In my post about erototoxic end times, I was in too much of a hurry to explore a paradox I might as well call the erototoxic paradox. (I decided to call it the Erototoxic Paradox because I think the model operates along similar lines to a poorly understood phenomenon the cardiologists call the French Paradox.)

The topic is frustrating and counterintuitive, but let me start with a quote from a piece Glenn Reynolds wrote in TCS Daily, titled Porn and Violence: Good for America's Children?

Teen pregnancy is down, along with teen crime, drug use, and many other social ills. There's also evidence that teenagers are more serious about life in general, and are more determined to make something worthwhile of their lives. Where just a few years ago the "teenager problem" looked insoluble, it seems well on the road to solving itself. But why?

After that column came out, it occurred to me that I had the answer: Porn and videogames. That's what's making American teens healthier.

It should have been obvious.

After all, one of the great changes in teenagers' social environments over the past decade or so has been far greater exposure to explicit pornography, via the Internet, and violence, via videogames. Where twenty or thirty years ago teenagers had to go to some effort to see pictures of people having sex, now those things are as close as a Google query. (In fact, on the Internet it takes some small effort to avoid such pictures.) Meanwhile videogames have gotten more violent, with efforts to limit their content failing on First Amendment grounds.

But -- despite continued warnings from concerned mothers' groups -- teenagers are less violent, and they're having less sex, notwithstanding the predictions of many concerned people that such exposure would have the opposite effect. More virtual sex and violence would seem to go along with less real sex and violence.

The solution is thus obvious -- we need a massive government program to ensure that no American teenager goes without porn and videogames Let no child be left behind!

Let's start with a brief review of erototoxin theory -- from its inventor Dr. Judith A. Reisman:

Reisman says that there are chemicals in the brain, which she has dubbed "erototoxins,"[5][6] that are produced by watching pornography and that have toxic influences on the brain.[7] Reisman lists these "erototoxins" as testosterone, adrenaline, oxytocin, glucose, dopamine, serotonin, and phenylethylamine.[6] While some of these chemicals are related to arousal or orgasm, none are specifically associated with toxicity or the viewing of erotic images.

Thanks to the latest advances in neuroscience, we now know that emotionally arousing images imprint and alter the brain, triggering an instant, involuntary, but lasting, biochemical memory trail.

This applies to so-called "soft-core" and "hard-core" pornography, which may, arguably, subvert the First Amendment by overriding the cognitive speech process.

Agree or not, these erototoxins are said to be highly addictive:

Pornography triggers a myriad of endogenous, internal, natural drugs that mimic the "high" from a street drug. Addiction to pornography is addiction to what I dub erototoxins - mind altering drugs produced by the viewer's own brain.

How does this 'brain sabotage' occur? Brain scientists tell us that "in 3/10 of a second a visual image passes from the eye through the brain, and whether or not one wants to, the brain is structurally changed and memories are created - we literally 'grow new brain' with each visual experience."4

Children and others who cannot read can instantly decode and experience images, hence images are not speech.5 In fact, erotic (any highly arousing) images commonly subvert left hemisphere cognition.6

Since the 50s, as pornography became mainstreamed and pushed the envelope of normal sexual conduct, law enforcement reported that sex crimes mimicking comparable acts were being inflicted on women and children. (See OJJDP study) 7

I have spent decades addressing the effects of pornographic "humor" and photos on children, fathers, husbands and wives and communities, much of which is found in my book, ''Soft" Porn Plays Hardball, 1990,8 in my U.S. Department of Justice, Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention (OJJDP) report, Images of Children, Crime and Violence in Playboy, Penthouse and Hustler,9 and in my white paper on "The Psychopharmacology of Pictorial Pornography: Restructuring Brain, Mind & Memory & Subverting Freedom of Speech" (http://www.dJjudithreisman.com/brain.pdf).

A basic science research team employing a cautiously protective methodology should study erototoxins and the brain/body. As with tobacco, these data could be helpful in public education and in legal change.

Testimony from victims and police commonly finds pornography to be an on-site-sexabuse manual.

Research indicates and my clinical experience supports that those who use pronography are more likely to go to prostitutes, engage in domestic violence, stranger rape, date rape, and incest. These beahviors should not be suprising since pornographic videos contaning all of these themes are readily available and the permssion-giving beliefs of these pornographic videos reinforced by the orgasm say that all these behaviors are normal, acceptable, common and don't hurtanyone.

(a) Prolonged exposure to pornography increases men*s self-acknowledged rape proclivity. Both noncoercive and coercive sexual displays have this effect.

In other words, if erototoxins are decreasing rather than increasing sex (and rape), why would the anti-sex people be against them? You'd think they'd be for them.

It's puzzling, and as I say, a paradox.

Dr. Reisman, one of the country's leading anti-sex crusaders (she's a leading Abstinence Clearinghouse activist) might need to rethink her position.

Pornography might be helping to promote and spread the very thing she advocates.

If that is the case, then the erototoxins of which she complains are indeed toxic -- to eros itself!

Imagine! If Dr. Reisman could only team up with what she calls "Big Pornography," all of America could be drugged into abstinence!