Write Boldly Part Three: The X Rated Truth

This essay. This is the essay that has caused me to face so much persecution. This is the essay that started our three part series that is now coming to an end. Warning, this essay is somewhat graphic but totally factual. You may feel guilty, disgusted, angered, sadden, and surprised. I was all of the above while writing and researching this. It's nothing what I wanted it to be, but yet everything. Honestly it is the most eye opening thing I have ever written in my opinion. I really hope you take the time to carefully read this and research on your own. I may have wrote this essay for my chemistry class but after facing as much hatred as I did, it became more. So here it is, part three.

The X-Rated Truth

“It is as though we have devised a form of heroin … usable in the privacy of one’s own home and injected directly to the brain through the eyes,” U.S. Senate committee, Dr. Jeffrey Satinover of Princeton University said. Dr.Satinover wasn’t talking about a drug that is sold on the streets; he was speaking about pornography and how dangerous it actually is. As porn has become more accepted, more research on the effects has started to surface. Researches have found that porn actually changes the brain in many different ways; it similar to drug substances, can become and addiction, and changes the behavior of a person. Although many people believe pornography isn’t harmful, it is changing the brain for the worse.

The human brain can be divided into four major sections, which are categorized as; the frontal lobe, parietal lobe, occipital lobe, and temporal lobe. The frontal lobe is located at the front of the brain, and has the functions of; associating with reasoning, motor skills, higher lever cognition, and expressive language. The back of the frontal lobe contains the motor cortex. This area takes in information from different lobes of the brain and uses the given information to carry out to different parts of the body. The frontal lobe also controls sexual habits, socialization, attention, and risk-taking. The brain also contains neurons. A neuron can be defined as a specialized cell transmitting nerve impulses, or simply a nerve cell. When the brain cells become activated by something we see, hear, touch, or smell, they begin to release chemicals that help create a stronger bond between those neurons. An example of this would be when we smell or ingest one of our favorite foods; our brain releases the happy/feel good chemical called dopamine. Another example is when we are with someone we are attracted to or care about; our brain releases the chemical oxytocin. Oxytocin helps us bond with people to create a stronger relationship. With these chemicals our brain creates new pathways for everything we do, including looking at porn. Pornography floods the brain with a high concentrate of dopamine, over and over again. Since the brain isn’t used to the overload of chemicals that is linked with consistent porn use, it tries to “fight back”. The brain actually takes away some of its dopamine receptors. According to the Webster’s Dictionary, receptors are regions of tissue, or a molecule in a cell membrane, that responds specifically to a particular neurotransmitter, hormone, antigen, or other substance. In this case, they respond to the releasing of dopamine.  These receptors help the user feel the effects of dopamine, but with fewer receptors the person can’t feel the effects as much. The brain could still produce the same amount of dopamine with each use, but without the receptors, the porn that they were once looking at before, doesn’t seem arousing or exciting. This results in porn users to look at more pornography or more hardcore porn to try to get the effect the old porn used to give them. This can in turn lead to addiction, similar to drugs and alcohol.

“Pornographers promise healthy pleasure and relief from sexual tension, but what they often deliver is an addiction, tolerance, and eventual decrease in pleaser,” Norman Dodge, MD, The Brain that Changes Itself said. The definition of addiction, according to the American Society of Addiction Medicine is characterized by, the inability to consistently abstain, impairment in behavioral control, craving diminished recognition of significant problems with one’s behaviors and interpersonal relationships, and a dysfunction emotional response. Basically an addiction is a physical and mental dependent on a particular substance, and when somebody unable to stop taking a substance without incurring adverse effects. Although when we think of addictive substances we think of drugs, cigarettes, and alcohol, porn can easily fit into the category of addiction. Porn actually has very similar effects on the brain compared to alcohol and other drugs. According to a study at Cambridge University, compulsive users of porn showed the same signs of addiction in their brain as those addicted to alcohol or drugs. During their study, researchers hooked young men’s brains up to a scanner compare brain activity of healthy volunteers to consistent pornography user.  The brain scan showed more pronounced stimulation when watching X-rated material when compared to those not addicted. The area that was stimulated, the reward pathway, is the same part that is highly active among drug and alcohol users. 

 Later studies by Dr. Valerie Voon, a Cambridge University neuroscientist specializing in addictions, showed the difference between regular exciting images, like sports pictures, compared to sexual images. It turned out that men’s brains, which already had an addiction to porn, reacted less strongly when shown the sports pictures compared to sexual images. Men who were not addicted to porn were also tested, and similar results were found. Dr. Voon’s also found that a part of the brain that was lit up during porn usage was the ventral striatum. This is the same part of the brain that is active when a drug addict sees a dealer or when an alcoholic sees anything related to drinking.

