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).”