WWW- Pornography, says Pamela Paul, is destroying our marriages and families and twisting our children's ideas about sex and sexuality.
Paul says she has no religious objections to porn. And she does not believe, as many feminists do, that porn causes men to rape women. But porn, she says, is bad for us. Men who use porn, she says, have trouble being turned on by "real" women. Their sex lives with their girlfriends and wives collapse. Women find themselves constantly trying to measure up to the impossible bodies and sexual performances of the porn stars their men lust after. And children, exposed to more porn than ever before, are more likely to have sex at an early age, and even to try to mimic porn.
Paul, a journalist, bases her findings on a specially commissioned Harris Poll and on interviews. She makes her case in a new book published by Times Books, Pornified: How Pornography Is Transforming Our Lives, Our Relations, and Our Families.
Some specific findings: The pornified man is dissatisfied. Only 28 percent of men say pornography improves their sex lives (68 percent say it has a negative impact or no effect at all), though they find themselves depending on it. Men get pulled into harder and harder pornography to keep the initial buzz going.
He is disconnected. Men look at pornography online more than they look at any other subject, and two-thirds of 18-to-34-year-old men visit a porn site every month. It adds up to almost half an hour on average with online porn each week, though many men say they spend that much online each day. Men eventually lose the ability to relate or be close to women in real life.
The pornified woman is reshaped. Six out of 10 women state that pornography affects how men expect them to look and behave (and four in 10 men agree). Even college-age women contemplate getting breast implants to keep up with porn stars. Similarly, six in 10 women believe porn changes men's expectations of how they should behave. Women find themselves forced to compete on all fronts.
She is betrayed. One-third of women see men using porn as cheating, while only 17 percent of men equate porn with cheating.
The pornified couple: They are distant. Four in 10 Americans say pornography harms relationships between men and women. Nearly half of women describe fall-out in relationships; only one-third of men say the same thing. Couples describe a breakdown in closeness and a growing absence of trust.
They are broken. Divorce lawyers report cases of porn tearing couples apart. Nearly two-thirds of attorneys at the 2003 meeting of the American Academy of Matrimonial Lawyers witnessed a sudden rise in divorces related to the Internet; 58 percent of those were the result of a spouse looking at excessive amounts of porn online.
The pornified youth: They are exposed. Among 18- to- 24-year-olds, who came of age with Internet pornography, more than half say it's hard to go online without seeing porn. Kids no longer have to seek out porn; 11 million Internet users are under the age of 18. Still, adults with children in the home are no less likely to look at porn than those without kids at home.
They are sexed up. A quarter of adults believe that the greatest effect porn is having on children is that it makes kids more likely to have sex earlier than they might have. Thirty percent say porn is distorting boys' understanding of women and sex, while 7 percent say the pervasiveness of porn is distorting girls' body images and ideas about sex.
