Posted on 04/17/2015 4:53:57 PM PDT by Mrs. Don-o
One of music artist John Mayer's signature songs is “Daughters,” a sweet and simple tribute to the importance of parents' influence on their little girls. Here's the refrain:
“So fathers, be good to your daughters, Daughters will love like you do. Girls become lovers who turn into mothers, So mothers, be good to your daughters too.”
But when John Mayer isn't crooning about your beautiful daughters, he's looking at naked pictures of them, sometimes hundreds at a time before he gets out of bed in the morning. In fact, he often prefers that to an actual human being, according to his wildly controversial 2010 interview with Playboy magazine.
“You wake up in the morning, open a thumbnail page, and it leads to a Pandora's box of visuals. There have probably been days when I saw 300 (naked women) before I got out of bed,” he told the magazine.
Unfortunately, Mayer's morning routine is not unique to him. Studies show that easy access to free internet pornography is having devastating effects on real-life relationships.
Preferring pixels to people
“For many individuals, the more porn they consume, the more likely it is that they can end up preferring the fantasy to reality, they can end up preferring the pixels to a person, and that's really messing up relationships, as you can imagine,” said Clay Olsen, co-founder of the internet movement “Fight the New Drug” (FTND).
The FTND movement, so named because of porn's addictive properties, aims to raise awareness of the harmful effects of pornography through creative mediums such as blogs, videos and infographics. The website includes personal stories as well as scientific studies to illustrate pornography's effects on the brain, the heart (relationships), and ultimately on the world.
“Our goal is to change the conversation from 'Dude, check this out,' to 'Dude, that's messed up,'” Olsen told CNA.
The longstanding, pervasive cultural narrative surrounding pornography is that it is a healthy sexual outlet and can improve sex lives. However, science begs to differ. Several studies cited in FTND's article, “Porn Ruins Your Sex Life,” found that pornography not only leads to dissatisfying sex, it can lead to less sex with actual human beings.
In a series of studies examining pornography use, “The Social Costs of Pornography: A Collection of Papers” published by the Witherspoon Institute, researchers found that those who viewed pornography became less satisfied with their sex lives, and that viewing porn just once can lead to feelings of dissatisfaction towards a human partner.
According to an article in Psychology Today by clinical psychologist Tyger Latham, Psy.D, erectile dysfunction, while once considered an issue plaguing old men, is cropping up more in young men who rely heavily on pornography to become sexually aroused. A study by the Italian Society of Andrology and Sexual Medicine surveyed 28,000 men on their internet porn habits, and found that porn use over time led to a lower sex drive and an eventual inability to become aroused at all.
“As soon as they try to actually get close to someone and commit to somebody and have an intimate relationship with somebody, it's in those moments that the harms of pornography show their full colors and truly manifest themselves,” Olsen said. “The unrealistic expectations are completely exposed…
And we now see people in their 20s having porn-induced erectile dysfunction because they cannot get excited or aroused without the presence of pornography.”
A decline in marriage rates
Not only is pornography use destroying the physical sexual life, it may be impacting the number of people pursuing marriage or committed sexual relationships.
In the fall of 2013, an article in The Guardian sounded the alarm that fewer people in Japan were having sex, citing as evidence numerous statistics on the country's declining birth rate, marriage rate, and even rates of young people who are dating or who are interested in dating.
A follow-up article on Slate found that while the actual number of people having or not having sex might not be definitively pinpointed, the statistics on falling marriage and birth rates only mean Japan is leading a world-wide trend, rather than bucking one. While it's not clear whether porn is directly influencing these numbers, many have speculated that it is.
Researchers with The Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA) in Germany found an increase in free Internet pornography is at least correlated with a significant decrease in the percentage of young married men, and it may even be contributing to the trend. A 2013 Pew study found that 71 percent of single Americans were not looking for a committed relationship. Another study found that nearly 40 percent of American women had never been married.
“The results in this paper suggest that such an association exists, and that it is potentially quite large,” the study notes, as reported in the Washington Post.
The study used General Social Survey (GSS), a comprehensive, nationally representative survey which analyzed internet use of 1,500 men ages 18-to-35, between the years 2000 and 2004. The researchers studied the number of hours spent on the internet per week, how often internet pornography was used in the past 30 days, as well as other activities such as use of religious sites.
Even when adjusted for variables such as age, income, education, religion and employment, the study found that generally, the more a person used the internet, the less likely they were to be married. Additionally, it found that the more a person used internet pornography, the less likely they were to be married. On the other hand, the use of religious websites was positively correlated with marriage.
Mark Regnerus, an associate professor of sociology at the University of Texas at Austin and a Catholic who has studied religion and sexual behavior, cautioned against assuming that correlation equals causation in such studies – but said that pornography use is likely part of a more complex reason for dropping marriage rates.
“We know that both things are occurring, but it's difficult to establish a causal connection,” he told CNA in an e-mail interview. “A variety of things are contributing to the declining marriage rate.”
