Pornified

by Pamela Paul

  The result is that both sides have lost what may otherwise be a natural, broad-based following among women. Those on the Right moralize about sex and erotica and the state of the family in general, thereby alienating women who want to celebrate their sexuality while rejecting pornography. Meanwhile, women on the Left focus their sights on a legal battle against pornography, and in gathering their arguments and their statistics ignore anyone who rejects the idea that all women are victims and that all sex is rape. While pornography does exacerbate discrimination, the legalistic attack on pornography has been forced into an untenable position. “Harm” legally must be proved, thus opponents spend their time trying to show that pornography inevitably leads to violence, that pornography causes men to rape. The backflips of logic and evidence required to make that point strike most people, and most courtrooms, as unpersuasive. Meanwhile, all other feminist, liberal, and moderate arguments against pornography have gotten lost.

  When pressed or questioned, most people—even those who dislike pornography—bleat out defenses of pornography like recordings, falling back on legalistic jargon and irrelevant abstractions. But the bottom line is that none of the old arguments about pornography reflect how it affects people’s lives and infiltrates their relationships today. Nor are there proposals to contend with the new reality of our pornified culture. In fact, most people don’t talk about whether they’re “for” or “against” pornography anymore; the cultural consensus seems to consider the matter beyond debate. Through complacency and carelessness, the majority of Americans shrug or laugh off the issue as inconsequential and irrelevant to their lives. But as we have seen, the costs to our relationships, our families, and our culture are great, and will continue to mount. Clearly, we need to find new ways to approach the problem.

  Conclusion:

  The Censure-Not-Censor Solution

  To date, arguments against pornography pass over the huge, muddled middle ground where most people actually experience its effects. For most people, pornography wreaks a subtle but real emotional, and in some cases physical, devastation. One need not oppose pornography on religious or political grounds, nor does one need to oppose any and all sexual expression to nonetheless be troubled by the pornified culture.

  Even many of the people who use pornography themselves are distressed by the ways in which it has infiltrated people’s everyday lives. Men are embarrassed to find themselves masturbating to their computers for hours on end. They question the influence pornography has on their sexual functioning. They worry they’re wasting their time and losing themselves in the process. Pornography not only damages relationships and interactions between men and women personally, professionally, and socially, it also makes women feel inferior and cheated, incapable of living up to airbrushed and surgically enhanced perfection. Women are baffled that their husbands and boyfriends feel drawn to submissive or unrealistic images of female behavior. They fear they can’t compete with the barrage of easy orgasms that their mates can attain anytime, anywhere to the images of other women—and without their knowledge. And they lie in bed at night wondering why their sex lives have gone sour, their husbands seem distracted, and Viagra is suddenly necessary for their boyfriends at age thirty-six. Both men and women fear the influence that pornography has on their children and the way a pornified culture colors the way young people come of age sexually in this country.

  Despite widespread denial and the pervasiveness of outdated rationalizations, many Americans have a problem with the rampant spread of pornography. According to the Pornified/Harris poll, when asked what the main thing the government should be doing to address pornography, 42 percent of Americans said the government should regulate Internet pornography specifically so that children cannot access X-rated material online and 13 percent said the government should regulate pornography in a way similar to cigarettes—with warning labels and restrictions to minimize harm. Interestingly, young people (ages eighteen to twenty-four) are most supportive of such measures, yet people in households with children were no more likely to favor them than those without kids around. Moreover, liberals and conservatives were equally likely to favor the regulation of pornography. Finally, only 1 percent of Americans believe the government should fully legalize all forms of pornography, and only 10 percent of Americans believe the government should have no role with regard to pornography. Clearly not everyone favors a laissez-faire approach to the problem, and there is room for consensus.

  What, then, can be done? In the absence of meaningful government action, the private sector could be mobilized. Yet companies that distribute or sell pornography do little or nothing to cut back, and no meaningful citizen lobby compels them to do so. On the corporate side, disincentives against taking action are strong. First, pornography is big business and growing; in a solid and competitive market, there’s money to be made, and lots of it. Second, companies cite the risk of putting self-imposed limits on the supply of pornography; in our litigious society, a company could land in court for years fighting charges of free speech infringement. Third, companies argue that, in today’s cutthroat global business climate, if one company—or even all companies in one country—stop supplying pornography, the competition will spring to fill the gap, supplying it no matter what other companies do, even if it means the pornography supply moves underground or overseas. Finally, and not to be underestimated, the pornography industry has done a very effective job keeping our attention off the harm their products inflict. Compounding all these challenges, the reach of pornography, driven by technological changes and cultural acceptance, has dramatically increased in the last ten years. Most Americans have no sense of the damage being done.

