Porn in US 'a public health crisis'
Sun, 18 May 2014 12:02 CDT
Porn sites get more visitors per month than Netflix, Amazon and Twitter combined
Pornography now is so widespread in the United States that it deserves to be addressed seriously as a major public health crisis, a panel of activists has said.
On the eve of a two-day conference on sexual exploitation, they suggested that porn be tackled in the same manner as teenage smoking or drunk driving.
"There's an untreated pandemic of harm from pornography," said Dawn Hawkins, executive director of Morality in Media, which has campaigned against pornography since 1962.
"There's a lot of science now proving that pornography is harmful," Hawkins told reporters at the National Press Club in Washington. "We know now that almost every family in America has been touched by the harm of pornography."
The Coalition to End Sexual Exploitation summit that opens on Friday in the Washington suburb of Tysons Corner aims to look at pornography as a complex social problem that needs to be framed as a public health issue.
Participants include health professionals, social workers, academics, feminists, faith leaders, campaigners against human trafficking and former members of the multibillion-dollar adult entertainment industry.
"This is a business with considerable political clout," said Gail Dines, a sociology and women's studies professor at Wheelock College in Boston and author of "Pornland: How Porn Has Hijacked Our Sexuality."
Porn sites get more visitors per month than Netflix, Amazon and Twitter combined, a third of all downloads contain porn and the Internet now hosts 4.2 million porn websites, said Dines, who is also president of the international feminist group Stop Porn Culture.
"Porn is without doubt the most powerful form of sex education today, with studies showing that the average age of first viewing porn is between 11 and 14 - and let me tell you, this is not your father's Playboy," she said.
"These degrading misogynist images have become the wallpaper of our lives and they are robbing young people of an authentic healthy sexuality that is a basic right of ever human being."
Donny Pauling, a former adult film producer for Playboy and others who also ran a network of adult websites before quitting the business in 2006, said he has personally seen the ill effects of the porn business on the women who appear in front of the camera.
He doubted that Miriam Weeks - a 19-year-old women's studies student at elite Duke University who caused a national stir recently when she came out as moonlighting Internet porn star Belle Knox - feels as "empowered" as she has claimed.
"I don't buy her story," Pauling said. "I recruited more than 500 first-timers into the business and there's never been one that came back and thanked me."
Mary Anne Layden of the University of Pennsylvania, who specialises in sexual trauma, said pornography has been a factor in every case of sexual violence that she has treated as a psychotherapist.
"The earlier males are exposed to pornography, the more likely they are to engage in non-consensual sex - and for females, the more pornography they use, the more likely they are to be victims of non-consensual sex," she said.
In an interview with Rolling Stone earlier this month, Weeks revealed that she started watching pornography at the age of 12 - and that she was once raped at a high school house party.
"There is going to have to be programs out there that get kids to understand how porn is manipulating them," Dines said.
And Layden suggested that if the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention got "interested in this as a public health issue, we can have success in the way that we had success with the issue of cigarette smoking".
I'll preface this post with the comment that I am pretty liberal and open minded about sex. What people do in private is none of my business - as long as people don't hurt eachother... it's all good. The thing is, porn (internet porn in particular), really changes people's expectations of partners, and dulls the senses regarding intimacy.
I watched "Don Jon" the other night - a recent movie about a porn addict. It really showed the outcome of the availability of porn in our world today. The guy couldn't get off without porn - even though he was very successful in bringing really beautiful women home. After they had sex, he's go in the other room to watch porn, so that he could feel complete. The movie was funny, and ended up being quite sweet, but it was also really sad in that I suspect it's at least partially true for most adult men.
I read a blog post that made the rounds on Facebook a while back. It was an open letter from this woman (I can't remember if she was famous or not) to her young teen son. It was all about porn and that although she resigned herself to knowing that he'd see it way too soon, and way too often, that she wanted to address what he saw and put it into perspective for him. Even just the fact that these people are actors and are performing for a camera - most getting paid and many using drugs. She talks in the letter about how women have hair that you will likely never see in porn (to think that most boys growing up will see hardcore porn videos before they have their own first KISS is insane). She urged her son to talk with his potential sex partner about things that his partner would like, versus assuming that anything that he'd seen on porn was ok to do.
I worry about my son with that. I check up on his computer, and know that's not something he's into right now, but there is no getting around it that by the time he's in college, it'll be pervasive.
Also, there are pressures on women to do things in bed that up until about 10 years ago, were not by any means standard stuff. As the porn industry pushes the envelope to retain their audience, the things that get moved to the category of "expectations" becomes further and further away from intimacy.
It's so hard to see that I've become "anti-porn". I know it sounds stupid, but I really do see myself as openminded, and I enjoy some good erotica literature on occasion - but what's happening is shifting our experience, and it seems that it is working very hard to dehumanize people, and steal women's power. It's not a moral issue, it's just a sociological issue.
I'll be done now... :)
lots of love,
k
With porn there is a significant dopamine reaction to the ability to rapidly change stimulating images. This neurochemical is what makes cocaine type drugs so addictive. The problem gets worse as tolerance sets in and the person now needs more "extreme" or more kinky images to stimulate the dopammine reaction. Individuals not only become desensitized to the other as a living human being, but also the begin to require more and more extreme and kinky activity just to enjoy themselves and get off.
Thus we see, IMHO, the epedemic of gang rapes in India (and here). This is a serious addiction which sometimes desroys many peoples' lives who are involved in all stages of the process, even quite peripherally. It is another indication of how our screen lives are making it more and more difficult for people - especially the young - to be actively relating to another human being. Another is the enormous increase in cop killings by, IMO, PTSD'd vets raised on first person shooter "games" and hired as cops.
see a new post: Have the police become a law unto themselves?
