A scourge for individuals and society
In February, the New York Times Magazine ran a long cover story, “What Teenagers Are Learning From Online Porn.” Based on interviews with boys selected to take part in the porn literacy class in a peer-leadership program for Boston teenagers, the article relates in depressing detail the habits of teenage users of pornography and how what they view affects their expectations in their relationships with girls. There is a certain irony in that the feature article is in itself a form of pornography, such are the details of their viewing habits. The article served as a moment for public punditry with numerous commentators weighing in on the appropriateness of pornography. Ross Douthat, a conservative New York Times columnist, did not merely criticize the coarsening effects of porn, but called for it to be banned. Conceding that in a world with the internet it is virtually impossible to completely stop pornography, Douthat said that banishing it to the “dark corners” of the web “would dramatically reduce its pedagogical role, its cultural normalcy, (and) its power over libidos everywhere.”
There is little interest in talking about pornography in the public square as a political issue. In the 1970s and 80s, the Religious Right and a certain type of feminist inveighed against pornography (for different reasons), culminating in the Attorney General’s Commission on Pornography in 1986. The report by Attorney General Edwin Meese concluded that children and adolescents were harmed by exposure to pornography, that prolonged use affected attitudes about “less common sexual practices,” and the portrayal of sexual aggression lead to increased coercion in users’ personal sexual relationships. Surgeon General C. Everett Koop said research indicated, “pornography does present a clear and present danger to American public health.” It did not result, however, in any new legislation or regulation to curb pornography. Within a decade, the internet would make images and shortly thereafter video of pornography easy and inexpensive (often free) to access from the privacy of any computer. The personal and social problems associated with using pornography would grow as anyone with a computer could download an unlimited buffet of sexual imagery.
In Canada, Conservative MP Arnold Viersen (Peace River-Westlock) introduced a private member’s motion (M-47) that led to the Standing Committee on Health to study the public health effects on men, women and children due to the easily accessible nature of violent and degrading sexually-explicit online material. In June, the committee tabled a report, Viersen complained, that largely ignored any evidence that “reveal(ed) the negative impact of this violent and degrading material on public health.” Expert witnesses had insisted that violent and degrading online pornography contributes to sexual violence against women and girls, is used to groom children for sexual abuse, and that it has a causal relationship to peer-to-peer sexual violence among youth. Viersen noted that the report, in ignoring the evidence, would “do little to prevent youth from accessing violent and degrading material.”
One reason that there is not much political momentum behind banning porn, or even seriously examining the harmful effects of it, is the view that pornography is a harmless vice, at worst a victimless crime. But such quaint views are not supported by a mountain of evidence that illustrates that there are immense costs, not only to consumers of pornography, but to the broader society and especially those who are in close relationships with regular viewers of pornography.
A common argument in favour of a laissez-faire approach to pornography is that it is personally liberating for users. Exploring sexual fantasies leads to a more fulfilling sex life because it helps overcome obstacles to personal enjoyment of a natural part of life.
Much recent media coverage questioning pornography, including (to the extent it does), the New York Times Magazinecover story, focuses on decreased sexual satisfaction and even its role in declining virility. There is a growing scientific literature that finds men who are regular users of pornography have trouble performing in the bedroom. Women users report having trouble living up to the standards of behaviour and appearance portrayed in pornography. National Review’s David French described the problem as “the sexual revolution eating its own,” saying pornography is not sexual liberation but the tragic loss of intimacy. Pornography, the psychologist Gary Brooks says in his 1995 book The Centerfold Syndrome, leads to five obstacles to healthy relationships: voyeurism (obsession with visual stimulation over all other features of healthy relationships); objectification (obsession with body parts over the whole of a person); validation (the need for submissiveness to validate one’s masculinity); trophyism (treating women as possessions); and fear of intimacy (the inability to enter into genuine, non-sexually based relationships). It is no wonder that one poll of American divorce and family lawyers indicated that in a majority of divorces they handled, porn use, by one or both partners, featured prominently. Other studies show that pornography use both before marriage and during marriage is significantly correlated with increased risk of divorce. One reason suggested is the decline in self-reported sexual satisfaction. But perhaps Ross Douthat in correct: writing in a 2008 Atlantic Monthly essay, he said pornography was a form of adultery, a betrayal of marital vows. Spouses who discover their partners using porn are likely to blame themselves for sexual shortcomings or develop trust issues with their husband (or, less commonly, wife). The instant gratification of porn is the opposite of what healthy, lifelong relationships are based upon: mutual trust and respect, hard work, honesty, and sacrificial giving.
