Losing your moral compass?

[onceaking]

I was listening to a debate that featured Louise Perry and she said something about consuming porn that resonated with me.

Here's her quote:


"Porn should be understood as a super stimuli, in the sense that it is entirely designed to arouse the human body... It is so much more arousing than anything you experience in the wild intentionally. You log onto these sites and everything is designed from images and sounds... to arouse you as quickly as possible. Something that's interesting about that is that sexual arousal has the effect of suppressing the disgust response. For kind of obvious reasons if you can have sex with someone you have to not be grossed out by them... The disgusted response is very closely linked to moral intuition which means that when people are really aroused they're not as good at making fine-grained moral judgments. So what you'll often hear from people who use porn, particularly compulsively, is that they'll go to these sites and watch stuff that they kind of know is terrible but also turns them on, they'll orgasm, and then push the laptop away. Then they're like 'Oh my God'!... They'll watch something which they know is... seriously unethical but they kinda can't help themselves because this is the nature of the product. It is designed to hijack our impulses".

Would you say this describes you when you've used porn? Have you ever lost your moral compass when using porn?

 

[StevenR]

I really haven't felt that way. I did graduate from just watching strip/dancing videos to more intense and graphic stuff but it was still just normal solo or sex stuff.
The problem I had was there's just so much to watch out there. The worst feeling was getting up after having told myself I would watch just one more video and an hour had passed.

 

[Deleted Account]

Would you say this describes you when you've used porn? Have you ever lost your moral compass when using porn?

100%. I've often thought about 'the thrill of transgression' - of being drawn to something because it is wicked or forbidden, something you're not supposed to do or to have. That's why so many of the porn labels make explicit reference to the devil or to wickedness. Physiologically, it's like unleashing you're inner beast, the most base part of your being. All that sounds religious, I suppose, and I'm not particularly religious or at least not a churchgoing type, but there's something in it.

 

[2080Future]

At first I didn't understand the question, but after reading the quote I realized that yeah, this happens to me pretty much everytime I PMO, and I always realise when I O and come off the high, how the thing that I just did or thought of doing was so disgusting...
Also, for a long time my strategy has revolved around using this disgust response to stop me when I start to get aroused but for the mentioned reasons it obviously hasn't worked, so this also makes me realise that I should change my strategy.

 

[Deleted Account]

I do believe porn was design to hijack our impulses in order to produce arousal; however, I don’t necessarily believe this is what causes others to delve into genres of porn they find unethical or immoral. I believe the sources for those motives are found in the mind.

Based on my own experiences, I’ve noticed the porn I gravitate towards is the stuff that validates what I feel about myself. For example if I feel worthless, unlovable, emasculated, etc then I seek out porn genres that match those feelings so as to give me a validation for them. This then helps me rationalize my own self-condemnation and the cycle repeats itself.

 

[Tan Korrey]

I was listening to a debate that featured Louise Perry and she said something about consuming porn that resonated with me.

Here's her quote:


"Porn should be understood as a super stimuli, in the sense that it is entirely designed to arouse the human body... It is so much more arousing than anything you experience in the wild intentionally. You log onto these sites and everything is designed from images and sounds... to arouse you as quickly as possible. Something that's interesting about that is that sexual arousal has the effect of suppressing the disgust response. For kind of obvious reasons if you can have sex with someone you have to not be grossed out by them... The disgusted response is very closely linked to moral intuition which means that when people are really aroused they're not as good at making fine-grained moral judgments. So what you'll often hear from people who use porn, particularly compulsively, is that they'll go to these sites and watch stuff that they kind of know is terrible but also turns them on, they'll orgasm, and then push the laptop away. Then they're like 'Oh my God'!... They'll watch something which they know is... seriously unethical but they kinda can't help themselves because this is the nature of the product. It is designed to hijack our impulses".

Would you say this describes you when you've used porn? Have you ever lost your moral compass when using porn?

Yes,
I've seen it all and what you wrote explains alot.

I'm pretty sure things I used to watch I wouldn't even want to do in real life so that says it all.