(whooshing)
- I think it's 
important to know the latest
scientific documentation 
about the effect,
the desensitizing 
effect of porn.
It's a huge thing in 
what's going on sexually
between couples, but especially
a danger to men's health,
and I'll tell you 
what I'm talking about,
and this is not 
a moral judgment,
it's just about the science.
I kept hearing 
anecdotally that doctors
were seeing younger 
and younger men coming in,
healthy men, presenting with
difficulties with erection,
difficulties reaching orgasm,
called euphemistically 
"delayed orgasm."
And there's 
nothing wrong with them.
It turns out that, 
you know, two generations
of men and now 
women are growing up
learning about sex from porn,
and basically 
consuming quite a lot of porn.
The trouble is that 
that has a direct effect,
especially on the 
male brain and male arousal
patterns because porn acts
in a desensitizing way
on male sexual arousal.
And it goes like this: 
the first time you see
an image, it's 
very, very erotic,
but the male brain needs novelty
and more and more 
extreme situations from porn
to get that same 
level of arousal,
and so what you 
start to see is what
one young man who has 
written about porn addiction
has called the "kink spiral,"
where it has to be 
more and more women
or more and more images or more
and more extreme scenarios.
This is why things that 
used to be quite marginal
10 or 15 years ago, are 
now very standard mainstream
because vanilla 
sex is just too boring,
you know, or naked 
women are just not arousing
enough over time when 
men are habituating to porn.
This is habituating, 
not just looking,
but with masturbation.
It's the masturbation to porn
that causes the desensitization.
We're seeing this 
same effect in women
who grew up 
masturbating to porn,
but there's less documentation.
There's less data; 
it's anecdotal.
The challenge is in 
relationships because,
well first, the 
challenge is over time,
young men start 
to lose the ability
to have strong erections and
reach orgasm easily
because of this desensitization.
But the other 
challenge is with relationships
because it's 
just one woman there.
She can't change 
the channel on herself,
you know, and she 
also may or may not
be willing or into more 
and more extreme situations
in order to 
maintain that same level
of arousal that porn novelty
and extremeness can provide.
And there's also a 
challenge that porn poses
to the female arousal 
cycle because it can feel
threatening to 
women to know that their
partner is 
bonding neurochemically
with all these other 
women, and so if you feel
threatened, 
you're not going to feel
that delicious, melting arousal
activation that 
allows you to really meet.
The good news is 
that there are programs
that can help men 
kind of wean themselves
off porn and then resensitize
themselves if they want to.
I do have to be 
honest and say, you know,
before a certain 
point of habituation
has been reached, 
but I do think it's worth
telling you this because, to
me, it's not a value judgment.
It's like cigarettes 
without warning labels.
I think men have a right to see,
women do too, 
whatever they want,
but to have a 
$10 billion global industry
that doesn't 
inform men especially
that they might 
be risking inability
to ejaculate, inability 
to get a strong erection,
you know, over 
not a very long time
of desensitization, I think
that that's a health issue.
And it's turning out 
to be a health issue.
Thank you.
(audience applause)
