Pornography Destroys Families

This guest post is offered by Rebecca Dattilo, Regent Law rising 3L and Spring 2020 Family Law student:

Pornography. It’s a commonplace topic among millennials and Generation Z’s as reports indicate that 90% of teens and 96% of young adults have taken an encouraging, accepting, or neutral approach towards pornography in discussions with their friends. 

Interestingly, teenagers and young adults (ages 13-24) actually believe that not recycling is worse than viewing pornography.  Of course, pornography is not consumed only by the younger generations. Pornography cuts across all demographics, regardless of age, sex, sexual orientation, nationality, or religion. For example, it is reported that 70% of men and 30% of women watch pornography. Among Christians, 64% of Christian men and 15% of Christian women stated they watch porn at least once a month. With 1 in 5 Google searches being related to pornography, statistics indicate that the number of porn consumers will continue to grow.  As noted here earlier at Family Restoration, porn distributors are taking advantage of the coronavirus stay-at-home lockdown. And according to Huffington Post, porn sites receive more visitors each month than Netflix, Amazon, and Twitter combined.

Some may ask, “What’s the big deal?” Pornography has often been painted to be a means of sexual expression, sex education, and a method of fulfilling unmet sexual expectations. Yet, despite the carefree approach many have adopted towards pornography, pornography has a very dark and sinister side. Studies indicate that pornography use has detrimental effects on the marital and family life. It is reported that prolonged use of pornography is correlated with diminished trust between couples, the rejection of the idea of sexual monogamy, a greater acceptance towards promiscuity and extra-marital relationships, a lack of attraction towards family and child-raising, and a greater likelihood of compulsive and addictive sexual behavior.  Unsurprisingly, pornography use is a present factor in many divorce cases: a 2002 report determined that 56% of divorces included the factor of one party possessing an obsessive interest in porn websites.  Such studies continually point to pornography destroying the lives of individuals, their marriages, and their families.

Additionally, pornography has dramatically changed perceptions of sexual violence as porn content deemed “hard core” continues to gain in popularity. In 2010, the journal, Violence Against Women, reported physical aggression in 88.2% of leading pornography scenes, and verbal aggression in 48.7%. Within that verbal aggression, 94.4% of the aggression was directed towards women and girls. Undoubtedly, these violent images and scenarios affect how both men and women perceive sexual intimacy and view the opposite sex.

Pornography has not just shaped attitudes about sex, but has influenced users’ actions. The Minnesota Human Trafficking Task Force cited 46 published research studies detailing the detrimental effects of pornography exposure. It was found that exposure to pornography places one at a higher risk for committing sexual offenses as well as accepting beliefs about sexual violence that trivialize rape or blame the victim. One study indicated that men who have engaged in date rape admitted to “very frequently” reading adult magazines such as Playboy and Penthouse. Furthermore, there are strong connections between pornography and human trafficking. Exploiters actually traffic individuals to use them in pornography and women and children are particularly susceptible to being trafficked for pornography. The National Center on Sexual Exploitation makes it clear that a pornography viewer is likely viewing content of trafficked women and children as forced sexual acts between a trafficked victim and her exploiter are regularly uploaded to the internet.  Do you want to help stop human trafficking?  Then stop using pornography.

          Far from innocent, pornography distorts perceptions about and attitudes towards sex, dehumanizes men and women as objects of lust, causes great psychological and physical harm to users, and destroys both marital intimacy and the marital relationship.

Pornography destroys families.  And it propagates sexual violence towards women and children, placing them at greater risk for sexual exploitation and trafficking.  Individuals can no longer afford to turn a blind eye towards pornography: there is just too much at stake.