Let’s Talk Porn | Maria Ahlin | TEDxGöteborg

For me,

porn

is a drug, these words belong to Alex, a young

porn

consumer I interviewed for my co-authored book on how porn affects our health. He was six years old when he first encountered pornography and the images were so powerful, he said. For me, he even had trouble sleeping today, he is 19 and still hasn't been able to quit porn. It's like having periods of sobriety with relapses. He explained that I need increasingly aggressive porn to experience the same effect. Would you think about this society? where our attitudes are not constantly being shaped by porn a society where porn does not set the standard for our sexuality our relationships our attitudes before we have the chance to explore these amazing things for ourselves my favorite sitcom of all time en Friends, if you don't know it and I definitely think you should, is the very popular American television show about six friends who live in New York City in one of the episodes that the two characters Joey and Chandler had by mistake.

Can I add that I got free cable TV? access to porn, oh, happy day, sure, I mean, they were so happy that they did everything in their power to keep that TV on and that made me think what it was about porn back then that made Joey and Chandler They would like to continue watching television in abundance. and what is it about mainstream porn today that is so important that we

talk

about today. Porn is the number one teacher in sex education and if that's the case, it's fair to wonder what curriculum this teacher uses in 2012.

Natalie. Purcell, who has a doctorate in sociology from the University of California, did a content analysis in which he examined more than 100 of the approximately 250 most popular and best-selling porn films and found aggressive, abusive and vulgar acts in almost all of the films. . The analysis also showed how porn since the 70s has become increasingly aggressive and humiliating and at the end of the period analyzed, which was the 2000s, acts such as gagging at ATMs, double penetration and even suffocation were included in almost all movies, now ATMs are not the money making machine. It's actually an act called ass to mouth, which means the penis first enters the anus and then goes directly to the mouth and gagging is an act where the penis goes so far into the throat that basically your Gag reflexes will begin to activate.

It wasn't until the 2000s, when these acts were largely introduced into mainstream pornography, 20 years earlier, that it was basically unheard of in another interesting study, this one dating back to 2005, by Anna Bridget and her associates, which analyzed a random sample of 50 of the 275 most sold and rented port movies in the US from December 2004 to June 2005, then they added these 50 movies, then they randomly selected 304 scenes and analyzed them and this is what they found : Approximately 9 out of 10 scenes contained physical aggression, now physical. aggression was mainly defined as gagging, remember penis in throat, slapping and even hair pulling, among other things, also about 5 out of 10 scenes contained verbal aggression, which was later defined mainly as name calling, where the most common names that were used were and the majority of The people who were exposed to this aggression were women and what was their typical response to this aggression.

You think almost everyone reacted positively or neutrally, almost never negatively. Let's apply this to everyday life. Let's say I gave you a gentle caress. cheek would probably see a smile on your face if I had slapped you instead maybe you wouldn't be so happy with me right? Yes, I would assume that it is important that the typical response to aggression is precisely the opposite of what you would otherwise expect in real life. In real life you will be mad at me for slapping you, but it is important that you remain neutral or even complain and ask for more. , we just have to stop here for a second and consider the message that this is sending what pressure what norms what standards are created from this.

I once met a guy who shared his concerns that his girlfriend never screamed or moaned like they do in porn and he asked me: What am I doing wrong? and then he says, "You know what," maybe he should try to strangle her. she'll probably enjoy it, that was my reaction too. Yes, I have been educating on this topic for about 10 years. I met five and six year old boys who stumbled upon pornography and I met girls who compared themselves to others. Too often, the extreme standards set by porn think that they are not good enough, not pretty enough, not sexy enough.

I've met teens who binge-watch porn on a regular basis and do everything in their power to quit, often without success, and I've met guys who are very eager to please. and they want to perform as much as they do in porn and when they don't receive the typical porn response from their partner in bed, many of them blame themselves for not being able to perform sexually. I was right in the middle of a

talk

about porn when a mom raised her hand and stood up, grabbed the microphone and said that the other day my eight year old son ran out of his room crying hysterically, at first the boy had refused To tell his parents what had happened, he did.