YIKES!
While I agree that pornography is very addictive and sends the wrong message about sex to adults and children alike, I don't know where, if a line must be drawn, to draw it. Should we outlaw all pornography? Is it okay for a couple to watch a porn flick as a prelude to sex? Should men be allowed to look at Playboy? Who should decide what is okay or what isn't? If we polled a hundred people on their comfort levels with various sexual acts we'd probably get a hundred different answers.
Clearly, children viewing pornography is a serious problem, especially when online access is so easily available. A possible solution is to make it harder to access these sites -- perhaps requiring registration and age verification.
The danger lies in government telling consentual adults what they can't do in their own home. I certainly don't want the porn police knocking on my door.
is a powerful tool for those who wish to control the internet. The mention of Madd should be enough to remind us of the pattern,,,a public awarenesscampaign, then the introduction of legislation backed by the emotions stirred by the issue,,,the buzz,few will stand against an issue like that, and those that do will be picked apart by the masses,,,,another moral issue....They want people to beg for it, the same way they wanted us to beg for rfid implants after 911.... I have talked with many women who were turned off to sex because of experiences with men who had obviously learned what they knew from the internet,,,,but I don't think this is the answer..There has to be another way
i walk a fine line between both lines of thought regarding porn. I have no prob with adults accessing/using/doing what is consensual. Access to kids/adolescents is a very real prob as most have stated. I raised two children in a home where their parents kissed in front of them, held hands and displayed affection in various ways that were appropriate when they were around. We answered their questions about sexuality as they arose. They saw us without clothes when we were dashing to the bathroom in the morning etc. We didn't act ashamed as we weren't.
I particularly remember a time at the dinner table, when my oldest was in fifth grade (so 10 yrs old) and in the middle of dinner she said "What's a blow job?" Now her dad's jaw hit the floor. Looking back I still laugh it was so comical but I said "it's when two adults use their mouths to give each other sexual pleasure." My daughter said "oh my gosh that is sooooooooooooooooooo grosssssssss." And I said, well someday you might see things differently my dear. That ended the conversation right there, but it opened up a line of communication regarding sexuality that has always remained open between us.
So I guess my feelings on this are don't make porn as accessible to kids, but that depends on parental controls, not neccessarily societal ones, and answer their questions, don't make them think naked bodies are taboo or anything else that they question is. We're way too uptight about sexuality here in the U.S. Maybe if more questions were answered directly about what sex in a loving adult relationship should be there would be less need to explore the seedier side of things. What's unfortunate is how many kids think porn is what 'loving' should look like. It opens them up to situations that are way beyond what they are really ready to handle.
I agree with your outlook on sexuality, Kristyne. As much as "Girls Gone Wild" type stuff is in your face in America, compared to other western countries, America is sexually uptight. Whether its the media or society itself, the message seems to be that sex and nudity are one and the same.
Years ago, I was a practicing nudist. Although the makeup of such camps vary (as some camps cater to swingers), the ones I frequented were geared towards families. Children who are raised in an environment where nudity is natural, don't see themselves as sexual objects or as body parts. The body is naturally beautiful and nudity is an expression of freedom, not sexuality.
When my daughters were teens I used to tell them that the half naked girls provacatively shaking their stuff on TV was not normal. It's propaganda. Sex sells. And it warps minds. Sex removed from the context of love undermines the integrity of human civilization. IMO.
My issue with porn is the public stuff that's supposed to be PG. See my comment at the Michael Jackson post. It seems to me that what's shown on TV and passed as entertainment these days, for instance at the half time super bowl is soft porn that our kids are being bombarded with constantly.
Sure, porn is great for adults. Part of it's appeal used to be the secrecy and "nautiness" of it. Now it's out in the open for children and everyone else to see in public. I find this porn angle to the music industry a complete turn off and I resent that innocense in our culture is being destroyed.
I totally agree with you Wendy. I find almost nothing on television either of much value at all. What's on during 'primetime' seems inappropriate for adolescents-and I know kids much younger are viewing all of it as well. Even the ads are way over the top. Like Kathy, I don't consider myself a 'prude' either, I grew up in the late 60's and 70's...the summer of love, sex, drugs and rock n roll...but what happened to letting kids be kids for just a little while. And if I begin talking about what's available for free online...we might be here for days. (I don't want censorship on the net either but geez what we can see.)
I volunteered in various capacities when my kids were in school, and I was amazed at some of the things I saw kids say and do. One I recall was two kindergarten boys discussing 'sucking pee pee's' - their exact words. OMG and where the hell did they learn that was my thought and that was over 20 years ago. Today school principles are dealing with stuff like that in hallways, lockerrooms and stairwells.
The graphic quality of entertainment media does our youth a definite disservice imo. We're seeing increased sexual assaults where the victims (and perps) are younger and younger and kids trading sexual favors like they're baseball cards....we aren't getting a 'safe sex' message across let alone teaching that sex isn't always love and love isn't always sex. Sometimes I feel like I am in mourning for the 'Leave it to Beaver' era some of us grew up in!
Kids could leave the house in the morning, play outside till the streetlights came on, if they did something wrong any mom in the neighborhood could call your mom and you were in deep sh*t... now I have to say....those were the days! (yikes I hated hearing that when I was young and I don't like saying it now!)
So I say a prayer for our lost innocence and ask for ways that we can regain just a little of it. (turning off the television and not supporting the programming is one way for me.) ok enough of my rant. I envision a world where all kids are protected, nurtured, and taught to Love and respect themselves first. Learn that, and they will Love and respect others as well. (tall order-I know)