Porn hurts women, so say the partners of users

Arndt's own examples are consistent with a growing body of research in marital and family therapy which concentrates not simply on the individual impacts of porn consumption (that is, its effects on users) but also on the "systemic" impacts; that is, its effects on the people around the user and, in particular, on his – it is usually men consuming – partner and children. This moves the discussion beyond intractable (though important) questions such as: "Will it turn him into a rapist?" or "Are his attitudes towards women becoming more callous and sexist?" to the everyday relational context of users. How, in particular, does secret use by one member of a couple affect the other – before, during and after discovery?

One of the most counter-intuitive findings of this research is that heavy porn consumption tends to diminish a couple's sex life – principally by shifting men's sexual focus away from their partners, and into a fantasy world of endless erotic possibilities. Many partners are consequently left feeling sexually and emotionally abandoned and devalued. Arndt dismisses this finding out of hand, but it has been noted by over a dozen studies, especially in relation to the partners of "heavy" users.

Another key finding is that pornography consumption is much more problematic in long-term committed relationships than in casual ones. For example, survey research conducted by Bridges, Bergner, and Hesson-McInnis (2003) found married women to be significantly more distressed by a partner's online pornography consumption than women in dating relationships. Moreover, the distress increased according to the perceived frequency of use. This research, notes Manning, "is significant because it supports the assertion that married women generally are distressed by their husbands' use of sexually explicit materialand that this may threaten the stability of the marital bond."

In other words, casual use in casual relationships is the least problematic for women, on the proviso that this use is not concealed. However, heavy use, especially heavy secretive use in a committed relationship, can wreak havoc, and not uncommonly results in separation and divorce. Fundamentally, women experience their partner's secret porn use as infidelity. As one woman in a recent study by Zitzman and Butler (2009) put it, it's "like he's had a million affairs".

The visceral appeal of internet porn, especially with the advent of high speed internet connections and high definition images, has, at least in some cases, trumped real women. In her now classic article The Porn Myth well-known feminist writer Naomi Wolf made this connection (in apparent opposition to Andrea Dworkin who had cautioned that porn would greatly exacerbate rape culture). "For most of human history," writes Wolf, "erotic images have been reflections of, or celebrations of, or substitutes for, real naked women. For the first time in human history, the images' power and allure have supplanted that of real naked women."

Wolf is right, however, she may have been rash to assume she had trumped Dworkin's portentous insight. Arguably, men's widespread patronage of the sex-industry, including porn, and increasingly "teen porn" and, more disturbingly, "kiddy porn" (what is in fact the filmed sexual assault of children) is itself a form of rape culture. While the women who are men's equals might be struggling for sexual recognition, those who are structured as their inferiors are struggling to keep up with the demand (or, more properly, the businesses that exploit them are struggling to keep up with demand).

The porn industry is gigantic – its profits are larger than Microsoft, Google, Amazon, eBay, Yahoo, and Apple combined (yes, that's right, combined), with worldwide profits currently posited at US 100 billion dollars. The stripping industry has doubled in the last decade; global sex-trafficking in women and children, usually from poor countries is booming; and, with the legalization of prostitution in many places, both the legal and illegal industries have boomed. In any given week, 60,000 men visit brothels in Victoria alone. While porn is turning men off women, as Wolf rightly notes, it is Dworkin who forewarned the underbelly.

Research both on users and, as we have seen, the partners of users, indicates two main trends associated with heavy porn consumption: men either begin to ignore their partners sexually (having substituted cybersex for relational sex); or they want to act out porn sex with their partners. Not surprisingly, the partner's of users typically describe feeling objectified or used. As one woman in a 2002 study by Bergner and Bridges described, "I am no longer a sexual person or partner to him, but a sexual object. He is not really with me, not really making love to me … He seems to be thinking about something or someone else-likely those porn women … He is just using me as a warm body."

Anti-porn activist and researcher, Gail Dinessimilarly observes (what therapists are seeing on a more regular basis) that young men are increasingly wanting their girlfriends to behave like "porn stars":

... the more porn men watch, the more they want to play out porn sex in the real world. They become bored with their sex partners because they don't look or act like the women in porn. What troubles many of these men most is that they need to pull up the porn images in their head in order to have an orgasm with their partner. They replay porn scenes in their minds, or think about having sex with their favourite porn star when they are with their partners.

There is now a growing body of anecdotal and clinical evidence to support this assertion. However, Dines, like Wolf, concentrates on the impact of Internet porn on young people. But, as Manning notes, research has not yet caught up with the demographic profile of users, or the extent to which pornography is reshaping sexuality and relationships across the board. It is not just vulnerable teenagers, or men in their early twenties, whose sexuality is being re-shaped by porn, it is men and women of all ages. Indeed, current Internet Filter Review statistics show that in the U.S. the 35-44 year old age group consumes the most pornography (defined as those users who pay for porn), followed by the 45-54 and 55 + age groups. Hard-core porn is mainstream and men of all ages, classes and cultures are watching it, which is impacting how they see women and sex. It is also affecting how women see themselves.

Research findings on the partners of users reveals a vernacular distress that exists in tension with both liberal apologist and feminist analyses of porn, since the primary concern of women who are the partners of users is not the political economy of the sex-industry, "freedom of speech", or the relative "agency" of sex-workers, but their own primal feelings of sadness, loss, jealousy and betrayal. What we see in these accounts is a discourse of suffering and abandonment that speaks of ruptured attachment and damaged self-esteem.

The primary concern here shifts from production to consumption or, more properly, the knock-on effects of consumption on the women in relationship with users. If we accept that the overwhelming majority of long-term relationships, and perhaps all marriages, are premised on exclusivity, trust, sexual fidelity, and intimacy, then regular porn use by partnered men - specifically, evaluating, selecting and masturbating over other women - is inherently threatening to couple bonds. When this changes the baseline of expectation for what women (should) look like and do, we are in trouble as a society, not only in our individual relationships.

Returning to Arndt and her key point that men are turning to porn because their wives wont "put out", we might ask whether men's endemic porn use is not rather a retreat from (and substitute for) real women – a shoring up of masculinity and male sex right - in a context where real women have made significant advances, including with regards their sexual autonomy. Are porn stars - and sex-workers generally - the new wives who must put out and shut-up? We might also ask, since we seem to think it is fine to question women's "low libido", why it is that men want - and in some cases expect - constant sexual access to women?