Controversy over sexual addiction

Many of you who read this blog know that I specialize in both sexual addiction, sexual compulsivity and sexology. I try to look at sexual practices, fantasies and behaviors from a positive perspective as much as possible. The debate around sexual addiction is growing. Sexologists and sex addiction therapists often disagree with one another.

Can there be a middle ground? I think so.

To find this middle ground we have to look at all the issues around sexual addiction and compulsivity as well as those individuals who are acting out their own narcissism, childhood sexual abuse or simply are immature and want to have a lot of sex without regard for others.

In my practice I see much more of those who are experiencing loss of control over their sexual behavior and are horrified by those they have hurt around them--including themselves.

First there was this article in a blog called, "The Salon"

Is sex addiction real?

By Tracy Clark-Flory

It's spawned a VH1 show and an excuse for Tiger Woods. But some experts balk at the idea of being hooked on nooky.

Since the term was coined in 1983, "sex addiction" has become so embroidered in
our self-help vocabulary that most of us stopped questioning it. The term gets
bandied about whenever Bill Clinton logs extracurricular time with an intern or
Eliot Spitzer gets caught having sex in his socks or David Duchovny separates
from his wife. Recently "Sex Rehab" host Dr. Drew Pinsky made headlines by
suggesting that Tiger Woods has a sex addiction. It's become the go-to defense
for extramarital affairs (I'm not an asshole; I'm an addict!) and been sold to
"Oprah" viewers eager to diagnose their porn-loving husbands as both addicts and
assholes.

A problem with news reports and journalism on sexual addiction or any other controversial issue is getting the facts correct. So another journalist posted a correction of what the, "The Salon" reported.

Fact Checking Sex Addiction Coverage
by Benoit Denizet-Lewis

Every couple of years, when a celebrity actor goes to sex addiction
treatment or a celebrity golfer sleeps with dozens of women who are not his
beautiful model wife, the media “rediscovers” sex addiction. Predictable
questions are bandied about: Is sex addiction real? Can someone be addicted
without a substance? Isn’t sex addiction just a clever excuse for whoring
around/irresponsible behavior? What’s next—an addiction to reading blogs?

In recent days, Salon and Slate—online magazines that I’ve contributed
to—have entered the fray. Slate published a piece that covers familiar
ground,
arguing that “our enthusiasm for labeling new forms of addictions
seems to have
arisen from a perfect storm of pop medicine,
pseudo-neuroscience, and misplaced
sympathy for the miserable.” Salon’s
story, which quotes me, strives for some
pseudo-balance but is still deeply
unsatisfying.

There have been many
articles/television segments
about Tiger Woods/sex addiction in the last week,
but one man can only take
so much lazy, knee-jerk journalism. For the sake of
time, I’m restricting my
analysis to the the Salon piece, which is far from the
worst but which
quotes several anti-sex addiction “experts” who don’t know what
they’re
talking about (on this issue, at least). In bold are portions of the
story,
followed by my analysis.

Whatever is decided to call this problem, the truth is that it exists. It causes men and women to behave sexually in ways that are out of integrity with themselves and their lives.

It's a "Guy Thing", not a "Gay Thing"!

Public Sex Confidential

Overnight, senator Larry Craig became the poster boy for public sex. But as Benoit Denizet-Lewis reminds us, the phenomenon is anything but new -- and it's not just a closeted republican thing. So what is it that still drives some in the gay community out of the bedroom and into the Bathroom?

By Benoit Denizet-Lewis
From The Advocate January 15, 2008

Benoit Denizet-Lewis interviewed me on gay men and public sex. Here are excerpts from the article in the Advocate:

“Public sex is alive and well,” says Joseph Couture, author of Peek Inside the Private World of Public Sex.. “Authorities are becoming more creative and
effective at policing it, but horny men are very resourceful. You can have all
the gay marriage you want, but public sex isn’t going anywhere.”

Some assumed that the Internet would do away with the need for sex in the bushes.
After all, why leave the house when you can have your man delivered? Others
hoped that as American society became more accepting of gay people, fewer gay
men would engage in furtive, anonymous encounters. But websites directing men to
public sex places continue to be popular, universities are redesigning their
bathrooms to make them less conducive to cruising, and every month brings news
of police crackdowns like the one in Johnson City, Tenn., where 40 men were
arrested in 2007 for indecent behavior in area parks.

