LOS ANGELES—A new, clinical study by a leading researcher at the Kinsey Institute has debunked a widespread myth often used by anti-porn crusaders in their campaigns to ban pornography — that viewing porn can cause erectile dysfunction, or ED.
ED, that is, difficulty achieving erection, can be attributable to a variety of causes, ranging from emotional stress to health issues such as hypertension and obesity that can cause limited blood flow to the penis, or the inability of the penis to retain the surge of blood that causes an erection. Nerve damage, diabetes, and certain cancer treatments can also result in erectile dysfunction.
But the claim that watching porn also causes ED has been a common one, though even studies that say they have found a link between porn and ED have found the alleged connection to be “weak,” according to a report by Medical News Today.
The new study by Dr. Erick Jannsen, senior research fellow at Kinsey, studied 211 men in a laboratory setting, and found “absolutely no statistical relationship between their use of pornography and their physiological response to pornography, measured in the laboratory, “ according to a report on the study by Psychology Today.
The subjects were all “men who have sex with men” — though as Psychology Today noted, “the penises of gay men do not work any differently than the penises of straight men.” The subjects were given diagnostic interviews to determine which fit criteria for “compulsive” or otherwise “problematic” sexuality, as well as each man’s porn consumption habits.
They were then hooked up to instruments to measure their levels of arousal and erectile response, while being shown a variety of video images designed to evoke specific emotions, and porn images to spark sexual arousal.
“In this research, a history of watching pornography had no effect on the ability of men to achieve an erection,” according to the Psychology Today report.
Though a supposed connection between ED and porn viewing has become a popular trope among critics of the porn industry, according to Psychology Today columnist and clinical psychologist David J. Ley, “there is not a single published study linking pornography and erectile dysfunction.”
Some recent studies have shown what appears to be an unexpectedly high rate of erectile dysfunction among younger men, which has led some anti-porn critics to assume that porn use must be the cause of this phenomenon.
But Ley notes that historical data on ED rates in the young male population is hard to come by, because most previous studies focused only on older men, meaning that comparisons of current ED rates among young men with past generations are difficult to draw.
The popularity of relatively recent ED treatments such as Viagra, along with the ubiquitous advertising campaigns for those drugs, has lifted some of the stigma around erectile dysfunction, according to Ley, who says that today’s generation of young men may be more likely to report ED symptoms than their counterparts in previous eras.
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