Photo Credit: "Vic's 38 Special" by butterflyfairies on Photobucket
"IT ONLY TOOK MEN A COUPLE OF DECADES BETWEEN DISCOVERING WOMEN CAN HAVE ORGASMS--AND DECIDING IT'S TOO MUCH TROUBLE TO GIVE THEM ONE," Bill Maher on HBO's "Real Time with Bill Maher."
In one of Friday's segments, Maher chastised men for preferring internet porn and masturbation to sex with their wives and girlfriends. In fact, some "experts" have claimed that men's "addiction" to cyberporn is a major factor in divorces in the U.S., which has the highest divorce rate in the world. Recently, however, lawyers have been telling me that social networking sites, especially Facebook, are the new leading factor in divorce. In the popular scenario, a spouse, male or female, connects with an old flame or a new FB "friend" and the affair ensues. Can we really blame Facebook for affairs? People were cheating before social networking sites made them more easy to catch through electronic surveillance.
And married sex lives were bad to non-existent before cyberporn was readily available.
As a society, we have a lot of theories about the role of porn in men's lives, especially in their relationships with women. Men (and porn) are demonized because it is men who watch more porn and drive the market and, more importantly, will admit to preferring cybersex over the real thing, the woman in their own bed. In "The Porn Myth," a 2004 New York magazine essay, Naomi Wolf argued that, far from 'whetting the male sexual appetite," porn actually turned men off to "the real thing." She wrote-
“For the first time in human history, the images’ power and allure have supplanted that of real naked women. Today, real naked women are just bad porn."
The militant feminist anti-porn position espoused by the late Andrea Dworkin is enjoying something of a revival; and it is difficult to distinguish their rhetoric from that of the Christian anti-porn crusaders (who, by the way, consider SexyPrime and my books to be porn.) On the other hand, women producers like Candidal Royalle and Jenna Jamison are producing porn--which we prefer to call "erotica"--aimed at women and many women, including me, do enjoy erotica/porn, at least occasionally. While I find the hardcore violent stuff offensive, I will admit to getting aroused by other material, including light BDSM, group sex, homsexuality, though they are behaviors I am not interested in trying. (Am I not an argument for the case that watching doesn't lead to acting out?)
When PBS "Frontline" did a documentary on porn in America a few years ago, they concluded that it was hard to define porn. Making a connection between porn and its effects on men's behavior and their relationships with women isn't so easy either. The right draws extreme conclusions; the left is reluctant to recognize any ill effects because that might give the right support in their censorship efforts. We have allowed the right to define the issues of abortion and porn, leaving us afraid to acknowledge that abortion and porn do have consequences because we don't want to give the right a bone to chew.
What does the science say?
THE BIG INTERNATIONAL STUDIES
The late Dr. Berl Kutchinsky, professor at the University of Copenhagen, received international recognition for his massive studies, over two decades, of the effects of porn on men in Denmark, Sweden and West Germany. He concluded that exposure to porn did not make men more violent toward women. Violent crimes, including sex crimes, actually decreased in the years following the legalization of porn in these countries. He died in 1995 before hardcore porn became so violent and easily available over the internet. But no significant reputable studies have refuted his basic conclusions.
THE LITTLE CONTROVERSIAL STUDY THAT WENT BIG
In 2009, Simon Louis Lajeunesse, a Université de Montréal researcher and professor, funded by the Interdisciplinary Research Center on Family Violence and Violence Against Women, extensively interviewed twenty male college students about their porn-viewing habits. He concluded that they suffered no ill effects. He wrote:
"Aggressors don't need pornography to be violent and addicts can be addicted to drugs, alcohol, gaming and asocial cases are pathological. If pornography had the impact that many claim it has, you would just have to show heterosexual films to a homosexual to change his sexual orientation."
His work attracted world-wide attention, more notice than such a small study by a junior professor deserves, because those words enraged the anti-porn activists. While he under-estimated how much porn the average man watches, his conclusion is valid. I've yet to see a study not funded by a religious or political conservative group that does make a clear connection between porn and sex crimes. It's not there. The problem of porn is more intimate than that.
Women say that porn turns men off to real women's bodies, creates un-realistic sexual expectations--and has made anal sex a right, not a request.
CAN WE PROVE THAT PORN AFFECTS THE QUALITY OF SEXUAL RELATIONSHIPS?
Anecdotal evidence and behavioral surveys and polls do indicate that cyberporn plays a role in men's relatively new-found disinterest in sex with their partners. Yes, it's true, he is often the one saying No today. The reasons behind male refusal are complex. For example, is it rooted in his resentment of her alpha female status and only expressed through retreat into cyberporn? (The Zola and I took this on two years ago in "Women on Top".) Or does his low libido have its origins in prescription drug issues and lifestyle habits making it more comfortable for him to lean back in his leather desk chair or the sofa in the basement den, hit "play" and unzip rather than getting active with his partner? Or has he resigned himself to sex online after years of disappointing sex in the bedroom?
