Our daughters – and our sons – have the right to live in a world that celebrates equally women's sexual freedom and bodily integrity. - Gail Dines
7 Surprising (and Negative) Effects of Porn
by BJ Stockman
B.J. lives on the redwood coast of California with his beautiful wife Kate and daughter Grace. He has a passion for the gospel of Jesus Christ and preaching and teaching God's word. One of the things he enjoys doing is serving pastors around the nation through Docent Research Group.
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 or a church leader. 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, depressed, dissociative, distractible, narcissistic, curious, and have high anxiety and low self-esteem (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 women 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).
- 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,
- ‘Soft-core pornography has a very negative effect on men as well. The problem with soft-core pornography is that its 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 woman 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).
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 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 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).”
source: http://www.churchleaders.com/pastors/pastor-articles/158080-7-surprising-and-negative-effects-of-porn.html
"women should avoid dressing like sluts in order not to be victimised".
SlutWalk is not sexual liberation
Women need to take to the streets to condemn violence, but not for the right to be called 'slut'
It wasn't long ago that being called a "slut" meant social death. No "nice" boy would take you home to meet his parents and no "good" girl would ever be your friend. At the same time, refusing to submit to sex meant you were a "prude" or "frigid". In short, there was no right way to be. Things have improved a bit in that young women are more insistent on their right to sexual autonomy, but sexually active women remain vulnerable to harsh social judgments even as the mass media celebrate and encourage such behaviour. And research shows that the label "slut" still has long-term negative consequences, especially for younger girls.
Nevertheless, a group of activists organised an event called SlutWalk, that took place on Saturday in Boston. It followed on the heels of a similar event in Toronto earlier this month, where women rallied in response to a comment made by a representative of the police that "women should avoid dressing like sluts in order not to be victimised".
To be sure, such a comment from law enforcement is highly offensive in suggesting that some victims of rape are responsible for the criminal acts of their attackers. Rather than admonishing women to dress a certain way, police should be warning potential offenders that they should "avoid assaulting women in order not to go to prison".
The fact that more than 2,000 turned out to march around Boston Common suggests that women are, indeed, hungry for sexual autonomy. But something else was at work here: many of the banners protested the ubiquity of sexual violence in the lives of women. Signs made by protesters showed that women are angry with being blamed for male violence and fed up with the failure of the culture to hold men accountable. Clearly the theme of the SlutWalk has struck a nerve, with similar events being planned around the world, including one in London in June.
The organisers claim that celebrating the word "slut", and promoting sluttishness in general, will help women achieve full autonomy over their sexuality. But the focus on "reclaiming" the word slut fails to address the real issue. The term slut is so deeply rooted in the patriarchal "madonna/whore" view of women's sexuality that it is beyond redemption. The word is so saturated with the ideology that female sexual energy deserves punishment that trying to change its meaning is a waste of precious feminist resources.
Advocates would be better off exposing the myriad ways in which the law and the culture enable myths about all types of women – sexually active or "chaste" alike. These myths facilitate sexual violence by undermining women's credibility when they report sex crimes. Whether we blame victims by calling them "sluts" (who thus asked to be raped), or by calling them "frigid" (who thus secretly want to be overpowered), the problem is that we're blaming them for their own victimisation no matter what they do. Encouraging women to be even more "sluttish" will not change this ugly reality.
As teachers who travel around the country speaking about sexual violence, pornography and feminism, we hear stories from women students who feel intense pressure to be sexually available "on demand". These students have grown up in a culture in which hypersexualized images of young women are commonplace and where hardcore porn is the major form of sex education for young men. They have been told over and over that in order to be valued in such a culture, they must look and act like sluts, while not being labeled slut because the label has dire consequences including being blamed for rape, depression, anxiety, eating disorders, and self-mutilation.
Women need to find ways to create their own authentic sexuality, outside of male-defined terms like slut. The recent TubeCrush phenomenon, where young women take pictures of men they find attractive on the London tube and post them to a website, illustrates how easily women copy dominant societal norms of sexual objectification rather than exploring something new and creative And it's telling that while these pictures are themselves innocent and largely free of sexual innuendo, one can only imagine the sexually aggressive language that would accompany a site dedicated to secret photos of women.
While the organisers of the SlutWalk might think that proudly calling themselves "sluts" is a way to empower women, they are in fact making life harder for girls who are trying to navigate their way through the tricky terrain of adolescence.
Women need to take to the streets – but not for the right to be called "slut". Women should be fighting for liberation from culturally imposed myths about their sexuality that encourage gendered violence. Our daughters – and our sons – have the right to live in a world that celebrates equally women's sexual freedom and bodily integrity.
Gail Dines, a Professor of Sociology and Women’s Studies at Wheelock College in Boson, has published a sharp critique of Sacha Baron Cohen’s Borat movie. In CounterPunch magazine, Professor Dines argues:[W]hen Cohen makes misogynist jokes about rape, prostitution and incest, they feel anything but funny. Okay, so Cohen may well be trying to satirize American sexism by unveiling the dark side of American men but when the audience laughs, I feel rage because I know that some of the men in the audience may well be on the prowl that night ….Violence against women, unlike violence against Jews, is a major public health issue of our time and the costs to women makes it a very unfunny topic. In recent school shootings, girls were specifically targeted by men, though few newspaper reports highlight this. Had the killer selected only Jews to kill, there would have been a national debate on the resurgence of anti-Semitism in America …. In Borat, the jokes about women dying (his wife), being raped (his sister) or being stalked by a crazed fan (Pamela Anderson) are passed off as business as usual in the life of being a woman….I do know that the fear I feel in the world is because of my gender, not my religion. This is what separates me, a Jewish woman, from Sasha Baron Cohen, a Jewish man.
Professor Dines’ full article is available here.
Gail Dines is a feminist anti-pornography activist, author, professor, and lecturer. An academic, she has also been described as "The world s leading anti-pornography campaigner".
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