Jamiatul Ulama KZN Council of Muslim Theologians
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Research has found that marriages in which one person has a porn problem or sexual compulsion are often plagued by less intimacy and sensitivity, as well as more anxiety, secrecy, isolation, and dysfunction in the relationship. And since many porn users end up losing their jobs as a result of looking at porn on a company computer, these marriages often end up with less financial security as well.
Life as a pro basketball player looks pretty good. The pay is great, you’d get to wear shorts to work, and your professional goals would include things like dunking more. So let’s say you decided to make that your plan: become a professional ball player by age 21. Chances are, you wouldn’t start preparing by picking up a cigarette habit and switching to a donuts-only diet.
So what does aiming for the NBA have to do with porn? The point is, most of us have an idea of what we want to do in life, and for the majority of people, that plan involves having a family. In fact, more than 80 percent of young adults say that getting married is an important priority in their life plan. [1] And considering married people are far more likely to say they are “highly satisfied” with their lives, it’s probably not such a bad goal. The problem for porn users is that healthy marriages and porn don’t mix well.
Research has found that marriages in which one person has a porn problem or sexual compulsion are often plagued by less intimacy and sensitivity, as well as more anxiety, secrecy, isolation, and dysfunction in the relationship. And since many porn users end up losing their jobs as a result of looking at porn on a company computer, these marriages can end up with less financial security as well.
In fact, many women—regardless of what their religious beliefs are—see looking at porn as a serious threat to being able to stay married at all. Why? For one thing, when a partner is using porn often, it takes away time they could otherwise be spending together. On top of that, many partners consider it cheating—or close to cheating—when their partner is using images of someone else’s body to get aroused.
And virtual cheating isn’t the only thing user’s spouses have to worry about. Studies have found that married porn users are more likely than non-users to have sex with someone other than their spouse, and men who look at porn are also more likely to go to prostitutes. As one researcher said, “Men witness the abuse of women in pornography constantly, and if they can’t engage in that behavior with their wives, girlfriends, or children, they force a [prostitute] to do it.”
And even if a user never goes that far, people who look at pornography are also more likely to be more sexually permissive—such as being OK with having lots of sexual partners and dangerous kinds of sex—which is associated with having less stable marriages later in life.
As a result, divorces related to porn use have “exploded,” says Dr. Gary Brooks, a psychologist who has been working with porn addicts for 30 years. In a survey of members of the American Academy of Matrimonial Lawyers taken in 2002, 62 percent of the divorce attorneys surveyed said that obsession with porn had been a significant factor in divorces cases they had handled in the last year.
Whether or not a porn user’s marriage falls apart, their spouse isn’t the only one affected. Children are often victims, too, either by being directly exposed to pornographic images or by being neglected by a parent who uses the time they could be spending with their kids to instead sit alone in front of their computer. In a 2004 poll conducted by Ellemagazine and MSNBC.com, one in five of the male respondents confessed that porn was taking away hours that used to be spent with their partner or kids. Among users that spent five or more hours per week looking at porn, that number shot up to 37 percent.
Not everyone will or even wants to make it to the NBA, but most people want to be happy (See Porn Leaves You Lonely) and to have a happy family as well. And the more we learn about porn and its effects, the clearer it becomes that a porn habit makes both of those goals harder and harder to reach.
Teens today are being raised on a steady diet of pornography, teaching them that random sex and group sex is completely normal and desirable.
Can you imagine what would happen if your school’s health class was taught by a cigarette salesman? Chances are, you wouldn’t hear much about lung cancer or how much shorter the typical smoker’s life span is. He might even try to tell you that smoking could boost your sprint time. Sounds ridiculous, right? Here’s the problem: that’s the kind of education millions of teens are getting about sex every day.
While porn is often called “adult material,” many of its viewers are well under the legal age. Whether they want to or not, the majority of teens are getting some of their sex ed from porn. [1] And just like cigarette commercials show healthy people puffing away instead of the cancer-causing reality, porn is offering a completely warped idea of what partners, sex, and relationships are really like. [2]
In porn, sex with strangers is made to look normal —and more often than not, it’s more than one stranger at a time. In a study of popular porn videos, the number of sexual partners in a scene ranged from one to 19, and averaged at three. And the kinds of sexual acts pornographers get on film are often degrading, dangerous, or violent.
“A competitive market means that pornographers are trying to outdo each other to come up with the most extreme images,” wrote John Wood, a therapist who works with youth addicted to pornography, in an article talking about porn’s effects. “This contest to push the boundaries means that straight intercourse is considered too boring. Images of brutal sex and women being humiliated and degraded by two or more men at any one time are the new norms.”
As a result, studies show that people who view porn are far more likely to think things like group sex or dangerous sex acts are more common than their non-porn–watching peers.
And in many cases, attitudes make their way into behavior. Researchers have repeatedly found that people who have seen a significant amount of porn are more likely to start having sex sooner and with more partners, and to engage in riskier kinds of sex, putting them at greater risk of getting sexually transmitted infections.
Sociologist Michael Kimmel has found that men’s sexual fantasies have become heavily influenced by porn, which gets awfully tricky when their partners don’t want to act out the degrading or dangerous acts porn shows. As a result, men who look at pornography have been shown to be more likely to go to prostitutes, often looking for a chance to live out what they’ve seen in porn. In one survey of former prostitutes, 80% said that customers had shown them images of porn to illustrate what they wanted to do.
What pornography doesn’t show is what healthy sex is like, since most pornographers cut out things like kissing, cuddling, other positive kinds of affection, and partners being responsive to each other’s needs and preferences.
They also cut out the consequences of the kinds of sex shown. In porn, no one contracts sexually transmitted infections; there are no unwanted pregnancies, no cervical cancer, no intestinal parasites, and no skin tearing or bruises. And no matter how rough a person treats their partner, in porn, nearly everything looks like it feels good.
In fact, in the study of popular porn videos, in nine scenes out of 10, a women was being hit, beaten, yelled at, or otherwise harmed, and the result was almost always the same—the victim either seemed not to mind or looked happy about it.
Not only does porn offer up a fictional version of sex education, but also that education is being delivered in a way perfectly tailored to how our brains learn. Images are an especially powerful teacher, since they can pack in a whole lot of information that the viewer can understand very quickly. And while words are often interpreted as opinions, our brains are more likely to interpret images as facts; after all, it’s a lot harder to argue with something you’re seeing happen in front of you.
Our brains also learn better when they’re sexually aroused. When you add in the focused concentration of searching through pornographic images to find exactly what the user is looking for, and reinforcing what’s being taught with the reward of sexual climax, it creates the perfect conditions for wiring what porn teaches into the brain (See Porn Changes the Brain).
As a result, consistent porn users wire their sexuality to looking at virtual images of unrealistic, surgically altered bodies. Instead of learning to build relationships with real people, it often feels more natural and arousing to them to be alone in front of a computer. “It’s sad,” said Dr. Gary Brooks, a psychology professor who studies porn’s effect on men. “Boys who are initiated in sex through these images become indoctrinated in a way that can potentially stay with them for the rest of their lives.”
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