Pornography Undermines Unit Readiness

Pornography is perhaps the most prevalent and least talked about topic in society. It is often treated as a harmless personal activity that most people over the age of 13 have at least engaged in once, if they are not regular consumers. However, it is now becoming understood that pornography is chemically addictive in the same way as drugs, tobacco, gaming, and gambling. It changes the way people see, relate to, and interact with others by physically altering the brain’s chemistry. The cumulative effect is a degradation in the quality of intimate relationships, possible erosion of respect shown to other humans, and potential culmination in sexual harassment or assault (SH/A). Therefore, it is very likely to negatively affect unit cohesion. Yet, many service members readily engage in the consumption of pornography while enjoying near-universal cultural approval.

Recently, a former captain in the Marine Corps was sentenced to 35 years confinement for a myriad of profoundly perverse acts that involved a teenage girl whose father was deployed, his own young child, and eventually an infant. His story began like most others, consuming fairly commonplace pornography for decades. As his tolerance grew, the result was catastrophic. While his case is an extreme one, the negative effects of pornography use exist on a spectrum and are detrimental to a force in readiness. With reporting of SA continuing to rise despite considerable effort to curtail it, General Berger concluded that “we still do not fully understand the scope and scale of the issue.”¹ Today the Corps’ most used mechanisms to deal with SH/A are not proactive, but occur post-incident. The Marine Corps should acknowledge the harmful effects of pornography, design small unit training materials to educate the force, and promote treatment for destructive pornography use.

A Personal Problem

The use of pornography has been shown to cause increased social anxiety and decreased connection in relationships, which can culminate in domestic discord and instability. While pornography has existed for some time, the advent of the internet brought anonymous, practically unfettered access to sexually explicit materials in the form of text, images, videos, and even virtual reality to practically anyone who can operate a connected device. As a result, multiple studies have found the average age of people in the United States who are first exposed to pornography on the internet is about 13 years and trending downward.² Because internet pornography use has been found to be addictive, the negative impacts of the habits formed during a pornography user’s early years are likely to confer to future relationships.³ The first problem is the negative feedback loop created when a consumer of pornography uses it to satisfy aspects of a sexual relationship which are best fulfilled with a committed partner. Continued pursuit of instant, virtual gratification comes at the expense of a real relationship and has been shown to be significantly associated to instances of loneliness and depression.⁴ Second, internet delivered pornography offers instant access to sexually explicit material that caters to every desire in ways that a healthy relationship cannot hope to compete with. After exposure to unlimited amounts of the most idealized sexual encounters, the reality of a partner who may not be as interested or objectively attractive can become a disappointment. A final harm of pornography use by one member of a relationship is that it is often held a secret from the other, either wholly or in part, causing disconnection when the secret is inevitably found out. As a result of these factors, internet pornography use has been shown to increase risk of infidelity (also connected to another critical problem: suicide) and decrease self-reports of satisfaction and intimacy in relationships both in and out of marriage.⁵ Such disruptions to personal and family readiness puts the goal of a better prepared force-in-readiness in jeopardy.

A Social Problem

Although they probably do not realize it, consumers of pornography are passively contributing to an industry which exploits the vulnerable in society at a significant scale. Human trafficking has been a focus of international criminal justice for some time, with 25 million people estimated to have been affected in 2020 worldwide. The United States averages several hundred trafficking convictions every year, about half of which involve sex-trafficking. The total size of the domestic problem is thought to be far worse than the Department of Justice’s conviction numbers suggest. In 2018, the United States was ranked as one of the worst places for human trafficking, with estimates on the number of those impacted ranging from tens to hundreds of thousands. In 2019, a single advocacy group identified 14,597 potential sex trafficking victims through its national trafficking hotline. While the connection between sex trafficking and pornography may not at first be apparent, the Trafficking Victims Protection Act’s definition of trafficking’s means as “force, fraud, or coercion” establishes a clear relationship between the two.¹² All three of these elements are regularly used within the pornography industry, leading some experts to conclude that “most pornography is . . . made by slaves.”⁶ Many performers report that violence, substance addiction, public shaming, and threats of suspending income are regularly used as leverage to get and keep them working in the porn industry.⁷ These commonplace methods leave in their wake performers like Linda Marchiano, who testified that, “Virtually every time someone watches [a popular pornographic film], they are watching me being raped.”⁸ While there are performers who are not being exploited, or would not consider themselves so, it is impossible to tell whether supposed actors in pornographic media are trafficking victims or not. Given the high number of documented trafficking victims, the many more estimated undocumented victims, and the ambiguity surrounding the sources of pornographic material found online, it is highly likely that even the casual consumer has—knowingly or not—derived pleasure from a victim of sex trafficking. This should be a matter of much concern to ethical warriors who serve as the defenders of those in need.

