Introduction
Pornography is the act of portraying matters concerning sex in order to have a sexual excitement or sexual arousal. Pornography takes the various forms of media such as books, videos, films, magazines, postcards, photos, sculpture, drawing, painting, animation, sound recording and video games.
This paper will highlight the major impact of pornography to marriage and family as well as children lives. With reference to the article by Dines (2010) “Porn has hijacked sexuality and is destroying men”, men are found to be much addicted with pornography than women hence according to research it has highly caused a great impact on marriages and family lives.
Therefore, the major area of concern will be the effects of pornography addiction and how it has had a great danger to marriage and family lives. Arakawa, Flanders and Hatfield (2011) noted that “pornography both creates and perpetuates gender inequality through promoting a sexist ideology and discriminatory practices against women” (para. 6).
This is because a man who watches pornography ends up taking women as an object of sexual gratification and makes them inferior to men. He devalues women in marriage and exploits them. This denies them their civil rights as women since they are incapable of forming connected and intimate relationships.
This enhances further discrimination of women in the society to the extent of denying their rights of freedom even in employment, property and even in education.
All this is as a result of less emotional attachment and interest loss of sexual intercourse of men to their wives that make the women feel upset and discriminated. As a result, differences may arise in marriage leading to divorce.
Effects of watching pornography and addiction
According to the article by Manning (2009) entitled “impact of internet pornography on marriage and family,” pornography has a great impact to marriage and family life especially to those who get married to men who are addicted by pornography.
He also adds that since the introduction of internet, families, couples and individuals, irrespective of age, have been affected by pornography. In his study, Manning (2009) says that as far as pornography study is concerned, a major focus is on men because they make the greatest percentage of the pornography consumers.
There are major, devastating effects that arise as a result of couples engaging themselves in pornography. First, pornography leads to decreased sexual satisfaction for married people. Long term exposure to pornographic materials leads to men and women reducing their sexual desire hence they end up not satisfying each other.
This leads to endless differences in marriage resulting to lack of peace marriages that in turn can cause divorce. The men who are already addicted with pornography will not be satisfied with their spouse’s affection, sexual performance, physical appearance and sexual curiosity simply because they are better satisfied by pornographic materials that their partners.
Secondly, pornography reduces sexual intimacy between married people. Sex is a basic need for marriage companions and thus there should be any problems in fulfilling the sexual desire for each other. This has a high potential of resulting to separation or divorce.
Any of the two spouses involved in pornography will not feel the need for having sex with his or her partner. This is because the ability to get sexual attraction to his or her spouse has already been eroded by the addiction to pornography.
The partner who is affected feels hurt, angry, sexually rejected, and inadequate; therefore, the marital bond is made weak (Manning, 2009).
Thirdly, pornography is the major cause of marital distress with most of the married women. If the men are unable to fulfill the desires of their spouses, their women will end up being distressed. This is because they will feel discriminated and they will lack peace with their spouses.
Therefore, it is advisable to understand each other and get to know each other’s weaknesses and strengths before getting married. This will enable individuals to avoid hurting each other, and this will also reduce cases of divorce and separation common in the society.
Fourth, pornography is a path that automatically leads to infidelity in marriage where one of the spouses is cheated on sexual issues. This results in the violations related to the aspect of sexual exclusivity that is the pillar of any marriage.
Infidelity is a great threat to marital bond because it usually violates the marriage agreement between the two as well as betraying the trust in marriage. Women have reported feelings of mistrust, loss of love from their husbands, and severe anger in marriages due to such case.
In turn, this has led to most of the divorce cases in marriages. Again, pornography is a major failure of respect in married couples within the society. A man who has been involved in pornography will never respect other women including his wife.
He will always look down upon his wife thus makes the wife loose the sense and happiness in marriage. This has led to most broken marriages in the society (Benjamin and Tlusten, 2010).
