Pornography Is Bad For America

Pornography Is Bad For America

The following is a copy of a post that I did some time ago. I represent it here because I know that not many of those who view my current posts are likely to search back through my history of postings. I also represent it because a friend and former colleague has asked my opinion on a matter related to pornography and its effects upon culture.

My last, deep and comprehensive, analysis of the research literature on the effects of pornography was published 12 years ago. I spent two years on this project, almost exclusively and will not be able to match that effort again at this time. I am certain that there are new findings that will support and that will not support my conclusions. I am certain that, as in my previous analysis of the data available, philosophy and politics has biased many of the findings and opinions.

As a psychologist, my own assessment is not just based upon the research findings however. It was, and remains, based upon the principles/laws that underly Social Learning Theory, Operant Conditioning and Respondent Conditioning of humans and other animals. These principles, laws, and learning mechanisms predict that certain response tendencies will emerge from repeatedly pairing orgasms with a particular class of stimuli. Within this process new patterns of sexual arousal can be learned, new thoughts and images can become very frequent, new patterns of behavior can be fantasized, and new patterns of sexual behavior will become more likely. The conditionability of the consumer of pornography is especially heightened during puberty, but is present for many years.

The depictions in modern pornography include, children and young teens ( simulated or real), homosexuals, groups, aggression, torture, disfiguration, feces and urine, and animals, to name only a few categories.

Given what I have learned about human conditioning and learning over the past 47 years of study and observation (36 years as a professor and a concurrent 30 years as a psychotherapist), there is no way that flooding a population (children included) with the vivid pornographic depictions listed above will not produce an increased rate of human sexual actions that are harmful to a large number of individuals involved, in many different ways, and to their socioculture.

I have added an interesting post (following my own) from another source, to update my own post with more current observations of the many ways that problems produced by the porn industry can affect peoples lives. This posting will follow my own.

Yes, there is research and opinion to suggest no harm from the infusion of pornography into various cultures. I simply do not believe it.

My original posting follows:

It is so popular and comfortable to say that “whatever consenting adults choose to do is okay”. But there are consequences beyond what consenting adults choose to do, when they do “it” publicly. The same can also be said about some of the things that consenting adults do in private.

The hard reality is that many of our newly granted sexual freedoms (illegal less than one life-time ago) are severely damaging everyone, especially our young adults and children. These new sexual freedoms must therefore damaging our culture: How could it be otherwise?

As a psychologist, I have frequently witnessed the devastating effects of the scientifically flawed conclusions of President Johnson’s Committee on Pornography which recommended the legalization of pornography in 1970. In 1986 President Reagan’s Attorney General’s Commission on Pornography concluded that the earlier Commission’s findings of no relation between pornography and antisocial behavior was “starkly obsolete”. We now know much more about the effects of pornographic sexual stimulation upon humans than we did in 1970. What has been learned explains much of our sex-related human suffering and loss brought by a series of ignorant and irresponsible Court decisions mandating a nation-wide torrent of dramatically explicit pornography.

The following is a brief summary of scientific research findings about the effects of pornography viewing upon human thoughts, emotions, and behavior that I have previously published [Mawhinney, V.T. (1998). Behavior and Social Issues, 8, 2, 159-193].

1. Violent portrayals of sex can increase sexual aggression in the viewer. Graphic sexual violence is common in XXX and R-rated films rented by adults and teens from neighborhood video rental stores.
2. Much of pornography depicts women in grossly disrespected, exploited, and/ or sexually abused rolls. I am stunned by the absence of outrage among Women’s Liberation organizations.
3. The millions who masturbate while viewing the deviant sexual displays that flood the internet (teens and kids, urine and defecation, pain and torture, and sex with animals, etc.) are auto-erotically conditioning their own increased appetite for such portrayals. The same is true of any genre of pornography.
4. Both violent and nonviolent sexual portrayals can increase aggression in men when some other impulse-control impairing event is added such as drugs, alcohol, or frustration.
5. Commonly depicted rape scenes in which females finally acquiesce, and enjoy the sex, perpetuates the idea that female pleasure is a common outcome of forced sex.
6. Viewing rape depictions can reduce the estimated seriousness of such assaults for both men and woman and the severity of the punishment that they recommend for the rapist.
7. Viewing pornography can cause the viewer to overestimate the commonality of the sexual activities observed. It can also increase the viewers expectations that such behavior will occur in their own relationships with others and that others will probably be willing participants.
8. Viewing pornography “primes” the observer to think about sex more often and this increases the probability of sexual behavior.
9. Watching attractive male and female sexual models in pornography can reduce the viewer’s judgement of the attractiveness of their own mate, increasing dissatisfaction.
10. Pornography was a very small industry in the early 1960’s. By the mid-1990’s its revenues had grown to over 10 billion dollars per year. One recent estimate places this nation’s annual “mainstreamed” pornography earnings at about 56 billion dollars. The legalization of pornography has stimulated monumental new business growth and very substantial new revenues for our predatory government.

