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Saturday, December 10, 2016

Porn, Sex And Marriage: What's OK, And What Isn't? : NPR

5:00 PM Bilal Muazin No comments

Warning: Today's post deals with sexual content and may not be appropriate for all audiences.

Dear Sugar Radio is a weekly podcast from member station WBUR. Hosts Steve Almond and Cheryl Strayed offer "radical empathy" and advice on everything from relationships and parenthood to dealing with drug problems or anxiety.

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Today they're delving into the adult topics of pornography and masturbation. A man says he masturbates regularly while watching pornography but still maintains a healthy sexual relationship with his wife. But he is still "troubled" by the notion that the porn industry is exploitative of performers, and questions whether it is morally acceptable to fantasize about women other than his wife.

To help in their discussion of these topics, the Sugars are joined by Wendy Maltz, sex therapist and co-author of The Porn Trap.

Dear Sugars,

Is it bad to masturbate to online porn? I am a happily married man in my mid-50s, and have been married for 15 years to a wonderful woman. We have a satisfying sex life, having sex approximately once every week.

However, I go online to masturbate to porn about three times a week. I work from home and find that I become sexually turned on during the working day. I look at masturbation as a healthy release. Viewing online porn allows me to accomplish the "task" more quickly and get back to work.

That other purveyor of personal wisdom, Dr. Phil, advises that watching porn is an immoral betrayal of a marital partner and says the women in porn videos are likely to have been abused as children and are being exploited. I have a teenage daughter and avoid videos of young girls, preferring age-appropriate subjects in the so-called "mature" category. I also avoid watching porn up to 24 hours before I am likely to have a date with my wife in order to be able to enjoy and contribute to our sex together.

Can Men And Women Be Friends Without Benefits?

My wife knows that I look at porn. While we don't discuss it, she doesn't feel that it is a betrayal of her. I look at viewing porn as an extension of masturbation, which I believe is healthy and a necessary release, one that is as private as going to the bathroom. If not for porn, I would still masturbate. I doubt Dr. Phil believes that masturbation is immoral. Is masturbating while fantasizing about someone besides my wife immoral? Assuming that online porn is the problem, is it possible that you can make distinctions?

I know that many of the women on porn sites are probably psychologically damaged in some way, and that the pornography industry may be contributing to that damage. On the other hand, is it possible that accepting money for video sex is not always exploitative? Is it possible that some of the women who perform in online sex videos do it out of a healthy appreciation of sex?

Signed,

Troubled by Porn

Steve Almond: I could have written this letter, and I felt a great sense of sympathy for this guy who's trying to figure out the same questions I struggle with when I bother to even struggle with them: Am I complicit in something that is very clearly against my moral code? In what ways? And what are my other alternatives?

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Follow the Sugars on Twitter @dearsugarradio.

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I think he is in a productive state of bewilderment, and I think most of the men of conscience who consume porn in one way or another are either suppressing this set of questions or are struggling with them. The porn industry is like football or like meat or like fossil fuels â€" it's essentially exploitative. But because I have a libido that operates differently than my wife's, I get horny and I want relief. I lament that I no longer sit there and do the imaginative work of masturbating without porn. There are a lot of people who aren't even grappling with the ways in which pornography is an ethical concern because, frankly, people don't want porn served with a side dish of ethics.

Wendy Maltz: I have a lot of respect for the man who wrote this letter. He's really thinking about his relationship to porn and trying to figure it out. He doesn't have the secrecy and shame element going on that a lot of people have with porn. But there's something happening â€" he's starting to question it. I can't say if his porn use in particular is a good thing or a bad thing. It's so personal. People have ask themselves, "What does porn mean to me? What is it doing to me? Where's it taking me?"

Cheryl Strayed: What do you mean when you say "Where's it taking me?" Do you mean to suggest that, in some ways, his porn use could be robbing his marriage of a sort of intimacy that it might have if he didn't use it?

