Before I begin I want to state that I did not write this article to pontificate, rather I am spreading awareness at an appropriate time of how a seemingly harmless medium can shape anyone's relationships with women, whether it be casual or intimate.
It is one thing to watch this material, but it is another to be stimulated by it. The viewing of explicit images and videos among excessive consumers has been linked to the decreased connection between the ventral striatum and the prefrontal cortex (which is common in the brains of addicts). If you are stimulated by porn, then you would want to maintain that euphoria without serious thought. This is how the imagery becomes an addiction since it also involves numbing the reward-seeking part of the brain that produces dopamine.
Not surprisingly, this is how psychologist Gabor Mate connects the power of addiction to the addiction to power.
When this cycle can affect anyone, then it can affect society. This causes the very concept of male sexuality to mutate unnaturally, especially during boyhood. This can especially affect society where there is high expectation on men to be more virulent and tough. Since there is a lot of aggression, coercion, and humiliation in the scenes, almost all of the respondents in one study were either numb to it or were pleasured by it.
Although porn itself is not an excuse for men sexually mistreating women, it can definitely influence that behavior. Since the aggression that is involved can alter the mind, it can also blur the distinction between consent and rape. This can only be possible when the actresses are portrayed as always "wanting it," regardless if it is in a private or public place. Not only can this rewire male psychology into becoming more aggressive, but also female psychology into becoming more passive.
Women are viewed as sexual objects through a monitor screen, in daily life, and on set. What makes this disturbing is that the industry does not care if it includes ordinary women or sex-trafficked girls since what really matters is how much profit is involved without regard to human life. The people within the industry also seek out girls who recently reached the age of consent.
When the actresses no longer fulfill the expectations of the industry, they are immediately disposed of. What is more, it is impossible for these actresses to reintegrate into society, so when they are not disposed of, they are entrapped in this life. They may also carry with them the sexually transmitted diseases that are prevalent in the industry. By frequenting a site, buying a DVD, or paying a subscription, how would you not be indirectly responsible for contributing to the system that causes these actresses to suffer?
Since women are treated as commodities, this can completely alter the concept of love into one that is less human and more conditional and capitalistic. A former well-known adult film star would have scoffed at love for that reason. He also admitted that during his career, he started to view women as sexual objects.
It would make sense considering how the industry (in most of the content at least) enables you to pick any type of woman you want to be pleasured by, whether she is thin or full-figured, black or white, short or tall, in her 20's or her 40's; without much effort.
This may lead you to tell me "Why wouldn't I want to engage in this? It's not like I'll ever meet a woman like that in real life." That is exactly the problem, which is it raises the limit of what would make the "perfect" woman and places high expectations on women who you never even met. When you look at an adult film actress, you are merely looking at a facsimile of who she really is.
I never want to distance any male readers by insinuating that anyone who watches the material automatically thinks women are sexual objects. If all I did was lecture to the 70% of all young men who use pornography weekly that they are horrible human beings, then they would not listen to me or take the science and the accounts of former adult film stars into consideration.
What the opposition does need to take into consideration is that pornography is no longer opposed just by religious people, but by the young men who were themselves addictive consumers.
To all of the men who might also say "Well, I know that porn's not real. I would never go out and do the things in it." Indeed, the majority of addicts do not actually go out and treat women the same way the actresses are treated; but this goes back to what I said about being stimulated by the material (in this case, sexually), then you would want to seek out that behavior in order to maintain that high.
To go back to my disclaimer at the top, although I write about problems that affect women, I am not chivalrous because I am no knight in shining armor. I used to think that anyone who was anti-pornography was either a religious fundamentalist or a feminist. However, what did win me over was the science that can accurately explain without bias the harm that it can cause, in this case, towards women.
The reality is that it is impossible to separate abuse of the female gender from pornography. You can't eat your cake and have it too. You can't indulge in a medium that puts incredibly high expectations on women and expect that to not affect your overall view of women.
To somewhat paraphrase my previous article about the addiction, I would rather live in a society where people are educated about the medium than a society where the medium IS the education. There is obviously a lot to stomach when it comes to the connection between this material and misogyny, but I would hope that science would become the truth that sets people free, literally and figuratively.
