Addressing the Shifting Cultural Perspective on Porn

For the month of November, WholeHeartEd is going to be focusing on the topic of pornography; how it affects us as individuals, in our relationships and society at large. While we strive to maintain language and terminology that is consistent with our mission to provide accurate information to allow you to make healthier choices, some of what we discuss this month may be triggering for certain individuals. Also, due to the nature of this month's topic, parents may want to screen our videos first in order to decide if it is suitable for your children.

If you watched our video this week, you saw the children's cartoon clips we showed at the beginning of the video. The message that these and many other movies and tv shows today are sending is that pornography is no big deal. Sure, it used to be seen as a dirty secret desire that you could only access on the wrong side of town, but now porn is ubiquitous and with just a quick search can be viewed by any young child with access to a phone. This month, we are once again joining in battle as we highlight No Porn November. All month long, we’re going to build our position against pornography with data, expert testimonies and eye-witness accounts in order to make our case as to why you should choose to drop porn for good.

So, is porn really no big deal? Well, to give it a fair hearing, lets look at some of one websites list of surprising benefits of pornography. They say that pornography is healthy, it relieves stress, it helps you find out what you like and sometimes, they say, it’s even better than the real thing! ( https://www.dailydot.com/nsfw/guides/porn-benefits/ ) Let’s take a look at these claims one by one and see how they hold up.

First, is pornography healthy? Is it a good way of relieving stress? Let’s see if we can cover two points in one. While, as the dailydot article points out, there are “many, many, many” studies claiming that porn is bad for your brain and relationships, with each “many” hyperlinked in order to apparently take you to, one would assume, a study claiming that pornography is bad for your brain and relationships. Apparently they were on a tight schedule to release this article because the first link takes you to one of their own articles saying that porn isn’t that bad for your brain, the next two are for the same article about porn harming your relationships and the next links to a 404 “not found” page. But don’t worry, dailydot, we’ve had more than enough time to provide multiple sources to support the claim that pornography use is consistently linked with increased anxiety and depression, how the pornography use of the partner can predicate eating disorders and increase body shame in women, and increase high-risk behavior and probability of contracting STI’s. While pornography use may seem to relieve stress at the time, it is a poor coping behavior because it doesn’t actually address the causes of the stress. Instead, pornography is used in the same way people use drugs and alcohol as a means of escape rather than actual social and problem-solving development. We’ll make sure to cite all of our sources at the bottom so that all of you can go back and look them up for yourselves.

Next, does porn help you “find what you like?” Not really. One nationally representative survey found that 1 quarter of 18-24 year olds identified pornography as their most helpful source for finding out about how to have sex. This same study found that adolescents who had had healthy discussions about sex with parents were less likely to report pornography as being helpful. This tells us that a considerable amount of teens are looking to porn, at least in part, as a means of learning about sex. The thing is, though, porn is not a good teacher. Rather than helping us find what we like, pornography actually seems to be shaping it. Increased pornography use, meaning viewing porn more frequently, has been associated with associated with men's enjoyment of degrading/uncommon sexually aggressive behaviors and women being more willing recipients of lightly aggressive behaviors. Pornography use has also been seen to affect “sexual scripting,” which deals with what a person expects as normative behavior in a sexual situation. One example of the shifting of sexual script is the increased expectation of anal sexual behaviors, including coercive, painful and unsafe anal sex, in a heterosexual relationship as normative for many adolescents and young adults who have been influenced by pornography.

Finally, is porn sometimes better than the real thing? I guess that depends on your definition of “better.” Is it easier to access pornography than to build a relationship that would lead to a consensual sexual experience? Sure. Does pornography give you a temporary combination of desire, control and complete self-gratification. Perhaps. After releasing a specific chemical response designed to increase feelings of connection and relational bonding with another human being, does pornography leave you feeling alone? Yes. Sex is a human experience that is meant to connect you to another person in a very deep and intimate way on a neurochemical level. Pornography use undermines that natural, healthy process and actually increases the likelihood that your relationships will end up as collateral damage. Not only does pornography use lead to less sexual satisfaction in your relationships, but it also has been a source of relationship conflict, lowered marital quality and doubles your chances for romantic break-up and divorce.

So, porn is a problem and we will continue to unpack its effects throughout the rest of the month. If you found this information helpful, we would love for you to share it with others and be sure to use the hashtag #nopornnovember.

Loneliness -

Butler MH, Pereyra SA, Draper TW, Leonhardt ND, Skinner KB. Pornography Use and Loneliness: A Bidirectional Recursive Model and Pilot Investigation. J Sex Marital Ther. 2018 Feb 17;44(2):127-137. doi: 10.1080/0092623X.2017.1321601. Epub 2017 Jun 8. PMID: 28448246. Decreased Sexual and Relationship Satisfaction -

Pornography Consumption and Sexual Satisfaction in a Korean Sample Paul J. Wright, Ekra Miezan, and Chyng Sun Journal of Media Psychology 2019 31:3, 164-169

Wright PJ, Bridges AJ, Sun C, Ezzell MB, Johnson JA. Personal Pornography Viewing and Sexual Satisfaction: A Quadratic Analysis. J Sex Marital Ther. 2018 Apr 3;44(3):308-315. doi: 10.1080/0092623X.2017.1377131. Epub 2017 Oct 9. PMID: 28885897.

