HOW WOULD YOU DEFINE "PORN"?

For me porn is anything containing sexually explicit content (pics, videos or writing (including hentai, cartoons, 3D shit and erotica)).

Then you have porn substitutes (anything remotely sexual that makes you think about porn and which presents a mild to high risk of relapse for you).

Then there is unhealthy sex interactions (just as bad as porn): prostitutes, escorts, massages parlor, strip clubs, etc

All are bad for us. But ultimately, each individual is responsible for setting boundaries for themselves and respecting them.

So the definition of what porn is is unique to each one of us.

 

This is very true, in fact I think we both commented on a thread recently about erotic literature and had differing opinions as to whether this constituted porn.

For me porn is artificial sexual stimuli involving real people in a explicit way. Whilst this is dominated by online video's in includes photographs online and in magazines etc, it also includes live porn, be it strip shows and escorts/prostitution (whilst these last two are an interaction essentially you are paying for a performance and is therefore to an extent artificial). These are all things that in my mind fit into the porn bracket.

Non sexually explicit imagery and video are a different matter (psubs to many here) and to me these are only an issue if I allow myself to use them as a substitute. Just coming across an image and thinking to myself that's very attractive is not an issue, masturbating to that image or getting aroused to that image and therefore using it as a substitute for more explicit porn would be an issue.

However I don't want to, and imagine a life where I had to block out every image or thought, I want to be able to enjoy life be be in control of that life.

 

Your choice. It depends of your definition of porn. If you look inward, I believe deep down you know what is right or wrong for your reboot. But don't beat yourself up with nuances. As long as you don't spend 4 hours a day looking at porn subs, it's fine.

 

I would define Porn explicitly with regards to masturbation - i.e. if you M to it, it is P. Thus it is subjective to some extent, but a lot of material out there (you know what I'm talking about) would be very boring to someone if they weren't viewing it in order to get that base response.

Personally I don't get my rocks off to girls faces wearing make up, even if I think they are attractive and appreciate that to some extent. Further along in my recovery I may think that way. or maybe not. But the most banal thing can become P in the warped mind of an addict. Just avoid the hard stuff, and stuff looking if you are using it to get off to - you know whether that is the case or not! - and don't sweat it if you see something accidentally that you think is sexy (unavoidable in our culture, with hot models on adverts etc).

 

@Dark Knight Rising

In this place, "porn" is a tool. A button. A means to an end. There are a lot of people here who identify as totally fascinated with a genre or category, but that misses the point. What we like is the neurological brain reward we can use porn to achieve. And, it is not even porn that does that. It is the thought of sex. That is a naturally occurring brain event. It is just that, since the invention of High Speed Internet Porn, we have, for the most part, unconsciously, figured out we could achieve that reward event with porn. Meaning humanity could use porn to achieve the event, and did, but HSIP made it much more efficient to achieve the reward event. For some people porn achieves that event more efficiently than reality. It's OK. Most humans do not have a problem with it, and for those that do, the problem is fixable. Gary Wilson said the solution is to quit watching porn. Yeah, but, no. The solution is to quit the event, the neurological brain event. Once a person has trained their brain to expect that event, via porn, they tend to get the event via a whole lot of other things than what society deems "porn". This is why when one decides to change that, one triggers easily on just sexy advertisements. In this place, we can define porn as use of artificial sexual stimulation to achieve a neurological reward. It is natural that we like the reward; it is how we are built, and is there to encourage reproduction, which is the most successful survival trait any species has evolved to have. Just take time to understand it, and it gets a little bit less difficult to manage. That is right, "manage". You cannot turn off the neurological brain reward event; it will happen, with or without porn, but you can train yourself to quit using porn to achieve it, just as you used porn to train yourself to get it. Yep, this did not just happen to you; it took a second to train your brain to expect it on a regular basis, it will take a second to train it not to.

Just that simple. Putting in the time and training. Seriously.

W.

 

It definitely isn't porn, and neither are youtube videos about makeup, but if it triggers you and leads to watching actual porn, you can add it to your own list of porn stuff to avoid.

Similarly, drinking half a glass of beer here and there is not a big deal for most people, but for an alcohol addict it can be the gateway to a bottle of hard liquor.

We all pretty much know what porn is and what isn't - debating over the margins is more of legalistic interest.

 

If it has nudity, it's p*rn. Movies that are just R rated I wouldn't count imo. but if you are on like snapchat or ur texts and receive nudes. it's p*rn.

