HOW CYBERPORN AFFECTS LIBIDO AND FEMINISM

The term ‘pornography’ has widely been debated. According to Family Safe Media statistics, there are 4.2 million pornographic websites, representing 12% of all websites in the world. Every day, there are 68 million search engine requests for pornographic material and this is 25% of all search engine requests. Worldwide visitors to pornographic websites number 72 million annually. Moreover, there are 100,000 websites that offer illegal child pornography. Many have the doubt whether there are disadvantages or ill-effects of watching hot videos? Although the harmless effects of porn addiction are highly talked about, its negative effects on the overall wellness of humans are ignored. 

Researchers have defined pornography as sexual material such as a picture, video, text or audio that is primarily intended to arouse the consumer sexually. The word pornography is a conglomerate of two ancient Greek words, namely, pornos (fornicators) and gráphein (writing, recording or description). In Greek language, the term pornography connotes depiction of sexual activity. Although no date is known for the first use of this term, the most related word found is pornographos, meaning “someone writing about harlots” in a 3rd century AD work by Athenaeus, a Greek rhetorician and grammarian. 

The addictive power of porn cannot be considered insignificant as our contemporary culture has been ‘pornified’, so to say. Pornography is a major influencer of people’s perception of sex in the digital age. In 2015, the worldwide market value stood at US$ 97 billion with the US revenue valued at $ 10 to $ 12 billion. Modern-day pornography began to take shape in the mid-1980s when the first desktop computers and public computer networks were released. Since the 1990s, the internet has made pornography more accessible and visible. The introduction of broadband connections paved way for online pornography, giving consumers anonymous access to a wide range of pornographic material. From the 21st century, pornography was made more available by greater access to digital cameras, laptops, smartphones and Wi-Fi. In 2022, the total pornographic content accessible online was estimated to be over 10,000 terabytes. 

Pornographic content is categorized into softcore and hardcore. Softcore pornography contains depictions of nudity but it is devoid of explicit depiction of sexual activity whereas hardcore pornography includes explicit depiction of sexual relations. Softcore porn was popular between the 1970s and 1990s. Most erotic magazines and novels that preceded the advent of computers fell into the category of soft porn.

History of erotic depictions

In 2008, the oldest artifacts of an erotic nature, including a nearly 6 cm tall Venus figurine, carved from mammoth ivory, dated to be at least 35,000 years old, were discovered at a cave near Stuttgart in Germany. People across various civilizations have created works of explicit sex, including artifacts, music, poetry and murals that are often intertwined with religious and supernatural themes. Many artifacts from ancient Mesopotamia portrayed explicit heterosexual sex. In Mesopotamian votive plaques, dating back to the early second millennium BC, a man is shown penetrating a woman from behind while she bends over drinking beer through a straw. Middle Assyrian lead votive figurines often portrayed a man standing and penetrating a woman as she rests on an altar. 

Although depictions of sexual intercourse were not part of the general repertory of ancient Egyptian formal art, rudimentary sketches of heterosexual intercourse have been found on fragments of pottery and in graffiti. 

The Greek poet Sappho’s Ode to Aphrodite (600 BC) is regarded to be an earliest example of lesbian poetry. Greek archaeologist Nikolaos Stampolidis says that the society of ancient Greece held lenient attitudes towards sex in the fields of art and literature. Kama Sutra (Principles of Love) by the Indian sage Vatsyayana (second or third century AD) is an ancient Hindu text written in Sanskrit on sexuality, eroticism and emotional fulfilment. Other examples of early literature and art of a sexual nature include Ars Amatoria (Art of Love), the 2nd century AD treatise on the art of seduction and sensuality by the Roman poet Ovid; the artifacts of the Moche people in Peru (100 AD-800 AD); The Decameron, a collection of short stories, some of which sexual in nature, by the 14th century Italian author Giovanni Boccaccio; and the 15th century Arabic sex manual The Perfumed Garden of Sensual Delight by Muhammad ibn Muhammad al-Nefzawi, often compared to the Indian Kama Sutra.

The first British English erotic prose is Fanny Hill (1748) by English novelist John Cleland, one of the most prosecuted and banned books in history. It was first published in England as Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure whose eroticism led to the author’s arrest, being charged for “corrupting the King’s subjects”. A film by American inventor and businessman Thomas Alva Edison was denounced as obscene in the United States in the late 19th century for depicting a “kiss” whereas French filmmaker Louis Eugène Pirou’s 1896 erotic short film Le Coucher de la Mariée (Bedtime for the Bride) was received very favourably in France. Blue Movie, a 1969 American erotic film by Andy Warhol, is the first film that depicted unsimulated sex that received a wide theatrical release in the United States. This is considered a seminal film in the Golden Age of Porn (1969-1984).

Porn addiction: is it benign or harmful?

Pornography has been viewed to provide a safe outlet for sexual desires that may not be satiated within relationships, and to facilitate sexual satisfaction in people who do not have a partner or who feel lonely or are depressed. It is used as well to cope with insomnia, boredom and other mental health issues. Some, therefore, see nothing abnormal about using porn. But, others assert that daily porn can deform the perceptions of intimacy and sexual performance and lead to reduced sex drive. They say that addictive porn consumers are aroused only through the medium of pornography and actual sex may not arouse them that jeopardizes their sex life. Sexologists affirm that excessive porn consumers start finding masturbation more satisfying than real sex. Such users find it difficult to experience an orgasm from sex with a partner.

