Jàguar Lacroix 9th March 2016 1

Submission for the Inquiry into the harm being done to Australian children through access to on the internet

Jàguar Lacroix MAPs, Grad. Dip. Psych., Grad Dip. Coun, ADOM Animal Rights, Human Rights Activist; Doctoral candidature pending (2016)

Thank you for this opportunity to express my thoughts and ideas. It is my hope that they make a constructive contribution to the debate.

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Submission for the Inquiry into the harm being done to Australian children through access to pornography on the internet

"During times of universal deceit, telling the truth becomes a revolutionary act." George Orwell

When legal scholar Catharine MacKinnon (19931) wrote that, we live in a porn saturated world I thought she was exaggerating. Upon educating myself on this subject I find she could not have been more correct. In fact pornographic imagery is increasingly emulated in fashion, advertising, celebrity blogs and in all forms of media (please see appendix A. for examples). Soft porn has gone mainstream, one wonders if hardcore, now accessible by any smartphone in a free wi-fi zone is soon to follow?

March 8th, International Women’s Day 2016: Having read all seventeen current submissions to the Submission for the Inquiry into the harm being done to Australian children through access to pornography on the internet, I find that little can be added to the recommendations of Professor Freda Briggs or the heartfelt concerns of mothers and parents; I have therefor chosen in this submission to focus on causation or what I perceive to be the sociological origins and outcomes of pornography production and consumption. I am doing this because I feel that many of you will be shocked by the easy access and content of violent forms of pornography online. I also find it quite hypocritical of a government to display concern about children’s viewing of pornography while announcing in the latest politically correct catchphrase to be “preventing domestic violence” through respect for women—when the of women and girls is legal in all but two states in Australia. Sexual access to a woman by buying the use of her body hardly promotes respect; the issue of prostituted persons "consent" will be covered later. Notwithstanding that all of these manifestations occur within a larger socio-historical context and the world. When we look at the immediate Australian society we find legalised prostitution, when we look at the larger world we see the rampant cruelty and sexual abuse of women and children, everywhere we see porn we see a loud message for both children and adults, that message for women and girls is: this is all you are worth—accept your status, for men and boys: this is all a woman or girl is worth—use her.

1 “Pornography makes the world a pornographic place… As society becomes saturated with pornography, what makes , and the nature of sex itself change” (MacKinnon, 1993, p. 25).

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What is Pornography For? In this paper, limited as it is in its scope I will first argue that pornography is just one of the symptoms of a predominantly privileged white-male-supremist mode of systemic oppression. Pornography supports the male-supremist system of oppression of those who do not benefit in any way from pornographies production and dissemination—women and children. Observing that the microcosm reflects the macrocosm, political forms of subjugation may be reflected in dictatorship in the family, for example in domestic violence, or the sexual abuse of children, just as social hierarchies mimic larger global politics - as can be seen in the macho posturing of Putin and previously Bush junior in his daddy pleasing role of world savior through a genocidal illegal war in Iraq2. Pornography is just one of the ways a masculine identity is constructed and reinforced through domination and entitlement to all the bodies below. i) Situating the adult porn industry as an effective arm of the I will seek to describe a phenomenological investigation into pornography's destruction of humanistic values in social bonds and the sexual-spiritual dimension of intimate partner relationships. ii) The debate on how pornography affects children has been extensively covered in the previous submissions, therefore rather than repeat these viewpoints I will seek to look instead at the sociological structures that have brought about a world where sexually explicit material is accessible almost anywhere with just two clicks of a mouse or a few taps on a touchscreen. iii) I will argue that pornography is the predictable outcome at the nexus of patriarchy: the confluence of a mythic-infantile-male-domination-fantasy (infinite sex—immortal life), capitalism3 and digital technology creating a perfect triune storm for the ongoing abuse and erosion of the “right to human status” of women and children as a form of class discrimination. I will further posit a thread of deep fear of feminine power and sexuality identifiable in ancient and recorded history that drives the needed to produce and consume porn. iv) It will be argued that porn's unopposed force in the marketplace and representation of women and girls as consumable objects situates porn as a subversive and potent means of female oppression.

2 UNICEF and the Government of Iraq, Child and Maternal Mortality Survey, cited in John Pilger, New Rulers of the World, Verso, 2002. 3 In North America eighty percent of pornographic content is produced in the San Fernando area of Los Angeles. In 2001, 11,000 new hardcore videos were released (Jensen, 2007). 13,588 were released in 2005 (http://internet-filter- review.toptenreviews.com/internet-pornography-statistics.html).

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v) I will argue unapologetically that the pro-porn consumer's voice signals a sexual-spiritual disconnection—a fear of intimacy and a negation of the empathy required to call oneself human.

Section 01 Panic Stations—How to Close the Stable Door After the Horse has Bolted Children online – EU and in Australia—79% of 5 to 8 year olds go online at home. In 2008, European Commission (EC) research indicated that, across the continent, 42% of children aged 6, and 52% of those aged 7, are internet users. The EC includes a range of nations (including those from the former Soviet bloc) that have only recently adopted the internet. The figures in early-adopter countries are much higher. In South Korea 92.5% of 3-9 year olds use the internet for an average of 8 – 9 hours per week, and this reflects their country’s status as the nation with the world’s greatest high-speed internet take-up (Jie, 2012). According to Gutnick et al (2011), the figures are different in the USA. While nearly 70% of 8 year olds go online everyday, about half of 5 year olds do so, and 25% of 3 year olds. The comparative Australian statistic indicates that 79% of 5 to 8 year olds go online at home (Australian Bureau of Statistics, 2012). (Holloway, Green, & Brady, 2013, p. 2)

In May 2013 the UK Office of the Children's Commissioner published a report entitled, "Basically... porn is everywhere" - A Rapid Evidence Assessment on the Effects that Access and Exposure to Pornography has on Children and Young People (Horvath, et al., 2013). The Office of the Children's Commissioner for England on its website called for “…urgent action to protect children from exposure to pornography” and: urgent action to develop children's resilience to pornography following a research report it commissioned which found that: a significant number of children access pornography; it influences their attitudes towards relationships and sex; it is linked to risky behaviour such as having sex at a younger age; and there is a correlation between holding violent attitudes and accessing more violent media. (http://www.childrenscommissioner.gov.uk/news/we-call-urgent- action-protect-children-exposure-pornography) Two direct quotes from the subsequent report: Maggie Atkinson, Children's Commissioner for England: This report is based on an assessment of the available evidence. It points out the gaps in our knowledge as well as providing compelling evidence that exposure to pornography influences children's attitudes to relationships and sex. We are living at a time when violent and sadistic imagery is readily available to very young children, even if they do not go searching for it, their

