When I began this series on pornography and its detrimental effects, I summarized the argument in favour of pornography as: “it is created by consenting adult performers and consumed by consenting adults, and it doesn’t affect you,” and then asserted that every aspect of this defence is wrong. In the first article I refuted the claim that porn is created by consenting adults, and in the second part we debunked that it is consumed by consenting adults. Today we will examine its effects on society, showing that it does in fact have an impact even on those who abstain from it. First it must be re-stated that one does not exist in a vacuum: the moral and social state of those in one's community play a large role in their life, and so the negative effects pornography has on the individuals of your community will also have an effect on you. These effects range from shifts in opinion to mental illness, but it doesn’t take much imagination to see how living among people plagued by these effects will come to negatively impact your community.
Pornography addiction is a reality and it is scary, because the easy access to pornography (discussed here) makes it very difficult to escape. After all, how does one run from something that lives in his pocket? Addiction is a difficult topic to discuss because the lines of what constitutes an addiction are not exactly clear. As recently as 2015, there have been people fighting the legitimacy of pornography addiction, disseminating their findings through pro-porn media outlets. But when we look a little deeper we can find that there is a strong case for the existence of porn addiction. When the American Psychiatric Association recognized internet gaming as a potential addictive disorder in their 2013 revision of their Diagnostic and Statistical Manual, a variety of researchers felt that internet pornography was overlooked. So, they authored a review of the current literature and concluded that internet pornography addiction fits the addiction framework and warrants further study. A few studies have already been done however, including one from 2013 which found that cybersex addiction is largely influenced by positive feedback from the pornography itself rather than poor or unsatisfying real world sexual relationships, and another that begins to map out how cybersex addiction begins. Gary Wilson’s website, Your Brain on Porn, has also listed 52 neurological studies that support the porn addiction model, including an article going over the several studies refuting the research on which the pro-porn media has staked its claim.
Pornography’s negative effect on a user’s mental health is a well-documented phenomenon that isn’t often talked about by our “sex-positive” mainstream media, but it’s an incredibly important thing for young men to be aware of. Just like how often we talk about the negative effects of drinking, sleep deprivation, or sloth on mental health, we should be discussing the negative effects pornography has on the young men who watch it. The first consequence is that those who consume porn are unhappier with their self image than non-users. A 2015 study found that porn consumption was positively linked with muscularity and body fat dissatisfaction, although it should be noted that this study could only determine a correlation between the two. While one’s first assumption may be that the unrealistic proportions found in porn are making young men insecure, it’s also not at all unlikely that those who are unhappy with their bodies or lives in general turn to pornography to cope. This very idea was explored by TheLastPsychiatrist in a 2011 response to an article discussing porn induced erectile dysfunction, a common topic in anti-porn discussions as it seems that it has become more common as of late. That being said, there is little research so far on its relation to pornography and it seems as though the research that is available is conflicting.
Depression also correlates with regular pornography use. There have been several studies linking pornography to inferior mental health. Porn addicts are found to be more likely to have depression, anxiety, and feel intimacy issues with their real life partners. Interestingly enough it seems that these findings relating to mental health held even when controlling for ones own perception of pornography. This would mean that the depressive symptoms aren’t merely a factor of the guilt and shame that a reluctant user exhibits, but that there is something about pornography itself that is damaging towards mental health. Porn use is correlated with lower degrees of social integration which makes the revelation that porn users are more lonely unsurprising. It’s not surprising that sexual aggression is also correlated with pornography consumption. One of the few public criticisms of pornography, especially among feminists such as Catherine MacKinnon, is that its unrealistic depictions of sex lack any clear indicators of consent. As a matter of fact there are entire genres of pornography dedicated to fetishizing violent rape. Perhaps then it is not surprising that a 2015 meta-analysis showed that pornography consumption was correlated with sexual aggression in both males and females. The study found that there was more of an effect on verbal aggression but physical aggression was still influenced to a significant degree. Pornography also seems to play a negative role in the satisfaction of ones real life relationships. A 2020 study examining a variety of national surveys found that pornography use was never positively correlated with relationship quality, and was either found to have no correlation or a negative correlation.
Like all media, pornography shapes a viewer's conception of the world around him, and it is not very surprising to find that those who view pornography are more likely to engage in casual sex. While the link between casual sex and pornography has been known for some time now, Paul J. Wright’s 2012 study found that it was in fact pornography that pushed individuals towards casual sex, not casual sex pushing people towards pornography. His study also explored the role unhappiness played in one’s likelihood to be swayed by pornographic media and found that while those who described themselves as “very happy” weren’t as likely to be influenced, while those who described themselves as “not too happy” were almost seven times more likely to engage in casual sex after being exposed to pornography.
