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DISPATCHES

PORN
in the USA
Examining Our
National Addiction
by John Coleman

S
miling over a John Belushi-like paunch and through a thick mustache, Ron Jeremy
looks more like a Super Mario Brother than the world’s biggest porn star. His
mane of black hair billows back from a squat face and dark, tweaked eyes that
leave you with the impression that he has just cracked the punch line to a very
dirty joke. At 5 feet, 7 inches, and a hedgehog-like 200 pounds, Jeremy wears his shirts
open and sports thick gold chains nestled in a dark pelt of chest hair. He is hardly the
aesthetic ideal of a sexual icon, but at 53 Ron Jeremy is porn.
Back in the 1970s, Jeremy was just a regular guy. A special education teacher with
a master’s degree from Queens College, his stage career started rather innocuously in
the Catskills where he tried his hand at stand-up comedy. But when a girlfriend sent his
picture to Playgirl magazine in 1978, Ron Jeremy (formerly Ron Hyatt) shifted gears. Mov-
ing to film, Jeremy went on to act in more than 1,600 pornographic movies. Transcending
the genre, he soon began to play himself (the comically repugnant male porn superhero)
in music videos and mainstream television shows. As pornography—once the quiet stuff
of R-rated magazines—ascended to its place as a more than $12 billion US industry, Ron
Jeremy rose with it; and the result is a mainstream cultural icon who’s both the spokesman
for our hyper-sexualized society and the proof of its bloated, dark underbelly.
So how did we get here? Only 40 years ago Elvis Presley made rock history with a
few well-placed pelvic thrusts, and Marilyn Monroe shocked our sexual sensibilities with
modest bathing suits and demure glances. Now Carmen Electra’s stripper workouts are a
staple of household aerobics, and 12 percent of the worldwide web is devoted to porno-
graphic sites. Pornography is in our living rooms, on our computers and television screens,
and buried deep in the experiences of our spouses, children, and siblings. And, by all ac-
counts, it’s here to stay.

