TestimonyUnited States Senate Committee on the Judiciary
Why the Government Should Care about Pornography November 10, 2005
Jill Manning Sociologist , Brigham Young University
TESTIMONY OF JILL C. MANNING, M.S. HEARING ON PORNOGRAPHY’S IMPACT ON MARRIAGE & THE FAMILY SUBCOMMITTEE ON THE CONSTITUTION, CIVIL RIGHTS AND PROPERTY RIGHTS COMMITTEE ON JUDICIARY UNITED STATES SENATE November 9, 2005
Thank you Senator Brownback, Senator Feingold and distinguished members of the Sub-Committee; I appreciate this opportunity to address you.
Since the advent of the Internet, the pornography industry has profited from an unprecedented proximity to the home, work and school environments. Consequently, couples, families, and individuals of all ages are being impacted by pornography in new and often devastating ways. Although many parents work diligently to protect their family from sexually explicit material, research funded by Congress has shown Internet pornography to be “very intrusive.”
Additionally, we know that a variety of fraudulent, illegal and unethical practices are used to attract new customers and eroticize attitudes that undermine public health and safety. This profit-driven assault jeopardizes the well-being of our youth and violates the privacy of those who wish not to be exposed. Leading experts in the field of sexual addictions contend on-line sexual activity is “a hidden public health hazard exploding, in part because very few are recognizing it as such or taking it seriously.”
Research reveals many systemic effects of Internet pornography that are undermining an already vulnerable culture of marriage and family. Even more disturbing is the fact that the first Internet generations have not reached full-maturity, so the upper-limits of this impact have yet to be realized.
Furthermore, the numerous negative effects research point to are extremely difficult, if not impossible, for individual citizens or families to combat on their own. This testimony is not rooted in anecdotal accounts or personal views, but rather in findings from studies published in peer-reviewed research journals. I have submitted a review of this research to the Committee, and request that it be included in the record.
The marital relationship is a logical point of impact to examine because it is the foundational family unit and a sexual union easily destabilized by sexual influences outside the marital contract. Moreover, research indicates the majority of Internet users are married and the majority seeking help for problematic sexual behaviour online are married, heterosexual males.
The research indicates pornography consumption is associated with the following six trends, among others:
1. Increased marital distress, and risk of separation and divorce,
2. Decreased marital intimacy and sexual satisfaction,
3. Infidelity
4. Increased appetite for more graphic types of pornography and sexual activity associated with abusive, illegal or unsafe practices,
5. Devaluation of monogamy, marriage and child rearing,
6. An increasing number of people struggling with compulsive and addictive sexual behaviour.
These trends reflect a cluster of symptoms that undermine the foundation upon which successful marriages and families are established. While the marital bond may be the most vulnerable relationship to Internet pornography, children and adolescents are the most vulnerable audience.
When a child lives in a home where an adult is consuming pornography, he or she encounters the following four risks:
1. Decreased parental time and attention
2. Increased risk of encountering pornographic material
3. Increased risk of parental separation and divorce and
4. Increased risk of parental job loss and financial strain
When a child or adolescent is directly exposed the following effects have been documented:
1. Lasting negative or traumatic emotional responses,
2. Earlier onset of first sexual intercourse, thereby increasing the risk of STD’s over the lifespan, 3. The belief that superior sexual satisfaction is attainable without having affection for one’s partner, thereby reinforcing the commoditization of sex and the objectification of humans.
4. The belief that being married or having a family are unattractive prospects;
5. Increased risk for developing sexual compulsions and addictive behavior,
6. Increased risk of exposure to incorrect information about human sexuality long before a minor is able to contextualize this information in ways an adult brain could.
7. And, overestimating the prevalence of less common practices (e.g., group sex, bestiality, or sadomasochistic activity).
Because the United States is ranked among the top producers and consumers of pornography globally, the federal government has a unique opportunity to take a lead in addressing this issue and the related harm. This leadership could unfold in a variety of ways. For example, through: • Educating the public about the risks of pornography consumption,
• Supporting research that examines aspects of Internet pornography currently unknown, • Allocating resources to enforce laws already in place, and lastly,
• Legally implement technological solutions that separate Internet content, allowing consumers to choose the type of legal content they wish to have access to.
