The Lure of Pornography

By Dr. Margaret Paul
November 14, 2007

The pornography industry is huge. This article discusses why porno has become such a popular addiction.

The pornography industry is huge, with revenues of close to $60 billion world-wide - over $13 billion is the U.S. Pornography revenue is larger than the combined revenues of all professional basketball, baseball, and football franchises, and larger than the combined revenues of CBS, NBC, and ABC. 40 million US adults regularly visit Internet pornography.

Why?

Sometimes couples use pornography to enhance their sex life, and if both of them enjoy it, it is not a problem. Sometimes porno is viewed just for the fun of it. When this is the case, its use is occasional and it is not a problem.

But most pornography is created by males for males and is used alone - addictively.

Viewing porno is often part of a sexual addiction - using some form of sex to avoid painful feelings and fill the emptiness of aloneness and loneliness. The intensity of the sexual feelings generated from porno can momentarily drown out fear, anxiety, or depression. All of this without having to run the risk of facing your deepest fears - your fears of inadequacy, rejection, or engulfment. No performance anxiety when you can have your relationship with a magazine, a video or with your computer.

This is a major lure of pornography: all the intensity and release with none of the risk of actual relationships. You don't have to please anyone. You don't have to perform, and you especially don't have to run the risk of real intimacy. You can blot out your fear and pain and momentarily feel good.

You don't have to open your heart. Your wounded self can be totally in charge, feeling satiated from the stimulation without having to care about anyone. It is easier than having sex with a partner. You can masturbate without ever having to deal with difficult issues such as love, connection, caring, emotional intimacy, or emotional vulnerability. You don't have to risk being hurt.

The lure of porno is like the lure of food, or the lure of drugs, or the lure of gambling, spending, and so on. It has become a major way that many people, especially males, avoid taking responsibility for their feelings. If you are feeling anxious, alone, lonely, depressed, inadequate, needy - why not just masturbate with porno and blot out your feelings?

The problem with this, as with any addiction, is that it does nothing to address the real problems. As long as you use porno - or any addiction - to avoid responsibility for your feelings, you are stuck behaving in ways that are not good for you and not good for the planet. Objectifying people sexually can never lead to high self-esteem. While your wounded self may justify this addiction by saying that it is not hurting anyone, this is definitely not true.

All our thoughts and actions go into the collective unconscious and affect our entire planet. Whenever you are thinking or behaving in ways that you would not want announced in the newspaper, you are not behaving with integrity, and you are perpetuating unloving behavior on our planet. This is greatly concerning with child pornography, which is now a huge industry. How can anyone, in good conscience, support an industry that uses and exploits children? It is a sad commentary on our society that people are making money on using children in this way - and it would not be successful if people did not participate in watching it.

It is interesting for me to note that the phrase that receives the most hits to the Inner Bonding website from Google and other search engines is "fear of intimacy." I have no doubt that fears of intimacy and the use of porno are related. Deep intimacy is so much more satisfying and fulfilling than porno. Yet fears of getting hurt are so great that many people avoid intimacy and turn to porno instead.

I would guess that if people practiced Inner Bonding and developed a loving Adult capable of handling painful feelings instead of avoiding them with addictions, the porno industry would suffer!

