His Porn, Her Pain, Confronting America's PornPanic with Honest Talk about Sex
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Making repetitive decisions despite negative consequences does not mean that someone is out of control or addicted. And do keep in mind that feeling out of control is not the same as being out of control. For more on the important subject of “porn addiction,” see page 159.
• Don’t assume you know what porn use means to this person at this time.
Disrespect for his wife? Expression of insecurity? Commitment to stay in a sexless marriage? Wrestling with shame about taboo fantasies? Something else entirely? We have no idea until we ask, listen, and ask some more.
Any source that states “porn use always means such-and-such” should be disregarded for that statement alone.
• Remember that fantasy generally doesn’t predict behavior.
We all know that in non-sexual arenas, fantasy rarely predicts behavior. People commonly fantasize about robbing a bank, killing their boss, giving their children to Mark Zuckerberg—and yet they rarely do so. It’s the same with porn. Porn reflects fantasy far, far more than it reflects desire. And it predicts behavior even less. Just as porn isn’t a documentary, don’t assume that a given client’s porn preferences are a literal depiction of their sexual preferences, or how they wish to relate to women, men, or sex.
A substantial number of women enjoy fantasizing during sex about being raped, but there isn’t a single woman who actually desires that.
• Don’t confuse politics with clinical/pastoral work.
For example, you may be concerned that people who consume pornography are motivated to commit violence against women (although as we’ve already seen, the data generally refutes this concern). Unless you think your current client is particularly vulnerable to such a motivation, your concern about “men” would be irrelevant regarding his case. The same is true about any concerns you have about “men” supporting an industry that you consider unsavory or even involved with human trafficking (again, the data refutes this concern). That’s a political, not a clinical consideration, and it’s inappropriate for you to discourage a client from using porn because of it.
• If appropriate, do raise your clients’ porn literacy.
Sometimes a porn consumer and/or his partner will benefit from their increased literacy regarding porn. Part of that is challenging people about the myths we’ve already discussed. It also includes making sure clients know:
~ Porn isn’t a documentary; real sex and real bodies aren’t like that.
~ Real sex doesn’t feel the way porn looks.
~ Porn omits parts of sex that most people consider important, including kissing, embracing, talking, laughing, and contraception.
~ A sexual encounter in real life almost never starts the way it begins in porn. It generally requires conversation, a smile, and a gentle touch.
~ Without scripting and a lot of preparation, much of what takes place in porn would be very uncomfortable, extremely unlikely, or simply impossible.
~ Most people never do some of the commonest things in porn: ejaculating on a woman’s face; anal sex; threesomes; women squirting during orgasm; sex with strangers; same-gender sex to orgasm. There isn’t anything wrong with these, but porn makes them seem common, and they are actually very unusual in the general population.
• Don’t assume that if you get a man to use less porn, he’ll have more desire for his wife or girlfriend.
This is like assuming that if someone eats less ice cream, they’ll eat more broccoli. If a man wants to increase his desire for his partner, techniques include focusing on the parts of her that he finds attractive, speaking with her about specific activities, addressing contraception, discovering and repairing old resentments or wounds, and improving their relationship. Most of all, we’d want to find out what has reduced his desire for her (if he ever had any), and the extent to which he has desire for anyone.
When masturbation is a form of self-soothing, or reassurance of function, or an experience of autonomy, taking it away hardly helps to enhance a relationship with a partner.
• Remember that for some people, what looks like overinvolvement with porn is actually overinvolvement with the Internet.
We’re all still learning how to cope with the Internet’s unlimited hunting opportunities, the unheard-of variety of images of whatever we’re interested in (puppies, movie stars, lasagna), and the fact that this extraordinary picture-and-word contraption is available for both work and play. In fact, many people’s lifestyle has completely blurred the distinction between work and play. One man’s lost-in-porn is another man’s (or woman’s) lost-in-Disney memorabilia or compulsive Downton Abbey sneak-watching in between customers.
• Remember that adult porn is not a gateway to, or the same as, child porn.
America’s porn industry is a multi-billion dollar enterprise marketing a legal product. They have no interest in expanding into a profoundly illegal market niche that everyone knows will get you bankrupt, jailed, and brutalized.
Everyone acting in American commercial porn must be certified as 18 and older. People who like to look at porn featuring young-looking actresses know they’re looking at adults, even though they may like pretending they’re looking at high school students. There is no evidence that such fantasy viewing leads to a demand for highly illegal, elusive, and obscure porn featuring actual minors.
• Therapists, social workers, clergy: Remember that your profession is in the grip of a PornPanic, too.
This means your training in pornography is probably limited or even misinformed; it probably includes a political correctness that limits dissenting voices with actual data or alternative counseling approaches; you face a mass media and public demanding that you compromise your professional principles to deal with their fear, anger, and confusion; and you face clients who are highly emotional about the subject, frightened for their family, and possibly overreacting to events in their lives.
• If you’re going to counsel people about parenting around porn, you need to know what kids do around it.
