A trial program conducted by Pornhub in collaboration with UK-based child protection organizations aimed to deter users from searching for child abuse material (CSAM) on its website. Whenever CSAM-related terms were searched, a warning message and a chatbot appeared, directing users to support services. The trial reported a significant reduction in CSAM searches and an increase in users seeking help. Despite some limitations in data and complexity, the chatbot showed promise in deterring illegal behavior online. While the trial has ended, the chatbot and warnings remain active on Pornhub’s UK site, with hopes for similar measures across other platforms to create a safer internet environment.
I completely agree with that.
And I think that is complete nonsense. If it had any merit, the reverse would also be true and could be used as an argument for conversion therapy. I think we can’t proactively develop our sexuality, only discover it. Expressive nuance is happenstance that can be enforced, but is not a deliberate decision. If I see foot fetish stuff it is an instant turnoff and has been for 30 years. My dislike of foot fetish stuff is certainly not due to lack of exposure.
Possibly. When it comes to sex I’m pretty visually fixated. If a femboy satisfied all the visual cues I see no problem in getting going by a femboy’s blowjob. Though, I have a thing for really big natural tits, so I think that’s rather unlikely.
Same as above. I don’t think you can consciously shift your sexuality. You can only force yourself to act against your sexual nature, but not change it. If you could, conversion therapy would have merit. If you had a heterosexual “life style” and then discovered that you enjoy some homosexual interaction, it would be just that: discovering the predisposition that was already there.
Almost agree. I think it’s naive to assume that you could reliably prevent people from exploring their sexuality by keeping them (pre-)occupied with something else. The mind wanders, and where it goes there are no barriers. What I wonder is if barriers in real life (like the ones described in the article) are the best way to handle pedophiles’ desires or if it wouldn’t be more effective to guide them on a prepared way that makes them steer clear of harming others. We’ve seen how well sexual supression works out with church celibacy. I’d say we should at least explore/research options for pedophiles to “express” their sexuality without harming others.
For what it’s worth, you got my upvote, because I think this is one of the most coherent and reasonable comments in the discussion - even if I do not agree with every point.
The reverse isn’t really true as repressing innate desire requires neurosis, while learning to enjoy something you don’t instinctively enjoy very much doesn’t. You can’t go down the road of neurosis open-eyed and that “setting your mind to it” bit requires insight into your own mind so the two are at odds with each other. If it happens then that’s ordinary repression, not a voluntary choice.
And even if it was true then conversion therapy would still be psychological torture: Nothing about conversion therapy is “setting one’s mind to it”, just like setting out to not dislike cleaning the toilet is not the same as someone flushing your head.
Or, differently put: Don’t shove something down someone’s throat that they don’t already enjoy inhaling. SCNR.
And then of course there’s the whole issue of why. Why change that stuff? Of course people might have individual reasons (which might be as simple as learning a psychological circus trick for the heck of it), but that doesn’t mean that a social norm to have a particular sexuality (short of consent issues) makes any amount of ethical sense.
You valued it negatively all those years and presumably never tried to do the opposite, it’s no wonder you continue to dislike it. And why would you, there’s no reason to.
All I’m saying is that the plasticity is there, not that it’s particularly common that people use it.
Nothing is 100% reliable, and the purely sexual can only be a part of the overall solution. Additional things include making affected recognise the impossibility of consent, the amount of damage their behaviour would cause, and if that alone doesn’t convince them that they should gladly distract themselves there’s some ways to get a bit of a handle on dark triad traits though TBH the bigger bully argument works most reliably: Criminalisation. OTOH it would be naive to only crack the whip of criminal law without offering people aid in how to avoid it.
If heterosexual people could learn to enjoy homosexual stuff why shouldn’t homosexual people be able to learn to enjoy heterosexual stuff? In your words: they only have to put their mind to it.