In his article “Sex in America Online: An Exploration of Sex, Marital Status, and Sexual Identity in Internet Sex Seeking and Its Impacts,” Albright (2008) also has a negative altitude towards pornography in some way. He says that pornography has great impacts to both men and women who over rely on such.
However, men have been found to be highly susceptible to pornography addiction and all other sex seeking behaviors compared to women. He adds to this and says that pornography gives a negative self image to the people who are addicted by it which mostly occur to women.
In addition, partners who watch pornography or spend much time on it, become more critical about their bodies. It has also been explained that pornography causes people to have pressure to perform things in relation to sexual matters that they watch in pornography (Albright, 2008).
In addition, Albright (2008) further says that men become very critical about the bodies of their partners as well as developing low interest towards performing the real sex. It has also been depicted that a good percentage of the women who go for online sex end up been involved in the real sex.
This has led to many cases of pre marital sex among the ladies. Albright also adds that pornography has a great impact to men because it consumes a good period for most of the male consumers, their effort and energy hence finally they become depressed and anxious and most of the problems with felt intimacy with their friends.
Albright depicts that most of those who engage in sexual matters online end up getting involved in risky sexual behaviors like having many sexual partners, getting involved in anal sex and being more exposed to partners who are HIV positive.
Becker, Galbreath and Cooper (2004) in their model on “sex on the internet” also depicts that there are many problems that are developed by most people who concentrate on online sex. They further discovered that most men who are addicted to the online sexual activities end up substituting real sex with the online sex.
Therefore, they cannot fulfill the sexual desires of their partners. It has been noted that men with an addiction to sexual activities over the internet end up wasting their time on internet sexual activities.
In turn, this has affected their personal, social and recreational aspects of their lives. The online sex has also been known to lead to masturbation among men.
Therefore, such behavior may affect marriage life. There are also some reported cases of great desires for participation on sexual activities for men than they would do on real time (Becker, Galbreath and Cooper, 2004).
Attwood (2005) says that the effect of media pornography functions on an individual in a variety of ways depending on the context. On this discussion, he says that, media pornography can be a source of sexual knowledge to those who watch or listen.
Also, this can give resources to improve intimacy practices; can also be an occasion where people can perform gender and sexuality; and can also serve as a necessary site for the construction of one’s identity (Attwood, 2005). Research that has been done by Attwood (2005) in the article shows that pornography has brought much of the discrimination of the female gender.
He also adds that pornography has led to cases of prostitution, intimidation, violence as well as child abuse in the society. A detailed study of pornography by Attwood (2005) also explains that pornography has led to the emergence of a culture that encourages lots of sexual assaults and abuse.
In most cases, this is exhibited in women and the reported rape cases involving young children. He also adds that pornography has resulted to misinterpretation of what sex is because most of the men thought that what they saw is not a reality (Benjamin and Tlusten, 2010).
According to their article “exploring actor and partner correlates of sexual satisfaction among married couples,” Yucel and Gassanov (2010) developed a model to identify the relationship between pornography and other sexual and marital problems.
They came up with a conclusion that there is a correlation between addiction to pornography and infidelity. In addition, they said that premarital sex is high in the people who are addicted to pornographic materials. They also opined that cohabitation is high among couples who use pornography regularly (Yucel and Gassanov, 2010).
Stack, Wasserman and Kern (2004) also discovered that pornography is a major cause of unhappy marriages. They also added that most people involved in pornography have become very weak in religion. According to them pornography has led to hypersexual disorders.
On the other hand, pornography has been found to have some positive effects from the research carried out by some of the researchers. Most of the authors have come up with concrete reasons to explain why pornography is beneficial to most couples.
For example, the research done by Stack, Wasserman, and Kern (2004) explains that pornography has many economic benefits. They made a suggestion that the increased number of video rental has tremendously increased. This has led to increased economic benefits to the rental owners and the economy at large.
Also, the authors Arakawa, Flanders and Hatfield (2011) in their article also support the idea that pornography is beneficial after conducting their study. They opined that cross-cultural study pornography has been said to help both men and women.