  Accepting the Reality of Pornography

  And real harm is being done. For years, another industry insisted their products did no harm. Corporate owners, employees, and consumers scoffed at studies showing tobacco’s links to cancer and emphysema. Industry leaders stood in front of Congress and testified that tobacco was not addictive. All Americans, they said, should be allowed to choose to smoke. Nothing should stand in the way of that freedom. Cigarettes, they explained, were harmless; therefore companies that manufactured them were not in the business to communicate deleterious effects. Later, in the presence of overwhelming public outcry and governmental and grassroots action, they made concessions: Perhaps tobacco was harmful to young people. Perhaps children should be educated about the potential for damage. Perhaps there should be some age limitations on the purchase of tobacco. All the while, hedging and budging, bit by bit. Not that there’s anything wrong with tobacco, they continued to insist.

  The industry could just as well be pornography. Pornographers consistently deny the harm inflicted by pornography—on its users, on relationships, on society overall—and the industry escapes regulation. When debate does stir up, they focus attention on children (and their parents), skipping over pornography’s other targets, adult women and men. And they happily ignore the broader implications of a pornified culture.

  Pornography has burst out of the container that civilized society once placed it in for the good of both adults and children. But while its place in American society has shifted radically, nobody—not the government, not the private sector, not society or our cultural institutions—has done anything to address the change. We have relaxed the social, practical, and cultural restrictions once placed on pornography and it has wended its way into our daily lives, playing a more central role than ever before.

  Many things we dislike and decry are nonetheless still made available in a free market and a free society. Even things we know cause harm: high-fat food, alcohol, cigars. Banning pornography would be like banning stupid television shows with ridiculous story lines and unlikable characters who say foolish things. Sure, we would all be better off not watching such drivel, but should it be outlawed altogether? Of course not. Just as most Americans, particularly nonsmokers, deplore cigarette smoking, they nonetheless believe adults should have the right to choos
e for themselves whether or not they want to smoke, and to suffer the consequences if they do. Nor should we necessarily demonize everyone who has looked at pornography. Most people condemn tobacco the product, not the people who consume it. Just as with tobacco, there need not be absolute judgment and denunciation, extremism and abolition when it comes to those who use pornography. But likewise, there should not be absolute judgment or denigration toward those who object to pornography and to its influence.

  Whatever one’s personal use of pornography, we as a society need to confront and understand its broader effects and make efforts to contain them. As with alcohol, cigarettes, and even fast food, pornography can and should be discouraged. Those who don’t mind—or even enjoy—overt displays of pornographic magazines on public newsstands might ask themselves how they would feel if their seven-year-old were seeing them. They may think pornography is okay in the abstract, but not when their own husband is poring over Internet pornography late at night. They might think about the fact that pornographic spam hits not only their own e-mail account, but also the inboxes of their children and their nieces and nephews—and that while they themselves might delete the spam without a thought, children may unwittingly (or wittingly) click on those links. They might consider pornography fine when they make their own first stop at a free softcore Web site, but rethink that stance when they find themselves preferring the company of their computer over that of their wife or girlfriend. They might rethink that stance when they consider how pornography affects their wife or girlfriend, and how it colors their relationship as a consequence.

  It should be simple in these cases to find a suitable response. In some instances, it’s just a matter of limiting personal consumption, in others of enforcing existing restrictions. Magazines could once again get brown-paper wrappers and back-of-the-store or behind-the-counter placement. Better technology could provide effective filtering systems that would make it harder to access pornography online. Thus far, the pornography lobby has made regulating the supply difficult. As industry analyst Dennis McAlpine explained on the PBS show Frontline, when it comes to enforcing obscenity laws on cable operators, “It’s a lot easier to get somebody when they first go over that line than when they have been over that line for five years and nobody said anything, because that line has then been moved. As you keep moving the line and it becomes accepted, it’s a lot tougher to go get them…. Going back is a lot tougher to do. They can keep moving it forward. And the longer that nobody tries this in court, the more likely they’ve got a case that it is acceptable.”1

  Still, once enough people are awakened to the reality of life in a pornified culture, once they realize that the consequences are much more dear than an embarrassed chuckle over seeing Janet Jackson’s breast, the difficulties of regulating pornography will not seem so insurmountable. People might bring enough pressure for politicians to buck lobbyists and take action. They might even get the court system to uphold regulatory decisions made long ago but subsequently ignored or overwhelmed by spurious challenges from the pornography industry. Indeed, a number of new regulatory measures have been floated in recent years. One suggestion put forth on the New York Times op-ed page by Jonathan A. Knee, director of the media program at Columbia Business School, is to criminalize the giving and receiving of payment to perform sexual acts, which would make the laws against pornography consistent with those of prostitution. Such a proposal, he suggests, would skirt the First Amendment issue while not requiring new leaps in the law. After all, he points out, “society objects on principal to the com-modification and commercialization of sexual relations, even between consenting adults.”2 Other efforts aim to regulate the distribution of pornography, particularly in countries such as Australia and Britain. In the United Kingdom, one mobile company, Vodafone, recently blocked handset access to sex, dating, and gambling Web sites unless users could prove their eighteen-or-over age status and opt in to receive such services.3 In Israel, cell-phone pornography has been banned.

