by Неизвестный
Pornography increases sexually imposing behaviors. Studies of aggression in the laboratory must use proxy tasks, as one obviously cannot ethically put participants in danger.38 To deal with this problem, the authors of one study investigated a more subtle form of sexual aggression: exposing a woman with known negative attitudes toward sexually explicit material to erotica or pornography.39 The female was a confederate supposedly engaged in a memory task, and the participants (both men and women) were instructed to attempt to distract her by showing her a series of slides. They could choose from pictures of sports, autopsies, nudes, partners engaging in sexual acts, or sexual deviance (including bondage). They knew the woman disliked sexually explicit material, and they also knew that all categories of slides were equally distracting to her.
Of the males, 72% ignored the woman’s stated dislike of sexually explicit materials and showed her slides from one of the three explicit categories, while 44% of the females did so. The authors replicated the experiment, but this time the participants were told that the female was neutral about sexually explicit materials. Female use of the sexually explicit slides was similar to that of the previous experiment (41%), but significantly fewer males (54%) showed the sexual material. The authors suggest that this type of disrespect toward a woman’s stated preferences has implications both in the workplace for sexual harassment, and in the home for romantic relationships. Specifically, men may use sexual media or locker-room talk in an instrumental way—to distract, impose, or subtly aggress against women (especially women with a known dislike for such media). In relationships, perhaps this means that men may use sexual media to “get back” at a partner when angry.
PORNOGRAPHY’S EFFECTS WITHIN ROMANTIC RELATIONSHIPS
There are numerous ways in which sexually explicit materials can be incorporated into romantic relationships. For example, couples may choose to view such materials together, as an enhancement to their sex lives. Many couples who have done so have felt positively about such shared use.40 Sexually explicit materials may be acceptable alternatives to sexual intercourse when a partner is absent or simply too tired for sexual relations. In such instances, the use is usually perceived as benign by both partners.41 Sexually explicit materials have been used successfully by numerous marital and sex therapists to enhance lovemaking in romantic relationships.42
However, more often than not pornographic materials are used outside of the relationship, in private, and often without the knowledge of the romantic partner.43 The combination of secrecy, sexual activity outside the relationship, and the user’s perceptions of the alternative “reality” portrayed in pornography have led significant numbers of women to find their partners’ use disturbing.44 Studies of the effects of pornography on romantic relationships show that they have reasons for concern.
Pornography use can be addictive. A clear, negative consequence of pornography use is that it may escalate to the level of addiction.45 The negative effects of compulsive use—use that occurred despite negative consequences to the person’s occupational or relationship functioning—may be obvious, such as the loss of a job due to surfing adult websites on the company computer, but may be more insidious, such as role disruption that occurs when a husband spends significant portions of his evenings online masturbating to explicit images rather than being with his family.46 In fact, increasingly, pornography use is becoming implicated in marital ruptures.47 Depression and stress are risk factors for compulsory use.48
Women are reluctant to enter into relationships with frequent pornography users. The discovery of a partner’s use of pornography can be a traumatic event.49 Some women report feeling shocked, hurt, and confused when they learn of the nature and extent of their partner’s sexual activities. One study investigating whether foreknowledge of a potential romantic mate’s use of pornography would affect intentions to enter into a serious, long-term relationship asked college men and women to view numerous mock online dating website-like profiles of individuals and to rate their interest in pursuing a long-term romantic relationship with each person.50 Women had significantly lower intentions to pursue a relationship with a potential mate who frequently used pornography. In contrast, men’s knowledge of a potential female partner’s pornography use was completely unrelated to their pursuit intentions.
DECREASED SATISFACTION
Pornography leads to decreased satisfaction with a romantic partner. The association between use of pornography and dissatisfaction in romantic relationships has been shown. Even short, experimental situations involving a one-time exposure to popular pornographic depictions create negative consequences for males’ evaluations of their romantic partner’s attractiveness and how in love with them they feel. Compared with men who watched a neutral film, men who watched a pornographic film subsequently rated themselves as less in love with their romantic partner.
In a sample of internet users, happily married people were 61% less likely to report having visited a pornographic website in the prior thirty days.51 Similarly, a survey of heterosexual couples found differences in sexual satisfaction associated with men’s pornography use. Specifically, couples where men reported high use of pornography reported significantly lower sexual satisfaction than couples where men viewed less pornography.
In a two-part study, researchers first found that exposure to pictures of female centerfold models from Playboy or Penthouse significantly lowered both men’s and women’s judgments about the attractiveness of “average” attractive persons. This occurred regardless of whether or not they found the pictures to be pleasant.