“I don't think porn use necessarily causes that, but contributes to it (together with diminished earnings power, diminished confidence, etc.),” he added. “To be sure, porn use doesn't help build confidence in men, something that's pretty necessary (but not sufficient) to be considered marriageable. So I'd say porn use is a suspect here, but connecting the dots is hardly straightforward.”
Increasing awareness
Only in the past few years and months has a conversation countering the “it's healthy, it's normal” narrative been emerging in mainstream media about pornography. Several celebrities are speaking up, and there are an increasing number of websites dedicated to helping people fight pornography addictions.
A few months ago, the release of the controversial “50 Shades of Grey” movie sparked a conversation on social media about sexual violence against women in media, with the hashtag #50dollarsnot50shades encouraging people to forgo the movie and instead donate to places that help victimized women.
The movie sparked a response from an unlikely source – British comedian Russel Brand, whose short video about the problems with pornography went viral, generating over 500,000 views on his YouTube channel and over 2 million views on FTND's website.
Joseph Gordon-Levitt is another celebrity who has been outspoken about the negative impact of pornography, most notably in his 2013 movie “Don Jon,” which he wrote, directed and co-starred in along with Scarlett Johansson. The film explores the unrealistic expectations of love and relationships that come from pornography addictions and from the media at large.
“I think that there's not a substantial difference between a lot of main-stream culture and pornography. They're equally simplistic, reductionist,” Gordon-Levitt said in an interview with NPR about the film.
“Whether it's rated X or 'approved by the FCC for general viewing audiences,' the message is the same. We have a tendency in our culture to take people and treat them like things.”
But the internet has been around for decades now – why has it taken society so long to catch on to the fact that pornography is harmful?
“Science has caught up with the fact that pornography's harmful,” Olsen said, “but society is still catching up.”
It often takes years for something that was once culturally accepted as true to be flipped on its head as science proves otherwise, Olsen said, so Fight the New Drug knows they still have a lot of work ahead of them.
“We're very excited to see some of this progress and some of these mainstream media outlets kind of following suit and starting to talk about the negative impacts, we couldn't be more excited about it, but we still have a long way ahead of us.”
Some other websites that are also trying to raise awareness and give help to those struggling with pornography include The Porn Effect and Covenant Eyes, and internet filtering and accountability system.
The best way to kick a porn habit? Keep fighting it and lean on the sacraments, Regnerus said.
“(My) advice: don't give up hope; pursue confession regularly; recognize and avoid the contexts which give rise to temptation. That's a start.”
Actually, this may be good.
If these fools abstain from sex, at least there will be fewer bastard kids and all the gnashing if teeth that goes with it.
Better people stop all their immoral &&/)($)@&ing and causing all kinds of (anti-, to be honest but ironic) social ills.
Looking at porn is bad, but screwing around is worse. Immorality abounds. Porno is just a symptom of the sexual problems we started at least in the’60s.
Not all arranged marriages have joy; an arranged marriage relies on the good judgement and sincere wish for the happiness of the bride and groom and I’ll be honest when I say that I do think people from the same background should marry.
I read a SF story once, can’t remember the title or author, but it told of a world where people are divided into 2 different civilizations - the vikes, who dressed outlandishly, did drugs legally and watched a lot of porn but never had actual sex, and the rees that lived more or less in the real world. Seems like that’s where we are headed.
Men and women both want love and respect, but men crave respect first of all, without feeling respected, they have a hard time loving and giving. Our popular culture constantly undercuts the idea of respecting others, especially respect for men. There is a big price to pay for that.
Fortunately, I found a woman who cultivates and feeds my need for respect, and I love loving her, more than many can even imagine.
I would say you can’t have what we have today...fish/bicycle, men/rapists/abusers/deadbeats...family court nightmare for men...due process turned upside down...without it affecting the way men view women...which undoubtedly affects the way they feel about them.
Pepper Schwartz is a family life/sexologist at UW. She did a study of married couples to see what worked and what didn't. She published the results and two conclusions jumped out at me. First, that a marriage was over when the couple stopped treating each other with respect.
Second, and I thought more illustrating...she sought a way to predict whether a marriage would be successful. The most reliable predictor whether a marriage would be successful was...the willingness of a husband to defer to his wife.
Some wit called that the triumph of hope over experience.
“But don’t you think that the availability, quantity, choice, and expense of consuming it makes the current era way different from anything of the past?”
Yes. But that is also true about other things, including illicit drugs, so-called sex tours, and the lure to join violent gangs. My point being that while times change, but people don’t (human nature does not).
The American female is increasingly hostile to men; uses sex to control, exploit, and even destroy a man. She uses the legal system and msm to send them into an unrecoverable character assassination nightmare. And I would be remiss not to mention the increasing number of false allegations happening these days.
Therefore I would say that by and large, it is radical feminism itself that drives men to not only porn, but prostitution and/or looking for marriage in foreign lands. The horror stories are well known.
When boys reach puberty, there is a built in mechanism for them to want to have intercourse with every woman on earth. That built in desire is to further the species. A teen aged boy used to get (either buy or borrow or steal) girly magazines and hide them under the bed or between the mattress and box springs. That’s why grown men would buy Playboy magazine and Hustler magazine. Without sex there are no people.
