I was driving on the West Virginia turnpike when I saw the signs, big letters announcing the presence of an adult store just a few miles up the road. The name was insulting. I was incensed for the prophet Daniel; what do they know about a “lion’s den?”

It seems I can never help looking at the parking lot when I pass by these dungeons. There, parked beside the windowless, blank building are semitrucks and economy cars, family vans and beaters. I try to pray for them, these people, these divine image-bearers who are on the assembly line in the slaughterhouse. But that doesn’t mean I don’t also feel anger.

Anger is what a woman feels when she has been violated. And while this may seem strange to men, the presence of porn violates not just the disrobed woman, but also every other woman around. While I know it isn’t my skin in the spotlights and my form in the camera lens, I’m aware that a public desecration of feminine beauty is a desecration of my beauty. It is an exposure of my secrets, my vulnerability, my delicacy, my treasure. I share this mystery of femininity with every other woman in the world, regardless of ethnicity, age, economic or social status. Just as there is a bond, a brotherhood, among men in common male perspective and mannerisms and attitude (normal, law-abiding guys respect another’s man space and abilities, understand masculine attitudes about work, sports and women, etc.) there is a solidarity among women all over the world concerning the attributes of feminine life. To disgrace one is to disgrace us all. There is no dividing line between “them” and me when it comes to our shared femininity.

I come to this topic, understandably, from a woman’s perspective and from a heterosexual point of view. The variations of sexual temptation and behavior are many. I will address here only some of them.

The Industry
Something must be said, of course, about the women who are in the porn industry themselves. They also bring disgrace on their gender by accepting money for undressing and acting, for swapping their mystery for shame. Yes, there are those who have little choice in the matter, the ones who are in some form of captivity. But I also know the stories of the college girls who need to make good money. There are some willing participants, to be sure, though it is arguable that they are deceived and even trapped in many respects. Satan cares little for the victims on either side. And they ARE victims, his victims.

Disturbingly, the very fact that for many women in it this industry is about either staying alive or making money stands in stark relief to the prevailing notion male viewers may fantasize is the performer’s frame of mind. There is very little, if any, admiration on her part for the men who will view her tantalizing image. They are nameless eyes to her. Probably she even scorns the pubescent eagerness of the viewers, but she is willing to take their money. She’ll endure the laughable and pitiable inclinations of the consumer as long as she can pocket her paycheck and go on with her life or she will do what she is made to do in order to prolong her life. Either way, the motivation is rarely passion.

But to a typical male consumer, if a woman is being paid, then the trade is even. It’s okay for him to access the pleasure for which he or the industry has paid and to which she has agreed. This then makes sexual beauty a sales agreement rather than part of a covenant relationship.

But whatever the motive that brings those involved to the moment, there is enough shame to go around whenever a woman is publicly disrobed – both men and women lose. And something precious is dragged through the muck.

The Lure
Still the lure remains. Those signs by the highway enchant the imagination. Yes, they do. The siren call is there. It is those whose ears are disciplined to a higher call who keep on driving. This is a difficult lesson for me and my sisters around the world. And we are sometimes tempted to lash out at the man in the car with us as though his visceral manly awareness and susceptibilities are his fault. And we want to correct the women, cover them, slap them. The anger we feel at the shared violation makes us protective; we are enraged in our exposure.

The male mind sometimes has trouble understanding this womanly anger. He needs the woman in his life to realize that he is not wanting to choose the bad; he is aroused by what is good – feminine beauty – and it is the actualization of that arousal which can be either good or bad. A disrobed woman is not, by definition, evil. An inappropriately disrobed woman is the problem. This is a delicate difference. But an important one for the female mind to ponder. We, as Christ-following and carefully feminine girlfriends, wives and mothers must not take the warpath against bodily female attraction; rather, we must stand biblically against the misuse and abuse of it, by either man or woman.

The Trap
Porn traps both genders.
But there is no denying that visual lust has traditionally been recognized as an overwhelmingly male predilection. Even Jesus addressed his command about visual lust particularly to men (Matthew 5:28). And there’s good reason (though women are certainly included in Christ’s warning and vulnerable to its violation as well).

Biologically, male and female brains are wired differently, and it affects the processing of the images we see every day. Though there are always exceptions, the majority of women do not have the direct physical link between visual awareness and instant pleasure that men experience when noticing a sexually-explicit image. Furthermore, most women do not really grasp the fact that the male brain is set to a frequency that automatically notes every sexually-attractive image within visual range. A woman may not notice that other woman’s slightly too-low top in the restaurant booth next to them, but it is guaranteed her husband will. Not that he is consciously looking it for it; but his visual radar is constantly on. Blame testosterone, blame his XY chromosomal pattern, but it’s a system he cannot disable.

