The Free Reign of Porn in the West

As we’ve evolved from Playboy to Pornhub, today’s pornography captures our attention and energy far more powerfully than the centerfold delights stashed away under the mattress in generations past. Our shift from monthly issues of still-image morsels to on-demand 4K video catering to any imaginable desire was so rapid we’ve barely begun to process how this potent stimulus is affecting us. And, as sexually liberated as America claims to be, it remains an embarrassing topic to bring up regardless of how one feels about it.

For the West–and now, much of the rest of the globe–the bane of porn presents a new, all-consuming vortex of carnal pleasures contributing to our downfall. Contemporary critics draw striking comparisons to Ancient Rome, Sodom and Gomorrah, and Babylon, underscoring how cultures in decline almost always exhibit gratuitous sexual decadence.

Up until recently, clamping down on pornography has been something of a white whale for conservatives, to the ridicule of outside observers. But as the scale and sheer multitude of porn explodes, the impact it has on its young consumers has drastically changed.

Even pop star Billie Eilish has described how porn “destroyed her brain,” saying that it had warped her notions of sex and relationships in a conversation on The Howard Stern Show.

As an offshoot of the Red Pill and pick-up artist world, the movement to overcome porn addiction has emerged in channels like the NoFap subreddit, which boasts nearly 1 million members. To them, porn use and masturbation are nearly inextricable, and the community advocates quitting both, together. From boxing’s folk wisdom to avoid sex before fights, to Donald Trump’s apparent abstention from dancing with himself, and Napoleon Hill’s chapter on sexual energy in Think and Grow Rich, the concept of safeguarding lidibo is certainly not new, but finds new life in a post-internet porn world.

The phenomena of on-demand, multitudinously diverse online porn is still relatively young, so we still only have emerging science to draw from. In a 2014 study commonly cited by critics of porn consumption, researchers found that male subjects with higher porn consumption had lower gray matter volume and activity in the brain’s reward system regions. This can mean one of two things: either porn itself is affecting the composition and activity of the brain, or this specific sort of existing brain composition and chemistry lends itself to higher porn consumption.

In 2016, another study showed that participants exposed to porn they self-reported as preferable experienced greater stimulation of their reward pathways. This finding corresponds with the insatiable hunger porn consumers know all too well and the dopamine rush after finding just the right clip after searching for hours on end.

The jury is still out on causal links between porn, brain chemistry, and personality changes, though the initial science seems to lean in that direction. What it points to is a powerful link between porn and our dopamine system, which is vital in providing us with the impetus to achieve our goals and cultivating a vital zest for life.

And, we know that the porn industry itself can be dangerously exploitative. Sheelah Kolhatkar of the New Yorker recently described the harrowing story of a young woman named Rachel who was blackmailed with nude content while she was underage and encountered an uphill battle to have it removed from Pornhub.

The parent company of Pornhub, MindGeek, also owns other porn sites, including RedTube, YouPorn, and Brazzers. Combined, MindGeek’s platforms netted 4.5 billion visits per month in 2020. Looking at more recent data in April 2022, we see that Pornhub.com, by itself, raked in 1.04 billion visits, ranking 9th in web traffic in the United States, according to data analytics company Semrush.

This beats out Twitter.com, which came in 10th with 991.61 million visits; Instagram.com, in the 13th spot with 804.69 million visits; and Netflix.com, lagging in 41st place with 236.19 million visits.

That’s a lot of eyes. And hands.

STARVING FOR PIXELATED BREADCRUMBS

The seamless manner in which America integrated porn into its smorgasbord of drug use is a testament to our love affair with substances of all kinds. The US is the per-capita world leader in substance use disorder, topping the charts at 5.89 percent of global prevalence in 2019, according to data from the Global Burden of Diseases, Injuries, and Risk Factors Study. Trailing behind are Greenland, Mongolia, the United Kingdom, and New Zealand.

And–as if opioids like heroin and certain prescription drugs weren’t bad enough–the surge in use of fentanyl, a synthetic opioid up to 100 times stronger than morphine, shows us that Americans’ appetite for mind-numbing substances is growing more ravenous by the year. As of April 2021, the US passed the grim benchmark of topping more than 100,000 overdose deaths, a 28.5 percent increase over the same 12-month period the year prior, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

With a lackadaisical attitude toward drug legalization, a progressive sensibility toward so-called “harm reduction,” and a mass media that venerates substance use, the American obsession with consumption seems to find its zenith in pornography.

On an individual level, the danger zone of abuse potential is limited by one’s capacity for addiction, which varies person-to-person. But what about on a collective level? What does porn do to the soul of a nation? Of a people?

The issue lies with how porn dovetails into the modern malaise that plagues our society, particularly for men. If narcotics are drugs of the body and mind, porn adds in a deep intoxication of the soul.

The rise of psychologist Jordan Peterson demonstrates that the Western world is in desperate need of a father figure, a collective logos. Declining college enrollment, weakening labor force participation, and declining fertility rates all paint a picture of a male psyche that has been rendered impotent. Coupled with the #MeToo movement, a hostile fourth-wave feminism, and a dominant culture that rejects anything with an air of male virility, it’s not hard to see how penetrating, outward-facing male energy has been turned inward, repressed in the face of a rejecting world.