In the second part of the study, centerfolds from Playgirl were used along with the Playboy and Penthouse centerfolds. After viewing the opposite sex models, participants were asked to rate how sexually attractive they felt their mate was. Men who had looked at the centerfolds rated their female partner’s attractiveness and scores on Rubin’s Love Scale significantly lower compared with the males who had not seen the centerfolds, but women’s ratings did not show this effect. This supports the notion that in this culture men find physical attractiveness to be more central to their sexual response than women, and that consumption of popular pornographic magazines may adversely affect males’ commitments to monogamous relationships. It also validates women’s experiences that they are being unfavorably compared with the impossible ideal portrayed in pornography and erotica.52
Very strong experimental evidence demonstrates that pornography can negatively impact sexual satisfaction within a current, heterosexual relationship. Similarly, over a six-week period, participants in one study viewed either common, non-violent pornographic videotapes or sexually innocuous comedic acts taken from prime time television.53 Following repeated exposure to pornography, sexual satisfaction significantly decreased for both men and women in their partner’s displays of affection, physical appearance, sexual curiosity, and actual sexual performance. More general items of satisfaction (e.g., general life happiness, satisfaction in non-romantic relationships, and so forth) remained unchanged, showing that the reduction in satisfaction was specific to the sexual partner of the participant, not a decline in satisfaction overall.
Although men’s use of pornography has a demonstrated negative relationship to satisfaction with a romantic partner, women’s use is more complex. In one study of heterosexual couples, women’s use of pornography was positively associated with their male partner’s relationship and sexual satisfaction.54 The researcher suggests that this difference may be explained by the primary reason for use of pornography: For men, it was a masturbatory aid, but for women, it was part of lovemaking with their partner.
To explore further the relationship between shared versus solitary use of pornography, another study examined survey data for men and women who reported being in a romantic relationship.55 Approximately half of survey participants reported viewing explicit materials with their partners, and they reported higher relationship and sexual satisfaction. These results were particularly strong for men. The
researchers believe that this may be due to the different sorts of explicit materials that tend to be marketed toward individual male users versus couples. Sexually explicit videos marketed to couples tend to emphasize story lines and foreplay and afterplay, use softer lighting, and include less focus on genitalia and fewer close-up shots of coital activity.56 (Currently, I am exploring this further in a study of forty romantic couples.)
PROBLEMATIC USAGE
Pornography users may not see their use as problematic . . . A survey of 9,177 internet users found that 70% kept secret from their romantic partner how much time they spent online in their sexual pursuits.57 While most (68%) felt their online sexual pursuits did not interfere with any area of their lives, follow-up analyses found that 93% of males and 84% of females admitted that others in their lives had complained about their online sexual activities.58 Another study of web users found that participants without internet sexual experiences were significantly more likely to rate the use of pornography as an act of infidelity compared with users.59
. . . However, partners of users are affected. The use of pornography not only affects the attitudes and behaviors of the consumer, it affects his or her partner’s well-being. In the most extreme example, a study of women entering a program for battered women in a large metropolitan city showed that a partner’s pornography use nearly doubled the odds that a woman reported being sexually assaulted by her partner.60 Forty-six percent reported being sexually abused, and 30% reported their partners used pornography. Fifty-eight percent identified their partner’s pornography use as having played a part in their sexual assault. Although alcohol reduces inhi- bitions, alcohol use did not significantly increase prediction of sexual assault above and beyond that of pornography use alone.
Partners of identified “sexual addicts” (ninety-one females, three males) were interviewed in one study to determine the effects their partner’s cybersex use had on their romantic relationships.61 The effects they reported included feelings of hurt and betrayal, lowered self-esteem, mistrust, decreased intimacy, anger, feelings of being unattractive and objectified, feeling their partners had less interest in sexual contact, pressure from the partner to enact things from the online fantasy, and a feeling that they could not measure up to the women online.
Interestingly, women who had had frequent, repeated exposure to pornography and found it difficult to avoid in their daily lives are the most negative about such materials (29% of the sample). 62 These women disliked pornography immensely because of its negative images of women and unrealistic standards of physical attractiveness. They tended to see women as being victimized or violated in such materials.
Over half of these women were involved with male consumers of pornography, and most felt negatively about this. They identified with the females portrayed in such materials. They had argued with their partners about their use, had felt rejected by it, reported that it had a negative impact on their relationship, and believed part of how they were being treated by their partners was a result of the pornography use.
Also noteworthy, women who held neutral to mildly positive views on pornography (7% of the sample) were nonetheless conflicted about its impact on their personal romantic relationships.63 They did not feel pornography showed violence and victimization of women, nor did they believe it was related to violence against women. They viewed themselves as very distinct from the women in the pornography. However, they did feel that it created unrealistic standards of physical attractiveness and sexual prowess, and that this had hurt their self-esteem or made a partner’s use of pornography emotionally painful to them.
