This is… Confusing.

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The New York Times yesterday published an article called “Internet Porn Nearly Ruined His Life. Now He Wants to Help,” and then confusingly placed it in the the Men’s Style section. This profile of Alexander Rhodes, chromic masturbator and former google employee doesn’t ever really clearly explain how his life was “ruined” by porn, aside from a mention of needing to imagine porn to sustain an erection during intercourse.

It also fails to explain the “addiction” portion of his alleged condition. I’m not here to tell someone that their plight isn’t legitimate or that they should just buck up and get on with their lives. I’ve suffered from depression and I’m a recovering alcoholic, so it isn’t my place to do any of that. But one might think that the New York Times of all publications, would be inclined to probe a bit deeper into what justifies the use of a term as weighty as “addiction” in this circumstance. Even Mr. Rhodes seems to tap dance around any medical legitimacy:

I had porn-induced erectile dysfunction — a very mild form, and this is all very self-diagnosed, because doctors won’t diagnose this — but I was able to maintain an erection by fantasizing about pornography. That was the only way.”

 

I implore you to read this profile, and draw your own conclusions:

 

Internet Porn Nearly Ruined His Life. Now He Wants to Help.

By SRIDHAR PAPPU

Alexander Rhodes sat along a stretch of grass, looking out over the Allegheny River. The two of us were sitting in a quiet space on the outskirts of Pittsburgh where we had planned to spend the night in tents camping out.

“The key thing to consider is that I am not a very good businessman,” he said. “I’m not really anything but a guy who was addicted to internet porn.”

A few years ago, Mr. Rhodes, 26, founded a website as an online space meant to help others who share his particular problem. It has about one million unique visitors each month, he said, and nearly breaks even.

Mr. Rhodes, who grew up in western Pennsylvania and worked at Google until recently, is now hoping to make his site into something larger. With the help of his father and other family members, he is transforming part of an abandoned church into a base of operations for his fledgling company.

“It’s one thing to look back and regret what happened in terms of growing up, being addicted to internet porn,” he said. “You might look back and be like: ‘Oh, man. I was a loser. And if I never watched it, my life would be so much better.’ And maybe that’s true. But at the same time, the fact that I was addicted to internet porn, the fact that I was so mediocre, makes me uniquely qualified to help humanity.”

In recent years, Mr. Rhodes has emerged as a spokesman against a “disease” that hasn’t been officially recognized by the medical establishment. He seemed uneasy with his new status.

 

You can see the entire article here, but that should give you the gist of it.

If you don’t want to masturbate to porn, then that’s your own thing. But using the word “addiction” and conflating your inability to sustain physical and emotional intimacy with another person with images on a screen really just feeds into our culture’s insistence that sex work, pornography, and really any kind of adult entertainment is somehow damaging or detrimental to some core element of our beings.  That view of sexuality is outdated, unhealthy, and medically and scientifically inaccurate.

Furthermore, I resent him referring to himself as sex-positive. When you set up a website and community dedicated to ceasing masturbatory activity, you’re not being sex-positive.  You’re reinforcing the idea that people are just victims of their own sexuality. Do some people need help taking care of themselves and seeing what behaviors are helpful and which are harmful? Sure. But prescribing “No Fap” as a cure isn’t taking that job very seriously.

 

– tyler