Fantasizing About an Action Trains the Brain Almost the Same as Doing It
Porn defenders commonly characterize it as 'harmless fantasy'. Few viewers, they say, will act it out in the real world. Unfortunately, research on learning suggests this assumption is risky. Visualizing an action is close in training power to actually performing the action. Learning from porn is also reinforced by the pleasure of orgasm.
This article describes the learning effects of visualization:
Perhaps you’ve heard of a well known experiment conducted by Australian psychologist, Alan Richardson, that used the skill of shooting baskets as a way of testing the effectiveness of creative visualization. One third of the test participants (group A) were told to practice their free throw technique twenty minutes per day, the next third (group B) were directed to spend twenty minutes per day visualizing but not attempting successful free throw attempts, and the third group (C) were not allowed to either practice or visualize. At the end of the test period, the group’s skill levels were measured. Predictably, Group (C) did not improve at all, however, both groups A and B showed nearly the same degree of improvement. Amazingly, the people who merely thought about playing basketball were able to perform almost as well as the ones who had actually practiced! Richardson's study showed that peak performance is obtained through 75% visualization and 25% physical practice. So, do you think your brain knows whether you are practicing physically or mentally?See also:
Neuroscientist Dr. Karl Pribram, PhD., a researcher at Stanford University, spent forty years investigating the mysterious way visual learning works and this is what he came up with: the brain follows the properties of a mathematical equation, called the Fourier Principle, which enables images to be transformed into skills and behavior. Put simply; imaging, especially with the inclusion of rich sensory details such as smell, sound, feel and taste, creates a “neurological template” or set of instructions for our body and mind. Images of movement, whether on a TV screen or in the mind’s eye, Pribram says, trigger memory of motion.
Video Presentation: A Content Analysis of 50 of Today's Top Selling Porn Films (explicit language)
Bridges: "So how many scenes didn't contain aggression? About 10%..."
Bridges: "Gagging and choking were much, much more common than any of us thought when we first walked into this project..."
Bridges: "Slapping happened 30% of the time... Most of the aggressors in these films were men...73%. By far the most common recipient of aggression was a woman. Even when women were aggressing, they were generally aggressing other women..."
Some porn hard to distinguish from training for pedophiles (explicit language)
The scenarios had Max providing the woman/girl with her first sexual experience. A detailed description of one of the vignettes shows how this video not only depicted child-adult sex, but offered realistic, detailed instructions on how to initiate a child into sex, a manual for how to perpetrate a sexual assault on a child...
After he put her up on the sink and basin and shaved her pubic hair, Max penetrated her with his fingers before vaginal intercourse, something rapists of girls often find necessary in order to stretch the child's vagina so that it can accept the penis. He then penetrated her anus with his fingers before anal intercourse. Although her facial expression suggested she was in pain, she said, "This is fun, mister..."
Porn's "Verbatim" Accounts of the Pleasures of Child Sexual Abuse Don't Square with Reality
Researchers estimate that, in our country, about 10% of boys and 25% of girls are sexually abused...
Gail Dines Presents: Pornography and Pop Culture (explicit)
"When you look at print, and you see something, you can think to yourself, 'I agree or disagree.' You can put it down and come back. You engage with it. However, the problem with image is that we have no such immunization to the seduction of eloquence of the image. You look at that [magazine cover of buff man and woman] and you don't engage with it. You immediately think, 'Oh my God I'm such a fat pig. Look at me compared to her. What's wrong with me?' My students do this all the time... [T]hat's the role of images...to construct your identity in relation to what is normalized.
"...[T]he bizarre thing about media is it makes normal the abnormal, and makes abnormal the normal..."
"I do not believe that men go to look at pornography because they hate women. I think for most males in our culture, and remember the average age of downloading your first porn is now 11 to 12... I don't think that these 11 to 12 year-olds hate women. Their hormones are going crazy, they live in a hypersexualized culture...what passes for sex education is pathetic, so where are you going to go? You're going to go to pornography...
"I say this to men over and over again. You might not go to pornography hating women, but you're sure as hell going to come away with that feeling. You get much more than you bargained for with pornography, and that's the problem with it. The other problem with pornography is it sexualizes the violence and degradation against women. And when you sexualize violence you render that violence invisible, because when men see that they can't step back and critique it... You are basically trying to have a rational conversation with an erection and it doesn't work."
Interview of Dr. Edward Donnerstein (by phone) by Catharine A. MacKinnon, January 10, 1984
Donnerstein: "The most interesting thing about the X-rated commercially released market is how the violence is displayed, which I think is the most important thing. While maybe only 25 or 30 percent of them contain overt violence, I think we probably all find that 90-95 percent of the time when a women is sexually assaulted or raped or aggressed against someway in these films, she is turned on and shows pleasure, enjoyment and so on and so on...