Porn can become an addiction because of the need to feel the pleasure it can bring, and because it also effects the “reward pathway.” The “reward pathway” is a function of the brain that keeps a person motivated to do the functions that keeps you are your genes alive. This includes eating and having sex to produce offspring. The way this rewards you is by releasing dopamine into your brain. As the brain adapts to the consistent stream of dopamine, users begin to find that they are unable to feel normal without that dopamine high.

Also, when the chemical dopamine is released into the brain, the new pathway is helped build by a protein called “IFosB.” This proteins job is to help remember to do the activities that are important or make you feel good. Basically while watching porn, dopamine is motivating your brain and rewarding you, and IFosb is leaving markers in your brain to help you remember why you feel so good. Just like dopamine, IFosb begins to build up the more a person watches porn or uses drugs. The more somebody watches porn or uses drugs, more IFosB is used and build, which in turn makes its easier for the user to turn back to the behavior, whether they want to or not. IFosb can cause a genetic change that in turn causes irreversible changes in that can leave people more vulnerable to addiction. It is also know that with addiction, comes behavioral changes.

            Since we already know that porn directly affects the reward pathway by releasing high concentrates of dopamine and IFosB, we can conclude that the use pornography does change a person’s behavior. Not only does a person become addicted to the substance, but also they begin to become aroused by objects that used to disgust them or go against what they believed was right. The more a porn user watches extreme porn, the more normal those behaviors become to the user. A simple argument against this is, not all users watch “extreme” porn, but in fact most porn users change they type of porn they watch over time, especially if they are trying to feel dopamine like they used to. In survey done in 2012 of 1,500 men, 56% of those men said that they changed from watching “regular” porn to “ extreme or deviant” porn. As the brain continually wires what the user is seeing while feeling aroused, what “turns them on” can begin to change too. Researcher Jim Faust who experimented with rats proved this.

Faust began his experiment by putting virgin male rats in the same cages with female rats that had been sprayed with a liquid that smelled like rotting rat. To his surprise, the drive to mate was more powerful than the instinct to avoid the smell. He continued this process until the male rats learned to associate sex with the smell of death. He did this by putting towels soaked in the death smell in the cages with the male rats. He found that the male rats would “play” with the towels as thought it was another female rat or an object they loved. Faust later connected his experiment to the human brain. Both rats and humans release dopamine during sex. The rats’ brain made a pathway with dopamine that connected the smell of death to pleasure, just like our brains may be turned on by “rotten” objects after watching porn. This is just one of the behaviors that can be changed because of porn.

Porn doesn’t just leave a person to change their sexual behaviors; it can also leave a person to become more violent. X-rated films can easily turn to violence, but most people think they tend to stay away from them. A group of researchers looked at 50 of the most popular pornography videos and analyzed them to see how much violence was in them. Out of 304 different scenes, 88% contained physical violence, 49% contained verbal aggression. They also found that only one scene out of 10 didn’t contain any violence, but a typical scene averaged 12 physical or verbal attacks. The difference between regular violence, fight scenes in a Hollywood movie, compared to porn violence is, 95% of the victims of aggression in the porn scenes didn’t respond in a negative way but instead with pleasure. Like stated before, the more a person watches porn, the more desensitezed a person becomes, and the more acceptable they become to the things they once were against or disgusted them. Even if a user doesn’t watch violent porn, they are still more likely to support and promote abuse and sexual aggression to women and girls. This is because in most porn there is a strong male, sometimes even female, dominance over the other.

Porn changes our brains to tend to more violent actions after watching violent porn because of “mirror neurons,” or brain cells that fire when we do things ourselves and when we watch other people do things too. An example of another time we use our “mirror cells” is when we cry during movies or get emotionally involved while watching sports. While watching porn our brains are telling our body to become sexually aroused with whatever is popping up onto the screen, even if it is violence. If an actor on the pornography video were to be harmed while feeling aroused, the user watching this performance is going to begin associating that violence with being sexy. Even if the porn is not violent, users begin to see other people as sexual objects instead of human beings. Watching porn can also lead people to believe women want to be treated with harassment and think that all people like sexual aggression. In some cases porn has lead people to take on rapist tendencies. Other research has found that porn does not only change users sexual behavior and tendencies toward aggression, but also leave people feeling lonely and have less satisfying sex.

             Even though porn is becoming more accepted, people don’t realize how harmful it actually is. Porn not only changes the chemical makeup of a users brain through dopamine, oxytocin, and proteins, but it also changes the users behaviors. Although porn isn’t considered a drug, it has similar effects and can lead to a serious harmful addiction. Researchers are just beginning to scratch the surface on the affects of porn, and many are working hard on trying to show what porn actually does to the brain and body. Porn often promises pleasure but instead leaves the user for the worse.