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friends may show it to them or they may stumble on it whilst using the internet. We all have a duty to protect children from harm - it is one of their rights enshrined in the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child - and the time has come for immediate and decisive action to do so. For years we have applied age restrictions to films at the cinema but now we are permitting access to far more troubling imagery via the internet. We do not fully understand the implications of this. It is a risky experiment to allow a generation of young people to be raised on a diet of pornography. Sue Berelowitz, Deputy Children's Commissioner for England: As part of our Inquiry into the sexual exploitation of children in gangs and groups we have seen that young perpetrators of sexual abuse describe their activity as ‘like having been in a porn film.' This report provides the evidence to support there being a high correlation between exposure to pornography and it influencing children's behaviour and attitudes. We cannot expect children to know that sexual violence is wrong unless we teach them so. (http://www.childrenscommissioner.gov.uk/news/we-call-urgent-action-protect-children- exposure-pornography)

The Social Phenomena Situating porn consumption in the context of an increasingly pervasive social phenomena, and a subject of ethnographic, phenomenological investigation (as an object of direct experience by the consumer), and building upon the discourse of previous theorists who have variously framed porn as sexual abuse (MacKinnon, 1993), a human rights violation (Dworkin, 1978-1979), and a question of a culturally constructed masculinity grounded in cruelty and violence (Jensen, 2007), as having a detrimental effect upon a generation's perceptions of sexuality (Dines, 2010) and associated with a growing market of porn in gaming (for example III, Hughes, 20074) and a potentially addictive behaviour. My intention is to focus primarily on mainstream porn consumption via the Internet.

“The only difference between prostitution and pornography is the presence of a camera” (A pornographer’s comment)

What is the Sexual Exploitation of Women Worth?

4 In Grand Theft Auto III a player can have sex with a prostitute and in retrieving the 'service' cost can beat her to death with a baseball bat, the sensation of killing the prostitute In this way is conveyed through realistic shock- vibrations in the user's PlayStation controller (Not for sale, The use of new communication technologies for sexual exploitation of women and children, Hughes, 2007, p. 172).

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Exact figures of online porn use are difficult to determine and the figures available are likely to be underestimates. It is reported that sexually explicit (pornographic) content is now represented in some 4.2 million sites, while indicative of porn's demand, 68 million searches for porn are made per day, comprising 25 percent of total online search requests, 42 percent of online users view porn5. One pornographic video is produced in the United States every 39 minutes (Ropelato, 2014), with 12,000 new film releases per year, rivalling Hollywood's average of 600 (Pilkington, 2009).

Valued at an estimated seven million dollars in North America in 1972 (Zimbardo, 2012), corporatised porn in the , facilitated by Internet and digital technology has exploded to comprise a global marketplace value of 97 billion (Ropelato, 2014), by any terms a stunning capitalist success story. The question is at what cost this victory of capital has been achieved through the commodification of female sex, upon the numberless living bodies of women and girls in a practice, which constitutes legalised commercial .

Apart From Generating Capital, What Else is Porn For? Pornography is utilised to train those recruited into the sex trade, repeatedly implicated in the trafficking of women and children into prostitution where the rape and abuse of this 'raw material' are filmed and recorded for commercial use as part of the process of coercion and breaking down of resistance 6(Giobbe, 1993; 1990), while a clear association of pornography with predatory online behaviour to groom minors is accepted truth in law enforcement (Hill, 20147; Hughes, 1999, 2007). Porn is used for stimulation by serial rapists before rape, and was routinely watched by American Air Force pilots prior to bombing raids in order to reinforce notions of masculinity and violence (Jensen, 2007). We are familiar with the soldier- bonding, 'documentary' torture porn of Abu Graib where inmates sleep deprived and terrorised, were humiliated by wearing women's underwear (a sexist if extra dimensional insult) and forced to imitate many of the acts one sees in pornographic content (Clarke, 2004).

5 Websites offering illegal : 100,000. Sexual solicitation of youth in chat rooms 89 percent (Ropelato, 2014, p. 4/10). 6 “…the US Justice Department’s senior special counsel for trafficking issues and civil rights, T. March Bell, announced that “trafficking people for forced labour and sexual slavery has become the world’s No. 2 most lucrative crime” (March Bell 2005), equal with the trade in weapons, and second only to the drugs trade. The profits are huge, he told reporters, citing the example of a brothel owner in Southeast Asia who typically might pay US$8,000 for a young woman. “We think that owner can make a US$200,000 profit on that US$8,000 investment” (Fergus, 2005, p. 1-2). https://www3.aifs.gov.au/acssa/pubs/briefing/acssa_briefing5.pdf 7 The Assistant Commissioner of Police Robert Hill speaking at the at a Prevention of Sexual Assault seminar at South Bank last year (2014) said there were more people accessing child pornography online in Victoria (Australia) than the police had resources to pursue (Lacroix, 2015).

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The rising appetite for porn - now moving into mobile (cell phone networks), particularly for third world markets, can be correlated with a commensurate increase in female autonomy, as females outperform males in the class room and university yet remain economically oppressed (cf. Katherine Frank's research into the resurgence of strip clubs, 2003; Jeffreys, 2009). The question is not "does pornography cause violence", along with other researchers I will argue that the industry itself constitutes the performance of sexualised violence (Dworkin & Heiferman, 1981). Here I concur with Diana Russell (1998) in my contention that it is not the images of explicit sex that are problematic but the behaviour towards female performers in pornographic contexts and the socialisation of perceptions of women and girls as a result of those representations, i.e. a generalised , and loss of respect for females. An erosion of values which occurs whether the porn viewed is softcore or hardcore (Malamuth, Haber, & Feshbach, 1980; Zillmann, 2000), as well as the perpetuation of the rape myth (woman enjoy rape) and the normalisation of sexualised violence - an intent to dominate and degrade in the majority of current online pornography.

Demand Drives Supply The trafficking of women and children for sex, where vulnerable persons can be used in any number of ways, including being filmed performing sex acts without consent is estimated to be between 300 to 600,000 annually within United States borders alone, and between two to four million worldwide (Farley, 2006; Farley & Barkan, 1998).8 In contrast to coercive recruiting, pornographers in the United States often find the glamorisation of pornography, a hyper-sexualised social media 9, and the lure of big money has achieved the enticement for them. From a thirteen year old runaway with few other prospects to a ‘barely legal’ seventeen year old girl, conditioned in a rapidly evolving digital age, hook ups, Craig's List, and exposure to porn through any smartphone, entry into the porn industry may appear attractively transgressive (Dines, 2010). Being wanted can be a heady power trip, and being 'wanted' and 'valued' as a sex object is prescribed without a clear evaluation of the possible repercussions by a pervasive social environment, social media - entertainment and existing pornography which has already positioned women and girls as either measuring up to the 'pornographic ideal' - sexually desirable or invisible (Crabbe, &

8 “An estimated 80% of all trafficked persons are used and abused as sexual slaves. This human rights violation is driven by demand for sexual services and the profit that is generated. The commodification of human beings as sexual objects, poverty, gender inequality and subordinate positions of women and girls provide fertile ground for human trafficking”. Michelle Bachelet, UN Women Director & Former President of Chile. http://www.equalitynow.org/node/1010 9 An example of peer group coercion utilised by media is the series Girls Gone Wild described by Gail Dines in Pornland: How Porn Has Highjacked Our Sexuality (2010).

