Pornography: The monstrous evil

Dr Dharmakanta Kumbhakar

(The writer can be reached at drkdharmakanta@yahoo.com)

Just a few decades ago, pornography was something that was, for most people, hard to come by. Even for someone growing up in a city like Guwahati in the 1980s and 1990s, pornography was still a faraway thing. There were a few book shops at Panbazar where a very few so-called adult magazines were available, but those were bought only by the adults. For most people, pornography was the dark side of society, rarely talked about. Over the last few decades, our society has changed significantly due to globalization. The most striking change is the sexualisation of our society. Today, the sexualisation of our society has brought pornography everywhere. We live in a society that is almost completely awash in pornography. Most of the bookshops are full of such magazines. Telephone-based pornography is available nowadays. We don't have to go out to find porn videos and images. It comes to us, to our home, with complete privacy. Porn websites are free on the internet. Porn stories are available on the web. Anyone and everyone can have access to online porn videos and images on their computers, laptops and smartphones anywhere. Even children and women enjoy porn nowadays almost as much as adult men.

Pornography is a problem that is causing immense harm to our society. It's cancer in our society. Like cancer, pornography doesn't kill quickly, but eventually, it will kill us. It's ruining a major section of society. The victims of pornography are everywhere. Women and children are most affected by pornography. Today, women are objectified as never before. Pornography is training men and women to use each other, rather than love each other. It's divorcing sex from love, relationships and self-sacrificial service. And it is addictive. Pornography addiction is ruining families, harming children, increasing prostitution and spreading sexually transmitted diseases (including AIDS) in society. It's also linked with increasing incidences of sexual harassment, on-the-job sexual harassment, sexual assaults and rape, sexual exploitation of children, sexual homicides, sexual trafficking and violent sex crimes in the present society. Pornography addiction also increases the number of sex offenders in society. This behaviour frequently grows into a sexual addiction which the victims fail to dissociate from. No matter what the negative consequences are, the victims are finding it difficult to stay away from it.

Pornography addiction causes immense harm to families in a number of ways. It can destroy a family by ruining marriage. It is usually the men who become addicted to pornography. The porn-addicted husband may lose sexual interest in his wife; he may act out his perverse or violent porn-fuelled fantasies with his spouse, or he may choose instead to act out with prostitutes. This may spread sexually transmitted diseases to the family. He may also spend thousands of rupees feeding his addiction. Sometimes the wife may be addicted also to pornography. She may lose sexual interest in her husband. These can destroy a marriage. Even if the addiction doesn't destroy a marriage, it can cause the innocent spouse great pain. Children are also harmed when addiction to pornography ruins their parents' marriages. Child sexual abuse becomes a concern when adults' interest in pornography includes teens, incest or child pornography. Pornography addiction destroys the sexual lives of many young men and women. There are so many of today's youth and young adults who view porn videos on a regular basis. There is evidence that many young men/women would prefer to masturbate in front of computers/smartphones than to spend time with a young woman/man. This will have a deleterious effect on their ability to make a marriage work and even their willingness to enter into a marriage.

The children may see such videos and images when the parents view them or may find them on parents' computers, laptops or smartphones. And with the advent of the internet, children are being exposed to online porn videos and images at an earlier age and to more extreme content. Most exposure begins when children are between the ages of 13 to 18 years. This early exposure to pornography can lead to an addiction that twists and deforms a child's normal development, destroying their innocence. Apart from sexual addiction, children are also harmed when they receive misplaced sex education from viewing pornography, which depicts promiscuous, perverse, degrading and violent sexual behaviours. They grow up with a distorted and evil understanding of sex. The female children can get the wrong ideas from pornography. Children are harmed when they are sexually abused by other children or adults who imitate the behaviour that they viewed in pornography. They are also harmed when they are deceived by pornography into thinking that it is correct to send photos or videos to others, that they have taken of themselves while being nude or partially nude or while engaging in sexual conduct. Children are harmed when their addiction to pornography follows them into adulthood and prevents or ruins their marriages, costs them their jobs, or contributes to making them, sex offenders.

Pornography is one of the greatest evils to ever afflict a society. Without a doubt, porn is killing us. What can be done about it? We need to fight against pornography. We need to acknowledge its pervasiveness in our society. Studies show that if people can be kept away from pornography until they are fully developed, say, in their mid-20s, their likelihood of ever using it is immensely reduced. The addiction rates for those who are not exposed to pornography as children are very low. Parents must take the necessary steps to keep their kids away from pornography. The Government must take the necessary steps to maintain a decent society as its citizen have the right to live and raise their children in a decent society. Pornography addiction is one such issue and reducing the supply through enforcement of obscenity laws will help reduce addiction. Enforcement of obscenity laws will also send the message that pornography is a moral evil. In particular, children and young adults need to hear that message. Moreover, there is a need for professional counselling to help deal with pornography addiction. We need all the help that we can get to deal with this major social problem.