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MUSKOKA/PARRY SOUND, Ontario – from www.cottagecountrynow.ca- Increasing pornography in mainstream societies is changing relationships between men and women, according to a researcher and teacher.

Robert Jensen [pictured], professor of journalism and a researcher who has based much of his work on pornography, said science doesn’t have the tools to answer whether or not “saturating a culture with sexually explicit material that routinely objectifies women and often presents sex in the context of male domination” has increased the number of sexual assaults, but said anecdotal evidence suggests it does.

“Both male and female partners in heterosexual relationships report the dramatic effects of addictive-like use of pornography,” he said.

Jensen addressed a group of 72 men and women who work with sexually abused individuals in their jobs at a recent conference for the Domestic Abuse Review Team of Muskoka at the Sherwood Inn.

The presentation was one of four in the two-day conference, which also included sessions on engaging men in change, child sexual exploitation investigations and co-occurring domestic violence, mental health and substance use.

When a man starts engaging in addictive-like habitual pornography, Jensen said it affects his intimate relationship in one of two ways: either he will begin bringing the sexual practices seen in pornography into the relationship or he will check out of an intimate and sexual relationship.

“They’re (women) reporting things like sexualized assaults in the context of domestic violence that they’ve never experienced before and seem to be taken straight out of a pornographic movie,” he said.

Sandy McKeown, a Parry Sound resident who currently works as a residential councillor at Chrysalis in Huntsville, has worked with abused women for 26 years. She has seen the changes the increasing acceptance of porn in mainstream society has had on women.

“It permeates their relationship,” she said.

Pornography is much more talked about when women come to the shelter than it used to be, she said, and plays a role in many of their relationships. Either their male partner wants them to do something they don’t want to or he is threatening to put a video of when they were “loving partners” online to a site such as YouTube, if the woman breaks up with him.

Other men shut down in their relationships when they become heavy porn users, checking out of reality.

It’s the cultural shift that has Jensen particularly worried, the way this generation thinks about sex.

“I’ve talked to young men for instance who have seen so much aggressive pornography that their understanding of what rape is, is from my point of view, extremely distorted,” he said.

“In other words, you will find young men who will acknowledge that they’ve engaged in acts that meet the legal definition of sexual assault, but they don’t see themselves as having committed a sexual assault.”

Speaking to a room filled of mostly women with a few men, Jensen said he didn’t think most people know what pornography looks like, even consumers.
“When you are watching porn for the purpose of being aroused, you don’t really see what’s going on,” he said.

“Pornography is not just sex on film, it is sex in the context of domination and subordination … the domination and subordination is what gives it the kick,” he said.

The two trends in pornography he sees are that it is more mainstream and normalized than ever before, and pornography has become more overtly degrading and cruel to women and more increasingly racist.

He said pornography has the perfect storm of inequalities: patriarchy, a social system based on the presumption of male dominance, and a white supremacist society based on presumptions of the natural dominance of Europeans, and it’s all happening in a capitalist economy that is concerned with maximizing profits.

“Any power inequality you can imagine, I can guarantee you has been sexualized in pornography. That’s the core of the contemporary pornographic mind,” said Jensen.

Recent brain science shows that the brain is very plastic and experiences can change the shape of the brain.

Jensen urges men not to use pornography, which is often considered addictive, as an escape route, saying it has the capacity to rewire the brain of the user.

While not against exploring sex or expressing it through art, Jensen classifies pornography along with stripping and prostitution. Some try to justify porn by saying it’s the woman’s choice, but he said one must consider the complexity of their choices and the fact that most women, especially in prostitution, come from poor families, see it as an economically viable option, and 70 to 99 per cent of them have been sexually assaulted as a child.

The stories women tell you while they are in the business are different than the ones they tell after they leave the industry, he said.

The presentation left some of the 72 attendees with confirmation of what they see in their daily work and others with a new perspective.

Ryan Mosley works for the Huntsville OPP and said he encounters sexual abuse situations at least once a month, sometimes every week. He expects it will help him in some of the sexual abuse situations he encounters.

“I’ve never heard anyone discuss it like this, it’s a very interesting perspective,” he said.

During a question period following the presentation, some asked what can be done about the issue when pornography has an annual profit of $97 billion worldwide each year, larger than most countries GDPs.

Jensen does not foresee a bright future but is hopeful things will change.

“The conditions that make it impossible to address some of these things at the large scale today may not be the same conditions in place tomorrow,” he said.

While waiting for that change, he urged people to commit to work they know is important to help mitigate the suffering around us, engage in activities that help build community, create institutions and networks to keep people of conscience connected to each other, and articulate values that are so easily washed away in a commercial culture.

“I think we have to assume, in the short term at least, we’re not going to push back these forces. We’re going to have to think about it in the long term,” he said.