They say that pornography has been found to be beneficial to married couples. This is because it helps them satisfy one another sexually and meet their sexual desires. They also added that married men and women gain better skills of satisfying their partners hence strengthening the marriage bond and sustaining the marriage covenant.
Albright (2008) also supported the idea. He argued that though negative effects have been realized with pornography, some of the researchers view it in a positive light. Some researchers see pornography as very important in fulfilling some significant sexual needs for married couples.
He also adds that pornography is advantageous to men because in increases the male bonding and sexual stimulations. He also says that it makes most of the men feel good in their lives.
Pornography and Marriage
It has also been established that pornography creates problems in marriages because it causes cohabitation. In addition, pornography causes premarital sex, especially to young people who have not yet been involved in marriage agreements.
It has led to most of the marriage divorces because of the failure to satisfy sexual desires. Pornography has also had a great impact to women. This is because it has caused sexual abuse and sexual assaults to most women, as well as increasing discrimination rates for women. Research also says that pornography causes devaluation of women by the men hence loss of interest in sex.
It has also been discovered that pornography has led to most unhappy marriages. Also, most people who over rely on it becoming weak in religion. It has been the major cause of lack of peace in most of the families because of intimacy between the couples.
Despite the many negative impacts of pornography, some benefits are accrued from it for instance; pornography brings income to video rentals, owners of cyber cafes and those selling such materials.
It is also said to be the cause sexual stimulation in married couples hence this has been advantageous to married couples. In addition, research says that it makes most of the men feel good in their lives and increase the male bonding.
Conclusion
From the research carried out on effects of pornography, it is important to mention that pornography has affected a large number of people negatively; mostly for married couples and teenagers. Despite the negative impacts discussed on pornography, there are also positive impacts resulting from the same.
However, it is evident that the arguments against pornography are far much more than the arguments in support of the same. Therefore, it is important to conclude that pornography is not good at all and should not be encouraged in the current society because it has had much devastating impacts.
Also, a detailed study on this issue shows that pornography should not be encouraged for growing children. This is because it can end up causing them either not to marry or bring great danger to the marriage life once they get married.
This has been portrayed worldwide by many women who get married to men who are either addicted to pornography or like watching pornography. It is from this evidence that I wish to recommend that pornography should be banned in the society.
Legal entities should enact laws to prevent pornography. The non-governmental organizations should also help in the elimination of this bad social behavior.
References List
Albright, J. M. (2008). Sex in America Online: An Exploration of Sex, Marital Status, and Sexual Identity in Internet Sex Seeking and Its Impacts. Journal of Sex Research, 45(2), 175-186.
Arakawa, D.R., Flanders, C. and Hatfield, E. (2011). Are variations in gender equality evident in pornography? Web.
Attwood, F. (2005). What do people do with porn? Qualitative research into the consumption, use, and experience of pornography and other sexually explicit media. Sexuality & Culture, 9(2), 65-86.
Becker, A.M., Galbreath, N. and Cooper, A. (2004). Sex on the Internet: Furthering Our Understanding of Men with Online Sexual Problems. Psychology of Addictive Behaviors, 18(3), 223-230.
Benjamin, O. and Tlusten, D. (2010). Intimacy and/or degradation: Heterosexual images of togetherness and women’s embracement of pornography. Sexualities 13: 599-623
Dines, G. (2010). “Porn has hijacked sexuality and is destroying men”. National Times. Web.
Manning, J.C. (2006). The Impact of Internet Pornography on Marriage and the Family: A Review of the Research. Sexual Addiction & Compulsivity, 13(2/3), 131-1.
Stack, S., Wasserman, I. & Kern, R. (2004). Adult Social Bonds and Use of Internet Pornography. Social Science Quarterly, 85(1), 75-88.
Yucel, D. & Gassanov, M.A. (2010). Exploring actor and partner correlates of sexual satisfaction among married couples. Social Science Research, 39(5), 725-738.