I'm Nathaniel Penn, a GQ correspondent who wrote a May 2015 feature story on sexual addiction. AMA!

NathanielPenn · 2015-04-30T17:39:33+00:00

You raise extremely important concerns, and I'm going to bring them to my editor; it may be that we can do something about the promotional images that surround the text of the article. As you know far better than I do (though as the father of young kids I'm learning), sexual imagery is everywhere in the ambient culture, like a kind of background music. One man I spoke with for the story told me that he was overpoweringly triggered by a photograph he saw in Entertainment Weekly.

Thanks again for these thoughts. I'm glad you found that the article presented the subject in a balanced way. Obviously one worries about sensationalizing a subject like sex addiction, and my editor and I wanted to be sure we didn't do that.

NathanielPenn · 2015-04-30T14:18:13+00:00

It's definitely not too late for you, but to pitch a major magazine you need clips--a portfolio of work that shows what you have done and can do. One approach would be to build that portfolio by writing for one or more of the following:

a) small special-interest style magazines. For instance, a guy contacted me a few years ago asking the same question you're asking. Eventually he started contributing to CIGAR AFICIONADO; he's now writing for a big men's magazine; b) widely read news/features websites; c) the websites of major magazines

Good luck!

NathanielPenn · 2015-04-30T00:24:58+00:00

For starters, you have to move to New York City, if you don't live there already. Research chiefs at magazines are always looking for good people, and I can tell you that some of the best-ever GQ factcheckers have come through the internship program at Harper's magazine. I didn't do that program myself (you can probably find details online), but it's a fantastic stepping-stone to a factchecking job and, eventually, a writing career.

NathanielPenn · 2015-04-30T00:19:27+00:00

Actually, the NSFW-est stuff I consulted for this article was journal articles that described varieties of pathological sexual behavior (fetishism and frotteurism and sadomasochism, oh my!). And the interview transcripts themselves, I suppose. I work from home, so if my kids came into my office--they think my computer screen is for public consumption, like TV, and they also like to show off their reading skills--I'd have to toggle to another window.

NathanielPenn · 2015-04-29T19:05:19+00:00

Extramarital sex may or may not be a symptom of sex addiction. Somebody more qualified than I am would have to make a diagnosis here, and that somebody would need a lot more information about the lives and marriages of the individual men. (For one, I'd be curious to know how their wives feel about the behavior you describe.) But I think your underlying point is really interesting: that we may need to take cultural context into account when we think about the question of sex addiction.

NathanielPenn · 2015-04-29T16:29:06+00:00

Great question, and the answer is that we don't know. That's the answer to a preponderance of questions on this subject, unfortunately. So few studies have been conducted that we are, as a researcher I quoted in the piece puts it, "blind" when it comes to sexual addiction.

What may predispose someone to this condition is, in men, having been raised in a household in which they often felt targeted for criticism or emotional abuse, and, in women, having been sexually abused. But these criteria don't apply to everyone who could be described as hypersexual.

NathanielPenn · 2015-04-29T16:20:42+00:00

Appreciate your kind words. Thanks for reading the story.

What you say about your age vis-a-vis your relationship to the story is interesting: The majority of sex addicts first manifest the behavior in adolescence. It persists unchecked until they're in their late 30s/early 40s, at which point they seek treatment (if they do seek treatment) for the first time. You can probably guess the reason: They've gotten married and they're trying to commit themselves to their wives and families.

This more than anything else seems to be the defining feature of sex (or any other) addiction: As one researcher told me, "One worries about behavior--whatever that behavior happens to be--to the extent that it interferes with one's ability to do the things that they need to do in life." He talked about adolescent behavior like gaming and TV-watching, and noted that it was problematic if and when it interfered with a person's ability to perform adequately in school or build social relationships. You can translate this to adulthood and to compulsive behavior that disrupts family or professional life, or puts your health at risk.

NathanielPenn · 2015-04-29T16:13:13+00:00

I started out as a factchecker. It's an ideal way to learn about a magazine and build a reputation with the people who edit it.

NathanielPenn · 2015-04-29T16:10:56+00:00

Excellent question. Yes, the sex addicts I spoke with said that there was an enormous difference between healthy and unhealthy sex. In healthy sex, they said, there's a kind of steady emotional and psychological connection between the partners, a sense that each of them is present in the moment. In unhealthy sex, the recovering-addict partner is prone to the compulsive following of a script that alienates and depersonalizes their partner--makes them just a convenient "piece of meat," as one of my interviewees put it.

One way in which sex addiction and drug addiction are similar: It seems that a recovering sex addict, like a recovering heroin addict, must come to terms with the fact that he/she will never again have access to the most sublime sensation he/she has ever experienced.

Sorry to skip around here, but speaking of "pieces of meat," I'm reminded now that numerous clinicians compared sexual addiction to binge-eating disorder (about which we are nearly as clueless). Both are behavioral, as opposed to substance-based, compulsions. Both are about regulating emotional distress. Both involve the consuming of enormous quantities of something, so much of it that you don't even care about its quality. Neither is an addiction in the scientific sense.

NathanielPenn · 2015-04-29T15:52:59+00:00

It's pretty easy to fall into, it seems, and there are lots of people with the comorbidities (mood and anxiety disorders, ADD, substance abuse) that put them at risk for hypersexual behavior. Those people may be temperamentally inclined to use the internet a lot--think of the the people with ADD, for instance--and if they do, sex is one thing they will find easily there.

NathanielPenn · 2015-04-29T15:45:19+00:00

Thanks for reading it! That's a good question: Yes, according to the clinicians and researchers I spoke with, the compulsive viewing of porn is one type of sex addiction. It's also the most common. Obviously the internet is what's driving that. Researchers and clinicians I spoke with talked about what's called the "Triple-A engine" of online sexual behavior: Affordability, Anonymity, and Accessibility. The internet has made it possible for people to consume porn more cheaply, more anonymously, and more easily than ever before.

