Utah’s governor Gary Herbert signed two pieces of legislation aimed to address pornography as a public health crisis, similar to alcohol and tobacco. “This is a fight I believe we can win,” Herbert said at a ceremonial signing. “It’s certainly a fight we ought to have. And certainly the intent here is to raise awareness and understanding about the addictive nature of pornography and the harmful effects that it has on individuals, families and society generally.”
One measure requires computer technicians to report child pornography they discover on the computers of clients. Another claims that pornography has created a “sexually toxic environment”— filling our culture with degradation and harmful images.
According to Wheelock professor Gail Dines, porn is doing more than creating harmful images— it’s destroying healthy notions of sexuality and hurting young men and women in the process. Porn today, Dines says, is an entirely different type of content than ever before. “What we used to consider pornography, a woman smiling in a cornfield with no clothes on, that doesn’t exist anymore,” Dines said in an interview Wednesday with Boston Public Radio. “ Those billions and billions of videos now are basically all hardcore.”
According to Dines, the average age to view porn is now 11 years old, and access to the internet is a big game-changer. When that 11 year old boy searches for “porn” on Google, “He thinks he’s going to see breasts, and he gets catapulted into a world of violence, sexual violence, degradation, and dehumanization,” Dines said. “I think that’s traumatizing our boys, which is why it’s a public health issue.”
Gail Dines is a professor of Sociology and Women's Studies at Wheelock College, she specializes in the study of pornography. Her most recent book is PORNLAND: How Porn has Hijacked our Sexuality. To hear her full interview with Boston Public Radio, click on the audio link above.
