Relationships Matter

Price: $11.56

User Reviews about Pornified: How Pornography Is Damaging Our Lives - Our Relationships - and Our Families

This book has two covers to choose from; the first edition containing the subtitle, "How pornography is transforming our lives, our relationships, and our families." The second edition substitutes the word "damaging" for "transforming, and this is more accurate, as Paul uses most of her book to tell the stories of men and women who view and consume pornography to their detriment-whether they know it or not.

The virtue of Paul's book is that it captures the habits of porn use by real people, and does not immediately take on abstract issues like freedom of speech, obscenity law, and defining what exactly pornography is. She interviews a number of people who are frank about their experience with porn ranging from largely positive to mostly negative. She retains their language and does not shy away from using their words and descriptions to capture the full effect of pornography on how people think and communicate about sex. Thus the reader is left to be shocked and shocked again by what becomes obvious if it isn't obvious already: pornography is utterly vulgar.

The inclusion of vulgarity is very important for Paul who never really defines what pornography is, but gives the impression that whatever it may be it is something that inherently degrading. Vulgarity, however, doesn't simply mean something "gross" or "offensive" is on display. It also denotes something stupid or low-brow, lacking refinement, class, or decency. Those that peddle it are rightly stigmatized and those that consume it are naturally ashamed of it at least to the point where they feel the need to keep it hidden from others.

Paul illuminates many contradictory attitudes about pornography held by both men and women that are maddening to contemplate. Men will say it doesn't affect them, but will admit to using it 5 hours a week "to get off." They say it doesn't cost them anything, and yet the industry makes more money than Hollywood and professional sports combined. Its just fantasy, not reality, though there is an ever increasing demand for porn stars to be photographed in more and more degrading fashions. Women want to be "cool with it" and let "boys be boys" but they feel devalued when their partner brings pornified fantasies into the bedroom. They know that every man "looks" but that does not stop the feelings of inadequacy and betrayal. Men think women "should get over it" or that they will "never understand" but many feel ashamed of how much they need it and feel tormented over how out of control their use has become. Sex therapists advocate couples using pornography together to spice up the love life, but many couples experience a lack of intimacy and deadened libido afterwards.

Paul does not advocate censorship, but certainly does not see pornography as a form of politically protected "speech." She argues that such a notion is ridiculous in light of the fact that pornography is really a commodity of an industry that commercializes and sells its products with no regard to the social good much like the tobacco industry sells cigarettes. The effects of porn on children and teenagers, not to mention marriages, are ignored while huge profits are turned by amoral corporations. Regulation of industry does not contradict or mitigate the political rights every American citizen is entitled to under the First Amendment. Such confusion, created by the porn industry itself, could even be applied to prostitution absurdly making it a form of "free demonstration" protected by law.

Pamela Paul's book is not for the faint at heart and is not recommended for anyone under eighteen or anyone trying to exit a pornography addiction. However, it is a much needed book for raising the awareness of anyone who is seeking answers to questions about what constitutes a true sexual morality and a truly good life.

-- Confronts vulgarity, raises awareness

In this book, journalist Pamela Paul takes an in depth look at porn. Her conclusion is simple. Porn is out of control, it is getting worse and it is degrading our culture. Her method is to interview a large number of people: men who use porn and women who react to it. She also commissioned a nationwide poll on the subject, and appears to have done her homework in reading up on the academic literature on the subject.

As she demonstrates, porn is all about objectifying women. It is a fantasy realm in which men can pretend that their self-centered sexual desires can be satisfied, all of the time. As she shows, porn is objectively harmful to all concerned. It desensitizes men to the images they see. It promotes the view that women are nothing but sexual objects. It is extremely damaging to relationships, because men trained on porn can have difficulty relating to real women. In many cases, it leads men to withdraw from their real relationships. In extreme cases -- which appear to be more and more common -- it can lead to very damaging types of addictive behavior.

As Paul is at pains to demonstrate, she is a liberal. She is the sort of person who thinks that most forms of religion are extreme points of view, out of the mainstream and threatening to good, progressive Americans. Oddly enough, this makes her book more powerful. She so obviously is NOT coming from a religious perspective that her negative conclusions about porn are more compelling. As she makes clear, she is the sort of person whose kneejerk reaction is that porn is free speech and that all good people are "progressives" who, of course, support the ACLU in all things. The fact that she has come to see why porn is morally wrong -- not that she is ever politically incorrect enough to use the taboo word "morality" -- shows how strong the case is. I hope that this book reaches others with her general point of view.