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Comments

Author	Comment	Date
soluna Bradford-on-Avon uk	Margaret wrote: "Whenever you are thinking or behaving in ways that you would not want announced in the newspaper, you are not behaving with integrity." Newspapers and the mass media in general are obsessed with exposing, judging and shaming people. To align yourself with their judgemental agenda is mistaken, in my view. What if you are a whistle-blower, working secretly to expose corruption in Government - would you want your actions all over the NYT or London Times for the FBI or MI5 to read and come calling? Of course not, but that doesn't mean that you are not behaving with integrity. Mass communication is normative - it seeks to make us conform to powerful people in society's definition of what is normal. I do not accept that definition and therefore would be very reluctant to have many of my (perfectly justifiable and harmless, in my view) behaviours exposed in the media. The rest of the article is correct, in my opinion, about the ability of pornography to give quick stimulation that assuages pain on a temporary basis. So does having your hair done, or buying nice clothes, but I don't hear many spiritual leaders condemning those activities with quite such venom. I speak as someone who enjoys pornography, both alone and together with my female partner. It's not the answer to anything - it's an inexpensive and often cheesy diversion, a bit of fun, as is having one's hair done (except that's not so inexpensive!). We humans are hard-wired to enjoy sex and multifarious different cultural representations of it - that is what has helped make us so successful at breeding. I find people engaged with spiritual seeking are sometimes too quick to dismiss some of the pleasures of the flesh. Child pornography of course is vile and disgusting - a huge betrayal of some of society's youngest and most vulnerable members. I only hope it isn't as prevalent as some people allege. Chris	07/23/2007 06:06 AM
jennybean Marietta (Suburb of Atlanta) Georgia United Stizzies	I struggle with my beliefs on this topic. Coming from a christian home, yet not necessarily embracing all the dogma associated with it, i've questioned long and hard my opinions on pornography. I definitely know that being in a relationship with a porn addict that what seems okay at first (viewing it together to enhance our sex life) turned things very sour for me after a couple years. I never had a problem with him viewing it on his own, it would just be that after awhile, I felt growing undertones of disrespect and lonliness that just built and built and built....but again, the frequency of it is the key i think.	07/26/2007 04:43 PM
wolfsandfeathers Windsor Canada	I only wish to respond to your statement about the prevalence of child porn. While you hope that it isn't as prevalent as people "allege". It is becoming more apparent on a daily bases that it is more prevalent then people allege. As a survivor of childhood sexual abuse I am afraid that this is a particularly delicate subject which evokes a strong emotional reaction. The avenues for preditors to have access to our children are gowing with the advent of technology. As a mother of children who have been through the teenage years with the internet I know how easily their "safe" world can be penetrated by a preditor and how vigilant a parent must be. It is a sad statement but one that is needed, please don't anyone wish away your child's safety.	07/27/2007 08:53 AM
soluna Bradford-on-Avon uk	Hi Jennybean I think being in a relationship with a porn addict must be a difficult scenario, at first view maybe not so different from being with an alcoholic or drug addict, except that in the case of porn it portrays people's bodies and a lot of us have hangups about that (not saying you do, but I do). But then again I wonder if Margaret's comment about green hair is pertinent? If someone said "your hair looks too green today" then you wouldn't be offended because their bizzare remark has no connection to your self-perception; it only affects you of it hooks into something you believe about yourself. Just throwing that in for comment. Chris	07/27/2007 09:15 AM
soluna Bradford-on-Avon uk	Hi W&F I understand that you must have very strong feelings about child porn. I'm very sorry to hear that you were abused. None of what follows is intended to minimise or discount your past distress or motherly concern. It is very important that we protect our young children. At the age of 13, my stepdaughter started an online relationship with a much older, clearly disturbed young man who habitually cut himself and carried a knife around with him. It seems he tried to get 'love' from young girls via the internet, mostly by portraying himself as a victim. As a result of my monitoring their communications, he was arrested and his computer confiscated, but he wasn't charged. Since then I have been very vigilant about what my SD does online. So, I do understand a parent's feelings in this regard. However, there was a recent item in the news about how our children's worlds have shrunk over the last few decades. I forget the exact figures, but something like 40 years ago, eight year olds were typically allowed to roam unsupervised within a radius of about two miles of their home. Now eight year olds are usually not even allowed out of the garden gate without an escort. And yet the statistics (at least in the UK) show that child abduction is actually no more common than it was all that time ago. Our fears (fed by the media) have helped make our children prisoners, overly reliant on us, mobile phones, television and computers. Statistically, very few children are abducted. Very few are the objects of child pornography. Each and every case is a tragedy, of course, but we are excessively coralling our children in order to try to keep them safe, and that I find very sad. I think back to all the time I spent as a child wandering around fields and lanes on my own, discovering my own power, my own limits, learning to guide myself, and I feel great regret that modern-day children are seldom given those opportunities. There are no easy answers. My stepdaughter is now just 16. For quite a while we have let her walk around our town in the dark alone until about 10pm. Something may happen to her, but it probably won't. She has to learn to look after herself. Chris	07/27/2007 09:51 AM
