# Just how harmful is pornography anyway? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [February 6, 2014, 11:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/just-how-harmful-is-pornography-anyway/680705 "2014-02-06T23:46:58Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![GIGObuster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gigobuster/32/421_2.png) [@GIGObuster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GIGObuster)\ **Post date:** [February 9, 2014, 9:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/just-how-harmful-is-pornography-anyway/680705/41 "2014-02-09T21:43:25Z")
> [@dasmoocher](#): > > Five minutes after the pizza is delivered? Nothing will happen until the electric guitar goes “bow chicka bow bow”… 🙂 [![](https://img.youtube.com/vi/72701ZoggfM/hqdefault.jpg "The Power of Music (Pizza Delivery)") ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=72701ZoggfM) (Safe for work! The power of music, MTV parody) ---
**Author:** ![nearwildheaven](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/90db22/32.png) [@nearwildheaven](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/nearwildheaven)\ **Post date:** [February 9, 2014, 10:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/just-how-harmful-is-pornography-anyway/680705/42 "2014-02-09T22:25:58Z")
I keep hearing all these stories about how a huge percentage of men (and a surprising number of women) are totally and completely addicted to pornography, to the point where they will quit their jobs, go days without sleep, completely neglect their children, etc. to look at it. Is any of it really that interesting? 😕 BTW, this phenomenon seems to exist only in the fundamentalist Christian community. Go figure. Has anyone else experienced this, or known of someone who did? ---
**Author:** ![thelurkinghorror](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/7c8e57/32.png) [@thelurkinghorror](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/thelurkinghorror)\ **Post date:** [February 9, 2014, 11:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/just-how-harmful-is-pornography-anyway/680705/43 "2014-02-09T23:15:04Z")
> [@nearwildheaven](#): > > I keep hearing all these stories about how a huge percentage of men (and a surprising number of women) are totally and completely addicted to pornography, to the point where they will quit their jobs, go days without sleep, completely neglect their children, etc. to look at it. Is any of it really that interesting? > > 😕 > > BTW, this phenomenon seems to exist only in the fundamentalist Christian community. Go figure. > > Has anyone else experienced this, or known of someone who did? Not anyone I know, but it’s the same as video game etc. addiction. Some people can play games/with themselves for hours and hours, but make it into work the next day. Some can’t regulate. For most of us, chafing is a big limiting factor anyway. ---
**Author:** ![Voyager](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/voyager/32/133_2.png) [@Voyager](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Voyager)\ **Post date:** [February 10, 2014, 2:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/just-how-harmful-is-pornography-anyway/680705/44 "2014-02-10T02:15:28Z")
> [@Ethilrist](#): > > From my own independent research, I’d say that most porn would give the uninitiated an unrealistic idea of what’s likely to happen during sex, what a reasonable body image is, and how much setup and effort is involved in developing a relationship to the point where sex is a possibility. Your average issue of Cosmo, not to mention TV shows and movies, have a lot more to do with unrealistic body images than porn, except, maybe, for penis size. After all, these actors, actresses and models make more money without taking off their clothes, and so usually look better. And all but the dimmest of us have figured out that porn isn’t realistic about the setup required. ---
**Author:** ![marshmallow](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/df705f/32.png) [@marshmallow](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/marshmallow)\ **Post date:** [February 10, 2014, 2:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/just-how-harmful-is-pornography-anyway/680705/45 "2014-02-10T02:38:55Z")
[Onion: Children Exposed To Pornography May Expect Sex To Be Enjoyable.](http://www.theonion.com/video/study-children-exposed-to-pornography-may-expect-s,14326/) What’s the big deal? I saw porn at a young age and look how I turned out. Uh oh. When I read feminist literature or blogs I nod my head and agree that porn dehumanizes women, but what’cha gonna do? Until there’s a way to rewire the brain men will remain horn dogs. We don’t really do shame, so the guilt trip isn’t going to work. ---
