Neurosurgeon Donald Hilton, an associate professor at the University of Texas, told a packed audience last night that pornography consumption has negative effects on masculinity, social interaction and demographics at a talk organized by True Love Revolution, a student advocacy group that promotes premarital abstinence.

“It’s impossible to talk about masculinity today without talking about the impact of pornography,” Hilton said.

He said that the “traditional male is an endangered species” and that this shift from traditional gender roles impacts demographics and lower fertility rates in the developed world.

“Sexuality, in my opinion has been underrated as a demographic factor,” Hilton said. “I think Tom Wolfe was onto something when he said that ‘the bigger pornography gets, the lower the birthrate becomes.’”

Pornography is also detrimental to women’s perceptions of their bodies, Hilton said. He said that some women undergo cosmetic gynecology out of a desire to mimic porn actresses’ genitalia.

Hilton also said that pornography that features violence against women can have negative sociological effects, encouraging misogyny for men who use internet pornography as a sexual instruction.

Hilton said that he believes that the biological cause of pornography addiction function similar to pheromones—chemicals that trigger social responses.

“Pornography is, I believe, a visual pheromone—a powerful brain drug—that is changing sexuality more rapidly through the cyber acceleration of the Internet and it is inhibiting orientation,“ he said.

Hilton also said that this trend detrimentally affects masculinity by desensitizing males to “appreciate female beauty” and perpetuating pornography addiction, which he defined as compulsive pornography use and compared to physical substance abuses.

Hilton argued that excessively viewing pornography results in neuromodulation of human brains, a process that influences the organ’s structure, making it are similar to “gambling, drugs, Sadomasochism and pedophilia,” which he claimed were also addictions. Through the brain’s pleasure center, pornography consumption is rewarded by the provision of dopamine, similar to physical sexual contact, and therefore can be addicting, he said.

The lecture elicited mixed audience reaction.

Taras B. Dreszer ’14 said that he found the talk to be overly moralistic.

“I came to the talk because I was interested in a neuroscience perspective, and I was disappointed by the fact that his points were only loosely backed by science,” Dreszer said.

—Staff writer Martin Steinbauer can be contacted at martinsteinbauer@college.