Why happens Pornography?

“The more one uses pornography, the more lonely one becomes,” says Dr. Gary Brooks, a psychologist who has worked with porn addicts for the last 30 years. “Any time [a person] spends much time with the usual pornography usage cycle, it can’t help but be a depressing, demeaning, self-loathing kind of experience.”

The worse people feel about themselves, the more they seek comfort wherever they can get it. Normally, they would be able to rely on the people closest to them to help them through their hard times—a partner, friend, or family member. But most porn users aren’t exactly excited to tell anyone about their porn habits, least of all their partner. So they turn to the easiest source of “comfort” available: more porn.

Professional porn actors have a whole team of people to make every detail look perfect, from directing and filming to lighting and makeup, maybe even a plastic surgeon or two to thank. With some careful editing, a typical 45-minute porn flick that took three days to shoot can appear to have happened all at once, without a break. Film the right bodies from the right angles at the right moments, edit out all the mistakes, Photoshop away any imperfections, add a catchy soundtrack, and you have something most definitely NOT like “natural” sex with “normal” people.

Research shows that pornography use is linked to less stability in relationships, increased risk of infidelity, and greater likelihood of divorce. Men who are exposed to porn find their partners less sexually attractive and rate themselves as less in love with their partners. A recent study tracked couples over a six-year period, from 2006 to 2012, to see what factors influenced the quality of their marriage and their satisfaction with their sex lives. The researchers found that of all the factors considered, porn use was the second strongest indicator that a marriage would suffer. Not only that, but the marriages that were harmed the most were those of men who viewed porn heavily, once a day or more.

Studies have shown that most women—even if they believe that porn is okay for other people—see no acceptable role for porn within their own committed relationship. And no wonder! The evidence that porn can harm relationships and partners is overwhelming.

The fact is, porn reshapes expectations about sex and attraction by presenting an unrealistic picture. In porn, performers always look their best. They are forever young, surgically enhanced, airbrushed, and Photoshopped to perfection. So it’s not hard to see why, according to a national poll, six out of seven women believe that porn has changed men’s expectations of how women should look.

As writer Naomi Wolf points out, “Today real naked women are just bad porn.”

While porn is often called “adult material,” many of its consumers are well under the legal age. In fact, the majority of teens are getting at least some of their sexed from porn, whether they mean to or not.

Researchers are finding that porn’s influence can and does find its way into teenager’s sexual behaviors. For example, people who have seen a significant amount of porn are more likely to start having sex sooner and with more partners, to engage in riskier kinds of sex that put them at greater risk of getting sexually transmitted infections, and to have actually contracted an STI.

Sociologist Dr. 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.

Defenders of pornography make the argument all the time, that no matter how someone is treated in porn, it’s okay because they gave their consent. In some cases it’s obvious when victims haven’t given consent, like when child pornography and human trafficking are involved. Pimps and sex traffickers often use porn to initiate their victims into their new life of sexual slavery, and then they force their victims to participate in making new porn.

Here’s the thing: if a “Hollywood” version is all you know about sex trafficking, then you’re only seeing one part of a much more complex picture.

In the year 2000, in response to reports of international human trafficking, one of the broadest bipartisan coalitions in history came together to pass the Trafficking Victims Protection Act, or TVPA. The TVPA defines sex trafficking as a situation in which “a commercial sex act is induced by force, fraud, or coercion, or in which the person induced to perform such act has not attained 18 years of age.”

That word, coercion, is important. It means that a commercial sex act can be sex trafficking, even if no one was physically assaulted, even if no one was tricked or defrauded. All it takes is coercion. The moment a victim is coerced or intimidated into a commercial sex act against his or her will, sex trafficking has occurred. It doesn’t have to be a lifetime of sexual servitude, sex trafficking can happen in an instance or situation. Changes the way you think about trafficking, doesn’t it?

Not all porn features physical violence, but even non-violent porn has been shown to have effects on viewers. The vast majority of porn—violent or not—portrays men as powerful and in charge; while women are submissive and obedient. Watching scene after scene of dehumanizing submission makes it start to seem normal. It sets the stage for lopsided power dynamics in couple relationships and the gradual acceptance of verbal and physical aggression against women.Research has confirmed that those who watch porn (even if it’s nonviolent) are more likely to support statements that promote abuse and sexual aggression toward women and girls.

As Internet porn grew more popular; it also turned darker, more graphic, and more extreme. With so much porn available, pornographers tried to compete for attention by constantly pushing the boundaries. “Thirty years ago ‘hardcore’ pornography usually meant the explicit depiction of sexual intercourse,” writes Dr. Norman Doidge, a neuroscientist and author of The Brain That Changes Itself. “Now hardcore has evolved and is increasingly dominated by the sadomasochistic themes … all involving scripts fusing sex with hatred and humiliation.” In our post-Playboy world, porn now features degradation, abuse, and humiliation of females in a way never before seen in the mass media. “[S]oftcore is now what hardcore was a few decades ago,” Doidge explains. “The comparatively tame softcore pictures of yesteryear … now show up on mainstream media all day long, in the pornification of everything, including television, rock videos, soap operas, advertisements, and so on.”