The problem is that what you are doing is conditioning sexual release, or relief, which is a very positive thing in men, to violence or to rape. One doesn't have to be a scientist to understand what conditioning does... I think the whole idea of catharsis really has to be put aside...
Time to Explore the Links Between Porn, Testosterone, Sexual Behavior and Violence
...[T]estosterone is highly susceptible to environment. T levels can rise and fall depending on external circumstances--short term and long term. Testosterone is usually elevated in response to confrontational situations -- a street fight, a marital spat, a presidential debate--or in highly charged sexual environments, like a strip bar or a pornographic Web site...
[T]he more cellular memories (biological and physiological processes) that pornographers can link their porn to throughout the male brain and body, the greater chance they have of addicting their viewers. And the more naturally occurring drugs/hormones (especially testosterone, but also adrenaline, epinephrine, and others) flowing in the male mindbody during viewing, the more narrow will be his focus, the more intense his sexual/mindbody arousal, the more deeply the images will be imprinted in his memory, and the greater his addiction.
Pornographers achieve this combination of a high number of mindbody links and maximum drug/hormone release by mixing sexual images with male dominance, aggression and violent images intended to shock and stimulate simultaneously. Porn scenes ranging from simple "male in control" to aggression, rape, torture and murder, abound in Internet porn geared to the male viewer.
These kinds of images link sexual arousal in the male mindbody with emotions of shock, anger, confusion, violence and domination which cause the male mindbody to release enormous amounts of additional testosterone, which further increase male narrowing, loss of reason, feelings of aggression, and sexual drive and arousal.
Porn Use Correlates with Infidelity, Prostitution, Aggression, Rape-Supportive Beliefs
In 1995, Human Communication Research reported on a meta-analysis of 33 different studies. Researchers found that "Exposure to pornography increases behavioral aggression. While there are many factors that influence this effect (for example, the content of the pornography viewed), the researchers conclude that a connection between exposure to pornography and subsequent behavioral aggression exists..."
In 2004, researchers also reported in Social Science Quarterly that "Individuals who have had an extramarital affair are 3.18 times more likely to have used Internet pornography than individuals who did not have affairs."
In 2005, a survey of 718 Swedish high school students found that "Seventy-one percent of adolescents surveyed believed pornography consumption influenced others' behavior, and 29 percent believed it affected their own behavior." Reported in International Journal of STD & AIDS.
Testimony from Northampton Shelter for Battered Women: Half of Abusers Use Pornography as a Part of the Abuse (explicit)
We have recently begun to formally ask the battered women who call us whether the abuser uses pornography and from this we conservatively estimate that at least 1/2 of the abusers use pornography as a part of the abuse. Battering is based on an issue of power and control, with the abuser using all kinds of methods to continually assert his power and control over the woman. Throughout, he is persistently working to deny her of her ability to make informed decisions about her life and through threats, coercion, and continual terror succeeds at clearly establishing himself as "in control". We frequently hear a woman say that she feels like a prisoner in her own home, and in fact, she is...
[Example case:] Not only had the children been forced to have sex with each other and several playmates, but the adults had used objects in their genitals, had killed animals in their presence, had made them engage sexually with animals, had hung them from rafters, had threatened to throw them off a cliff, all acts depicted in pornographic videos.
Testimony in Minneapolis: "Pornography is probably the most extreme example of anti-women socialization that men receive in this society"
If you look at a lot of pornography, it shows women being beaten, humiliated, tied up. It shows women tied and stabbed, poked, prodded and abused by devices, assaulted by several men or animals, and many ugly and degrading things. When you see a woman being battered, you see a lot of the same ugliness and violence at the same time. Not only do they portray women as liking and deserving this sexual abuse, it shows them as enjoying it, deserving it. And that is what one of the great myths of battery is, is that women deserve to be battered and that they enjoy it. If they didn't like it, they wouldn't stay...
Everywoman Center Coordinator: Porn Damages Women; Porn Addiction
"Typically, a woman will say that her boyfriend is into very violent forms of pornography and likes to act out specific aspects of that, and she doesn't know how to stop it," Roth said, "or a battered woman might perceive a connection between the pornography in her household and the bouts of violence...
"In no other case [of media communications] are people so quick to discount the argument about the human cost, which I think reflects how low protection of women ranks in our priorities. We're quicker to protest media (material) that depicts the mistreatment of animals than of women," Roth said. "A society does need to make choices about what attitudes it wants to condone."
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