lindsayswisdom California	Dear Chris, I appreciate the expansion of vulnerable children and parental involvement in your post. As mom of a 15 and 20 yr.old young men,I wrestle with this,having the computer in a visible place, and knowing what they are doing"out there" without being overly invasive, has been frustrating w/power struggles & acting out to test limits, and it's true, I want everything & everyone to be ok,and with the unknown hidden agendas of folks,i.e.torching a house over internet fights in the news, operative word is " constant vigilance". Thanks	07/27/2007 12:02 PM
Phyllis St. Louis Missouri	Dear Chris Your message about your step-daughter reminded me of another piece of advice that Margaret has given, although I am the first to confess that I have not acted on it. Girls and women should be trained in self-defense. They do not have to study the martial arts to do this, but she was able to find a class where the students actually got to practice these techniques on a fully-padded instructor, so they were more than theoretical. I am sure that other classes like this exist. What I have intended to do, and probably will now that it is up again, is to explore either getting key chain Mace and/or a key chain personal alarm. I see on the web that each would be about $9.95. Does anyone know something about these things that I should know before getting them? Beyond that, as Margaret has emphasized, staying connected with your guidance keeps you open to the information you need to take care of things without requiring you to stay in a constant state of fear in order to feel safe (a contradiction in terms anyway). Hugs Phyllis	07/27/2007 12:28 PM
lindsayswisdom California	I have been struggling this afternoon since reading the posts on pornography. I myself have minimized the impact that ideas gotten from porno mags were used by my brother upon me.It went beyond "playing doctor". Fast-forward to present and my reactivity to porno today, my IC,my new loving adult & being a mom, what might seem innocuous to adults, is a theft of childhood,it behooves us all to question everything,the predators are more likely right under our noses.	07/27/2007 01:20 PM
WonderWomanette Lowell Massachusetts	Hi Phyllis, In reference to you question about a Mace/keychain. Depending on the state you live in you may need a license to carry Mace/pepperspray. This is not true in all states in the US but many, I would check that out with your local police department prior to purchasing one. You don't need a license for the personal alarm. Also the name of the self-defence class that Margaret recommends or has recommended to me is called Impact Model Mugging. Sometimes- Impact Self-Defense. Peace, Kate	07/28/2007 05:17 AM
Phyllis St. Louis Missouri	Hi Thanks for the tip. On the website that I checked they listed a couple of states, including NY, that you needed a license for. I will make sure that MO is not on any of the lists. I am guessing that the challenge will be to remember not to try to bring it onto an airplane (and I travel a lot) otherwise I will be buying a lot of new ones :-) Hugs Phyllis	07/28/2007 05:20 AM
WonderWomanette Lowell Massachusetts	I think that everyone has posted some very interesting thoughts/ideas/feelings on this subject. Porn can be a trigger issue for people, clearly. As someone who works with young children and families I experience the effects of children who are witness to violence. Children are experiencing a tremendous amount of domestic and community violence. The media is saturated with murder, War, sex, drugs etc. Children manifest what they are seeing/exposed to in their play. In many cases this is very natural, the child is processing what they have seen, maybe their father is in Iraq and sending home photos of himself in uniform so the child then begins to express himself through War play. It many cases it is a manifestation of sexual/physical/emotional abuse and neglect. I know the media and the porn industry is having a huge effect on young kids- the internet has made it readily available. You can be surfing the net for Dora the Explorer or Elmo and a pop-up porn add is right there covering your computer screen. Then there is Primetime with Chris Hanson- "To Catch a Predator." Grown men (so far all they have shown is men, but I know women do this too) go to a private home looking for sex with a 12, 13, 14 year old girl or boy. They make DOZENS of arrests in ONE night! Thank goodness they are all decoys on the net who are of age but the predators don't know that. It's a serious, serious issue. I don't have children yet but my nieces are 11 and 8. The risks are so different for them then they were for me, at 31 I feel really lucky I grew up before the internet. However I feel a huge responsibility to stay on top of the latest technology so when I do become a parent I am well informed. Thanks for reading my stream of consciousness writing here. It's just a lot to think about and process. Thank goodness for Spirit and Innerbonding. I deeply and joyfully believe it will change the world! Peace, Kate	07/28/2007 05:44 AM
WonderWomanette Lowell Massachusetts	Hi Phyllis, In Massachusetts you need a FID (Firearm Identification Card) to carry any kind of chemically incapacitating device. Ya! Don't forget to take it off the key chain before travel! Kate	07/28/2007 05:51 AM
