What We Don’t Know About Pornography Could Fill The Internet

Ah, porn.

Chances are you’ve had a peek. And at some point you’ve probably felt a twinge of guilt.

But is it actually bad for you?

A study from the University of Montreal has found that it has no ill affects on men, but critics dismissed it due to the small sample size and shoddy interviewing techniques.

A reasonable person would compare it with other studies to see how vastly the results vary.  But there are ethical problems with researching porn so there are few meaningful studies out there to compare. The question is: why don’t we know more about what it does to us?

Apparently it goes back to a study conducted by Jennings Bryant, a professor of communications at the University of Alabama, in 1979 which reached these conclusions:

Men who consumed large amounts of pornography were less likely to want daughters, less likely to support women’s equality and more forgiving of criminal rape. They also grossly overestimated Americans’ likelihood to engage in group sex and bestiality.

Because the results were so startlingly negative, researchers cannot expose participants to porn. Bryant said: “If you can’t demonstrate that what you’re doing to research participants is ultimately beneficial and not detrimental, and you can’t eradicate any harm, you’re required not to do that thing again.”

This is evidence that porn has negative effects, according to Pamela Paul, the author of Pornified: How Pornography Is Damaging Our Lives, Our Relationships, and Our Families. She fills her article with stories of men whose porn addictions made them miserable. There are a lot of them and they are heart breaking.

But how many people who consume porn casually would write to the author of Pornified to explain that they’re doing just fine?

No one doubts that porn changes how people see the world, but people are divided as to how. Those in the pro-sex camp say that it is old fashioned ideas of guilt that make porn evil but violence in films permissible. Some feminists argue that it reduces women to masturbation aids, while other says the internet helps get rid of our hetero male concepts of attraction.

Will it makes you a more interesting lover or make you a callous consumer of sex? Will it augment your relationship or tear it apart? Will it make you happier?

The answer is that we really don’t know. The Montreal researchers could not find any men in their 20s who had not consumed porn, so they had only the subjects’ assertions that it did not change their perceptions of women. (Although how would they know? Most started viewing porn as preteens — it’s not like your ideas about the opposite are fixed by age 11).

[Ed: One study of kids found that it make the boys more accepting of sexually harassing and physically restraining girls.]

Our culture is becoming pornified. It is ubiquitous. And I would like to know what that is doing to us.

It could be that it is fine, and the hand-wringers can relax. But if it is making it impossible for some people to relate love and sex, or perpetuating the idea that violence against women is sexy, or is making girls feel like they have to be sex objects, I want to know.

There is nothing to be gained by shutting the door and pretending it’s not going on. Let’s be grown-up about it and take a long, hard look at porn.