**Author:** ![nearwildheaven](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/90db22/32.png) [@nearwildheaven](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/nearwildheaven)\ **Post date:** [February 10, 2014, 3:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/just-how-harmful-is-pornography-anyway/680705/46 "2014-02-10T03:50:40Z")
> [@Voyager](#): > > Your average issue of Cosmo, not to mention TV shows and movies, have a lot more to do with unrealistic body images than porn, except, maybe, for penis size. After all, these actors, actresses and models make more money without taking off their clothes, and so usually look better. > And all but the dimmest of us have figured out that porn isn’t realistic about the setup required. I’d like to know who all those “23-year-old business executives” are. Okay, nowadays, maybe, but back in the days before the Internet? Get real. A while back, a local grocery store was accused of censorship because a customer asked that Cosmopolitan be taken off the checkout rack and put into the regular magazine rack, because there was some phrase on the cover that she felt was a little too racy for that area, and the manager agreed. C’mon, folks! Nobody said they couldn’t sell it! It was simply relocated. The person who complained, BTW, was a woman in her 20s who lived with her boyfriend and professed no specific religious beliefs; she just didn’t think that a phrase like “Toe-Curling Orgasms!” belonged on the checkout rack. ---
**Author:** ![nearwildheaven](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/90db22/32.png) [@nearwildheaven](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/nearwildheaven)\ **Post date:** [February 10, 2014, 3:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/just-how-harmful-is-pornography-anyway/680705/47 "2014-02-10T03:54:11Z")
> [@marshmallow](#): > > [Onion: Children Exposed To Pornography May Expect Sex To Be Enjoyable.](http://www.theonion.com/video/study-children-exposed-to-pornography-may-expect-s,14326/) > > What’s the big deal? I saw porn at a young age and look how I turned out. Uh oh. > > When I read feminist literature or blogs I nod my head and agree that porn dehumanizes women, but what’cha gonna do? Until there’s a way to rewire the brain men will remain horn dogs. We don’t really do shame, so the guilt trip isn’t going to work. A man I worked with when I was in college shared a house with several other people, one of whom was a very butch lesbian. He came home one night (we worked at a restaurant) to find her and some of her friends watching a lesbian porno movie. He had no idea that lesbian porn existed! :smack: While I’m certainly no porn expert, I said, “Dude, if people do it, someone’s filmed it.” :dubious: 😛 He also asked me if women got together to watch porn, the way some men do. I replied that I had never done it, and the times I’ve heard of women doing it, it was a joke, usually involving the fast-forward button. 😕 😉 p.s. He was straight. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [February 10, 2014, 4:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/just-how-harmful-is-pornography-anyway/680705/48 "2014-02-10T04:07:19Z")
> [@ITR\_champion](#): > > Amy Lang, a sexual health educator and founder of Birds + Bees+ Kids, says: “Internet porn is generally way too much information about sex for a 13-year-old boy. He really doesn’t have the emotional or intellectual ability to make sense of what he’s viewing.” He doesn’t have the emotional or intellectual ability to make sense of a cherry pie when he eats it. That’s all rather beside the point, isn’t it? ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [February 10, 2014, 4:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/just-how-harmful-is-pornography-anyway/680705/49 "2014-02-10T04:09:11Z")
> [@Martian Bigfoot](#): > > Totally. It has always puzzled me why most porn is so disgusting and evil. Actual sex isn’t, in my experience. On the contrary, it is often a wonderful experience of love and intimacy. Indeed, the most wonderful such experience that money can buy! ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [February 10, 2014, 4:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/just-how-harmful-is-pornography-anyway/680705/50 "2014-02-10T04:10:29Z")
> [@Hector\_St\_Clare](#): > > **Hershele** it’s not that puberty exists that’s the problem, it’s the fact that it happens at 12 or so instead of at 16-17. > > Age of puberty was higher in the past than it is today. D’ye think?! Age of marriage was a lot **lower** in the past than it is today. ---
**Author:** ![Guinastasia](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/guinastasia/32/5751_2.png) [@Guinastasia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Guinastasia)\ **Post date:** [February 10, 2014, 6:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/just-how-harmful-is-pornography-anyway/680705/51 "2014-02-10T06:15:09Z")
> [@Hector\_St\_Clare](#): > > All things considered, I’d rather keep children as far away from sex and sexualization as possible. What exactly do you mean by “keeping them far away from sex as possible”? Do you mean not telling kids _anything_ about sex, like about how babies are made, or whatever? (I don’t think anyone here is arguing that five-year-olds should be watching porn) ---
