Child Abuse, Grooming, Violence

Do many of the women in pornography have a history of childhood sexual abuse?

Yes. It is estimated that the women in pornography are three times likelier to have been sexually abused as children than in the general population. Based on one survey of performers in the pornography industry, 37% of the women were raped as children.

Additionally, it is worth noting that women in the pornography industry are twice as likely to have grown up poor than in the general population. As research has proven that financial destitution significantly increases the likelihood of being subjected to sexual exploitation, it is no surprise that perpetrators of sexual violence, including pornographers and pimps, frequently target economically vulnerable women and children (and sometimes men).

sources

Child Abuse, Exposure, Grooming

What is the average age of first exposure to pornography?

The average age of first exposure to pornography (male and female) is lowering each year.

As of 2005, one study found that the average age of exposure was between 13 and 17 years old. As of 2011, the average age was 12. Today, the average age is 11.

Boys are exposed to pornography at higher rates than girls. One study in the United States found that by the age of 12, 53% of all boys had exposed to pornography compared to 28% of girls. In Australia, however, approximately 70% of boys and 53.5% of girls were exposed by the age of 12, and 100% of boys and 97% of girls by the age of fifteen.

Two out of three children are first exposed to pornography involuntarily (meaning, one in three seeks it out the first time). Typically, children are exposed via misleading websites, friends, and adults.

(Any analysis of the harms of childhood exposure to pornography [or, for that matter, the harms of a society that cultivates and rewards the ideologies of pornography and unwanted sexualization] demands exhaustive consideration and care, and thus won’t be covered here but in a separate page or series of pages. Though the effects are clear to those with a basic understanding of socialization, trauma, and childhood development, the rate by which the age of first unwanted exposure to pornography continues to decrease unabated. The effects on exposure of pornography on children, in addition to the real world harms pornography and a pornified culture perpetrates against women, must be studied, recognized, and acknowledged on a massive scale in order for anything to be done. Before we can take care of our young, we must be able to look in the mirror and recognize ourselves and what we have done.)

sources

Gonzo, Orgasm, Science, Stats, Violence

How does pornography consumption rewire the brain?

Dopamine, a neurotransmitter that sends information between neurons, plays a large role in wiring the brain. It is released into the body when a person, or animal, encounters a stimulus that is novel or noteworthy or potentially rewarding. Dopamine performs many functions along many pathways in the brain, but in the context of pornography consumption, after a person is stimulated by pornography, dopamine is released along the mesolimbic pathway into the nucleus accumbens. The more dopamine that’s released here, the higher the likelihood the person will be drawn to the stimulus, or related stimuli, in the future.

A large amount of dopamine is released during natural human sexual activities and interactions; an orgasm releases significantly more. Pornography complicates matters for the human body: it is continuously available and ever-ready to serve as a sexual stimulus, with no bodily restrictions or limitations. As an endless source of sexual stimuli, no one human being can realistically compete against the accessibility of pornography. And so the process of consuming pornography literally conditions the brain to anticipate and desire a degree of stimulation that cannot be duplicated in real life, of specific imagery and behaviors that perhaps shouldn’t be duplicated in real life (reminder that 88.2% of all mainstream pornography regularly depicts physical violence, of which 94% is perpetrated against women).

Once the brain has fully learned to associate the stimulus with a response (such as a video with an orgasm), significantly less dopamine will be released. Consequently, the original stimulus will literally no longer be able to provide the same degree of anticipation or desire. Once a person becomes desensitized to the old stimulus, they need a more shocking stimulus in order to match the dopamine released in the prior stimulus. This need for something shocking or more extreme is called tolerance.

Put another way: A man enjoys the rush of masturbating to softcore pornography. After a while, he no longer gets the same rush he once did. He turns to hardcore pornography, and his rush returns. However, the same thing happens again. Before too long, he is watching gonzo pornography, and then a series of videos sexualizing children. Even as simplistic examples go, this is a fairly typical pattern for male consumers of pornography. This is exactly how the consumption of softcore pornography can lead to hardcore pornography, hardcore pornography to gonzo pornography, and so on. This is exactly how pornography rewires the brain.

(There are countless other factors which play a role in re-wiring the brain [opioids, the limbic system, and so on]. In time, they will be addressed and either added to this page, or I will reframe this question as a matter of dopamine’s role in rewiring the brain.)

sources

What do you want to know about pornography? Just ask.