Negative Effects of Pornography Essay Example for Free

Negative Effects of Pornography Essay According to research by Malumuth, men who fit the rapist’s profile report more sexually coercive behavior in the past and more sexually aggressive intentions for the future than do men who do not fit this profile, Men who fit the rapists profile are also more likely than other men to have high levels of arousal in response to violent pornography. The Family and Pornography -Married men who are involved in pornography feel less satisfied with their conjugal relations and less emotionally attached to their wives. Wives notice and are upset by the difference. -Pornography use is a pathway to infidelity and divorce, and is frequently a major factor in these family disasters. -Among couples affected by one spouses addiction, two-thirds experience a loss of interest in sexual intercourse. -Both spouses perceive pornography viewing as tantamount to infidelity. -Pornography viewing leads to a loss of interest in good family relations. The Individual and Pornography -Pornography is addictive, and neuroscientists are beginning to map the biological substrate of this addiction. -Users tend to become desensitized to the type of pornography they use, become bored with it, and then seek more perverse forms of pornography. -Men who view pornography regularly have a higher tolerance for abnormal sexuality, including rape, sexual aggression, and sexual promiscuity. -Prolonged consumption of pornography by men produces stronger notions of women as commodities or as sex objects. -Pornography engenders greater sexual permissiveness, which in turn leads to a greater risk of out-of-wedlock births and STDs. These, in turn, lead to still more weaknesses and debilities. Research on the effects of pornography on aggression has found that violent pornography tends to have greater immediate effects on male-to-female aggression that on male-to-male Other effects of pornography -Many adolescents who view pornography initially feel shame, diminished self-confidence, and sexual uncertainty, but these feelings quickly shift to unadulterated enjoyment with regular viewing. -The presence of sexually oriented businesses significantly harms the surrounding community, leading to increases in crime and decreases in property values. -The main defenses against pornography are close family life, a good marriage and good relations between parents and children, coupled with deliberate parental monitoring of Internet use. Traditionally, government has kept a tight lid on sexual traffic and businesses, but in matters of pornography that has waned almost completely, except where child pornography is concerned. Given the massive, deleterious individual, marital, family, and social effects of pornography, it is time for citizens, communities, and government to reconsider their laissez-faire approach. -Research demonstrates that exposure to films containing sexual violence against women results in inaccurate beliefs about rape, less sympathy toward victims of rape, and increased aggression to women. 1. Porn contributes to social and psychological problems within men Anti-pornography activist, Gail Dines, notes that round men who become addicted to porn, â€Å"neglect their schoolwork, spend huge amounts of money they don’t have, become isolated from others, and often suffer depression. Dr. William Struthers, who has a PhD is 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, and distractible. 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 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. 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 ubi quity 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. Soft-core pornography has a very negative effect on men as well. The problem with soft-core pornography is that it’s voyeurism teaches men to view women as objects rather than to be in relationships with women as human beings. 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. One experiment shows that men and women who were exposed to large amounts of pornography were significantly less likely to want daughters than those who had none. 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. 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. 5. Porn squashes the beauty of a real naked woman 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 them. Today, real naked women are just bad porn. 6. Porn has a numbing effect upon reality It makes real sex and even the real world become boring in comparison. It particularly anesthetizes the emotional life of a man. 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. 7. Porn lies about what it means to be male and female Pornography tells a false story about men and women. In the story of porn, women are â€Å"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 â€Å"soulless, unfeeling, amoral life-support systems for erect penises who are entitles to use women in any way they want.† These men demonstrated zero empathy, respect, or love for the women they have sex with.