Sexual psychopathy: "Don Jon", pornography and the death of "love"

An article about the new film, "Don Jon", looks at the effect that pornography can have on men's attitudes towards sex and women.

I've written before about the main attributes of psychopathy. It is also known as "sociopathy" (which is more commonly used when emphasizing environmental factors, whereas "psychopathy is more about biological factors). Lack of empathy, superficiality in relationships and sex, using their partner as a tool to sexually control, and a fascination with more perverted forms of pornography, are some of the main characteristics of the "sexual psychopath".

The "sexualisation" of modern culture has been written about time and time again, from the increasing sexually-graphic music videos (from Rihanna to Britney Spears) in the public domain, and the growth of the availability and increasing perversity of pornography over the last two decades (due to the internet) have been consistently held to blame.

As the article in "The Telegraph" points out, your brain reacts to stimuli, so over time, if your brain gets used to being stimulated by "extreme" stimuli, these "extremes" will become less stimulating, leaving the brain requiring greater "extremes" to reproduce the same effect. Men who look at porn too much to get their kicks, will therefore become inevitably in need of more bizarre and "extreme" forms of porn.

Sex as masturbation

Pornography also creates a "disconnect" between the ultra-stimulating "porn world" and the more "mundane" real world. Put into practice (and supported by anecdotal evidence), this means that men who watch excessive amounts of porn begin to have unrealistic ideas about what their future dates and partners should do in bed.
Looking at it from another perspective, it means that this type of men may also begin to look at potential partners as sex objects, treating real women in the same way as the women they see treated in porn flicks. As in one scene in "Don Jon", the protagonist makes his sex partner feels as though he was using her body to masturbate instead of his hand: this is the narcissistic psychopath's definition of "sex". It is typical with anyone who has had sex with a "sexual psychopath": it's less "making love", as the psychopath "jerking off into someone's body". The other person is made to feel like a tool to bring about the psychopath's enjoyment.

It goes without saying that a "sexual psychopath", lacking empathy, is therefore lacking in "love". They will say the words, but not understand the meaning. The "sexualisation" of modern life is also blamed indirectly for this, too. Because of the widespread availability of porn, and its easy accessibility to teenagers, it means that teenage boys also are influenced by this impersonal and superficial representation of sex at a formative age.
Apart from the usual hormones that rush around a teenagers body, "sexualisation" creates an environment cynical towards sex as something to be discovered through a longer-term relationship. It encourages teenage boys to make explicit and highly inappropriate comments to girls, which will only increase the cynicism on both sides. It helps to feed a vicious circle of misogyny on the male side, and a more virulent strain of feminism from the women.

This last point is instructive, as the same "vicious circle" of male misogyny and female ambivalence is evident in many conservative societies around the world. But how can strongly conservative and strongly permissive societies both have "problems" with pornography?

The answer may be that, from an environmental point of view, "sexual psychopathy" (or "sexual sociopathy"), is more prevalent in socially-extreme environments. The only difference is the cause: the effect is the same. Misogyny can been seen as a scourge in both the "godless" West as the "God-fearing" East.

In the West (e.g. The USA), sexual psychopathy manifests itself as guiltless promiscuity and the phenomenon of countless fatherless children, and is usually put down to an unstable childhood and a gradual emotional disconnect between the man and the woman.
In the East (e.g. Pakistan), sexual psychopathy manifests itself as rape and domestic violence within the home, and can be explained through a social environment where men and women are socially prohibited from normal sexual relations, and are compelled to marry someone they have no emotional connection with.

So far, no-one has come up with a solution to the problem.

You can read more about the relationship between psychopathy and human relationships here.