20 salvo issue 2
Recent History
Pornography is nothing new—it’s just never been as pervasive
or readily available as it is now. Derived from two Greek words,
porne and graphein, pornography’s component parts mean,
literally, to “write about prostitutes.” In ancient civilizations
this drive to represent sex and sexuality bled into an affinity
for nude sculpture, painting, and the theatrical representation
of sexual acts. In modern Europe, it took a more literary bent.
UKTV’s Pornography: A Secret History of Civilisation traces the ori-
gins of European pornographic writing on a line that stretches
from Pietro Aretino’s 1535 dialogue School of Whoredom to the
eighteenth-century works of the remarkably violent Marquis de
Sade; but pornography has always been limited by technology’s
ability to simulate true sexuality. Wood carvings and erotic
novels are poor substitutes for real sex, and it wasn’t until
the twentieth century that technology caught up with human
desire.
From dirty theaters to Masonic
lodges, soft-core pornographic mov-
ies were an integral part of the mo-
tion-picture movement that brought It’s not hard to see why porn is popular. Sex is fun but hard
silent films to the Western world, for some people to get, and it’s tangled up with all sorts of
and photography put the likenesses
real-world complications, like emotional attachment, lengthy
of naked ladies (and, one might
assume, naked men) on everything dating rituals, love, sexually transmitted disease, performance
from playing cards to matchbooks. problems, regret, and Marvin Gaye music.
For decades, this was an undercover
enterprise, but in 1953 Hugh Hefner
launched Playboy magazine with the inimitable Marilyn Monroe phone pornography (yes, cell phone pornography) is a $1.5 billion
as its primary attraction, and—almost immediately—American industry. By the time you read these statistics, pornography’s ex-
pornography was a mainstream phenomenon. By 1972 Playboy ponential growth will have rendered them outdated; and if you
was reaching one quarter of all college-age men, and a plethora think all of this consumption is harmless or the obsessive work
of harder and softer knockoffs—from Hustler to Maxim—fol- of a small pocket of individuals, think again.
lowed. Porn stars like Ron Jeremy and John Holmes became Pornography consumers are your parents, professors,
household names, and centerfolds like Pamela Anderson became husbands, pastors, colleagues, children, and friends; and some
reputable national celebrities. By 1986 two different presidents modern pornographic offerings make Hustler layouts look like
had set up special commissions to investigate the social ramifi- Norman Rockwell spreads in The Saturday Evening Post. Jerry Ro-
cations of pornography; and if all this hoopla convinced everyday pelato of Top Ten Reviews notes that 40 million US adults regularly
Americans that they had seen and heard it all, no one was ready view pornographic websites. Twenty percent of men admit to
for the rise of the internet.VHS technology had taken porno viewing pornographic materials at work, 53 percent of Promise
movies out of shady theaters and into the bedrooms of lonely Keepers (members of the prominent Christian men’s organiza-
bachelors and adventurous couples, but the internet, perhaps tion) view online pornography on a weekly basis, and 37 percent
the greatest democratizing force in history, put ever more ex- of Christian pastors identify pornography as a current struggle.
plicit pornography at every computer user’s fingertips, and the Far from being immune, women account for as much as one-
result was revolution. third of all pornographic consumption; and children are some of
As a nation, we are addicted to porn. According to a 2004 the heaviest users online. The average child is 11 years old at the
web traffic report published in World Watch, there are 23 to time of his or her first exposure. Twenty percent of all children
60 million unique visitors to pornography websites every day. have been sexually solicited on the web; more than 90 percent
Fifty-one percent of all videos shared on peer-to-peer (P2P) of 8 to 16-year-olds have viewed pornography online, and 80
networks are pornographic in nature, and 73 percent of all im- percent of 15 to 17-year-olds have had multiple exposures to
age searches on the popular P2P engine Kazaa are for pornog- hardcore pornography.
raphy—24 percent for child pornography. In 1998 there were Not sure what “hardcore” means? In the 1970s it may
about 14 million pornographic web pages online. By July 2003 have indicated the full-frontal nudity of Hustler magazine. Now
that number was 260 million, and by the end of 2004 there it often means gang rape, multiple penetration, violence, child
were 420 million. Fully 70 percent of in-room movie revenues at pornography, group sex, Bukkake, and bestiality. As of December
hotels come from the viewing of pornographic films, as do 25 to 2005, child pornography was estimated to be a $3 billion indus-
30 percent of all Pay-Per-View revenues. In Western Europe, cell try; and users lured in by traditional pornography often progress

salvo spring 07 21
quickly to these ever more intense forms. The very definition would someday be available at the click of a mouse. It was his
of pornography adopted by the US Supreme Court in 1966 last message to the public. His name was Ted Bundy.
declares pornography to be material that “appeals to a prurient
interest,” implying what Professor T. Walter Herbert has called
“an itch that gets worse when it is scratched.” And in many The Problem of Porn
ways, it is addictive. As one hardcore pornography user put it, It’s not hard to see why porn is popular. Sex is fun but hard for
“Once you become addicted to it . . . you look for more potent, some people to get, and it’s tangled up with all sorts of real-
more explicit, more graphic kinds of material. Like an addic- world complications, like emotional attachment, lengthy dating
rituals, love, sexually trans-
mitted disease, performance
Children exposed to porn are more likely to engage in sexual problems, regret, and Marvin
intercourse at an earlier age, develop addictive or compulsive Gaye music. Porn eliminates
the middleman and connects
sexual behaviors, devalue marriage and monogamy, and over- a consumer directly to his or
estimate the prevalence of such sexual behaviors as group sex, her deepest fantasies without
bestiality, and sadomasochism. the possibility of failure or
rejection and with seemingly
little real-world impact. But
tion, you keep craving something which is harder and gives you porn consumption isn’t as devoid of consequences as it seems.
a greater sense of excitement, until you reach the point where It doesn’t just satiate our sexual appetites in a safe and efficient
the pornography only goes so far.” way. It expands those appetites and brings with it a different
Of course, that quote came in 1989 from a man who basket of problems—dangerous because they are subtle.
would not see the never-ending fetishism of the internet and so Some of porn’s problems are straightforward. Child pornog-
couldn’t even imagine the mind-blowing range of offerings that raphy is bad because it depicts children in sex acts—something