When asked to imagine a scenario where their partner used sexually explicit materials to engage in solitary sexual stimulation, women had fewer positive reactions and more negative reactions, while men were more likely to view a partner’s use of sexually explicit materials as an attempt to enhance the couple’s sexual experience.64 Both men and women disagreed slightly that solitary sexual stimulation was due to problems in the romantic relationship, particularly when no use of pornographic materials accompanied the masturbation. Participants did not react negatively to this sort of sexual activity, perhaps because the scenarios were hypothetical and described as taking place when the partner was out of town. Reactions might have been considerably more negative if the partner was described as available at the time of the behavior, since that would more clearly show the partner choosing the sexually explicit material and/or masturbation over sexual relations with their partner.
To explore this possibility, a similar study asked college women to read a series of descriptions of romantic couples in which the male partner used pornography, some when his partner was in town, some when his partner was out of town.65 The study participants rated the women in the stories as being less satisfied with their bodies and their relationships when the partner was a heavy user of pornography, and as even less satisfied when the partner was in town and presumably available for sexual relations.
When how partners feel about the use of pornography in a real-world context rather than a hypothetical scenario is examined, the results are clearer. One study examined conversations with women who identified their partners as pornography “addicts,” were quite upset over this use, and were seeking help from an online, anonymous, public forum. The study found that the woman’s partner’s use of pornography was associated with her having numerous devastating interpretations of her role in his use, his moral character, and the state of their romantic relationship.66 Themes of the women’s self-descriptions included seeing herself as the reason for her partner’s use (“I am not attractive enough,” “I should be more available”), seeing the partner as uncaring or selfish (“If he loved me, he wouldn’t hurt me this way,” “I’ve told him it bothers me and he still uses pornography; he must not care about me”), and viewing the relationship as a farce (“We pretend like everything is fine, but really our relationship is sick and unhealthy”).
Another study conducted a web-based survey of 100 women whose partners used pornography. Nearly one-third reported moderate to high levels of distress about their partner’s use of such material.67 They reported feeling as though their partners were not interested in making love to them, but during sexual intercourse were instead picturing the women they had seen in the pornography. They also felt their partners were less trustworthy, usually because they would keep the use of pornography a secret (even when they did not object to it).
Nearly three-quarters reported feeling that the partner’s use negatively affected their own self-esteem. Some felt they had failed their partners sexually; if they had been better sexual partners, their partners never would have had to turn to such material for sexual satisfaction.
AN INTRIGUING FINDING
These studies show that, for a significant minority of women in heterosexual romantic relationships, their partner’s use of pornography negatively impacts their perceptions of themselves, their partners, and their relationship, but that a majority express either neutral or positive attitudes toward it. While the distressed and broken marriage merits our clinical attention, this intriguing and consistent finding merits our scientific attention. Why do some women report interpersonal difficulties stemming from a partner’s use of pornography while others do not? What characterizes couples who are able to accommodate such use successfully, perhaps even in a manner that enhances the self-reported quality of their relationship, while others become so distraught that they consider divorce or even suicide?
This phenomenon remains a mystery, but its solution may provide us with insight regarding the mechanisms by which pornography exerts its negative effects. Currently, I am exploring this question in a study of forty heterosexual couples. Although these data are not yet available, I am certain that they will generate numerous fruitful pathways for future research that will continue to enhance our understanding of this important area of study.
SUMMARY
As pornography has become increasingly accessible
, it has played a more prominent role in romantic relationships and in shaping sexual norms. The experimental and survey data reviewed above suggest that there is cause for concern: Young men and women who report higher pornography use, and from earlier ages, engage in more risky sexual behaviors. Compulsive pornography use is hurting some marriages and increasingly is playing a role in divorce. Although there is growing recognition of its potential for harm, therapists are largely untrained in the many ways pornography use can impact individuals, couples, and families. An important first step is acknowledging the role pornography plays in these negative life events. However, we must continue to research how, for whom, and why, so that we can help those who have been hurt and help prevent future harm.
PART TWO:
MORAL PERSPECTIVE
THE ABUSE OF SEX
Roger Scruton
We are a long way from the days when homosexuality was described as a perversion, pornography as an offense against public morals, and masturbation as “self-abuse.” The old morality that condemned sex outside marriage and saw nothing wrong with treating homosexuality as a criminal offense, even if it has a following in the Muslim world, has few adherents in the West. We have moved on at such a pace in the last half-century that to many people any talk of sexual morality at all appears quaint. If there is sexual misconduct, it is only a special case of the more general sin of forcing, defrauding, or manipulating other people into doing something they do not really want to do. If they really do want to do it, and the feeling is mutual, then what on earth is wrong?
That is the view I wish to challenge. What I say may not persuade everyone; indeed, it may not persuade anyone. But I will have achieved half of my purpose if I convince you that the argument is not about consent but about the very nature of the sexual act and the desire expressed in it.