“…For the first time in human history, the images’ power and allure have supplanted that of real naked women. Today, real naked women are just bad porn.” – Naomi Wolf
Naomi Wolf’s statement is striking. It reveals to us just how far porn has distorted the modern view of sex. In Gail Dines’ Pornland and a similar book by Pamela Paul called Pornified, we hear more stories of both men and women whose sexualities have been disfigured by porn. Men who cannot help comparing their wife or girlfriend to the porn they have recently watched, and find that the real woman in front of them inevitably comes up short. Women who feel pressured into having “porn sex” with their partner, taught that the only way to be desirable is to demean themselves. There are even some who can no longer have sex with their partner – real sex, with a real person – without watching or fantasizing about porn.
So what are we to make of this – of the way porn seems to be changing people? Perhaps there is more to porn than simply spiritual wrongdoing. After all, we are not just souls but bodies. According to the Bible, our bodies are meant to be tools for righteousness, but there is growing evidence that porn is re-sculpting our bodies — and specifically our brains — into tools for unrighteousness.
Our bodies and our brains are one of God’s most incredible gifts to us, yet we don’t often think deeply about them. In fact, we far too often downplay the significance of our bodies. But consider this: we are embodied creatures in the sense that everything we do, we do with our bodies. They are the way we act in the world. If we didn’t have a body, we couldn’t eat, we couldn’t run, nor could we think, pray, or speak (at least in the way we do now). What we do, therefore, affects not just our souls, but our bodies and brains also.
In his book Wired For Intimacy, neuroscientist William Struthers explains what pornography does to our brains. There are a lot of details about hormones and neurotransmitters, but to put it simply, pornography exploits our brains like an addictive drug.
What makes pornography so addictive is that it takes advantage of the brain’s pleasure and reward circuits. These are the parts of the brain that get used for the enjoyment of good things like food, drink, and (real) sex. Just like a drug, pornography overloads these circuits and creates desire, dependence, and desensitization.
For instance, when someone looks at porn, and especially when they masturbate to it, there is a combined release of many important hormones and neurotransmitters. Some especially powerful ones that Struthers mentions are dopamine (which creates focus, and desire), norepinephrine (which helps form memories), serotonin (which helps modulate your mood), and various endorphins (which create a feeling of euphoria). These chemicals combine to create a very strong experience, carving the memory of it deep into the very stuff of thought. Oxytocin and vasopressin, chemicals that help create bonding and attachment, are released especially strongly at orgasm.
Unfortunately, instead of bonding us to the partner whom we love and cherish (which is what would happen in real sex), these chemicals bond us to the viewed representations of sex. These pornographic representations are most often degrading, cheap, and unrealistic. As more and more porn is consumed, the brain and body become more and more desensitized. The hunger for greater stimulation grows, while more and more extreme situations are needed to get that same rush — the classic addict’s trap.
Struthers also mentions what he calls “mirror neurons.” These are part of a brain system that mentally mirrors the actions we see, and helps us to imagine ourselves in that same situation. When we see someone do something, it’s like our mirror neurons say “I can do that!” and then act out (in the brain) how they would do it.
When it comes to porn, this is especially insidious. Since porn is, for many, their most accessible window to sex and sexual pleasure, these mirror neurons ensure that porn becomes vicarious sex ed. When it comes time to actually have real life sex, our mirror neurons expect an over-the-top, degrading, and often violent and aggressive sexual experience.
When real sex fails to deliver, confusion and disappointment ensue, driving the viewer back to their old habit, in a vicious cycle.
Repeated porn use acts like a river flowing through a valley, carving deep channels that redirect nearby water through its banks. Since every interaction in porn is sexual, all our interactions with the opposite sex get funnelled into this same rut, and soon it is difficult to have any normal interactions that are not sexually charged. Sexual thoughts and fantasies hover constantly at the edges of thought, at the periphery of almost every conversation.
It is important to know that pornography is a growing problem for both men and women. However, what porn can do to men’s brains is especially insidious, because the women they desire are almost always the most objectified, demeaned, and dominated party in a porn scene. Pornography presents them as nothing more than sex objects, and that is how the viewer is trained to see them. By hewing this channel in their own brains, Struthers says men have “unknowingly created a neurological circuit that imprisons their ability to see women rightly as created in God’s image.”
“Responses to pornography,” says Struthers, “flow through the neurological viaducts through which feelings of love, longing, need, and romance are expressed.” Porn gives to the viewer (at least at first) the neurological rush that accompanies the amazing gift of sex, but without the vulnerability, mutuality, and love that are meant to be a part of it. Under the influence of pornography, these mirror neurons, hormones, and neurotransmitters, meant to bring us joy and deep human connection, become a potent cocktail of dependence, frustration, and isolation.
This is a bleak picture indeed, but Struthers says there’s hope. Just as pornography can sculpt our brains into instruments of unrighteousness, prayer, community, and a change of habits can re-sculpt our brains towards the service of God. The same mechanisms that bind us so strongly to pornography can, over time, work towards our sanctification and freedom from addiction.
It is possible, by the grace of God, to carve new channels for the rivers of our thoughts—new channels that flow towards healthy sexuality and away from the counterfeit. It is in this spirit, the spirit of Romans 12, that you can “present your bodies (and especially your brains!) as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God. It is possible, in community and with the help of God, to be transformed by the renewing of our minds.
This is the second in a four-part series on pornography.
Part One : The History of Porn
Part Three: Pornified Relationships
Part Four: The Porn-Addicted Church
Photo by (Flickr CC): Allan Ajifo