soluna Bradford-on-Avon uk	Hi Phyllis Very good points. I think both men and women should be trained in self-defense. Over here it is young men who are by far the most common victims of street violence, from other young men. But there is also a growing urban ladette culture where groups of young women attack people - far less common I'm sure and the subject of much media hype, but there have been a few cases prosecuted recently. We offered our daughter an attack alarm but she wasn't interested - she doesn't see it as necessary and it's probably uncool. I was attacked as a teenager, but I never have taken self-defense lessons. I have been in some very dodgy places in my time and I am convinced that people who behave like victims are far more likely to become victims. If you look confident and not to be messed with (I don't mean aggressive, but very sure in your intent) then you are far less likely to be attacked. Connection to guidance I'm sure can make you more secure in your intent - thanks for the reminder, Phyllis! Chris	07/28/2007 08:10 AM
soluna Bradford-on-Avon uk	Hi Kate I agree that kids should never have access to porn and that the Internet has made this very difficult to police. Every parent should use software such as CyberPatrol, in my view. It distresses me that children are subjected to thousands of images of humans being violent and hateful towards other humans at an even earlier age than they witness porn - pretty much from the time that they are first sat in front of a TV. That must have a terrible affect. I think the US is a particularly sick and violent society. There is quite a bit of controversy about the "Catch a Predator" series. See this link: http://www.chatmag.com/news/060107-dateline-nbc-murphy-texas.html "The prosecuting attorney has rejected all 24 cases involving a sting orchestrated by Dateline NBC. Defense Attorney David Finn is quoted as saying that the video footage is "garbage"." One man who didn't even show up at the sting venue was surrounded by police at his own home. He shot himself. The producers of the show are now being sued for over $100 million. I'm not saying that the predation doesn't happen - it nearly happened to us - but I'm very sceptical about the media. They're often trying to make careers and fortunes out of our fears. Chris	07/28/2007 08:29 AM
bridgeweavera Brenham Texas	Sidestepping the entire pornography issue for the moment, I just wanted to say that the role of the media certainly deserves examination. Yesterday the news showed footage of a helicopter crash between competing news helicopters somewhere in Arizona, I believe. The copters were filming the police chase of a criminal when they collided. The news anchor added that the authorities were considering adding manslaughter charges to the other charges due to the crash and 4 deaths. While the ongoing crime of evading police created a spectacle that contributed toward the deaths, I believe that the responsibility lies with the news teams in excited hot pursuit, and with their bosses, who require them to undertake such pursuits. In the end, they became the news. I believe it is also news that the media are making us think things happen far more often than they used to, and creating a climate of fear and suspicion, to echo your earlier comments about the limitations of children's freedom these days.	07/28/2007 10:49 AM
WonderWomanette Lowell Massachusetts	Hi Chris, Indeed. The media certainly does play on our fears and insecurities. Regardless of the controversy surrounding Dateline NBC's "Catch a Preditor" show, what it illustrates for me is that there are lots of wounded men and women out there seeking sex with children. It's real and it happens. The media will give us their slant as they do but there is almost always a grain of truth in what is being presented. When it comes to violence against children, I'd prefer to be more safe than sorry. At a minimum it opens the door for conversation with adults, teens and young children- in an age appropriate way of course. Peace, Kate	07/29/2007 07:50 AM
bridgeweavera Brenham Texas	I think it has ALWAYS happened. It happened to me and to many other people I know back in the 60's and 70's. I am attuned, therefore to suspect it many times when other people might have no idea. (Same with battering.) I aften find myself exploring gently with kids about their safety and alerting parents to iffy situations--if the parents aren't the ones taking advantage. Latchkey kids left for long amounts of time to their own devices with no one to turn to for help and nobody to keep track of what they are up to are at the greatest risk, I think. There are perhaps more of them in the middle and upper middle class nowadays than there used to be, but for those of us with parents struggling to make ends meet, this has always been the situation. And that's my point. I don't think it is any more dangerous now. I think that there are greater numbers of kids at the same old level of risk, though, and being aware of the risks and educating our children is important. The media's role in bringing this to the attention of the public is commendable. But terrifying us and causing us to restrict our children out of fear is very sad for the children. And I have pastored several people accused of sexual abuse, who have been devastated by false accusations and have had to register as sex offenders for the rest of their lives. Some have been teens involved in consensual sex with their girlfriends--and the birthday of the older one suddenly made their longstanding relationship criminal. Others have been accused of sexual improprieties for helping children or disabled adults with toileting. Some have been mentally retarded themselves. If you've ever worked at a state school for the mentally retarded you know that the males can be very sexually aggressive and persisteant--and should be supervised when with those who are vulnerable, like children or the other residents. So let's provide that supervision rather than terrify parents and children with salacious tales! It all boils down to supervision and having someone available when a child is in need. Even when wandering around on a bike or walking along way from home, children's risks are low. It is actually more likely to be someone they know and trust who abuses them--out of inappropriate solitary access to the child. This is why Scouts require the constant presence of 2 adults at all times at meetings!	07/29/2007 09:55 AM

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