The longer-term consequences of our incompetent sexual experiment are unprecedented personal and financial costs for increased illegitimate births, sexually transmitted diseases, rapes, child molestations, sexual infidelity in relationships and increased divorce rates. The flood of pornography is a significant partial determinant of all of these painful events. I submit that this is not “new found freedom”, it is a deadly form of social chaos.

And what about our local strip clubs? The mixture of sexual stimulation, tension, alcohol, and frustration in a testosterone “saturated” local strip club frequently ends in physical brutality, violence, and death. Only the naive are surprised and shocked.

Do you really think a community gains more from these sex clubs than it loses? The costs to a city’s reputation are incalculable. The financial losses will be enormous. Consider the costs to law enforcement, emergency medical services, hospitals, and to our judicial and penal system. This “little object lesson” is an example of bad behavioral contagion. It is the spread of damaging behavior patterns within our lives, in large part, caused by the drug and sex practices that are encouraged by our own socioculture.

Of course one can make the First Amendment argument. But our founding fathers could never have dreamed that the meaning of “freedom of expression” would be so distorted to inflict an avalanche of pornography upon this nation. Many of us, born and raised in the 1940’s and 1950’s, felt very free indeed: We enjoyed freedom from the culture-wide pornography related human misery that now enslaves us all.

What do our children learn from all of this? And how many of us care anymore? It saddens me to say this, but each generation appears to be breeding a next generation that is increasingly more troubled than the one before. Our addiction to pornography is a large part of this problem. If you think that this culture’s sex, drugs, violence, and other impulse-control problems are bad now—just wait. There is much worse to come.

What can be done? The mark of emotionally healthy individuals and cultures is their ability to deny immediate gratification to achieve long-term rewards. All across this great nation, good citizens and their good governments must do all that they can to reverse our cultural sexual addiction contagion— and we must do it very soon. Eliminating the recreational sex industry within your own communities is a step in the right direction.

V. Thomas Mawhinney, Ph.D. 11/08/09

This is a slight revision of an article that I published in the South Bend (Indiana) Tribune approximately 9 years ago.

Dr. Tom, 4/1/10

Prevent Fetal Alcohol Syndrom (FAS)

Prevent Fetal Alcohol Syndrome (FAS)

Women who drink alcohol during pregnancy put their infants at risk for biological damage. Binge drinking among college students and early alcohol consumption among teens has increased dramatically. Alcohol consumption during pregnancy increases the risks of a newborn infant suffering from fetal alcohol syndrome (FAS). FAS often shows itself in head and facial deformities that tend to create elf-like facial features, slow growth, abnormal joints (feet, fingers, toes), heart defects, tremors and agitation in newborns, hyperactivity, learning disabilities, abnormal brain development and possible mild to moderate mental retardation.

Rough estimates of the occurrence of FAS are 1 to 2 of every 1000 babies. This figure increases to around 29 of 1000 women who heavily consume alcohol early in their pregnancies.

In general, alcohol consumption among our female population has also increased in recent decades. Guidelines for the safe consumption of alcohol during pregnancy are not clear and this has led many health professionals to recommend zero alcohol use during pregnancy.

