Petra Bueskens - Anti-Porn Author, Scholar & Psychotherapist
Petra Bueskens is an Australian scholar, author and psychotherapist, and the founder of PPMD Therapy. Petra has written several very well-researched, informative, and powerful articles about the harms of pornography. Please see these articles in full below.
A largely untold story in the ongoing debate about pornography is the fact that a growing number of women are very distressed by their partner's porn use. A number of persistent themes are emerging in research, on internet support sites (for women), in therapists' offices, in the accounts of divorce lawyers, and anecdotally. This paints a clear picture of women's distress, and provides an additional argument for the harms of pornography.
Bettina Arndt has missed the mark in her recent article Porn is not a dirty word. While she does a good job at elucidating what many men think and feel about pornography – the fantasy of compliant women, the justifications for deception, the guilt over finding their real partners inadequate, and the ubiquitous sense of entitlement to women's bodies – she does a very poor job at illuminating what is going on for many women who are the partners of users.
Arndt fails to question men's entitlement to porn, or the deleterious impact this has on a growing number of women; instead, she explicitly reinforces men's right to gratification – if not from wives, then from the sex industry. Her justification falls back on an antiquated stereotype that somehow men "need" more sex and women are obliged to give it or suffer the consequences.
Arndt draws attention to the so-called libido deficit of women, the purported mismatch among couples, and men's abiding sense of sexual frustration in marriage. At no point does she cite (or even show awareness of) sociological research on long-term heterosexual couples that indicates why many women withdraw from sex – unequal domestic loads, a chronic lack of leisure time and sleep after children are born, resentment over the double-shift, a lack of "foreplay", poor body image, and a sense of emotional disconnect from men who remain persistently unempathic – rather, she paints a picture of long suffering husbands who turn to porn in a valiant effort to avoid hassling their wives.
Here's a more challenging thought: it may in fact be men who are running from sex – sex that is conducted in the context of respectful, egalitarian relationships with women who know what they want, and enjoy intimacy and orgasm every bit as much as they do. This might require stopping and listening to women, creating a foundation of respectful and reciprocal intimacy, and sharing an equal load of the domestic work and childcare. In other words, we have to ask what kind of sex women are less interested in, and the context within which their interest diminishes, before accepting the "women want less sex" thesis.
Before examining this thorny issue, however, I'd like to turn to women's suffering because this is the biggest hole in Arndt's argument. She completely elides a substantial and growing body of evidence regarding the emotional harms of pornography for the female partners of users. What does this evidence show? It shows that many women, especially those who are in long-term committed relationships, are deeply aggrieved by their partner's porn use and, upon discovery, suffer all the symptoms associated with ruptured attachment and a loss of trust.
As Arndt notes, many married men view porn in secret and therefore lead a double life. This is a critical point, and one noted in the research literature; if a man's viewing is open (and agreed to), if a couple watch or make porn together, as in the growing DIY market, this does not constitute a threat to the relationship. Likewise, as Arndt also notes, if the viewing is not accompanied by masturbation, it is less threatening.
However, this is not what is going on in an increasing number of cases. As Jill C Manning, a clinical psychologist and sex addiction expert notes, "This mutual scenario ... is not the predominant experience coming forth in today's cultural milieu or clinical settings". Most married men who are viewing porn, especially the hard-core stuff, are doing so in secret and maintaining this duplicity in the knowledge that porn is distressing to their partners.
This point is clearly illustrated by one of Arndt's research participants, who after lamenting his wife's putative sexual disinterest goes on to recount the following scenario:
... So when she's asleep I turn to porn where all these young women appear to be totally enthusiastic about pleasing the man. I know it's all acting and they are only doing it for money and that it's not fair to expect my wife to be like these porn actresses, but in my fantasy world this is what I love and get off on. I'll do it for up to an hour, slowly, going from video to video on my laptop, while my wife is sound asleep. I can take as long as I want and get lost in my own world.
Another user who, by his wife's account, considers foreplay "girly crap", states how much more convenient porn is where "there is an endless supply of beautiful women, all doing stuff most of us guys can only dream of." As her interviewees readily acknowledge, in "pornland" the women are on tap, make no demands, exist solely to please men, engage in a wide variety of sexual practices "ordinary women" don't seem to like, and can be switched off at will. Paradise! Except that this is deeply threatening to, and destabilising for, an increasing number of real women who find themselves unable to compete with the sexed-up Stepford Wives on screen.
