Mid-May, 2010
Mary Bailey, Editor
the watchfuleye@rcn.com

PRINTER FRIENDLY VERSION

This Is Our Brain in Adolescence

By Mary Bailey

The primary source

The chief source of sex education for many young males is pornography on the Internet, according to David Amsden in a 2003 New York magazine article. As one 20-year-old confided to him, during his initial sexual experience “my first thought as it was happening was, ‘Oh, this is pornography!’” Some young men cannot get aroused with real women, Amsden found, but have no trouble interacting with a pornographic site. Others cannot sleep with their girlfriends unless they behave like porn stars. It is “truly amazing,” a sex therapist told Amsden, the “things women feel obliged to do” without “bothering to please themselves.”

The story of Amsden’s 20-year-olds probably began much earlier in life, perhaps in their middle school years. It is human nature for young teens to be curious about sex. After all, the adolescent brain is wired to study adult behavior. That’s how we all grow up. But the problem is that today’s boys and girls are encountering “Internet sex” (shorthand here for social networks, video games, cable movies, pornography sites, and the like) and accepting it as something they should learn.

We have long suspected that sex as portrayed on the Internet is damaging people’s sexual behavior, but those who defend these forms of entertainment have always said, “prove it!” Although not explicitly studying the Internet, neuroscientists equipped with brain-scanning techniques are now discovering the ways it and its siblings are able to shape behavior, especially during adolescence. The following is one such explanation.

Until recently, we did not know the brain continues to grow beyond childhood. In just the last decade or so, neuroscientists have learned there are two periods in life when the brain dramatically explodes with brain cells (neurons): early childhood -- and adolescence. It is knowledge of this second period of growth that has altered so much of what we thought we knew about the brain.

Neuroscientists now realize that our brain’s prefrontal cortex, which lies behind the forehead and temples, burgeons with development from the first hints of puberty until our mid-twenties and
beyond. The significance of this finding cannot be overstated, for it means that our prefrontal

Please forward this monthly newsletter on the sexualization of girls to people and organizations you think will (or should) be concerned with this unprecedented, fast-growing assault on girls.
cortex---the regulator of attention span, impulse control, and judgment---is the youngest part of the brain and the last to mature.

During our tumultuous teenage years, we typically respond to emotional situations with “gut feelings” initiated by our brain’s ancient center of emotions, the limbic system, sometimes referred to as “the reptile brain.” But this is also the time when our prefrontal cortex begins its rapid development, sprouting numerous neurons that branch and connect to form pathways and networks. Some of these branchings get used and others do not, depending on our interests and experiences.

Then, as we move into our twenties, the branchings we don’t use start withering away and our prefrontal cortex begins to shrink---and which branchings are saved and which are discarded depend upon our personal experiences and choices. “Teens have the power to determine their own brain development,” says Jay Giedd, chief of the child brain-imaging unit at the National Institute of Mental Health, “whether they do art, or music, or sports, or video games.” Or, we might add, whether they do the “Internet.”

Do, or just imagine doing

Not only do our brains re-map themselves based on what we do, but on what we imagine doing. Staying with our musical examples, the brain of a pianist who only imagines playing a tune registers the same degree of change as the brain of the pianist who actually plays the tune! That is, the plastic brain can re-wire itself based on movement, whether real orimagined. Whether real or imagined! Think of the significance of this for Amsden’s young pornography viewers.

Focus and repeat

But two steps are necessary for brain re-mapping to occur. First, the viewer must give rapt attention to the real or imagined movement. That causes the prefrontal cortex, the regulator of attention span, to damp down all other distractions until, as psychiatrist Jeffrey Schwartz of the UCLA School of Medicine puts it, “only one thought, one possible action, prevails over all the other possible ones competing for dominance in consciousness.”

The second prerequisite for changing the brain’s landscape is repetition. Repeated experiences become converted into long-term memory, says Nancy Andreasen, chair of psychiatry at the University of Iowa, especially “if they have more personal meanings, a high emotional loading, [and] a vivid sound or appearance” – all qualifications that Internet sex easily meets.

What happens on the Internet doesn’t stay on the Internet

Picture an adolescent boy who has given focused and repeated attention to Internet sex. Eventually these experiences start to crowd out other, perhaps more romantic choices he might have made, and his brain builds a sexual repertoire that may last him a lifetime if other factors do not intervene.

