The Impotence Pandemic

By Dr. Judith Reisman

October, 2007

Sex therapists and pornographers have long prescribed pornography to correct male impotence and to "spice up" a couple's sex life. However, the broader meaning of "potency" is one's "power, authority … a person or thing exerting power or influence," scorning pills, potions or pictures.

The proper contextual definition of impotence, then, is not the narrow classification of "erectile dysfunction." A potent man does not fix his flagging libido with little blue pills or centerfolds.

Instead, a more complete and accurate definition finds men impotent when they cannot engage in a truly intimate conjugal embrace with their chosen beloved.

Princeton University professor of psychiatry Jeffrey Satinover said, "The pornography addict soon forgets about everything and everyone else in favor of an ever more elusive sexual jolt. He … will place at risk his career, his friends, his family."

Such is the definition of impotence. Satinover compared pornography to heroin, saying, "Only the delivery system … and the sequence of steps" differ.

Moreover, the sequence can work very quickly. Professor Mary Anne Layden of the University of Pennsylvania compared pornography's rapid effects to that of "crack cocaine."

In impotence, one replaces the face of one's beloved with that of novel pornographic fantasies. For, neurobiologist Peter Milner writes, "unfamiliar stimuli have a rewarding component. It is even possible to become addicted to novelty and uncertainty."

Indeed, several studies conducted by French neuroscientist Serge Stoleru also find that the "common condition" of impotence and lack of sexual desire among normal, healthy young men, reflect continued overexposure to "erotic" stimuli as exhausting their sexual response.

Someone once dubbed pornography "the opiate of the masses," an endogenous drug high called "lust" that makes wholesome sensuality seem run-of-the-mill. Pornography triggers high states of fear-shame-lust arousal ("flight/fight/sex"), quite the opposite of love. Therefore, devoted couples often confess dismay at finding pornography more arousing than their marital embrace. Many wrongly assume their love is weak. Yet, the strength of love requires an absence of the shame, fear, even hate that is the basis of lust. For a fuller discussion of the psychopharmacology of pictorial pornography, visit my website.

Says Milner, this explains why, to some extent, pornography and gambling are "multi billion-dollar industries. … Most stimuli become less attractive … as they become familiar and predictable. … Thus, novelty has an effect similar to that of reward." (Emphasis added.)

By definition, once their erectile function depends on the novelty of new pictures, such men are emasculated, "without power." They have traded their libido, their masculine power and authority, for a steady stream of new paper dolls.

In December 1953, Hugh Hefner began marketing Playboy as "sexual liberation."

But Hefner didn't bring sexual liberation; he brought Pornographically Induced Impotence, or PII.

Pornographically Induced Impotence is displayed in an August 1974 Playboy cartoon. A beautiful young girl and a handsome lad are in bed. Across the girl's nude body the grinning boy has laid a naked "centerfold" image. The girl under the paper doll asks, plaintively, "Are you sure you still love me, Henry?"

This Playboy lad – symbolic of millions of subsequently addicted Internet consumers – no longer commands his own natural-born masculine power to physically love.

Both "Henry" and his beautiful young vessel are robbed of their human rights; the power of their own intimacy.

Urged on by Kinseyan "sexperts" to bring "erotica" into their marriage beds, millions of hopeful couples have instead become puppets, dangled from the pornographers' strings.

Pornographically Induced Impotence is now a national pandemic, raking in untold billions for pornographers and their satellite businesses as well as from the marital discord and despair it produces.

From the Playboy mansion to Capitol Hill, from the Las Vegas bordellos to newlywed bedrooms, from Fortune 500 offices to Ivy League dorms, men and boys are habituating to the rewards of their own hand, provided by Hefner et al.

Public policy analyst Shaunti Feldhahn was interviewed recently about her church lecture program that included her research on men's "fixations on pornography."

The series was launched after counselors noted, "Many families in our church are struggling with pornography and with infidelity."

Men are "visually wired," Feldhahn explained. Their images of women stretch "back to his teenage years, and any one of the pictures is going to pop up at any time in his brain without warning."

In 1981, Hefner biographer Gay Talese wrote that "Hef's" influence reached out to "the central nervous system of Playboy readers nationwide."

And, that "central nervous system" included "images" popping up and stretching "back to teenage years." By 2005, some estimated impotence at roughly 50 percent of men.

What percentage suffer from pornographically induced impotence is unknown. For pornography emasculates indiscriminately. It castrates men of every race, religion and "orientation," atheist and orthodox, rich and poor, conservative and radical, young and old, svelte and paunchy, handsome and unappealing, scientist and sky cap, the clever and the obtuse, en masse.

Pornographically Induced Impotence once kept men and boys breathlessly awaiting each month's "new" fantasy images. The Internet means they wait no more.

Good news for the sex business, sexologists and Big Pharma!

Men conditioned since boyhood to use erototoxins blame their wives, girlfriends, women for their own waning libido.

But even psychologist Bernie Zilbergeld warned that Playboy encouraged impotence in their consumers:

"Humor is the basic source of education. … Cartoons that poke fun at impotence or other male inadequacies … would outweigh any supportive things said in the advice column. Cartoons are simply more compelling. Some things are."

Yes, some things are. Zilbergeld never warned about the thousands of Playboy cartoons that "poke fun" at virginity, wives, marriage, religion, sexual harassment, single moms, incest and child sexual abuse.

Feldhahan said almost all men she surveyed said they "didn't want unlimited sex," but to have "a feeling of wanting to be wanted." One certain way to be wanted is to be a real man. Let "Henry" purge the paper dolls and the Internet dolls to retake his masculinity.

Dr. Judith Reisman is President of the Institute for Media Education and is the author of "Kinsey, Crimes & Consequences."

More is available at Reisman's website.

http://drjudithreisman.com/