Arndt writes of these experiences as if they pose no moral or emotional problems, even as she notes that the partner of this man, Zoe, whom she characterises as "a volatile woman", cites porn as integral to the decline and break-up of their relationship. Here we see the knock-on effect of porn use as it seeps into the user's relationship and damages its sexual and emotional core. While this doesn't happen in all relationships where men watch porn, it is happening in a substantial number of cases.
Arndt's own examples are consistent with a growing body of research in marital and family therapy which concentrates not simply on the individual impacts of porn consumption (that is, its effects on users) but also on the "systemic" impacts; that is, its effects on the people around the user and, in particular, on his – it is usually men consuming – partner and children. This moves the discussion beyond intractable (though important) questions such as: "Will it turn him into a rapist?" or "Are his attitudes towards women becoming more callous and sexist?" to the everyday relational context of users. How, in particular, does secret use by one member of a couple affect the other – before, during and after discovery?
One of the most counter-intuitive findings of this research is that heavy porn consumption tends to diminish a couple's sex life – principally by shifting men's sexual focus away from their partners, and into a fantasy world of endless erotic possibilities. Many partners are consequently left feeling sexually and emotionally abandoned and devalued. Arndt dismisses this finding out of hand, but it has been noted by over a dozen studies, especially in relation to the partners of "heavy" users.
Another key finding is that pornography consumption is much more problematic in long-term committed relationships than in casual ones. For example, survey research conducted by Bridges, Bergner, and Hesson-McInnis (2003) found married women to be significantly more distressed by a partner's online pornography consumption than women in dating relationships. Moreover, the distress increased according to the perceived frequency of use. This research, notes Manning, "is significant because it supports the assertion that married women generally are distressed by their husbands' use of sexually explicit materialand that this may threaten the stability of the marital bond."
In other words, casual use in casual relationships is the least problematic for women, on the proviso that this use is not concealed. However, heavy use, especially heavy secretive use in a committed relationship, can wreak havoc, and not uncommonly results in separation and divorce. Fundamentally, women experience their partner's secret porn use as infidelity. As one woman in a recent study by Zitzman and Butler (2009) put it, it's "like he's had a million affairs".
The visceral appeal of internet porn, especially with the advent of high speed internet connections and high definition images, has, at least in some cases, trumped real women. In her now classic article The Porn Myth well-known feminist writer Naomi Wolf made this connection (in apparent opposition to Andrea Dworkin who had cautioned that porn would greatly exacerbate rape culture). "For most of human history," writes Wolf, "erotic images have been reflections of, or celebrations of, or substitutes for, real naked women. For the first time in human history, the images' power and allure have supplanted that of real naked women."
Wolf is right, however, she may have been rash to assume she had trumped Dworkin's portentous insight. Arguably, men's widespread patronage of the sex-industry, including porn, and increasingly "teen porn" and, more disturbingly, "kiddy porn" (what is in fact the filmed sexual assault of children) is itself a form of rape culture. While the women who are men's equals might be struggling for sexual recognition, those who are structured as their inferiors are struggling to keep up with the demand (or, more properly, the businesses that exploit them are struggling to keep up with demand).
Research both on users and, as we have seen, the partners of users, indicates two main trends associated with heavy porn consumption: men either begin to ignore their partners sexually (having substituted cybersex for relational sex); or they want to act out porn sex with their partners. Not surprisingly, the partner's of users typically describe feeling objectified or used. As one woman in a 2002 study by Bergner and Bridges described, "I am no longer a sexual person or partner to him, but a sexual object. He is not really with me, not really making love to me … He seems to be thinking about something or someone else-likely those porn women … He is just using me as a warm body."
Anti-porn activist and researcher, Gail Dines similarly observes (what therapists are seeing on a more regular basis) that young men are increasingly wanting their girlfriends to behave like "porn stars":
... the more porn men watch, the more they want to play out porn sex in the real world. They become bored with their sex partners because they don't look or act like the women in porn. What troubles many of these men most is that they need to pull up the porn images in their head in order to have an orgasm with their partner. They replay porn scenes in their minds, or think about having sex with their favourite porn star when they are with their partners.
There is now a growing body of anecdotal and clinical evidence to support this assertion. However, Dines, like Wolf, concentrates on the impact of Internet porn on young people. But, as Manning notes, research has not yet caught up with the demographic profile of users, or the extent to which pornography is reshaping sexuality and relationships across the board. It is not just vulnerable teenagers, or men in their early twenties, whose sexuality is being re-shaped by porn, it is men and women of all ages. Indeed, current Internet Filter Review statistics show that in the U.S. the 35-44 year old age group consumes the most pornography (defined as those users who pay for porn), followed by the 45-54 and 55 + age groups. Hard-core porn is mainstream and men of all ages, classes and cultures are watching it, which is impacting how they see women and sex. It is also affecting how women see themselves.
