The column I should have written

An Irrelevant Debate

The journalistic and argumentative malpractice that I committed was particularly egregious because it invited the perception that acceptance of pornography as a social crisis is predicated on the acceptance of a flimsy statistic about porn performers. This is simply not the case. The fact remains: The personal and social consequences of pornography’s ubiquity render the extremely specific question of feminist porn an interesting, but unimportant, distraction.

In more than two decades of treating the survivors and perpetrators of sexual violence, Dr. Mary Anne Layden, co-director of the Sexual Trauma and Psychopathology Program at Penn, has never experienced a case in which pornography was absent in the life of the offender. Not one.

Is this really surprising, considering the content of popular pornography? In my last column, I described a current fad in Internet erotica: A2M, which stands for ass-to-mouth. In her talk at the second annual Love and Fidelity Network conference last November, journalist Pamela Paul described another popular and much-duplicated scene, in which a woman lying on her back, completely submissive, is literally choked with a penis.

Last Friday, Brendan Carroll exposed the truth about one form of “feminist porn,” when he described a visit to the website of Pink Visual, whose president, Allison Vivas, defended pornography in a column published in The Daily Princetonian. One particularly fulfilling section of the website on which Carroll reported was the “Gang Bang Squad,” which “involve[s] women being led around on their hands and knees by chains attached to dog collars.”

Some might protest that, despite Vivas’s self-identification as a feminist pornographer, her work does not represent true feminist pornography, and furthermore that pornographic films that meet these feminist criteria are different in kind from mainstream smut. But this still will not do, as such work (if it exists) clearly is but a tiny alcove in the Playboy mansion of pornography; it has little to nothing to do with the way the average Princetonian engages with pornographic media.

Furthermore, and perhaps more importantly, as Paul pointed out, research shows that viewers of pornography escalate their consumption to more extreme styles and fetishes, inevitably patronizing the very smut-peddlers that the “feminist pornographer” is supposedly trying to undercut. This isn’t surprising, as Layden explains that from the perspective of cognitive science, Internet pornography provides a perfect learning environment — given the anonymity of the personal computer, the reward provided by the orgasm, the role models on the screen who are themselves (apparently) rewarded for their behavior and the fact that learning is deeper in the presence of arousal. And what is it that pornography teaches?

First and foremost, pornography teaches what are called “permission-giving beliefs” — that what is being portrayed is normal and natural. Much like with drug addiction, as viewers get accustomed to what they are seeing, they soon pine for something more thrilling in order to get the same payoff. But, more than that, consumers of pornography (again, unsurprisingly) apply what they have learned to their real lives, with toxic personal and social consequences.

Research in the 1980s which selectively exposed participants to pornography, in combination with the cognitive theory above, has established a causal link between viewing pornography and many pernicious consequences. As discussed in the first iteration of this column, pornography has been shown to be harmful to relationships and to opinions toward women. More recent research applying pornography under experimental conditions has been impossible, according to Layden, because university review boards have prohibited it precisely because it is harmful to the participants.

This is just the tip of the iceberg. Pornography is also associated with a more adversarial view of sex, with decreased support for transforming traditional gender roles and with the use of vulgar and explicitly sexual terms to describe women. And there is anecdotal evidence, including Layden’s startling professional experiences, linking porn to sexual assault.

These consequences of pornography cannot be simply classified as private side effects to which individuals are able to consent by virtue of some sort of inviolable “personal freedom.” They are socially corrosive vices that taint relationships with friends, acquaintances, colleagues and strangers and that infiltrate communities and society at large. And so the conclusion to the column I should have written is the same as that to the one I actually wrote: What are we going to do about the problem of porn? Will we continue to cower behind the flimsy facade of privacy and personal freedom? Or will we recognize that at some point freedom ends and responsibility begins?

Brandon McGinley is a politics major from Pittsburgh, Pa. He can be reached at bmcginle@princeton.edu.