#liveforeternity

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 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 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).

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It becomes about your pleasure and not the self-giving, mutually reciprocating intimacy that it was designed for.

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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 

Spurgeon, 1859

by Deacon Steve Sakanashi

Hey Dad, if we could sit down and talk again today you would be 58. I’m 25 now, so I would buy us both a beer, and here’s what I would say:

Remember when I scraped the car junior year?

At first she said she knew it was her fault but then she called us back to say she wanted $500. You were frustrated, but then you decided that we would pay her. You said she was one of the people our church was trying to love and you wanted her to remember grace if someone ever met her and talked to her about Jesus—and losing that opportunity wasn’t worth $500. Thank you for teaching me how to preach the gospel in word and deed.

Remember when you led a youth ministry during college?

When I started raising support three years ago, one of those students told me he was going to support me before I even had a chance to tell him what I was doing, telling me that if I was your son, he knew whatever I did would be worth supporting. That was the easiest support meeting I’ve ever had. I really needed that money to get started in ministry. Our church plant is at 800 people now. Thank you for not wasting your college experience.

Remember when we used to have Dad & Me days?

I looked forward to those days every year. I think it’s funny how our favorite thing ended up being to go to Sizzler and drive new cars at the dealership. Cheese bread and new-car smell are some of my favorite memories. Really, I think I just loved hanging out with you. I’m so glad you took me with you to that conference in Denver and then to your old stomping grounds in Seattle to explore. Each of us four kids got to go on a special trip with you. Thank you for making plans to build memories and teach me that God gives his kids the best gifts.

Remember when you started feeling a pain in your back?

It ended up being cancer—monster cancer. You were so confident God was going to heal you. I was too. Then you told us the chemo didn’t work and you were going to die. That was on my 18th birthday—three months after they diagnosed you, three months before you died. I was so confused and angry with God.

Remember our last conversation?

I asked you what you wanted me to do with my life.

You told me to please God and I would please you.  You told me to love my younger sister and brother, to hug them and tell them they were special. You told me God was good and I could trust him. You told me to study the book of Romans hard because that’s where you found your peace and that’s where I would find mine. You told me it is better to give than to receive, far better, and to learn this and live by it. You told me I had given you deep joy as a father just by being your son. You told me I was a man of God and had your deepest blessing, and that we had the same heart for Jesus. You told me that true obedience is learned through suffering. You told me to remember heaven. You told me you were going home to meet Jesus.

It’s been seven years since we had that conversation and I remember everything you said. God has been so gracious, and I’m trying my best to love and follow him like you did. Sometimes I worry about whether I’ll ever be as good a Christian, husband, and dad like you were, but then I am able to rest in peace because you taught me that the Father loves and accepts us regardless of whether we succeed or fail.