Write Boldly Part 2: Loving What Isn't Mine

I actually wrote this a little over a year ago. I wasn't originally planning on posting this as my second part in my series, but the essay I had written has somehow been lost in my endless pile documents on my computer. So this will have to do. Although it isn't a hard topic as last weeks, it's still personal and bold in my opinion. Many people are too afraid to write what they feel, let alone post it on the internet for all too see. But this is about writing boldly, even when we fell like bottling up our feelings. Side note, I do not feel these things anymore but the feelings that are written below I felt for over nine months.

12-9-13

In that final moment, everything had faded away. No harsh words were spoken, not even a goodbye had slipped from any of our lips. I had known it was all falling apart for a while, but the refusal to accept it had made the crash landing that much harder to bare. The boy I had fallen for has fallen for my best friend, and she is slowing letting me go to hold on to him. It seems like ages since I knew he felt the same spark, and with her, I don’t think she realized we have fallen apart. Just months ago everything was perfect, I was actually happy to go to school and live my life. Now whenever I look at them tears form in my eyes and I wish my body would just go numb. It’s so ironic how I look at them, wishing they would look back and see all the pain I’m in, but when our eyes meet, I quickly look away because I don’t want them to see how much I need them. You sometimes hear about those kids who feel like they have an empty hole where there heart should be, and they feel nothing because of it. I envy that. Instead I have ripped up heart, made from the knives of the people who once protected it from all harms way. Its not like I really know why they have decided to leave me, but I think I have a clue. Why love a bleeding heart, when you can love someone new? So I guess it ends here. We’ll go our separate ways, and I’ll hope to see them again somewhere in the future. I wish it were so easy to believe that. There are days when I think I have accepted my fate, and others I sit on top of my bed for hours staring at the dark ocean blue walls of my room and wonder why, why it all happened, why did they forget, and why can’t they see me now, desperate for love and affection. Have I officially become invisible? And if so, is that all bad? Is there good in evil, or am I just tricking myself? So many unanswered questions that fill my mind and make me want to explode, but there is always one thought that overrules them all. I can only think about how I have nothing, because the last of everything has just slipped from my grasp, and like a child I’m crawling to get it back. But I have realized you can’t have something back when somebody else has already taken it. I know I should move on and forget them like they have forgotten me. I even have a right to be mad, so why aren’t I? Why is it when I look at either of them, or anybody who has hurt me in life, I only thinks, “What I would do to have it all back”. Why do I still love what doesn’t belong to me, or even loves me back. The thick black fog of depression where the insults echo, the bad thoughts repeat over and over again, where starts to consume them and they feel like that there only escape is slicing away at what’s left of their unmarked bodies, not realizing they are only hindering themselves from actually being able to run away and escape the poisonous mist. And just like that it has hit me. How little I mean to everyone, and how nobody would even notice if I disappeared, especially not them. They killed all the good that was left in me. As I look behind me, I can see the fog slowly creeping up on me. Soon to consume me like its other prisoners, and I don’t know how to escape it.

Write Boldly Part 1: The Silent Holocaust

Recently I have been writing an essay over the effects of pornography. Although that essay has nothing in common with the one you are about to read, it holds something much more dear to me. Both essays are bold topics that I have faced criticism and persecution for. Instead of backing away, I had and have kept writing to prove what I believe and stand up for isn't just talk. But this got me thinking, "so what if you finish your essays or articles? What have you really proven?" So I have decided that I'm going to do a three part series(maybe more) on my blog of the three top essays I have been most persecuted on. This is to not only encourage myself in to keep writing on topics I find important, but for also the common writer to be reminded its okay to be bold, in fact it's more than okay. I hope almost all of your writing is bold and makes someone mad, because that means someone is reading it and thinking about it. Anyways, the first of three;

The Silent Holocaust

By: Celestial Jackson

            Guided by a camera, the legs are grabbed by forceps. The teeth on the forceps rip and tear the flesh and bones. This process is repeated until the whole body is totally dismembered and removed. The spine is snapped and the skull is crushed, and the dead shredded baby is ripped from its mother’s womb. Processes like this happed over three thousand times a day just in the United States alone. This silent holocaust needs to be stopped. Abortion should be illegal. Today I’m going to tell you on how abortion is a painful medical procedure that harms more than its victim, how abortion is the murder of innocent lives, and how abortion cannot be justified.