In their excellent book titled Through a Man’s Eyes, authors Shaunti Feldhahn and Craig Gross explain how this system works.
“. . .scientists have found that much more of the male brain is set aside for visual processing than in the female brain. And that visual orientation is especially attuned to sexual images. . . In fact, his visual nature – combined with testosterone and other chemicals that affect bonding, sexual memory, and emotions – make a guy far more likely to perceive certain sights as sexual in nature in the first place. This same wiring also means that his initial reaction to those images is far more likely to be instantaneous arousal: a gut-level, pleasurable, automatic reaction. In fact, most women have never experienced the same sort of involuntary, gut level, instinctive, physical reaction of pleasure to visual and sexual images that many men experience daily.” 1

Most of us know that men are, as a general rule, more sexually conscious than women. But what women don’t really understand is the visceral nature of his reaction to sexual images and how powerfully it affects him. Feldhahn and Gross explain what happens when a man’s eyes become aware of a woman dressed in a way that shows off her good figure.

“It has to do with a small cluster of neurons in the brain called the nucleus accumbens. Sometimes referred to as the “pleasure center of the brain,” it plays an important role in pleasure, motivation and addiction. It is part of the reward circuitry of the brain and its operation is based primarily on two neurotransmitters, dopamine (which promotes desire) and serotonin (which has to do with satiety and inhibition).”2

This is the part of the brain which, in a male, is directly linked to his visual awareness of feminine beauty, especially sexually-stimulating feminine beauty. When a man sees a woman whose body is revealed in a provocative way:
“A center in the brain called the nucleus accumbens lights ups and a whole chain of events happens within a few seconds. . . . The nucleus accumbens is also the part of the brain that lights up when you haven’t eaten all day and are famished, then walk into a dinner party and spot a tantalizing buffet.”3

When glimpsing a sexually-stimulating image, the male brain will automatically activate the pleasure center in the brain. This immediate rush of good feeling urges him on, compels him to prolong the happy dance in his body by letting his eyes caress and consume the sensual beauty in front of him. This particular type of temptation then is not merely the thought of something pleasant but involves an actual bodily response that a man must shut down in order to remain pure in his mind. And he CAN do that. Felhahn and Gross point out that the thinking centers in the male brain are activated immediately following the visual response and, at that point, the man makes the decision either to indulge his lust or to force his mind to something else.

“Although neuroscience shows that the very first reaction is instinctive and biological rather than voluntary, the next step is a choice. This is where a man moves from temptation to a healthy, righteous action – or from temptation to sin.”4

Most women do not experience visual stimulation in the way that men do. This is why, though statistics show there is a greater incidence of it in recent years, women are not the primary consumers of porn. Most women respond to the sight of an attractive man through their cortical centers – the thinking part of their brains.

“. . .it is a thinking-oriented response from the beginning. She thinks to herself, Wow, he’s an attractive man.” 5 Her nucleus accumbens isn’t involved at all in this initial encounter.

And so, while women may get a kind of thrill out of viewing a man’s naked body, it usually, for the vast majority, involves some type of relational thinking as well. In order to be sexually aroused, usually she must imagine some type of relationship with that image, personifying him as a man with whom she shares a tender bond, not merely responding bodily to his physical apparatus. Female brains typically respond to a sexually pleasant image with the front-of-the-brain thinking center; male brains overwhelmingly respond to a sexually pleasant image with the back-of-the-brain pleasure center. As Feldhahn puts it:

“In other words, at the most simplistic level, a guy sees life while a woman feels and talks about life. Whether he is a 12-year-old boy or an 82-year-old man, it is impossible for a male to not be visually oriented – just as it is impossible for a woman not to experience emotions about certain things. 6

So, considering the biological makeup of the two genders and their distinct differences, visual lust and the lure of porn is a snare that Satan finds particularly effective on men. But that doesn’t mean it isn’t a problem for women. Statistics show that women are viewing porn in greater numbers than ever before. It is probable that their motivation and resulting pleasure are different than what men experience, but it is a trap all the same.

The Truth
Sexuality is a system God put within us. In fact, it’s the core of who we are – male and female, experiencing and responding to life in the gender He assigned to us. Our sexuality tells us something important about the One who made us – He delights in covenant relationship and wants us to as well; He created sexual pleasure as a gift for human beings; He intended the raw power of our sexual attraction to seal a couple together for life and from it to bring forth the next generation of people to fill the earth.

Satan knows all of this. And he has assaulted sexuality from the beginning. In pitting Adam and Eve against one another when they sinned, he began the twisting of the way the genders relate to one another. And he continues that to this day. He doesn’t want us to know how the other works. He likes to launch surprise attacks. But the truth will set us free, God’s Word declares.

Another important point for both men and women to keep in mind is that the male mind not only notices sexual images, it stores them.

