by Marty Klein
Such a crisis was also a tremendous marketing opportunity. The response was reinventing pornography as a Public Health Menace. Only the most extreme people talk about the immorality of watching porn anymore; instead, almost everyone who opposes porn now talks about how dangerous its use and existence are to consumers and to society.
As social scientist Alan McKee notes, when religious shaming goes out of vogue, “sin” is simply replaced with “unhealthy.”
And so government, activists, decency groups (both old and new) and most churches1 switched the anti-porn narrative from “porn is immoral” (vaguely bad for users) to “porn is dangerous” (concretely bad for everyone). Americans started hearing that viewing pornography caused consumers to rape and molest. And that it ruined marriages, damaged brains, stole erections, harmed teens, supported crime, scarred children, perverted adult desires, distorted men’s ideas about “normal” sex, damaged the actors and actresses who made it, led men to dehumanize women, and created addiction. This justified the demands, continuing to this day, that porn be restricted or even criminalized.
On the eve of his execution in 1989, convicted mass murderer Ted Bundy said that violent porn made him kill his many victims. James Dobson, executive director of Focus on the Family, proceeded to popularize this interview as “proof ” of porn’s pernicious effects, and demanded government action.2 Ridiculously, the views of a deranged psychopath are still being quoted as insight about public policy.3
Porn thus became a legitimate civic concern for whole new constituencies that weren’t being moved (or were even turned off) by the “immorality” argument, such as feminists, psychologists, addictionologists, criminal justice professionals, domestic violence activists, and anti-trafficking advocates.
* * *
As the increasingly sophisticated and increasingly ubiquitous Internet brought free, high-quality pornography to an increasing percentage of the American public, a number of groups and individuals became increasingly distressed. Although some of them—traditional allies, such as the Catholic Church and right-wing morality groups—did coordinate their response, many others acted on their own, for their own separate reasons. Nevertheless, the net effect was a broad attack on pornography by a variety of civic players—including some traditional opponents, such as feminists and the Catholic Church, brought together in a de facto alliance against a shared enemy.
Essentially, an ad hoc array of civic propaganda militias launched a full-scale war on the use of a legal product by 50 million people. That war continues today.
The key weapon in that war was the successful transformation of the primary cultural narrative about pornography. Porn use has been changed from a behavior that is immoral (for oneself) to a behavior that is dangerous (to everyone). Porn consumers are no longer seen as compromising primarily themselves, but rather as endangering everyone around them, from loved ones to neighbors to complete strangers.
Behavior (porn use) heretofore considered private has been reconceptualized as public (despite the fact that it is still done in private). Like other private sexual behaviors such as sodomy, marital swinging, sadomasochism, reading “obscene” books, and going to strip clubs, porn use has been “public-ized” by social fiat.4
Everyone who follows current affairs has seen the importance of controlling the social narrative of contentious events or political struggles. Look at the power of these contrasting labels in a wide range of issues:
global warming vs. climate change
gay marriage vs. marriage equality
pro-life vs. anti-choice (and pro-abortion vs. pro-choice)
lack of will power vs. alcoholism
mini-van vs. light truck
child abuse vs. no-nonsense discipline
illegal aliens vs. undocumented workers
homosexual agenda vs. civil rights for all
redevelopment vs. eminent domain property seizure
self-abuse vs. masturbation vs. self-pleasuring
In our instantaneously interconnected world, controlling the narrative of what’s going on is fully as important as controlling what’s going on.
As America continues to grapple with the chaotic, exponentially growing world of the Internet, anyone can identify themselves as a stakeholder regarding its supposed effects. Concerned about pornography, a wide range of groups has done so: addictionologists, feminists, psychologists, religious leaders, child advocates, government, sexual violence activists, media scholars, morality groups, and law enforcement, to name a few.5 This has led to odd political alliances; for example, conservative feminists working with anti-choice activists, Internet safety activists working with anti-technology home school advocates, or addiction therapists working with child safety advocates.
Acting mostly independently, each group uses its own tactics. In no particular order, these include:
Inventing the disease of “porn addiction,” blatantly redefining the word “addiction” without any clinical rigor
Declaring porn use a threat to marriage without any studies comparing marriages in which porn is and isn’t used
Resurrecting 30-year-old laboratory studies of porn’s effects on college student attitudes without acknowledging what, exactly, they measured and found
Citing tiny, exploratory neuroscience studies and implying they indicate that porn use affects long-term brain function
Inventing the disease “pornography-induced erectile dysfunction” (PIED), despite the lack of data showing an increase in erection problems in users
Defining porn use as “infidelity” despite most couples having no prior agreement about whether either will use porn during the marriage
Defining porn as “demeaning to women” despite most porn showing women in states of desire and pleasure, being fulfilled by a willing partner; various activists actually object to the use of vibrators, the focus on female “pleasure,” and depictions of female “enthusiasm”6
Portraying porn actresses as emotionally damaged people (without any evidence) further exploited by an uncaring industry
Saying the production and consumption of porn encourages sex trafficking, despite a lack of data indicating this
Saying that porn use is bad for teens’ brain development, using extremely hypothetical models
Conflating the effects of watching a lot of porn with the effects of high Internet and smartphone use
Ignoring the historic data on the incidence of sexual dissatisfaction in marriage
Ignoring government data on the decrease in rates of sexual violence, teen pregnancy, divorce, and other social pathologies since broadband made porn accessible to everyone, all the time
Distorting the typical content of porn, claiming it’s all dramatically violent
Note that virtually none of these arguments or strategies was used to oppose the creation or use of pornography as recently as 40 years ago.
