Stop Pornography
After the meeting
Therefore, what?
Step 1:
Talk to your children
Good Pictures, Bad Pictures
Read Good Pictures Bad Pictures (by Kristen A. Jenson M.A. and Gail A. Poyner Ph.D.) with your children.
“Good Pictures Bad Pictures is a comfortable, read-aloud story about a mom and dad who teach their child what pornography is, why it’s dangerous, and how to reject it.” (Podcast with author, here.)
Family Teaching Aids
Family Teaching Aids: Educate Empower Kids offers age appropriate tools and lessons to help educate children about things like positive body image, pornography, grooming etc.
A Parent's Checklist
A Parent’ Checklist: This website is replete with information and tips to empower parents to know what to look out for and help their children learn to avoid pornography exposure and discuss potential previous exposures.
Protecting Young Eyes
Protecting Young Eyes: This website’s tag line is “Defending Kids from On-Line Danger.” It provides resources to parents, churches and schools, including evaluations of on-line parental controls.
Step 2:
Talk to family members and friends
Use some of the questions from the discussion group to guide your conversation. Or, choose some additional questions from this list:
Forming a Bond
What does a person bond with when they view pornography?
Teaching About Relationships
What does porn teach about relationships between men and women?
Contribution and Consequences
What, if any, positive contribution to society is provided by pornography? Should pornography be outlawed? Why, or why not?
Value of Men, Women, and Sexual Relationships
What does porn teach society about the intrinsic value of men, women, and the sexual relationship?
Step 3:
Engage the Broader Community
Raise Awareness
Help to pass legislation making people aware of the porn problem. Support legislators who work to raise awareness and find solutions to the porn epidemic.
Public Health Crisis/Issue
As of May 2019, sixteen states have declared pornography to be a public health crisis/issue. (Arizona, Arkansas, Florida, Idaho, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Missouri, Montana, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, South Dakota, Tennessee, Utah, and Virginia) These declarations are not enforceable by law, but are done to raise awareness and are expressions of concern, support, and action.
Encourage Education
Encourage education on the dangers of porn in our schools, churches and broader community. Work to ensure that public facilities, including libraries, have taken measures to ensure that porn is not readily available on public computers.
Encourage Research, Provide Support
Help to ensure that your community/state is encouraging research and public education on the porn issue, including providing support to those who experience porn addiction.
Block Porn
Encourage internet providers to block porn unless households opt in.
Talking Points-
Pornography
Thirty-six percent of internet content is pornography. One in four internet searches are about porn. There are 40 million (and growing) regular consumers of porn in the US; and around the world, at any given time, 1.7 million users are streaming porn.
Chyng Sun, Professor of Media Studies, New York University, 2017.
After being exposed to pornography, men reported being less satisfied with their partners’ physical appearance, sexual performance, and level of affection and express greater desire for sex without emotional involvement.
More frequent porn viewing was associated with lower sexual satisfaction. The researchers note that under no circumstances was pornography use associated with greater sexual satisfaction.
In regard to the claim that porn is helpful in instructing viewers on sexual pleasure; porn is generally inaccurate and likely to lead to low-quality sex and infrequent orgasm, especially for female partners, as well as one-dimensional, likely unsatisfying sex, for males.
Porn use has been found to influence some users’ sexual preferences, leaving them wanting what they’ve seen on-screen and significantly less satisfied with sex in real life.
Studies suggest the human brain drenched in porn, over time, struggles to distinguish between real life violence and so-called fantasy or entertainment violence. Our tendency to model others’ behavior is strengthened both by repetitive observation and internalized visualization.
Porn use is significantly associated with loneliness. In addition, loneliness was significantly associated with pornography use, suggesting a two-way relationship. Pornography provides temporary relief, but ultimately induces greater feelings of loneliness and isolation, disrupting normal attachment behavior, leading to greater difficulty forming stable, satisfying relationships, and further increasing the likelihood of using pornography as a substitute for intimacy with close others.
A study surveyed 2,120 married adults and found that, overall, the chance of divorce doubled for both men and women who started using porn after getting married – with the association between pornography use and divorce much higher for younger people.
Frequent exposure to pornography is associated with greater risk of developing a negative body image, especially for women. Adult exposure to pornography is connected with rating one’s partner as less attractive.
Prolonged use of pornography produces habituation, boredom, and sexual dissatisfaction among female and male viewers, and is associated with more lenient views of extramarital sexual relations and recreational attitudes toward sex.
A meta-analysis of 33 studies found that exposure to either nonviolent or violent porn increased behavioral aggression, including both violent fantasies and actual violent assaults.
The brain pumps out an increased amount of dopamine in response to things that are new, shocking or surprising.
Use of pornography is the strongest correlate of sexual aggression.
Social Media Resources
Help Spread the Word
Know Your Topic
We are bombarded by information, but who can you believe? Google, SIRI, Alexa, Website A, B or C? In advocacy work, it is imperative to use trustworthy sources of information.
Do some detective work: Who is the author of a white paper or article? Is that person connected to an organization? Does that organization’s website have an “About Us” section? Go there. Review the Board of Directors and Staff resumes/bios. This will give you clues as to the policy and ideological leanings of the writer and the connected website. Take advantage of the “Contact Us” information and note the geographic locale of the entity that has put up the website. Look for dates and signs that the website is current and regularly updated.
Citations, citations, citations. Don’t accept statements at face value; know the origins of all information, statistics and research. This process takes time, but it is worth it. Don’t let misinformation hamper your advocacy and damage your credibility. Learn more about credible sources here.
“To be credible we must be truthful.” Edward R Murrow.