This leaves society with three major problems: The first is that many pregnant women do not get this message. Secondly, many of the women who do understand that alcohol is dangerous to their in-utero developing babies simply behave irresponsibly: some knowingly take the risks of alcohol consumption during pregnancy. In many other cases pregnant women are addicted to alcohol and believe they cannot control their alcohol intake. Finally, and most diabolically, women may drink alcohol during that early time interval when they have not yet discovered that they are pregnant.

Physical and neurological damage caused by woman who consume alcohol or other drugs during pregnancy cannot be cured. These infants are damaged for the rest of their lives. The effects of these impairments will reverberate for at least three generations: the mother’s life, the child’s life, and the lives of the many others with whom the damaged and growing person will interact. The costs in lost human potential and financial resources of substance abuse to the unborn and society are huge and difficult to establish.

What, in general, are the costs of an impaired child through life? There are the costs of special education, unemployment, medical care and welfare. Insurance costs must increase as well as our taxes. What about the costs of crime, law enforcement, prosecution, and prison?

We seldom think about the costs to us all of the forms of behavioral contagion that I have outlined above. If we fail to control these costs to society through prevention, this human source drain upon our health and viabilitycan destroy America’s health and viability.

We must prevent FAS and other factors that destroy our children.

I am reminded of a nursery rhyme from my childhood:

“Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall. Humpty Dumpty had a great fall. All the Kings men and all the Kings horses couldn’t put poor Humpty Dumpty together again.”

The prevention of our human problems is the best and most cost-effective way.

God Bless,

Dr. Tom

Divorce When There Are Children?

Divorce When There Are Children ?

As a therapist, I find counseling with couples without children who contemplate divorce to be mildly stressful. I always want to help people to solve the problems that they are coping with.
But, with married couples without children who fail to remain together, the pain and stress to them and their families normally does not damage any children and I take solace in that. If one or both are determined to divorce, I shrug my shoulders with resignation and sadly say, O.K., go ahead.

When I am working with a married or formerly commited couple with children who fail to remain together, it is a gut-wrenching experience for me. I am pretty good at letting go of the therapeutic process when there is nothing left that I can do. But, I do everything in my power to persuade married or committed couples to consider the effects of their divorce upon their children.

Please allow me a brief fantasy.

If I were king, I would decree that no couple with children could separate before their children had graduated from high school. After all, the children did not ask to be brought into this world only to be separated from those who they have grown to love and depend upon for life, security. and normal growth and development.

In my fantasy, in this day and age of easy contraception, I would lecture to my kingdom:

"You brought that infant into the world and now it is your obligation to raise that child to the best of your ability. Your personal hopes and desires are secondary in importance to the needs of your child...and your child needs you to stay together to help him or her grow to the age of independence.

Sorry, that's just the way it is. Besides, when you were married you took an oath before God to remain married, 'Till Death Do Us Part'.

Why don't you now just commit to, 'Till Our Children Depart', and worry about the rest later.

Now, let's get to work to do the best job that you can possibly do raising your children and also find as much happiness during this process as is possible".

O.K., the fantasy is over. Don't get mad...it was only a fantasy!

The hard reality is that there are several good reasons to get a divorce, in spite of the hazards to the children involved. I am convinced by 30 + years of practice, that when children are involved, the marriage deal-breakers should only be 1. Physical or Sexual Abuse; 2. Chronic Untreatable Emotional Abuse; 3. Chronic Untreatable Infidelity; and 4. Chronic Untreatable Alcohol or Drug Addiction or Abuse.

I believe these family problems normally put children at greater risk for harm than a divorce.

But for all other cases that include children, there is a moral responsibility to the children involved and to society to enter marriage/couples counseling and to try as hard as possible to improve the existing problems. Reasonable estimates of improved relations in couple's relationships are between 60% and 70%.

If you are considering a divorce or terminating your relationship with your partner, and you have children, stop and think about what will happen to them. I ask that you please have the courage to study the following links and then protect your children with all of your might.

This first link describes the harms that are likely to occur to your children.

http://www.divorcereform.org/psy.html

This second link describes the harms that accrue to society when marriages or couples with children break-up.

http://www.heritage.org/research/family/bg1373.cfm

God Bless, Dr. Tom

3/20/09