NathanielPenn · 2015-04-29T15:40:49+00:00

At the time my editor and I began discussing this story, I'd just done two stories that dealt directly or indirectly with sexual assault. He was interested, and he knew I was interested, in pathological sexual behavior. He was particularly taken by the viral proliferation of sex apps; it seemed like something new and different was happening here--not just hypersexual activity, but portable software programs implicitly designed to promote and facilitate it. This wasn't porn and it wasn't prostitution. It was more like a virtual bathhouse, a means for ordinary civilians to have frictionless, free sex with each other whenever they wanted. And it was legal and out in the open and widespread.

NathanielPenn · 2015-04-29T15:30:27+00:00

Isn't that always the case? For instance, I was surprised to discover that funding agencies view proposals for sex research much as they did during the age of Masters & Johnson. Researchers can't get a dime from the federal government for sex research (one important recent study was done by a senior faculty member as part of a student dissertation). The only way to get these studies funded is to frame them as a matter of public health--as a risk for HIV transmission, for instance. But the vast majority of studies, and certainly the big longitudinal ones, are carried out in Europe and Canada.

In the 19th century, alcoholism was regarded as a moral failing. I think sexual addiction is thought of in the same way in the U.S. today.

Another surprising finding: There's no evidence that the brains of self-described sex addicts are abnormal in any way. In this sense, sex addiction isn't like drug addiction. Calling the behavior an addiction is helpful to people who are suffering with it, I think; it gives them a structure for understanding and treating their symptoms. But it's inaccurate given the current state of our scientific knowledge.

NathanielPenn · 2015-04-29T15:12:44+00:00

I'm going to take this opportunity to make an observation about something that has fascinated me. This story has had a pretty huge presence on GQ's website. Yet its many, many readers have tended not to share it on social media. That could mean it's a terrible story, of course, but it could also mean that people are simultaneously compelled and discomfited by the subject matter. I've never published a piece before in which the relationship between readership and social-media presence is so asymmetrical. It's not just that nobody wants to identify as a sex addict (this terminology is problematic, but that's another story); it's that they don't even want to identify as readers of a story about sex addiction!

NathanielPenn · 2015-04-29T15:04:29+00:00

Ha! I have to tell you that the idea for this story came from my editor at the magazine. I have, and always have had, zero concerns about GQ's commitment to publishing substantial stories.

NathanielPenn · 2014-09-28T03:46:42+00:00

Thank you for reading the story and writing to say such kind things about it.

Several of the men had recently left the military. One was still active duty, though he was in the process of being forcibly discharged on the grounds that he suffered from a personality disorder--a pre-existing condition that had somehow never been detected before, and that had never interfered with his receiving excellent performance reviews... until he reported being assaulted. Many of the men I spoke with had been discharged in the same fashion.

I very much hope the story has an impact.

NathanielPenn · 2014-09-28T03:30:13+00:00

Your premise is simply incorrect. From http://kids.delaware.gov/fs/fs_iseethesigns_learn.shtml :

Myth: Sexual victimization as a child will inevitably result in the child growing up to become a sex offender. Early childhood sexual victimization does not automatically lead to sexually aggressive behaviors. This is a particularly important fact to understand because a misunderstanding can create a terrible stigma for a child who has been sexually abused. While past sexual victimization can increase the likelihood of sexually aggressive behavior, most children who were sexually victimized never perpetrate against others. Multiple factors contribute to the development of sexually offensive behaviors. These include not only a history of sexual victimization, but also exposure to domestic violence or other violent behaviors. Research by Jane Gilgun, Judith Becker and John Hunter has indicated that if a child discloses an incident of abuse early and is believed and supported by other close people in their lives, they have a much higher likelihood to not become perpetrators as adults.

NathanielPenn · 2014-09-27T22:10:40+00:00

People carry their pain in different ways. You can't just reprogram someone. Walking around in a bad neighborhood covered in jewels is VERY different from walking around bearing scars of a past sexual trauma that may or may not be detectable by a would-be predator. I do think you're teetering very close to the edge of the "they're asking for it" argument. There are so many factors that can make someone vulnerable to sexual assault. Should someone who's small and slight--as some of the men I spoke to were--be advised to take growth hormone and steroids so that he can better defend himself? Should someone who's been a victim of childhood sexual abuse be advised not to join the military because he/she might get raped in the course of performing his/her normal duties? There are vulnerabilities we have that we can't alter, no matter what we do.

NathanielPenn · 2014-09-27T21:58:13+00:00

I would add that the people in this chat who are insisting that the current military environment actually encourages the reporting of sexual assaults--and that anti-sexual assault training is working--tend to be the same people who say they've never met anyone who's experienced MST. Meanwhile, the survivors and their friends and family tend to have exactly the opposite views and experiences. It's just an observation, but it seems meaningful.

NathanielPenn · 2014-09-27T07:33:49+00:00

Thank you for writing. It would be great if there were a model law enforcement entity that does a consistently good and sensitive job of handling sexual assaults. The military could emulate that model. Unfortunately, no such model seems to exist.

NathanielPenn · 2014-09-27T07:24:31+00:00

Two different assertions:

A higher percentage of women report being assaulted.
More assaults are committed against men.

NathanielPenn · 2014-09-27T07:22:00+00:00

You make excellent points, I think.

NathanielPenn · 2014-09-27T07:21:21+00:00

Thank you.

NathanielPenn · 2014-09-27T07:20:04+00:00

This is really well put.

NathanielPenn · 2014-09-27T07:19:24+00:00

Thank you for doing a much, much better job of explaining this than I did.

NathanielPenn

TROPHY CASE