“What he (Struthers) provides is a well-rounded understanding of how pornography affects men. He looks beyond the usual, beyond the moral and ethical and legal and even spiritual. He shows that pornography is also a physical matter, “rooted in the biological intricacies of our sexual design.” Though there is value in books that look from the other angles, “calls to pray harder, move the computer to the living room and get plugged into an accountability group only go so far. They come across as hollow to many men whose brains have been altered and rewired by their experiences with pornography. They have trained their brains to respond sexually to the pornography they consume.”

Though there is value in reading this entire book, the heart of the book is the brain. In one chapter right in the middle of the book Struthers provides a primer on the brain and shows both how sexuality is hard-wired into the brain and how pornography can disrupt that God-given capacity. He shows that in many ways the male brain is built as an ideal receiver for pornography; the capacity of the brain to pursue intimacy with a wife is very easily disrupted and perverted by a desire to look at pornography. The wiring that ought to be used to pursue intimacy with one woman can easily be disrupted and used to pursue a kind of false intimacy with an endless succession of women. Men who have become consumed with pornography will have to admit with the author that “they have unknowingly created a neurological circuit that imprisons their ability to see women rightly as created in God’s image. Repeated exposure to pornography creates a one-way neurological superhighway where a man’s mental life is over-sexualized and narrowed. It is hemmed in on either side by high containment walls making escape nearly impossible.”

What Struthers both claims and (at least to my mind) proves is that looking at pornography and acting out to it creates neural pathways that disrupt the “normal” pathways. As pornography use and acting out to it become habitual, the pathways become more and more pronounced and, therefore, more difficult to overcome. Soon a man has rewired his brain in such a way that true intimacy becomes a challenge“.

There was an Interesting article by Janice Turner in the Opinion section of The Times yesterday, asking whether the time has come to limit the predominance of porn across the internet, basically, to protect the innocence of our children:

“How do you tell a child who has not yet had a first kiss that the plasticated members, the goggle-eyed grunting Barbies, that he came across while noodling around online are not what sex is about? Sex is tender, loving, fun, you might say brightly. (Sounding like what? A tantric hippy? A Sunday school teacher?) This porn, on those websites that can pop up unbidden and so freak you out, it’s not real. Well, it’s not the good stuff.  

But as your daughter or son’s eyes cloud with derision and your own cheeks pinken, you know the grim pointlessness of this chat, given that, for a whole generation, porn is what sex is about, since its clothing and poses, its service industry soullessness has been allowed to move into that time of faltering, gawky sweetness and rewritten the whole damn script.”

“Porn should have been returned to its rightful place, the top shelf, under the bed, the red-lit back streets, the adult domain, when it first penetrated the public sphere a decade back. Lads mags could have been classified with Razzle five years ago, not when, circulations declining annually by 25 per cent, they look certain to die out. Surely ministers in their chauffeured Jags spotted the bawdy billboards that demeaned our public spaces or caught the MTV videos just a leather thong’s breadth from Penthouse or came across the “adult” cable section where girls lick their own nipples at a texted request from Steve of Chelmsford.  

Did they never look up, frowning, from the atrocious teenage pregnancy figures that they promised but failed to halve and see the root cause — girls aping the tits-out attire of porn stars, practising the raunch culture credo that the only satisfaction girls should hope to get from sex was how well they performed it for men — and that only a dried-up priss would ever say “no”.  Did they not wonder that rape convictions were so unobtainable, despite a revolution in policing, because the notion that girls were all perpetually “hot” and “up for it” was tainting the judgment of juries — and of young men?  

Did it never occur to them that the Islamification of young Muslim women, the ascendancy of the hijab, that categoric statement of separation and difference, was, to no small degree, a protective reaction by a modest people against a host culture that was running through a shopping centre with its arse out, wearing a T-shirt saying “No gag reflex!”  

But, too terrified of seeming anti-sex or of defying the prevailing boomtime ethos that the only morality was the market, government back then refused to tackle pornification. It was a private matter, it insisted. But it wasn’t any more: it was manifestly, luridly public.”

“Pornography is a visual representation of sexuality which distorts an individual’s concept of the nature of conjugal relations. This, in turn, alters both sexual attitudes and behaviour. It is a major threat to marriage, to family, to children and to individual happiness. In undermining marriage it is one of the factors in undermining social stability”

I found this interesting article in the Guardian about the effect that sexualised images of women have on men’s brains:

“Men are more likely to think of women as objects if they have looked at sexy pictures of females beforehand, psychologists said yesterday….Researchers used brain scans to show that when straight men looked at pictures of women in bikinis, areas of the brain that normally light up in anticipation of using tools, like spanners and screwdrivers, were activated….Scans of some of the men found that a part of the brain associated with empathy for other people’s emotions and wishes shut down after looking at the pictures…..”