In closing, I am convinced Internet pornography is grooming young generations of Americans in such a way that their chances of enjoying healthy and enduring relationships are handicapped. I hope this committee will carefully consider measures to reduce the harm associated with Internet pornography. I thank the Committee for this opportunity to testify and welcome your questions at this time.
Showing posts with label Senate testimony. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Senate testimony. Show all posts
Friday, March 16, 2007
Thursday, March 15, 2007
Testimony of Dr. Mary Anne Layden, University of Pennsylvania
Given at a Science, Technology, and Space Hearing:The Science Behind Pornography Addiction Thursday, November 18 2004 - 2:00 PM - SR 253
http://commerce.senate.gov/hearings/witnesslist.cfm?id=1343
The Testimony ofDr. Mary Anne Layden Co-Director, Sexual Trauma and Psychopathology Program,Center for Cognitive Therapy University of Pennsylvania
Thank you, Senators, for allowing me to speak to you today.
Pornography, by its very nature, is an equal opportunity toxin. It damages the viewer, the performer, and the spouses and the children of the viewers and the performers. It is toxic mis-education about sex and relationships. It is more toxic the more you consume, the “harder” the variety you consume and the younger and more vulnerable the consumer.
The damage is both in the area of beliefs and behaviors. The belief damage may include Pornography Distortion, Permission-Giving Beliefs and the attitudes about what constitutes a healthy sexual and emotional relationship. The behavioral damage includes psychologically unhealthy behaviors, socially inappropriate behaviors and illegal behaviors.
Let me give some examples. Pornography Distortion is a set of beliefs based in pornographic imagery, sent to the viewer while they are aroused and reinforced by the orgasm. An example of Pornography Distortion would include beliefs such as “Sex is not about intimacy, procreation or marriage. Sex is about predatory self-gratification, casual recreation, body parts, violence, feces, strangers, children, animals and using women as entertainment.” All of these are messages regularly sent by pornography.
Permission-Giving Beliefs are a set of beliefs that imply that my behavior is normal, acceptable, common and/or doesn’t hurt anyone so I have permission to continue to behave in the way that I am. In all types of violence and addiction, Permission-Giving Beliefs are involved. Examples would include “All men go to prostitutes” “Women like sex mixed with violence” and “Children enjoy sex with adults”. These particular Permission-Giving Beliefs are also common in pornography.
Both Pornography Distortion and Permission-Giving Beliefs increase the problem of mis-education about sexuality and relationships. For example, the myth that women are sexually aroused by engaging in behaviors that are actually sexually pleasuring to men is a particularly narcissistic invention of the pornography industry. This is sexual mis-education.
The consequences of all these distorted beliefs are varied. For the viewer, pornography increases the likelihood of sexual addiction and they respond in ways similar to other addicts. Sexual addicts develop tolerance and will need more and harder kinds of pornographic material. They have escalating compulsive sexual behavior becoming more out of control and also experience withdrawal symptoms if they stop the use of the sexual material. The executive who goes to his office and logs on to the Internet porn sites at 9:00 AM and logs off at 5:00 PM is out of control and risks a great deal. Research indicates that 70% of the hits on Internet sex sites occur between 9-5 on business computers. Research also indicates and my clinical experience supports that 40% of sex addicts will lose their spouse, 58% will suffer sever finanacial losses, and 27-40% will lose their job or profession. Those whose marraiges don’t end, may find themselves increasing dissatisfied with their spouses appearance and sexual behavior and increasingly sexually acting out which leads to an increase in sexually transmitted diseases. Research indicates that even non-sex addicts will show brain reactions on PET scans while viewing pornography similar to cocaine addicts looking at images of people taking cacaine. This material is potent, addictive and permanently implanted in the brain.
