So why should we be critical of these developments to define pornography use as an illness and medicalise it? The problem is that ordinary men who use pornography in an obsessive way would be turned from ‘perpetrators’ who indulge in watching the degradation of women for their sexual gratification, into ‘sufferers’ who cannot really help themselves – and hence have to be excused, pitied, put on medication and supported. That is, being ‘hooked’ on the misogyny that is pornography – and expecting their partners to perform pornsex – would be excused as a ‘personal’ illness rather than as part of the much bigger problem of women’s continuing subordination in society. ‘Ordinary blokes’ with supposedly ‘ordinary desires’ are let off the hook for indulging in watching other men violating women. Such convenient thinking – followed by an abdication of responsibility by the ‘addicted’ man – is a worrisome development.
The co-dependency Website ‘Porn Addict Hubby’ is illuminating. A female partner is turned into the ‘jailer’ to police every move of her addicted husband or partner:
Albeit an extreme case, let’s look at the example of a German woman who uses a shock collar on her husband to keep him from getting out of bed at night to surf for porn. The husband doesn’t have to take any responsibility for his actions or the consequences of poor job performance due to lack of sleep. The wife says they are willing to do whatever it takes to save their 12-year marriage.
In other words, the acceptance of ‘pornography-as-addiction’ could lead to the reversal of agency so that women rather than men become the problem. “Why can’t you keep me off this stuff? It’s your fault”, a relapsing husband might say. As ‘Porn Addict Hubby’ continues, quite rightly indignant: “How about some accountability software26 and boundaries? How about regular men’s support groups and joint counseling?” (
Even more problematic are developments in legal cases where pornography ‘addiction’ is cited in an attempt to mitigate the crime of sexual abuse. For example, on 12 April, 2011, in the Victoria County Court, Craig Coleman blamed ‘his sex and pornography addiction’ for violating his 3-year-old daughter with 3 counts of sexual penetration (Lowe, 2011a).
In her judgment on 13 May, 2011, Judge Frances Millane sentenced Coleman to 7 years in prison and ordered him to undergo ‘offense specific’ treatment to ‘contain strong sexual deviancy’ towards female children (Lowe, 2011b). His pregnant wife has since left him and his abused daughter has developed a fear of men, including her grandfather, and is displaying sexual behaviour.
These examples show the need to be extremely wary of jumping on the bandwagon of ‘pornography-as-addiction’. Accepting the medicalisation of yet another area of life gives more power to Big Pharma. As new drugs come on the market for this latest disease, so will experimental treatments with dangerous adverse advents.
But it is the industry, Big Porn Inc, that benefits most from this development. As the number of ‘addicts’ continues to grow (added to by men in treatment programmes who relapse), pornography users will demand new, even stronger gonzo, more risqué pornography. The acceptance of ‘porn-as-illness’ appears to assist some men who genuinely want to free themselves from this soul-destroying predicament through looking for (medical) help. However, I believe we set ourselves up to be further colonised by both Big Porn and Big Pharma.
Any discussion of ‘pornography-as-addiction’ must first and foremost hold the pornography industry accountable for their multi-billion dollar profits from sexual violence and abuse that brings up the question ‘is it an addiction?’ in the first place.
Conclusion
The topics covered in this chapter expose areas where Big Pharma and Big Porn reinforce one another. They are all intense commercial growth areas and rely on exploiting people’s desires – be it for the longest erection, the most alluring body, the ‘personalised’ perfect child, or power and control over the infinite offerings of 24/7 online porn domination of women.
Because they are presented as benevolent relief of suffering (e.g. of sexual problems, of infertility, of ‘addiction’), and are called issues of personal ‘choice’ in a postmodern age where nothing is ‘real’ anymore – and truth does not exist – it can be difficult to uncover the violence of patriarchy and capitalism that is driving Big Porn and Big Pharma. A feminist analysis focusing on the continued subordination of women is crucial if we are to understand how the medicalisation of every aspect of our lives in a culture saturated with pornography is taking away ‘real choices’ when it comes to living in harmony in our bodies – however imperfect they might be.
