780 - Unmasking the Lies - Debunking Myths about Pornography (1)-1
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[00:00:00] Yo, yo, what's up, my man? It's Sathiya Sam here. Welcome to Unleash the Man Within. Thank you so much for listening. I'm so glad you're here, and I hope you're having a fantastic day. Today we're jumping into some interesting content about The myths around pornography and my word, we could probably do a whole series on this.
Maybe we will one day, uh, cause there's a lot out there, a lot of misunderstandings, a lot of bad information about pornography. And I'm pretty excited to kind of set the record straight on a couple of things. [00:01:00] Uh, before I do that really quickly, uh, we have a bunch of free resources for the listeners of this show.
Um, and what I, one of the things I found is that, you know, you guys all have different needs, different unique parts of your situation. And so it would be impossible for me to just give one thing that could serve you perfectly. So we have a resource page. It's the theocm. com slash resources. And that's got just a pile of trainings and booklets and books and PDFs that can help you in your recovery journey one way or the other.
I'd love for you to go check it out. Link is in the show notes. It's the theosam. com slash resources. Let's jump into today's content and let's talk about, uh, some of the lies and myths that are associated with pornography. Uh, you know, it's interesting. Pornography is sort of one of those things that because it's so pleasure, uh, pleasurable and because those who like it, like it a lot, you know, you could stack all the evidence in the world showing this is [00:02:00] bad for you.
And people are still probably. Going to do it. It's sort of like, I mean, I liken it to smoking and the cigarette, you know, like we all know it's bad. And again, at first we didn't, I suppose you could make that argument, although the cigarette companies always knew it was bad. Uh, but eventually, you know, it became public knowledge, how bad these are for you.
And so now there's laws that prevent you from smoking in public places and, you know, all that kind of stuff, but people still smoke. Right. Even though they know it's bad for them. And so we're dealing with something very similar with pornography where there's actually a mounting research and evidence that would make a case like, Hey, this is not just bad for you.
Like this stuff should be outlawed and yet you have, uh, you know, Centy billion dollar industry that has been built around it. You have people who are hopelessly addicted to it, many of whom want to be addicted to it. Um, and then you have just a whole bunch of other factors that keep people wanting this.
And, and as a result, [00:03:00] a lot of these myths about pornography get perpetuated. And so what we're going to talk about today are some of these myths to beware of, make sure that these things have not seeped into your thinking. And if they have, don't worry, I'm going to help you clean things up a little bit here today.
Okay. Um, Myth number one is that porn is only for hypersexual people. So porn and that's porn addiction. So, you know, the only people who really struggle with porn addiction are those really hypersexual people. Okay. I don't even know, like, this is the, I don't even know how people get away with this crap.
Sometimes this is not true. Okay. Uh, porn addiction is, has very little to do with anything sexual at all. In fact, if you start to discover why people watch pornography, You'll realize that 99 percent of the reasons have nothing to do with sex. And even if initially the reasons is like, yeah, you know, my wife is not putting out, so I'm just going to pornography.
You get a little bit more underneath the surface and you find out, no, there's a lot more to this equation that has nothing to do with anything physical or sexual. So this is not for hypersexual people that the whole [00:04:00] systemic. component of porn addiction has literally nothing to do with sex. Um, uh, myth number two, porn is not as bad as other addictions.
Again, this is one of those, like, how are we defining what is as bad or worse in the scope of addiction? Like is gambling a worse addiction than cocaine? Well, I don't know. I mean, cocaine, cocaine definitely has the most devastating impact on someone's physiology. Um, At least there's research that would suggest that, but then gambling is, you know, socially acceptable.
Nobody's gonna, you know, look at you weird for pulling the handle on a slot machine, but if they see you doing a line of Coke in the bathroom, they might look at you differently. So does that make it worse? I, again, these are parameters we can't really decide or define ourselves, but what we can say is that pornography usage, habitual porn usage starts to impact the brain the same way that habitual alcohol.
usage, cocaine usage, gambling, any of these, again, whether it's a [00:05:00] substance addiction or it's a behavioral addiction, all the research would suggest that pornography is affecting the brain the exact same way. Some research out there would show that it's worse. And I would like to see more of it before I really put my stake in the ground on that.
Um, but we know that that porn affects the brain just as much, if not worse than other drugs. Addictions. Uh, myth number three, porn addiction is only for people with moral or religious beliefs. I just crack a big smile every time I see this research. Uh, there's a particular group who is really adamant that, you know, people who, uh, who identify as, you know, I have porn addiction.
They also identify really high on a moral and religious scale. And so the whole kind of premise is, you know, these people, um, it's, it's actually not about the pornography. It's just about their morality. And basically what they're saying is if people didn't have that morality, Then they wouldn't have the addiction.
