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I’ve seen what porn can do in relationships. The dehumanising ways men who become obsessed with it treat women. I’ve heard from those women about their rapes, about their degradations, about the increasing callousness and misogyny seeping into their relationship like a stain.
I’ve spoken to the men as well.The one who had to leave the middle of business meetings to mastubrate,who couldn’t stop,who didn’t want to face how his problem was impacting those around him.The colleagues who knew. The girlfriend who had to endure his disregarding of her in bed.
The man who confided that he could hear about truly brutal things happening to women, now, and feel nothing because he had seen worse on his computer screen, and enjoyed it. Another man who was desperate for help but surrounded by pro porn friends who told him he had no problem
“I’m going to lose the woman I love” he told me “if I don’t stop this but I don’t know how”. I watched his friends, male and female alike, call his girlfriend a prude and tell him it was fine
One said if he watched for less than 8 hours a day it couldn’t be an addiction.
One said if he watched for less than 8 hours a day it couldn’t be an addiction.
I’ve seen an additional set of claims from males about porn,too. I’ve seen them say they’ve become trans as a result of forced feminisation/sissification porn. Or they think their sexuality has expanded a result of porn. Or,concerningly,that they became paedophiles through porn.
Unlike the stories from women and men who are damaged by porn, which I know to be accurate, those kind of claims have always seemed like they must be untrue to me. It seemed like watching porn was being used to explain something that had nothing to do with that.
I think I was wrong.
I happened upon a study the other day. Goodness knows how the ethics board didn’t faint away at the proposal but the results meant that they basically induced a shoe fetish in a group of males who previously didn’t have one. This is how they did it.
I happened upon a study the other day. Goodness knows how the ethics board didn’t faint away at the proposal but the results meant that they basically induced a shoe fetish in a group of males who previously didn’t have one. This is how they did it.
They took adult males&females and showed them arousing material. They monitored their arousal. When they achieved it they showed them pictures of leather boots. They did this repeatedly. Then they stopped showing them the material, and only showed them the boots.
The females were completely unmoved.These were,after all, only boots. In the males,or at least enough of them,the sight of the boots alone was now enough to generate an erection. They also now broadened out on their own, and would get erections when shown similar types of shoes.
The researchers concluded that men were far more sexually suggestible than women and then they, presumably, sent those poor men back out into a world that would likely look askance at their new found enjoyment of ladies footwear.
What an absolute revelation though.
What an absolute revelation though.
&doesn’t this explain so much? Show a man violence against women when he’s aroused,link those in his brain&he’s potentially going to start finding all violence against women arousing. He may begin to participate in that violence, especially in the bedroom.
Show him the darkest thing you can find when he is already aroused, like material involving children, and surely there really is the frightening potential that he is going to start to link the two in his brain. This is the most concerning realisation of all.
If arousal can so quickly rewrite men’s sexual desires, not just in a superficial way or only in the men who watch a substantial amount of porn, it makes both porn&the men indulging in it more potentially dangerous.I knew porn was a problem but this quantified that problem more.
It explains so much about the dehumanisation of women for men’s sexual gratification more widely,too.We live in a society that even before porn treated us as objects.Their arousal would have helped teach them to continue that objectification of us for the reward it offers them.
Im not sure what the solutions are but modelling more healthy romantic&sexual relationships in all forms of media is a necessity
As well as safeguards that,at the least,stop teenage(&younger) boys streaming porn when their brains are even more malleable&vulnerable to suggestion
As well as safeguards that,at the least,stop teenage(&younger) boys streaming porn when their brains are even more malleable&vulnerable to suggestion