  But while much of the blame for pornified culture lies with an unfettered and out-of-control supply, it is in the demand for pornography that the most practical and effective solution lies. Consider a taping of Girls Gone Wild. A bunch of drunken college women on spring break decide it’s cool and funny to lift up their shirts for the ogling crowds. They’re encouraged by the hooting cries of college guys surrounding them on the beach, yelling at them to just “go for it.” They’re urged on by the cameramen and producers from the Girls Gone Wild team, who need the footage to justify their paychecks. Who started this and who is to blame? Is it the women’s fault for not having enough self-respect and courage to mock the jeering crowds and walk away? Is it the men’s fault for encouraging the women to behave like fools? Or are the cameramen and producers to blame, cynically exploiting young men and women in order to make a buck? Perhaps some reasonable blame could be assigned to all three. But none of these people would be doing any of this if there weren’t a considerable demand for Girls Gone Wild videos among viewers at home. If demand didn’t exist, the product wouldn’t sell—and would disappear. There may be fault distributed across the board in the production of pornography, but the most consequential players are the men eager and willing to pay for it.

  While the supply of pornography can be effectively limited, the greatest potential for change lies with the demand, and it’s the demand that may well prove to be the easiest, most efficient target for effecting change. The government and the private sector, the media and the popular culture, private citizens and public institutions could all work to quell consumer demand. Just as cigarette smoking was glamorized and encouraged in popular culture throughout most of the twentieth century, and then discouraged and regulated once its harm became clear, Americans need to be informed about pornography’s negative impact—about how its unabashed acceptance is not a step forward for women, nor a harmless diversion for men, nor a step toward a more open and liberalized sexuality.

  What we need is a mind-set shift, one that moves us from viewing porn as hip and fun and sexy to one that recognizes pornography as harmful, pathetic, and decidedly unsexy. Once pornography becomes discredited and derided by both men and women, consumption will become less brazen, and will eventually decline. Imagine a public service TV spot: “Think porn’s sexy? Ask former porn star Lara about the director who sexually harassed her. About the fact that she can’t get any other jobs that pay nearly as much. How bruised and sore she is, how fearful that she can’t have more children. Growing up, Lara wanted to be a lawyer, then an actress. Instead, she’s trying to support her three-year-old son while hiding where she gets her money. Sure, porn’s sexy—if you like your women desperate, depressed, and defeated.” Once people learn how a girl like Nora Kuzma grew up to become exploited pornography star Traci Lords, once they realize that the pornography trade isn’t all about seedy-cool Boogie Nights, people will choose not to buy into the porn world’s conception of sexuality. In her memoir, Underneath It All, Lords complains, “Today porn is everywhere I look. I find it in the junk mail folder on my computer … porn stars play themselves on television shows, appear on billboards, and give interviews about how ‘liberating’ porn is for women. Well, I believe it’s anything but.”

  The difference individuals can make via their own behavior and standards should not be underestimated. Imagine if one man, a good friend of the groom, were to say to the departing bachelor, “Actually, I don’t think going to a strip club for your bachelor party celebrates your impending marriage. It’s not respectful to your wife or to women in general, and I don’t think it reflects well on you or on any of us. And while I support your marriage and am excited to celebrate with you, this isn’t the way to do it.” Imagine if women were to speak out about their discomfort and dislike of pornography, about how their partners become distant, disconnected, and lonely, rather than pretend to be game and go along. Imagine if women who pursued pornography themselves because it was deemed hip or sexy or fun decided instead
that it was hipper and sexier and more fun to actually have sex with another live, completely engaged individual.

  Men and the Reality of Pornography

  Men have been sold on the idea that pornography is a harmless amusement and a natural pursuit, both a right of passage and a man’s right. Not surprisingly, this message has come courtesy of the industry itself, put forward in the earliest pornographic magazines and pounded home through the years. When objections to pornography were made, men were to understand that those cries came only from women, and that, naturally, women couldn’t understand. When questioned, most men readily concede that pornography probably isn’t the greatest thing for women. But few men have stopped to consider what pornography does to men.

  It’s time they took notice. Pornography has a corrosive effect on men’s relationships with women and a negative impact on male sexual performance and satisfaction. It plays a rising role in intimacy disorders. More than ever, it aids and abets sexually compulsive behavior in ways that can become seriously disruptive and psychologically damaging. Men who become addicted to pornography feel helpless and degraded, often losing themselves and their loved ones to the habit. Even men who use pornography regularly, but not compulsively, question the effect it has on their lives. For married or otherwise monogamous men, pornography often signals discomfort or uneasiness in a relationship. They hide their porn from their girlfriends and wives, make light of it with other men, and even lie about it to themselves—underestimating their consumption, writing off the impact, telling themselves they only ended up looking for two hours because they were stressed, tired, bored, or annoyed. Men caught with pornography by their bosses or their wives often feel humiliated and pathetic. They get defensive and angry, alienating the people who matter most to them. They can lose their jobs and jeopardize their careers. They can weaken or destroy their marriages and isolate their children. What titillates in the short term hardly merits the long-term costs.