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Corlett, 2011). Thus indoctrinated by a corporatised patriarchy and demonstrating the classic identification with the abuser syndrome of 'trauma bonding', sexual endurance on the porn set acts as a 'rite of passage' to negate the fear of disappearance - invisibility, and pain of worthlessness10, and that most feared of fates—group ostracism or even ejection.

The Normalisation of Sexual Violence In the ethos and values of a pornographically pervasive society, sexualised violence becomes normalised (Jensen, 2007; MacKinnon, 1989; Russel, 1998). In the absence of self-possession, tolerance of sexual abuse becomes an alter ego - a disconnected identity - purely sex, sex-fetish-object. In porn, a man retains his subjective identity separate to his sexuality, whereas a woman is subsumed by her genitals and beauty- currency, she is sex, valued only to the degree her erased self - reconfigured as sexual fetish-object, can arouse genital excitement in the viewer. As MacKinnon states so succinctly, "man woman, subject, verb, object" (1989, p. 124).

Liberation Sex or Dissociated Denial? For others, the sexualisation of women and her identification as an object of 'no other use' can be achieved through environmental 'training' - painfully demonstrated by ex pornstar 's admissions of teenage rape and assault in her autobiography (2004)11. In pornography female bravado in the service of dissociated denial communicates to the viewer a misleading message of liberation-sex.

Porn epitomises the absence of informed choice and alternative images of non-degraded sexuality. In a porn saturated world (MacKinnon, 1993; 1984) there is no equal and opposite one-hundred billion dollar industry where both men and women are represented in a sex-erotic, rather than a sexploitation context as human beings deserving of equal rights. A soldier for example, captured by an enemy state has more rights than a woman in the legal degradation of state sanctioned pornography12. The General Assembly of

10 Dissociation is a necessary defence for the survival of prostituted woman. "When they do not dissociate, they are at risk of being overwhelmed by pain, shame and rage" (Farley, 2006, p. 108). 11 From the secular antipornography website: "In the introduction to the book Jenna says: “For two decades I looked men in the eye and denied everything. And then for years, in private, I wrestled with myself. The truth won. The following, then, is a true story.” (A story that includes having been raped three times as a teenager: 1. by her date when she was fifteen and lost her virginity (p. 284-286), 2. By her abusive boyfriend’s uncle (p. 16-17), and 3. by a group of high school boys, who severely beat her and then left her for dead (p. 391-394)". Retrieved July 2015, para. 9. http://antipornography.org 12 United Nations Convention Against Torture (1987), see also The Geneva Convention (1864; 1949).

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the United Nations (1948) article 5 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, states that prisoners of war must not be subjected to "cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment", however acts that constitute this behaviour are played out upon the real bodies of real women on a regular basis in the filmed sex acts that now constitute mainstream 'gonzo' porn (see below for some easily accessible examples free online pornography). In this sense porn cannot be defended as mere fantasy. Nor are those women poised to take up studies in law, engineering and medicine opting to become porn stars. Porn-prostitution as a highly stigmatised career is not so attractive to the well educated and privileged14, although those sectors are over represented in viewing and defending it in the name of libertine politics (Russel, 1998).

Childhood Neglect and Sexual Abuse In alignment with the vocabulary of oppression, in a study of 304 scenes in pornographic videos, 88.2 percent showed physical aggression against women, "principally spanking, gagging, slapping..." (Bridges, Wosnitzer, Scharrer, Sun, & Liberman, 2010, p. 1065). Occupational hazards for performers may include penetration with objects, animals or fists, slapping, kicking, choking, spitting, pulling and name calling (Farrley & Barkan, 1998; Morita, 2004). In an unregulated industry the ethics of consent are questionable when between 60 percent (Silbert, & Pines, 1981), 75 percent (Bagley & Young, 1987) 88 percent (Farley, & Lynne, 2004) and 90 percent (Matthews, Deer, Lopez, Stark, & Hudon, 2011) of these

14 In relation to lower socio economic disadvantage, the role of physical helplessness in the enhancement of torture, which I argue the gonzo genre of porn as "cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment" clearly constitutes, has been explored by Başoğlu, Livanou and Crnobarić, (2007, p. 282; Başoğlu & Mineka, 1992),

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performers are found to have histories of childhood neglect and sexual abuse (Abramovich, 2005). Let us focus for a moment on what it means to be sexually abused. In a presentation in relation to this subject Dr Bill Glaser asked us to imagine: a society afflicted by a scourge which struck down a quarter of its daughters and up to one in eight of its sons. Imagine also that this plague, while not immediately fatal, lurked in the bodies and minds of these young children for decades, making them up to sixteen times more likely to experience its disastrous long-term effects. Finally, imagine the nature of these effects: life- threatening starvation, suicide, persistent nightmares, drug and abuse and a whole host of intractable psychiatric disorders requiring life-long treatment. What should that society’s response be? Glaser (2007, p. 1, emphasis added)

Actually Glaser’s figures of prevalence are conservative (25 and 12.5 percent 15), his illustration of harm however is tragically realistic. As Ariel Levy (2006) cogently points out in Female Chauvenist Pigs, "There is something twisted about using a predominantly sexually traumatized group of people as our erotic role models"(p. 180). In the exercise of free will, a step that must be addressed is a capacity to act on that freedom. One does not expect a paraplegic to get up and run.

Women have been chattel property for a long time; but now prostitution becomes the clearest expression of what it means to be a woman, to be sexual, and to be owned, but to think one is free. (1999) 16

Inside systems of oppression one has few possible choices (Kiraly & Tyler, 2015), usually only two—‘to go along’ and stay below the radar of disapproval and punishment or resist and face the violent opposition of the ruling class, from loss of employment for complainants to conscientious objectors against porn culture being labelled “emasculating, frigid, anti-sex and unfeminine”, alternatively when women love sex they are perceived by the status quo to be dangerous nymphomaniacs and sexually insatiable marriage breakers. Interestingly it is worth making another observation about these choices, they are self-reinforcing forms of oppression because they set women against women, those aligned with the patriarchy and benefiting in some way, and those against. Within the limited paradigm of structures of systemic inequality one “can’t win for losing” as feminist philosopher Marylyn Frye (1983) has wryly

15 When CASA (Centre Against Sexual Assault) says that 80 percent of abuse never gets reported one wonders what the real figures are (Chloe Booker, The Age Newspaper, March 13, 2016, p. 11. ‘Everyone’s complicit’: Why sexual abuse survivors need your support (a survivors story). 16 Pornography, prostitution, and a beautiful and tragic recent history; A speech by Andrea Dworkin to the University of Minnesota.

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observed (cited by in Kiraly & Tyler, 2015, p. 12). Ultimately it needs to be understood that we are all under the same system of oppression, admittedly with different gendered outcomes, and males themselves are not excluded from its essential aims of control and dehumanisation. If men17 understood the degree to which they are being brainwashed in the service of an unfeeling father-pleasing- psychopathology they might begin to think critically about behaviours they formerly endorsed.

