Pornography: Vain or Boon?

What is behind pornography?

Pornography or porn is the portrayal of explicit sexual subject matter for the purposes of sexual excitement and erotic satisfaction.

Sex, as an experience common to all humans, is physically and emotionally pleasurable. However, all individuals do not experience as much sexual activity as they would like, or of the types they would want. So pornography allows them to vicariously, or voyeuristically, experience sexual images and activities. This is often accompanied by masturbation, as is computer-connected sex or phone sex. 

The attraction of pornography has led to its manufacture and dissemination, and the internet has become the predominant media for its viewing and sale. Ironically, the internet has also led to wider promotion of sexual materials than was previously available, which adversely impacted many commercial suppliers. An ever-larger market has created an ever-larger supply and will provide less profit for any individual enterprise. Traditional magazines (and phone sex sellers) have experienced a dramatic reduction in their business as a result of the internet. 

There are variety of media, like books, magazines, postcards, photos, sculpture, drawing, painting, animation, sound recording, film, video or video game that are used as the ways for the existence of pornography.However, when sexual acts are performed for a live audience, by definition it is not pornography, as the term applies to the depiction of the act, rather than the act itself.Thus, portrayals such as sex shows and striptease are not classified as pornography.

What are the effects of porn addiction? 

Some effects of porn addiction are:

• Escalation/Desensitization: Addicts experience an ever-increasing lust and a craving for more intense porn. Eventually "soft-core" porn is not stimulating enough, which pushes them into "hard-core." It is a downward spiral. 
  
  
• Dissatisfaction with your sex life: Spouses of addicts are affected as sex does not satisfy the addict as it once did. Men who look at porn are dissatisfied by their wife's appearance and this often leads to dysfunctional relationships. 
  
  
• Addiction to masturbation: Those addicted to porn are almost always addicted to masturbation. The sexual urges become so strong that masturbation becomes the easiest way of release. 
  
  
• Shame and guilt: Emotional pain is perhaps the most common effect of porn addiction. A deep sense of failure and shame is often experienced. 
  
  
• Un-erasable images in your mind: Men who no longer view porn fight with mental images for years. They wish they could erase these images from their mind. 
  
  
• "Lonerism" and Secrecy: Porn addicts generally keep to themselves and keep their addiction secret. This often results in dysfunctional relationships. 
  
  
• Acting it out: Those who view porn frequently have a greater tendency to act out those sexual behaviors on others, no matter what the cost. This may include rape, group sex, voyeurism, having sex with children, inflicting pain, etc. 
  
  
• A wrong view of women: Women in porn are viewed as less than human, mere property, and something to compete for or conquer. 

Does pornography offer positive results?

Pornography is something that most people, whether they'll admit it or not, have watched at one point in their lives. Softcore or hardcore, gay, straight, or lesbian there is literally a niche out there for almost  every kind of porn you can imagine. It's why the porn industry is literally a multi-billion dollar one, and it just proves that no matter what you feel about how right or wrong pornography is, there is a demand out there for it.

However, there have been a lot of "common knowledge" assumptions about pornography that have made their way into the collective consciousness of Americans. For instance, pornography is supposed to be degrading to women and damaging to children. Pornography is supposed to be addictive to those who watch it, and it also supposedly wears away at a person's moral fiber like a strong wind does a rock face. And perhaps worst of all, an acceptance and spread of pornography in the general populace is supposed to lead to a spike in sex crimes, particularly rape. Now, for those of you who are curious, these urban legends have been investigated and at least two major psychological studies agree that these myths are just that.Dr. Neil Malamuth and Milton Diamond each conducted their own, separate studies on the use and possible effects of hardcore pornography in willing adults of both genders. Dr. Malamuth, who has argued for the negative effects of pornography in the past, actually found evidence to the contrary in his study. According to a post on the Psychology Today website, the results of Malamuth's study indicated that, "respondents construed the viewing of hardcore pornography as beneficial to their sex lives, their attitudes towards sex, their perceptions and attitudes towards the opposite sex, towards life in general, and over all." This was a statistically significant fact discovered in all but one group, and it applied across genders!