**Author:** ![Der\_Trihs](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/der_trihs/32/233_2.png) [@Der\_Trihs](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Der_Trihs)\ **Post date:** [February 10, 2014, 7:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/just-how-harmful-is-pornography-anyway/680705/52 "2014-02-10T07:11:24Z")
> [@Ethilrist](#): > > I think that that has a whole lot to do with it… > > From my own independent research, I’d say that most porn would give the uninitiated an unrealistic idea of what’s likely to happen during sex, what a reasonable body image is, and how much setup and effort is involved in developing a relationship to the point where sex is a possibility. Congratulations; you’ve just discovered that fiction and reality aren’t the same. _Of course_ porn is unrealistic; it’s a fantasy. This is really much the same sort of moral panic as worrying that people will watch Superman movies and try to fly, or action movies and try to leap through glass windows. Sure some will; but someone who can’t separate fiction and fact is going to lead a life filled with disasters no matter what. And censoring everything is a cure worse than the disease. > [@marshmallow](#): > > When I read feminist literature or blogs I nod my head and agree that porn dehumanizes women, but what’cha gonna do? _Banning_ porn is more likely to result in the dehumanization of women, since it makes men more sexually frustrated and more focused on getting women to have sex with them. Especially given the overlap between people thinking that porn is bad and that masturbation is bad. The women in porn are “objectified” because they are objects. Pictures. Often there’s not even a real woman as the original for the picture. Forbidding porn means that _real, actual_ women are the ones objectified. And as I already pointed out what evidence there is, is that porn leads to a lowering in the rate of sex crimes. So even if porn “objectifies women”, the evidence seems to be that that’s a _good_ thing. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [February 10, 2014, 3:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/just-how-harmful-is-pornography-anyway/680705/53 "2014-02-10T15:48:29Z")
Isn’t it possible to objectify women without degrading them anyway? Objectification is simply a heterosexual male’s normal response to the presence or sight of any attractive woman; it does not mean he does not also take her seriously as a person. (Probably, in fact, [he takes her **more** seriously as a person than he would an unattractive woman](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bebe%27s_Boobs_Destroy_Society), but that’s another discussion.) ---
**Author:** ![marshmallow](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/df705f/32.png) [@marshmallow](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/marshmallow)\ **Post date:** [February 10, 2014, 3:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/just-how-harmful-is-pornography-anyway/680705/54 "2014-02-10T15:59:19Z")
> [@Der\_Trihs](#): > > _Banning_ porn I’m sure some people somewhere want to go back to bans, but not from what I’ve seen. Feminists (or the not-sex pos ones anyway) try to convince men it’s a bad habit and warps their thinking and they should stop. I’m sure that’ll gain traction any day now. > [@](#): > > The women in porn are “objectified” because they are objects. Pictures. Often there’s not even a real woman as the original for the picture. Drawings or CGI or whatever is better since an actual woman isn’t being debased or taken advantage of, but the societal objectification remains. It makes men see women as only interesting or useful as they are beautiful, or linking sexiness and competency. See also the much maligned “pornification” of Western culture. I’d say the porn isn’t the problem, even if it does damage. All the sources of objectification feminists complain about (porn, strip clubs, prostitution, commercial media, fashion, plastic surgery, wet t-shirt contests, etc.) come from the same place: the male brain. So porn is a symptom, not the cause. Kinda like the old quip: Did [whatever] drive you to drink? I can drive myself! ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [February 10, 2014, 4:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/just-how-harmful-is-pornography-anyway/680705/55 "2014-02-10T16:51:54Z")
