Drumroll: An Academic Journal For Porn Fans

If there were ever a human phenomenon in need of serious objective investigation, Internet porn use is surely it. Never has the youthful human brain been battered with so much erotic novelty during such a critical window of sexual development, and cracks are definitely appearing. However, judging from the board of the upcoming Porn Studies Journal, this particular publication will lack the detachment and expertise to fulfill this critical role.
According to HuffPo:

The journal, which is being published by Routledge starting in 2014, will welcome submissions from fields as diverse as criminology, sociology, labor studies and media studies. According to the New York Times, Porn Studies will focus on pornography as it relates to “the intersection of sexuality, gender, race, class, age and ability.” This is definitely XXX-content for the scholarly set.

There is nothing in the list of proposed topics about the adverse effects of Internet porn on users. In fact, all of the 32 board members for the new journal appear to think porn’s benefits far outweigh its costs.

Imagine a “Dietetics Studies Journal” in the Land of the Obese, whose board consists only of the Chairman of the Board of PepsiCo, the CEOs of Nestle and Pillsbury, and a marketing exec from Kraft, and you have a good feel for the bias of the upcoming journal.

23 of the total 32 board members specialize in media and film studies, which suggests that a better name for the journal would be Porn Film Today. None have extensive background in physiology, neuroscience, adolescent development or addiction. Indeed, a mere 3 of the 32 have PhDs in psychology.

Worse yet, none appear to have any clinical experience with the kinds of issues today’s porn can cause—with the exception of Marty Klein, darling of the Adult Video Network. AVN honored Klein with his own porn star page to show its gratitude.

It should. Klein has repeatedly emphasized porn’s harmlessness. See, for example, his post, Fourteen Ways to Observe Pornography Awareness Week. One of the 14 is, “Memorize this fact: using porn does NOT cause brain damage, erectile dysfunction, or loss of sexual interest in one’s mate.” Brain damage is a red herring — although addiction-related brain changes can be stubborn to reverse. Many self-reports of users, however, document porn-related ED and loss of attraction to real partners (as well as reversal of these symptoms after giving up porn use).

A closer look at the editors and editorial board

The new journal’s board is overwhelmingly composed of artists and theorists who think Internet porn is the greatest thing since the invention of “talkies.” Here’s a sprinkling of the talent the new journal will tap, beginning with its editors, Smith and Attwood.

• Clarissa Smith – In a recent “Intelligence Squared” debate, Smith, representing the pro-porn side, announced that “Pornography is good for us.”
• Fiona Attwood and Clarissa Smith were co-authors of a survey of people who “use and enjoy porn.” Alas, the press then predictably glosses over such limitations, misleading readers that an objective study has concluded that “porn is great.”
• Australian board member Kath Albury, did her own dodgy survey with fellow board member Alan McKee in 2008, funded in part by actual pornography businesses. “The authors claim that the harm of pornography is negligible and is, in any case, outweighed by the expressed pleasure of its users.”
• Alan McKee – “Pornography is actually good for you in many ways.”
• Violet Blue – Blue says you should think of erotica as a tool in a woman’s sexual arsenal. “It can be as reliable as a woman’s vibrator.” (Link not included: NSFW.)
• Meg Barker  – “Most of my research has been conducted within sexual communities, focusing on bisexuality, BDSM, and open non-monogamy.”
• Tristan Taormino – Pornographic film maker and actress, creator of “Rough Sex #2” and “House of Ass,” among others.

Expect this bunch to churn out the erotic equivalent of food studies entitled, “The Life-Enhancing Aspects of Deep-Fried Banana Splits.” Why? Because the Porn Studies Journal board members have made it their mission to accentuate the positive and eliminate the negative, just like the old song advised.

Who is not on the board?

Although many porn users across the web are complaining of severe symptoms from overconsumption of Internet porn, including escalation to extreme material, withdrawal misery, delayed ejaculation and erectile dysfunction, there’s not one behavioral-addiction specialist or urologist among the new journal’s dozens of colorful board members. In fact, it seems likely that this board is so focused on what’s going on between our legs that they will have little use for gathering data on porn’s effects between our ears.

The New York Times announced the new journal in its “Arts” section. However Internet porn that’s wreaking the most havoc today is not about culture, the niceties of erotic film making, or anything that happened before high-speed. It’s about delivery of unending novelty and screens—not sex. It’s about free porn tube sites, that is, multiple open tabs of 3-minute clips of the most explosive segments of countless hi-def videos. It’s about escalation to increasingly taboo (in the user’s view) porn.
Above all, it’s about the effects of this kind of unparalleled brain-training on adolescent brains, and related problems. These including unaccustomed social anxiety, concentration and motivation problems, widespread youthful sexual performance problems and consequent problems using condoms.

Listen for these dubious talking points

One thing is for sure: A journal whose editors will not ask questions that would uncover the symptoms of addiction or sexual conditioning certainly will not find evidence of either. Indeed, judging from the talking points we hear repeatedly from folks on the Porn Studies Journal board, you can expect them to largely ignore the unsettling phenomena in the preceding paragraph in favor of the following distractions:

1. Lots of porn is made by amateurs (or at least made to appear that it is made by amateurs), so we can all disregard the tube-site, gonzo-porn phenomenon.
2. Becoming dependent upon a screen to become aroused is every bit as much “healthy sex” as is human erotic interaction.
3. Sexual minorities can only learn how to have sex by watching Internet porn, so porn access for kids is vital. (However, Austrian film maker Gregor Schmidinger is asking whether early Internet porn use is leading to weak erections among some gay users.)
4. The rise in popularity of so-called ‘Mummy Porn‘, including books such as the Fifty Shades of Grey trilogy, is a step forward for humankind.
5. Telling kids that there is “good porn” and “bad porn” will head off any problems for youthful porn users, a proposal Marty Klein refers to by the euphemism porn literacy.

Basically, this journal seems poised to tell us what we already know: Porn users like porn (at least until it causes life-wrecking symptoms).” If academics survey fraternity parties and yell, “Anyone here like beer?” We hypothesize that the collective response will be an overpowering “Hell yes!” But would such a survey tell us anything about the benefits or harms of binge drinking?

Petition to journal’s publisher

If you would like Routledge (the publisher of the new journal) to instate a more objective board, or, in the alternative, change the new journal’s title to something more accurate, you can sign this petition.
The petition’s creators say,

“It is imperative that a journal titled Porn Studies creates space for critical analyses of porn from diverse and divergent perspectives. Our hope is that you will change the composition of the editorial board, confirm the journal’s commitment to a heterogeneous interrogation of the issues embedded in porn and porn culture, and ensure that diverse perspectives are represented – on the board and also in the essays published in the journal. Failing that, we ask that you change the name to reflect and make evident the bias of its editors (Pro-Porn Studies) and create another journal … (for instance, Critical Porn Studies).”

UK article about new journal