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To: The Committee Secretary Senate Standing Committees on Environment and Communications.

For your perusal.

PROTECT OUR CHILDREN FROM INTERNET

Pornography is an and an addiction is behaviour shaping, leading to the nullifying of any moral compass, hence, the Senate inquiry into the impact of online pornography on Australian children is most welcomed.

INTRODUCTION.

At the recent ‘Porn Harms Kids’ seminar held in the University of Sydney, the head of the Australian Childhood Foundation, Dr Joe Tucci, rang the alarm bells re an emerging public health crisis among our nation’s youth. He elaborated on how the widespread availability of pornography ‘online’ was detrimentally shaping children’s behaviour. Dr Tucci also highlighted the research which revealed the high percentage of those under the age of 16 (boys and girls) visiting pornographic websites.

The tragedy is that health authorities are seeing an increase in the number of youngsters participating in problematic sexual behaviour with other children, ultimately, potential adults emerging with ongoing sexually offending lifestyles towards others.

The following extract from this seminar is succinct:

Attendee Tim Gordon, 23, from Melbourne, said he was addicted to pornography from the age of 11 to 13. "For me personally porn made it pretty difficult to see women as anything other than objects," Mr Gordon said. We are seeing that some women, especially young ones, are being coerced into sexual acts that might not be appealing to them. "To a certain extent, no matter how much you try and tell yourself that they're intelligent, complex people, your mind just doesn't let you when you're in that space; porn has a way of just dominating your mind." Coralie Alison from anti-pornography group Collective Shout agreed that early exposure to pornography online was affecting the way some young men treated women. 'There's so much shame and guilt, so it's hidden' Mr Gordon said this was the first time he had spoken about his addiction publicly, and that the problem was still hidden in .

"What frustrates me is that it is not something that is talked about. You have guys, friends of mine, who are struggling with it, but they just don't feel at liberty to talk about it with anyone, and that is really what allows it to thrive," he said. "There is so much shame and guilt associated with it. So it is very common for young guys and girls who are struggling with porn to just keep it to themselves." Dr Tucci said the exposure was too much, too soon for children. "We have dropped children into an adult world where the concepts that they are faced with are too complex for them to understand and process properly," he said. Ms Alison said more education was needed, and while some schools were teaching about the negative impacts of viewing sexually explicit material at too young an age, a national approach was needed. "It is not just up to parents, it not just up to teachers and it is not just up to government," she said. "It will take a multi-pronged approach to find a solution. We need to have the conversation about what to do next.” This is further highlighted by Family Voice Australia’s research officer Ros Phillips letter: FamilyVoice Australia research officer Ros Phillips has praised UK Prime Minister David Cameron for his pledge yesterday to introduce new laws to protect children from damaging online pornography. She has called on Australia’s Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull to do the same.

“Research shows that men who become frequent porn users had their first exposure between 11 and 13 years old, with almost one-third claiming it was younger than 10,” Ros Phillips said.

“This is alarming because of the long-term effects of pornography on young minds. They are more likely to sexually abuse siblings and other children, or to become deeply anxious and traumatised.”

Mrs Phillips said that adult porn users are more likely to become dissatisfied with their partner, leading to family breakdown. They are likely to become more interested in extreme forms of pornography, and consider the crime of less serious.

“Pornography commonly portrays acts that are degrading to women, and there is strong evidence that exposure to violent pornography is associated with sexually aggressive behaviours in both adolescent and adult males,” she said.

“We urgently need ISP-level filters to protect Aussie children from harmful porn.”

EFFECTS OF PORNOGRAPHY EXPOSURE AND USE.

A series of studies were held in the 1980s by Dolf Zillman and Jennings Bryant researching into the effects of pornography exposure upon older adolescents and young adults. Their findings exposed the following:

Subjects considered that the crime of rape was less serious. Subjects became more interested in extreme and deviant forms of pornography. Subjects became more accepting of non-marital sexual activity and accepting of oral and . Male subjects were more inclined to show callousness towards women. Subjects were more likely to become dissatisfied with their . Subjects were more inclined to sexual infidelity in a relationship. Subjects valued less, with a tendency to believe marriage as becoming obsolete, and had a greater acceptance of female . The studies also revealed that men experienced a decreased desire to have children and women had a decreased desire to have daughters.