Section 02 The Consumer Neurological Effects. The use of online porn in the service of sexually explicit images for and sex, what males refer to as a 'wank bank' has been found to elicit an " arousal" profile in viewing cybersex-porn through the constant novelty inducing stimulation of dopamine pathways (Kühn & Gallinat, 2014; Zimbardo, 2012, p. 111). A resulting association with 'dose dependent' arousal, and desensitisation towards depictions of violence18 - the finding that 16 percent of online porn users are addicted and report an escalating need for more and more violent imagery (Zillmann, 2000), positions pornography as sexualised rage directed at women in a world of diminishing autonomy and clear roles for men (cf. Rubin, 2009, and the 'sex / gender' system of acculturated role assignments). There is also evidence using functional magnetic resonance imaging (FMRI), that although female consumers of porn share many of the same areas of cerebral responses as males, the brains of male viewers show a significantly greater stimulation of the thalamus and hypothalamus, regions of the brain involved in signals for thirst, hunger and sex. This means that men may experience the physiological response induced by porn as not only sexual arousal but also as a survival imperative i.e. to eat or starve, to drink or die of thirst (Karama et al, 2002).

A Homoerotic Obeisance to the Law of the Father I therefor argue that as well as presenting as a potentially addictive behaviour (yes, watching porn is a behaviour and behaviours can be unlearned), through stimulation of dopaminergic and other reward pathways, porn represents the destruction of humanistic values in social bonds and the sexual-spiritual

17 I call this man an orphan—in emotional terms he does not even have himself, he has biological parents, a (m)other and a father – whose relational ethos is usually a misogynistic outcome of unquestioned transgenerational abuse of the female. One of the major ways forward for humanity is for the individual male and collective male psyche to begin to question the validity of his inherited hatred. (Hatred of women is at the heart of the patriarchal psychosis). For more about the concept of transgenisis—a psychogenic theory of history, the psychohistorian Lloyd deMause is an invaluable resource (The History of Childhood: The Untold Story of Child Abuse, 1974; The Emotional Life of Nations, 2002). 18 Donnerstein (1983) cited in Russel (1998).

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dimension of intimate partner relationships. As such pornography is an outgrowth of an outmoded and destructive form of relating, symptomatic of all that a global phallocentric hegemony promotes. To put it crudely: from the male perspective more money, and more sex shores up the fragile masculine identity. And even more crudely watching a woman “get fucked” to use the vernacular assures the predominantly male viewer(s) that he is safe in his homoerotic obeisance to the Law of the Father (Lacan & Mehlman, 1987) while providing a sensate rush comparable to snorting a line of coke. A selection of neuroscience resources demonstrating the neurological effects of a “brain on porn” can be found here19 20. Describing porn’s effect to a U.S. Senate committee, Dr. Jeffrey Satinover (2004) of Princeton University said:

“It is as though we have devised a form of 100 times more powerful than before, usable in the privacy of one’s own home and injected directly to the brain through the eyes”.

Meanwhile pornographers do not seem to suffer any illusions about their roles in the spirit of showing males the unattainable girl and degrading her.

Porn producer, performer, Bill Margold says his role is to "satisfy the desire of men who don't much care for women" and want to see performers like himself "getting even with the women they couldn't have..."

19 Satinover, J. (2004). Subcommittee on Science, Technology, and Space, Hearing on the Brain Science Behind and Effects of Addiction on Families and Communities, November 18. (Porn’s dirty little secret, 2013, p.1). www.fightthenewdrug.org 20 Pitchers, K. K., Vialou, V., Nestler, E. J., Laviolette, S. R., Lehman, M. N., and Coolen, L. M. (2013). Natural and drug rewards act on common neural plasticity mechanisms with DeltaFosB as a key mediator. Journal of Neuroscience 33, 8: 3434-3442; Hilton, D. L. (2013). Pornography addiction—A supranormal stimulus considered in the context of neuroplasticity. Socioaffective Neuroscience & Psychology 3:20767; Bostwick, J. M. and Bucci, J. E. (2008). Internet sex addiction treated with naltrexone. Mayo Clinic Proceedings 83, 2: 226–230; Nestler, E. J. (2005). Is there a common molecular pathway for addiction? Nature Neuroscience 9, 11: 1445–1449; Leshner, A. (1997). Addiction is a brain disease and it matters. Science 278: 45–7. Paul, P. (2007). Pornified: How pornography is transforming our lives, our relationships, and our families. : Henry Hold and Co., 90; Berridge, K. C. and Robinson, T. E. (2002). The mind of an addicted brain: Neural sensitization of wanting versus liking. In J. T. Cacioppo, G. G. Bernston, R. Adolphs, et al. (Eds.) Foundations in Social Neuroscience (pp. 565–72). Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press.

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Margold says he "strongly" believes this, although the industry "hates" him for saying it,

Stimulating and Fulfilling Outlets for Sexualised Rage There are numerous examples, on porn sites, in chat rooms, from producers themselves, and ex performers, and from both male and female anti-porn activists to legitimately frame pornography as both fulfilling and stimulating outlets for sexualised rage. A further aspect of online porn use is the de- socialising effects of disconnection from real interaction with other humans. Furthermore, porn can be seen as a compensatory male bonding experience (Jeffreys, 2009, p. 141), an outcome of a sex-gender system of male access to female bodies, of genealogical and kinship ties of exchange based on women or girls as the 'gift' (Rubin, 2009, The Traffic in Women: Notes on the 'Political Economy' of Sex).

Pornography may be approached from many perspectives, the performer, the producer and the 'john' as well as human rights, questions of autonomy, sociological effects, filmed prostitution, 'legitimate work', capitalism, oppression, gender inequality, power, the sexual objectification of women, and the blurring of virtual and experiential realities. Porn consuming may be framed as revenge against the female / male partner, or a behaviour compensating for deep unconscious or conscious shame around the body and or one's sexuality.

The question of shame is an important one: as anecdotal evidence, I have found it to be a prevalent emotion in male users of online porn. Watching a woman who always 'wants it', in fact screams for more, may fulfil early unmet emotional needs and deficits of touch and healthy acknowledgment of a child's relationship to his body and sexuality. In a mirror of the self, whether faked or not, 'she' can't get enough and neither can he. For men, being insatiably 'wanted' in the eternal 'yes' of porn-world may represent an attempt to negate early sexual or post adolescent shaming and rejection. In this regard, society is massively hypocritical, such a negated natural force as sexuality when shamed is bound to emerge in the pervasive yet stigmatised use of pornography seen today, porn is polite society's 'dirty little secret'21. The pervasive predominantly male use of porn, from a psychoanalytical point of view may also be positioned

21 The invisible-private nature of porn use resembles the invisible incidence of child abuse. It is not something the average user wants to shout from the rooftops. In Where are all the child molesters? The illegality of child abuse means that no one will admit to sexual inappropriateness with a child, yet one in three women report being sexually abused by the age of eighteen. Needless to say, I believe the survivors are telling the truth, and the perpetrators range from the nice guy next door to your bank manager (Castoriadis paraphrased, Lacroix, 2015).