Research findings on the partners of users reveals a vernacular distress that exists in tension with both liberal apologist and feminist analyses of porn, since the primary concern of women who are the partners of users is not the political economy of the sex-industry, "freedom of speech", or the relative "agency" of sex-workers, but their own primal feelings of sadness, loss, jealousy and betrayal. What we see in these accounts is a discourse of suffering and abandonment that speaks of ruptured attachment and damaged self-esteem.
The primary concern here shifts from production to consumption or, more properly, the knock-on effects of consumption on the women in relationship with users. If we accept that the overwhelming majority of long-term relationships, and perhaps all marriages, are premised on exclusivity, trust, sexual fidelity, and intimacy, then regular porn use by partnered men - specifically, evaluating, selecting and masturbating over other women - is inherently threatening to couple bonds. When this changes the baseline of expectation for what women (should) look like and do, we are in trouble as a society, not only in our individual relationships.
Returning to Arndt and her key point that men are turning to porn because their wives wont "put out", we might ask whether men's endemic porn use is not rather a retreat from (and substitute for) real women – a shoring up of masculinity and male sex right - in a context where real women have made significant advances, including with regards their sexual autonomy. Are porn stars - and sex-workers generally - the new wives who must put out and shut-up? We might also ask, since we seem to think it is fine to question women's "low libido", why it is that men want - and in some cases expect - constant sexual access to women?
This article is part of a longer article submitted to Arena journal entitled “Pornography, Male Sex-Right and the Grieving Wife”, a version of which appeared in Arena Magazinethis week.
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This article was originally published online at Online Opinion - Australia's e-journal of social and political debate, and was republished here with the Author's permission.
Connecting the Dots: Porn & Women's Declining Libido
By Petra Bueskens
Posted Monday, 5 March 2012
Dr Bella Ellwood-Clayton, resident anthropologist come sexpert, released her new book this week Sex Drive: In Pursuit of Female Desire. In it she draws attention to something researchers and sex therapists have largely ignored (in this country anyway) and that's the negative impact of porn on women's libido.
"In any given second, 28,258 internet users are viewing pornography and 372 internet users are typing adult terms into search engines. Every 39 minutes, a new pornographic video is created in the US ...The effects of this pornography flood are yet to be fully understood, but it inarguably harms female libido" argues Ellwood-Clayton.
We know porn is everywhere – "the wall paper of our lives" as Naomi Wolf puts it – with global sales exceeding 97 billion dollars annually. And we know that most of those viewing porn are men, almost all young men, and many older men too. Internet filter review statistics show that 97 percent of the searches for "free porn" were undertaken by men.
An Australian survey of more than 1000 porn users found that men outnumbered women four-to-one or, in other words, men constituted 82 per cent of users. In addition, they found that 77 per cent of these same users were heterosexual and 55 per cent were in a monogamous relationship. That's a lot of men in relationships who are looking at porn.
Ellwood-Clayton is concerned with the well-documented decline in libido for women in long-term relationships. However, unlike the other key commentators on this issue - Bettina Arndt and Dr Rosie King, Ellwood-Clayton has connected the dots, in recognising the deleterious impact on women's self-image and self-esteem of both pornography and the (increasingly pornified) advertising industry.
While Bettina Arndt tells us we should "stop banging on about porn" and let men be men, and Dr Rosie King suggests, in her cheerful yet naive way, that women need to look at what's behind their lost libido – depression, ill-health, sexual technique and so on, both have missed a key variable in the mix. For both Arndt and King the onus is on women to step up in some way – either by happily submitting to sex they don't want (Arndt) or by looking at their own issues (King).
In contrast, Ellwood-Clayton draws attention to the pornographic wallpaper adorning our lives and asks if this doesn't have something to do with women's low libido. She connects women's increasingly documented sense of physical inadequacy, exemplified by our huge and ever growing expenditure on beauty products and cosmetic surgery, as well as the relentless pursuit of diet and exercise, with our declining desires. Hers is a far more insightful and radical analysis.
The real clincher, notes Ellwood-Clayton, is the disconnect between our minds and our bodies – we have come to perceive our bodies not as we feel and experience them, not as living breathing entities capable of menstruating with the moon and bringing forth new life (and here we see her anthropological bent), but through the filter of porn culture and advertising. For Ellwood-Clayton, women see their bodies through "the social gaze" and police themselves accordingly.
