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Authors: Melinda Tankard Reist,Abigail Bray

Tags: #General, #Social Science, #Sociology, #Media Studies, #Pornography

Big Porn Inc: Exposing the Harms of the Global Pornography Industry (19 page)

BOOK: Big Porn Inc: Exposing the Harms of the Global Pornography Industry
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The American Psychiatric Association (APA) is considering adding sex addiction
to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM).
25
As Russell Brand reports (2011): “The United Kingdom’s health service is starting a preliminary project for sex addiction treatment, which experts say, could spark a boom in drug companies repackaging antidepressants and sex-drive-suppressants.” If this were to happen, it would lead to a further explosion in experimental treatments as we have seen for female and male sexual dysfunction (see section 1). John Cloud from
Time Magazine
notes:
APA recognition of sex addiction would create huge revenue streams in the mental-health business. Some wives who know their husbands are porn enthusiasts would force them into treatment. Some husbands who have serial affairs would start to think of themselves not as rakes but as patients (Cloud, 2011).
So why should we be critical of these developments to define pornography use as an illness and medicalise it? The problem is that ordinary men who use pornography in an obsessive way would be turned from ‘perpetrators’ who indulge in watching the degradation of women for their sexual gratification, into ‘sufferers’ who cannot really help themselves – and hence have to be excused, pitied, put on medication and supported. That is, being ‘hooked’ on the misogyny that is pornography – and expecting their partners to perform pornsex – would be excused as a ‘personal’ illness rather than as part of the much bigger problem of women’s continuing subordination in society. ‘Ordinary blokes’ with supposedly ‘ordinary desires’ are let off the hook for indulging in watching other men violating women. Such convenient thinking – followed by an abdication of responsibility by the ‘addicted’ man – is a worrisome development.
The co-dependency Website ‘Porn Addict Hubby’ is illuminating. A female partner is turned into the ‘jailer’ to police every move of her addicted husband or partner:
Albeit an extreme case, let’s look at the example of a German woman who uses a shock collar on her husband to keep him from getting out of bed at night to surf for porn. The husband doesn’t have to take any responsibility for his actions or the consequences of poor job performance due to lack of sleep. The wife says they are willing to do whatever it takes to save their 12-year marriage.
In other words, the acceptance of ‘pornography-as-addiction’ could lead to the reversal of agency so that women rather than men become the problem. “Why can’t you keep me off this stuff? It’s your fault”, a relapsing husband might say. As ‘Porn Addict Hubby’ continues, quite rightly indignant: “How about some accountability
software
26
and boundaries? How about regular men’s support groups and joint counseling?” (<
http://www.pornaddicthubby.com/index.html
>).
Even more problematic are developments in legal cases where pornography ‘addiction’ is cited in an attempt to mitigate the crime of sexual abuse. For example, on 12 April, 2011, in the Victoria County Court, Craig Coleman blamed ‘his sex and pornography addiction’ for violating his 3-year-old daughter with 3 counts of sexual penetration (Lowe, 2011a).
In her judgment on 13 May, 2011, Judge Frances Millane sentenced Coleman to 7 years in prison and ordered him to undergo ‘offense specific’ treatment to ‘contain strong sexual deviancy’ towards female children (Lowe, 2011b). His pregnant wife has since left him and his abused daughter has developed a fear of men, including her grandfather, and is displaying sexual behaviour.
These examples show the need to be extremely wary of jumping on the bandwagon of ‘pornography-as-addiction’. Accepting the medicalisation of yet another area of life gives more power to Big Pharma. As new drugs come on the market for this latest disease, so will experimental treatments with dangerous adverse advents.
But it is the industry, Big Porn Inc, that benefits most from this development. As the number of ‘addicts’ continues to grow (added to by men in treatment programmes who relapse), pornography users will demand new, even stronger gonzo, more risqué pornography. The acceptance of ‘porn-as-illness’ appears to assist some men who genuinely want to free themselves from this soul-destroying predicament through looking for (medical) help. However, I believe we set ourselves up to be further colonised by both Big Porn and Big Pharma.
Any discussion of ‘pornography-as-addiction’ must first and foremost hold the pornography industry accountable for their multi-billion dollar profits from sexual violence and abuse that brings up the question ‘is it an addiction?’ in the first place.
Conclusion
The topics covered in this chapter expose areas where Big Pharma and Big Porn reinforce one another. They are all intense commercial growth areas and rely on exploiting people’s desires – be it for the longest erection, the most alluring body, the ‘personalised’ perfect child, or power and control over the infinite offerings of 24/7 online porn domination of women.
Because they are presented as benevolent relief of suffering (e.g. of sexual problems, of infertility, of ‘addiction’), and are called issues of personal ‘choice’ in a postmodern age where nothing is ‘real’ anymore – and truth does not exist – it can be difficult to uncover the violence of patriarchy and capitalism that is driving Big Porn and Big Pharma. A feminist analysis focusing on the continued subordination of women is crucial if we are to understand how the medicalisation of every aspect of our lives in a culture saturated with pornography is taking away ‘real choices’ when it comes to living in harmony in our bodies – however imperfect they might be.
The global corporations of Big Pharma and Big Porn are reshaping before our eyes what it means to be human. Big Pharma has a long and well-documented history of manufacturing illness in order to sell pills. Feminist writers like Phyllis Chesler were among the first to identify the political investments in the corporate production of illness when she wrote
Women and Madness
in 1972. This radical suspicion is beginning to filter into the mainstream; there are increased critiques of antidepressants and of Ritalin (to drug unruly children), for instance. But the covert, implicitly ideological nexus of Big Pharma and hypersexual Big Porn – as I have exposed it in this chapter – has not received due attention.
Together Big Porn and Big Pharma represent the corporate policing of intimacy. To cling to neoliberal ideologies of ‘choice’ as an explanation for people’s obedience to these limited definitions of ‘a good life’ is to radically underestimate the impact of these multinational corporations on everyday commonsense understandings of health, happiness and well-being. We have to resist being turned into dissociated ‘Chemical Citizens’
27
and being under the spell of cut-and-paste babymakers, cutters with knives, and cutters of words who tell us we are all wowsers and prudes who want to spoil their party of ‘just a bit of fun’. The future of children who grow up in this porn- and pill-saturated world is too important to be left to the laissez-faire ideology of free markets. There has to be real joie de vivre again – not plastic, not porn-infused, not misogynist, not racist, but instead full of possibilities for life-loving everyday politics for all.
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BOOK: Big Porn Inc: Exposing the Harms of the Global Pornography Industry
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