"Internet porn destroyed my marriage!" (and other familiar themes)

This is another re-post, of something I wrote last September (edited slightly for space). I thought it was relevant and worth restating. I promise, my "Why I'm here" post is coming soon; at the moment I happen to be buried under work, unfortunately.

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This morning, while sitting in my doctor's office waiting to be poked and prodded, I read a horribly-written, utterly asinine Redbook article entitled "My Husband's Sex Addiction." (Here's an online version of the article.) Every few months, it seems, I read a variation on this same article: couple has major problems that stem from some deep, serious issues - and yet the focus is put on porn. I just want to grab these people and yell something along the lines of:

Hey! Get a fucking clue! The porn is not the problem! I know it's probably easier for you to point your finger at naked people on the internet as the reason for your failing relationship; treat the symptoms, not the causes! That's not as painful, and you've got a scapegoat! But, guess what? If porn weren't the issue, it would be something else. Can we get a little perspective, and focus, please? Stop painting everyone who enjoys porn, or rough sex, or whatever it is that squicks you out and that your emotionally abusive spouse happens to partake in, with the brush of "sex addiction." I know things seem much simpler and easier to cope with when you can draw a dividing line between black and white; but you will never get to the root of your issues and actually begin healing until you stop pointing the finger at everyone/everything else and look within yourself. Yes, it will be painful. Yes, it will be lonely and difficult. I can understand why it's more appealing to blame porn.

Synopsis of this particular story, wherein I play armchair psychiatrist (because it's not a particularly hard case to crack here): Husband was sexually abused as a teenager. He doesn't get therapy. Wife claims that "it wasn't until after they wed and became parents that she learned the full, devastating truth about him" - and yet, the sentence immediately preceding that one in the lede was, "From the moment she met her future husband, Jen knew he had a dark side." (So which is it?) Shit, maybe all his drug use should've tipped her off. Later she freaks out about his porn and masturbation, but I guess it never occurred to her that all of it was a manifestation of the same problem. Hello, escapism! He's trying to toke and jerk it away ("it" being the pain stemming from his abuse).

Jesus fuck, these articles piss me off. I mean, I know I shouldn't expect the height of journalistic integrity from Redbook. But goddamn. Can we at least stop with the non-sequiturs? For example:

When our daughter was born, about five years into our marriage, Rob said he was relieved she was a girl--he was worried that history might repeat itself if he had a son. That comment freaked me out, so I asked him to get rid of his porn.

WTF?? I'm reading along, okay... then bam! I'm hit with that last dependent clause. "I asked him to get rid of his porn." How is that at all related?? The mind baffles. Seriously, I do not understand how anyone could draw an association there. How is the tendency for abuse survivors (particularly ones who haven't received treatment... hello!) to become abusers themselves related to this guy's porn collection?? Oh.My.God. Head will explode!

Articles like this barely scratch the surface. Instead of examining actual causes of discontent, they rely on stereotypes - because stories about people working through painful childhood experiences don't exactly make the magazines fly off the shelves. Unfortunately, the sensationalism serves only to perpetuate sex-negative attitudes, and wrongly conflates healthy expression of individual sexuality with addiction, mental illness, abuse, etc. "There must be something wrong with you!" Uh-huh. I've heard that line too many times, and have felt the implicit judgment many more times than that.

It also puts anything sex-related up on a pedestal, as separate from and somehow worse than any other symptom of not dealing with one's shit. Notice how the "breaking point" was when she found him masturbating at the computer - yet the drug use, verbal and emotional abuse of wife and child, poor job performance, etc. is mentioned only in passing. (This goes along with what Figleaf was saying about anything sexual, outside of very tight constraints, being construed as "the worst that could happen." Additionally, Sage wrote about how sexual stereotypes harm everyone.)

This article had the potential to dispel some of those stereotypes and misconceptions. Okay, not so much the article itself as the sidebar that went along with it. It starts off on a promising note (emphasis mine.):

Sex addiction is the use of sexual behavior in a compulsive and self-destructive way. "An addict is rarely satisfied and is usually emotionally absent during a sex act," says Douglas Weiss, Ph.D., who runs Heart to Heart, a treatment center for sex addicts in Colorado Springs.

They really had a chance to do something there. Instead, what did they do? Fall into the same trap of listing "warning signs" such as masturbation, porn use, and strip clubs. (And I love how they throw "having affairs" in there with all the rest... it reminds me of how religious wingnuts conflate homosexuality with shit like pedophilia and bestiality.) And the real kicker (again, emphasis mine):

Experts estimate that up to 5 percent of Americans could meet the criteria for sex addiction, 80 percent of whom are male. And sex addiction is on the rise, especially among men, because of the explosion of Internet porn.

Who are these "experts?" Where did they get their data? You cannot make an outlandish claim, such as associating the rise of sex addiction with internet porn, and not be prepared to back it up. Four words: correlation is not causation.