Those who use pornography have also been shown to be more likely to engage in illegal behavior as well. Research indicates and my clinical experience supports that those who use pronography are more likely to go to prostitutes, engage in domestic violence, stranger rape, date rape, and incest. These beahviors should not be suprising since pornographic videos contaning all of these themes are readily available and the permssion-giving beliefs of these pornographic videos reinforced by the orgasm say that all these behaviors are normal, acceptable, common and don’t hurt anyone.
I have also seen in my clinical experience that pornography damages the sexual performance of the viewers. Pornography viewers tend to have problems with premature ejaculation and erectile dysfunction. Having spent so much time in unnatural sexual experiences with paper, celluloid and cyberspace, they seem to find it difficult to have sex with a real human being. Pornography is raising their expectation and demand for types and amounts of sexual experiences at the same time it is reducing their ability to experience sex.
The viewers are not the only ones to be affect by pornography. The performers are damaged as well although the performers were often damaged before they entered the industry. No healthy six-year-old growing up in a healthy home environment says, “I hope I grow up to be a porn star, stripper or prostitute”. Those who now work in the porn industry were often little girls who got into their beds each night, rolled themselves into a fetal position and each night he came in a pealed her open. They work in the porn industry with its physical invasion and visual invasion because it feels like home. Once they are in the industry they have high rates of substance abuse, typically alcohol and cocaine, depression, borderline personality disorder which is a particularly serious disorder and dissociative identity disorder which used to be called multiple personality disorder. The experience I find most common among the performers is that they have to be drunk, high or dissociated in order to go to work. Their work environment is particularly toxic. One study on strippers indicated that they were likely to be punched, slapped, grabbed, called cunt and whore and to be followed home or stalked. Not surprisingly, these women often work with bodyguards. This live form of pornography causes violence and the customers receiving these Permission-Giving Beliefs become carriers of these beliefs back to their homes, onto their jobs, into the street, onto the school yard. There they encounter women and children who do not have bodyguards.
The terrible work life of the pornography performer is often followed by an equally terrible home life. They have an increased risk of sexually transmitted disease including HIV, domestic violence and have about a 25 % chance of making a marriage that lasts as long as 3 years.
The viewers and the performers of pornography are the most direct victims. However, the children and the partners are also damaged by this industry. My clinical experience indicates that the spouses of porn viewers are often depressed, and are more likely to have eating disorders, body image disorders and low self-esteem. These wives can’t function in the fake sexual world in which their husbands live. The wives may try to please their spouse by engaging in sexual behaviors that they find degrading. The wife may think that they can increase the sexual energy in the relationship and satisfy her husband if she views the pornography with him. My clinical experience is that these wives often get a short-lived boost in sexual activity but soon she notices that when her husband is having sex with her, he is turning around to watch the porn on the TV screen. She then realizes that he isn’t having sex with her at all. He’s masturbating inside her body while he is having sex with the women on the screen.
Some wives will resort to plastic surgery especially breast implants. Research indicates that women who get breast implants are four times as likely to commit suicide as other women are.
The children also show the damage. As pornography becomes normalized, it is left around the house. Children can get exposed to it. These are tender minds that are just developing their conceptualizations of sex. Normalizing abnormal sex increase the likelihood that they will engage in these behaviors. This increases the likelihood of early sexual experience and with it, the increasing risk of pregnancy, and sexually transmitted diseases. These children often think that all relationships are sexual. That sex is the core of their personalities and is the way in which you raise your self-esteem. This may be one reason that we see sexual addiction running in families. The distorted beliefs are not only reinforced but modeled as well. In one report in Australia, children who had become sexual predators before the age of 12, all had experienced pornographic material on the Internet and large number believed that the only use of the Internet was for pornographic material.
Children who have porn-viewing fathers complain that when he looks at them it feels “creepy”. The parental gaze has now become the “porn gaze”. The child of the porn user finds that every thing is now about sex.