Girls too can be drawn into the Internet vortex, of course. As with their male counterparts, teen curiosity can lead them to imitate the sexual practices they see on the Internet. By and large, however, while young males may be learning self-centered gratification, young girls are more likely led to study how to attract and please boys. In the process, the sexuality of both is likely to be distorted and impaired. And that is a dreadful price to be paid by a generation that is coming of age with the “Internet.”

For a detailed description of brain plasticity as described in this article, read “The Mind and the Brain: Neuroplasticity and the Power of Mental Force” by Jeffrey M. Schwartz and Sharon Begley.

Coming Of Age with the Internet

By Pamela Paul

Of the many stories I’ve heard revealing the ways in which young men struggle with porn, I offer here just one, distilled, from a self-described “25 year old recovering porn addict” who wrote to me in October. “Marc” began looking at his father’s magazines at age 11, but soon, he wrote, he “turned to the Internet to see what else I could find.” This “started off as simply looking at pictures of naked women. From there, it turned into pictures of couples having sex and lesbian couples. When I got into watching videos on the Internet, my use of porn skyrocketed.” At 23, he began dating a woman he called “Ashley.” “However, since Ashley’s last boyfriend had been a sex/porn addict, I was quick to lie about my use of porn. I told her that I never looked at it. But after 5-6 months, Ashley discovered a hidden folder on my computer containing almost a hundred porn clips. She was devastated.”

Marc and Ashley broke up, got back together and spent several months traveling in India. He continued to look at porn behind her back, and on a trip to Las Vegas, he got lap dances despite promising not to. Ashley broke up with him again. “I had never thought about the adverse effects of my use of porn…. I want to change. I want to be a respectful human being toward all human beings, male and female. I want to be a committed and loving boyfriend to Ashley.” “The Cost of Growing Up On Porn,” Washington Post 03-07-10). Paul is the author of “Pornified: How Pornography is Damaging Our Lives, Our Relationships, and Our Families.”

A Different Message for Girls

By Sarah Seltzer
Excerpted from Women’s eNews

In her latest book, Susan J. Douglas finds TV’s treatment of women is putting a haze over young women’s awareness of sex discrimination in real life.

American women turn to TV on prime-time dramas and see powerful women everywhere. They are surgeons on “Grey’s Anatomy,” district attorneys on “Law and Order,” and high-powered cops, lawyers and politicians. Katie Couric and Diane Sawyer anchor the newscast, often spotlighting Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s state visits. Television has often seen female presidents of the United States, something yet to be achieved in reality: Cherry Jones on “24” and Geena Davis on the short-lived “Commander-in-Chief.”

Isn’t that just so empowering?

No, says Douglas in “Enlightened Sexism: The Seductive Message That Feminism’s Work Is Done,” published by Henry Holt this month. Douglas says TV is such a powerful medium that it can shape people’s real-world views, creating the false impression of equality. When that happens, the door is open to more sexism.

The implications of TV’s take-charge women, she writes, is that sexism is dead, so now it’s fair game to caricature and lampoon women as shrews and bimbos in fare such as “Real Housewives” and dating shows where women viciously vie for the favor of male contestants.

Douglas told Women’s eNews she coined the term “enlightened sexism” when she began noticing a wedge between programming geared toward her generation versus toward her students and daughter.On the one hand, there were highly successful, ambitious female characters. On the other, particularly in reality TV, there were young women who were “shallow, materialistic, obsessed with guys they barely knew, involved in cat fights.”

On the one hand, women had “made it.” On the other, that idea was being exploited to put women back in their place. Neither extreme reflected what Douglas saw was women’s actual lives, where inequalities are reflected in everything from the workplace to impossible beauty standards. (Womensenews.org, 4-23-10)

Sexting, Dispersing, Humiliating

What do you do when a middle school student rents to classmates his cell phone images of girl classmates in various degrees of undress? This is not a hypothetical question, but something that recently happened at Pyle Middle School in Bethesda, MD.  Such “sexting” has become increasingly common in the past two years, say Montgomery County police. Now officials are trying to find out if the girls were coerced, but this is difficult since most of pictures are close-ups of body parts. If they were taken and distributed by adults, such images would be considered child pornography under federal law. But these are children distributing the pictures among themselves. An investigation is being led by the police department’s Family Crimes Division and is considered a “test run” for county officers still learning how to handle sexting situations. In the meantime, Pyle PTA President Karen Johnson said she gives her child a cell phone but doesn’t let him send or receive text messages or have a Facebook account. “Maybe some of our students just aren’t ready for some of the technology that we’re handing them,” she observed. (Wash Post 4-16/17-10).

