By Patrick B. Craine
MONTREAL, Quebec, December 4, 2009 (LifeSiteNews.com) – New research into the effects of pornography on men from a University of Montreal postdoctoral student has made waves worldwide over the last couple days. The interest stems from the researcher's controversial conclusion that all men consume pornography and that such consumption has a negligible impact on men's sexuality. US family issues expert Dr. Patrick Fagan severely criticized the credibility of this study stating the researcher “knows nothing about statistics. He knows nothing about sampling. So it's not serious.”
“We started our research seeking men in their twenties who had never consumed pornography,” says Simon Louis Lajeunesse in the press release. “We couldn't find any.”
This dearth led Lajeunesse to declare on Wednesday, as reported in the Ottawa Citizen: “Guys who do not watch pornography do not exist.”
Instead, Lajeunesse has recruited and interviewed 20 heterosexual male university students who consume pornography, so as to observe the effects of pornography on their sexuality and on their perceptions of men and women.
“They shared their sexual history starting with their first contact with pornography, which was in early adolescence,” he said. “Not one subject had a pathological sexuality. In fact, all of their sexual practices were quite conventional.”
His research concluded that 90 percent of pornography is consumed on the Internet, while 10 percent comes from video stores. On average, single men watch pornography three times a week for 40 minutes, it determined, and those who are in committed relationships watch it on average 1.7 times a week for 20 minutes.
Further, Lajeunesse reports that most boys seek out pornographic material by the age of 10, when they are most sexually curious. However, he says, they quickly discard what they don't like and find offensive. As adults, they will continue to look for content in tune with their image of sexuality, he says.
According to Lajeunesse, all of the test subjects said they supported “gender equality” and felt “victimized by rhetoric demonizing pornography.” “Pornography hasn't changed their perception of women or their relationship which they all want as harmonious and fulfilling as possible,” says Lajeunesse. “Those who could not live out their fantasy in real life with their partner simply set aside the fantasy. The fantasy is broken in the real world and men don't want their partner to look like a porn star.”
He attempts, additionally, to refute the “perverse” effect that is often attributed to pornography. “Aggressors don't need pornography to be violent and addicts can be addicted to drugs, alcohol, gaming and asocial cases are pathological. If pornography had the impact that many claim it has, you would just have to show heterosexual films to a homosexual to change his sexual orientation.”
Dr. Patrick Fagan, director of the Center for Family and Religion, told LifeSiteNews.com that Lajeunesse's claims “[fly] totally in the face of where all of the literature is leading.” Dr. Fagan, who is also a Senior Fellow with the Family Research Council (FRC), released a major study this week on the devastating effects of pornography, wherein he identified its harms to countless marriages, children, individuals and communities.
“Pornography corrodes the conscience, promotes distrust between husbands and wives and debases untold thousands of young women,” he explained.¡¡ Contrary to Lajeunesse's claim that pornography is essentially harmless, Fagan says that it is “relational and emotional poison.”
“[Lajeunesse] interviewed twenty people,” commented Dr. Fagan. “And for that, he said that 'all men watch pornography.' He clearly is no methodologist. He knows nothing about statistics. He knows nothing about sampling. So it's not serious.”
Fagan admitted that it may be difficult to find men who have never been exposed to pornography, because, he says, “the whole culture's littered with [it].” “There's a big difference between that and men who regularly watch pornography,” he continued, however. “And there's plenty of indications in the literature that there are many men who don't watch pornography.”
Commenting on Lajeunesse's claim that pornography does not lead to sexual pathology, Fagan said, “We don't know anything about the quality of the research that he's done. His definition of sexual pathology – who knows what he is talking about.”
Dr. Fagan indicated that he suspects Lajeunesse's notion of “sexual pathology” is “very different” from those who believe in the “sort of sexuality that's needed for a functioning vibrant, happy, united couple in the marriage pact.”
According to Dr. Fagan's research, many teenagers do explore pornography and “a certain portion [do] get hooked on it.” “Once they get hooked, when it becomes addictive, when it becomes habitual, over time this really changes their whole perception of the sexual,” he said.
He explained some of the pathologies associated with such an addiction. “They think that everybody is engaging in the sorts of sexuality that we see in pornography,” he said. “They think that it's much more common than it is. They themselves begin to see the sexual differently, and expect their sexual relations to be different. This has a huge effect on men who are married ¨C on what they expect from their wives. … They begin to lose sexual interest in their spouse.”
He indicated, further, that there is research being conducted that has found a link between pornography consumption and rape. “The more that young boys watch this stuff and the longer they do it,” he said, “the more likely they are to engage in forced sexual behaviour later on, where they force their girlfriends or their wives into non-consensual sex.”
“This is the press giving a lot of play to something that is very undergraduate-ish, even though he's a tenured professor,” Dr. Fagan said. “This non-study, this trivial thing, flies totally in the face of where all of the literature is leading. He doesn't deserve the space he's being given.”
See related LifeSiteNews.com coverage:
New Major Study Catalogues How Porn Harms Marriages, Children, Communities and Individuals