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as an 'immortality' ploy, a desperate defence against death (Becker, 1973), loneliness and a fear of intimacy (Kernberg, 1998; May, 1969; Yoder, VIRDEN III. & Amin, 2005).

Ethics of sex: online forums often cite the view that, "porn is not sex’. In the way sex is construed to be a mutually erotic experience between comparative equals, now more than just violent sex, mainstream pornography is violence sexualised. This is an important distinction because it moves the debate about porn from one of taste (rough sex) to one of criminality worthy of an investigation into its psychological origins. In so called 'civilised' societies we aspire to an intolerance of violence. As held by pornography's detractors, porn is not just about sexual pleasure; it is deriving sexual pleasure from the subjugation of another human being. Encapsulated in the entitlement of the viewer's sexual pleasure is a right to view a commodified sex-performance, a woman's body bought and sold, an act of prostitution22 The pornographer who will sell this video thousands of times is the pimp; facts often missed or deliberately ignored in the debate around porn.

"I was told we were destroying lives, but it didn't touch me because no one we knew was real" (Glamorama, Brett Easton Ellis, 1998, p. 311).

What about consent? From a philosophical-humanistic ethical point of view I believe it is important as a researcher into the human condition to question the oft vaunted role of choice on the part of porn actors. Taking choice to mean the right or ability to choose between a range of two or more alternatives, I will argue that the degree of choice and availability of employment options is limited for many women in a society in which women are consistently objectified and money is power23.

"The job of a porn star is not a calling - or even an option - for most women" (ex porn star Jenna Jameson, 2004, p. 325).

"The poverty of women is a necessary condition for the establishment and survival of the sex industry" (Sherry Lee Short, 2007, p. 306).

22 I will allow others to focus on the 'for or against' debate in overlapping theoretical concepts of human rights abuses in and gay porn. 23 "The poverty of women is a necessary condition for the establishment and survival of the sex industry" (Making hay while the sun shines: The dynamics of rural strip clubs in the American Upper Midwest, and the community response. Sherry Lee Short, 2007, p. 306).

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I thereby question individual social responsibilities on the part of the user, and the ways in which user choice contributes to an ethos in which the objectification of women as an underclass is normalised. Sweden has been progressive in this sense, deeming prostitution as an offence against human dignity and passing a law in which it is the client rather than the ‘service provider’ who is prosecuted24. The question of choice is challenged by (2004, p. 396) in her conception of prostitution as a harmful cultural practice in the United Nations definition of the term. Choice also implies guilt for making the 'choice' of the prostituted performer an option, laying guilt firmly at the feet of women and effectively as in rape, blaming the victim (Lederer, 1980). Again, male demand for supply gets to stay concealed and by implication irrefutably condoned, while woman pay the price of stigmatised supply.

Acknowledging the Social Construction of Desire The desire for porn can furthermore be framed as a culturally assigned affirmation of male sexual taste and dominance, one that caters exclusively to the male orgasm. "It is a socially constructed masculine sexual desire that provides the stimulus to the industry of prostitution" (Jeffreys, 2004, p. 392). Similar to the 'rape myth', to which some women subscribe, the dominated female porn consumer in this paradigm, can absolve herself of responsibility and thus shame.

In "Why I changed my mind about porn", once pro-porn, Sarah Ditum explains her volte face, "The pornographic vocabulary of sex as the violent debasement of the female body had seeped out from screens and into the lives of the women I knew…" (Ditum, 2015, para 1). When the abstract and theoretical becomes up close and personal opinions can change. And "opinions" as Stoller (1991), a confused apologist of porn, has pointed out "are not facts" (p. 214). Yet social opinions about porn are very much framed by beliefs about what constitutes porn. Since much social research is empirical, one falls back upon what 'facts' combined with opinion - are revealed by questionnaire self-reports. In researching the effects of porn one is necessarily dependent upon the self-reported experiential reality of the subject and his or her relationship to the pornographic content of that life-world - umveldt, and inner-self-world, eigenvelt, (Binswanger, 1963).

Section 03 Identifying the Source of Causation Approaching 100 billion dollars annually adult content pornography is a free enterprise capitalist driven industry—the bottom line is profit. Like any corporate or private business, pornographers in the sex industry do their market research and are an extremely market savvy group of people. Pornography stocks

24 Sex Purchase Act (Sexköpslagen) criminalising the buying of sex was introduced in Sweden 1999.

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are floated on Wall Street 25 (, Oct 23rd 2000). Approximately 12,000 adult videos are produced in the United States alone every year. It is estimated that 4.2 million legal porn websites are available to access online with an almost infinite variety of free as well as pay-to-view sexually explicit content from vanilla, to gonzo to bondage, bestiality, , torture and snuff porn.

I will contend that pornography can only be constructively approached in terms of symptomology, as an outcome or manifestation of a larger issue of spiritual impoverishment 26, of alienation from each other, and as an outgrowth of the capitalist system of human repression. Furthermore, pornography is the opiate of the masses, a stimulus which acts on the lower animal drives of the limbic system of the reptilian brain, and changes the way males and females perceive themselves and each other. I will argue that the cost to females is one of a sexually objectified self-image, of living sociologically through image and interaction, under the oppression of an all pervasive sexually objectified male gaze27. This is clearly demonstrated in media representations of women and girls.

The long term damaging effects on the social and personal sensibilities of children on viewing material of this kind as outlined comprehensively by Briggs AM in submission 02, 2016 (Submission for the Inquiry into the harm being done to Australian children through access to pornography on the internet) are undeniable. Since the advent of the World Wide Web in 1993 pornography—both legally sanctioned adult and illegal child abuse images, videos and live streaming abuse of children has gained momentum. Encryption allows anyone to surf the dark net, peer-to-peer, bulletin boards, chat rooms and Usenet sites allow for untraceable communication between clients and perpetrators. Now porn has gone "viral" and explicit and often violent pornography has been unleashed upon the planet via the easily accessible use of smartphones, tablets, library computers and home internet, the solution in terms of protecting children and society from the effects is a much more difficult prospect (Mascheroni, & Cuman, 2014; Green, & Brady, 2014). The use of the word to teach “resilience” (“urgent action to develop children's resilience to pornography”) as a requirement of children’s exposure to porn in the UK report on children’s Internet

25 The General Motors Corporation, the world's largest company, now sells more graphic sex films every year than does , owner of the empire. The 8.7 million Americans who subscribe to DirecTV, a General Motors subsidiary, buy nearly $200 million a year in pay-per-view sex films from satellite, according to estimates provided by distributors of the films, estimates the company did not dispute (Wall Street meets pornography, October 23, 2000). 26 I do not wish to frame spirituality in merely religious terms, in my definition I refer to a love of humanity and a love and respect for each other, (which transcends dogma) and is inclusive of all sentient life. 27 As Rubin (2009) notes: "the oppression of women is deep; equal pay, equal work and all the female politicians in the world will not extirpate the roots of " (p. 100).

