In response to several requests concerning porn and sex addiction, my next few posts will be addressing this issue. This post on the maladaptive nature of porn is a collection of very brief excerpts from a paper I wrote a few years ago for a symposium. My next post will cover the neurological impact of porn and why it is addictive.The maladaptive nature of pornographyThe Beginning
Unattached mating or promiscuity was the norm for most species over millions of years. Various techniques for determining with whom one could mate developed very early, overt visual cues being one of the significant methods throughout the animal kingdom in both males and females.
While most species mate only during female ovulation, over the years through evolution, human females released the overt, vivid visual signs of female ovulation, found in most primates. With this development males could no longer tell when to inseminate a female hence the unusual phenomenon we see in humans where sex desire is not limited to a specific time of month but is near constant. (There is evidence that females today subconsciously demonstrate signs during ovulation but they are much more subtle than in other primates). However, with no obvious clues for a specific time, human males developed an ability to sense of what females had the potential to procreate. The unconscious primitive sexual strategy at the time, millions of years ago created the instinct for males to have sex with every available females at any time hoping to impregnate as many as possible.
Researchers have found, world wide, that human males subconsciously cued into and ultimately viewed as attractive in human females were four specific traits: smooth skin, thick hair, distinctively womanly bodies that could carry a baby, and a low hip to waist ratio; all indicators of healthy females who had reached menses but had not yet reached menopause. (
David Buss, Evolution of Desire)
What is our Problem?
Early humans and even today’s indigenous peoples often interact unclothed and do not have difficulties with uninhibited sexual behavior, addiction to pornography, or the objectification of women found in society today.
Also of note, in modern societies where nudity is common among all members of the community, (old and young, male and female, family, friends, and strangers), the human form is less unusual, intriguing, and sexualized.
There are numerous possible reasons for some societies managing nudity better than others including, a focus on survival, valuing females for their participation in society in ways additional to procreation or the gratification of males, the non-sexualized view of the body, and, within the natural environment, limited access to thousands of photographs of unrealistic, enhanced, exaggerated female forms.
Eminent neurologist, Dr. Vilayanur Ramanchandran, from the University of California, SD, discovered that that which attracts various species to a mate in the animal kingdom, would elicit even stronger desire when the stimulus is magnified or enhanced. In the human male, this would amount to men desiring the extremely exaggerated female form (huge breasts, tiny waists, bright red lips, etc), for sexual pleasure, as we observe in modern day.
We can conclude, in indigenous societies, with little opportunity to view exaggerated or excessive sexual cues, the brain mechanisms do not produce the increased desire found in many men in today’s sexualized society. Similarly, in societies where the human female body is not exclusively sexualized, nudity itself is not associated solely with sexual conquest.
A Modern Day IssueThis visual attraction phenomenon emerged early on as a useful means for the continuation of an individuals genes. Today however, most men are no longer interested in creating hundreds of offspring in all ovulating women; hence, the excessive visual attraction is unnecessary, counter productive to parental and familial investment, and maladaptive as a reproductive strategy.
Men who make use of a woman’s body to bring forth offspring are now, in most societies, expected to provide for, be involved with, and parent their children.
“Natural selection had no way of anticipating that X-rated movies (and two dimensional images), would come along and lead indiscriminately lustful men to spend leisure time watching them rather than pursuing real, live women who might get their genes to the next generation.” (Robert Wright, The Moral Animal, p 37). Or, I might add, who could spend their time caring for offspring and contributing to community.
Further, early on, natural selection did not know that time, care, and commitment to one’s offspring and partner would increase the survival rate of not only offspring but the individual monogamous male as well.
What Happened?Over the last few million years, and as male parental care emerged, it became clear that the earlier sexual strategy of males randomly impregnating as many females as possible and caring for none of them was less effective than those males who attached to one partner and invested their energy and resources on the care and protection of his mate and their children.
What we now know (and what humans instinctively discovered through evolution) is the more a male is positively involved with his offspring, the better offspring manage life.
There is much discussion in the therapeutic, religious, and political arena on how best to manage the onslaught of Internet porn, the increased incidents of sexual addiction, and the inundation of elicit and extreme sexuality pervading modern society. While some proponents of porn celebrate its ubiquity and rejoice in new opportunities personally and financially, others show alarming concern.
And while humankind has struggled with sexuality for eons, never in our history have we faced the onslaught of exaggerated, unrealistic, pornographic images literally filling our comm unites, homes, and lives. We are just beginning to observe the results of such a society.Over the millennia, in virtually all societies we observe numerous attempts to curb or eliminate the difficulties associated with unregulated human sexuality. From castration of males and females, to covering and veiling women; from repression to denial, from society’s laws to God’s commandments, little seems to have ultimately been effective in managing human sexuality.
Historically, men have considered their desire for women as either the evil temptations of women, a satanic influence, or a divine design specifically for men's use and pleasure. None is correct.
While there are certainly men and women who hold such views, there are those who have evolved beyond their primitive instincts who honor woman as human beings, full participants in life, with gifts and talents and abilities beyond their bodies.
The more men value women, the less they use and abuse them.
Humans are not without conscience or a thinking brain. Recent evidence confirms that humans are not hard-wired as are other species. The fixed action patterns, which once governed primitive behavior, can be released or diminished as self-awareness increases. Humans are not subject to early primitive instincts but can, through awareness embrace new understanding and and behavior.
Further, what we know from our evolutionary history is that what is maladaptive diminishes and ultimately disappears. As we come to understand the impact of an obsession with sexual stimulus, perhaps the awareness alone will bring a new enlightenment to our humanness. Perhaps emerging in the hearts and minds of men and women is a sense of valuing women for their unique contributions to life, rather than how pleasing their form and servitude may be to men.
The primitive sexual strategy to randomly use the bodies of females to impregnate and further one's DNA without parental investment and care, is no longer appropriate and is indeed maladaptive to humans.
Finally, from Dr. Normon Doidge's,
The Brain that Changes Itself, "..the humans sexual "instinct" seems to have broken free of its core purpose, reproduction and varies to a bewildering extent, as it does not in other animals in which the sexual instinct seems to behave itself and act like an instinct. No other instinct can so satisfy without accomplishing its logical purpose, and no other instinct is so disconnected from it s purpose"
What will the future hold? If history is our guide, men who release the primitive maladaptive mating strategies and invest their time and resources in their offspring will continue our species.
As you start playing around with the possibility of an affair, as you start fantasizing and imagining all the excitment. Hold the reality of what is ahead... enormous pain, humilation, sorrow, and heartache. 
