Thank you so much for inviting me to speak. I appreciate your interest in this topic.
I'm going to present my case that society has become “pornofied”. By that I mean that sex has become a product, that the body is now seen as a commodity. If it's a product, you can sell it; if you can sell it, you can steal it. The sexual exploitation industry includes pornography, strip clubs, prostitution, and sex trafficking; and the sexual violence and sexual abuse phenomenon includes sexual harassment, rape, and incest. The sexual exploitation industry and the sexual abuse phenomena are a seamless, interconnected continuum that cannot be separated.
I want to talk for a minute about learning. Psychologists have studied the phenomenon of learning, and what they find is that pictures are compact carriers of meaning, that learning is deeper if you're rewarded for the behaviour, and the orgasm is very rewarding. Learning is deeper when you have role models that are showing us the behaviour and if those role models are rewarded. Learning is deeper in the presence of arousal, and antisocial behaviours are learned and expressed more when you think you're anonymous and no one can see you.
Therefore, pictures, rewards, role models, arousal, and anonymity all produce greater learning, which are all phenomena present in Internet pornography, making pornography, especially Internet pornography, a perfect learning environment, except for the fact that everything it teaches you is a lie.
Psychologists now call Internet pornography the new crack cocaine. What is it teaching us?
The first thing it's teaching us is permission-giving beliefs. Permission-giving beliefs are beliefs that tell us what I'm doing is normal, it doesn't hurt anybody, and that everybody is doing it. Therefore, I don't need to change my behaviour. Those who have a problem with my behaviour are wrong, crazy, and prudish.
For example, some permission-giving beliefs believe all men go to prostitutes, all people want sex with all people all the time. Women enjoy being raped. Women enjoy degrading sex. Children like to have sex with adults.
It also produces miseducation about sexuality. Pornography tells us that sex is not about intimacy, caring, love, or respect. It's not about marriage or having children. Sex is recreational. You don't need to know your partner. Sex with strangers is the most intense and the best kind of sex. Sex is adversarial. Pornography is a one-way street that focuses only on your own pleasure, and there's no need to consider the needs or feelings of others. Also, sex is a male entitlement. Men need sex, and women's bodies are just sexual entertainment for men.
Pornography includes performers who never say no, and never reject sexual advances. This increases unrealistic expectations about others, entitlement for sex, frustration with others who say no, and the reduced awareness and skill of noticing the unwillingness of partners.
From this point on, I'm going to talk about research findings. I can't talk about the more than 200 studies that have been done on this, or the tens of thousands of subjects, but let me give you some of the findings.
In the research we found that men who use pornography think that women enjoy rape, that she got what she wanted when she was raped. They're more accepting of the rape myth, which is a set of beliefs that are untrue about rape, and they also believe that rapists deserve less time in prison. They have an adversarial view of sex. They have more callous sexual beliefs. They're more accepting of violence against women. They use more sexual terms to describe women. They see women as sex objects. They have reduced support for the women's liberation movement. They rate their partners as less attractive, are less satisfied with their partner's sexual performance, have a greater desire to have sex without emotional involvement. They have a greater desire and acceptance of sex outside of marriage for married people, are less child-centred, and are less desiring of female children.
They are willing to have sex with individuals who are 13 to 14 years old, are sexually attracted to children, and less likely to think that pornography needs to be restricted from children.
The increasing use of pornography is related to higher psychopath scores. Those are the thinking effects. The behavioural effects are these: sexual dysfunction of men who use pornography; erectile dysfunction; premature ejaculation; retarded ejaculation, especially in younger men. In one study, 58% of the male participants, with an average age of 25, had erectile dysfunction with women, but not with pornography.
The recent brain image studies show us that pornography users have what's called “teen brain”, impulse centres more active than the rational centres; “cocaine brain”, that is, pornography produced as a similar brain pathway as cocaine. They have less grey matter, less brain sensitivity to sexual stimuli, and less brain connectivity.
They have more sex partners, are less attracted to their sex partners, are less interested in actual sex with their partners, and ask their partners to act out scenes in pornographic films. They have more affairs if they're married, and are more likely to prostitute women.
In fact, in one study, 25% of the 19- to 21-year-old males said that they had either already prostituted a woman or planned to in the future. The more pornography these males used, the more likely they were to prostitute a woman or to say they would in the future, and those who prostituted women were more likely to engage in non-consenting sex. Men who go to strip clubs are most likely to engage in non-consenting sex.
Man who use pornography engage in more behavioural aggression, are more likely to sexually abuse partners whom they have battered, use violent sexual fantasies to get themselves aroused, and are more likely to actually harass women. They are more likely to engage in date rape, stranger rape, and marital rape. They are more likely to verbally coerce sex, physically coerce sex, and use drugs and alcohol to coerce sex.
The earlier male children are exposed to pornography, the more likely they are to engage in non-consenting sex. There's a greater use of pornography among juvenile sex offenders, adult sex offenders, child molesters, and incest offenders. Men who are convicted of using child pornography later admit that they had sexually abused children as well.
The diagnosis of pedophilia is found more in child pornography users than even in child rapists.
The three factors that have been identified as connected with sexual violence are hostility toward women; a belief that sex is casual, non-intimate, recreational, and adversarial; and the use of pornography.
U.S. statistics are horrific. One in eight women is raped. Twenty-five per cent of college females experience a rape or an attempted rape. Fifty per cent of women are sexually harassed in their lifetime, and 38% of females have been sexually molested by 18.
The effects on women are these.
Women exposed to pornography are more likely to accept the rape myth, have more sexual fantasies that involve rape, and think that rapists deserve less time in jail.
They also have reduced support for the women's liberation movement. They're more negative about their bodies, think their male partners are more critical of their bodies, and have less sex. The more pornography a young adult female uses, the more likely she is to be a victim of non-consenting sex.
Let's look at the research on kids.
Kids who are exposed to sexualized media are more likely to have engaged in oral sex, anal sex, and sexual intercourse. They are more likely to have more negative attitudes towards condoms, have not used contraception in the last intercourse, have not used contraception in the last six months, have an earlier initiation to sex, have more sex partners, have had more than one sex partner in the last three months, and have sex more frequently. They are more likely to have a strong desire to conceive, and in fact are more likely to get pregnant.
They are more likely to engage in more sexual harassment, and in more non-consensual sex. They are more likely to test positive for chlamydia, have used alcohol and other substances in their last sexual intercourse, have higher sexual permissiveness scores, and have less progressive gender role attitudes.
The philosopher Roger Scruton has said that from his point of view, the damage that pornography causes is that it threatens the loss of love in a world where only love brings happiness.
Thank you.
