Sex. Sensitive word, am I right? However, sex is everywhere. Sex sells. It always has and I’m pretty sure it always will, because of its intrinsic nature to our human species. Sex feels good, and that’s the very reason why it also has its risks and dangers. Porn is the perfect example to demonstrate that. Indeed, this billion-dollar-worth industry profits from our very need and reliance on sex, and since we live in a capitalistic society, profit goes before your health, mental or physical (don’t let yourself be fooled by incentives like World Mental Health Day or the currently popular “We care about your health” mottos – on one side they’re nothing but empty words, and on the other side, placing mental health as priority in a profit-driven society is as absurd as contradictory). But how concretely does pornography change us and why does it have such a strong power over us? Can we consume it without falling into the cycle of addiction? What can we do to retrain our minds in this respect?
A couple of months ago, I’ve watched Exodus Cry’s documentary “Raised On Porn”, and as much as I was expecting the saddening nature of what was shown, I couldn’t help it but feel deeply sorry for the people featured in the documentary and outraged at Big Porn’s blatant indifference towards the disastrous impact their industry causes. We see shattered marriages, people’s self-esteem being annihilated, children being misguided (groomed almost). In order to understand this phenomenon, we need to look where it starts. Gary Wilson, author of “Your Brain on Porn” writes on his website that according to a recent study, roughly 90% of children between the ages of 8 and 16 years old have viewed porn online. “It puts the average age of a child’s first access to porn at 11. Some are seeking it out, while others may come across it accidentally, but the fact is it’s everywhere.” In fact, the beginning of the issue is the way in which pornographic content is bombarding all of us over the internet. This means that children too have to encounter this type of content. While we adults can more easily compartmentalize and treat occasional spams as what they are – nothing but spam – a 10 year-old obviously doesn’t have the same attitude or mindset. Because of the undesired exposure, a great percentage of children end up plunging in a rabbit hole where not many of them have the mental capability to get out. Already in their 2007 study “Unwanted and wanted exposure to online pornography in a national sample of youth Internet users”, Janis Wolak, Kimberly Mitchell and David Finkelhor stated that “Forty-two percent of youth Internet users had been exposed to online pornography in the past year. Of those, 66% reported only unwanted exposure.” Over a decade later, it goes without saying that those numbers have increased dramatically.
The second issue worth tackling is the nature of the content itself. While pornography can occasionally offer educational material (how to please oneself, how to please your partner, etc.), we need not to forget that it isn’t this type of porn which brings home the bacon. The trendiest type of content (and ultimately what makes the greater sources of profit for the industry) tends to revolve around unrealistic depictions of sex coupled with toxic messages (for example, forcefulness often being portrayed as a positive thing). This contributes to the enactment of sexually harmful behaviors with potential for resulting in complex psychological traumas. Likewise, through preteens’ and teens’ exposure to this type of content, certain expectations are set as to how a sexual encounter should occur and what should be done. Such expectations are often unrealistic and sets sexually unexperienced people up to failure when it comes to creating healthy sexual experiences. They also contribute to conceptualizing sex as a feelingless act, rather than attaching it to the notion of intimacy or even relationship.
In parallel, because of Big Porn’s lack of verification measures regarding the sources of the content uploaded on their platforms, a (too) big percentage of videos which end up on these websites happen to be illegal. This includes videos of rape, child sexual abuse, but also content which may have been produced between consensual adults but which was released on the internet without their consent, ultimately rendering the material illegal. An example of that is the concept of revenge-porn or illegally released sex-tapes. Other types of illegal content include material produced by sex-traffickers – their victims often being children and young women retained against their will. This issue of content traceability is not only alarming on the users’ end (you could very much be watching videographic evidence of an underage person’s rape without knowing it), but it also raises serious concerns in regards to the industry’s priorities. Because of their lack of moderation, Big Porn companies have thus become the scene for sinister and grave behaviors. This isn’t the worst part however. The worst part is that those same behaviors grow into trends, and shape a great quantity of consumers’ psyche, damaging themselves and potentially the people they could interact with.
Indeed, the growing trend for hardcore material is equally concerning. The increase in popularity (and normalization) of kink and paraphilic behaviors can encourage tendencies which, if explored at a very young age, can be hard to get away from. Because of the very nature of sex and the pleasure it provides, it is very easy for young people to fall in the trap and end up creating an addiction to a certain type of content. An example is the recently shared testimony of 20-year old singer Billie Eilish in her interview with American radio-host Howard Stern. She explains how her habit to watch porn got to a certain point where she could no longer watch anything else but sexually violent content. She further comments that her going down this path was due to currently popular narratives: “if you’re not interested in getting thrown around during sex, if you’re not interested in being slapped and being choked, people are like, ‘you’re vanilla, you’re soft… you’re boring in bed, you’re not a freak’… and I’m not talking about me, I’m talking about women. Women are like, ‘oh, I have to like being hurt to be thought of as good in bed.’” This is a perfect illustration of the regrettable consequences early exposure to pornography (and more precisely hardcore porn) can have on young individuals and how it encourages and promotes performative hypersexuality. Whether because of peer-pressure, FOMO, or preexisting trauma, more and more children and teenagers resort to consuming this type of content, only to later experience the rather bitter aftertaste of it. “What does she mean by ‘bitter aftertaste’?” you may ask. I mean a whole heap of problems, ranging from PTSD, erectile dysfunction, to depression and suicidal ideation. Now that’s hardcore.
