Wednesday, January 4, 2017

Advice For a Young Man Wanting to Quit Pornography. By Michael Lovan.

I'm super proud of a young man I know. He wrote me, asking me for help in quitting pornography. He recognizes the harm it does, but has found that quitting is not as intuitive as consuming. He doesn't understand why that is, and has no idea what he can do to curb his impulses to watch. 
With his permission, I'm posting my response to him.
= = = = =
Dear _____,
I’m glad you wrote me about your desire to quit pornography. It can be very hard to break that pattern, and while I can attest that it does get easier, you literally won’t be in the clear as long as you’re a male. I’ll explain.
Part of the construction of manhood is the idea of masculinity, meaning that to be a man, you must be strong, emotionless, have many sexual conquests to boot, and anything less then you aren’t a “real man.” I’m not suggesting that these ideas of manhood have manifested in those direct terms throughout your life or have infiltrated your way of thinking consciously, but rather, the world is largely patriarchal, down to its laws, language, customs, and attitudes, and this pathology is deeply embedded in the way we perceive males. Women, on the other hand, are ascribed femininity, which includes a cluster of traits such as fragility, being overly emotional, lacking intelligence; they should also be sexually inexperienced, lest she be labeled a “slut.” These perceptions, too, are so ingrained in the way we perceive females that culturally, we lash out at women who try to assert themselves or have sex or even want to make choices about their own bodies on their own terms. One interpretation of pornography, in a historical framework that sees women fighting for their own rights and to be recognized as equals to men on a social / political / economic scale, is that it is a means of regaining control over these women so that men might oppress them back into their feminine box and shut up.
Even the most critical, most thoughtful of us can’t escape this socialization. This is the world you were born into and it likely will not change in your lifetime.
I get into all of this because I don’t believe the odds of you quitting pornography are that high if your quitting is informed merely by your own desire to remedy, as you say, the terrible things it does to your mental states. This isn’t to say that you are incapable or that you are not strong, but rather, you are addicted to pornography in a world where the vast majority of men are addicted to pornography. You live in a world where even mentioning that you want to quit porn will subject you to ridicule and death threats (I am not exaggerating). Doing it for yourself is possible, but it is not probable, given the world you live in. 
In order to quit pornography efficiently, you must understand the how and the why behind your addiction in relation to the direct harm it causes women in front of the camera, recognize the propagandist role pornography plays in oppressing women at home, and confront the reality that the majority of what you are masturbating to is likely, or very likely, rape.
In other words, you must become political. That doesn’t mean you become a vocal anti-porn activist tomorrow (though I would certainly welcome your company), or that you stop masturbating tonight (do it without porn or any visual aids!), or that you punish yourself (feeling bad for yourself won’t change anything). It means you take the moments where you would typically be masturbating to pornography, and the moments you are not masturbating but find yourself sexualizing women at the back of your mind, and instead use your brain to think critically.
I’ve a few direct, actionable things you can do today in order to sharpen your mind.
1) Buy a journal. Get ready to write in it a lot.
2) Read Getting Off by Robert Jensen. It’s an amazing resource, written from the perspective of an anti-porn male. It is free and available here. http://robertwjensen.org/…/02/Getting-Off-by-Robert-Jensen.…. Write about your learnings in your journal. Write about what you learned in relation to yourself. Revisit what you wrote the next day.
3) Each time you feel the urge to masturbate, write in the journal about what you are feeling. Do not allow yourself to “check out” emotionally. Process what you are experiencing. Write until you are positive that you made it through. Revisit what you wrote the next day.
4) Stay cognizant of your thoughts. You might find yourself thinking sexually of a woman you pass by, or are triggered to think sexually when you watch a film. Take a deep breath. Recognize where this is coming from. Write in your journal about this. Revisit what you wrote the next day.
5) Read any number of essays by Andrea Dworkin on pornography. They are amazing are available for free here. http://radfem.org/dworkin/. Write about your learnings in your journal. Write about what you learned in relation to yourself. Revisit what you wrote the next day.
6) Go online and express anti-porn sentiment. Watch what happens. Write about what you observed from other men. Revisit what you wrote the next day.
7) Get to know how the women in your life feel about pornography, its depiction of women, and how it has impacted their lives. Be mindful of how you navigate this sort of conversation, though - it's much better to listen than to question.
Also, you can always write me and tell me what you are going through. I’m happy to be a support through this. But recognize this: the only one who can get you to quit is you. You’re not going to quit unless you quit. Nobody is going to pull you out of this except for you.
Whew. I think you may have wanted a few tip and tricks and I gave you a mouthful. In any case, I am really glad you wrote me. Feel free to let me know if you need any clarity or if there is anything more I can do for you. I'm really proud of you.
Cheers,
Lovan