Science helps explain the reasons for not just pornography addiction, but why porn is associated with declining virility and sexual satisfaction. Norman Doidge, a Toronto psychiatrist, has done extensive research on neuroplasticity (how the brain changes), including the effect of pornography on the physical brain. In his 2007 book, The Brain That Changes Itself: Stories of Personal Triumph from the Frontiers of Brain Science, Doidge says that pornography, like other addictions, “hijacks” the dopamine system, the nerve cells that control behavioural and cognitive output. Even limited use of pornography effectively trains the brain to want more pornographic stimulus. Doidge writes, “The same surge of dopamine that thrills us also consolidates the neuronal connections responsible for the behaviours that lead us to accomplish our goal.” The brain wants more such stimulus to provide additional anticipatory enjoyment; Doidge explains that the brain does not rewire for “satisfying pleasure” in the way it does for “exciting pleasure.” Researchers Philip Zimbardo, Gary Wilson, and Nikita Coulombe, and others, have found that the brain seldom remains satisfied with the same level of pornography, so addicted users require increasingly more graphic, more boundary-breaking pornography to be satisfied. Hence, so-called softcore porn leads to hardcore porn, and hardcore pornography that begins as searching for pictures of traditional sex, escalates to pornography featuring multiple partners, children, and in some cases violence, bestiality and depictions of rape.
Zimbardo, Wilson, and Coulombe also found that adolescents who used pornography reported much lower sexual satisfaction in high school and later in life. Carlo Foresto of the Italian Society of Andrology and Sexual Medicine, explains that such problems worsen “when young men’s sexuality develops independently from real life sexual relationships.” The National Center for Biotechnology Information has published dozens of studies linking pornography use to difficulty in developing relationships with members of the opposite sex, learning how to court partners, and maintaining relationships with intimate partners. There is even research indicating pornography harms the relationship between children and caregivers. In 2016, sociologist Gail Dines wrote in the Washington Post that it is impossible to dismiss pornography as “harmless fantasy” considering that “After 40 years of peer-reviewed research, scholars can say with confidence that porn is an industrial product that shapes how we think about gender, sexuality, relationships, intimacy, sexual violence and gender equality — for the worse.”
Considering the availability of free and unfiltered online porn — 12 per cent of all internet sites are pornographic and fully a quarter of online search engine requests are related to sex — it would not be surprising if one estimate that the average age of first exposure to internet porn is 11 years old is, in fact, accurate. But even if that figure is exaggerated, many pre-teens and adolescents are accessing pornography; one study found three quarters of all teenage boys report having a friend who regularly views pornography while another found two thirds of teenage boys admitting to viewing porn in the past year. And these habits are shaping these boys’ views of sex and sexuality. In a 2010 study, “Aggression and Sexual Behavior in Best-Selling Pornography Videos,” Ana Bridges and her colleagues found that 88 per cent of the best-selling and most-rented pornography films contained scenes with physical aggression, “generally spanking, gagging, choking or slapping,” and nearly half contained verbal aggression. Men committed 70 per cent of all aggressive acts and women were the targets 94 per cent of the time.
The most comprehensive analysis of the harm pornography causes beyond the individual is “The Social Costs of Pornography,” the findings and recommendations that came out of a conference co-hosted by the Witherspoon Institute and Social Trends Institute in 2010. Citing dozens of studies and reports, it states pornography consumption “has negative effects on individuals and society.” From depicting women in ways that devalue half of humanity to undermining the values of healthy relationships (respect, attachment, fidelity), porn undermines human relationships. It is hardly surprising that a 2005 Social Science Quarterly report found that individuals who had extramarital affairs were three times more likely to have used internet porn than internet users who did not have an affair; and, individuals who paid for sex with a prostitute were four times more likely to have used online pornography. Lab studies from the 1980s found that exposing men to pornography was correlated to men placing less value on fidelity, more value on casual sex, and increases in aggressiveness. Studies in Italy and Australia of adolescents who sexually abuse or harass others found perpetrators were significantly more likely to have viewed pornography in their formative years. An Italian study of adolescent girls who view pornography found they were more likely to also be victims of harassment and sexual violence. Also, a 2003 Women’s Health study found adolescent girls who view porn are more predisposed to engage in high-risk sexual behaviour, including oral and anal sex.
Another class of pornography victims is the producers. Porn actors are much more likely to have sexually transmitted infections. Despite porn industry claims that STIs are closely monitored, a 2012 Journal of Sexually Transmitted Diseases study found that a third of 168 “adult film actors” tested had a previously undiagnosed STD. One of the authors stated, “One important finding of this study is that performers had more undiagnosed infections than previously thought and were thus more likely to transmit these infections despite compliance with screening standards common to the industry.” About one in six female porn stars had simultaneous oral, vaginal, and anal STIs. Furthermore, while most sexually-exploited trafficked women and children are victims of prostitution, the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children and the Department of Justice both recognize that pornography “adds to the serious problem of sex trafficking” with a growing number of arrested human traffickers found with cameras that are used to create and sell pornography.
Yet another class of pornography victims are those sexually and physically assaulted by pornography users. Since the 1980s, studies have shown a link between sexual violence and violence against women and porn use among perpetrators of such crimes.
There is overwhelmingly evidence that pornography is harmful to users, their families, and the broader population.
For those who believe policies should be based on evidence, not value judgments, the case against pornography is overwhelming. The social science seems to prove the wisdom in most major religions, including Christianity, Judaism, and Islam, having all condemned pornography as a sin or moral failing. Pornography turns the object of sexual desire into objects rather than equals, degrading sex to a transactional function, rather than an expression of the unity of partners taking part in God’s ordained procreative act. Those unwilling to listen to the moral arguments against pornography should still be able to hear the cry against pornography that researchers have found documenting the dangers that the pervasive porn culture inflicts on society.