Passion Victims
by Leslie Sillars
W hen Tim (not his real name) was 16, his mother al-
lowed him to subscribe to Playboy. “My mom’s got
some issues of her own,” he says. He kept renewing until he
met his future wife in 1991 and presumed that real sex in
marriage would curb his desire for pornography. It did—for
about six months. Then he was back to soft-core magazines.
He observed some self-imposed lines: no hard-core or
child porn or anything like that. But in 1996 he got internet
access for his graduate program in social work at a DC
university. “That opened up a Pandora’s box,” he recalls. For
the next eight years he crossed one line after another, unable
to stop even as his training as a therapist told him he was
addicted. He thought he could treat himself.
His wife’s family owned a business, and while employed
there after grad school, he was, uh, using pornography three
times daily: when he got up (“My cup of coffee,” Tim says), at
work, and again in the evening.
His wife had discovered his secret obsession after about
a year of marriage. She just got “slammed,” he says, each time
she discovered another magazine, website, or movie. She
stayed with him, hoping he’d change, but in March of 2004 he
made a pass at his sister-in-law. That was the end. “It was like a

22 salvo issue 2
the U.S., thankfully, has criminalized. Some porn depicts violence
worthy of prosecution, or constitutes “peeping” that violates the
privacy of unwitting citizens. But other problems are less obvi-
ous, and the opposition to pornography falls into at least three
camps: the practical opponents of pornography, feminists, and
the religious faithful.
The practical opponents point out that apart from ideologi-
cal or moral objections, pornography carries with it a number
of real-world consequences. In her testimony before the Senate
Judiciary Committee in November 2005, scholar Jill C. Manning,
the Social Sciences Fellow in Domestic Policy at the Heritage
Foundation, focused on pornography’s impact on marriage and
the family. In an exhaustive literature review, Manning identified a
number of demonstrable problems with pornographic consump-
tion, including increased risk of separation or divorce, decreased
marital intimacy and sexual satisfaction, increased infidelity, and testified that all the literature led her to believe that pornogra-
increased compulsive or risky sexual behavior. phy was hamstringing our ability to relate to one another in the
Children suffer from decreased attention as their parents family context, as well as crippling the mindsets and behaviors of
withdraw, and they endure the hardships of an increased risk of future generations.
parental divorce or job loss. Children exposed to porn are more Author Pamela Paul took this a step further in her 2005
likely to engage in sexual intercourse at an earlier age, develop book Pornified, where she noted that statistical and anecdotal
addictive or compulsive sexual behaviors, devalue marriage and evidence shows that pornography is destroying our very abil-
monogamy, and overestimate the prevalence of such sexual ity to relate to one another and ourselves. Through extensive
behaviors as group sex, bestiality, and sadomasochism. Manning statistical research and hundreds of interviews, she found that