Monday, January 2, 2017

Is Pornography Consumption Directly Linked to Violence Against Women? by Michael Lovan



Is pornography consumption directly linked to violence against women?
Yes. The consumption of pornography has been demonstrably linked to violence against women. Firstly, pornography constructs and reinforces males as masculine (dominant) and females as feminine (submissive), an ideology that maintains male entitlement to sex, normalizes male violence, and coerces women to be subservient to men and both deserving and desiring of violence perpetrated against them; secondly, pornography consumption lowers inhibitions towards violence against women and increases sympathy for perpetrators of sexualized violence; thirdly, pornography serves as a how-to guide that directly trains men how to perpetrate violence against women for and during sex.
It is important to verify that pornography itself is violent. In a content analysis of the 50 best-selling and best-renting pornographic videos, Psychologist Ana J. Bridges, Robert Wosnitzer, Erica Scharrer, Chyng Sun, and Rachel Liberman found that each scene had, on average, 11.52 aggressive acts, including both verbal and physical abuse. Of the 304 scenes observed in this study, 3,376 instances of violence were reported, of which 88% were physical and 48% were verbal. 72% of the aggressive acts were perpetrated by men, with over 94% of the abuse targeted against the women in the scenes. In other words, pornography is very violent; the vast majority of it containing depictions of violence, particularly against women.
In a study conducted by Dr. Dolf Zillman and Dr. Jennings Bryant on the effects of continuous exposure to pornography, their findings proved that increased exposure to pornography made subjects more tolerant of sexual violence, less supportive of the rights of women, and more lenient towards the punishment of rapists.
Psychologist Edward Donnerstein found in his study of sexual aggressions perpetrated against college women, 39% of the sex offenders had been influenced by pornography. In Diana E.H. Russell’s studies, she found that perpetrators of sexual violence against children frequently used pornography as a grooming method to provoke sexual curiosity, legitimize, normalize, and desensitize them to sexual violence, and silence them by making them feel guilty and thus complicit in their own abuse. In Professor Janet Hinson Shope’s studies, she found that among women who were in sexually abusive relationships, pornography had played a direct role in the abuse 58% of the time. A comparable study found that 25% of abusive men forced their partners to either watch or reenact scenes from pornography; this study also found that the most abusive abusers were those who watched pornography. 
In each of these studies, and many more conducted over the course of the last several decades, the through line is that pornography has not only shaped attitudes towards violence against women but has played a direct role in conditioning men to be perpetrators of sexual violence and conditioning women and children to accept sexualized violence.
SOURCES
Melinda Tankard Reist and Abigail Bray. Big Porn Inc. Spinifex Press, 2011.
Bridges, A.J., Wosnitzer, R., Scharrer, E., Sun, C., & Liberman, R. (in press). Aggression and sexualbehavior in best-selling pornography videos: A content analysis update. Violence Against Women.
Donnerstein, Edward. “Pornography and Violence Against Women: Experimental Studies.” Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences 347.1 (1980): 277-288. Web. 6 Mar. 2012. 
Donnerstein, Edward, and Daniel Linz. “Mass Media Sexual Violence and Male Viewers Current Theory and Research: RESEARCH ON THE EFFECTS OF AGGRESSIVE PORNOGRAPHY AGGRESSIVE PORNOGRAPHY AND SEXUAL AROUSAL AGGRESSIVE PORNOGRAPHY AND ATTITUDES TOWARD RAPE AGGRESSIVE PORNOGRAPHY AND AGGRESSION AGAINST WOMEN THE INFLUENCE OF NONPORNOGRAPHIC DEPICTIONS OF VIOLENCE AGAINST WOMEN THE EFFECTS OF EXPOSURE TO R-RATED SEXUALIZED VIOLENCE MITIGATING THE EFFECTS OF EXPOSURE TO SEXUAL VIOLENCE THE IMPACT OF NONAGGRESSIVE PORNOGRAPHY CONCLUSIONS REFERENCES.” The American Behavioral Scientist (1986-1994) 29.5 (1986): 601-616. Print.
J. Bryant and D. Zillman, “Pornography: Models of Effects on Sexual Deviancy,” in Encyclopedia of Criminology and Deviant Behavior, ed. C. D. Bryant (Philadelphia: Brunner-Routledge, 2001), pp. 241-44.
Jensen, R. (2004, July). Pornography and Sexual Violence. Harrisburg, PA: VAWnet, a project of the National Resource Center on Domestic Violence/Pennsylvania Coalition Against Domestic Violence. Retrieved January 2, 2017 from: http://www.vawnet.org
Shope, Janet Hinson. “When Words Are Not Enough.” Violence Against Women 10.1 (2004): 56-72. Web. 6 Mar. 2012.