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 traveled 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 CyberLove 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 relatoinships. 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 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 own 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 desensitivzed 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 joysticks 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).”
This article i