The cumulative effect of these independent actions has been to create a coherent narrative of porn as a consumer product dangerous to both its users and to everyone else. The combined effect of these multiple, synergistic narratives is to create the impression that only people who are selfish, sick, desperate, lost, obsessed, oblivious, or criminal use the product.
And so 50 million people—three times the number of people who watched the World Series last year, more than the entire African-American population of the United States—has had their private recreation pathologized, demonized, and marginalized. Their private recreation is now a Public Health Danger.
Like all moral panics, today’s PornPanic is accompanied by massive amounts of misinformation repeated endlessly. If you live in America, you have heard the following myths not once or twice, but over and over. And from multiple sources: a religious figure here, a conservative feminist there, a media psychologist agreeing with a “victim” of porn, a child welfare or anti-trafficking advocate solemnly interviewed without challenge. When the public hears the same message from such a diversity of sources, echoing
each other’s false estimates, it becomes hard to imagine that they’re all wrong. But the following common myths are factually incorrect.7
Myths About Porn: The Nuts and Bolts of the Public Danger Model of Pornography
Myth: Porn is mostly violent and “misogynist.”
Fact: It’s mostly non-violent. It shows female sexual passion (e.g., women loving cunnilingus or fellatio), which some people define as misogynist. In any other context, problematizing female passion is considered unacceptable. The anti-porn assumption that depicting women as enjoying sex is misogynist should be seen as misogynist, too.
Myth: Watching porn causes erection problems, especially in young men.
Fact: There’s no data showing there are more erection problems now than before 2000, and no data that if there are more erection problems, they’re caused by watching pornography.
Myth: Porn destroys enjoyable, intimate relationships.
Fact: There’s no data that this occurs. There are people in relationships whose stability depends on ignoring or hiding sexual dissatisfaction; when porn viewing becomes an issue in a couple, it may appear as if porn viewing is responsible for the sexual dissatisfaction or relationship problems. No one, however, leaves a good intimate relationship for pictures of pretty young women (or men).
Myth: Most men hide their porn-watching from their partner because they know they’re doing something wrong.
Fact: Most men who watch porn don’t think they’re doing something wrong. When they hide their porn-watching it’s because they believe they have to protect their wives’ feelings, or because their wives have forbidden them from watching, so they must resort to secrecy—instead of challenging the unilateral prohibition, which could lead to conversations extremely uncomfortable for both parties.
Myth: Only a man would enjoy porn; women simply don’t like it.
Fact: Millions of women watch porn alone; as many as 10 million watch with their partner. Over 100 million copies of the Fifty Shades of Grey trilogy have been purchased—virtually all by women.8 It may lack photos, but yes, with explicit descriptions of sex, sexual feelings, and sexual bodies, this book is porn, porn, porn.
Myth: Watching adult porn leads to watching kiddie porn.
Fact: There is no evidence for this. In fact, the audiences for the two products have almost no overlap. Most adults find the idea of watching kiddie porn so repulsive that nothing could get them near it, certainly neither enjoyment of nor boredom with their current adult porn. The adult (legal) porn industry does not create kiddie (illegal) porn, and therefore doesn’t market it to consumers.
Myth: Porn is all about men’s sexuality and men’s pleasure.
Fact: This is contradicted by watching any random three minutes of almost all pornography featuring women. Women are generally portrayed as enjoying whatever activities in which they’re involved. Their characters almost always desire the sex they have, and almost always orgasm. If they provide their partner(s) with pleasure, they are usually shown enjoying it. Male viewers enjoy consuming depictions of women’s sexuality, ranging across women’s desire, arousal, pleasure, satisfaction, curiosity, communication, seduction, fantasy, preferences, domination, submission, and anatomy.
Myth: Watching porn encourages violence against women.
Fact: The rate of sexual violence toward women in America has declined since the rate of porn consumption dramatically increased.
The early studies on whether porn use encourages sexual violence was collected primarily from college students in a laboratory and focused primarily on self-reported attitudes toward women, rather than actual behavior (without ever studying any actual links between the two). Later studies used open-ended questions about actual porn use and actual male-female behavior; this research found little effect of porn use on sexual violence.
Myth: Neuroscience proves that watching porn can damage the brain (especially in the young) and even cause porn addiction.
Fact: The burgeoning field of psych-neuroscience reports similar changes in the brains of people cuddling puppies, enjoying sunsets, and watching porn. Neuroscientists do not claim that watching porn does anything—rather, this is the work of activists citing ambiguous reports of neuroscientists, which laypeople aren’t trained to evaluate.
