Concerned grandmas and old-fashioned church ladies are locking arms with a growing group of young men plagued with erectile dysfunction.
Yes, you read that correctly.
This eyebrow-raising army is taking different approaches to fight a common enemy: pornography.
Gone are the days of pre-teen boys being introduced to images of naked women’s bodies via discarded Playboy and Penthouse magazines. Studies show that boys as young as 14 are addicted to pornography easily available on their iPads, laptops, and smart phones.
The problem is so widespread that in 2009 researchers realized there were not enough college-aged men who did not use Internet porn to form a substantial control group to study in comparison to their porn-using peers.
The seriousness of porn and its effects on young men, their relationships with others and their lives has its roots in science and the make-up of the brain. Viewing nude bodies stirs a young man’s brain’s dopamine production. Dopamine produces pleasure, and as time goes by, the brain requires more of the hormone to produce the same or greater levels of pleasure. The dopamine effect unleashed can lead to what scientists now call “arousal addiction.”
So what’s the harm? Porn viewing is nothing new, and it’s just a natural part of a young man becoming more confident with women to produce mutually pleasurable sexual experiences, right?
Fact is arousal addiction produced by Internet porn will hit a brick wall in a normal young man’s development. Unnatural arousal is actually destroying sexual performance as the addict experiences gradual desensitization and eventually erectile dysfunction – something medication only cannot reverse.
Billions of dollars are spent each year on Internet porn and uninformed or disengaged parents naively shrug off the Internet porn phenomenon as natural curiosity. Instead, their sons begin to spend more time alone focused on computer screens as their immature brains demand more and more dopamine and the pleasure it brings. The young men become depressed, withdrawn and develop social anxiety – the fear of interacting with peers, friends and family. Many become angry and violently act out their aggression.
It’s at this low point where these devasted young men and their unlikely co-horts — grandmas and old-fashioned church ladies– are converging. Many of these women, having known all along the devastating effects for years of pornography on men, women, children and whole families, have fought for years against pornography.
They fought to protect innocents from assaults from predators whose arousal addictions began with Playboy and Penthouse magazines. They pleaded with lawmakers to protect women and children from the effects of pornography provided by taxpayers in local public libraries.
Over twelve years ago, I was among several Illinois conservative women – who were thought to be prudes and pleasure-stiflers – that marched with members of Rev. James Meeks’ Salem Baptist Church and Bishop Larry D. Trotter’s Sweet Holy Spirit Church around Chicago’s Harold Washington Library.
An elder at Bishop Trotter’s church had been with his 8 year old son at the library, when his son and he came across a man viewing obscenity on a taxpayer-funded computer screen. Outraged, the father told the story to his pastor, and Trotter rightfully spoke out to the Chicago press.
Rev. Meeks proposed we begin printing out some of the scenes available on the library’s computer screens and stick them on the library’s walls to shame the library board. He and other pastors pled with the library board to protect their patrons. A library employee who felt threatened by the unfiltered pornography in the area for which she was responsible also appealed to the board, but all to no avail.
The American Library Association, headquartered in Chicago, declared filtering Internet access was censorship, and something they refused to endorse, no matter who it offended. Unfiltered pornography access, paid for by Chicago taxpayers, stayed, while concerned parents with children they wanted to protect were dismissed.
These same conservative women took their pleadings to the state legislature. They asked that Internet filters be placed on library computers. The American Library Association kicked its efforts into high gear, and shamed even family-oriented lawmakers away from voting to require obscenity filters on taxpayer-funded computers.
These women, now grandmas, were mocked and ridiculed by librarians, the media and state lawmakers for simply trying to ward off part of the attack they knew could devastate the healthy heart and souls of the next generation.
And here we are today — locking arms with the very ones we tried to protect.
Now these young men, damaged by the foolishness of a generation unwilling to protect their own, are fighting back for their own sake. They are forming a new movement of ex-porn addicts that meet online to hold each other accountable and encourage each other away from Internet arousal addiction and onto healthy person-to-person relationships.
October 27 to November 2, 2013, is White Ribbon Against Pornography (WRAP) week. Whether you’re a grandma, an old-fashioned church lady, an awakened parent or a redeemed ex-porn addict, wear a white ribbon proudly.
We’re all in this battle together — and there’s hope, no matter what the librarians and lawmakers say.
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