 

Imho it's the ease of access that makes it "porn".
Imagine that you live in a world in wich you can get laid as easily as you open your pc and watch a porn video, while getting access to a porn video is as difficult and has all the limitation as having regular sex, in that world regular sex would be bad as porn in the real world.
So let's make the comparison between looking at nice girls while you do other things like sport and looking at nice girls on instagram : why you would consider one thing ok and the other less so ? in my opion because one requires barely any action on your part and the other requires you actually going out to do stuff, and you won't be getting a selection of the bests, just who you encounter.
So i'd define "porn" any activity that give you "happiness/dopamine" without you having done anything somehow "difficult" to gain it, in the case of this question the content have to be related to sex/arousal because we are talking about NoFap

 

The question is interesting, but, in terms of a neurological reward event, it is the thought of sex that causes the event. The event itself, sometimes called a dopamine high, is naturally occurring AND helpful. Most people have a naturally occurring, healthy, and absolutely necessary sex drive. A lot of us get uncomfortable with that, from time to time, but, a lot of us also come to really enjoy it. By the time one gets to a forum like this, the definition of "porn" is best understood as artificial sexual super stimulation. It does not stimulate "you"; it stimulates that part of the brain that rewards thoughts of sex with the neurological reward event, a dopamine high. Whether we want it or not, we are hardwired to like the high. That high is why humans have sex. It works well, we keep breading and making babies. Then, say around 2007, we invented High Speed Internet Porn. Its effects on the brain are similar to drug consumption; it lights up a lot of the same parts of the brain as do drugs, meaning HSIP produced a dopamine high. Initially, we (you, me, everyone, humanity) did not give HSIP a second thought. Most of us used it like a video game, and thought of it as a harmless distraction, until one day a number of people said "enough is enough, I am quitting," then tried to quit...and found it almost impossible, or so they thought. What had happened is that, due to brain plasticity, or the older psychological concept of "conditioning", the people trying to quit found their brains did not want to quit. The neurological reward event had become their brain's daily norm. The neurological brain event we can use HSIP to achieve happens naturally, without HSIP, but not as often, not as prolonged, not as profound. By the time some guys want to quit, they have been doing daily PMO sessions for an hour, every day, for years. The PMO session works by first searching vids, maybe edging, and, when the perfect vid happens, O, and another flood of neurological reward events. By the time a guy like that tries to quit, the brain has become acclimatized to the reward event. The reward event has become the brain's daily normal, and the brain does not want to give it up. For the user, it feels good to get that reward event, and when it stops, if feels like 10 kinds of hell. This sucks, but knowing 1) is going to feel like hell, as in that feeling is a normal part of stopping, and 2) the feeling eventually lessens, then goes away. The is the purpose of the reboot a/k/a "hard 90." The purpose of the reboot is to re-condition your brain not to expect that daily reward event.

When one so conditioned decides to quit, the brain becomes starved for the neurological reward event it has been experiencing for years. That is the place where many have identified that, in the reboot, porn is not just porn; it is the perception of anything other than actual sexual activity that allows the brain to have the neurological reaction. That means not only cutting out P, but as many sexual thoughts as possible. Not possible to eliminate them altogether, but possible to recognize sexual thoughts trigger the reward event, and it is the reward event that, by the time a person tries to quit, that is the real problem. Do the hard 90, then try and enjoy life, just do not use artificial sexual super stimulation to enjoy it.

 

Makeup isn't porn by any definition - it's grooming and it's been practiced since antiquity and beyond. If that were true, then we should also consider dyed hair as porn, since it looks much prettier than greyed hair.
Porn serves only one purpose: to arouse the viewer.
On the other hand, makeup isn't there to arouse you, and can tell you so much more about the woman who wears it: her mood at the moment, her style, her social class even. The when and where she wears makeup say a lot about her too.
And even heavy and elaborate makeup won't make a woman much more beautiful than she really is. Look closely and you'll see through it.

 

"sexually explicit videos, photographs, writings, or the like, produced to elicit sexual arousal (often used attributively)" Makeup tutorials aren't p*rn. All you had to do is do a search bro.

 

Bro you are going way off topic. P*rn is sexually explicit stuff dude. None of it is bad. If you abuse it, that's on you. Doing it 3 times a week is fine. if you do it everyday multiple times a week then you got a problem.

 

"Man, you can even turn a dude into a cute girl, and I'm not kidding."

Ha! Not to mention awkward, not that there is anything wrong with that....