The new disease of porn addiction is simply an updated version of the disease of sex addiction, created in the 1980s by prison addictionologist Patrick Carnes. Without the hallmarks of true addiction—changes in physical functioning, need for increased dosing, withdrawal symptoms, and continuing the activity when it isn’t enjoyable—it’s hard to take this claim seriously.
* * *
Misinformation like this creates a sense of distance and of porn’s Otherness, despite porn’s ubiquity. And the more people continue to feel porn is Other, the more that distance continues, which is critical for maintaining the Public Danger narrative of the PornPanic.
Through it all, the voice of porn consumers is conspicuously absent.
So how do we account for the persistent myths about pornography and the demonization of this product, a product used by more people than the number of adult Americans who drink soda every day?9 How do we account for the fear, the rage, the insistence that this product is pernicious when people are confronted with contrary evidence all the time—i.e., their own porn-watching mate doesn’t murder anyone, demean women, molest children, or look at child porn?
The anti-porn industry is strong and still growing. A quick review of Amazon.com, for example, reveals dozens of books written about the cultural and personal disasters caused by porn in just the last few years. And a wide range of websites attacks porn’s alleged harms, ranging from xxxchurch.com to nofap.com to pornharms.com—none involving a credentialed professional. This outpouring is both the result of and continuing contribution to a moral panic, similar to the ones we’ve seen in America periodically since before the founding of the Republic.
The transformation of opposition to porn from the immorality model to the Public Danger model matters for several reasons. It gives concerned sweethearts a new, worrisome explanation for their mate’s behavior, while it gives angry wives and girlfriends justification for saying their partners are doing something wrong (as opposed to “I don’t like it”). It encourages parents to worry rather than talk to their kids.
We’ll see how this looks in real people’s lives in Part III. It really does matter what narratives we’re marinating in.
* * *
Here’s an unusually clear picture of the Public Danger model of pornography, a model that invites everyone to mobilize against porn. In January 2016, the state legislature of Utah passed a resolution declaring pornography a Public Health Crisis (see next page). It’s an amazing document, asserting over a dozen false “facts”; attributing causation to pornography that isn’t documented; describing supposed social problems in ideological terms; and calling for young people to not abandon marriage.
The resolution ends with the faux compassionate, “… overcoming pornography’s harms is beyond the capability of the afflicted individual to address alone.”
To the extent that the Utah resolution names serious problems in society (such as misinformation about sexuality and violence toward women), those should be addressed via sex education, family conversations, porn literacy, well-informed therapists and school clinics, and parenting classes. Alas, the resolution suggests none of these. In fact, within weeks of passing this resolution, the very same legislature voted down a bill that would allow comprehensive sex education in Utah schools—a low-cost intervention scientifically proven to reduce many of the problems the resolution claims need addressing.
* * *
What is the only reasonable response to this fact-free declaration, this self-righteous pile of hellfire judgments (“deviant sexual arousal”?), this deliberate mischaracterization of private recreation from the state with the highest per capita use of porn in the United States?
Figure 3.1 shows what has happen
ed since the introduction of free, high-quality pornography into virtually every home in America.
CONCURRENT RESOLUTION ON THE PUBLIC HEALTH CRISIS STATE OF UTAH 2016 GENERAL SESSION
Be it resolved by the Legislature of the state of Utah, the Governor concurring therein:
WHEREAS, pornography is creating a public health crisis;
WHEREAS, pornography perpetuates a sexually toxic environment;
WHEREAS, efforts to prevent pornography exposure and addiction, to educate individuals and families concerning its harms, and to develop recovery programs must be addressed systemically in ways that hold broader influences accountable;
WHEREAS, pornography is contributing to the hypersexualization of teens, and even prepubescent children, in our society;
WHEREAS, due to advances in technology and the universal availability of the Internet, young children are exposed to what used to be referred to as hard core, but is now considered mainstream, pornography at an alarming rate;
WHEREAS, the average age of exposure to pornography is now 11 to 12 years of age;
WHEREAS, this early exposure is leading to low self-esteem and body image disorders, an increase in problematic sexual activity at younger ages, and an increased desire among adolescents to engage in risky sexual behavior;
WHEREAS, exposure to pornography often serves as children’s and youths’ sex education and shapes their sexual templates;
WHEREAS, because pornography treats women as objects and commodities for the viewer’s use, it teaches girls they are to be used and teaches boys to be users;
WHEREAS, pornography normalizes violence and abuse of women and children;
WHEREAS, pornography treats women and children as objects and often depicts rape and abuse as if they are harmless;
WHEREAS, pornography equates violence towards women and children with sex and pain with pleasure, which increases the demand for sex trafficking, prostitution, child sexual abuse images, and child pornography;
WHEREAS, potential detrimental effects on pornography’s users can impact brain development and functioning, contribute to emotional and medical illnesses, shape deviant sexual arousal, and lead to difficulty in forming or maintaining intimate relationships, as well as problematic or harmful sexual behaviors and addiction;