Parents, here are some “sexting” tips: 1) Tell your kids that if they receive a sexting message and pass it on, they’re going to be held responsible for the humiliation of another person. 2) Re- consider allowing your children to have cell phones, especially at night when a lot of inappropriate material is being sent. 3) Tell them that using a cell phone is a privilege, not a right. If your kids use their cell phones to humiliate someone, they will be taken away. 4) Kids don’t really need phones with cameras. Cell phone manufacturers should reintroduce phones without them. (Valerie Strauss and Rosalind Wiseman, “The Answer Sheet,” Wash Post, 4-17-10)

[Actually, you can Google “cell phones without cameras” and learn that camera-less cell phones do exist. Not only that, there is a market for them, as gyms and the defense and technology industries often restrict cameras. Check it out. — Ed.]

The Slave Girls of America

Abridged from Saada Saar, Huffington Post

The above sounds like the title to an X-rated movie, doesn’t it? Unfortunately, we’re talking about the large numbers of American-born girls being bought and sold for sex in their – and
our own -- country.

According to Saada Saar, Executive Director of the Rebecca Project for Human Rights, an estimated 100,000 to 300,000 children in the U.S. are at risk of being victimized by commercial sexual exploitation And she cites the average age of a prostituted American girl as 12-14 years.

“This is a new and emerging phenomenon,” says Saar. “Ten years ago, there were not the same disturbing stories of traffickers seeking out and preying on girl runaways. Or of very young girls in rural and suburban communities being kidnapped and then sold to men for sex.” There are even “domestic trafficking hubs,” with Ohio and Georgia considered among the top states harboring them.

Why now? Saar points to the Internet, with its easy access to sites serving gangs and sex traffickers. “And,” Saar notes, “there isn’t a culture of crime and punishment for selling girls as there is for selling illegal drugs. It is less risky, and more profitable” – for, unlike drugs, girls are “reusable.”

And guess who ends up being criminalized? Not the men! The Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention reports that 63 percent of girls in detention are there for prostitution.
In other words, “Girls are being put behind bars for being raped and sexually exploited by pimps and the men who purchase them for the night,” Saar says.

In other countries NGOs (non-governmental organizations) have set up rescue and rehabilitation programs for prostituted girls. But, at the time of her writing, Saar said there were less than 50 beds in the entire country devoted to trafficked American girls. [Locally, this is changing, as Tina Frundt, once a trafficked girl, is about to open Courtney’s House. See www.Courtneyshouse.org .]

Those men who purchase girls are not simply paying for sex. Through their brutal acts of raping vulnerable girls and boys, they are committing criminal acts against children.  Laws against child abuse already exist, says Saar, “but there is minimal political will, at the state and federal level, to prosecute them – especially the ‘johns.’”

Saar ends with a question: “How is it that in our nation, in the 21st century, any one of our daughters can be bought and sold for the purposes of sexual exploitation, and without the severe threat of punishment? What is happening that girls’ lives are worth so little?” (“Girl Slavery in America,” Huffington Post, 4-20-10)

Nothing dollar-able is safe – John Muir
Don’t just sit in front of your television set and get mad – Eleanor Smeal

Mainstream vs. Criminal Coverage

An Editorial

You readers certainly are sending us thought-provoking reactions to our coverage! In response to last month’s story on a Supreme Court case to keep child molesters in prison beyond their sentences, one reader asked why a journal that focuses on the mainstream sexualization of girls would co-mingle its message with criminal sex offenses. Conversely, another wondered what stance, if any, we plan to take on the crime of child trafficking.

First, let us say that sometimes we feel like astrophysicists, searching cyberspace for the latest information showing how harmful everyday sexualization is for girls. We have emphasized – and will continue to emphasize -- the mainstream sexualization of girls in our culture.

In March 2010, our first issue, sociologist Jill Brantley described in “Yes, But What Does It Mean?” the dynamics of sexualization.  She showed how it works to turn girls into objects, forcing them to evaluate their appearance in terms of sexual allure, and trapping them “in a constant quest to establish sexual attractiveness to the abandonment of other goals.”

In April 2010, in “Sexualization of Girls: Why It Matters” editor Mary Bailey described how many of us, although deeply troubled by mainstream sexualization, are being turned into bystanders -- silenced by free speech concerns. She argued that sexualizing a generation of children isn’t just exercising free speech rights, it’s denying girls their fundamental right to care and concern.

