Media Sexualization and Your Mind

A very dangerous aspect of today’s media is that it is hyper-sexualized. While we all enjoy watching scantily-clad women squeeze a beer can between her tits in an advertisement, the relentless assault of subliminal messages will slowly wear away at one’s psyche. We are constantly blasted with sexual imagery through the media in movies, TV, video games, and advertising. The First Amendment protects free speech, but multinational media corporations are using this to protect “speech” that is harming our children. We, as Americans, need to exercise our First Amendment rights to give them the finger in order to protect the innocent.

Porn use has skyrocketed since the rise of the internet, and its effects on our minds, behavior, and relationships are extremely dangerous. There are almost 30,000 people watching porn on the Internet every second. Every day, one in four search engine queries are related to porn. Frequently watching porn can cause long-term problems for your mental health and even addiction.

Masturbation can also cause harmful effects to your health, especially if you’re a man. Going just one week without masturbation can increase your testosterone levels by 45 percent. Watching porn can also cause erectile dysfunction. That should really be enough to make you stop watching it, but there’s more.

According to psychologist David J. Ley, “Pornography contains extreme, unrealistic depictions of sex acts that even most adults don’t engage in. Certainly it makes common sense, that showing these images to kids might confuse them at the least, or even warp their ideas about sex, gender, and relationships.” He goes on to explain that unfortunately, because of the internet, a lot of kids received their sexual education from porn.

If people get raised on porn, this has profound long-term effects on mental health. Serial killer Ted Bundy is one example of what porn can do to the developing mind. In his final interview before his execution, Bundy said, “I look at this as a kind of addiction. Like other kinds of addiction I would keep looking for more potent, more explicit, more graphic kinds of material…the most damaging kinds of pornography are those that involve violence, especially sexual violence.” Bundy said his descent into porn started with a softcore magazine he found on the ground by a dumpster. He said many of the men he met in prison were also in the throws of an addiction to pornography.

There are studies that show even nonviolent pornography can lead to the person who watched it to be more likely to use coercion to push women into sex. In a comprehensive analysis of 33 separate studies, it’s shown that viewing any kind of pornography increases aggressive behavior. Not to mention how abusive the porn industry can be in the first place. Many women in porn are victims of human trafficking. Victims of trafficking are often coerced or convinced into becoming prostitutes, and 18 percent of the time this is done online. In America, human sex trafficking is a business worth over $3 billion.

Watching porn is the absolute worst thing you could do, but it’s almost inescapable in today’s society. Much of what we watch on TV, especially in the advertisements, is softcore porn. Sexualized content is often targeted towards children. According to another study, exposure to sexual content on television predicted teen pregnancy.

This is all done by sick scumbags like Harvey Weinstein and Dan Schneider.  Why do we expect anything different? The people who make television shows create things that are reflective of their own addictions to pornography. It seems like a supremely coercive way of turning women into sexualized objects—by making absurd and outlandish sexual practices seem normal through televised play-acting, men and women can be manipulated into thinking abusive practices are normal.

It is often argued that porn is protected by the First Amendment. The truth is, porn and sexualization on the scale it is being pushed are hardly worth protecting. We don’t allow child porn in this country because of how abusive and degrading that degeneracy is. Why is porn any different? Women are kidnapped and forced into becoming actresses in porn all the time. It is an abusive and degrading form of entertainment for everybody involved.

Freedom of speech has been protected in Western civilization since ancient Greece. There was a distinction here, however, between freedom to participate in the political system and the freedom to say anything you want. In Plato’s Republic, Socrates says that the “first thing” we do in establishing a government is choose which stories are good to tell, or not. “You know also that the beginning is the most important part of any work,” Socrates said. “Especially in the case of a young and tender thing; for that is the time at which the character is being formed and the desired impression is readily taken.”

Both forms of speech are protected in America. But when multinational media companies try to use their “speech” to brainwash and control us, we need to reject it. We need to stand up to those companies and boycott them. It’s time to unplug from the television lapdance and get a girlfriend.

Many people report improved relationships and better performance in all areas of life after they stop masturbating. There’s no better place to find this than the r/NoFap.  If you need help to stop watching porn, stop being a baby. But if that doesn’t work, check out r/NoFap. r/NoFap is a Reddit page devoted to guys who stopped masturbating. On it you’ll find success stories and support groups for people who want to stop watching porn. Don’t turn into the next Ted Bundy—get help now.