Problems With Porn

Can we speak of a socialist attitude to porn? Going by past discussions on the UK Left Network and its regular eruption into skirmishes millions of words long over in feminist blogspace, you would have to say "not really". The tendency is for debate to quickly boil down into hard and fast positions, with more nuanced contributions pushed aside. You either find porn a blatant display of patriarchy's sexual dominance, that it is degrading to women who take part in it, and damaging to the men who view it; or a libertarian position where, when all is said and done, as long as what takes place is between consenting adults, there's no real harm involved. Women and men should have the right to participate and view it if they wish.

Unfortunately, Addicted to Porn, another late night offering from Channel Four, does very little to move the debate on from these mutually hostile and mutually exclusive camps. In fact, there is no attempt to even set up any kind of debate. The message from this short documentary is unambiguous: porn will either fuck up your life or turn you into a violent criminal.

Addicted to Porn looks at four men. Eldon, the 32-year-old "star" of the show, clearly does have a problem. He spends 34-40 hours a week watching porn and has to work part time because his addiction means he can't hold a full time position down. He finds sex with real women an anti-climax compared with the stuff he sees on film. Eldon feels porn is ruining his life and wants to give it up, but finds it difficult to break with his pattern of behaviour. So he attempts to go without for a week for the benefit of the programme. He describes the conflict in his mind, one moment thinking he should stay away from the material, in another feeling that going to a peep show at a Soho cinema "doesn't really count". He is forced to find things to do to occupy what would have been his porn-time. He undertakes a short course of hypnotherapy, goes on a blind date, and ends with torching his video collection.

Warren's addiction is more severe. He has become obsessed with acting out the hardcore fantasies he's seen on the internet. His previous partner was unwilling to accede to his demands, and left along with their son. Despite destroying his relationship and not having seen his son for six years, his passion for porn remains undimmed. He now has a partner willing to go some of the way, but scours the internet looking for contacts happy to act out his fantasies. Warren's story conveys a real sense of his compulsion. He openly talks about the frustration he has with the addiction, and the stress stemming from the lies and secrecy he uses to cover his porn-fuelled liasons.

Duncan took his to the extreme. It's as if he stepped out of The Bonfire of the Vanities, or a Brett Easton Ellis novel. Born into a wealthy family and having secured a lucrative career in marketing in New York; cocaine, porn, and prostitutes dragged him into a spiral costing him his job, career, his Upper East Side home, family ties, and around $2 million. After losing his job in 1991 he moved to London in an attempt to escape, but it remains with him still. He monitors himself constantly to keep himself from lapsing, which means even avoiding glancing up at the top shelf of a newsagents and putting himself in situation where his prior behaviour could reassert itself.

Finally, and most extreme of all, is the case of Graham Coutts. One may recall his murder of Jane Longhurst in 2003, a crime committed, it was claimed, because of Coutts' addiction to violent pornography, especially that featuring strangulation and asphyxiation. We are left in no doubt that murder was the unavoidable consequence of his taste in porn.

The talking heads who intersperse the programme all sing from the same hymn sheet. David Nutt, a neurologist, argues there is a chemical basis for porn addiction. Whenever we engage in pleasurable activity, the brain's release of dopamine lays down a memory of the circumstances that led to the release. However, "excessive" sexual pleasure, the repeated dopamine releases in conjunction with porn viewing gradually disconnects the demand pathways from the neurological means of managing it. The brain becomes predisposed to this behaviour, thereby forming the basis for an addiction. Once this has taken place, one cannot detox as drug addicts can, because the problem remains locked inside porn addicts' heads. Mary-Anne Layden, a criminological psychotherapist recalled how every sex offender she's ever worked with had some relationship to porn, in its absence in prison, they remain able to call up the imagery they once viewed and elaborate a series of fantasies with this "raw material". For Jeffrey Satinover, the main problem is not with the small number of violent acts that implicate porn, but with the huge number of men who regularly view porn, albeit with mild effects. This can put strains on relationships and inflict the kinds of damage Eldon and Warren have experienced.

The chief failing of Addicted to Porn is not so much its one-sided argument, but the paucity of evidence it has to back it up. The agony aunt, Flic Everett offers some anecdotal examples from her postbag from women distressed by their boyfriends and husbands desires for porn-a-like sex, and we see a brief table top discussion between three women talking through their experiences. But to what extent can these charges be laid at porn's door? Like all sexual preferences, are they not rooted in our formative biographical experiences? Is a man with a taste for violent sex just as likely to carry out his fantasies because of porn, or in spite of porn? Of course, this isn't to suggest porn is separate to formative (sexual) experiences, but it does imply that porn is a dependent variable, an element in the overwhelming majority of sexual biographies that is a consequence of one's peccadilloes rather than a cause of them. In other words, between a "normal" man who views porn and a sex offender who has viewed porn lies a river of specific and separate experiences. For example, Graham Coutts didn't murder Jane Longhurst because he was addicted to violent porn; rather it is more likely the addiction sublimated his murderous desires for a period of time.

I am sceptical toward claims that porn can drive violent sexual behaviour, but the claims the programme makes about addiction and the impacts it can have do seem credible. As recently discussed on Madam Miaow and Splintered Sunrise, one consequence of porn has been to promote total body hair removal on women, and perhaps a little bit of "tidying up" where men are concerned too. But to what extent has this assumed the weight of peer pressure and compelled women to conform to yet another 'feminine body' demand, under pain of malicious gossip and rumour? And does the popularity of porn, and I'm mainly talking about straight/"lesbian" porn aimed at men, affect the way men view women? Is there any truth to the objectification/degradation argument, does it make the overt commodification of sex (proliferation of semi-pornographic lads mags, lap dancing bars, strip joints, prostitution) more socially acceptable?

But what of the positive effects of porn? Does porn demystify sex, and hold open the possibility of more satisfying sexual relations? Can it offer a relatively safe and risk-free avenue for "previewing" experiences one may desire to carry out?

Porn and the reception to porn is complex. For socialists to get a proper understanding of the way it feeds off desires, the effects it has on behaviour, how it reinforces/subverts dominant hegemonic codings of gender and sex, we need to stay way from the pitfalls of moralising and laissez-faire acceptance. Otherwise analysis and debate will get locked into the non-fruitful rehashings of the same tired arguments.