country music song,” he says. “I lost my wife, my job, my kids, support. In fact, for men who attend, “the prognosis is excel-
my house, everything.” lent.” Even wives, who typically feel horribly violated and
Tim is sitting in his clean and sparse town home in betrayed, can heal if their husbands “work diligently to help
northern Virginia, with Star Wars movie posters on the walls restore their self-esteem.”
and a couple of cats loafing on the couches.You’d think he’d “Sexual sin is the sin of a loner,” Andrew says. “The fact
be embarrassed to say all this, but he’s clear-eyed and frank that you’re here means half the battle is over.You’ve admit-
about his failures. He caused his ex-wife enormous pain, he ted you have a problem, and you’ve admitted you need help.
says, and someday he will tell his two children what he did. Those are the two biggest barriers to ending this enslave-
This is in large part because, in the months after his ment to lust.”
exposure, he met another man, “Andrew,” who years before Andrew himself spent 13 years of his marriage in a
had been in his shoes (only worse). In 2003 Andrew had cyclical swamp of guilt, pornography, and illicit affairs. The
begun with his pastor a private, informal, and free program of fantasies of the world of porn distort everyday life, he says,
13 weekly meetings for men enslaved by their own lust. Tim sexualizing even innocuous encounters with women. Once,
was a member of the second group and now helps lead the he called back a woman who had called him about a used
meetings. Five groups of 2–6 men have now been through car to try to get a date. “This is the world of an addict,” he
the program. says. “You live in delusion and denial.”
The members range from those who felt compelled to The group provides a strong dose of reality. Andrew
engage prostitutes to men whose wives are enraged that and the counseling pastor of his church put together a
they can’t stop gawking at pretty women in public places. manual covering the physiological, psychological, and
The one constant in their lives was pornography. spiritual aspects of sex and pornography. Group members
Tim and Andrew would like more men to attend, but get their problems into the open, face their lies, and work
they are, after all, dealing with addicts or near addicts, and out a plan to break their habits. A 13-week program won’t
these people are disconnected from reality and character- necessarily eliminate decades-old patterns, Andrew says,
ized by shame, denial, and mistrust. They show up fearful but it will get you off the slippery slope. “You’re always
and uncertain but are “jubilant” when they finish, Tim says, susceptible to temptation,” he reports, “but it can get to
because for the first time they have hope for escape and the point where it’s not only manageable, it fades into the
a tight group of friends who provide accountability and background noise.”

salvo spring 07 23
regular viewers of porn were less happy in relationships, more would have seemed nearly criminal: young girls sexualizing
likely to suffer from problems with impotence, more likely to themselves to impress younger and younger men obsessed with
engage in risky or illegal sexual activity, and more unhappy with the porn-star persona; people who preferred pornographic
their partners or themselves. She found women devastated fantasy to sexual reality; and a disconnect of sexuality from inti-
by their husbands’ and boyfriends’ addictions. She found men macy. As one of Paul’s interviewees put it, “[porn] takes a three-
whose otherwise normal sexual appetites progressed to violent dimensional human being with feelings—someone who could
and criminal behavior after being numbed by “fantasies” on the be your daughter, sister, or mother—and basically says, this is a
net. The men she interviewed wasted hours online at work creature that is only intended to satisfy your sexual desires. It
becomes your natural way of
thinking. . . .You’re no longer
We human beings simply aren’t meant to detach this physical conscious you’re even doing it.
It just happens.”
activity from emotional or spiritual intimacy. We struggle Unsurprisingly, some
when we objectify and commodify others because we end up feminists oppose porn because
degrading and objectifying ourselves. it is “speech” that, as Professor
Catherine Mackinnon puts it,
both subordinates and silences
and at home cruising the net for porn, often letting their dating women. It is “the graphic sexually explicit subordination of
prospects, professional opportunities, and self-images wither women, whether in pictures or in words.” And as such, it is seen
and die in the process. And everywhere she found a culture of as an inherent tool of the patriarchy—one that leads to further
“pornification”—behaviors being normalized that, 20 years ago, objectification, subjugation, and degradation. Other feminists

addiction to pornography was the root cause of his mur-


ders. Similarly, the serial killer Ted Bundy, who killed at least
28 young women and girls, stated the day before his execu-
tion that “the most common interest among serial killers is
pornography.” And then there is the infamous Jeffrey
Dahmer, charged with the deaths of 17 men and boys.
When asked what motivated his behavior, he told the FBI
that it was “heavy drinking, pornography, and masturbation.”
Bolstering such stories are a number of statistics that
likewise demonstrate a link between porn and violent
crime. For example, there were 1,400 child sexual molesta-
tions in Louisville, Kentucky, between July 1980 and Febru-

Victimless
ary 1984; adult pornography was connected with each and
every one of them and child pornography with most. Much

Vice?
more recently, Gene Abel of the New York Psychiatric
Institute found in his intensive study of rapists that “one-
third . . . had used pornography immediately prior to at least
one of their crimes.” Other investigators have discovered