So again, very interesting research. Uh, there's a lot of holes to poke in this. Uh, the first thing is [00:06:00] that if you study someone's, um, the, the research apart from moral or, you know, moral beliefs or religiosity, um, you can still observe addictive tendencies and patterns in somebody's brain. Um, so, you know, that alone kind of, uh, demystifies that whole thing.
Uh, the second thing. Is that no addiction, no kind of compulsive use is correlated with somebody's morality. Those, those, those two things, I really have nothing to do with it. Where you're actually looking at is does it affect somebody's day to day living, their ability to function? Does it affect their social life?
Are they engaging in riskier behavior? Like these are actually more clinical ways of diagnosing whether or not an addiction exists. And you could look at those things in people with a moral conviction about pornography that are Christian and they were taught their whole lives that it was bad. And you could look at it in a group of people who have no moral conviction and whether or not it's having the same impacts is literally not impacted whatsoever by their morality.
So it's a complete [00:07:00] myth. Yeah. Not true at all. Myth number four, porn is a useful tool to spice up your sex life. Now this one is actually not an entire myth. In fact, there's good research that would suggest when couples view pornography, they report higher rates of sexual satisfaction. Initially. Okay. And then what happens is if you follow these couples over longer periods of time, is they actually start to report lower levels and their risk of infidelity, divorce, and all kinds of relationship dysfunction start to go through the roof.
Now let's think about this. If you get conditioned, okay, if I condition you to get aroused by somebody other than your partner, What do you think is going to happen eventually? You're just going to push that partner out and everything about the relationship dynamic changes when you don't need them sexually.
So this is like, it's, it's almost embarrassing really that our society has bought into this lie. Uh, again, I understand why I can see [00:08:00] the logic. But when you really think about what you're doing, this is really bad for you. Um, and that's one of the most destructive myths that exist around pornography. Uh, number five, porn is educational and informative.
Oh my, I love this. You know, this is, this is really the equivalent of saying that Hollywood is educational and informative. Are there educational and informative movies out there? Sure, but we don't hear about them and most of us don't watch them. The reality is what most people watch on Netflix or Disney is not educational.
It's not informative. It's the stuff that's entertaining. It's the stuff that scratches the itch and sometimes it's the stuff that's meeting the need. And porn is literally. No different. Most people watch porn for, uh, again, unmet needs. Uh, there's entertainment component to it. And then, you know, there's a huge part of people just not being able to control their sexuality or control their urges.
All of these things lead people down this destructive path. Now, here's the interesting thing, and this is the same with Netflix and whatever. If, have [00:09:00] you gone on Netflix recently and it showed you the top 10 movies that were playing in your country? That, that is based purely on user response. So the, the, the things you're more likely to consume are the things that rank higher.
They're the things that are more, they have a higher relevance rating, it's called algorithmically. So with pornography, it's the same way. These, these algorithms are built the exact same way. And so if people are watching this stuff and they're watching it a lot, and they're, they're staying on the videos longer, it's more likely to show up in a search.
It's more likely to show up on a main home page. And so what you're watching is totally skewed by people's viewing patterns and by mainstream, uh, real, really dysfunction, unmet needs, all of those kinds of things. Little about this is educational. And the other side of this, of course, is that it's produced.
It's, it's purely produced for clicks, for views, for your attention span, and to get you getting those dopamine hits on their site so that you'll keep coming back for more and [00:10:00] then they can charge money for your attention through ad revenue. So, um, so that is a myth number five. Now this takes me into myth number six, which is that porn is free.
Uh, and I will actually keep this one short and sweet. A marketing expert once said. That if the product is free, you are a product and you, my friend are in fact a very valuable product to a lot of these systems. And a lot of these sites be very careful. Porn is anything but free. It costs you your soul.
It costs you your attention. And one way or another, you're going to pay a price. It just may not be financially, at least not right away. Last myth that we're going to go through is Ethical porn is better than mainstream porn. Okay, this is just a fascinating whole like concept. The whole concept of ethical porn and it's just largely largely untrue.
Ethical porn is no better. It's still pornography. It still has the same impact on you. The only thing that's better about ethical porn is that those involved in the [00:11:00] production of the pornography We're in, you know, better circumstances. They were paid a bit more fairly. And that is, that is definitely a step up from a production standpoint, but as for the impact it has on you and your wellbeing, it's the exact same, it's still pornography.
So look, that's everything for today. I hope this helps you and maybe shines a little bit of a light on how destructive porn really is for you. Uh, if you want some additional help, check out my free case study video that shows how we help other guys quit pornography. If you want to be one of those guys, that video is definitely worth a watch.
And if you think that what we're providing is a good line for you, or you at least want to find out more, you can book a time with us. We'd love to speak with you and see if we can help in the meantime. God bless you guys. Thank you so much for listening. We'll talk soon. Bye bye. [00:12:00] [00:13:00]
