IN A SMUT RUTT

"Porn is extremely destructive, man...More than people understand. There's this great line in 'The Mind of the Married Man' on HBO-like, "Why can't you be with your wife?" And the guy says, 'How can I when I have 200 channels of porn scrolling through my mind every five seconds?' And it's true. I don't like to watch that stuff."

"Isn't going to strip clubs a form of porn?" I counter.(interviewer)

"Yeah. And I've done all that stuff. But I think ultimately, it mutates your ability to just be with one person."

-Leonardo Dicaprio, from New York Times Magazine, 2002

Why does pornography harm women, and the mind of the viewers?

Maybe it seems obvious, but maybe we need reminders.

• It causes the male viewers to have unrealistic expectations physically of their lovers. The women depicted in pornography have unrealistic or idealized body proportions-with their fake boobs, lipo-suctioned butts, and hairless labias; standards that the average woman (who has not succumbed herself to "cosmetic surgery") cannot live up to. Men will be comparing their female partners’ bodies to the women they have viewed while masturbating. They will be disappointed with their partner and be demeaning-letting them know in words or actions that they do not find them beautiful, skinny, or voluptuous enough, and some men will even go to the lengths of pressuring their partner to change her looks for him.
• Male viewers of pornography will have unrealistic expectations sexually of their female partners. Not only will a man pressure his partner to engage in sexual activity sooner than she may be ready because he is not used to delaying gratification, but he will compare her to the women in the pornography-and be disappointed with his partners’ lovemaking. He may ask her to do things that she is not comfortable with or which are not even natural, because he has viewed these things in the porn and seen them as normalcy. For example, he may even ask her to add another partner to their lovemaking. Even if he does not go to these lengths, the fact that he has grown accustomed to seeing the men in the pornography with multiple partners and has himself whacked off to so many different women in the porn, he will grow tired of monogamy. Eventually his partner will not live up to the fantasies.
• Even for the porn dabbler; one who finds himself to be reasonably pure or religious- by entertaining his lusts with porn, he is desensitizing his conscience, altering his positive view of women, and growing accustomed to the self gratification that pornography induces.
• Pornography, by its very nature, has nothing redeemable. Some will try to call a percentage of it artistic, trying to rationalize the negative and harmful nature of it.
• Porn is created solely for the viewer to gratify themselves, to whack off, which is in itself a lack of patience and self control, selfishly entertaining their lusts because they do not have a mate. Many men who do have a mate still engage in viewing pornography, thereby replacing their mates, and acknowledging by the act of viewing porn, that their mate is not enough for them, or that they enjoy a 2-dimensional cyber or video of a female more.
• Porn is always the promotion of sex that is not within the bounds of a commitment. It is never in the normal context that one would have to practice self-control. It is in a context that implies premarital, extramarital, and is simply anti-marital in its character. Porn lacks values by simply being a denigration of respect for women, marriage, self control, morality and ethics. Porn teaches men that sex is simply an instinctual, animal drive, and removes it from a context where emotion and love are involved.
• Porn also harms women because it causes men to unknowingly view women as less than human, as less than themselves; as objects or animals. It teaches them to not only be dominators, but also misogynists-meaning they believe women are not their equal-but their pets, their servants.
• If men believe women are less than human, it is logical to believe that viewing pornography leads to violence against women, as statistics have shown. If women are viewed in reality, as the objects that they are in porn; to be used, abused and tossed aside at will, than the logical result will be spousal (or partner) abuse. We’ve all heard of cases like Ted Bundy who was the ultimate extreme of the negative effects of addiction to pornography. He started with average pornography and became addicted, exposing himself to more and more hardcore pornography. The violent acts in the pornography were eventually not real enough for him and he eventually killed and mutilated women in reality.
• One who dabbles in porn "innocently" for fun once in a while will numb himself or be naïve to how it effects him; to the lack of ethics and morality he may slowly be beginning to accept. He may begin to rationalize viewing porn until he looks at it more often and becomes addicted, and is sucked into it beyond his control. Even if he is not addicted, he cannot be immune to the same dangers.
• Pornography is nothing redeemable, because it always promotes selfishness, lust and an unnatural oversexed drive, which like the ecstasy drug, will leave you crudely disappointed with reality.

  FOR WOMEN

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• An upsetting trend now is the fact that women are increasingly not only accepting of porn, but are becoming viewers of porn, even though it an industry that is so injurious and contemptuous to them. What started out as a trend of women who viewed pornography with their partners reluctantly has become a culture of women who embrace it as even being "feminist" or "liberating."
• Some would argue that porn can be "feminist" in nature, but I believe it is all a crude adoption of the same belittling, objectifying lack of ethics that hurts women in other types of pornography. The porn I speak of that is rationalized to be "feminist" is that in which the female is the dominatrix, or master and abuser. It is not feminist to objectify men or treat them as animals, simply because they have done so to us. It is only stooping to their level, adopting the values that we are trying to react against. Being a feminist does not mean belittling the other sex- that would only be revenge. A true feminist respects both sexes and would treat the opposite sex, as they themselves would want to be treated.
• Women are the population most hurt by all types of pornography, and should be the first to refuse to look at, watch or accept it.
• Women who watch porn will not only begin to believe they are not good enough, but will agree with their partner when he says she is not good enough. She will compare herself to the women in the pornography, thinking, "Do I look like them?" (With their unrealistic, idealized and cosmetic surgery induced proportions) "Can I perform in bed like them?" "Will I be able to keep my partner interested?"
• By looking at porn, a female will begin to see herself as less than she formerly believed herself to be. She will no longer understand her worth. If porn were an adequate education for women to understand how to be sexually passionate, or learn more about their bodies, it would be somewhat redeemable-but porn is too distorted to have value in that respect.
• By masturbating to porn, she will also be practicing a lack of self-control, gratifying the flesh, simply to get off. Her lust will increase, and maybe soon she will be trying to seduce men to feel more loved, convinced all the while that she is in control.
• Pornography is nothing redeemable, because it always promotes selfishness, lust and an unnatural oversexed drive, which like the ecstasy drug, will leave you crudely disappointed with reality.