NOTE Zillman/Bryant: ‘Pornography, Sexual Callousness and the Trivialisation of Rape’; ‘Effects of Prolonged Consumption of Pornography on Family Values’. The use of pornography creates problems for women as they are at the receiving end of violent and sexually aggressive attitudes. Pornographic films portray male vs female verbal and sexual aggression and acts which are degrading to women. In fact, these kinds of movies are no longer the domain of the pornographers as they are being streamlined into our homes via the television. Pornography exposure has been linked to the phenomenon of ‘sexting’ which is becoming common place amongst teenagers. Dr Julia Long from the London Feminist Network hit the nail on the head with her observation: “Pornographers don’t care about the damage their industry dose. Their only concern is profit” The statistics highlighted in the ‘Porn Harms Kids’ seminar with regard to the monies accrued by the porn industry in America alone are appalling: $29 billion per year, and is responsible for 30% of internet traffic. Apart from this, a growing number of neuroscientists/psychiatrists are weighing into the debate with their increasing concerns re brain damage in addictive pornography users. Though the studies in this area are not yet finalised and more research needs to be done, the Max Planck Institute for Human Development (Berlin) and the Cambridge University (UK) are finding it necessary to pursue this possible link. NOTE Further information can be found in the following: 1 Rob Tannenbaum, “Interview with John Mayer,” Playboy Magazine (March 2010).

2 Read Mercer Schuchardt, “Hugh Hefner’s Hollow Victory: How the Playboy Magnate Won the Culture War, Lost His Soul, and Left Us with a Mess to Clean Up,” Today, December 2003, 50–54.

3 Todd G. Morrison et al., “Exposure to Sexually Explicit Material and Variations in Body Esteem, Genital Attitudes, and Sexual Esteem among a Sample of Canadian Men,” TheJournal of Men’s Studies 14, 2 (Spring 2006): 209–22 . 4 Gail Dines, Robert Jensen, and Ann Russo, Pornography: The Production and Consumption of Inequality (London: Routledge, 1998).

5 Harold Mouras et al., “Brain Processing of Visual Sexual Stimuli in Healthy Men: A Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging Study,” Neuroimage 20, 2 (October 2003): 855–69.

6 William M. Struthers, Wired for Intimacy: How Pornography Hijacks the Male Brain (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2009).

7 Justin H. G. Williams et al., “Imitation, Mirror Neurons and Autism,” Neuroscience and Biobehavioral Reviews 25, 4 (June 2001): 287; Sarah Archibald, “Mirror Image,” NatureReviews Neuroscience 7, 4 (January 2006).

8 Harold Mouras et al., “Activation of Mirror-Neuron System by Erotic Video Clips Predicts Degree of Induced : An fMRI Study,” Neuroimage 42, 3 (September 2008): 1142–50. CONCLUSION. This nation’s children, surely, should be our most treasured possession deserving of protection from online predators. These ‘trolls’ (in the current vernacular) are not only wanting to fulfil their own sexual fantasies but are grooming the next generation of participants for the pornographic trade. An excellent article is put out by Melissa Farley entitled: Pornography, , & Trafficking: Making the Connections” (Prostitution Research and Education, San Francisco August 2015). Developing and maintaining a healthy sexuality should not be denied our progeny at the expense of an industry that regards people as a disposable commodity. Pornography takes out of context….. instead of being the union and deepening intimacy and procreation between two human beings, it simply becomes another consumable product losing all dignity, a debasing act, with people being viewed simply as pieces of meat on which other’s appetites can be assuaged! As seen from the Zillman/Bryant studies, pornography strikes at the very heart of the nuclear family. As the social commentator Michael Novak noted in his discourse on the Importance of the Family: “One unforgettable law has been learned through all the disasters and injustices of the last thousand years: If things go well with the family, life is worth living; when the family falters, life falls apart”. Laws need to be introduced to stop the online corruption of this nation’s future. ISP-level filters are called for preferably with ‘opt-in’ rather than ‘opt-out’ filters along with the onus being placed on the pornography industry to provide gateways through which children (any child under the age of 18) cannot enter. Our phones, computers, iPads - whatever - should be free of instant porn’. Thank you for your considerations.

Respectfully Yours,

Mrs Marilyn Colemon