AI and the Ghost of the Feminine

Earlier this week, I posted this on Facebook and Instagram and received quite a strong response - so I’m publishing here as well to hear from my readers.

In my recent interview with Tyson Adams, we explored the phenomenon of pornography and its deep, often hidden, effects on men.

You might think it’s not so different from what previous generations faced—but after listening to our conversation, you’ll see we’re living in an era unlike any before.

Once upon a time, a young boy’s access to pornography required either cunning effort—like sneaking into his dad’s hidden stash—or sheer luck, like Tyson stumbling across a Playboy in a field.

Today, that mediation is all but gone.

Youth can now access an unending stream of pornographic imagery and videos—24/7, in any variation imaginable.

And the impact has been nothing short of catastrophic.

Martin Shaw, mythteller and rites-of-passage guide, speaks to the mythic loss pornography has inflicted on the male psyche:

“There used to be shadowy areas in the imagination that contained passageways for Aphrodite, Dionysus, and lusty Pan to emerge through and ignite the sexual experience. However, that requires an imaginal flow, not the oddly passive imprint of negotiated image, downloaded into the mind by a jaded computer techie in Silicon Valley. […] Porn provides the picture—a very limited one—that short-circuits the entrance of ‘the mind’s eye’ to the erotic imagination. […] In other words, we fail to develop our own erotic imagery.”

And now, with the advent of AI, we are entering exponential territory.

The involvement of a human woman is no longer required.

Busty, “perfect” AI-generated women now have hundreds of thousands of followers on Instagram, with legions of adoring men. AI porn platforms allow users to conjure whatever woman or scenario they desire—on demand.

It’s a godlike power, exercised within the confines of a false, synthetic reality.

I can’t help but return to a common thread in many indigenous traditions: that everything has a spirit.

When that spirit is extracted, manipulated, and concentrated, it becomes addictive. Think: sugar cane versus refined sugar. Sacred tobacco versus commercial cigarettes. The same for alcohol, coffee, the list goes on.

Pornography, in this light, makes a promise: connection to the Feminine.

But it cannot deliver.

Instead, it offers a ghost.

A distorted, addictive shadow of the feminine.

So how does a man break free?

The path is not linear—and it involves multiple layers.

One is rewiring the nervous system: learning to seek self-regulation not through porn, but through practices like breathwork, meditation, movement, and creative expression.

Another is healing the shame that clings to so many men’s sexual histories. This is the heart of my work in Stealing the Key: Men, Sex, and the Mother Complex.

And finally, a man must expand his relationship to sexuality itself—reclaiming it as a doorway into eros, the primal force of life.

He comes to realize that sex is just one channel of this vast current, and that when he stops seeking it solely through women—or through substances—he opens to a cosmos teeming with beauty and inherent purpose.

If you're a man who wants to begin this journey, send me a DM.

___

I’d also love to hear your comments on this below!

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit themythicmasculine.substack.com/subscribe