Wednesday, October 03, 2012

Because Your First Sexual Experience Wasn't Awkward Enough

Gary Wilson:

If you're wondering how you, or someone you love, came to find bestiality, gang rape, transsexual porn or anything else arousing, wonder no longer. In the laboratory, researcher Jim Pfaus has even successfully used the reward of sexual jollies to condition mammals to love cadaverine (the odor of decaying flesh):

Four days [after males' first sexual experiences, with females "perfumed" with cadaverine], males received a wooden dowel that had been saturated in cadaverine into their home cages. Males in the control ... groups avoided the dowel, and some attempted to bury it. In contrast, all males in the cadaverine-paired group made contact with the dowel and more than half picked it up and gnawed on it, as they would if the dowel had been laced with something hedonically positive like estrous vaginal secretions or chocolate.

So what is giving Newcomers the biggest sexual kicks? Not real peers. Just as rats an humans really don't like the smell of rotting flesh, many of today's porn users don't really like what they've escalated to. "It's complicated."

Here's the scary bit for Newcomers: Early sexual conditioning can stick around. Adolescent brains are at their peak of (1) dopamine levels, (2) sensitivity to dopamine signaling and (3) vulnerability to addiction. Novel, startling, arousing stimuli can rock their world in a way it won't an adult brain. This neurochemical reality primes young brains. They learn to define sex according to whatever stimuli offer the biggest sexual buzz. This lesson is a powerful one, as can be seen from the rats that cherished cadaverine-scented dowels.

In contrast, sexual conditioning is far more elastic if it occurs after normal mating patterns are established. For example, when scientists yanked receptive females away from male rats, the rats swiftly learned to ejaculate with fewer intromissions. Once this pattern was established, the males continued their hasty ways even when given free (uninterrupted) access to females.

On the other hand, males given all the time they wanted with hot females first—and then subjected to disappearing females—also learned to speed up. However, they resumed a normal pace when returned to free access.

Today's teens first train their mating skills to pixels rather than real partners. Their training does not prepare them to experience normal pleasure during intercourse (or even oral sex) with a real partner. It's like hitting tennis balls to improve one's jump shot. Guys are training for the wrong sport, so when (if?) they switch to real partners they have to learn a whole new game.

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