Wendy: Porn is a very powerful product. It's like nothing we've ever seen before. There's a conditioning process associated with porn. It can become a stronger habit. Our sexual arousal response gets patterned to particular cues, and those cues can be the images in porn or they can be the smell of a lover's neck. Images are very powerful, so porn could be affecting the intimacy he has with his wife in ways he's not even aware of. He says porn is not an issue in his marriage, but he and his wife aren't really talking about its place in their relationship either.

Steve: There's a kind of "don't-ask-don't-tell" policy when it comes to porn in relationships. Pornography, predominantly for men, is a little secret cavern â€" it's a place we go, even if we're in happy, deeply communicative relationships, as it seems this guy is.

Cheryl: Part of my response to this letter is that there's nothing wrong. This guy wants to have an orgasm about four times a week. Presumably, if his wife wanted to have sex more, she would be making advances towards him. And he has a different sex drive than she does, and so he just takes care of himself. He doesn't need to tell his wife. There is such thing as privacy, even when you're married to somebody. Wendy, is this inherently a bad setup, or are you thinking, well clearly, because he's asking these questions, he's not entirely comfortable with it?

Wendy: From a clinical perspective, we're not talking about someone who is disassociated or who uses porn in lieu of sex, but there's something going on for him â€" he signed his letter "Troubled by Porn." One of the things that I wonder about is, why does he use porn a lot while he's working? Is sexual release a way of dealing with stress for him? Maybe he's not feeling as productive or as recognized in his field as he'd like to be? Has porn become a way that he self-soothes? And if so, is that at the expense of learning other ways to take care of himself â€" reaching out to a real person or going for a run?

The other thing is his age. Being a man in his mid-50s, it can take a little longer to get sexually aroused. The erections aren't as firm. Sex can become a little bit more laborious in terms of functioning, but under usual circumstances, that's offset by really good communication with a partner you've been with for years.

Cheryl: Or by a sense of humor â€" that sex doesn't have to be a performance. It doesn't always have to equal orgasm. It's a sensual exchange of pleasure and communication.

Wendy: And there's this wonderful growth that a couple can have. I've been married for nearly 40 years now, but I had a rough beginning as a sexual person. I've now experienced what it's like to be in a long-term relationship where you don't have a heavy influence of porn and where you can really work with your partner and learn with your partner and grow with your partner sexually. I think a lot of couples are missing out on that growth.

Steve: Troubled by Porn, you've reached a moment where you have to ask yourself, "What is the meaning of porn for me? And if I'm unsettled, do I need to start having the difficult, but necessary, discussion with my wife to say, 'I feel greater desire and I want it to be toward you. I want to find a better balance between my porn use and our sex life together.' "

You can get more advice from the Sugars each week on >Dear Sugar Radio from WBUR. Listen to the full episode to hear more about how porn can affect relationships.

Have a question for the Sugars? Email dearsugarradio@gmail.com and it may be answered on a future episode.

You can also listen to Dear Sugar Radio on >iTunes, >Stitcher or your favorite podcast app.

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Thursday, December 8, 2016

Pizzagate gunman refuses to dismiss online conspiracy theory claims about child sex ring

1:00 PM Bilal Muazin No comments

Edgar Maddison Welch, 28 of Salisbury, N.C., surrenders to police Sunday, Dec. 4, 2016, in Washington. Welch, who said he was investigating a conspiracy theory about Hillary Clinton running a child sex ring out of a pizza place, fired an assault rifle inside the restaurant on Sunday injuring no one, police and news reports said. (Sathi Soma via AP) Â (Sathi Soma)

The man accused of firing an assault rifle inside a Washington pizza shop refused to completely dismiss the online conspiracy theory accusing the eatery of running a child sex ring that brought him there in the first place -- although he said he regretted how he handled the situation.

Edgar Maddison Welch, 28, told the New York Times in a Wednesday videoconference that the online articles he read about Comet Ping Pong pizzeria â€" which linked the supposed ring to Hillary Clinton â€" left him with the â€œimpression something nefarious was happeningâ€ and he wanted to â€œreally able to look into it.â€

Court documents showed that Welch entered the eatery and fired an AR-15 rifle several times inside the restaurant but later exited with his hands up. He surrendered to police when he found no signs of children being held as sex slaves.

