Shmuley Boteach scribed the book
Kosher Sex and even has his own Wikipedia entry. He must be a prominent guy.
Amazon.com review:
Kosher Sex is based on the idea that sex is holy. Written by Shmuley Boteach, a Hasidic rabbi, the book occupies the interesting juncture between sex and religion. Using traditional Jewish thought, Boteach attempts to remove sexual taboos and explain the power and place of sex within a marriage...
Some of Boteach's ideas may strike a liberal reader as overly conservative--his thoughts are directed at married couples, as he firmly believes sex has no place outside of this committed bond. Furthermore, his beliefs on such issues as the place of masturbation and pornography in marriage, whether or not sex should be used to settle arguments, and if the lights should be on or off while making love may make Dan Savage or Susie Bright fans cringe...
Publishers Weekly:
Despite its title's implication, Kosher Sex is not a prudish book. Rather, this manifesto on using sex as a marital aid takes the view that sex is not to be suppressed in the name of piety but directed toward a more fulfilling, emotionally intimate relationship. A Hasidic rabbi who counsels religious and secular alike in matters of the bedroom, Boteach (The Jewish Guide to Adultery) draws less on mystical and Orthodox teachings and more on personal anecdotes to support his wholesome ideals. The sexual revolution, he argues, has demystified sex and numbed us to its power, with disastrous results. To avoid becoming a statistic, Boteach advises couples to seek kosher sex, not great sex. The difference? The latter "consists entirely of motions," while the former seeks to "elicit lasting emotions." Boteach also takes to task those who assert that a large number of partners prepares one for a long-term relationship, and argues for young marriages, before couples become fully formed adults...
Therein rests his bias. No sex for girlfriends -- marriage only. Forget about test drive dating, forget about getting a sense of your adult individuality, and forget about great sex. Marry young and stupid. Naturally, then, under such viewpoint, pornographic imagery itself is equally damaging as the actual action of adultery, as it wedges division between the spiritual union of a man and a woman bonded in marriage. Ironically, marriage causes testosterone levels to drop, contributing to sexless marriages. With this context in mind:
He was saying that pornography destroys a man's ability to appreciate one woman.
Masturbation is a sexual relieve valve and men primarily need visuals whereas women primarily need toys. Science has proven men are much impersonal and emotionally detached about sex than women, and the most prevalent male fantasies revolve around sex with strangers. This does seem to somewhat undermine Boteach's premise concerning kosher sex and "eliciting lasting emotions," precisely because it seems to treat male and female sexuality the same. As addressed in the aforementioned quote by Rollo Tomassi, not star of
LA Confidential. Pornography is best described as serving the perfunctory biological function of sexual relief and is often argued as preventing the more serious consequence -- acting on sexual impulses where societal constructions (i.e. relationships) would suffer. It's not like we develop emotional attachments.
Mike32ct:
There is nothing natural about w*cking off to a computer screen. Remember, the brain is the largest sex organ. To condition it to respond to images on a screen is NOT going to help your performance with a real woman.
Consider ubiquitous male arousal to photographic images of nude young women (pornography). Being aroused by two-dimensional images could not constitute an adaptation because it shows no evidence of design (and, of course, because no graphic two-dimensional images of nude women existed in the environments of our ancestors). Being aroused by the sight of live three-dimensional nude young women shows clear evidence of design, however. Because the minimum male parental investment is relatively small, any ancestral man who routinely failed to become aroused at the sight of live, young nude women, and who needed numerous other criteria to be met prior to arousal (e.g., knowledge of the social status of the woman's family, her ancestral pedigree, her sense of humor, gathering and cooking skills) would have missed many profitable, low-cost opportunities to reproduce. Arousal to pornography, therefore, is no doubt a by-product of the male adaptation to become aroused at the sight of live, young nude women. (Excerpt from
"Human sex differences in sexual psychology and behavior", Annual Review of Sex Research, 2001)
I gave up porn because I got so conditioned to responding to porn, that I would go soft (or be unable to cüm) when I was with a real woman.
I have been looking at pornography, on and off, in long cycles of interest and disinterest, since I was 12. That's 17 years, give or take. My tastes in women have evolved over the years, as I myself have evolved, though I have never really gotten into anything too hardcore. Pundits would argue pornography would have set expectations so unrealistically high that once I lost my virginity
* I would be in sorrow for the failed unrealistic expectations. Rather, when I did finally, my first time exceeded my expectations (and I had no problems performing). Why, because I have always known pornography is not reality, realistic neither of sexual behavior nor interpersonal relationships. The only time I've experienced sexual dysfunction was when I masturbated hours before an encounter, not because of any prior "conditioning" from pornography, I would surmise. You said earlier "to condition [yourself] to respond to images on a screen is NOT going to help your performance with a real woman"—pictures aside, when it came to watching videos I knew exactly what I was doing.
My only regret with pornography is that it spoiled the mystery of what's underneath girls' clothing.
(
* Heck, who I am kidding. No guy ever 'loses' his virginity. We get rid of the damn thing!)