Skylar Swall, a writer focusing on masculinity, relationships, and self-improvement, explains how we got here: many men lack father figures who would have imbued them with the confidence to stand up and engage with the world, even in the face of an openly hostile culture.

“Why else would men like Jordan Peterson, or Ryan Michler, or Jack Donovan, be rising voices today? They're touching on concepts that a father should have shared with us when we were 12 years old.”

Swall calls porn consumption a “false courtship” to a digital mistress that ends in depression and anxiety for the user.

“It eliminates all obstacles: all you need is a WiFi connection. It's teaching you to sit on the sidelines, to accept the pixelated breadcrumbs of a desirable woman.”

In speaking with and coaching young men of all backgrounds, Swall has found that they ultimately turn to porn as an abdication of their duties, both to themselves and to others. And yet, despite cultural conditions, Swall emphasized that the onus is on men to extract themselves from the prison of compulsion, not only for porn, but also for other quick-and-dirty dopamine hits.

“I don't want to come off as if I'm cracking down on men. I want to explain to you this is why you're making that choice. You are abdicating responsibility in turning to these low-resistance forms of entertainment or consumption.”

DIAGNOSING THE PSYCHO-SPIRITUAL CRISIS

As Freud taught us, anything repressed will eventually seek expression. Porn is the perfect vehicle for misdirected male energy. Catering to nearly any taste, fetish, and orientation, there is something for every permutation of psychological complex.

To dive deeper, the work of Swiss psychologist Carl Jung–often cited by Peterson–may shed some light on the deeper forces at play here. In Jung’s conception of the individual’s psychology, he developed a framework of archetypes: patterns of the psyche that commonly express themselves across most, if not all, people.

Among these archetypes are the anima and the animus. In the man, Jung theorized, there lay the anima archetype, his internal feminine component. For the woman, the animus represents the masculine component. For Jung and his branch of psychology, archetypes like these were to be integrated rather than extinguished from the psyche.

To extrapolate these concepts beyond the individual, we can see that the collective anima hasn’t exactly been friendly to men in postmodernity. Women are discouraged from adopting more traditional feminine personas and are often encouraged to be a Girl Boss™. Meekness and humility are looked down upon, if not demonized. Cardi B types, OnlyFans ‘entrepreneurship,’ and outspokenness for its own sake are glorified. “Well-behaved women rarely make history” and “the future is female,” are the new slogans.

The anima, as Jung described, is the amalgamation of a man’s experiences with women, starting with his mother and including his romantic relationships.

Empirically, we know now that when a man engages with porn, especially his preferred type of content, his brain’s reward system is blasting him with dopamine. Spiritually, he seems to be dysfunctionally consummating with the succubus of porn, a nefarious substitute for a true, healthy communion with his own anima, or his inner woman.

As Jung’s student and collaborator Marie-Louis von Franz wrote in 1968 in Man and His Symbols:

“The most frequent manifestations of the anima takes the form of erotic fantasy. Men may be driven to nurse their fantasies by looking at films and strip-tease shows, or by day-dreaming over pornographic material. This is a crude, primitive aspect of the anima, which becomes compulsive only when a man does not sufficiently cultivate his feeling relationships—when his feeling attitude toward life has remained infantile.”

Where Freud sees human psychology motivated primarily by base desires for lust and power as ends in themselves, Jung and his students diverged, seeing such drives as serving deeper impulses toward spiritual attainment and a yearning for wholeness.

In King, Warrior, Magician, Lover, written by Jungian psychoanalyst Robert Moore in 1990, the author describes the condition of a man possessed by the spirit of the “Mama’s Boy.”

“He may compulsively masturbate. He may be into pornography, seeking the Goddess in the nearly infinite forms of the female body… He does not want to do what it takes to actually have union with a mortal woman and to deal with all the complex feelings involved in an intimate relationship. He does not want to take responsibility.”

THE FUTURE OF PORN

Porn isn’t going away anytime soon. While I am a fan of the assertive conservatism of JD Vance, for example, calls to ban porn are not going to work. It will only cause anti-porn advocates to lose ground in the culture war and will distract from good faith criticism of porn consumption. The scolding, heavy-handed approach does not seem to work in regards to debauchery, as illustrated by the spectacular failure of the prohibition of alcohol in the early 20th Century.

If there were a simple solution to eradicating mankind’s destructive impulses, we would have figured it out by now. However, we have tried to at least reign it in. The various rules pertaining to chastity and adultery found in world religions offer us some guidance, but church elders  couldn’t anticipate an immersive digital playground of sexuality right at our fingertips.

Between virtual reality porn and AI sex robots, the ever-expanding menu of digitized fornication will only get more and more immersive. So, how can we avoid temptation when it is so pervasive, so socially accepted… and even encouraged?

Swall advocates for a conscious management of one’s libido: that is, funneling it into healthy alternatives like exercise, reading, writing, and of course, actually talking to real-life women. Religious traditions since time immemorial recommend contemplative prayer and reading scripture to combat lust. There are even apps that block all of your favorite erotic sites and keywords.

When we close our incognito tabs, clear our browser history, and shut off the computer, we should look deeply into the muddled reflection in the black screen. We should do this not with shame, nor condemnation, but merely to ask ourselves, why? There are perhaps hundreds of answers to how to stop porn consumption, or any alluring vice for that matter. And yet, to meaningfully answer the why, to grapple with the fiber optic tendrils that possess us, is likely to deliver us to the solution that finally works.