Indeed, whilst we tend to think the victims of the porn industry to be mostly women, we’re often forgetting far less discussed issues affecting men in great numbers. An example, as previously cited, is erectile dysfunction. Although ED can be caused by a myriad of reasons (side-effects to certain medications, anxiety disorder, depression, physical or psychological trauma, etc.), porn-related ED seems to be on the rise, mainly due to the increase in violent or “freaky” content. This results in a lot of men being unable to feel sexually satisfied with non-violent sex, or to be unable to achieve erection or orgasm when not reenacting a porn-like scenario. Commitment to one’s partner can also become an equally challenging task. Freelance health writer for Everyday Health, Denise Mann writes in her article “Erection Problems? This Habit May Be Why” that “one survey of 28,000 Italian men found that “excessive consumption” of porn, starting at age 14, and daily consumption in their early to mid-20s, desensitized men to even the most violent images.” This not-only is the cause for those men’s inability to enjoy non-violent sex, but also further increases their need for even harder content. Psychiatrist and author of “The Brain that Changes Itself” Norman Doidge also explains that “Pornography satisfies every one of the prerequisites for neuroplastic change. When pornographers boast that they are pushing the envelope by introducing new, harder themes, what they don’t say is that they must, because their customers are building up a tolerance to the content.”
The furthering of the arousal threshold in hardcore-porn consumers can in fact be explained in one word: neuroplasticity. What is it? In the grand scheme of things, neuroplasticity is a general umbrella term to refer to our brain’s ability to change, modify and restructure itself in response to experience or recurrent stimuli. We indeed have more power than we think over our brain. Because of the very malleable nature of our brain and its sensitivity to a variety of stimuli, we can create addictions roughly the same way we can get better at mathematics or learn new languages. Of course, the cognitive process isn’t the same when watching porn as when going to French class, but the process in which we’re training our brain to a certain type of content can be comparable. This not only gives food for thought as to what we can achieve by merely valuing more the power our brain has and realizing how a lot of us are underusing it, but it also gives hope for people who suffer from porn addiction, in the sense that there is light at the end of the tunnel. The same way we get used to something, we can get “un-used” to it. Unfortunately, the journey to get away from addiction is far more painful that the journey towards it, and that’s the very reason why recovery is so difficult.
Indeed, porn is a hell of a drug. In a Neuroscience News article, we can read on the parallel between porn and addictive substances, and how both are in fact hyper-stimulating triggers which result in unnaturally high levels of dopamine secretion. This can cause serious damage to the dopamine reward system and render it unresponsive to natural sources of pleasure. This therefore explains why and how a lot of porn consumers develop difficulties in achieving arousal with a real-life partner. Moreover, because the user’s brain built up tolerance to this excess in dopamine, it results in the latter requiring either more access to the addictive content in question, or more extreme content (or both) to reach the same levels of pleasure. Unless the issue tackled, the user’s brain is thus trapped in a cycle of getting less and less pleasure while wanting more and more.
Understanding notions such as neuroplasticity isn’t just fascinating, it can be life-changing. The same way we should be careful with what we feed our bodies with, we should take great care in what we feed our brains on. And since the brain rules the body, we should be even more careful with the latter. By realizing the power our mind has over our brain, and what putting our mind to something can achieve, we can adapt and restructure our own habits – reduce the self-destructive ones, increase the beneficial ones, or adjust where needed.
Likewise, analyzing and understanding what Big Porn stands for is equally important. While no one can be 100% consistent between principles and actions, we should strive for greater consistency and transparency between what we think, what we say, and what we put our time and money towards. Although most industries (if not all) operating within a capitalistic society prioritize profit over customer well-being (the beauty industry being another great example), the leading companies of the porn industry demonstrate to be particularly cold and ruthless towards some of the most vulnerable demographics of society (children for instance) – not only when it comes to the deleterious effects their products can have on them, but also when it comes to having them involved in the very making of the product (e.g. sex trafficking). This is worth having in mind at the time of accessing those companies’ websites and browsing through their tempting catalogue without really knowing the ingredients.
It’s tough to know where to go from here. There’s indeed a lot of work that awaits us before the pornographic industry can provide legal and traceable content. I’m personally not for the illegalization of pornography as a whole, because I believe in people’s right to express themselves, be it through sex, literature, music, cinema, or even through art in general. If you’re 18 or older and you’re willingly working in the sex industry, that’s your choice, and although I personally don’t agree with it, it’s not my place to hinder anyone’s freedoms. That’s actually what true liberalism stands for (little reference to my previous article) – tolerating beliefs different that one’s own.
But to go back to what we really can do to palliate to the aforementioned issues, I believe there are quite a few things to write down on our bucket-list. First, let’s call for greater moderation of those companies’ platforms. This means more traceability, more emphasis on the children-unfriendly nature of the content, and more sanctioning of illegal practices. Secondly, let’s keep in mind what porn does to our brain. If you consume, do so awarely, and have some sense of reasonability. And thirdly, let’s encourage conversation around real-life sexuality and reflect on what sex means for us. A part of pornography’s popularity (and its subsequent issues) lies on the taboo around sex. By reflecting, analyzing, and discussing our desires and our relationship with sex, we can make a first step towards solving a great part of the problem. What does sex do to you and what do you do for sex?
Sources
https://www.yourbrainonporn.com/about/your-brain-on-porn-in-the-news/generation-xxx-what-will-happen-to-kids-raised-on-porn-canada/
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/17272613/
https://exoduscry.com/blog/shiftingculture/billie-eilish-says-violent-porn-destroyed-my-brain-after-watching-at-age-11/
https://www.ansa.it/web/notizie/rubriche/english/2011/02/24/visualizza_new.html_1583160579.html
https://neurosciencenews.com/neuroscience-pornography-brain-15354/
Aude Calloch 