This is a rather frank post on porn, so
proceed or not with that in mind.
Porn is a problem. It is a personal problem
for many and a cultural problem for all. You
may think that you have not been effected by
porn, but you have because it
is 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 effects 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 women 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:
Pornography effects 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 women struggling
with watching it or simply a mom or dad with
a son or daughter.
1. Porn contributes to social and
psychological problems within men.
Feminist and 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, a feminist author,
writes,
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. ( “The Porn Myth”)
3. Porn turns sex into masturbation. Dines
tell the story of how one man’s porn use
essentially taught him “how to
masturbate into a woman” (Pornland, 92).
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). Similarly, Dines, states, “While
porn is by no means the only socializing
agent, thanks to its intense imagery and
effect on the body, it is a powerful persuader
that erodes men’s ability to see women as
equal and as deserving of the same human
rights that they themselves take for granted
( Pornland, 98).”
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…who are nothing more than
collections of holes ( Pornland, xxiv)”–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).”