He didn't want to talk about it, but eventually it became clear that he would stumble upon pornography, but it wasn't so much the actual pornography he had seen that bothered him. He was crying because he thought this thing I just saw was important. My mom and dad make each other in bed. More than 50 years of research has shown us what pornography causes. First, pornography can produce attitudes that then trivialize sexual assault. Research demonstrates a strong link between pornography consumption and sexually aggressive acts. assault and here's the thing, even pornography that is not aggressive can have these effects on our attitudes due to the fact that every time a person in porn is being dehumanized that is when the change in attitudes occurs, I mean are we understanding this?

This is actually what pornography does. can do to us now, not everyone who consumes pornography, of course, is going to go out and sexually assault someone, that's not what we're saying here, but the fact is that for an alarming number of sex offenders, pornography was a trigger that led them to be less sensitive to sexual assault this isn't rocket science this is basic human psychology what we often see what we get used to let's go back to joey and chandler for a second my favorite comedy friends what was going on inside of their brains that made them so eager to keep that television on, neuroscientists have discovered that pornography hijacks the reward pathway in the brain and can become a compulsive behavior with addictive qualities in 2014, Dr.

Valerie Voon and I think This must be mentioned before the debris. She is a world authority on addiction as well. The lead researcher from the department of neuroscience at the University of Cambridge, published her long-awaited study, a study that provided groundbreaking results on how watching pornography affects the brain and the study showed how compulsive porn users have real similarities on several levels with drug addicts, the image you see here is an illustration of a brain scan image showing the brain activity of healthy volunteers when shown pornography versus compulsive users and as you can see, when compulsive users were shown pornography, their response was much greater, indicating that they were both more triggered by the pornography they were shown and that they also experienced a greater need for pornography, so the compulsive users had a greater desire for pornography, but still did not have a debunking the myth that those who are compulsive users of pornography must simply be people with a higher sexual desire who also have a warning about something but don't like it is a finding which really fits like a glove with the current definition of addiction that the facts are beginning to.

They are piling up and if you ask me, it's just a matter of time and research before porn addiction is formally recognized, but until then we need to keep listening to those who are brave enough to share their stories with us, okay, so I think you would agree with To me, we definitely have a challenge here, I mean, we have unlimited 24/7 access to physically verbally aggressive material that clearly has an impact on our attitudes, relationships, sexuality, intimacy, possibly even causing addiction, therefore we must act now, we must act quickly if I want to change this because as of now this train is going in the wrong direction, do you want a solution?

Yes, I can feel it. I mean, I really think it's very important that we talk about porn. It is good that education is one of our main strategies. We are going to start the conversation about pornography, we are going to talk to our students, children, colleagues, teachers, family members, neighbors, whoever wants to listen to us, we must include a critical discussion about pornography in schools, in workplaces, in locker rooms, just as we disrupted the idea that smoking was simply harmless and social, and just as we are teaching critical thinking about media and advertising, we are going to disrupt old ideas and beliefs about pornography and begin to teach critical thinking about it with education and conversations that create awareness that we are going to equip the next generation with a mindset that will not make them easy targets.

I sat down with a father who wanted to share his best advice on how to talk to your child about pornography. Well, he said you have to do it first. Make sure the conversation you're having happens while you're driving your car, okay, so you're driving and your son is next to you first, you don't have to look directly at each other, that helps, and second of all, he leaves and almost like he whispered and said his son can't go anywhere, whatever works well, obviously, just having a conversation about porn, even if you know that really awesome car conversation isn't going to solve everything, this It's not a small problem, so no, you know a quick fix.

There are solutions, but I think by teaching critical thinking and a critical mindset, we're off to a good start and now if you're wondering if this educational strategy really works, I want to show you a message we received on Instagram just a couple of weeks ago about changing attitudes and changing attitudes is a youth organization where I am executive director and we basically educate on this topic. Now let me read this to you because it's pretty impressive. I would just like to thank you. you for being a contributing factor in me quitting porn completely. I've been free from porn for two months and I feel much better than before.

Also, I feel like I'm no longer contributing to an offensive and disgusting industry, how wonderful that is. To me, this is what it's all about, yeah, what do you think of this? A society based on equality based on consent based on sexual health where we can explore and where we can be curious and where we can decide what we want. We want what we think is sexy, what turns us on, but to get there we need to start the conversation about porn. Now we need to anchor ourselves in the research statistics, the science, the real-life stories.

For too long, the health consequences generated by pornography have been more or less complete. ignored but it's time we changed that's why I leave you with this how are you going to talk about pornography? Thank you so much.