Pornography is menacing people, relationships, and society, and this book has the research and stories to prove it. John D. Foubert, Ph.D., an interdisciplinary scholar who has studied sexual violence since 1993, shares the life stories of more than twenty people directly affected by pornography. He also interviews scholars and explains how pornography affects our brains. In examining the many ways pornography is devouring the God-given sexual health of the Internet generation, he highlights its connection to sexual violence and how it ruins lives. He also focuses on who makes pornography and their motives, recent trends in pornography, and how pornography is changing the way people have sex. Perhaps most importantly, he explains what we can do to confront pornography in our own lives, the lives of our loved ones, and in society. Whether you are a teen, young adult, a parent, pastor, scholar, or you are just curious about what pornography does to people, your conscience will be shocked and your points of view deeply challenged by what Foubert has uncovered about the reality of todays pornography.

"Strips porn of its culture-war claptrap . . . Pornified may stand as a Kinsey Report for our time."—San Francisco Chronicle Porn in America is everywhere—not just in cybersex and Playboy but in popular video games, advice columns, and reality television shows, and on the bestseller lists. Even more striking, as porn has become affordable, accessible, and anonymous, it has become increasingly acceptable—and a big part of the personal lives of many men and women. In this controversial and critically acclaimed book, Pamela Paul argues that as porn becomes more pervasive, it is destroying our marriages and families as well as distorting our children's ideas of sex and sexuality. Based on more than one hundred interviews and a nationally representative poll, Pornified exposes how porn has infiltrated our lives, from the wife agonizing over the late-night hours her husband spends on porn Web sites to the parents stunned to learn their twelve-year-old son has seen a hardcore porn film. Pornified is an insightful, shocking, and important investigation into the costs and consequences of pornography for our families and our culture.

Pornography, also known as sexually explicit material intended to cause sexual arousal, has been hailed by many as a growing public health crisis. Multiple states have now passed resolutions declaring pornography a harm to individual and collective health for inciting epidemics of sexual assault, human trafficking, and compulsive use. But research on the impact of pornography reveals a complicated story behind the straightforward narrative of abuse, including the repression of sex positive materials in the pursuit of pornographic containment. Pornography and Public Health uses a rigorous evidence-based approach to explore the positive and negative effects of pornography on public health, revealing how pornography came to be considered a public health crisis despite the lack of US governmental support. While pornographic content varies widely, this book provides a holistic overview of the people who view pornography, what they are most likely to see, how content has changed over time, and how these changes appear to influence some users. Each chapter explores controversies related to important subtopics in pornography scholarship including aggression, body image, and problematic use, as well as acknowledging the benefits that porn and porn literacy can provide in some contexts. Drawing on meticulous research and close readings of the available data, Emily F. Rothman explores the implications of existing evidence for practice and policy and offers meaningful guidance for public health scholars interested in understanding, and resolving, one of the most complicated issues in health and human behavior of our time. With unique academic insights, Pornography and Public Health avoids moralizing to argue that we can take steps to minimize possible harms from pornography while simultaneously protecting sexual liberty and promoting respect for pornography performers.

This book contains the oral testimony of victims of pornography, spoken on the record for the first time in history. Speaking at hearings on a groundbreaking antipornography civil rights law, women offer eloquent witness to the devastation pornography has caused in their lives. Supported by social science experts and authorities on rape, battery, and prostitution, discounted and opposed by free speech advocates and absolutists, their riveting testimony articulates the centrality of pornography to sexual abuse and inequity today. At issue in these hearings is a law conceived and drafted by Andrea Dworkin and Catharine A. MacKinnon that defines harm done through pornography as a legal injury of sex discrimination warranting civil redress. From the first set of hearings in Minneapolis in 1983 through those before the Massachusetts state legislature in 1992, the witnesses heard here expose the commonplace reality of denigration and sexual subordination due to pornography and refute the widespread notion that pornography is harmless expression that must be protected by the state. Introduced with powerful essays by MacKinnon and Dworkin, these hearings--unabridged and with each word scrupulously verified--constitute a unique record of a conflict over the meaning of democracy itself--a major civil rights struggle for our time and a fundamental crisis in United States constitutional law: Can we sacrifice the lives of women and children to a pornographer's right to free "speech"? Can we allow the First Amendment to shield sexual exploitation and predatory sexual violence? These pages contain all the arguments for protecting pornography--and dramatically document its human cost.

Professor Gail Dines has written about and researched the porn industry for over two decades. She attends industry conferences, interviews producers and performers, and speaks to hundreds of men and women each year about their experience with porn. Students and educators describe her work as “life changing.” In Pornland—the culmination of her life’s work—Dines takes an unflinching look at porn and its affect on our lives. Astonishingly, the average age of first viewing porn is now 11.5 years for boys, and with the advent of the Internet, it’s no surprise that young people are consuming more porn than ever. But, as Dines shows, today’s porn is strikingly different from yesterday’s Playboy. As porn culture has become absorbed into pop culture, a new wave of entrepreneurs are creating porn that is even more hard-core, violent, sexist, and racist. To differentiate their products in a glutted market, producers have created profitable niche products—like teen sex, torture porn, and gonzo—in order to entice a generation of desensitized users. Going from the backstreets to Wall Street, Dines traces the extensive money trail behind this multibillion-dollar industry—one that reaps more profits than the film and music industries combined. Like Big Tobacco—with its powerful lobbying groups and sophisticated business practices—porn companies don’t simply sell products. Rather they influence legislators, partner with mainstream media, and develop new technologies like streaming video for cell phones. Proving that this assembly line of content is actually limiting our sexual freedom, Dines argues that porn’s omnipresence has become a public health concern we can no longer ignore.

Pornography is powerful. Our contemporary culture as been pornified, and it shapes our assumptions about identity, sexuality, the value of women and the nature of relationships. Countless Christian men struggle with the addictive power of porn. But common spiritual approaches of more prayer and accountability groups are often of limited help. In this book neuroscientist and researcher William Struthers explains how pornography affects the male brain and what we can do about it. Because we are embodied beings, viewing pornography changes how the brain works, how we form memories and make attachments. By better understanding the biological realities of our sexual development, we can cultivate healthier sexual perspectives and interpersonal relationships. Struthers exposes false assumptions and casts a vision for a redeemed masculinity, showing how our sexual longings can actually propel us toward sanctification and holiness in our bodies. With insights for both married and single men alike, this book offers hope for freedom from pornography.