The loss of libido is therefore not about women's lack of sexual capacity or response, it's not even about the so-called monotony of monogamy, it's about the painful sense of not measuring up. This path is a convoluted one that relates to heterosexual women's desire to be desired. "Sex is far better for women", notes Ellwood-Clayton, "when they feel sexy". "Herein lies the rub: modern-day women rarely feel sexy. Far too much stands in the way."
What stands in the way exactly?
Ellwood-Clayton is clear: pornography and advertising industries that parade impossible standards of youth and beauty. As these images take up more and more cultural (media) space, they also take up more mental space, leading to women's ubiquitous "self objectification". What's standing in our way is an internalised image of the twenty-first century sexual ideal – the pneumatic, hairless, toned, athletic, ever-youthful, sexed-up woman – and, increasingly girl - of porn that has seeped into the collective female consciousness and quite literally sapped it of eros.
As Clayton observes, "Women in pornography are typically young and often surgically altered. Even their labia look uncommonly similar-even, hairless and small. Pornography has increased women's insecurity about their genitals." Women's seeming distress about this is not far off the mark; in recent internet filter review statistics both "teen sex" and "teen porn" feature in the twenty most popular searches. How can heterosexual women in their 30s, 40s, 50s and beyond possibly compare?
As Ellwood-Clayton notes, "In previous eras, women had a better shot at meeting the ideal ... But what happens when the beauty presented to women as ideal is physically unachievable? Take Barbie. Most young girls in America, from the age of three upwards, own a Barbie doll. A study comparing body measurements of models, store mannequins and Barbie dolls found that: '[a] young woman randomly chosen from the reference population would have a 7 per cent chance of being as ectomorphic [slender] as a catwalk model, a 3 per cent chance of matching an international model, a 0.3 per cent chance of matching a shop mannequin, a 0.1 per cent chance of matching a 'supermodel', and no chance at all of matching Barbie'. Talk about setting us up for a fall."
And, of course, it is women's inculcation of these norms, and our at times slavish attempts to emulate them, in the hope of being attractive to men, that holds our libidos hostage. There's an irony, notes Ellwood-Clayton, when we are too busy trying to look sexy to actually ever feel sexy.
And what of the majority of women who simply can't live up to the "porno-chic" ideal because they fall outside that rare 7 percent (of naturally thin women) or because they are adults not teenage girls –and therefore, by definition, fall outside the contemporary pornographic ideal – or they do not have an eating disorder? The other 80 or so percent of women often feel, in Ellwood-Clayton's unceremonious terms, "too fat to fuck". Well, this was the finding of one recent study she quotes on the matter. That is depressing indeed and yet, if we think about it, a not altogether unsurprising finding in a world wallpapered with porn.
The siren son of porn is damaging relationships and it is high time that sex experts, educators and therapists in Australia recognised this (as they have in both the US and the UK). Bella Ellwood Clayton's book is a refreshing take on women's declining desires and offers some solutions (you can read the book for those) about what might be done about it. First up: switch off the porn.
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This article was originally published online at Online Opinion - Australia's e-journal of social and political debate, and was republished here with the author's permission.
Petra is a psychotherapist in private practice since 2009. She worked previously as a lecturer in Sociology and Gender Studies at The University of Melbourne and Deakin University (2002-2009). (Australia) She is a writer and social commentator known for her work on motherhood, sexuality, and feminism. More recently, she has been writing about pornography, therapy culture, and homebirth (an unlikely mix!). Petra has two daughters and a step-daughter.
Petra tweets @PetraBueskens and can be contacted at petra@ppmdtherapy.com. She is the founder of PPMD Therapy and can be contacted for appointments by email.
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Pornland: How Porn Has Hijacked Our Sexualitytakes an unflinching look at today’s porn industry: the stories woven into the images, the impact on our culture, the effects on us as men and women, the business machine that creates and markets porn, and the growing legitimacy of porn in mainstream media. Above all, PORNLAND examines the way porn shapes and limits sexual imaginations and behaviors.
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Saavi Accountability -- The only online accountability program that works with all online addictions. It is also the only program that sends notifications instantly via text message to an accountability partner so that they can be supportive when an individual needs it the most at the point of weakness, while they are accessing the online content. The software was created by a young man (26) who overcame his addiction and is trying to help others.
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"Pornography is a marketing device for sex trafficking: It normalizes degradation and violence as acceptable and even inevitable parts of sex, and uses the bodies of real women and children as objects. The difference between pornography and erotica is clear in the roots of the words themselves -- porne means females slaves, eros means love -- so pornography, like rape, is about violence and domination, not sex. Millions of lives depend on our ability to separate pornography from erotica, and to disentangle violence from sexuality."
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