There are no studies and no data that indicate a benefit from pornography use. If there were a benefit, then pornography users, pornography performers, their spouses and their children would show the most benefit. Just the opposite is true. The society is awash in pornography and so in fact the data is in. If pornography made us healthy, we would be healthy by now.
Back to Witness List
http://commerce.senate.gov/hearings/witnesslist.cfm?id=1343
The Testimony ofDr. Mary Anne Layden Co-Director, Sexual Trauma and Psychopathology Program,Center for Cognitive Therapy University of Pennsylvania
Thank you, Senators, for allowing me to speak to you today.
Pornography, by its very nature, is an equal opportunity toxin. It damages the viewer, the performer, and the spouses and the children of the viewers and the performers. It is toxic mis-education about sex and relationships. It is more toxic the more you consume, the “harder” the variety you consume and the younger and more vulnerable the consumer.
The damage is both in the area of beliefs and behaviors. The belief damage may include Pornography Distortion, Permission-Giving Beliefs and the attitudes about what constitutes a healthy sexual and emotional relationship. The behavioral damage includes psychologically unhealthy behaviors, socially inappropriate behaviors and illegal behaviors.
Let me give some examples. Pornography Distortion is a set of beliefs based in pornographic imagery, sent to the viewer while they are aroused and reinforced by the orgasm. An example of Pornography Distortion would include beliefs such as “Sex is not about intimacy, procreation or marriage. Sex is about predatory self-gratification, casual recreation, body parts, violence, feces, strangers, children, animals and using women as entertainment.” All of these are messages regularly sent by pornography.
Permission-Giving Beliefs are a set of beliefs that imply that my behavior is normal, acceptable, common and/or doesn’t hurt anyone so I have permission to continue to behave in the way that I am. In all types of violence and addiction, Permission-Giving Beliefs are involved. Examples would include “All men go to prostitutes” “Women like sex mixed with violence” and “Children enjoy sex with adults”. These particular Permission-Giving Beliefs are also common in pornography.
Both Pornography Distortion and Permission-Giving Beliefs increase the problem of mis-education about sexuality and relationships. For example, the myth that women are sexually aroused by engaging in behaviors that are actually sexually pleasuring to men is a particularly narcissistic invention of the pornography industry. This is sexual mis-education.
The consequences of all these distorted beliefs are varied. For the viewer, pornography increases the likelihood of sexual addiction and they respond in ways similar to other addicts. Sexual addicts develop tolerance and will need more and harder kinds of pornographic material. They have escalating compulsive sexual behavior becoming more out of control and also experience withdrawal symptoms if they stop the use of the sexual material. The executive who goes to his office and logs on to the Internet porn sites at 9:00 AM and logs off at 5:00 PM is out of control and risks a great deal. Research indicates that 70% of the hits on Internet sex sites occur between 9-5 on business computers. Research also indicates and my clinical experience supports that 40% of sex addicts will lose their spouse, 58% will suffer sever finanacial losses, and 27-40% will lose their job or profession. Those whose marraiges don’t end, may find themselves increasing dissatisfied with their spouses appearance and sexual behavior and increasingly sexually acting out which leads to an increase in sexually transmitted diseases. Research indicates that even non-sex addicts will show brain reactions on PET scans while viewing pornography similar to cocaine addicts looking at images of people taking cacaine. This material is potent, addictive and permanently implanted in the brain.
Those who use pornography have also been shown to be more likely to engage in illegal behavior as well. Research indicates and my clinical experience supports that those who use pronography are more likely to go to prostitutes, engage in domestic violence, stranger rape, date rape, and incest. These beahviors should not be suprising since pornographic videos contaning all of these themes are readily available and the permssion-giving beliefs of these pornographic videos reinforced by the orgasm say that all these behaviors are normal, acceptable, common and don’t hurt anyone.
I have also seen in my clinical experience that pornography damages the sexual performance of the viewers. Pornography viewers tend to have problems with premature ejaculation and erectile dysfunction. Having spent so much time in unnatural sexual experiences with paper, celluloid and cyberspace, they seem to find it difficult to have sex with a real human being. Pornography is raising their expectation and demand for types and amounts of sexual experiences at the same time it is reducing their ability to experience sex.