What are the effects of pornography to children?

While there are many ways that pornography harms children, I want to assure you that every child who views pornography will not necessarily be affected and, at worst, traumatized in the same way. The effects of pornography are progressive and addictive for many people. Just as every person who takes a drink does not automatically become an alcoholic, every child who is exposed to pornography does not automatically become a sexual deviant or sex addict. However, since pornography has a new door to the home, school, and library through the Internet, it is important for us to look at the many ways that pornography can potentially harm our children.

Exposure to Pornography Threatens to Make Children

Victims of Sexual Violence

The Internet has proven a useful tool for pedophiles and sexual predators as they distribute child pornography, engage in sexually explicit conversations with children, and seek victims in chat rooms. The more pornography these individuals access, the higher the risk of their acting out what they see, including sexual assault, rape, and child molestation.

• Pornography's Relationship to Rape and Sexual Violence
  According to one study, early exposure (under fourteen years of age) to pornography is related to greater involvement in deviant sexual practice, particularly rape. Slightly more than one-third of the child molesters and rapists in this study claimed to have at least occasionally been incited to commit an offense by exposure to pornography. Among the child molesters incited, the study reported that 53 percent of them deliberately used the stimuli of pornography as they prepared to offend.  
  
  
  The habitual consumption of pornography can result in a diminished satisfaction with mild forms of pornography and a correspondingly strong desire for more deviant and violent material.
  
  
• Pornography's Relationship to Child Molestation
  In a study of convicted child molesters, 77 percent of those who molested boys and 87 percent of those who molested girls admitted to the habitual use of pornography in the commission of their crimes. Besides stimulating the perpetrator, pornography facilitates child molestation in several ways. For example, pedophiles use pornographic photos to demonstrate to their victims what they want them to do. They also use them to arouse a child or to lower a child's inhibitions and communicate to the unsuspecting child that a particular sexual activity is okay: "This person is enjoying it; so will you."

Exposure to Pornography Frequently Results in Sexual Illnesses, Unplanned Pregnancies, and Sexual Addiction

As more and more children are exposed not only to soft-core pornography, but also to explicit deviant sexual material, they are learning an extremely dangerous message from pornographers: Sex without responsibility is acceptable and desirable. Because pornography encourages sexual expression without responsibility, it endangers children's health.

One of the grimmer consequences of adult-like sexual activity among children has been a steady increase in the extent to which youth are afflicted with venereal disease. In the United States about one in four sexually experienced teenagers acquires a sexually transmitted disease (STD) every year, resulting in three million cases of teenage STDs. Infectious syphilis rates have more than doubled among teenagers since the mid-1980s. More children contract sexually transmitted diseases each year than all the victims of polio in its eleven-year epidemic, 1942-1953.

Another obvious result of children involved in adult sexual activity is the increased rate of pregnancy among teenagers.

Research has shown that "males who are exposed to a great deal of erotica before the age of 14 are more sexually active and engage in more varied sexual behaviors as adults than is true for males not so exposed."One study reveals that among 932 sex addicts, 90 percent of the men and 77 percent of the women reported that pornography was significant to their addiction.

Exposure to Pornography May Incite Children to Act Out 

Sexually against Other Children

Children often imitate what they've seen, read, or heard. Studies suggest that exposure to pornography can prompt kids to act out sexually against younger, smaller, and more vulnerable children. Experts in the field of childhood sexual abuse report that any premature sexual activity in children always suggests two possible stimulants: experience and exposure. This means that the sexually deviant child may have been molested or simply exposed to sexuality through pornography.

