Porn Addiction

How the “Porn Addiction” Movement Disrespects Women

Those treating "porn addiction" see women as pathetic victims of their feelings.

Although “porn addiction” is not recognized as a disorder in the DSM-5, and the concept is dismissed by most professional sex therapists, the porn addiction movement is enormous and growing.

There are porn addiction treatment centers everywhere, a growing number of seminars therapists can take to recognize and treat the symptoms, 10-step groups for addicts, and courts and clergy across the country who refer people to porn addiction programs or literature.

The porn addiction movement claims that one of the biggest problems with pornography is the way it disrespects women. But the movement itself is what's really disrespectful to women.

The porn addiction movement, of course, is focused on straight male consumers. Although there are millions of women who regularly use pornography, their spouses almost never complain about it. Similarly, the partners of gay porn users (male or female) rarely complain about it.

When couples do quarrel about porn, it’s almost exclusively straight women complaining about the porn use of their straight husbands. That's why the book I wrote about this dynamic is entitled His Porn, Her Pain.

With this built-in constituency, the porn addiction movement focuses almost exclusively on male consumers (“addicts”), and their female partners (“co-addicts,” “co-dependents,” “enablers”).

Most "treatment" programs such as The Ranch and The Meadows are eager to involve the female partner in treatment. Whether she participates or not, she is usually described as a pathetic creature whose head and heart have exploded because of the catastrophe of their man’s porn use. The movement looks at these women with a combination of pity, dismay, shame, and frustration.

In their websites, popular articles, and marketing materials, the porn addiction movement’s words to porn users’ spouses are a toxic brew of patronizing assumptions.

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