How Porn Turns Men Into Little Boys

Two hundred years ago in the U.K., if you said you were going to a “gentleman’s club,” it was understood you were going to a private upper-class establishment where you could relax, read, play parlor games, get a meal, and gossip with others of your class.

Today, in the U.S., if you said you were going to a “gentleman’s club,” it is assumed you will be paying to see a striptease in a low-lit bar that smells like urinal cakes and hopelessness.

Is this really what should typify a “gentleman”?

Pornography is often classified, along with other sexually oriented businesses, as “adult” entertainment—something for “mature” audiences. If these descriptions merely meant these kinds of entertainment are “not suitable for children” then few would protest.

That said, it would be foolish to use this as an argument that pornography is actually suitable for adults. Heroin and racism are also “not suitable for children,” but this does not mean, ipso facto, that they are healthy for those over the age of eighteen.

Porn advocates are fond of saying (“fond” is an understatement—they repeat it like a mantra) that pornography is sophisticated, mature entertainment suitable for responsible adults. Porn, they will have you believe, is what true gentlemen appreciate—like a good cigar, scotch, and Picasso (for a reason I cannot fathom).

As the infamous Ron Jeremy is quick to say: “Pornography is consensual sex between consenting adults, to be watched by consenting adults.”

What Do We Mean By Mature?

Which leads us to ask: What exactly constitutes “adult” or “mature” behavior? Is it merely a commentary on the age of the participant? Or is it about something more? Stipulating proper definitions is complicated because today these terms are so often used as synonyms for erotic media—which is the very topic we’re trying to dissect.

One way we use the term “mature” is when talking about reaching a final or desired state. We speak of “mature wine” as wine that has reached its peak fermentation and is ready to be consumed. We also use the word “mature” to speak of someone who has “grown up” in his or her behaviors and attitudes—they don’t display the impetuousness and naivety of youth. This is clearly what the patrons of strip clubs are doing by calling these establishments “gentlemen’s clubs”: they are insinuating that the activities that go on are part of manly behaviors.

Ask any neuroscientist what a “mature” human brain looks like, and he or she will likely talk to you about a region of the brain known as the prefrontal cortex. It’s located directly behind the forehead and serves as the managerial center of the brain. It is responsible for our willpower, regulating our behavior, and making decisions based on wisdom and principles. When emotions, impulses, and urges surge from the midbrain, the lobes in the prefrontal cortex are there to exercise “executive control” over them. By the age of 25, this region of the brain reaches maturity, meaning that our thinking becomes more sophisticated and we can regulate our emotions more easily.

Neuroscience

Why bring neuroscience into the equation? Because fascinating research is being done looking at the impact of viewing porn on this region of the brain.

The brain is designed in such a way to respond to sexual stimulation. Surges of dopamine are released during a sexual encounter—and yes, also pornographic encounters—giving the person a sharp sense of focus and an awareness of sexual craving. Dopamine helps to lay down memories in the brain, so the next time a man or woman is in the mood, the brain remembers where to return to experience the same pleasure: whether that be a loving spouse or the laptop in the den.

However, scientists are now seeing that continued exposed to porn gives the brain an unnatural high—something it literally isn’t wired to handle—and the brain eventually fatigues.

Anatomy and physiology instructor Gary Wilson notes this is the same pattern noticed when drugs are abused: the brain becomes desensitized. More of the drug or harder drugs are needed to get the same high, and the downward spiral begins. Wilson says this brings about significant changes in the brain—both for drug abusers and porn users.

One of those changes is the erosion of the prefrontal cortex—that all-important center of executive control. Dr. Donald Hilton, a neurosurgeon, shared what scientists are seeing in their research:

“A study on cocaine addiction published in 2002 shows volume loss, or shrinkage, in several areas of the brain, particularly the frontal control areas. A study from 2004 shows very similar results for methamphetamine. But…we expect drugs to damage the brain, so these studies don’t really surprise us.

Consider, though, a natural addiction, such as overeating leading to obesity. You might be surprised to learn that a study published in 2006 showed shrinkage in the frontal lobes in obesity very similar to that found in the cocaine and methamphetamine studies.

And a study published in 2007 of persons exhibiting severe sexual addiction produced almost identical results to the cocaine, methamphetamine, and obesity studies.

So we have four studies, two drug and two natural addiction studies, all done in different academic institutions by different research teams, and published over a five-year period in four different peer-reviewed scientific journals. And all four studies show that addictions physically affect the frontal lobes of the brain.”

When the frontal lobes of the brain are weakened, when the craving for porn hits, there is very little willpower present to regulate the desire. Neuroscientists call this problem hypofrontality, where the person is slowly loses impulse control and the mastery of his or her passions.

The point is this: The very thing in the brain that is the mark of adulthood and maturity is the thing that is eroded as we view more porn. It is as if the brain is reverting, becoming more childlike. “Adult” entertainment is actually making us more juvenile.

The attempt to make sexual deviancy appear gentlemanly seems to me to be nothing more than the attempt of weak men to justify shameful behavior. Since the very first issue of Playboy hit the magazine racks in 1953, Hugh Hefner’s strategy was two-fold: to distributors he would market the magazine as soft-core porn, but to the target audience he would market it as a men’s “lifestyle magazine” for upwardly mobile men. This began the cultural change of porn’s public image:

[W]hen the editors addressed the reader, the pictures were just one of many attractions, rather than the attraction. The reader was invited not to masturbate to the centerfold but rather to enter the world of the cultural elite, to discuss philosophy and consume food associated with the upper middle class…The markers of upper-class life, which appear causally thrown in as afterthoughts (cocktails, hors d’oeurves, and Picasso), were deliberately placed to cloak the magazine in an aura of upper-middle class respectability.

Just as sure as Playboy would have died without the naked women lining its pages, it also would have died without its articles and advertisements, which gave permission to the self-defined middle-class American male to indulge in porn.

Misunderstood Revolutionaries?

Why is it that Adult stores offer back entrances? Is because their clientele are misunderstood revolutionaries who are plotting the demise of a sexually repressed society? Or is it much simpler than that? Is it because they know that such behavior is wrong?

When one considers the options, which activity sounds more “mature” and grown-up: Making love for a lifetime to one real flesh-and-blood woman whom you are eagerly serving and cherishing, despite all her faults and blemishes (and despite your own), or sneaking away at night to troll the Internet, flipping from woman to woman, from one thirty second teaser to another, for hours on end, pleasuring yourself as you bond to pixels on a screen?

No, indulging pornographic media and other forms of commercial sex are hardly befitting of the adjective “adult.” Actions speak louder than words—even when those words are five feet high, neon, and constitute the phrase “gentlemen’s club.”

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Matt Fradd is the executive director of The Porn Effect, an apostolate dedicated to helping men and women reject porn for a love that satisfies. He is the editor of Delivered: True Stories of Men and Women who Turned From Porn to Purity and coauthor of Victory: A Strategic Battle Plan for Freedom in the Struggle Against Pornography. Matt speaks to around fifty thousand people every year on the dangers of porn and how to be free from it. He lives in Georgia with his wife Cameron and their four children. Follow him on Twitter at @mattfradd

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