At least one mayor,
Fort Lauderdale, Fla.’s Jim Naugle, proposed drastic measures to deal with the
rampant “homosexual activity” in public restrooms. He wanted to spend $250,000
of the city’s money on self-cleaning robotic bathrooms designed with doors that
automatically open every few minutes, theoretically making sex inside them
impossible. Naugle noted that he prefers the word homosexual to the word gay,
because, he insists, most gay people are actually “unhappy.” Outraged, gay
activists began the “Flush Naugle’s Bigotry” campaign and encouraged people to
send rolls of toilet paper to the mayor’s office to help him “wipe his dirty
mind clean.”

So what explains the pull of public sex for gay men? Why do
some of us risk arrest, humiliation, gay bashings, and sexually transmitted
diseases in order to get off in the shadows?

It’s no secret that risk and danger are aphrodisiacs for many people and that public sex offers an adrenaline rush. But Kort, the psychotherapist, believes there’s a more powerful force to explain why some gay men spend much of their free time cruising public places for sex and why they regularly risk arrest to do so. One man cited in Tewksbury’s study, for example, had been arrested three times for cruising in the same park.

“What no one wants to really talk about is the role that sexual compulsion and addiction plays in this,” Kort says. “I would argue that a majority of men who regularly engage in public sex are either addicted to the rush, the escape, or the shame of public sex. Many gay men will go to great lengths to say that this is a behavior that they enjoy, that they want to be doing this, but if you probe deeper, they’re not happy. This isn’t an activity that makes them feel good about themselves, but they can’t stop doing it.”

Kort adds that many self-identified adult gay men mistakenly believe that by coming out of the closet, they got over whatever self-hate and shame they’d felt growing up gay in a straight world. Anonymous public sex, Kort says, is sometimes a way for gay men to play out shame and self-hate -- to essentially retraumatize themselves. “I call it returning to the scene of the crime -- the crime scene being our childhoods, where we were often degraded or humiliated for being different and where we were told hundreds of negative messages about how gay life is only about sex and how we’ll never find true love and don’t deserve a quality life,” Kort says. “The trauma of our childhoods get sexualized, and we express it at 3 a.m. on a cold night with a stranger in a park or in a rank bathroom along a highway.”

Books referred to in this article:

Gay men seek straight men in public restrooms

In an article appearing in the Advocate's year end issue by Benoit Denizet-Lewis From The Advocate January 15, 2008 entitled, Public Sex Confidential

Denizet-Lewis asks:

So what is it that still drives some in the gay community out of the bedroom and into the Bathroom?

And the article is a well-researched response to some of the reasons. One is how compelling it is for gay men to find straight men in public bathrooms:

One powerful motivating factor for many gay men seeking sex in public
places is the belief that they will find the ultimate sexual prize there:
“straight” men. You won’t bump into many married or self-identified straight
guys in gay bars, but you will find them in public sex places, where they
believe their anonymity is best protected, and where they can get
no-strings-attached gay sex without the hassle of having to actually talk to gay
people (many public sex encounters are done without exchanging a word).

“The reality is that gay men are tripping over each other in public
places to service the guys that carry themselves in the most masculine way
possible, the guys that they believe will then go home to their wives or their
straight lives,” says Joe Kort, a psychotherapist and the author of 10 Smart
Things Gay Men Can Do to Improve Their Lives.

“Straight guys are the ultimate unavailable man, but for a few minutes
in the darkness gay men can have them. And for many gay men it’s the first time,
and the only real place, where they will feel seen, accepted, and validated as
sexual people by straight men. But in the context of public sex, it’s a twisted
form of validation.”

Undercover cops looking to arrest men engaged in public sex understand
that appearing straight carries currency in parks and bathrooms. Richard
Tewksbury’s study “Conversation at the Oasis” -- published in the March 22,
2007, issue of The Journal of Men’s Studies -- details the following
conversation between a cruiser and an undercover police officer on a park nature
trail:

Suspect: You come down here much?

Officer: This is my first time. I just heard about it on the
Internet.

Suspect: You’re a good-looking man.

Officer: Thanks. My wife thinks so too.

The study surveyed police records of 127 cases of public gay sex in a
California city between 1995 and 2005. Tewksbury found that awareness of the
potential for arrest “does not appear to deter cruising activity,” which might
explain why Couture and others don’t believe that Larry Craig’s arrest will keep
men from seeking out public sex. On the contrary, Couture says. “Thanks to good
old Larry Craig,” he tells me, “every man in the United States now knows exactly
how to go about getting sex in a bathroom.”