(Thanks to Jessica Harris for this interview. See more clips from the new documentary-in-progress,
Shamed.)
Dr. William Struthers explains that
the female brain, unlike the male brain, is wired to understand sexual
arousal first as “contextual” and then as “sensory.” What this means is
when a young woman looks at porn, their brain learns what it means to be
wanted by a man.
When women see porn, any attraction to it initially is to think, “This is what guys want, so this is what I should become.” For
women, their initial curiosity about porn is usually to imagine
themselves as the wanted party. Only after this do women become visually
aroused by pornography images themselves.
Why is this? Dr.
Struthers explains that when men or women watch porn, the portion of the
brain called the amygdala is activated. The amygdala is the negative
emotional center of the brain, the part of the brain that is activated
when a person becomes aroused and excited, stressed out, or anxious.
When men or women view porn, they experience a combination of stress and
anxiety. For men, the natural way to interpret this anxiety is sexual
tension that needs to be released. But for women, this is not their
natural reaction to porn.
However, a shift is taking place today as more and more women are exposed to pornography at younger ages.
Dr.
Struthers says research indicates women over the age of 35 are much
less likely to develop habitual, compulsive, impulsive, or addictive
pornography viewing habits when compared to women under the age of 35. The
reason is because the younger a woman is, her brain is more able to be
trained and taught to interpret the anxiety she feels as sexual tension,
and so women “are becoming increasingly more likely to view pornography
and to develop maladaptive or compulsive patterns of viewing and
sexually acting out as well,” Struthers says.
In a recent survey
of the online community of Dirty Girls Ministries (an online support
system for women who struggle with lustful behaviors),
95% of
the girls surveyed said they started habitually and compulsively
watching pornography or engaging in cybersex before the age of 30.
You started habitually and compulsively
watching pornography or engaging in cybersex when you were…
