I’m a long-term reader; I’ve admired your work for years.

I haven’t been following the main part of this conversation, so I don’t really have the knowledge to make an educated response. I would tend to believe that your responses to the folks at Scarleteen are appropriate and compassionate. I also am very able to believe that young women are facing pressures to be pro-porn that folks my age (just turned 39) didn’t experience as adolescents. I’m glad that you speak to them with respect for their experiences, not projection from your own.

This is a sidebar to the main point of your post, but I was struck by your comment that you could use volunteers. Weirdly, it’s never occurred to me to volunteer for Scarleteen. It is something I would be interested in. Is there a webpage, or FAQ, or someplace I can look to get information on volunteering? I’d like to see what’s involved, and what the qualifications and commitments are, so I can see if there might be a way I could help out.

Thanks,

Samir

And having issues with it as a concept is a far different response than affirming that it’s merely the product of a sex negative society. Thank you for the offer to talk more; I may take you up on it at some point. I’m doing pretty well now, thanks to some amazing group support. I think two really difficult things to understand about compulsive sexual behavior for a partner are that 1) it’s NOT personal and 2) it’s NOT about the activity being “acted out” by the addict. The scenario described by the young woman who was so uncomfortable with her partner’s use of porn really struck a note with me. I wondered why I was crying and miserable, and at some times violent when I discovered a stash of secret porn. I was convinced the problem was me. Those so quick to judge the young woman as merely “insecure” may not know the whole story - it’s hard enough to understand when compulsions are in full bloom.

Thanks again — it’s no wonder Scarleteen is so successful, you have an incredibly generous spirit. As soon as I become employed, a donation is on the way. Cheers.

I confess, I also have issues with sex addiction as a concept, but not when we replace the word addiction with compulsion. For me, addiction is about external (as in, our bodies don’t make them, we add them) chemical addiction, but compulsion is about behaviors, and people can most certainly be sexually compulsive and/or have impulse control issues with sex.

If you want someone extra to talk to, I’d be happy to talk by email if you like. That’s a rough spot to be in.

As a very sex-positive feminist with a male partner who has a sex addiction, I struggle all the time to have less-than-simplistic discussions about porn. His experiences have significantly impacted my understanding of porn. Unfortunately, most of my sex-positive role models seem to have outright disdain for or disbelief in even the IDEA of sex addiction.

I know that you’re not discussing addiction per se, but I appreciate your willingness to look at and think about and critically discuss an issue that is generally only seen in terms of either/or.

I also find that with the young women I hear from about these issues talking like her, there’s usually more going on that just a lack of a good sex life (which I addressed in my answer, anyway) or not masturbating. Sometimes that’s it, to be sure, but not always. And with her feeling as skittish as I think she was feeling, my suggesting those kinds of things to her would likely either have scared her off or made her feel dismissed. Once more with feeling, younger women and older women just are not the same, and this generation has borne some burdens and pressures many of us who are older have not.