In today's issue of The Guardian, Fortean journalist Mark Pilkington reports on Judith Reisman, a psychologist who believes that pornography is an "erotoxin" that wreaks havoc on your brain chemistry. After pitching her ideas to the US Senate, Reisman and University of Utah professor emeritus Victor Cline are raising cash from conservative and religious groups to scan the brains of people enjoying porn. From The Guardian:
They foresee two possible outcomes: if they can demonstrate that porn physically "damages " the brain, that might open the floodgates for "big tobacco"-style lawsuits against porn publishers and distributors; second, and more insidiously, if porn can be shown to "subvert cognition " and affect the parts of the brain involved in reasoning and speech, then "these toxic media should be legally outlawed, as is all other toxic waste, and eliminated from our societal structure." Link
Using Pilkington's brief article as a jumping off point, the Mind Hacks blog takes Reisman to task with a collection of worthwhile links.
Unfortunately, (Reisman's) self-published paper The Psychopharmacology of Pictorial Pornography Restructuring Brain, Mind & Memory & Subverting Freedom of Speech (PDF) is highly selective when reviewing the published neuroscience research.
Many of her arguments are based on one-reference claims, and some only on what she calls "extensive documentation". One unmentioned implication is the fact that, if sexual arousal from pornography causes 'brain damage', then so will real-life sex!