Again, author Shaunti Feldhahn explains that most men have a mental photo file of sensual images, pictures involuntarily stored up over a lifetime, and that these images can pop up in the brain at any time, without warning, even if a man doesn’t wish them to. In fact, a man has no say in whether the brain archives these images; it just does; it’s the way the male brain functions.

“Experts trace it to the amygdala, a part of the brain that acts as a kind of repository for memories that are tied to gut-level responses – such as a man’s instinctive reaction to a provocatively dressed woman. Visceral memories from that kind of stimulation can bypass the thinking centers to involuntarily pop back up in a person’s mind. While a woman’s brain (more oriented toward processing emotion) is more likely to have emotional pop-up memories, men’s pop-ups are more likely to be visual images.” 7

What this means practically is that every sexually-stimulating image to which a man is exposed has the possibility of being stored in his brain until the day he dies. In her research, Feldhahn found that some men she interviewed could recall provocative images they’d seen as young teens with the same clarity as the scantily-clad woman they’d noticed that day. This then becomes another strong reason for a man to guard his eyes purposefully and meticulously. A moment of carelessness can become a tool Satan can use against him for the rest of his life. This is often a revelation for women who are usually baffled by the intensity of a man’s visual wiring.

But it is also a great motivation then for wives lovingly to give their husbands totally legitimate and beautifully inviting images of themselves to store up in their brains. If a man has that kind of sexual memory, a wife has an open door into a very deep part of him. Married women can love their men by gifting them with new and exciting images within the covenant of their relationship, and by doing so, provide their husbands with readily available substitutions for the tempting visual situations they will face every day.

And it becomes a strong reason for us as women to honor our God and the men around us by choosing our public clothing with both beauty and modesty in mind.

And yes, it is possible for a woman to be attractive without inviting male eyes to sin. Feldhahn and Gross explain this as well:
“It is also important to note that a man’s reaction is different if the image is attractive, but isn’t perceived as sexual. Men are able to appreciate beauty just like we are, after all, and that includes noticing that a woman is attractive – without any physical reaction. If a man sees a woman who is not calling overt attention to her body, it is often a nonissue. His nucleus accumbens simply doesn’t light up. The automatic reaction, and thus temptation, isn’t triggered.” 8

The Power
Knowing all of this truth still doesn’t calm me as I pass by the sign for the adult bookstore. I still feel the primal rage inside me at the lies Satan is using to perfection on both men and women. But I know that every time I acknowledge the truth of sexuality as God designed it and pattern my life after it, I am part of the light and not the darkness. His ways make so much sense, for now and for eternity.

I do believe that gender transcends earthly existence. We are made in His image to the very soul level. It will not change; we will just gain a heavenly body in which to house this treasure. Sexuality as we know it here will not be part of our eternal relationship with others there. But I believe we will still relate to one another as either male or female, in the Divine reflection He gave us. To tamper with this modality in any way, to change one’s gender identity, to trivialize it, to exploit it, to desecrate one’s sexuality is a direct assault on the Divine.

Sex is a powerful reminder that a Mind greater than ours designed this world and everything in it. There is no intelligent way to explain the force that sex exerts on us every day other than this. Men and women of every social and economic and intellectual strata are swayed by it over and over, make life-altering choices because of it, triumph or fail in relation to it. Why the contour of our bodies and the wiring of our brains and the chemicals in our systems should be such a force is only explainable by acknowledging that gender and sexuality go to the very core of who we are. And that force was set in motion by our Creator.

Learning the amazing biology behind sexual temptation doesn’t remove the frustration of dealing with it or the pain caused by failure. But it does help us understand why it is such a big deal and arm us with knowledge about how to conduct ourselves and how to pray for those we love.

The next time you drive by one of those signs or glimpse the salacious magazine cover or notice the attractive person jogging down your street, remember that our brains and bodies are wired to work a certain way and they do. But the ability to reason and to choose our actions is also given to us. Nothing on earth or in heaven can ovecome our volitional purity. Only we can do that to ourselves. The choice is ours. And the power is His. When you think about it, that’s an unbeatable combination for our victory and happiness.

1. Shaunti Feldhahn and Craig Gross, Through a Man’s Eyes (New York: Multnomah Press, 2015) 21.
2. “The Brain from Top to Bottom,” http://thebrain.mcgill.ca/flash/i/i_03/i_03_cr/i_03_cr_par/i_03_cr_par.html, accessed 11-29-18
3. Feldhahn and Gross, op cit.
4. Ibid, 23.
5. Ibid, 24.
6. *“3 Essential Things You Need to Know About a Man’s Brain,” Shaunti Feldhahn, https://shaunti.com/2017/05/3-essential-things-you-need-to-know-about-a-mans-brain/, (May 12, 2017), accessed 7-8-19
7. Shaunti Feldhahn, For Women Only (New York: Multnomah Press, 2004) 140.
8. Felhahn and Gross, op cit., 24.