In a study of six hundred American males and females of junior high school age and above, researcher Dr. Jennings Bryant found that 91 percent of the males and 82 percent of the females admitted having been exposed to X-rated, hard-core pornography. Over 66 percent of the males and 40 percent of the females reported wanting to try out some of the sexual behaviors they had witnessed. And among high schoolers, 31 percent of the males and 18 percent of the females admitted actuallydoing some of the things they had seen in the pornography within a few days after exposure.

Exposure to Pornography Shapes Attitudes and Values

Most of us caring, responsible parents want to instill in our children our own personal values about relationships, sex, intimacy, love, and marriage. Unfortunately, the powerful irresponsible messages of pornography may be educating our children on these very important life issues. Just as thirty-second commercials can influence whether or not we choose one popular soft drink over another, exposure to pornography shapes our attitudes and values and, often, our behavior.

Photographs, videos, magazines, virtual games, and Internet pornography that depict rape and the dehumanization of females in sexual scenes constitute powerful but deforming tools of sex education. The danger to children stems at least partly from the disturbing changes in attitude that are facilitated by pornography. Replicated studies have demonstrated that exposure to significant amounts of increasingly graphic forms of pornography has a dramatic effect on how adult consumers view women, sexual abuse, sexual relationships, and sex in general. These studies are virtually unanimous in their conclusions: When male subjects were exposed to as little as six weeks' worth of standard hard-core pornography, they:

• developed an increased sexual callousness toward women
  
  
• began to trivialize rape as a criminal offense or no longer considered it a crime at all
  
  
• developed distorted perceptions about sexuality
  
  
• developed an appetite for more deviant, bizarre, or violent types of pornography (normal sex no longer seemed to do the job)
  
  
• devalued the importance of monogamy and lacked confidence in marriage as either a viable or lasting institution
  
  
• viewed nonmonogamous relationships as normal and natural behavior

Exposure to Pornography Interferes with a Child's

Development and Identity

During certain critical periods of childhood, a child's brain is being programmed for sexual orientation. During this period, the mind appears to be developing a "hardwire" for what the person will be aroused by or attracted to. Exposure to healthy sexual norms and attitudes during this critical period can result in the child developing a healthy sexual orientation. In contrast, if there is exposure to pornography during this period, sexual deviance may become imprinted on the child's "hard drive" and become a permanent part of his or her sexual orientation.

Psychologist Dr. Victor Cline's findings suggest that memories of experiences that occurred at times of emotional arousal (which could include sexual arousal) are imprinted on the brain by epinephrine, an adrenal gland hormone, and are difficult to erase. (This may partly explain pornography's addicting effect.) Viewing pornography can potentially condition some viewers to have recurring sexual fantasies during which they masturbate. Later they may be tempted to act out the fantasies as sexual advances.

Sexual identity develops gradually through childhood and adolescence. In fact, children generally do not have a natural sexual capacity until between the ages of ten and twelve. As they grow up, children are especially susceptible to influences affecting their development. Information about sex in most homes and schools, comes, presumably, in age-appropriate incremental stages based on what parents, educators, physicians, and social scientists have learned about child development. But pornography short-circuits and/or distorts the normal personality development process and supplies misinformation about a child's sexuality, sense of self, and body that leaves the child confused, changed, and damaged.

Pornography often introduces children prematurely to sexual sensations that they are developmentally unprepared to contend with. This awareness of sexual sensation can be confusing and overstimulating for children.

The sexual excitement and eventual release obtained through pornography are mood altering. For example, if a young boy's early stimulus was pornographic photographs, he can be conditioned to become aroused through photographs. Once this pairing is rewarded a number of times, it is likely to become permanent. The result is that it becomes difficult for the individual to experience sexual satisfaction apart from pornographic images.

Most of us find it difficult to talk to our children about sex in general, let alone the harmful effects of pornography, as graphically described in this chapter. We want to protect the innocence and purity of childhood for as long as possible.

How do you respond to pornography?

Are you going to deal with it?

Are you in favor that pornography will be banned?

Please express your opinion to help others be enlightened...