Look, the harmlessness of porn was definitively proven in a 2011 joint study by Dr. Lulu Lust, M.D. (mega-duggs) of Johns Hopkins psychiatric, and Rod Steele, Ph.D. (pretty hung devil), a singularly well-endowmented researcher from the psychology department at MIT. With trembling hands they both traced the outlines of their preliminary research methodology . . . It was empirical, all so oh so empirical . . . ---
**Author:** ![Hector\_St\_Clare](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/b5ac83/32.png) [@Hector\_St\_Clare](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hector_St_Clare)\ **Post date:** [February 10, 2014, 6:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/just-how-harmful-is-pornography-anyway/680705/56 "2014-02-10T18:49:46Z")
> [@BrainGlutton](#): > > D’ye think?! Age of marriage was a lot **lower** in the past than it is today. That depends entirely when and where you look. Child/early teen marriages certainly weren’t uncommon in India or China. In eastern and southern Europe, ages in the late teens for women were more typical, and mid- to late twenties for men. Northwestern Europe always had quite late ages of marriages (estimates I’ve seen for England around the time of the Black Death are around 25 for women, 32 for men). England/Ireland also had pretty similar (late 20s to mid 30s age of marriage in the 19th century. In many other parts of the world, as you point out, marriage ages were much lower. ---
**Author:** ![Hershele\_Ostropoler](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/e47c2d/32.png) [@Hershele\_Ostropoler](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hershele_Ostropoler)\ **Post date:** [February 11, 2014, 5:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/just-how-harmful-is-pornography-anyway/680705/57 "2014-02-11T17:57:07Z")
> [@Guinastasia](#): > > What exactly do you mean by “keeping them far away from sex as possible”? Do you mean not telling kids _anything_ about sex, like about how babies are made, or whatever? (I don’t think anyone here is arguing that five-year-olds should be watching porn) That’s what concerned me, there. It’s one thing not to tell kids anything about sex; it’s another thing not to tell adults about sex before they become adults. Sex isn’t (inherently) a bad, impure, or destructive thing. Fourteen-year-olds in modern first-world society probably shouldn’t be sexually active in the narrower senses of the term. The reasons for that are cultural, but no less valid for that. But that doesn’t mean they shouldn’t know about it. ---
**Author:** ![Kelevra](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/97f17d/32.png) [@Kelevra](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kelevra)\ **Post date:** [February 11, 2014, 6:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/just-how-harmful-is-pornography-anyway/680705/58 "2014-02-11T18:26:35Z")
> [@nearwildheaven](#): > > I keep hearing all these stories about how a huge percentage of men (and a surprising number of women) are totally and completely addicted to pornography, to the point where they will quit their jobs, go days without sleep, completely neglect their children, etc. to look at it. Is any of it really that interesting? > > 😕 > > BTW, this phenomenon seems to exist only in the fundamentalist Christian community. Go figure. > > Has anyone else experienced this, or known of someone who did? Mrs. Kelevra has an uncle who is supposedly addicted to porn. I bought into all the stories until I met him and his wife. She is such an unremitting bitch that the only sexuality he will ever experience is through porn. He isn’t addicted to it, he just no longer cares what his wife thinks and refuses to stop looking at it. One time when we were visiting his wife yelled at him for watching a Coors Light commercial during a football game. And yes, the whole family are fundamentalist Christians. ---
**Author:** ![Skald\_the\_Rhymer](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ecccb3/32.png) [@Skald\_the\_Rhymer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Skald_the_Rhymer)\ **Post date:** [February 11, 2014, 9:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/just-how-harmful-is-pornography-anyway/680705/59 "2014-02-11T21:28:46Z")
> [@Der\_Trihs](#): > > It’s beneficial, mostly. It gives men a harmless way to sate their desires rather than letting their frustrations build until they do something that hurts themselves or someone else. It is correlated with a general decrease in sex crimes. Girls watch porn too, you know. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [February 12, 2014, 2:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/just-how-harmful-is-pornography-anyway/680705/60 "2014-02-12T02:47:41Z")
> [@Skald\_the\_Rhymer](#): > > Girls watch porn too, you know. !!! Wha- . . . They . . . . . . Really? . . . I’ll be in my bunk. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/just-how-harmful-is-pornography-anyway/680705.md?page=2) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/just-how-harmful-is-pornography-anyway/680705.md?page=4)