Growing up in Salt Lake City it has always been somewhat of joke or with a sneer to actually hear the horror stories that we were raised with regarding the viewing of pornography.
Truth is, pornography was never really all that wild in Salt Lake City because we had a Porn Czar. Literally a school marm of a woman that would actually view videos that are distributed to make sure that there was no full frontal nudity of males in the videos and no real sexual activity that is seen between couples.
Paula Houston was Utah’s Obscenity and Pornography Complaints Ombudsman or “porn czar.” Before rising to her post, she was a prosecutor.
Houston grew up in Columbia Falls, Montana, and graduated from Brigham Young University.
The role of the Obscenity and Pornography Complaints Ombudsman was to provide resources for residents attempting to curb the unwelcome presence of pornography in their neighborhoods and on the Internet. Houston came under fire on several fronts during her brief tenure. Critics doubted she could remain objective and fair in regards to pornography because she was a Mormon.
The American Civil Liberties Union opposed the creation of such a position, describing it as unnecessary given existing laws and feared Houston might violate due process, and First Amendment Rights.
The position was part of the attorney general’s office and in its creation; the annual budget for the “porn czar” was $150,000. So when the Attorney General’s office had to cut $750,000 from its budget, Houston’s job was made redundant.
So really what we saw in videos would be considered erotica and not porn.
This had me resentful of the state I lived in because as a young male I wanted the choice to view whatever I wanted without it being censored. The internet of course changed all that and by 1998 there were two three letter words that were the most popular being typed into search engines, UFO and SEX.
For the time the warning has come from the pulpit about how pornography ruins lives and we have heard from feminists about how it exploits women. Now we are hearing from behavioral science studies that while porn won’t kill you or necessarily ruin your life, it just may be the reason why men and women are having the worst time relating to each other and having intimate relationships.
In the last couple of years studies have been showing an increase in sexual problems among young males. While the numbers vary, a 2007 study of the American Journal of Medicine showed that this affects more than 18 million men in the United States over the age of 20. One of the factors has been attributed to the widespread exposure to internet porn.
Now they emphasize “one” of the factors because the research could not find any college age men that have not watched or participated in self gratification while watching internet porn.
According to the study again to emphasize:
Researches could not find any college aged males who were not using internet porn. This created a blind spot. Imagine if all guys started smoking at age 10 and there were no groups that didn’t, we would think that lung cancer is normal for all guys.
This means there is very little conclusive data available because of the fact that most males have viewed or are now viewing internet porn.
It is also interesting to note that of those who watch high speed pornography from the age of 10 to the age of 50 have developed problems in having to create enough dopamine necessary to have sexual relationships with real women. It is also interesting to note that it is easier to reverse the problem in older males than it is to reverse it in younger male groups.
This is a frightening trend.
Young males at 23 are now complaining of erectile dysfunction and other sexual problems because of something called the Coolidge effect.
The Coolidge effect is based on an old joke old joke about Calvin Coolidge when he was President …. The President and Mrs. Coolidge were being shown [separately] around an experimental government farm.
When [Mrs. Coolidge] came to the chicken yard she noticed that a rooster was mating very frequently. She asked the attendant how often that happened and was told, “Dozens of times each day.” Mrs. Coolidge said, “Tell that to the President when he comes by.” Upon being told, President asked, “Same hen every time?” The reply was, “Oh, no, Mr. President, a different hen every time.” President: “Tell that to Mrs. Coolidge.”
In biology and psychology, the Coolidge effect is a phenomenon seen in mammalian species whereby males and to a lesser extent females exhibit renewed sexual interest if introduced to new receptive sexual partners, even after refusing sex from prior but still available sexual partners.
The Coolidge effect applies because when the male mind indulges in rapid fire pornography that is rapid fire partnerships psychologically. Each one a particular fantasy or even a fetish, that in the real world or in a real relationship would not happen or even comes close.
This leaves the male unsatisfied and unable to produce the dopamine necessary to create a response, or even give pleasure to his sexual partner.
In this case pornography becomes a dopamine vampire.
Very simply put, addiction is the repetition of specific behavior that causes us to feel good. We feel good because we release certain hormones like dopamine. The more dopamine we release, the better we feel and chances of us wanting to repeat the same behavior. Dopamine feeds off novelty, meaning that novel and pleasurable experiences will cause our brains to release more dopamine than consecutive similar ones, to the point where we reach the Coolidge effect.
Internet porn is especially enticing to the reward circuitry because novelty is always just a click away. It is like the rat that is in the cage constantly pushing the button for his cocaine fix.
The World Wide Web is like an infinite stream of breasts, legs and lips, a place where we can see more ‘super hot’ women in a time span of 10 minutes than our ancestors could in multiple lifetimes.
The Coolidge Effect is no longer the exception but the rule.
Back in the day being a teenager and having those overwhelming feelings would send you over the top if you saw a female model in a bikini, or a still picture of a nipple , but now you have high speed high definition voyeurism where the rare chance of being in the presence of a real woman with sexual intentions loses its novelty.
After years of consistent consumption, this won’t cut it anymore. The same pornographic material won’t excite you either and you feel compelled to explore other novel endeavors that are considered perverted or warped.
Some of the brain changes that happen during the long term exposure to internet porn are being reported as:
- Desensitization — The more porn you watch, the more you need to reach the same amounts of dopamine release.