If you’re interested, go to websites that serve kids’ needs around sexual information. You may be surprised at the frankness with which kids are discussing sex and with which educators are responding to them. You’ll probably be surprised at the sophistication with which young people navigate websites, social media, and their own devices when it comes to porn, sexting, and pursuing information.
Great websites in this regard are Scarleteen; Sex, etc.; SIECUS; and Laci Green’s video blog, Sex Plus.
• You need a definition of healthy porn use.
If you don’t have one and don’t want one, you’re probably not prepared to deal with cases in which pornography is an issue. It’s up to the client to decide whether he wants to discontinue using pornography, not you.
• Remember that just because a case involves porn there isn’t necessarily a porn problem. Here are examples of cases that include porn which are about much more than porn:
~ He pressures his wife to watch porn with him, although she doesn’t want to.
~ He demands his girlfriend do what he sees women do in porn.
~ She feels obliged to do what he demands.
~ He leaves evidence of his masturbation around the house despite the fact that (or perhaps because) she resents him masturbating.
~ She tells him she understands why he watches porn better than he does.
~ He carelessly leaves porn on his computer or device so that his kids stumble onto it.
~ He makes rude jokes about porn in the family or in public.
~ He spends rent money on porn.
~ They argue periodically about whether or not he’s “allowed” to watch porn.
~ He’s promised to stop watching porn, and then she catches him doing it and resents it.
~ She makes snide comments about porn whenever a TV show or the news gives her the opportunity.
~ She withdraws (emotionally and/or sexually) from her husband in disgust over his porn viewing.
~ She talks critically
to her kids about her husband’s or ex-husband’s porn viewing.
These are all examples of dysfunctional and irresponsible behaviors that happen to involve porn—but they could be about almost anything and look the same. For example, pressuring someone to watch football games on TV when they clearly dislike doing so; spending the rent money on fishing equipment or new sweaters; carelessly leaving sharp knives or valuables around where kids could hurt themselves or the family.
What may present as porn cases are often cases about power, responsibility, passive-aggressiveness, retaliation, existential loneliness, fear of growing old, etc. Look for those themes rather than getting distracted by the porn elements of a case.
• Do encourage couples to discuss sex more than pornography.
As I’ve said throughout this book, many couples with sexual difficulties find it almost impossible to discuss them with each other. Common difficulties include desire discrepancies; lack of orgasm or satisfaction; low frequency; conflict about preferences; infidelity; suspicion of infidelity (which is not the same thing as infidelity); problems with arousal or excitement; and the incredibly common situation of little or no sex in long-term relationships.
Pornography is an easy thing for couples to fight about, as it can involve issues of power, fantasy, violence, fear, arousal, gender, desire, masturbation, attraction, autonomy, dysfunction, rejection, and self-esteem, all without leaving the comfort of your own home. You might want to assess which of these any given client(s) really needs to discuss before delving into pornography.
EPILOGUE: A COMPLICATED CONSUMER PRODUCT
Because of our tormented relationship with sexuality, America loads a lot of things onto pornography. We blame it for the results of how we raise our kids, run our marriages, advertise consumer products, and make sexual decisions. We disapprove of the results of what we do, and then we blame porn for these results. Not only is this intellectually dishonest, it keeps us stuck getting what we don’t want. Because porn isn’t going away, our investment in blaming porn for what we fear, hate, and feel ashamed of guarantees more fear, more hate, and more shame.
The PornPanic enterprise most certainly makes our lives worse. As I said almost 10 years ago in America’s War on Sex, there’s an unlimited amount of money and power to be gained by scaring the hell out of Americans about sex. This is true regarding porn. And as we’ve seen in Part I, with the transition from the “immorality” problem to the “public health/danger” problem, more and more groups are jumping on the anti-porn bandwagon, making the PornPanic more intense and more frightening than ever.
These groups include anti-trafficking activists; anti-sex work abolitionists; Internet safety advocates; child safety advocates; radical feminists; religious leaders; anti-masturbation crusaders; sexual purity crusaders; conservative women’s political groups; politicians; anti-domestic violence activists; and people who make a living “treating” porn addiction.
Alternately cynical and naïve, the combined PornPanic enterprises actively promote gossip, rumors, and recycled junk “statistics” to show that porn is dangerous for not just its users, but for everyone else, too. Ironically, it’s some of these same groups that lobby against funding the science that could establish the actual impacts of porn. This is similar to the way the gun lobby has successfully helped Congress prevent government funding of public health research that could definitively answer questions about whether guns are dangerous—and then the gun lobby says, “There’s no proof that guns are dangerous.”
I don’t know anyone who uses porn who says, “We shouldn’t have research about porn’s effects.” But a lot of people who say that porn is dangerous lobby against scientifically researching porn’s effects. They counter the federal research of the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s that found no harm from porn by saying “today’s porn is different”—but then they block today’s scientists from studying today’s porn. (This is also the reason we lack sufficient data on the effects of viewing child pornography.)
By preventing research on the effects of porn, endlessly repeating Big Lies about porn’s effects, and simultaneously opposing sex education that addresses pornography honestly, the PornPanic perpetuates the problems we so much lament and fear. Because we don’t properly educate our kids about sex, don’t train health or mental health professionals in porn and how it’s used, and don’t have honest discussions about the uses of sexuality in advertising and the arts, we get to blame porn for a lot—and solve nothing.
