cut back on what I found attractive in real life because there was a massive difference in what I found attractive in real life and what was attractive in pure fantasy, in porn.

And I definitely believe that if you let yourself go wild with all these fetishes and fantasies, you'll likely end up getting into necrophilia, bestiality, pedophilia and all other really messed up extreme ends of porn. It's what your brain does in order to keep you functional enough to procreate because you no longer can get an erection or even entertain the thought of basic porn like a penis going into a vagina, it's just so dull, boring and doesn't seem exciting enough.

You can literally develop a fetish that branches into pedophilia just because normal porn doesn't excite you anymore, you need something new. I even found myself considering gore porn, I was on the edge of considering all these things and that's when I realized I was way over in my head. These things that I had never found attractive before in my life, no matter how much I was exposed to them, were becoming things that I seriously entertained including into my fantasies.

But to propose a ban on porn would just make it worse, these are outlets, people need some way to have an outlet to vent and calm down. Which the UK seriously wants to do, apparently, to my knowledge. What SHOULD be done is a far more detailed emphasis on sex education, not just on safe sex, sexuality and so on forth but on what porn does to your brain and how far it can make you go if you get too deep into it. Introduce a program that teaches self-control, that warns about blurring reality and fantasy together.

That would help to teach men and women to moderate their porn usage, don't discourage them to view porn but definitely encourage to keep control of how far they go with these things by keeping the amount of times to a reasonable amount. Also, it should be taught that a lot of mental disorders or conditions can definitely cause one to turn to masturbation as a crutch to keep themselves going by relying on the high they receive from it.

[Dug]

But impotence is more likely to cause a reaction in young men, because it hurts our masculinity. If we were to say that porn caused sexual aggression, we would just ignore it, because, while despicable, sexual aggression is masculine.

I'm more saying that it warps the view of young men on what the average woman is like and what a normal sexual relationship entails. Combined with social media like Instagram it gives this view that the only women desirable are these porn star level chicks and average women are not enough. They'll settle for nothing less than "10s".

[sarahtasher]

The understatement of the century is that if you base your sexuality on porn, you are going to get MASSIVELY disapointed.

[cozzri]

Porn does a lot worse to young men than just impotency. I'd argue its the root cause of basically all the angry young dudes on the internet. The endless access to hardcore sexual fantasies they'll never live out warps their view of reality and relationships with the opposite sex.

Maybe they just need to find the right person to live out those fantasies with? There's a TON of female perverts out there too with the same/similar interests; you just need to be persistant in finding them.

[shadowmouse]

Crap, I forget, that was 40 years ago. Hey, get the hell offa my lawn! <shakes cane>

[Ubermensch]

Maybe they just need to find the right person to live out those fantasies with? There's a TON of female perverts out there too with the same/similar interests; you just need to be persistant in finding them.

But sometimes that isn't enough, I think it's extremely understated just how crazy and exciting porn fantasies can get, especially when you develop insane fetishes. They're better than actual sex, they're exactly what you want to happen in your head, you don't need consent, you don't need to worry about satisfying anyone but yourself.

And eventually, it gets to a point where you can't even find the most basic things like a vagina attractive anymore. I mean, for me, I do find it attractive but I really have to come up with a convoluted story as to why it's so attractive and that involves getting into some extreme fetishes. It's just not enough anymore to have an image or a video, I need a story, I need to mix it with my fetishes so it can actually be erotic again to me.

That's porn addiction, it gets so fucked up.

[Hilhen7]

Up to 1/3rd of men have ED? Wow that's a lot of people, but on the upside I feel like a stud....

/Flex

[White Goodman1]

This doesn't make any sense. I watch naked women on video and I get a boner, then I see actual naked woman right in front of me and I get to touch her and suddenly I go limp? I don't know, maybe some guys do? Doesn't affect me. Dude you got some issues

[Hilhen7]

Excessive use of fetish porn may indeed affect a man's ability to get turned on by the relatively more vanilla sex that they are likely to get in a relationship (depending on how extreme your porn fetishes are, evidently), but I do not think there is such a thing as "I saw so many 10/10 hotties fucking online that average women don't turn me on anymore"

On an average case, I think the problem is more that men get fetishes from porn, but are too afraid/shy or their companion is, so they don't bring up their fetishes and that leads to disappointing sex. That would only be indirectly caused by porn imo, more of a communication issue.

What exactly are the crazy fetishes nowadays that guys absolutely must have in order to be satisfied? All they need is some good oral and they should be fine.

[Ubermensch]

What exactly are the crazy fetishes nowadays that guys absolutely must have in order to be satisfied? All they need is some good oral and they should be fine.

You're not understanding things, people who deal with a lot of stress and have no outlet other than porn tend to masturbate excessively. I masturbate 4 times a day, every day of the week without fail, for years. That made me develop a lot of fetishes that eventually made me afraid of what would come next. But the reason why I developed so much was because whatever I masturbated to excessively the last 3 months would no longer be erotic for me and I had to take it up a notch. I stopped finding even the most extreme and degraded forms of porn erotic or exciting and had to go up the ladder for something new.

It's not about what "we absolutely must have", it's the fact that people with stress, depression and other mental conditions tend to turn to porn for the amazing highs it can provide on such short notice and keep us going like as if nothing is wrong. It becomes an addiction to stifle our problems and we start losing sense of what we REALLY find attractive and what our brain artificially creates that we think we're attracted to.