Home » Attorney General's Commission on Pornography » Part Four » 1. Victimization » II. Adverse Effects » B. Psychological Harm

7. Compulsive Reenactment of Sexual Abuse and inability to Feel Sexual Pleasure Outside of a Context of Dominance and Submission [869]

Part: 
Four
Chapter: 
1

Many witnesses described an inability to engage in healthy sexual relationships, including reports of a seeming need for abuse or unhealthy dominance. One woman whose husband was an avid consumer of pornography testified:

This obsession and addiction did not enrich our sex life. It robbed me of a loving relationship, and our sex life turned to his masturbating with his pornography.[870]

Another witness testified:

My unhealthy concept of sex began when I was a child between the ages of seven and nine. At that time I was introduced to both pictorial and written pornography. This was over fifty-five years ago. My entire concept of what sex was all about came from these materials.[871]

A woman who had been forced to participate in the production and viewing of pornography testified:

So at night in order to go to sleep I would act out scenes in my head of being tortured and I had to practice how to endure extreme pain. This is how I put myself to sleep at nights as a child. As an adult, instead of having to imagine these scenes, John acted out his violent sado-masochistic fantasies on my body.[872]

* * *

I lived with [a man]. One day he told me he had fantasies; fantasies of tying up a woman and using whips. I told him I had the same fantasies. In fact I have been having those fantasies since I was at least twelve or thirteen years old. One of the ways I would put myself to sleep at night as a child was I would run skits through my head and the main character I would act out was me. I was always being hurt.[873]

A former Playboy bunny testified:

My first association with Playboy began in childhood when I found Playboy as well as other pornographic magazines hidden around the house. I have since discovered that a great deal of pornography ends up in the hands of the children. This gave me a distorted image of sexuality. Pornography portrays sex as impersonal and insatiable.[874]

Notes

  1. These described symptoms may be characteristic of Post-traumatic Stress Disorder and Sexual Masochism. See, DSM-III, supra note 762, pp. 238, 274.
  2. Chicago Hearing, Vol. I, p. 154.
  3. Houston Hearing, Vol. II, p. 178BB1.
  4. Washington, D.C., Hearing, Vol. I, p. 230.
  5. Id., pp. 229-30.
  6. Chicago Hearing, Vol. I, p. 312.