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accessing of pornography is an interesting one—no critique is offered as to the harmful effects upon the industry itself of performers and consumers alike. As well as a predictable form of moral cowardice the implication is that we must all “adapt” to the prevalence of the sexual abuse of women (sexism) as an unfortunate “norm” in service to the preeminence of male sexual desire. Nelson Mandela was not cowed into accepting apartheid after 27 years in prison and nor should we who are still attempting to realize Martin Luther King’s “dream” of no racism accept sexist classism.

"Deeper than the personhood question or the violence question is the question of the mechanism of social causation by which pornography constructs women and sex, defines what "woman" means and what sexuality is, in terms of each other" (MacKinnon, 1984, p. 343).

Pornography is one of the ways in which males and females are socialised into respective roles. For example, with rare exceptions, the male is depicted as sexually dominant and the female compliant with male desire, servile and sexually insatiable, i.e. she always wants sex, or in the consumer's fantasy, she always wants him. With the exception of rape porn, in which the rejection, fear, terror and pain of the victim are eroticised, unlike real life, rejection and the word 'no' are predictably absent in porn-world. In this sense porn is a one-dimensional fantasy, albeit one enacted upon real bodies for the masturbatory pleasure of real viewers. MacKinnon argues: To define the pornographic as that which is violent, not sexual, as liberal moral analyses tend to, is to trivialize and evade the essence of this critique, while seeming to express it. As with rape, where the issue is not the presence or absence of force but what sex is as distinct from coercion, the question for pornography is what eroticism is as distinct from the subordination of women. This is not a rhetorical question. Under male dominance, whatever sexually arouses a man is sex. In pornography, the violence is the sex. The inequality is sex. Pornography does not work, sexually, without hierarchy. If there is no inequality, no violation, no dominance, no force, there is no sexual arousal (MacKinnon, 1984, p. 343)

These are the lessons of normalisation of sexualised violence that children who will become adults are learning. Porn has not only hijacked our sexuality (Dines, 2010) it has hijacked our humanity and colonized our minds. Is this the kind of society in which we want to live? The influence on children of the current generation is not limited to Australia but to a global population—is this the kind of world we want to inhabit? Given this perspective a global conference needs to called on the on the world's children, extensive research has already piled up on the detrimental effects on adults (Glaser,

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1997; Jeffreys, 1997, 2012; Farley, 2006; Farley & Barkan, 1998; Farley, & Lynne, 2004; Malamuth, Haber, & Feshbach, 1980; Whisnant, & Stark, 2004).

Professor Freda Briggs has pointed out, as do Preibe and Svedin (2008) children's exposure to pornography constitutes child abuse, now that exposure is free, ubiquitous, normalised social behaviour and sexualised violence is "what woman (and girls) want" we can expect to see massive impact on our social environment in the next ten to twenty years and beyond. The impacts outlined by numerous experts in the field of the prevention of harms to children in a world of corporatised sexual abuse and gender inequality, amount to the cries of dying canaries in the mineshaft.

Addressing the Source of Sexualised Violence Approaching pornography from a different angle. Show me a pornographic movie that promotes the respect, dignity and value of a woman, reduces incidences of rape and , rather than representing her as an 'object of use', tits, ass, mouth - acquiescing to rape, smiling through abusive sex and I'll show you a single mother in Leeds not on welfare (or a great white shark without a predatory instinct). Now there might be one of two single mothers in Leeds not on welfare, there might be one or two films out there that revere women and promote the sexual dignity of women, but I don't think I would be calling them pornographic - at a stretch they could be erotic. You might argue, is it the role of sex- erotic film or literature to promote the respect of women? And I would say no, not necessarily, but when studies show that viewing even non-violent porn is demonstrated to increase the blaming of victims of rape, to desensitise viewers to violent sex, and to lack empathy with real people, I think we need to reconsider. What exactly has been unleashed on this planet via the accessible technology of the smart phone and Internet? What kind of sociological changes have been, are being and will be wrought by pornography? How is the viewing of sexual violence influencing the current generation of children who in less than ten or fifteen years will be adults?

Male to male socio-sexual relations. The advantages inherent in our society for males in protecting the sexual privileges of other males in legal jurisdictions—whether through application of the 'Law', watching porn and / or using prostituted women, girls and children is not going to be easily surrendered (MacKinnon, 1984). Radical feminists have been warning of the social harms of pornography for more than forty years (MacKinnon & Dworkin, 1974), warnings that have fallen on deaf ears. I remain perhaps neurotically optimistic that one day both adult and child content porn will be relegated to the dustbin of history in which the mass entertainment blood sports of the Roman Colosseum (built in 70 AD, the amphitheater held up to 50,000 spectators per event and was in use for four centuries), the festivities of the auto da fe, public guillotining, bear baiting, bull fighting and others were formerly abandoned. All I

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can say to the right wing capitalists, the left wing libertarians and the Third Wave feminists is: “Welcome to your world”.

The Law of the Father Is there an unbearable burden in maintaining masculine identity under patriarchy? In the Psychoanalytic roots of patriarchy: The neurotic foundations of social order, Smith (1990) proposes, "...a matriphallic sexuality" wherein the binary opposites of masculine and feminine are transcended to an identity inclusive of both (Smith, 1990, p. 262-263; Smith & Ferstman, 1996).

Patriarchy destroys the female. By "privileging the logos" and "asserting the patriarchal law"… the Sphinxian "discourse of consciousness" (Derrida cited in Smith & Ferstman, 1996, p. 263) is thus dismantled, allowing for the post industrial destruction of the planet "mother earth" to proceed unabated. Both Smith (1990), Stoltenberg (2005) and Jensen (2007) argue for a reconfiguring of what it means to be a “man”, calling instead for a radical transformation from the gender bifurcation inherent in male-female socialised identity relations to one of an overarching humanity. The denial of female power at the heart of all existence by the current order of the male-supremist right-to-domination is lethal to all humanity: “Psychoanalysis as posited by Freud necessitates the overcoming of the Maternal Law to assert the Law of the Father. Only when she is dead, buried, chained and controlled can the Law of the Father come to be” (Smith, & Ferstman, 1996, p. 263. Italics added). The filmed prostitution – fetishisation and objectification of the female body that is pornography exemplifies this truth.

Now the proverbial cat is out of the bag and “porn is everywhere”. Education and legally enacted policies may parallel the awareness and empathy needed to evolve as a group species from homo sapiens to homo sapiens - thinking man (cerebral psychopath), to an empathic, feeling human - neo sapiens28, (my appellation), however nothing short of a consciousness shift will change anything in a meaningful way. It took several hundred years of activism and a civil war to abolish slavery as it was known in Europe and the Americas, now world wide there are more enslaved persons than ever before. What was overt—unaccompanied by the consciousness required to attain the abolition of capitalism, another of symptoms, has simply become covert.