However, in the process of seeking information about mainstream sexualization, we cannot help but come across a variety of sexual situations and influences that act upon girls. And we can’t help but wonder if and to what extent they are interconnected. We therefore feel it would be a mistake to focus our attention exclusively on the sexualization of girls, although it remains our primary concern. For instance, we believe that boys too are in danger, as you will see upon reading some neurological evidence in this, our third issue.

In “This is Our Brain in Adolescence,” we offer a hard-science demonstration of the damage that can come from sexualizing children of both sexes. In the past decade or two, neuroscience has uncovered sources of human behavior heretofore unavailable to social scientists and philosophers.  This issue’s lead article suggests there is biological evidence that boys, although perhaps not to the same extent as girls, are also damaged by exposure to exploitative and objectifying material.

For this reason we choose not to present the mainstream sexualization of girls as a separate and distinct entity divorced from the rest of cultural life.  Rather, we see it residing at one end of a continuum that extends from fashion, advertising, TV, the Internet, parents and teachers on the one hand -- through peer pressure, sexting, and teen dating  -- all the way to the pornography, molestation, prostitution, trafficking, and even the sexual murder of children on the other. So while we continue to focus on the mainstream sexualization of girls, we’ll also keep an eye on other stops along the continuum where sexual offenses might occur.

· · ·

Sightings

Craigslist, the ad-selling Web site, is “the primary way children are bought in the country,” according to Rachel Lloyd, executive director of Girls Educational and Mentoring Service. Other activist organizations also consider it the nation’s largest center for online trafficking of women and children. (Just this April the Gambini crime family was charged with attempting to sell the sexual services of girls ages 15-19 through Craigslist. The online service will make an estimated $36 million this year on all its sex-related advertising.) The Web site argues that it is protected from prosecution by the Communications Decency Act. Legal experts and judges generally agree, pointing to a federal appeals court ruling that Craigslist was an online service provider, not a publisher, and so was protected by federal law. But an unanswered question still remains, activists say: Did Congress really have in mind the advertising of sex with children and trafficked (i.e., unwilling) adults when it drafted the Communications Decency Act back in 1996? (New York Times, 4-26-10)

 Because he could. “London’s most visible wild child” Mandy Smith was 14 when she lost her virginity to Bill Wyman of the Rolling Stones. The two were married when she was 18 and he was 52. Today, at age 40 and a Catholic working with youth in Manchester, England, Smith says what Wyman did was wrong. “If it happened today, he would be vilified by the press. He’d be in jail. For me, for a long time, it was a gray area: I was underage, but I was complicit. Now I see it in black and white. I work with teenagers. I know how vulnerable they are under all that bravado.” (London Daily Mail, cited by The Week, 5-7-10)

Too great a lure. “What a cruel irony that a much-admired principal of a District middle school was allegedly killed by people he met online,” wrote Marci Greenstein of Bethesda to The Washington Post. “School officials across the country are constantly warning students and their parents about online predators. I was terrified after listening to an FBI agent give a talk at our local middle school about the ways kids can be lured into giving information to strangers online. That’s why it was especially heartbreaking to hear about Principal Brian Betts. It is likely he gave the same cautionary speech to his students at some point, yet the lure of the Internet was too great for this smart educator.” (Letters to the Editor, Wash Post, 5-11-10)

From Chapstick to lip gloss to lipstick. A rising number of tween girls use certain cosmetics daily, according to consumer-researcher NPD Group. From 2007 to 2009, the percentage of girls 8 to 12 regularly using mascara rose to 18 percent from 10 percent, using eyeliner to 15 percent from 9 percent, and using lipstick to 15 percent from 10 percent. At the same time, all other groups, including teenagers, are using less makeup in these economic times. The girls “are not sneaking the stuff,” said NPD analyst Karen Grant. “They’re doing the shopping with their moms.” According to Stacy Malkan, author of “Not Just a Pretty Face: The Ugly Side of the Beauty Industry,” the industry markets to children so aggressively that it invites a comparison to Big Tobacco efforts such as the Joe Camel ads. “There’s a relentless marketing pressure on young girls to look older. Not just from magazines and TV ads, but from shows like ‘90210.’ Those kids are supposed to be in 10th and 11th grade, but they look 25,” says Malkan. Indeed, notes the New York Times: the aisles of CVS and other drug stores are lined with cosmetics aimed at Miley Cyrus fans, and fashion runways now teem with girls of 14 in heavy makeup. (NYTimes, 4-29-10)

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