The viewers are not the only ones to be affect by pornography. The performers are damaged as well although the performers were often damaged before they entered the industry. No healthy six-year-old growing up in a healthy home environment says, “I hope I grow up to be a porn star, stripper or prostitute”. Those who now work in the porn industry were often little girls who got into their beds each night, rolled themselves into a fetal position and each night he came in a pealed her open. They work in the porn industry with its physical invasion and visual invasion because it feels like home. Once they are in the industry they have high rates of substance abuse, typically alcohol and cocaine, depression, borderline personality disorder which is a particularly serious disorder and dissociative identity disorder which used to be called multiple personality disorder. The experience I find most common among the performers is that they have to be drunk, high or dissociated in order to go to work. Their work environment is particularly toxic. One study on strippers indicated that they were likely to be punched, slapped, grabbed, called cunt and whore and to be followed home or stalked. Not surprisingly, these women often work with bodyguards. This live form of pornography causes violence and the customers receiving these Permission-Giving Beliefs become carriers of these beliefs back to their homes, onto their jobs, into the street, onto the school yard. There they encounter women and children who do not have bodyguards.
The terrible work life of the pornography performer is often followed by an equally terrible home life. They have an increased risk of sexually transmitted disease including HIV, domestic violence and have about a 25 % chance of making a marriage that lasts as long as 3 years.
The viewers and the performers of pornography are the most direct victims. However, the children and the partners are also damaged by this industry. My clinical experience indicates that the spouses of porn viewers are often depressed, and are more likely to have eating disorders, body image disorders and low self-esteem. These wives can’t function in the fake sexual world in which their husbands live. The wives may try to please their spouse by engaging in sexual behaviors that they find degrading. The wife may think that they can increase the sexual energy in the relationship and satisfy her husband if she views the pornography with him. My clinical experience is that these wives often get a short-lived boost in sexual activity but soon she notices that when her husband is having sex with her, he is turning around to watch the porn on the TV screen. She then realizes that he isn’t having sex with her at all. He’s masturbating inside her body while he is having sex with the women on the screen.
Some wives will resort to plastic surgery especially breast implants. Research indicates that women who get breast implants are four times as likely to commit suicide as other women are.
The children also show the damage. As pornography becomes normalized, it is left around the house. Children can get exposed to it. These are tender minds that are just developing their conceptualizations of sex. Normalizing abnormal sex increase the likelihood that they will engage in these behaviors. This increases the likelihood of early sexual experience and with it, the increasing risk of pregnancy, and sexually transmitted diseases. These children often think that all relationships are sexual. That sex is the core of their personalities and is the way in which you raise your self-esteem. This may be one reason that we see sexual addiction running in families. The distorted beliefs are not only reinforced but modeled as well. In one report in Australia, children who had become sexual predators before the age of 12, all had experienced pornographic material on the Internet and large number believed that the only use of the Internet was for pornographic material.
Children who have porn-viewing fathers complain that when he looks at them it feels “creepy”. The parental gaze has now become the “porn gaze”. The child of the porn user finds that every thing is now about sex.
There are no studies and no data that indicate a benefit from pornography use. If there were a benefit, then pornography users, pornography performers, their spouses and their children would show the most benefit. Just the opposite is true. The society is awash in pornography and so in fact the data is in. If pornography made us healthy, we would be healthy by now.
Back to Witness List
Judith Reisman, Senate Testimony
Given at a Science, Technology, and Space Hearing:The Science Behind Pornography Addiction Thursday, November 18 2004 - 2:00 PM - SR 253
The Testimony ofDr. Judith Reisman , California Protective Parents Association
Good afternoon, thank you for the opportunity to speak with you today. I am Judith Reisman, Ph.D., president of the Institute for Media Education, specializing in the communication effects of images on the brain, mind and memory; fraud in the human sexuality field; and the addictive properties of sexually explicit images, commonly called pornography.