Her ideas on what to do about porn are interesting. She basically gives up on the idea of legal restrictions. She thinks that the Supreme Court's 5-4 decisions in favor of nearly all porn are etched in stone, and that regulation can thus do very little. What she advocates is a campaign of moral suasion similar to that waged by liberals against cigarettes. Cigarettes, of course, are still legal, but liberals have done a great deal to de-glamorize them and to make them unacceptable. She wants a similar approach to porn, in which it is simply rejected by society at large. I do not share her negative view of regulation of porn; I still hope that conservatives get that fifth vote on the Supreme Court, and that the Court will throw out the extreme pro-porn views. At the same time, I like her idea. I think it is a good idea, and one that I hope both liberals and conservatives could agree upon. -- Lucid, thoughtful liberal attack on porn

OK, she exaggerates, sometimes wildly. And OK, being a woman, she doesn't really understand what makes men tick (though she's certainly no man-hater). Nevertheless, her main argument is undoubtedly right.

If your sex life is real sex with a real woman, then unexpected things are always happening. Especially if you're spontaneous and can laugh at yourself and be yourself and encourage your partner to be herself, too, then sex rarely gets boring. You're never sure what's going to happen, because you're not really in control (sex is best when you're completely out of control); instead, life is in control of whatever happens. Not that it ever works out perfectly, but when you both end up feeling so good and so grateful, who cares? When these great times are shared, there's nothing else like it.

Porn is the opposite. Or haven't you been using it long enough to see that it gets old pretty quickly? When the same images start to bore you, you try something a little more "edgy." At first, you'll say to yourself, "I'd never consider THAT repulsive stuff." But eventually, you wind up in precisely that gutter yourself.

I'm sure she's right that well over half of US men use porn at least monthly. But since she exaggerates, it's hard to know just bad the problem really is. Porn might resemble alcohol: terribly corrosive for some, but relatively harmless for most. So if you're a woman, and you catch your hubby using porn some night, it's not necessarily any worse than his having a couple of beers. But if he also does other things that are starting to "really creep you out," then it's probably gotten worse than "just a couple of beers." If he treats you rudely during sex, or wants you to get into porn, too, or puts a lot of pressure on you to do things that gross you out -- then he's probably become the equivalent of a full-blown alcoholic.

Everybody's going to find something different in this book that really disgusts them. For me, it's the idea that so many young men think they are learning how to be better lovers by watching porn. (They probably think that drinking helps them drive better, too.)

I'll close with three quotes. First, there are some minor exaggerations that are flat-out ridiculous: "Even Playboy has a highly harmful effect on men's sexuality and ability to be in a serious relationship."

Page 85 is so well-written as to be worth the price of the book all by itself. Here's the first paragraph: "...with porn, certain vital emotions are bypassed altogether. Pornography contains little in the way of kissing, hugging, caressing, or holding--all the supposedly `feminine' aspects of sex that, stereotypes aside, can be key experiences for men as well. No one is ever vulnerable or insecure in pornography; there are no reassurances or exchanged intimacies."

The author is very sex-positive: "If men truly prefer sex to porn, they should be allowed and encouraged to act that way." The women in the book are always complaining that their "pornified" men don't want sex with them enough.

Sex is healthy. Porn has become common, and it can be addictive. It'll never be as healthy as good sex. And it can eventually drag you down into the gutter of perversion.






-- Just because she's a feminist doesn't mean she's wrong

First, I applaud Pamela Paul for tackling what is a very sensitive topic and attempting to provide some useful information to guide an intelligent discussion. Too many people are subject to uninformed biases about this topic which makes resolving any issues impossible.

The best part of the book is the statements from her interviewees who show how pornography has affected their lives. These statements from real people provide a glimpse into real lives that are difficult to ignore. Too much rumor and hearsay influences how people regard pornography. In addition some opinions are based on ideological principles that don't take into account real-world affects. Paul brings us many of these real world affects and, consequently, gives us a fuller account.

I also like her censure-not-censor solution. As she demonstrates in her book, pornography can have very detrimental affects on people's lives and, just like other things, should be controlled in some way. The comparison to alcohol and tobacco is very appropriate and I agree that that is the course our society should take.

However, I cannot fully recommend this book as an unbiased scholarly work. Her position against pornography clearly drives her writing. She repeatedly emphasizes the negative aspects of pornography while being very dismissive of anybody who speaks in favor of it. Among her informers there are some who do not show any negative impacts of in on their lives. But she only includes a few quotes from these people while extensively quoting all those whose lives were destroyed by it. Towards the end of the book while discussing "the truth" about porn she automatically dismisses anybody who has anything good to say about it without a careful evaluation of their position and offers an overintellectualized refutation. I do not consider this to be unbiased reporting.

I am also bothered by the way she comes down against men. While including statistics and quotes showing that a significant number of women regularly view porn and admits that the number is rising, her final conclusion portrays pornography as a male problem. Men only are the ones who use it negatively and are victimizing women. She seems to forget some of her own research, two of her informers were men who claimed to not view porn at all and saw no point in it. Her conclusion certainly contradicts my experience with some of my female acquaintances who admit to watching porn and have no issues with it.

Overall the book has a strong influence from feminist theory that disdains pornography and keeps it from being an objective treatment. The book is a good introduction to a subject that needs more discussion, but, please, take the overall message with a grain of salt. -- informative, but not objective