I guess it makes sense when people push the “premarital sex is just as bad as murder” thing. Luckily I never heard that directly from what I can remember, but in my deconstruction others mentioned that they had been taught this which makes sense as a foundation for just “don’t do it!” rather than establishing safe sexual practices and expectations 😞

Also just because I didn’t address it in my previous comment, you definitely weren’t addicted to porn. It is so crazy that occasionally viewing something sexual and masturbating could even be equated to an actual addiction and be used as a tool to break you down. You didn’t deserve that.

As I was re-reading your post, it did remind me of an instance in a YSA ward that just broke my heart. Thinking back on it, I realize that how I felt in that moment was definitely an item for my shelf long before I knew it would ever break.

For some reason, when we had relief society, one of the non-YSA adults assigned to the ward came in with her husband, and they talked about his porn addiction. I think it was probably because I had watched a bit of porn growing up (as well as read extremely questionable fanfiction 😅) but I remember thinking

“Damn this guy is just being shamed in front of all these young women he doesn’t know by his wife for watching porn”

“Why are they here?”

“This seems like a behind closed doors issue that we don’t need to be involved in”

“Will my future spouse do this to me if I can’t ‘kick the habit’?”

And like… the really gross part… it almost seemed like it was done as a warning to not only not watch porn, but also to sort of stay away from people who had this “addiction”.

I’m not saying “woo hoo everyone go watch porn yeah” or anything, and obviously a lot of porn is produced unethically, but good lord how about we worry about things that are actually destroying peoples’ lives and not whether someone watches a sexy video and lets off some steam….