In this regime, the enemy is clear, the only solution is increased ignorance, and the result devoutly wished is a narrowed scope of human sexual imagination.
This outcome will not happen. Instead, the opposite will: more porn, more confusion, more rancorous struggles on all sides, more attempts at censorship, and more marital strife. That’s the bitter harvest of PornPanic.
It’s interesting, however, to note the obsessive focus on negative outcomes of porn use. For obvious political and ideological reasons, there is little call for research (or even discussion) about possible positive outcomes of porn use. These positive outcomes might include:
Facilitate dialog with a partner
Get new ideas for erotic activities (costumes, positions, dialog)
Prevent/relieve boredom in long-term relationships
Endorse female sexual desire, agency, and pleasure
Normalize masturbation
Educate about female sexual anatomy
Model behaviors such as outercourse (non-intercourse sex)
The lack of this side of the conversation about pornography is telling. It tells us that the anti-porn crusade is about something other than porn, and that its agendas are about more than preventing negative outcomes. There’s a clear anti-sex agenda, often an anti-female sexuality agenda.
Many products in everyday use can be exploitative or dangerous, including cars, alcohol, Viagra, fireworks, smartphones, rock ‘n’ roll, tattoos, and even ibuprofen.
The positives of such products are always raised when their negative aspects are discussed. This is even true of professional football, a wildly popular product now fighting to control its public image and maintain its customer base. Whenever concussions or CTE are discussed, NFL spokespersons don’t deny football is dangerous, but contextualize this fact within a values statement that “yes, but all life involves risk, and football offers millions of participants and spectators a lot of good things.”1
Those responding to the common one-sided, negative view of pornography, by contrast, generally use unsophisticated, ineffectual arguments:
No, porn isn’t dangerous, or
It doesn’t matter if it is, because America’s tradition of free expression mandates porn’s availability, and consumers have a right to access this content.
While the first is mostly true and the second is entirely true, this is simply not sufficient. In today’s America (as in yesterday’s), consumers aren’t willing to stand up on behalf of this product, and its creators similarly feel blocked from advocating for its positives. Scientists aren’t studying it. The media are caught in the very PornPanic they’re supposed to be reporting on, so it’s almost impossible for them to see through it clearly enough to describe it and its typical effects accurately.
And when people hypothesize this product’s unique negative impacts—such as badly educating young people or modeling disrespect to women—we should wonder why these critics aren’t in favor of public policies and social norms that would influence these issues about which they apparently care so much. Comprehensive sex education, more parent–child conversations about sex, better training of clinicians, a more fair and accurate media narrative, and new norms about how couples can talk about sexuality would be a good start.
In fact, a sufficient amount of the above would resolve most problems about pornography. As I’ve been describing throughout this book, the best approach to America’s destructive PornPanic is honest talk about sex. And lots of it.
NOTES
> INTRODUCTION
1. The adaptation of new technologies for sexual purposes: Pottery: Used as a medium for erotic art; Gutenberg: Some of the first books printed with the new movable type were erotic manuscripts; Rubber: Used for a new kind of condom; Nylon: Used for a new kind of hosiery.
2. The question was repeated by a government prosecutor in the British obscenity trial of Lady Chatterley’s Lover. See http://ahr.oxfordjournals.org/content/118/3/653.full.html
3. Even as the public (1) has made Internet pornography one of the most popular forms of entertainment in history, and (2) has made the Internet the cornerstone of all private, public, and commercial interactions with blinding speed.
4. ArmyTimes.com, http://www.armytimes.com/article/20100331/OFFDUTY03/3310301/Addicted-online-porn
5. DailyMail.co.uk, http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2261377/Porn-study-scrapped-researchers-failed-ANY-20-males-hadn-t-watched-it.html
CHAPTER ONE
1. Archive.org, https://archive.org/details/Perversi1965
2. Prochoice.org, http://prochoice.org/education-and-advocacy/violence/violence-statistics-and-history
3. A term introduced by the Family Research Council in 1992, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homosexual_agenda#Initial_usage
4. More than 17,000 people allege that Catholic priests were sexual with them as children. Allegations against more than 6,000 priests are deemed “credible.” BishopAccountability.org, http://www.bishop-accountability.org/AtAGlance/USCCB_Yearly_Data_on_Accused_Priests.htm
5. Oyez.org, https://www.oyez.org/cases/2002/02-102
6. Kennedy said that the Constitution protects “personal decisions relating to marriage, procreation, contraception, family relationships, [and] child rearing” and that homosexuals “may seek autonomy for these purposes.” The Court held that “the Texas statute furthers no legitimate state interest which can justify its intrusion into the personal and private life of the individual.” In his scathing dissent, Scalia described the decision as “… the Court asserts [that] the promotion of majoritarian sexual morality is not even a legitimate state interest.…” Law.Cornell.edu, https://www.law.cornell.edu/supct/html/02-102.ZD.html