This
is a rather frank post on porn, so proceed, or not, with that in mind.
Porn is a problem.
It's a personal problem for many and a cultural problem for all. You may think
you have not been affected by porn, but you have because it's embedded in the
surrounding culture. The staggering size of the pornography industry, its
influence upon the media and the acceleration of technology, paired with the
accessibility, anonymity, and affordability of porn all contribute to its
increasing impact upon the culture.
Pornography
affects you whether you’ve ever viewed it or not, and it is helpful to
understand some of its negative effects, whether you are a man or woman,
struggling with watching it, or simply a mom or dad with a son or daughter.
There is a plethora of research on the detrimental effects of pornography (and
I do not think that what follows are necessarily the worst of them), but here
are seven negative effects of porn upon men and women:
1.
Porn Contributes to Social and Psychological Problems Within Men
Anti-pornography
activist, Gail Dines, notes that young men who become addicted to porn “neglect
their schoolwork, spend huge amounts of money they don’t have, become isolated
from others, and often suffer depression.” (Pornland, 93). Dr. William Struthers,
who has a PhD in biopsychology from the University of Illinois at Chicago,
confirms some of these and adds more, finding that men who use porn become
controlling, highly introverted, have high anxiety, narcissistic, curious, have
low self-esteem, depressed, dissociative, distractible (Wired for Intimacy,
64-65). Ironically, while viewing porn creates momentary intensely pleasurable
experiences, it ends up leading to several negative lingering psychological
experiences.
2.
Porn Rewires the Male Brain
Struthers
elaborates,
As men fall deeper
into the mental habit of fixating on [pornographic images], the exposure to
them creates neural pathways. Like a path is created in the woods with each
successive hiker, so do the neural paths set the course for the next time an
erotic image is viewed. Over time these neural paths become wider as they are
repeatedly travelled with each exposure to pornography. They become the
automatic pathway through which interactions with woman are routed….They have
unknowingly created a neurological circuit that imprisons their ability to see
women rightly as created in God’s image (Wired For Intimacy, 85).
In a similar vein
regarding porn’s effect upon the brain, Naomi Wolf writes in her article,
"The Porn Myth,"
After all, pornography
works in the most basic of ways on the brain: It is Pavlovian. An orgasm is one
of the biggest reinforcers imaginable. If you associate orgasm with your wife,
a kiss, a scent, a body, that is what, over time, will turn you on; if you open
your focus to an endless stream of ever-more-transgressive images of cybersex slaves
that is what it will take to turn you on. The ubiquity of sexual images does
not free eros but dilutes it.
3.
Porn Turns Sex into Masturbation
Sex becomes
self-serving. It becomes about your pleasure and not the self-giving, mutually
reciprocating intimacy that it was designed for.
4.
Porn Demeans and Objectifies Women
This occurs from
hard-core to soft-core pornography. Pamela Paul, in her book Pornified, quoting
the research of one psychologist who has researched pornography at Texas a&M,
writes,
‘Softcore
pornography has a very negative effect on men as well. The problem with
softcore pornography is that it’s voyeurism teaches men to view women as
objects rather than to be in relationships with women as human beings.’
According to Brooks, pornography gives men the false impression that sex and
pleasure are entirely divorced from relationships. In other words, pornography
is inherently self-centered–something a man does by himself, for himself–by
using another women as the means to pleasure, as yet another product to consume
(80).
Paul references
one experiment that revealed a rather shocking further effect of porn: “men and
women who were exposed to large amounts of pornography were significantly less
likely to want daughters than those who had none. Who would want their own
little girl to be treated that way?” (80).
“It becomes about
your pleasure and not the self-giving, mutually reciprocating intimacy that it
was designed for.”
Again, it needs to
be emphasized, that this is not an effect that only rests upon those who have
viewed porn. The massive consumption of porn and the size of the porn industry
has hypersexualized the entire culture. Men and women are born into a pornified
culture, and women are the biggest losers. Dines continues,
By inundating
girls and women with the message that their most worthy attribute is their
sexual hotness and crowding out other messages, pop culture is grooming them
just like an individual perpetrator would. It is slowly chipping away at their
self-esteem, stripping them of a sense of themselves as whole human beings, and
providing them with an identity that emphasizes sex and de-emphasizes every
other human attribute (Pornland, 118).
5.
Porn Squashes the Beauty of a Real Naked Woman
Wolf, in her blunt
way, confirms this,
For most of human
history, the erotic images have been reflections of, or celebrations of, or
substitutes for, real naked women. For the first time in history, the images’
power and allure have supplanted that of real naked women. Today, real naked
women are just bad porn (Quoted in Wired for Intimacy, 38).
6.
Porn Has a Numbing Effect upon Reality
It makes real sex
and even the real world boring in comparison. It particularly anesthetizes the
emotional life of a man. Paul comments,
Pornography leaves
men desensitized to both outrage and to excitement, leading to an overall
diminishment of feeling and eventually to dissatisfaction with the emotional
tugs of everyday life…Eventually they are left with a confusing mix of supersized
expectations about sex and numbed emotions about women…When a man gets bored
with pornography, both his fantasy and real worlds become imbued with
indifference. The real world often gets really boring…” (Pornified, 90, 91).
7.
Porn lies about what it Means to be Male and Female
Dines records how
porn tells a false story about men and women. In the story of porn, women are
“one-dimensional”–they never say no, never get pregnant, and can’t wait to have
sex with any man and please them in whatever way imaginable (or even
unimaginable). On the other hand, the story porn tells about men is that they
are “soulless, unfeeling, amoral life-support systems for erect penises who are
entitled to use women in any way they want. These men demonstrated zero empathy,
respect, or love for the women they have sex with…(Pornland, xxiv).”
Credit: BJ Stockman, theresurgence.com