The global corporations of Big Pharma and Big Porn are reshaping before our eyes what it means to be human. Big Pharma has a long and well-documented history of manufacturing illness in order to sell pills. Feminist writers like Phyllis Chesler were among the first to identify the political investments in the corporate production of illness when she wrote Women and Madness in 1972. This radical suspicion is beginning to filter into the mainstream; there are increased critiques of antidepressants and of Ritalin (to drug unruly children), for instance. But the covert, implicitly ideological nexus of Big Pharma and hypersexual Big Porn – as I have exposed it in this chapter – has not received due attention.
Together Big Porn and Big Pharma represent the corporate policing of intimacy. To cling to neoliberal ideologies of ‘choice’ as an explanation for people’s obedience to these limited definitions of ‘a good life’ is to radically underestimate the impact of these multinational corporations on everyday commonsense understandings of health, happiness and well-being. We have to resist being turned into dissociated ‘Chemical Citizens’27 and being under the spell of cut-and-paste babymakers, cutters with knives, and cutters of words who tell us we are all wowsers and prudes who want to spoil their party of ‘just a bit of fun’. The future of children who grow up in this porn- and pill-saturated world is too important to be left to the laissez-faire ideology of free markets. There has to be real joie de vivre again – not plastic, not porn-infused, not misogynist, not racist, but instead full of possibilities for life-loving everyday politics for all.
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1 My heartfelt thanks go to Susan Hawthorne, Helen Pringle, Abigail Bray, Melinda Tankard Reist, Diane Bell and Maree Hawken who have all commented on this chapter. I really value your input; just occasionally I had to leave one of my ‘Swissisms’. When working on such distressing issues as this book contains, good friends are crucial. All shortcomings in this chapter are of course my own.
2 ‘Global pornographic revenues are approaching $100 billion …’,
3 ‘Want Longer Lasting Sex?’ is one of the many slogans by the Advanced Medical Institute (AMI) that are exhibited on towering billboards in Australian cities,
4 In March 2011, Pfizer reported global sales of $1.93 billion for Viagra, with Viagra Jet, a chewable, its latest offering, now selling in Mexico,
5 Long-term use of Sildenafil (Viagra) may lead to difficulty breathing, vision problems, headaches and flushing. Erections can last longer than 4 hours. Meika Loe (2006) has documented the less than happy reactions by female partners of Viagra users.
6 A similar British study published in 2007 found that only 18% of women perceived a one-time lack of orgasm and interest in sex as a problem. The figure fell to 6% when the women were asked if they were distressed by these events (King et al., 2007).
7 Leonore Tiefer deserves a medal for her decade-long, feisty resistance to the medicalisation of sex (‘sex for our pleasure or their profit?’), see
8 For example, see Sheila Jeffreys (2005, pp. 158–161) on the tragic death of German Lolo Ferrari in 2000. Ferrari was pimped by her husband for prostitution and pornography. Before she died from an overdose of prescription drugs, Ferrari weighed a mere 48 kg. She was a heavy user of pain killers as each breast had been surgically augmented and weighed more than 3kg, which meant she could barely stand up, and she rarely slept because of not being able to find a comfortable position. Eleven years after her death, a quick Google search locates hundreds of porn pictures of Ferrari. Pornography is indeed infinite prostitution (see Farley, this volume).
9 The so-called cervical cancer vaccines Gardasil and Cervarix are experimental vaccines against 2 strains of the human papillomavirus (HPV) that are associated with many, but not all, cervical cancers. At the time of writing (May 2011), there have been 94 deaths and 21,634 adverse effects associated with these vaccinations. There were 8,733 emergency room visits and 2,159 hospitalisations; 4,346 girls and young women did not recover. See
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