Right answers for wrong reasons

I marvel at how two diametrically opposed sexual value systems have reached the conclusion that porn consumption is bad for men. How is it possible to be either a prude or a hedonist and both agree that porn is a bad thing?

My answer is that men who see themselves as sex-positive and believe porn is good are suffering from anosognosia. Feminists and religious fanatics who see themselves as sex-negative are similarly deluded because they don't realize that abstinence from porn and masturbation is the pathway to the greatest male sexual vitality and (if one is so inclined) promiscuity. Either that, or they hold a bizarre and to me alien value system which holds that fantasies are equivalent to real experiences.

Or alternatively, pornography is just an easy target loosely connected with male sexuality on which to bring down the violence of the state. Since prosecutions are easily based on possession of information alone and requiring neither victims nor witnesses, the feminists can afford to miss their antisex mark much of the time.

I cringe when I see otherwise ideologically sound men buy into the official narrative like The Antifeminist is doing here: David Ley On How ‘Your Belief In Porn Addiction Makes Things Worse.’

The pro-porn advocacy quoted there is so stupid that it's not even wrong, just irrelevant. I don't care if "porn addiction" is a meaningful concept or even if it's harmful to believe in it. What I care about is whether porn interferes with the sex life you could have had without it, and that is never considered in that piece. As I keep saying, the opportunity cost should be our paramount concern with regard to pornography and masturbation. The cited research does not ask how much more sex with how many more females you could have had if you never looked at porn and never masturbated, because the researchers don't care if men have sex.

Such indifference to sexuality is ultimately even more sinister than criminalization, I think. It represents a withdrawal from the world and acceptance of the idea that men might as well be asexual as long as they feel happy about it. I agree that nobody should be criminalized for retreating into a fantasy world, but male sexualism is a nobler ideology, the radical idea that sex is a good thing for us, and thus we do not align ourselves with that kind of junk science.

Pornography is neither worth criminalizing (if one is anti-sex) or supporting (if one is sex-positive). The apparent gains are self-defeating either way. There are many laws I disagree with for reasons other than my male sexualist ideology, and the anti-porn laws happen to be in that category, rather to be opposed on libertarian and free-speech grounds, because yes, they are certainly wrong when viewed from those angles. But they are not an impediment to our healthiest sexual expression, and if anything, obeying them actually helps that.

The Antifeminist makes some better arguments in his latest post here:

In his utter foolishness, Eivind doesn’t seem able to grasp that it’s just a fact, that the lines between ‘porn’ and real relationships are going to increasingly blur. For example, consider selfies. The age of consent is 16 or even lower in most countries in Europe, but the minimum age for ‘sexualized’ selfies is 18. This makes it difficult in today’s world to even pursue or maintain a relationship with a 16 or 17 year old, without breaking the law (‘child pornography’ laws). And this will just get ever more problematic. And not just because of the difference between age of consent and child pornography laws. Most men take sexy pics of their girlfriends. Now they could be prosecuted under ‘revenge porn’ laws if they ever show them to another person, or in Germany already, if they even fail to delete such pics at the end of the relationship.
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To be honest, I don’t see the age of consent laws (at 16) as being even close to the worse feminist injustice. What is so wrong about the present age of consent is the insane and draconian punishments that are meted out now to transgressors. As well as that, the idea that being attracted to teens is a perversion – namely paedophilia. But that itself has likely been caused by the feminist definitions of child porn, rather than the age of consent. Even in Britain, for example, jokes about ‘jail bait’ were commonplace until the child porn laws were ‘strengthened’ and raised to 18 in 2003. Child porn laws essentially carry with them the idea that it is perverted, wrong, and ‘paedophilia’, to even look at or be attracted to a person under 18.

While these are good points, the solution is not to weaken our libidos by being complacent to porn. It should be possible to advocate the right to healthy sexuality without aligning us with something detrimental to it. I certainly agree that when the criminalized "child porn" or "revenge porn" is nothing more than a selfie received from a girl one is talking to or pictures taken in a relationship, rather than a substitute for the girl, this is among our utmost concerns. Reality is that lots of men use such and other pornographic material as a substitute for sex, however, so we must be careful not to conflate these.