Thanks to the latest advances in neuroscience, we now know that pornographic visual images imprint and alter the brain, triggering an instant, involuntary, but lasting, biochemical memory trail, arguably, subverting the First Amendment by overriding the cognitive speech process. This is true of so-called “soft-core” and “hard-core” pornography. And once new neurochemical pathways are established they are difficult or impossible to delete.
Pornographic images also cause secretion of the body’s “fight or flight” sex hormones. This triggers excitatory transmitters and produces non-rational, involuntary reactions; intense arousal states that overlap sexual lust--now with fear, shame, and/or hostility and violence. Media erotic fantasies become deeply imbedded, commonly coarsening, confusing, motivating and addicting many of those exposed. (See “the Violence Pyramid” at http://www.vbii.org/violence.html) Pornography triggers myriad kinds of internal, natural drugs that mimic the “high” from a street drug. Addiction to pornography is addiction to what I dub erototoxins -- mind-altering drugs produced by the viewer’s own brain.
How does this ‘brain sabotage’ occur? Brain scientists tell us that “in 3/10 of a second a visual image passes from the eye through the brain, and whether or not one wants to, the brain is structurally changed and memories are created – we literally ‘grow new brain’ with each visual experience.”
This scientifically documented neurochemical imprinting affects children and teens especially deeply; their still-developing brains process emotions differently, with significantly less rationality and cognition than the adult brain.
Children and others who cannot read will still instantly decode, feel and experience images. Largely right-hemisphere visual and non-speech stimuli enter long-term memory, conscious and unconscious. Any highly excitatory stimuli (whether sexually explicit sex education or X-Rated films) say neurologists, “which lasts half a second within five to ten minutes has produced a structural change that is in some ways as profound as the structural changes one sees in [brain] damage...[and] can...leave a trace that will last for years.”
Pornography psychopharmacologically imprints young brains – thereby invalidating notions of informed consent. Moreover, the mainstreaming of pornography since the 1950’s directly coincides with the unprecedented explosion in sexual disease and a huge, exponential increase in new types of pornographic copycat sex crimes by and to juveniles and adults. Such facts should inform the legal arguments about free speech versus pornography in public and even private venues. I have spent decades documenting the effects of pornographic “humor” and photos on children, fathers, husbands and wives and communities, much of which is found in my book, "Soft" Porn Plays Hardball, 1990, in my U.S. Department of Justice, Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention (OJJDP) report, Images of Children, Crime and Violence in Playboy, Penthouse and Hustler, and in my white paper on “The Psychopharmacology of Pictorial Pornography: Restructuring Brain, Mind & Memory & Subverting Freedom of Speech” (http://www.drjudithreisman.com/brain.pdf).
A basic science research team employing a cautiously protective methodology should study erototoxins and the brain/body.
State-of-the-art brain scanning studies should answer these questions with hard, replicable data. As with the tobacco suits, these data could be helpful in litigation and in affecting legal change.
Testimony from victims and police commonly finds pornography an on site sex crime manual. In one 1984 Senate hearing, John Rabun, now COO of DoJ’s Missing and Abducted Children Center, testified that when arrested, “all, that is 100%” of rapists, pedophiles, etc., in their study possessed adult pornography, “such as Playboy, on up….”
An offensive strategy should be planned, mandating law enforcement collection of all pornography data at crime sites and judges, police, lawyers and law schools should receive training in the hard data of sexology fraud and erototoxins as changing brains absent informed consent.
Congress should end all Federal funding of educational institutions that train students with bogus Kinseyan academic pornography and/or that teach pornography as harmless. Congress should also remove the authority of so-called sexology institutes--most of whom are pornography grantees--to confer professional credentials and serve as expert witnesses.
These are concrete steps that can and must be taken to redress the effects of pornography on our children, our communities and our country.
Thank you very much.
Back to Witness List
The Testimony ofDr. Judith Reisman , California Protective Parents Association
Good afternoon, thank you for the opportunity to speak with you today. I am Judith Reisman, Ph.D., president of the Institute for Media Education, specializing in the communication effects of images on the brain, mind and memory; fraud in the human sexuality field; and the addictive properties of sexually explicit images, commonly called pornography.