M any believe that the consumption of pornography is a


victimless vice, far less harmful to the general public
than drugs, alcohol, or second-hand smoke. One criminolo-
that a sizable proportion of rapists and child molesters use
pornography both before and during their attacks.
Many additional studies could be cited, but these are
gist, Berl Kutchinsky of the University of Copenhagen, even enough to make the point. Pornography may not create
claims that it benefits society, arguing that the availability of criminals out of the blue, to borrow a line from the average
pornography depletes dangerous sexual impulses. However, porn advocate, yet it does seem to have an amplifying effect
most researchers will tell you that Kutchinsky’s study had on the already deranged, “feed[ing] and legitimiz[ing] their
serious flaws and that the truth about porn-related crime is deviant sexual tendencies,” as Dr. W. L. Marshall put it in his
actually quite disturbing. landmark report on pornographic influence. Either way, one
Let’s start with the anecdotal evidence. Arthur Gary would have to say that porn is not nearly as benign as some
Bishop, a convicted homosexual pedophile who murdered would have us believe; nor are its drawbacks confined to
five young boys in Salt Lake City, Utah, declared that his the user alone.

24 salvo issue 2
disagree with this proposition, viewing pornography as a likely
contributor to the sexual revolution, which they claim has fur-
thered the liberation of women from male domination; but most
of them would also concede that certain forms of pornography
(rape, humiliation, violence against women) are misogynist and
all-around bad. Pornography often relies on the degradation of
women—whether presenting them with unrealistic, airbrushed
standards as Playboy does, or through violent subjugation as seen
on various rape-porn sites—and such degradation can be emo-
tionally damaging to women and serve as an encouragement to
men who are prone to realizing such debased fantasies.
Finally, religious opposition complements these criticisms
and takes them a step further. Such opposition is likewise
diverse (encompassing all three monotheistic religions and a
smattering of others), though it is stated somewhat succinctly
and universally in the Catechism of the Catholic Church:

Pornography consists in removing real or simulated


sexual acts from the intimacy of the partners, in order by the idea of sexual pleasure without strings, but to thrive in
to display them deliberately to third parties. It offends a fully human way, we need something deeper. We need con-
against chastity because it perverts the conjugal act, the nection. We need meaning. We need emotion—long and tearful
intimate giving of spouses to each other. It does grave nights working out problems, fights over improperly squeezed
injury to the dignity of its participants (actors, vendors, toothpaste, the joy of childbirth, the embarrassment of bad hair
the public), since each one becomes an object of base days, and so on. We need more than fantasy. We need relation-
pleasure and illicit profit for others. It immerses all ships. We need reality. We need intimacy.
who are involved in the illusion of a fantasy world. It
is a grave offense. Civil authorities should prevent the
production and distribution of pornographic materials. Two Paths
And that’s where we stand. Today, we are not just a society ad-
To Catholics, pornography is a sin because it strips sex of its dicted to pornography; we are a society addicted to the “pornifi-
intimacy. Whereas feminism claims that pornography degrades cation,” the sexualization, and the commodification of just about
the dignity of women, religion—Christianity, specifically—claims everything. But we have a choice.
that it violates the dignity of all parties and perverts a sacred What if Ron Hyatt ( Jeremy) had chosen a different path
and intimate act into something detached, objectified, and spirit- in 1978? In this alternate universe, Hyatt would have remained
less. At the most superficial level, this objection is rooted in a a special education teacher, and his girlfriend would have kept
religious code; God is generally not a fan of lust or extramarital those pictures. As an occasional stand-up comic, Ron prob-
sex. But looking deeper, we can see that it is also rooted in the ably wouldn’t have had sex with so many beautiful women. He
human heart. We human beings simply aren’t meant to detach wouldn’t have movie credits. He wouldn’t have so much money.
this physical activity from emotional or spiritual intimacy. We And in a lot of ways, his life would be more difficult. Special
struggle when we objectify and commodify others because we education kids are some of the most vulnerable in society. They
end up degrading and objectifying ourselves. We are tempted need love. They need attention. They need encouragement. But
in spending time with those kids, Hyatt would have changed
their lives—taught them that human worth is not based on the

