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Pornography and 
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The Growing Threat 
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FACTS ABOUT PORNOGRAPHY AND ATTITUDES

  • Studies show pornography is progressive and addictive for many.  It often leads to  the user acting out his fantasy -- often on children. -- Victor Cline, Ph.D., Department of Psychology, University of Utah 1988, Pornography Effects: Empirical and Clinical Evidence, pg. 24
  • A primary pornography consumer group is boys between ages 12 - 17. -- Attorney General's Final Report on Pornography, 1986, pg. 258
  • Pornography distorts the natural development of personality.  If the early stimulus is pornographic photographs, the adolescent can be conditioned to become aroused through photographs.  Once this pairing is rewarded a number of times, it is likely to become permanent.  The result to the individual is that it becomes difficult for the person to seek out relations with appropriate persons. -- Jerry Bergman, Ph.D., The Influence of Pornography on Sexual Development: Three Case Histories, IX Family Therapy 3, 1982, pg. 265.
  • When pornography is readily accessed, this "simple" way to gratify sexual desires can lead to a deviation from healthy development in which "pictures replace people."  Because pornography encourages neither tenderness nor caring (and typically quite the opposite), it can negatively influence a child's understanding of his own sexuality and the sexuality of those around him. -- See John O. Mason, Ph.D., Dr. P.H., Assistant Secretary for Health, Address to the Religious Alliance Against Pornography, The Harm of Pornography, pg. 2 (Oct. 26, 1996).
  • To children, pornography "educates" by presenting new information.  That information about human sexuality is not only highly inaccurate, but also misleading.  Photographs, videos, magazines, and virtual games that depict rape and the dehumanization of females in sexual scenes constitute powerful but deforming tools of sex education.  In addition, pornography portrays unhealthy or antisocial kinds of sexual activity, such as sadomasochism, abuse, and humiliation of females, involvement of children, incest, group sex, voyeurism, sexual degradation, bestiality, torture, objectification, and sanction of "the rape myth." -- VICTOR CLINE, PORNOGRAPHY'S EFFECTS ON ADULTS & CHILDREN 13 (1994); see also, Neil M. Malamuth & Joseph Ceniti, Repeated Exposure to Violent and Non Violent Pornography: Likelihood of Raping Ratings and Laboratory Aggression Against Women, 12 Aggressive Behavior 129-37, U.C.L.A. (1985).
  • As a result of a steady diet of "regular" pornography, men can display such  symptoms as:
    • Voyeurism:    looking at women constantly, which interferes in other    relationships.
       
    •  Objectification:  obsessive fetishism over body parts that interferes with    the ability to have relationships with an actual person.
       
    •  The need for validation, or handing power over to women to validate    their masculinity easily threatened by women and other men.
       
    •  Trophyism:  treating women as collectibles, and unable to see or feel    beyond it.
       
    •  Incapable of intimacy: lonely, but unable to get beyond the     plastic/glossy images of women enough to make a relationship with a "real" woman possible.

GARY R. BROOKS, Ph.D., The Centerfold Syndrome: How Men Can Overcome Objectification and Achieve Intimacy with Women, Josey-Bass Publishers (San Francisco, 1996).

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