by Amelia Thomson-DeVeaux
Earlier this semester, I wrote an op-ed for the Daily Princetonian, detailing the reasoning behind Let’s Talk Sex’s latest speaker series, which will tackle the difficult issue of pornography. Tomorrow, April 8, well-known author and anti-porn activist Pamela Paul will kick off the series, which will culminate with a talk by Tristan Taormino on April 29.
Ms. Paul will be speaking at 4:30 p.m. in McCosh 46.
I first saw Ms. Paul, the author of Pornified: How Pornography Is Damaging Our Lives, Our Relationships, and Our Families, speak at a conference last November, hosted by Princeton’s Anscombe Society and the Love & Fidelity Network. I was struck by her eloquent and engaging lecture, and as we began to think about the lineup for the LeTS spring speaker series, she immediately sprang to mind.
Pornified was published in 2005, but Ms. Paul is still very much involved in the debate around pornography, despite her more recent volume on the commodification of child-raising. In early March, she published an op-ed in the WaPo, responding to critics who were using new research from the University of Montreal to brand her as an “anti-pornography zealot,” a prude who was making a huge fuss over nothing. Paul swiftly discounts the results of the survey, which was based on 1-2 hour interviews with 20 heterosexual men. Clearly, this is not data from which we can draw sweeping conclusions about the ultimate “goodness” or “badness” of pornography.
In the op-ed, Ms. Paul writes:
Back in 1979, Jennings Bryant, a professor of communications at the University of Alabama, conducted one of the most powerful peer-reviewed lab studies of the effects of porn viewing on men. Summary of results: not good. Men who consumed large amounts of pornography were less likely to want daughters, less likely to support women’s equality and more forgiving of criminal rape. They also grossly overestimated Americans’ likelihood to engage in group sex and bestiality.
She goes on to say that she doesn’t expect for a follow-up to this study to happen again, and admits that her own work is “hardly lab research.” But, she says, her many interviews with people who attested to the destructive capabilities of pornography attest to the “many signs of porn’s hidden impact.” As one of the first generations to grow up during and after the explosion of internet and amateur pornography, Ms. Paul’s work is a critical and disturbing look at the ways that pornography may have shaped the way we developed, and continue to grow as adults.
