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Pia de Solenni

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Porn. The new tobacco?

Porn. The new tobacco?

Last updated on: April 16, 2009 at 6:34 am by Pia de Solenni

Porn. The new tobacco? 2009-04-16T06:34:05-07:00 Pia de Solenni

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I know. You’re wondering what porn and tobacco have to do with each other especially since cigarettes are practically vilified and porn is widely accepted. But Mary Eberstadt provides yet another interesting analysis in her latest article.

Eberstadt offers a fascinating insight. Porn is mainstreamed and widely accepted just like tobacco was 50 years ago. Everybody accepted smoking even if they themselves didn’t smoke. It was almost considered a right. If people didn’t smoke, they thought that there was nothing they could do about those who did. Smoking was just a given and it was “harmless”. Are you starting to see the similarities?

Like tobacco, Eberstadt sees the potential for educating people about the harm of pornography. She writes:

Despite that synergy, however, there is evidence that pornography does cause harm to at least some people. Consider, for example, its apparent widespread interference in the workplace. According to a 2007 survey by the American Management Association and the ePolicy Journal, 65 percent of corporations now use pornography-detecting software, up from 40 percent in 2001. According to that same study, fully 84 percent of the 30 percent of bosses who said they fired someone for internet misuse cited pornography as the reason why. These facts alone strongly suggests that pornography consumption is both compromising at least some office work on a large scale, and also becoming a risk factor for at least some employees in job loss.

Indirect evidence from other sources, such as divorce cases and reports by clergy and therapists, also suggest that pornography can cause harm. Consider the increasing role played by internet pornography in divorce proceedings. According to a meeting of the American Academy of Matrimonial Lawyers, for example, 62 percent of the 350 attendees said that the internet had been a significant factor in cases handled that year — and that was in 2002, well behind today’s levels of pornography consumption. Numerous pastors and priests and ministers and therapists have reported that pornography use is now the leading cause of marital trouble and breakup they encounter as counselors.3 If we accept that marital breakup itself causes distress to both parties as well as to any children involved, then pornography’s potential cast of victims appears to widen significantly by virtue of that fact alone.

Third, the claim that pornography causes harm to at least some users can be also be inferred from the fact that some people will go out of their way to avoid encountering pornography, including by paying for software that blocks it. In this way at least some potential consumers signal tacitly their own decision that pornography is potentially injurious — much the same way as the millions who have joined programs to quit smoking, often at their own expense, have signaled their own consumer view that the substance they want to avoid is injurious.

And she notes the role of women both in the promulgation of tobacco and the mainstreaming of porn. After all, the makers of a product do better when the entire population buys into it rather than just half of the population, especially a half that can be influenced by the other half:

In sum, women’s liberation has been used in the attempt to sell women on pornography in much the same fashion as it was used to sell women on cigarettes beginning almost a century ago. Feminists often echo this theme themselves in their roaming defenses of the newer product. No less an authority than Betty Friedan, for example, endorsed the book Defending Pornography by aclu President Nadine Strossen — with the notion that “free expression is an essential foundation for women’s liberty, equality and security.”

The article is definitely worth a read. Take the time even if you can’t read it all at once.

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