Physical Effects of Porn
Many young people see porn as a how-to manual, a source of ideas about the world of adult sex. Sadly porn sites do not come with warnings about risk or harm. They promote themselves as an endless supply of pleasure and entertainment. Like all potentially addictive substances and behaviours, porn can cause serious changes to the brain over time and encourage behaviours that harm other parts of the body. Non fatal strangulation or ‘air play’ as the porn industry calls it euphemistically, is one such example that is becoming increasingly common today. See this blog on it. So, what are the physical effects of porn?
Porn-Induced Erectile Dysfunction
The most alarming physical change that is stated by men, especially men under 40 today in many of the recovery sites, is erectile dysfunction (ED). That is, they cannot attain a stiff or erect penis. See the video below to understand why. For others, delayed ejaculation or a sluggish response to real partners is common. NOTE they do not experience ED when using porn, only when they try to have intercourse with a real partner. That means many men without partners do not even realise they have developed an erectile problem.
As University of Cambridge lead researcher Valerie Voon said:
“[Porn addicts] compared to healthy volunteers had significantly more difficulty with sexual arousal and experienced more erectile difficulties in intimate sexual relationships but not to sexually explicit material.”
This can cause serious problems when a couple get together. Either partner may feel inadequate for not being able to perform sexually or seemingly not being able to invoke sexual desire in the other person. It has caused many men a great deal of shame and embarrassment and upset or a sense of failure in their partners.
Immediate Push Back from Porn Industry
Read this excellent article from The Guardian “Is Porn Making Young Men Impotent?“.
You will note at the end of the online article that it was amended three times after the original publication. You might be interested to know this was due to the constant harassment by a porn industry shill. That person bombarded the editor and journalist with intimidatory emails and tweets. I know this because the journalist contacted me every day for a week looking for even more evidential support.
Yet The Guardian editor still bowed to the intimidation. First, by way of appeasement, she removed the hyperlink to the key research paper that shows a causative link between problematic porn use and erectile dysfunction. But that wasn’t enough. The shill insisted they remove mention of it altogether. The paper in question: Is Internet Pornography Causing Sexual Dysfunctions? A Review with Clinical Reports (Park et al., 2016). [As of early 2020, Park et al. has been cited by over 80 other peer-reviewed papers, and is the most viewed paper in the history of the journal Behavioral Sciences]. Read it for yourself.
If you want to know more about the multi-billion dollar porn industry PR dirty tactics listen to this brilliant series on BBC Sounds “How they made us doubt everything” Although this series does not deal with internet and tech companies, the same playbook is being used by the porn industry. Or read The Playbook: How to deny science, sell lies and make a killing in the corporate world by academic Jennifer Jacquet. The moment a story emerges that is contrary to their financial interests they attack it with all their force. They intimidate journalists, lie without compunction and editors rarely ask for proof of the lies, and they threaten court action etc. This is why it has been so difficult to make the public aware of the real risks around porn use. Here is a short video about the porn playbook.
Unexpected problems
For example, one young man from a traditional community who had kept himself a virgin until his marriage had been using porn as a substitute. When he and his wife tried to consummate the marriage, he was unable to perform sexually. This remained the case for two years as he did not connect his porn use to the sexual impotence. At this point his wife said she wanted a divorce. It was only then by chance that the young man discovered Gary Wilson’s TEDx talk, did he discover that prolonged porn use could lead to erectile failure. We hope his wife called off the divorce proceedings as this is a curable condition. How many more marriages and relationships are being affected by internet pornography?
The good news is that when the men give up internet porn for a while, their erectile function can be restored. It may take months or even years in some stubborn cases. Strangely it takes young men much more time to recover their “mojo” than older men. This is because older men started their masturbation careers with magazines and films and their exposure to porn was not usually intense and sustained enough to create the deep sexual conditioning and pathways that watching internet video porn creates. Younger men use porn and masturbation together for very long periods rather than use their imaginations, the old fashioned way.
Here are some research findings
• Italy 2013: age 17-40, more younger patients had severe Erectile Dysfunction (49%) than older (40%). The full study is available here.
• USA 2014: age 16-21, 54% sexual problems; 27% Erectile Dysfunction; 24% problems with orgasm. A summary of the research is available here.
• UK 2013: fifth of boys aged 16-20 told University of East London they were “dependent on porn as a stimulant for real sex”. A press article on this is available here.
• In a Cambridge University study in 2014, average age 25, but 11 out of 19 said porn use caused ED/diminished libido with partners, but not with porn.
Porn can influence the physical power dynamics in sexual relations
After several decades of improvement in power relations between men and women, Things have changed. There is a lot of recent evidence that some men are becoming more dominant and aggressive, especially in sexual relationships. This undesirable behaviour appears to be driven to some degree by men’s consumption of internet pornography.
A 2010 study of the content of best-selling DVDs found that of the 304 scenes analyzed, 88.2% contained physical aggression. This was principally spanking, gagging, and slapping. In addition, 48.7% of scenes contained verbal aggression, primarily name-calling. Perpetrators of aggression were usually male, whereas targets of aggression were overwhelmingly female. Targets most often showed pleasure or responded neutrally to the aggression.
Building on this research is a newly published German study which found that men who had engaged in the most dominant and sexually coercive behaviours were those who most frequently consumed pornography and who regularly consumed alcohol before or during sex.
This study surveyed German heterosexual men’s interest and engagement in a variety of dominant behaviours observed in recent analyses of pornography. Men’s interest in watching popular pornographic movies or more frequent consumption of pornography was associated with their desire to engage in or having already engaged in behaviours such as hair pulling, spanking a partner hard enough to leave a mark, facial ejaculation, confinement, double-penetration (i.e. penetrating a partner’s anus or vagina simultaneously with another man), ass-to-mouth (i.e. anally penetrating a partner and then inserting the penis directly into her mouth), penile gagging, facial slapping, choking, and name-calling (e.g. “slut” or “whore”). Consistent with past experimental research on the effect of alcohol and pornography exposure on men’s likelihood of sexual coercion, men who had engaged in the most dominant behaviours were those who frequently consumed pornography and regularly consumed alcohol before or during sex.
Anal Sex and other Violent Sexual Behaviours
Porn is made to show activities which are very visually stimulating, such as oral sex, double penetration or facial ejaculations. However the performers are being paid or coerced into doing things that they would not normally do by choice. Many female porn stars have been sexually trafficked into the porn industry.
The porn industry mostly operates in an unregulated environment. It often shows activities that are potentially very dangerous to health. For example there is extensive use of “barebacking,” that is penetrative sex, usually anal sex, without condoms. The use of condoms makes the sex portrayed appear less real and with lower visual impact. By avoiding condoms porn-makers can show the maximum exchange of bodily fluids. This means featuring the ‘hottest sex’. But it is also demonstrating for you the riskiest options for your own sex-life.
Medical and sexual health professionals recommend that all new partners be considered for what they are. They are potential sources of Sexually Transmitted Infections (STIs), including HIV/AIDS. Engaging in sex with a real partner is a risky thing to do. It is up to you and your partner to manage the level of risk.