- Sensitization — The more porn you watch, the more associations with porn you are going to make when facing stimuli which can induce these thoughts. The incognito browsing function in Google Chrome’s browser is invented to surf the web anonymously without leaving visible trace on your computer. If you are used to watching porn on a computer and are afraid of leaving traces, this is a perfect solution for that. While the initial idea is to surf anonymously, you will start making associations with watching porn. Due to the rewired nerve connections in the brain the reward circuitry gets stimulated with cues related to the addiction.
- Hypofrontality — Reduced impulse control and weakened ability to foresee consequences. The more porn you watch, the more difficult it will be to refrain from watching it and the less you will care about the consequences.
- Dysfunctional stress circuits — Chances of a relapse increase. Dopamine works through the brains main stress area in a way that it increases the activity of the brain involved in addiction relapse. That is why often time’s addicts relapse during stressful periods in life.
Now, here is the most interesting part of the study. It seems that the high speed internet availability of pornography does not affect women.
The reason why most of this does not apply to women in the same way as to men is because of the difference in female and male perception of sexuality.
Men and women have different sexual cues. Simply put, men are primarily visually and externally focused and women are primarily psychologically and internally focused.
Among men psychological and physical arousal is intertwined together and porn is seen as an individual thing. Among women psychological and physical arousal is not necessarily linked. For women porn is more of a social thing. They prefer to read erotic novels or discuss the subject on forums, and the meaning of sex often transcends having sex and getting an orgasm. Therefore women are less prone to getting addicted to internet porn.
In a 2004 testimony before the United States Senate, Dr. Jill Manning shared some interesting data regarding pornography and relationships. In her research she found that 56 percent of divorce cases involved one party having an obsessive interest in pornographic websites. Another source, the American Academy of Matrimonial Lawyers, polled 350 divorce attorneys in 2003 where two thirds of them reported that the Internet played a significant role in the divorces, with excessive interest in online porn contributing to more than half such cases.
Is the porn addicted male becoming a pornosexual? Meaning that he cannot be aroused or even interested in real heterosexual or homosexual encounters? Is this a whole new sexuality where some men become isolated and can only relate and enjoy masturbatory virtual relationships?
Author Jodi Ellen Malpas recently dumped her husband of 10 years because he no longer lived up to the sexual fantasies she created in her own books. The 34-year-old, whose This Man trilogy has sold more than 500,000 copies, has left her husband of ten years after ‘falling in love’ with one of her characters. Malpas told the Daily Mail:
All my fictional men are strong, successful, sophisticated and enigmatic. I guess it’s hard for any living, breathing man to live up to such a fantasy. In This Man I created Jesse Ward, whose forceful personality was appealing to me. There is no denying I fell in love with him.
These types of fantasies are paving the way for the crossing of the uncanny valley where in the transhumant world man will be able to have relationships with sympathetic and empathetic virtual assistants and also have sexual relationships with robots.
Her, directed by Spike Jonze and starring Joaquin Phoenix, takes this issue head on as a man who is a loner realizes that his computer-operating system voiced by Scarlett Johansson is meeting his every need intellectually.
We’ve seen numerous, examples of these types of films where the simulated woman or man is far more desirable. A film like Fritz Lang’s ‘Metropolis’ — and his beautiful robot Maria — illustrated these types of experiences when film was in its infancy.
Westworld and Futureworld were Michael Crichton’s vision of an amusement park where realistic robots would provide sex and entertainment for tourists. Of course, the train goes completely off the rails when a robotic gunslinger goes rogue and kills people.
In 1982, Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner gave us the axiom “more human than human,” as the Tyrell Corporation introduced the Nexus 6 robot that is remarkably life-like. The only way to tell the difference between human and robot is to test the subject with a psychological exam that is administered using a Voight-Kampff machine.
What used to be science fiction is becoming reality. The simulation is becoming the reality. If the simulation is too uncannily real, then what is it?
David Levy is an author who has put into one book a future where sympathetic online systems combined with life like robots will satisfy the transhumanist sexual desires of humans. Levy’s book, Love and Sex with Robots, is perhaps the fullest exploration of the future of humans and robots, especially their interaction in the bedroom. It explores the details of internet-linked devices that transmit real physical contact.
And Levy is no fantasist. He is the only person to win the Loebner prize – an annual competition to determine which chat software is the most realistic – in two separate decades, first in 1997 and again in 2009.
According to 1,900 robotic experts, by 2025 human beings could be having sex with robots. “Robotic sex partners will be commonplace, although the source of scorn and division.”
A recent study in the UK found that one in five people would totally have sex with a robot. Which is interesting, to say the least. It may seem creepy, and cold, but the truth is there are many people who see the advantage to having robotic sex as opposed to the real thing.
As many people believe sex is all about how they feel rather than their partner. The fact is while we try to pleasure the partner we are with, a robot would only care about whether or not you are satisfied. This would guarantee orgasm, no emotional ties, and no risks of STD’s or pregnancy.
This is the future, unless we can retrain ourselves to have natural relationships the tendency to have a machine or a virtual partner is inevitable, it is a case of playing in the World of Warcraft as opposed to the world of whorecraft.
Tonight, Clyde talks to Gary Wilson, author of Your Brain on Porn, and one of the world’s leading experts on Porn-Induced Erectile Dysfunction (PIED).
Text - Check out Ground Zero Radio with Clyde Lewis Live Nightly @ http://b4in.us/1whyikL
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