            The definition of an abortion is; the termination of a pregnancy after, accompanied by, resulting in, or closely followed by the death of the embryo or fetus. The following are a few of the many painful procedures that are most commonly used. In a DNC abortion a tiny instrument is inserted into the womb, and the abortionist scrapes the uterus. There, the babies body is cut into tiny pieces, and pulled out piece by piece through the cervix. This inhumane procedure is extremely painful for the tiny human body. Another type of abortion is called an injection abortion. The abortionist use a suction tube, that is 5xs more powerful than a normal household vacuum, and inserts the tube through the cervix where he baby and placenta are torn to pieces and sucked into a jar. In an another DNC abortion, forceps are used to crush the baby’s head, and to pull its mutated body parts out of the uterus. Another common abortion called a saline abortion. This is were a powerful salt is injected into the mothers womb and the baby is forced to intake this salt where it beings the process of burning the baby alive inside and out. Within 24 hours the mother goes into labor to deliver her dead baby, but in some cases, the baby is delivered alive crying from the pain of being burned alive. It is a scientific proven fact that a fetus feels pain from 8 weeks and on, and that abortion causes excruciating pain to the child, and can even cause harmful effects on the mother including; higher risk of breast cancer, infection, hemorrhages, and in extreme cases death.  Having an abortion doesn’t just causes physical effects on the mother, it also causes mental effects. In a study of post-abortion patients only 8 weeks after their abortion, researchers found that 44% complained of nervous disorders, 36% had experienced sleep disturbances, 31% had regrets about their decision, and 11% had been prescribed psychotropic medicine by their family doctor. Also women who have an abortion are 9x more likely to commit suicide compared to a woman who had a full term pregnancy.

Many people would argue that abortion isn’t really killing. A fetus isn’t really a baby yet, right? Just because it can’t talk or walk or function like we do yet means it’s not a human. Listen to how stupid that sounds! Did you know 5 weeks after conception the baby’s heart; brain, spinal cord, and many other organs start to develop? Is that not considered human or alive? Some babies are born naturally after 5 months in the fetus and we call them human, but abortions on 5-month-old fetus happen all the time, are they not human?  Of course they are. The argument that is often used is; since abortion is now legal, it doesn’t matter and it’s okay since the nation agreed it wasn’t murder. The same argument can be said about the Holocaust. When Hitler was in power, everything he did was legal. Brainwashing children, persecuting Christians and Jews, ane killing millions of people. Just because something is legal, doesn’t mean it is okay. How dare you say the killing of millions of Jews was terrible, but you allow the slaughter of million of unborn children and say it’s the mothers choice. How are you different from Hitler in this sense? By allowing abortion to be legal, you are supporting a silent holocaust of unborn babies. A child in the fetus is alive and human, and by having and allowing abortions is making us to be murders. But is it ever just to have an abortion? That leads me to my final point.

            Pro-Abortionists often say, abortion is the only choice a woman can have in certain cases like rape. Although it is indeed horrible that women are raped and have to deal with the trauma that comes with, it is in no way right to punish the child for the father’s crime. Aborting a child because of rape, does not undo what has already been done but instead increased trauma for the mother because she has willing killed her own child. According to a study done by the Pro Choice Institute, only 1% of all abortions are for the reason of rape, only 6% of abortions are for the reason of potential health problems for the mother, and 93% of all abortions are because the child is unwanted or is inconvenient for the mother. We all know the when you have sex, you risk the chance of becoming pregnant. If you choose to have sex, you choose to take the responsibility to become a parent if you become pregnant. This also goes with a argument that it is a woman’s right to have a abortion and it’s her choice on what happens to her body. It was also the woman’s choice to have sex, and risk the chance of becoming pregnant. That shouldn’t mean she has the right to murder. Another argument made by pro-abortionists is that a child could be born with a birth defects and by having an abortion we can prevent children from living with those defects. A Pro-Life group called Project 180 publically asked questions on peoples thoughts on abortions with children who would have birth defects. One of the answers to the question was,

“The child is going to have a bad quality of life, so why would you want to raise that child to have a bad life.”

How can we say the child is going to have a bad life when we the child is not born? We could say that about any child. That it may not have a good life so its okay if we kill it. When is it justifiable to kill a baby in the womb? The answer is never. There are many alternatives to having an abortion. A major one is giving the baby up for adoption to a family who wants to love and bless your child. Instead of committing an unjust act, women could give a their child a just future.

           

            Now that I have shown you how abortion hurts both mother and child, about abortion is the murder of innocent lives, and how there is no way to justify the killing of a precious life, would you agree that abortion should be illegal? I hope you do. Abortion is a serious problem, but it can be stopped. By just voting against abortions in upcoming elections you can save millions of lives. To find out more information about how you can help end abortion go to www.onlineforife.org. Be the voice to the voiceless, end the legalization of murder, and end this silent holocaust.