Normalisation of an Abuse of Power Looking hard at the symptoms while ignoring the cause. In a world where woman and girls suffer massive discrepancies in economic, material, educational, equality and power differentials in

28 Homo sapiens ORIGIN Latin, literally ‘wise man.’ Sapiens ORIGIN late Middle English: from Old French, or from Latin sapient - ‘being wise,’ from the verb sapere.

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personal freedoms, porn is an effective arm of the patriarchy in the perpetration (act) and perpetuation (continuance) of oppression. When a woman or child's sexuality is commodified for the gratification of the more powerful we have a direct analogy with pornography being filmed prostitution and paid sex being sexual slavery. There is no better way for the patriarchy to oppress half the human race than to commodify /sell / disseminate and rent her sexual power. MacKinnon (1984) wonders in the context of male sexual power relations: are females fetish objects - that which is dead being imbued with life - or objects - that which is alive being made dead?

What we have in pornography - concealed by the fiction of liberation sex is a vast multi-billion dollar industry of sexual slavery aided and abetted by rapid advances in technology. The result is the world that male supremacy's effective handmaiden - pornography - power over not power for - has wrought.

As Briggs (2016) notes, the role of pornography in studies of juvenile and child sex offending is often ignored. Porn is the elephant in the room that no one wants to address, perhaps because the enormity of this type of human rights abuse is just too horrific to comprehend. I can only ask, how honest do you want to be? With yourself and if you have children, with a future generation shaped by porn.

“The internet is effectively a policy void which has rendered all other censorship laws meaningless” Paul Case (submission 07, 2016, p. 2) Given the undeniable truth of this observation (in relation to the internet) the only possibility of change to the outcomes described by Briggs (2016) and others on the detrimental effects of child on child sex abuse, exposure to “adult content” explicit material and the constant outpouring of pornography by the industry itself is to first remove the financial incentive. Useless as this suggestion at first appears if there was no money in porn I doubt if there would be much production. Can you think of a single monetarily driven corporation that is not contributing to the death of our planetary eco system and in the case of porn to the degradation of society in relation to humanistic values?

Martin Luther King said, “I have a dream”, he didn’t say I have a nightmare, even though the dimensions of dysfunction currently displayed by human beings often fulfill the criteria of the monstrous; visionaries are needed because they are the people who pull us towards better ways of being—despite our so-called civilization 29. I therefor urge each individual to think about the ethically informed contributions we can make to our personal and collective worlds.

29 We might do well to look at and learn from the numerous Amazonian tribes, the Kung! or the Kogi of Columbia (Reddy, 2013), who have not had a murder in living memory, in contrast - the rest of the world killed well over 100 million in the last century (Simons, 2006, National Geographic, Century of Death, Genocide and the Signs of Proof ).

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Where to From Here? What will be done about the information contained in these submissions depends largely upon how seriously the Australian federal government and other nations take the discussion subject as a looming tsunami of social harm and furthermore accept that the highest aspiration for collective humankind is one of a shared humanity in which the original precepts of the 1949 Geneva Convention30 are observed by nation states. If this most flouted law were applied to the sex industry the majority of porn—constituting as it does "cruel inhuman and degrading treatment" would become instantly illegal. This calls for no less than a coordinated global movement for the protection of children from all forms of abuse and exploitation.

The harms to children and society by the viewing of pornography have been made explicit in a mountain of evidence for those who care to look (Helander, 2011; Jeffreys, 1997; 2008; Russell, n.d.; 1998; Seto et al., 2015; Stoltenberg, 2005; Malamuth, 1981; Mathews et al., 2011; Ybarra, et al., 2011) addressing existing trauma is one thing and certainly specialised training needs to be carried out for persons in child care centres, parents, teachers and other professionals; addressing causation—the systemic production and dissemination of the sexual subjugation of women and often children (in child pornography) is another. Where is the political will going to come from for affirmative action when it strikes at the very heart of the structural hegemony of first and third world male supremacy as enacted by law, political policy and social initiatives?

Recommendations I endorse most of the recommendations 31 in professor Freda Briggs (2016) submission 02; unfortunately as previously outlined it is virtually impossible to filter out porn from online access (Bartlett, 2014), the

30 The most relevant articles relating to prisoners of war prohibiting “cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment” are Articles 1, 2, 3, and 16. Geneva, Switzerland Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights 1987. 31 Recommendations (Briggs, 2016): 1. Child protection school curriculum should be compulsory in all states. Currently, South Australian state and Catholic schools are the only ones to include it in the core health curriculum from pre-school upwards. Queensland has an optional program. Children need to know what constitutes wrong, reportable behaviour and to whom it should be reported. 2. Child protection programs for children should include the avoidance and reporting of people who show “rude” sex pictures or movies. 3. Parent education is essential given that most exposure to pornography and most sexual abuse occurs in the family setting. 4. The committee should join Royal Commissions, coroners and CEOs of education and child protection services in demanding comprehensive practical and relevant child abuse-related training for all human service TAFE and university graduates whose work could involve children. This should include recognising and handling child-on-child abuse and identifying and

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developers of TOR for example do not approve of child pornography however as soon as one site is taken down it simply pops up somewhere else a few days later. I would also suggest that sexually explicit or naked images not be framed for children as “rude”, for the reason that it is my contention that bodily and sexual shaming are one of the drivers – beyond a natural curiosity in sex, an interest in sexualised violence.

Sex, as it is organised in this society, is the most common way in which human rights violations, injustice, and inequality are acted out. Adriene Sere, ‘What if the Women Mattered?’ (Eat the State, Sept. 23, 1998)

Yes indeed, what if the women—and children mattered? Rebecca Solnit (2013) writes in The Longest War online at Tom Dispatch that there are 87,000 rapes in the US every year – all cited as “isolated cases”. World wide there is approximately one rape per minute. What I wonder would happen if one man was raped every minute, or as a male friend quipped, a male politician once a year. I think there would be outrage, furore and a swat team on every corner. Why, I ask you are women and children so irrelevant as to be rendered invisible and silent?

"To the extent pornography succeeds in constructing social reality, it becomes invisible as harm (MacKinnon, 1984, p. 335).

Making Harm Visible In her paper Not a Moral Issue Catherine MacKinnon cogently observes: If pornography is an act of male supremacy, its harm is the harm of male supremacy made difficult to see because of its pervasiveness, potency, and success in making the world a pornographic place. Specifically, the harm cannot be discerned from the objective standpoint because it Is so much of "what is." Women live in the world pornography creates. We live its lie as reality. As Naomi Scheman 32 has said, "lies are what we have lived, not just what we have told, and no story about correspondence to what is real will enable us to distinguish the truth

responding to problem sexual behaviours that indicate the influence of pornography or suggest that the child is acting out abuse. Most university courses only include mandatory reporting instructions.