Some people, including the therapists pushing their treatment programs, call this a "sex addiction" or "porn addiction."
Most of the therapists, psychologists and psychiatrists and medical doctors I have interviewed do not subscribe to the theories of sex or porn addiction. They may describe the behavior as "compulsive" but not addictive. The terms "sex addiction" and "porn addiction" have been popularized by the media; and a woman who isn't happy with her man's interest in porn is quick to make the snap diagnosis. Sometimes men too buy into the addiction theory in one way or another.
Maia Szvalitz in "Does Men's Bond With Porn Ruin Them For Real-Life Sex"(Time magazine) refutes Davy Rothbart's theory in "He's Not That Into Anyone" (New York magazine) that oxytocin has bonded him to his porn. The "cuddle horomone" oxytocin, which women produce more copiously than men, does seem to help create bonds of attachment between lovers, especially if they have experienced orgasm. There is no scientific evidence indicating that oxytocin helps bond men to porn. She writes:
"But that's not how oxytocin--which is involved in feelings of love and lifelong bonding--actually works. If it was, men wouldn't seek a variety of porn; rather they would be monogamous to whatever material they first found enjoyable. (And women would fall in love with their vibrators.)"
Can anyone argue that porn has changed the sexual dynamic between men and women?
I'd love to hear how you think it has.
copyright 2008-2011, www.sexyprime.typepad.com; PARTIAL reposts only permitted with link back to original article on SexyPrime
Okay the sign in with FB doesn't work...Porn/Erotica. Let me just say love it love it love it! Then again I just had the discussion with Hubby that for my BDay I had to choose between a $125 flat iron for my hair or ~my~ subscriptions for Playboy and Penthouse. I'll take the subscriptions and $300 Playboy hard drive of every PB published for Anniversary thank you!
WAKE UP AMERICA! It is not because of lack of morals or values and it sure as heck not because of porn that we have the highest divorce rate! Pffft ~please~! Let's be honest here shall we? As Oprah said "America spends more thought on getting married than being married." as a populace we have a warped sense of marriage and get married for all of the wrong reasons; but I guarantee you ~real~ love is NOT why America mostly gets married!
We are so filled with media propaganda, hypocritical religious from the pulpit lies carried to government, the experts opinion of scientific minimal participation but let's say "all" studies, and Politically dependent on geographical location and social status protectiveness. I mean come on! Have you seen all the articles in Psychology Today etc on how to teach women desire? It was published in Ask Men about anal sex, and come to find out if you read the pages of comments, most responses were men don't want anal except for the taboo factor, but once it's no longer taboo they no longer desire it. So to me that says they desire the taboo NOT the pleasure, then get their underwear in a wad if the female enjoyed it and wants more. Now what is up with that? Pleasure, the ultimate taboo. Never mind mutual pleasure.
The real issue here is NOT guys watching porn. MHO. The real issue is lack of communication between couples, and the biggest one, give women permission to be wicked! Couples don't talk about their desires, kinks, wicked dreams, fantasies, or physical pleasures. We, as Americans, don't have a comprehensive sex ed to the point in this new millenium the experts are still arguing if women even ~can~ have an orgasm without the emotional. ~PLEASE~ give me a break! We are not allowed to be open with our mate, and heaven forbid if you as a couple make your own rules, and make it a point to actually act on making each others desires a reality. Get society, government, and the pulpit out of your bedroom and out of your head!
Porn isn't killing relationships, America is killing relationships! Our idea of being married gets us married, our idea of what marriage and parenting is gets us through the first few years maybe, but the actuality is a whole different story which ends in divorce. If you can't be wicked with your spouse then who are we suppose to be kinky with? If true love waits, then doesn't it stand to reason that natural desire follows? Give women the natural right in society to desire and be wicked how ever one defines it. Make it okay to communicate and perform such desires with your mate. Heck as a society communicate the reality that the natural physical is only enhanced by the emotional, not women need the emotional to desire/need the physical. As if men are the only ones with dirty minds. What a load of BS! Use porn/erotica as a learning tool for self as well as communicating the unmentionable or undefinable. I did! Use them to enhance marriage NOT destroy it! Men have porn, women have romance/erotic novels/blogs. What's the difference? Have you read Kimmie Wednesdays?
Fight clean have dirty sex. Allow women the right to go public with the physical reality, and stop labeling them as whores and sending them to hell for a natural necessity! Dildos are illegal in some states for Gods sake. Men may want a lady in public and a whore/slut in bed, but women want a gentleman in public and a master of pleasure in bed! Combine the two and you got one hell of a couple, one blessed marriage! But America says no! Sex dies after marriage. Yet true love waited.....Now that's messed up!
Posted by: Lynda Belle | February 16, 2011 at 08:30 PM
Oh, I love this.....
especially that line, Women want a gentleman in public and a Master of Pleasure in bed. Yes!
Posted by: Susan Crain Bakos | February 17, 2011 at 09:04 AM