Another way in which pornography changes one’s perceptions,putting them on the outside of what is normal, is in their view of sexual assault. Pornography has been found in some instances to make users more accepting of rape myths such as “any healthy woman can successfully resist a rapist if she really wants to” and “women who get raped while hitchhiking get what they deserve”. Considering this and what we know about pornography’s effect on users, sexual aggression, it perhaps isn’t a surprise to learn that those who have been exposed to pornography would give more lenient sentences to convicted rapists. Those exposed to pornography suggested a sentence length of a little over half the length of that suggested by those who had not been subjected to pornography. Males who were exposed to pornography suggested, on average, as little as 50 months incarceration for someone found guilty of rape whereas those with no prior exposure to pornography suggested on average 94 months. Studies like these highlight how porn is not simply an individual issue, pornography at this point is ubiquitous. The evidence suggests it may be having an effect on the people serving on the juries in your town.
In my previous article, I discussed that the original R. v. Butler decision had stipulations in place to ensure that abnormal pornography, including the degradation of or violence towards women, could still be prosecuted and the praise this stipulation received from the women’s advocacy group LEAF. These stipulations were of course quickly de-clawed but it's hard to believe they would have had any effect on Canadians’ pornography consumption in the first place. Frequent pornography consumption has diminishing returns - the neurological response from pornography in a user's first week will be stronger than their 50th. This weakened stimulus causes users to seek out more unique forms of pornography and can often have them searching for abnormal types of pornography. This phenomenon can be observed in the 1986 study Shifting Preferences in Pornography Consumption, in which those who had a “massive” exposure to pornography overwhelmingly chose to view abnormal pornography (bondage, sadomasochism, bestiality), rather than a neutral stimuli or even normal pornography. Studies like these show us the hopelessness in “moderating” pornography; viewers will likely tend towards abnormal types of porn as they grow bored of porn permitted under the Supreme Courts third category of “explicit sex which did not include violence nor subjected people to treatment which was degrading or dehumanizing”. The spiral into more degenerate genres of pornography is not always hindered by legality. With the internet, even illegal forms of pornography are not so hard to find and even, up until recently, hid in plain sight on the worlds most well-known porn site. The 2013 study, Does Pornography Follow a Guttman-Like Progression?, found that “deviant pornography users engaged in adult pornography at a significantly younger age compared to those who engaged in only nondeviant pornography”. In fact, it was found that “adult + deviant pornography users reported a significantly younger ‘‘age of onset’’ for adult pornography use compared to the adult-only pornography users. In other words, deviant pornography users en- gaged in adult pornography at a significantly younger age compared to those who engaged in only nondeviant pornography“. These findings, coupled with the low current average of first exposure to pornography (13 years old) discussed in my last article, are a few very concerning discoveries.
Pornography also has the ability to shape our values. A 1988 study found that after 6 weeks of pornography exposure, participants were more accepting of moral aberrations than the control group. They were more accepting of things such as pre- and extra-marital sex as well as polyamory, they were more likely to believe that male and female promiscuity was natural and even that suppressing one’s sexual inclinations could pose health risks. The same study found that those who consumed porn were less likely to see marriage as a vital institution and were more than twice as likely to believe that it would eventually be abandoned as a significant social institution. Porn consumers were 31% less likely to want any children at all, 61% less likely to want a daughter, and the desire for a woman to have a daughter dropped to a third of the control rating. They favoured no-fault divorce while paradoxically also being more likely to believe that occasional infidelity by a spouse should not be grounds for divorce. Pornography has also been known to play a role in divorce. Even while married, a man who starts watching porn during their marriage will double their chance of divorce. For a woman the odds are tripled. Internet pornography plays a role in 56% of divorces and divorce lawyers have commented on its increasing presence in ending marriages.
Pornography does immeasurable harm to its performers, its consumers, and society at large with no tangible benefit. This plague has been tolerated for three decades, not only legally but culturally, largely through the efforts of libertine propagandists. The sophistic pronouncements of these propagandists serve as a cover for those who profit off of abuse and ensure that the endless supply of vulgarity and vice being funnelled into millions of homes may never be disrupted. Canadians should not tolerate this poison in our society any longer. For the sake of young women who are targeted as prey by pornographers, for the vulnerable children who are but a few clicks away from the violent depravity porn has to offer, and for the sake of our community’s physical, mental and moral health, we must demand that our government retract its decision to allow this scourge to fester on its citizens.