Now, we have the internet and, guess what, Playboy is on the internet with nude women just like in the magazine.
There are many x rated websites that are freely used by men and, yes, women. That is out of the box now and it isn’t going back in the box to be hidden somewhere.
I worked on a court case one time and I needed to check out “porn” on the internet as this case was based on a supposedly porn website. That’s how I found Playboy was right there on the internet. Then, there was the question of, “What is porn?” Some might say if a woman’s ankles were bare it was porn. Some might say it was if the dress was at knee length, it was porn. Maybe if a woman’s arms were bare, it was porn. There is no legal definition of porn - it’s an individual decision as to what is porn.
So, when we get past what is porn to what is actually happening, I don’t doubt watching nude people having sex on the internet or reading sexual stories on the web, may stunt sexual interaction with a real person. The reason for that is there is no danger of being rejected using the internet, not being “good enough” at sex to please the partner. It’s easy gratifying that sexual urge. The man doesn’t have to make the effort to meet someone or try to convince his tired wife to have sex.
Women also don’t have to meet anyone to have sexual gratification, so why not do it using the internet and save all that time trying to meet someone. And, it’s medically safer to have sex by one’s self using the internet to fuel the sexual experience, than have sex with a casually met partner.
I don’t care how many studies are done about this because it isn’t going to change human behavior as long as the internet is still up and running. When the internet totally crashes for good, single people will venture out of their houses again looking for a partner.
In the case of married people, something is wrong with the relationship between the two people if one is using the internet for sexual gratification and not including the partner. The reason for this are many and a counselor may be able to help the two people talk this out if they can’t do it themselves. They have made a commitment with another person so this situation is different than a single person who has no commitment.
I’ve got 5 kids
Randy as ever....I always loved girls....got lucky and met my wife who was a female version of me in that area
She’s still my most fun five foot tall 100 pound treat
And i love seeing hot women naked or in bikinis or thongs
We go to South Beach and my wife doesn’t beat me over the head....she knows I’m a man.....old school with a brow and Adam’s apple........not a femme hipster
Men are visual
Porn makes men horny....that’s the point of it
It might give them unrealistic expectations
Plenty women like porn too....real porn....the hard stuff.....I’m not joking
Porn is all some lonely men have at home alone or stuck in a loveless marriage ...I guess
This article as usual is a man beater
Lol.....the notion porn makes folks less interested in sex was written by someone who doesn’t know men or doesn’t have much sex
Porn is obviously immoral but thats another class
You asked dear.
Pshaw—Internet dating has made geting a date, who is not going to sue you for flirting, easier than ever.
One of the reasons that these charges of rape, etc. are so common is that women (aside from the feminist weirdoes) do not know how to say no in the first place and they also know that if they say no, the guy will dump them and just go find someone else. So they say yes or get so drunk they don’t know what they’ve said, and then they feel bad afterwards and decide that they must have been raped.
And one of the reasons they feel that they must always be ready to put out is that men watch so much porn that they have simply come to expect immediate, relationship-free sex of any woman they meet. Don’t forget that boys start seeing this stuff practically from childhood now, and increasing numbers of girls watch it. Not to mention the completely amoral sex ed that begins in about fourth grade now.
I read an article about one of these false rape charges last week that described a 21 year old college student who was having his degree revoked because a 18 year old fellow student had claimed that he raped her. Nobody denied that they had had sex, but she suddenly decided after the fact that she hadn’t wanted It. But what was really strange was that no one thought the circumstances were worthy of comment: the two didn’t know each other and were just sharing a cab back to town from a bar. He asked her if she wanted to come over, she went to his house, they had sex, and later she decided she hadn’t really wanted to do so. He didn’t even know her name.
The thing that nobody commented on was why the school, the students and even the families seemed to think it was perfectly normal for this 18 year old student to act like a street hooker and why it was normal for the male to assume that this girl, whose name he didn’t even know, was automatically available for sex.
I think porn not only affects people’s physical response, but it makes them see people of the opposite sex as kind of automatic sexual vending machines.
Just an aside - we had a priest in my parish about five years ago who preached a homily in which he named watching porn as both a sin and a great danger to personal relationships and marriage. The uproar this created was amazing - people were calling the bishop saying “how dare he tell me what I can watch,” “how dare he talk about sex,” etc. The bishop at the time was a true Vatican II type and told him to avoid topics like that in his homilies.
If you subjected ordinarily frisky goats to extremely frequent hyper stimulation, they probably couldn't mate normally. And the sheer tonnage of porn out there, of all kinds and levels of perversion, at a click of the finger, is unprecedented for the human race.
I guess it would be better for sexually frustrated men to just go out and score an actual prostitute than just cruise the web for free porn. If woman kind is gowing to castigate the act why not make it real?
It’s been a boon to the tissue paper industry.
Woo Woo! Big congratulations to you, and God bless you and yours!
Megapixels won’t make you a sammich nor civilize your more caveman -like tendencies when the polite folk come over.
:o)
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