01 intellectual or the physical but on something deeper and


stronger—and he might have learned something in the process
Fact Finds about vulnerability, dependency, intimacy, and himself.
Right now, a lot of us face a similar choice. Pornogra-
phy—the very culture of “pornification”—is tempting. It is easy.
According to Arthur C. Brooks, a professor at
Syracuse University’s Maxwell School of Public Af- It seems costless. It lets us indulge our fantasies—even our
fairs, there is a 41% “fertility gap” separating political darkest fantasies. But it doesn’t help us reach people. It doesn’t
conservatives from liberals. And given that 80% of cure our loneliness or emptiness. It only bandages those things,
people with an identifiable party preference grow up while the love that might otherwise fill our lives quietly drains
to vote the same way as their parents, Brooks argues away from disuse. And it would be easy to sell out to a culture
that future elections will no doubt feature many more that tells us everything is material, everything is theatrical, and
conservative voters than liberal ones. everything is superficial. But selling out would be selling our-
selves short on the biggest thing a “pornified” culture can’t offer:
the other path, a human connection—intimacy.

salvo spring 07 25
The “Porn Chic” Top Twenty

A ccording to Pamela Paul, author of Pornified: How Pornography Is Transforming Our Lives, Our Relationships, and Our Families, “the stan-
dards of pornography have become something that not only men but women see as totally acceptable. It’s gone so mainstream
it’s barely edgy.” A brief glance at the surrounding culture will quickly confirm Paul’s assertion. Whether in the form of stripper aerobic
videos or “Porn Star” t-shirts, pornography is suddenly everywhere, and the trend has transformed this onetime perversion—the stuff of
“dirty old men” and even dirtier X-rated theaters—into a mainstream preoccupation. With that in mind, Salvo brings you the top twenty
examples of porn’s inroads into conventional society.

20. Cooking shows on the Food Network employ the cinematography, dialogue,
and body language characteristic of pornography (according to Harper’s magazine).
19. Such general-interest “lad mags” as Maxim feature on their covers barely dressed actresses and
models in various soft-core poses.
18. Both Harvard University and Boston University start publishing student-run sex magazines.
17. Vanity Fair puts photos of nude celebrities on several of its covers.
16. The NBC sitcom Friends treats pornography as a harmless habit.
15. Mainstream films like Boogie Nights and The People vs. Larry Flynt glamorize
the porn industry.
14. Such hip-hop and rock stars as Eminem, Kid Rock, Metallica, and Bon Jovi use porn actors
in their music videos.
13. Suburban women eschew Tupperware parties for sex-toy sleepovers.
12. The book XXX: Porn Star Portraits is published, its pictures accompanied by admiring essays by
Gore Vidal, John Waters, and Salman Rushdie, among others.
11. Porn director Matt Zane makes the “documentary” Backstage Sluts, in which Jonathan Davis of Korn
and the bands Sugar Ray and Insane Clown Posse tell stories about sex with groupies, which are then
re-enacted in graphic detail.
10. The bands Limp Bizkit and Godsmack help launch Playboy’s latest web
venture, “Sex & Rock-n-Roll.”
9. VH-1 broadcasts the show Porn to Rock, about the musical aspirations of two porn-film actresses.
8. Video games such as Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas contain sexually explicit scenes.
7. Art-house movies like The Brown Bunny and 9 Songs contain real, not simulated, on-screen sex.
6. At the Adult Entertainment Expo in Las Vegas, porn stars walk down a red carpet amid a media
barrage and while being mobbed by hundreds of fans.
5. Paris Hilton’s career takes off in the wake of the scandal surrounding her
participation in a number of sex tapes.
4. Brazilian bikini waxes—popularized in pornographic magazines—are all the rage at salons and
day spas.
3. Clothing company American Apparel uses porn starlet Lauren Phoenix to model its tube socks.
2. Cable reality series featuring strippers, prostitutes, and centerfolds become commonplace, from
The Cathouse to Girls Next Door to Fuse TV’s Pants-Off Dance Off.
1. Porn actress Jenna Jameson writes a best-selling memoir titled How to
Make Love Like a Porn Star.

26 salvo issue 2

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