I saw an article online yesterday for the Top 34 (or was it 35?) excuses men have for turning down sex. I didn't read it though.
Right now we are seeing something unprecedented in human history: men in their 20s suffering from erectile dysfunction. Back when Kinsey first released his reports, less than 2 percent of men in their 40s reported having problems with erectile dysfunction. Now it's not only commonplace, it's almost considered routine to hand out Viagra to very young men. That's beyond unfortunate; it's borderline tragic. We have pathologized sex.
There are a lot of potential culprits behind this modern epidemic, of course: No doubt mounting rates of obesity caused by excess caloric consumption and insufficient exercise play a role. Video games are probably also a factor. Zombieslayer loves to talk about how boys these days would rather play first-person shooters than fuck.
My personal theory, however, and one I believe is backed up by research, is that the leading cause of male sexual dysfunction is the ubiquity of internet pornography. Recent neurophysiological studies have shed some fascinating light on the effects of pornography on the brain, specifically the reward pathways. Habitual users of porn have very similar brain chemistry to that of habitual drug users. Just as drug users develop a tolerance to their drug and have to use increasingly larger doses to get the same effect, so also habitual porn users have to view increasingly extreme forms of imagery to get off. It used to be that a man might see a handful of women naked in his entire life. Now a teenage boy can see 30 naked women in as many seconds. Eventually his brain gets so inured to the constant spikes of dopamine and other reward chemicals that his penis literally goes numb. It's not that there is anything physically wrong with his anatomy; it's just that his brain no longer can respond sufficiently to stimuli.
There are a lot of men out there who are porn addicts and don't even realize it. They might think they are just recreational viewers and not even use it for masturbatory reasons, but they are addicts nonetheless. I should know -- I was one of them. I had assumed for years I just had low libido, or that reports of average male libido were simply sensationalized. It wasn't until after I started reading about this stuff last summer that I had the startling realization I was a porn addict. I was deeply convicted. So I cut out all forms of visual titillation cold turkey: no pictures (not even swim suits), no videos, nothing. Rather to my surprise, I started to go through the classical signs of withdrawal. My libido fluctuated wildly for a while. But after about a week, it started to roar back. In fact, I was caught off guard by how powerful it was. I felt, well, like a teenager again. My sex life improved dramatically, much to the satisfaction of my wife.
Since then I have worked with a number of men, ranging in age from early 20s to 40s, all of whom were experiencing varying degrees of sexual dysfunction. One of them, a man of 30, had done so much masturbation to internet porn that he hadn't been able to get off inside a woman in almost a decade. It took almost three months for his libido to return, but now he has a remarkably successful sex life and says that he has never had so much confidence and stamina in bed before. Another man was 29 and hadn't had sex in over 8 years. He is now in a happy relationship and preparing to get engaged.
If I were a parent of teenagers, I would block all forms of internet porn in my home. I would also probably ban video games altogether, because I have noticed that on the days I do play, my brain is so overstimulated that I have little to no interest in sex. Needless to say, that does not endear me to the wife.
All that being said, I still believe that descriptions of male sexuality have been exaggerated over the past century and a half -- particularly by feminists as a way to discredit men. Historically, until the rise of the male-bashing brand of feminism in the late 19th century, it was always considered a given that women had much stronger libidos than men. Portraying all men as potential sexual predators, however, gave feminists a bugaboo around which to rally their forces. But given the fact that over the course of human existence, only 40 percent of men have managed to reproduce compared to 80 percent of women, I think it's hard to dispute that women have a much stronger drive to pass on their genes than men do.
If any of you are interested in learning more about this topic, send me a message. I would be happy to send you some videos that go into painstaking detail about the physiological processes at work here.