"I just wanted to do some good and went about it the wrong way," he told the newspaper.

While Welch acknowledged that his â€œintelâ€ on the restaurant was not 100 percent, he refused to dismiss that what he had read online was untrue, conceding only that there were no children "inside that dwelling."Â

He also rejected the term â€œfake newsâ€ believing that it diminishes stories shared outside the mainstream media.

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Welch told the newspaper he started driving to Washington from his Salisbury, N.C., home intending only to give the restaurant a "closer look." But while on the way, he said he felt his "heart breaking over the thought of innocent people suffering."

Welch would not say why he brought an AR-15 into the pizza shop and fired it, the newspaper reported.

On Thursday, a judge delayed a preliminary hearing for Welch. His public defender requested the delay, saying she needed more time to investigate the case. He will be back in court Tuesday.

Welch appears to have lived an aimless life that became turbulent in the weeks before he was drawn to the nation's capital by a fake news story.

Friends and family say he is a well-meaning father of two girls who wanted to be a firefighter. But he also unnerved some with his religious fervor and sometimes had trouble detaching himself from the internet.

In the weeks before his Washington arrest, there were other signs of turbulence. In late October, Welch struck a teenage pedestrian with his car in his hometown, requiring the boy to be airlifted to a hospital, according to a police report that said he wasn't immediately charged. More recently, days before he drove to Washington, he was dropped from the rolls of a volunteer fire department.

In past years, he was convicted of drunken driving and minor drug charges.

But the one constant, friends and family say, was his love for his two young daughters.

"He's a father and a very loving man, very concerned about children," said his aunt Tajuana Tadlock, adding: "He's not a vigilante, by no check of the words."

Tadlock said Welch's parents haven't been able to talk to him to ask what he was thinking, and the family's only information comes from the news and the public defender.

In recent years, Welch often mentioned his Christian faith. Interspersed with Facebook posts about his daughters are the registered Republican's musings on the Bible and religion.

Danielle Tillman of Raleigh said she met Welch a few months ago and has known his current girlfriend for years. She recalls Welch made her uncomfortable while talking at length about religion. At one point, he grabbed her hand and prayed, asking for "the demons to come out of me," she said.

Welch's family has roots in the Salisbury area, where his father and grandfather served in local government, according to the Salisbury Post. Friends say he attended West Rowan High School. A woman at the family's property declined to answer questions this week.

Around age 18, Welch pleaded guilty to misdemeanor drug possession charges in neighboring Cabarrus County, according to online records of the January 2007 offense.

Welch enrolled at Cape Fear Community College in Wilmington, but court records say he didn't graduate.

On a break from college in 2009, Welch was interviewed by the Salisbury Post after he made it halfway through a hike of the 500-mile Colorado Trail. He told the newspaper the hike helped him overcome an addiction to the internet.

"It's a good feeling, going solo," he told the newspaper. "There's something spiritual about it."

In April 2013, Welch was charged with impaired driving with a blood-alcohol content of .09, court records show. He pleaded guilty, was sentenced to probation and community service and underwent alcohol counseling.

Rowan County records show that after a short marriage, his wife filed for divorce in November 2014. The thin file doesn't say why they split up. The divorce complaint was dismissed in 2015 after neither attended a scheduled hearing. Documents related to his arrest say they remain separated, and his two children live with him.

Welch twice served briefly as a volunteer firefighter, and his aunt said he was recently taking classes needed to get a paying job as a firefighter.

Locke Fire Chief Rusty Alexander said Welch barely showed up at the fire station after joining in 2012, and lasted about six months.

"He tried it, and basically it wasn't for him," Alexander said.

In May 2016, Welch became a volunteer firefighter in the town of Spencer, Chief Gray Grubb said. Grubb said Welch stopped attending training sessions and didn't answer alarms, so he was removed from the active roster Nov. 30.

"When we interviewed him, he seemed like a good guy," Grubb said.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

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Pizzagate gunman refuses to dismiss online conspiracy theory claims about child sex ring

11:30 AM Bilal Muazin No comments