Thanks to the latest advances in neuroscience, we now know that pornographic visual images imprint and alter the brain, triggering an instant, involuntary, but lasting, biochemical memory trail, arguably, subverting the First Amendment by overriding the cognitive speech process. This is true of so-called “soft-core” and “hard-core” pornography. And once new neurochemical pathways are established they are difficult or impossible to delete.
Pornographic images also cause secretion of the body’s “fight or flight” sex hormones. This triggers excitatory transmitters and produces non-rational, involuntary reactions; intense arousal states that overlap sexual lust--now with fear, shame, and/or hostility and violence. Media erotic fantasies become deeply imbedded, commonly coarsening, confusing, motivating and addicting many of those exposed. (See “the Violence Pyramid” at http://www.vbii.org/violence.html) Pornography triggers myriad kinds of internal, natural drugs that mimic the “high” from a street drug. Addiction to pornography is addiction to what I dub erototoxins -- mind-altering drugs produced by the viewer’s own brain.
How does this ‘brain sabotage’ occur? Brain scientists tell us that “in 3/10 of a second a visual image passes from the eye through the brain, and whether or not one wants to, the brain is structurally changed and memories are created – we literally ‘grow new brain’ with each visual experience.”
This scientifically documented neurochemical imprinting affects children and teens especially deeply; their still-developing brains process emotions differently, with significantly less rationality and cognition than the adult brain.
Children and others who cannot read will still instantly decode, feel and experience images. Largely right-hemisphere visual and non-speech stimuli enter long-term memory, conscious and unconscious. Any highly excitatory stimuli (whether sexually explicit sex education or X-Rated films) say neurologists, “which lasts half a second within five to ten minutes has produced a structural change that is in some ways as profound as the structural changes one sees in [brain] damage...[and] can...leave a trace that will last for years.”
Pornography psychopharmacologically imprints young brains – thereby invalidating notions of informed consent. Moreover, the mainstreaming of pornography since the 1950’s directly coincides with the unprecedented explosion in sexual disease and a huge, exponential increase in new types of pornographic copycat sex crimes by and to juveniles and adults. Such facts should inform the legal arguments about free speech versus pornography in public and even private venues. I have spent decades documenting the effects of pornographic “humor” and photos on children, fathers, husbands and wives and communities, much of which is found in my book, "Soft" Porn Plays Hardball, 1990, in my U.S. Department of Justice, Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention (OJJDP) report, Images of Children, Crime and Violence in Playboy, Penthouse and Hustler, and in my white paper on “The Psychopharmacology of Pictorial Pornography: Restructuring Brain, Mind & Memory & Subverting Freedom of Speech” (http://www.drjudithreisman.com/brain.pdf).
A basic science research team employing a cautiously protective methodology should study erototoxins and the brain/body.
State-of-the-art brain scanning studies should answer these questions with hard, replicable data. As with the tobacco suits, these data could be helpful in litigation and in affecting legal change.
Testimony from victims and police commonly finds pornography an on site sex crime manual. In one 1984 Senate hearing, John Rabun, now COO of DoJ’s Missing and Abducted Children Center, testified that when arrested, “all, that is 100%” of rapists, pedophiles, etc., in their study possessed adult pornography, “such as Playboy, on up….”
An offensive strategy should be planned, mandating law enforcement collection of all pornography data at crime sites and judges, police, lawyers and law schools should receive training in the hard data of sexology fraud and erototoxins as changing brains absent informed consent.
Congress should end all Federal funding of educational institutions that train students with bogus Kinseyan academic pornography and/or that teach pornography as harmless. Congress should also remove the authority of so-called sexology institutes--most of whom are pornography grantees--to confer professional credentials and serve as expert witnesses.
These are concrete steps that can and must be taken to redress the effects of pornography on our children, our communities and our country.
Thank you very much.
Back to Witness List
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