There’s solid evidence that homo-/heterosexuality in men strongly correlates with androgen hormone levels of the mother during pregnancy. Of course that is not binary. But if you are on either end of the spectrum you will not learn to enjoy the other. For women homosexuality is not as well (medically/biolgically) understood. But all research I know points to there being a deciding predisposition just like in men. Now, if of course you’re on one side but not an end of the spectrum and have not had exposure/opportunity to discover that you might enjoy something that runs contrary to your perceived sexuality, it might feel like you’re making an active effort to change/expand on your sexuality when the opportunity arrives and you decide to take it. The truth is, that for a substantial amount of men you can predict with 100% certainty that they will either be exclusively heterosexual or exclusively homosexual simply by measturing their mothers androgen hormone levels during pregnancy. Again, you can discover, and also nurture and develop, your sexuality, but you cannot change it; only repress it.
I don’t think so. Somebody repressing or hiding his (for example) homosexuality doesn’t require neurosis. “Only” an environment that’s out to kill them for it, like parts of Africa.
I think our main issue might be language. You keep talking about learning and I keep talking about discovering. I never made a decision to like big tits. I didn’t “learn” to enjoy them. Thanks to the internet I was presented with a buffet of almost all the porn industry has to offer. I saw everything, but big tits particularly appealed to me, so then I saught out that content deliberately. No doubt reinforcing that taste of mine, but the wiring was already there, before I knew it. You might say that I learned to love big tits. And to that I’d say: wrong. I discovered that I like big tits! Learning requires intent, and there was no intent whatsoever in me realizing I like big tits.
That’s too esoteric for me or I do not understand at all what you’re trying to say here
Yes.
I guess I agree? I don’t see how this relates to anything I said, though.
Exactly my point. Predisposition and discovery. SCNR ;-)
See, I’d say that’s the wrong question. At least to begin with. Is change possible? If the answer is no, there’s no point in asking why you would want that change.
I fear you’ve lost me again. I really don’t know what you’re trying to convey here.
You’re missing the point. Out of the wonderful bouqet of pornography I picked what I liked. That way I found out what I liked. I am absolutely sure that even if I tried to like foot fetish porn I would fail. The “set your mind to it part” is nonsense in this context. That’s not how sexuality works.
I agree to some extent. Everybody has some basic sexual wiring (read orientation) whithin which one can take different routes to develop ones own sexuality. The end result could be very distinct but the way to it is not a conscious process. You can consciously choose to try something new, but you can’t choose whether you like it or not.
Partly to mostly agree. I think we’re on the same page that criminalizing being pedophile helps noone, though. CSAM already is illegal. Long arc back to the beginning: I doubt the measures described in the article have any meaningful impact.
That’s not what I meant by “reverse”, I meant in in the learn to enjoy vs. learn to not enjoy sense.
That sets a baseline instinct, it’s not the end-all be-all of sexual attraction. It sets an attraction, not a repulsion, and just as you don’t need to be genetically attracted to carpentry, as long as you’re not repulsed by it to a degree that can’t be humanely overcome you can learn to enjoy it.
But the answer to whether it’s possible or not is not dependent on whether we want to use that possibility, or whether evangelicals could use it as an excuse to torture people.
Basically that it’s not society’s business who you choose (or not) to be attracted to, as long as it’s all consensual. If you have a Yogi and they want to be aroused by eating spaghetti then that’s their business.
Choosing whether we should like things or not is our largest degree of freedom. The ancient Stoics knew it, and modern psychology picked up on it (CBT is directly influenced by Epictetus). The capacity to do that is, for most people, buried under layers and layers of conditioning because learned helplessness is great if you want to rule people but that doesn’t mean that it’s not there.
And, of course, don’t get me wrong, the capacity is not limitless, things like gender dysphoria are on a deeper level than the mechanisms of pursuit and avoidance. But if you agree that it’s possible to learn to enjoy cleaning the bathroom for someone who really dreaded it before: What makes sucking dick so different that it becomes an impossibility?
Even if the impact is small, even if it’s basically zero, it’s still worth doing because there’s no harm in it.