Other negative effects of pornography on mental health include guilt, shame, low self-esteem, depression, anxiety, anger, a feeling of isolation in society and suicidal thoughts while porn users may also run the risk of losing their jobs due to inattention at work place and getting into debt from spending large sums of money for buying pornographic material. Research has proved that pornography can also distort the perception of reality, increase aggression and abuse, desensitize the viewer and contribute to drug abuse.

How pornography affects the human brain

A study in 2014 revealed that watching porn could shrink a part of the brain linked to ‘pleasure’. Researchers at the Max Planck Institute in Berlin looked at the brains of more than 60 men while they looked at pornographic images. It was found that the striatum, a part of the brain that makes up the ‘reward system’ (a group of neural structures responsible for emotions of pleasure) was smaller in those who watched excessive porn, meaning that they might require more graphic material to be aroused. Porn watching, thus, can damage this reward system, resulting in physical changes in the brain’s shape, size and chemical balance. 

Physicians and psychologists have identified the following side effects resulting from frequent porn watching:

1. Increased risk of Erectile Dysfunction (ED)

Chemicals released in the brain cells cause an erection in men. These chemicals, like dopamine, are released when men see, hear, or touch anything that turns them on. When one watches porn excessively, dopamine is released in excess. This hampers the dopamine reward system, thus making it unresponsive to natural sources of pleasure, for example, one’s partner. A survey disclosed that 23% of men under 35 years of age faced ED-related issues when they indulged in sex with their partner. Renowned urologist and sexual health expert Dr. Rena Malik MD from Southern California believes that certain psychological factors linked with the use of pornography-anxiety, stress and moral incongruence- could heighten the risk of ED.

2. Reduced sperm count

Studies of sex experts have shown that too much porn may lead to frequent ejaculations, affecting the sperm density in semen. It may also result in premature or delayed ejaculation. 

3. Effects on behavioural patterns

Porn consumption can have adverse effects on behavioural patterns: anxiety, depression, irritability and anger, transforming into a psychological craving. The inability to access porn can increase aggression and anxiety. In this sense, porn addiction seems to be tantamount to drug addiction.

4. Insensitivity to others’ pleasures

The porn viewers often get so engrossed in that habit that they tend to neglect everything or everyone around them. This can impact romantic relationships, friendships and even social relationships and also their professions.

5. Body image issues

Porn stars generally depict perfect human bodies. Consumers of porn, dissatisfied with the shape of their own bodies, lose self-confidence, thus resorting to taking supplements to boost their body image that often results in harmful side effects. 

6. Marital infidelity 

According to research, the addiction to porn equally leads to lower marital quality and infidelity. Men who watch pornography frequently find their partners less attractive. At a 2003 meeting of the American Academy of Matrimonial Lawyers, two thirds of the 350 divorce lawyers admitted that the Internet played a significant role in the divorces in the preceding year, with excessive interest in online porn contributing to more than half such cases. Research also demonstrated that pornography contributes to sexual assault, rape and molestation of children.

Pornography and Feminism

Feminist views on pornography range from total condemnation of the medium as an inherent form of violence against women to an embracing of some forms as a medium of feminist expression and of respect for women’s rights. This disagreement between the two groups led to the feminist sex wars of the 1980s which pitted anti-pornography activists against pro-pornography ones who affirmed the right of women to consume and produce porn.

Feminist opponents of pornography, such as Andrea Dworkin, Catherine MacKinnon, Robin Morgan, Diana Russell, Alice Schwarzer, Gail Dines and Robert Jensen, argue that pornography is demeaning to women and constitutes facilitation of violence against them. Dworkin and MacKinnon called for a civil law to make pornographers accountable for harms resulting from the use, production and circulation of their publications. Dworkin testified before the Meese Commission in 1986 of the attorney general on pornography, ordered by the then US President Ronald Reagan. 

MacKinnon charges that the production of pornography entailed physical, psychological and/or economic coercion of women. She points out that porn stars are not there by choice but due to a lack of choices. MacKinnon argues that the porn consumption fuels prostitution and sex trafficking while Dines holds the view that pornography is becoming increasingly violent and that women who perform in it are brutalized in the process of its production. She says that pornography is the perfect propaganda piece for patriarchy. Many outspoken critics of pornography are of the view that it gives a distorted view of bodies of men and women, as well as the actual sexual act. 

Porn stars Traci Lords and Linda Boreman claimed that most female performers are coerced into pornography either by somebody else, or by an unfortunate set of circumstances. But, others claim that most women are lured into the porn career by sheer monetary gains. 

How to quit porn watching

The following steps have been proposed as a means to give up obsession with porn consumption:

• Proper planning
• Joining an online or offline community 
• Replacing porn watching  with other healthy habits
• Engaging in physical activity
• Changing the surroundings and lifestyle
• Meditation or prayer
• Installing a porn blocker on one’s device
• Giving priorities to one’s values
• Seeking help from friends
• Therapy and medications      ***