Brown CC, Carroll JS, Yorgason JB, Busby DM, Willoughby BJ, Larson JH. A Common-Fate Analysis of Pornography Acceptance, Use, and Sexual Satisfaction Among Heterosexual Married Couples. Arch Sex Behav. 2017 Feb;46(2):575-584. doi: 10.1007/s10508-016-0732-4. Epub 2016 Apr 18. PMID: 27091186.

Stewart, D.N., Szymanski, D.M. Young Adult Women’s Reports of Their Male Romantic Partner’s Pornography Use as a Correlate of Their Self-Esteem, Relationship Quality, and Sexual Satisfaction. Sex Roles 67, 257–271 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11199-012-0164-0

Break-up/Divorce Increase -

Perry, S.L. Pornography Use and Marital Separation: Evidence from Two-Wave Panel Data. Arch Sex Behav47, 1869–1880 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10508-017-1080-8

Samuel L. Perry & Cyrus Schleifer (2018) Till Porn Do Us Part? A Longitudinal Examination of Pornography Use and Divorce, The Journal of Sex Research, 55:3, 284-296, DOI: 10.1080/00224499.2017.1317709

Perry, S.L., Davis, J.T. Are Pornography Users More Likely to Experience a Romantic Breakup? Evidence from Longitudinal Data. Sexuality & Culture 21, 1157–1176 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12119-017-9444-8

Anxiety and Depression -

Harper C, Hodgins DC. Examining Correlates of Problematic Internet Pornography Use Among University Students. J Behav Addict. 2016 Jun;5(2):179-91. doi: 10.1556/2006.5.2016.022. Epub 2016 May 9. PMID: 27156383; PMCID: PMC5387769.

Kraus SW, Potenza MN, Martino S, Grant JE. Examining the psychometric properties of the Yale-Brown Obsessive-Compulsive Scale in a sample of compulsive pornography users. Compr Psychiatry. 2015 May;59:117-22. doi: 10.1016/j.comppsych.2015.02.007. Epub 2015 Feb 17. PMID: 25732412.

Kor A, Zilcha-Mano S, Fogel YA, Mikulincer M, Reid RC, Potenza MN. Psychometric development of the Problematic Pornography Use Scale. Addict Behav. 2014 May;39(5):861-8. doi: 10.1016/j.addbeh.2014.01.027. Epub 2014 Feb 13. PMID: 24583276.

Egan V, Parmar R. Dirty habits? Online pornography use, personality, obsessionality, and compulsivity. J Sex Marital Ther. 2013;39(5):394-409. doi: 10.1080/0092623X.2012.710182. Epub 2013 Apr 11. PMID: 23577795.

Eating Disorders/Body Shame -

Tylka TL, Kroon Van Diest AM. You Looking at Her “Hot” Body May Not be “Cool” for Me: Integrating Male Partners’ Pornography Use into Objectification Theory for Women. Psychology of Women Quarterly. 2015;39(1):67-84. doi:10.1177/0361684314521784

Eric W. Owens, Richard J. Behun, Jill C. Manning & Rory C. Reid (2012) The Impact of Internet Pornography on Adolescents: A Review of the Research, Sexual Addiction & Compulsivity, 19:1-2, 99-122, DOI: 10.1080/10720162.2012.660431

High Risk Behavior/STI Increase

Willoughby BJ, Carroll JS, Nelson LJ, Padilla-Walker LM. Associations between relational sexual behaviour, pornography use, and pornography acceptance among US college students. Cult Health Sex. 2014;16(9):1052-69. doi: 10.1080/13691058.2014.927075. Epub 2014 Jul 14. PMID: 25023726.

Tydén T, Rogala C. Sexual behaviour among young men in Sweden and the impact of pornography. Int J STD AIDS. 2004 Sep;15(9):590-3. doi: 10.1258/0956462041724299. PMID: 15339365.

Porn as education -

Rothman, E.F., Beckmeyer, J.J., Herbenick, D. et al. The Prevalence of Using Pornography for Information About How to Have Sex: Findings from a Nationally Representative Survey of U.S. Adolescents and Young Adults. Arch Sex Behav 50, 629–646 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10508-020-01877-7

Increased degrading or uncommon sexually aggressive behavior -

Matthew B. Ezzell, Jennifer A. Johnson, Ana J. Bridges & Chyng F. Sun (2020) I (Dis)Like it Like That: Gender, Pornography, and Liking Sex, Journal of Sex & Marital Therapy, 46:5, 460-473, DOI: 10.1080/0092623X.2020.1758860

Debby Herbenick, Tsung-Chieh Fu, Paul Wright, Bryant Paul, Ronna Gradus, Jill Bauer, Rashida Jones, Diverse Sexual Behaviors and Pornography Use: Findings From a Nationally Representative Probability Survey of Americans Aged 18 to 60 Years, The Journal of Sexual Medicine, Volume 17, Issue 4, 2020, Pages 623-633, ISSN 1743-6095, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jsxm.2020.01.013 (https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1743609520300473)

Koletić G. Longitudinal associations between the use of sexually explicit material and adolescents' attitudes and behaviors: A narrative review of studies. J Adolesc. 2017 Jun;57:119-133. doi: 10.1016/j.adolescence.2017.04.006. Epub 2017 Apr 20. PMID: 28433892.

Anal Sex -

Marston C, Lewis R. Anal heterosex among young people and implications for health promotion: a qualitative study in the UK. BMJ Open. 2014;4(8):e004996. Published 2014 Jul 18. doi:10.1136/bmjopen-2014-004996