32 N. Scheman, "Making it All Up," (transcript of speech, Jan. 1982, available from the author). Cited in Not a Moral Issue, MacKinnon (1998, p. 335).

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from the lie." So the issue is not what the harm of pornography is, but how the harm of pornography is to become visible. As compared with what? To the extent pornography succeeds in constructing social reality, it becomes invisible as harm. (1998, p. 335. Italics mine)

Undeniably pornography has been very successful in constructing social reality. Undeniably as well for a very long time the harms of pornography have been studied, made explicit, made visible, and despite myriad academic – peer reviewed cross cultural revelations, the physical, psychic and emotional harms have been dismissed as hysterical, and perhaps with the exception of some Nordic countries (and South Korea) largely ignored; now a moral panic ensues as those harms formerly described as manifest in adult consumers and performers alike are recognized as also detrimental to the delicate sensibilities of our children. As Mackinnon argues, this is not a moral issue but harm in the service of oppression, the systemic oppression of half the human race. Band-Aid measures of “harm minimisation” and a ballooning “specialist field” to deal with children’s exposure to pornography are one of the predictable outcomes of a growing awareness, however we need to go much further in addressing the causation behind the economic triumph of the sex industry. Economic disadvantage, sexism, gender inequality and human rights abuses – are interconnected and self-reinforcing structures.

Will the Law Please Stand up For Women? The General Assembly of the United Nations (1948) Article 5, states that no one shall be subjected to torture or to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment. I call for the application of the law against “cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment” for performers (most pornography is at the very least degrading to women) and prostituted women. The filmed prostitution of pornography is frequently obtained through economic desperation (Farley & Lynne, 2004; Moran, 2015; Raymond, 2013), violence and deadly coercion (Morita, 2004; MacKinnon, 1984), and as a result of an early sexualised identity— childhood sexual abuse (90 percent of a sample of women in a study of Native American women. Matthews, et al. 2011).

However one needs to be realistic in understanding and accepting the fact that all of the measures outlined in the aforementioned “panic reports” are akin to closing the stable door after the horse has bolted (Bartlett, 2014). Even if the production of pornography was shut down tomorrow and as already stated, I believe, like bear baiting as a cruel form of entertainment detrimental to bears, pornography will one day be viewed as a barbaric practice which degraded the dignity of, and put the sexual safety of millions of women and children at risk while perpetuating their status as lower class citizens—the reality is this: the internet image has a half life of forever. As long as there is wi-fi, not even counting peer-to-peer access, mobile technology, external hard drives, usbs, smartphones and tablets, what sexually explicit and violent

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images and video are currently in existence—failing the invention of a technology, which will effectively and selectively block pornographic content on the users device 33, porn will always be accessible— somewhere—somehow. Section 04 What men do with their penises (masturbate to sexually explicit images), where men put their penises, into resisting34 or unresisting orifices while fantasising about porn, or how women earn their money as prostituted performers would remain a concern of mere indulgence unless these actions effected both performers, user-consumers; women, children, men and myself in ways detrimental to our collective humanity.

My thesis on this complex subject has sought to among other things - illuminate how the pervasive dissemination of pornography distorts the image of women for both sexes to the limited choice of the 'pornographic ideal', normalises sexual violence, and portrays women as 'deserving and desiring' of such violence.

In conclusion, the rise of the global sex trade, the traffic in women and online porn are symptomatic of a deeper problem of male insecurity in the face of female sexual-spiritual power35, of patriarchal dominance losing its grip in a world where women are slowly gaining grounds in terms of equal rights (Jeffreys, 2009). Reinforced by capitalism, backed on all fronts by a male dominated social environment of sexual entitlement and access to the female body, pornography represents the erosion of human values of respect and equality, and thus equally pollutes the mind and body of the consumer as it damages the psyche and physicality of the performer. For, just as the torturer cannot avoid his reflection in the blade that separates and destroys person and flesh, the consumer cannot separate him or herself from being reflected in the acts of degradation performed. As patriarchal capitalism is increasingly challenged by progressive minds, old values of male dominance are losing ground. The prevalence of porn is a compensation for this lost ground. For a female consumer of porn such identification can be framed as "'trauma bonding'" a pervasive societal manifestation of the "Stockholm syndrome" (Jeffreys, 2009, p. 164) and a primarily unconscious identification with the aggressor-abuser; one which with insidious effectiveness serves to perpetuate the traditionally prescribed male roles for women as subservient, sexually available, silent.

33 Perhaps one day in a perfect world someone will invent a standard component install - impossible to remove without destroying the receiving device which will block out porn (who gets to decide what is pornography and what is art or is another matter – but it is possible). Not unlike the devices proposed for car ignitions to prevent the vehicle from being started while the driver is under the influence of alcohol. 34 Evelina Giobbe has framed prostitution as 'bought rape' (Giobbe 1991, p. 155). 35 It is thus unsurprising that one of the most effective ways to disempower women is to commodify her sexuality.

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A brave new world? 's final sentence in Getting off: The end of masculinity, speaks to such an aspiration, in rejecting our current notions of what it is to be a man he says, "I choose to struggle to be a human being" (2007, p. 180). Exemplified in rejecting pornography is a struggle to embrace our biologically gendered animal selves and powerful sexual drives, embracing and transforming the anima and animus (Jung, 1964) while rising to the challenge of deserving the title of human being.

The artist Kiki Smith (1992) named her sculpture of a woman crawling on all fours trailing a rope of faeces as Tale, a work which equally could have been entitled History. It is in my view, our collective responsibility to change this representation of woman's invisible social genealogy from one of his-story (tale) to one of equal rights, respect and a sense of sacredness for all humanity regardless of race, biological sex or culturally assigned gender. Between those rarely acknowledged luminaries from Boadicea, Joan of Arc to Mother Theresa, 'She' has been histories shadow puppet.

Addendum In my personal frame of reference, online pornography is a category of predominantly male sexual entertainment predicated upon filmed prostitution, constituting a symptomatic outcome of an entrenched pandemic patriarchy. Other symptoms of patriarchy such as war, the arms trade, the traffic predominantly in women, and girls, and to a lesser degree men and boys, the intrusion of material values into every aspect of our lives through corporate despotism, work slave and nation state competition for dwindling resources, and the global hegemony of American style corporate-political fascism, may be held separately accountable. Within these undeniable realities of 'power over' rather than 'power for' however, there is a particular historical thematic thread that holds my interest. That thematic is a palpable fear of female sexuality, and the expression of feminine power through that sexuality. It is this causation rather than the reflected outcomes, already so eloquently addressed by multiple radical-feminist thinkers such as Dworkin, MacKinnon, Jeffreys, Russel, Dines, Farley, Jensen, and others, that I have in part attempted to address.

A deeper understanding of how we arrived at the present state of affairs is required into the historical roots of patriarchy and the sexual oppression of women (Smith, 1990). Such an investigation would naturally feed into the present day consumption of online cyber-space porn and the social implications of this pervasive medium for children and for our collective and personal socio-historical worlds.

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