The Sex Myth: Why Everything We're Told Is Wrong by Brooke Magnanti

might have
been just a cheating jerk, he now can claim to be suffering from ‘narcissistic personality disorder’ or a ‘sex addiction’.
    There is no denying that at least some of the people claiming a sex addiction are experiencing dangerous or worrying behaviour. Labels are useful, and have their place.
Defining terms for alcoholism and drug addiction, for instance, helps give a framework where genuinely self-destructive and antisocial behaviour can be addressed. Step One of any twelve-step
programme involves simply acknowledging that a problem exists. But is a fidelity problem always the same thing as an addiction? A rich guy cheating on his wife, that’s a tragedy for
the family, for sure. But are we calling someone an addict who is really just the equivalent of a social drinker, or an unpleasant drunk? There’s a line that gets crossed in addictions, and
it’s a pretty extreme one. I’ve lived with addicts and I’ve lived with cheaters. There is no comparison.
    In Chinese there is a saying:(sān rén chéng hǔ). Roughly translated, it means ‘three men
make a tiger’. The idea is that once you’ve heard about something from three different people, you’re likely to take the story as truth without any other evidence. It only takes a
handful of persuasive voices to convince people that something exists, even if it may not.
    One of the people most influential in the area of ‘sexual addiction’ is Dr Patrick Carnes, who co-founded the Gentle Path sex addiction programme at the Mississippi treatment centre
that Woods entered. Since 1992 he has written seven books on the topic and numerous articles. He wrote the definition of sexual addiction for the Comprehensive Textbook of Psychiatry, and
established the treatment protocol.
    His Wikipedia page also notes that he was awarded the distinguished Lifetime Achievement Award of the Society for the Advancement of Sexual Health, a society he co-founded in 1987.
    On his website, Carnes gives a more explanatory definition of sexual addiction than either the DSM-IV or the ICD-10. He begins by saying that it is not about a single behaviour. But he does
confirm that it includes some, and/or all, of the following: ‘compulsive masturbation, compulsive heterosexual and homosexual relationships, pornography, prostitution, exhibitionism,
voyeurism, indecent phone calls, child molesting, incest, rape and violence.’
    Undoubtedly child molesting, incest, rape, and violence are wrong and should be causes for concern, regardless of whether they happen once or repeatedly. But surely those should be addressed by
criminallaw. And putting masturbation in the same category? Isn’t that a little . . . nineteenth-century thinking?
    So, while some of the behaviours Carnes lists are clearly worrying, they are also extremely varied, perhaps too varied to fall under the same diagnostic umbrella. Is masturbation really somehow
related to child molestation? If so, Carnes doesn’t say how. Nor am I aware of any scientific evidence to suggest that this is the case.
    Carnes developed the Sexual Addiction Screening Test, a diagnostic tool that aims to assess behaviour that may indicate a sex addiction. (It’s unusual, even in a newly defined
psychological disorder, for one person to have contributed so much to the definition and the diagnosis, not to mention the treatment criteria.)
    The diagnostic test is disconcerting at times. Consider, for instance, a few yes-or-no questions:
    Do you hide some of your sexual behaviours from others?
    Has sex (or romantic fantasies) been a way for you to escape your problems?
    Because the answers are yes or no, there’s no room for interpretation. For instance, the child of very conservative parents may well hide sexual behaviours. Hiding your
homosexuality from homophobes, in the narrow way the question is phrased, could potentially indicate you are a sex addict. And asking whether anyone has used fantasy as a way to escape problems . .