A Unit Cohesion Problem

The psychology and physiology of pornography naturally leads to the dehumanization of the subject, usually women, and increased likelihood to commit violence. The central concepts for understanding these tendencies are neuroplasticity and supernormal stimulus. Neuroplasticity essentially means that the brain will re-configure itself to improve performance at whatever a person does or is exposed to repeatedly. Supernormal stimulus describes the phenomenon in which animals and humans prefer novel and fantastic versions of commonplace things when the two are presented at the same time. These concepts combined describe, at the neuronal-level, why the tendency in human consumptive behaviors such as eating and sex is to seek bigger rewards more efficiently and often. Life’s challenges of education, work, raising children, and many other stress-inducing and time-consuming activities set natural limits on basic behaviors such as eating and sexual activity. However, in the age of mass-produced food and pornography, the barriers to indulging in each have lowered to the point that many become harmfully addicted. In the marketing of food, this manifests in increasingly larger servings of soda and French fries at surprisingly low prices. For pornography, it insidiously results in the slow desensitization of a pornography consumer’s mind to increasingly degrading and violent themes.

Over the last 40 years the content of pornography has evolved in a manner consistent with the addictive features of neuroplastic change and supernormal stimuli. Pictures of women in various states of undress in the 1940s have given way to common themes that feature sadomasochism, hate, vengeance, humiliation, coercion, and criminal behavior, all available in every variety imaginable.⁹ In 2010, psychologists analyzed 304 popular pornographic scenes and found that 88.2 percent contained physical aggression and 48.7 percent contained verbal aggression, overwhelmingly against women.¹⁰ When aggressed against, 95.1 percent of females responded either with expressions of pleasure or neutrality. Conversely, only 9.9 percent of scenes contained positive behavior such as kissing, laughing, caressing, or verbal compliments. Most troubling, similar research found that fewer than 5 percent of instances of aggression provoked a negative response from the victim, including flinching and requests to stop.¹¹ Significant exposure to content which does not represent realistic human relationships increases the likelihood of degraded respect among genders at best, and increased likelihood of sexual violence at worst.¹² This has been shown in a study where participants who were exposed to violent sexual films showed significantly less sympathy for a rape victim during a mock trial than did participants who did not view that kind of film.¹³ General David H. Berger described sexual assault as “the most troubling destructive behavior,” calling for additional steps be taken to counter it, such as education in areas such as unconscious bias.¹⁴ The increasing body of research linking pornography use to unacceptable behavior such as SH/A makes raising awareness of the negative effects of porn one such area for education.

Acknowledgement and Education

The Marine Corps can start by publicly acknowledging the dangers of porn and partnering with an organization that specializes in awareness training, such as Brain Heart World. Media that breaks the ice, provides an overview of the topic, and highlights the concerning facts should be developed as the first segment to awareness training. This could be provided to unit leaders at every level to set up a discussion, similar to the way that SH/A bystander awareness training was conducted in 2013. The second segment should have peer groups break off and conduct small unit discussions on the issues and introduce sources of help for those who desire them. Discussion guides would be developed to equip those peer group leaders with the necessary facts and thought-provoking questions to effectively lead those conversations. To tie into established themes, the discussion could be broken down according to Honor, Courage, and Commitment. Pornography can erode the honor and dignity shown to other humans both in and out of our ranks. Resisting the urge and peer pressure to consume pornography requires courage and self-discipline. Lastly, Marines must be committed to improving, not degrading, relationships with spouses, families, and fellow Marines, as well as defending the vulnerable in our society. The third segment should be focused on the slippery slope toward so-called “revenge porn” and consumption of media depicting the mistreatment of minors (article 117a, UCMJ) that regular pornography use can lead to. Unfortunately, Marines convicted by court martial for possession or production of child pornography and wrongful distribution of sexual images is commonplace. Marines must know the pervasiveness of the problem and that most perpetrators of sexual crimes are gradually desensitized starting with “normal” explicit material.

Promoting Treatment

An additional area for improvement is making Marines aware of the availability of treatment for pornography addiction. Although many providers are unfamiliar, Tricare covers addiction counseling services for abuse of all kinds of substances and behaviors, including pornography. One of our authors learned this by chance after a naval medicine provider told him there was nothing they could offer for counseling to quit pornography. An administrator at the naval hospital knew otherwise and connected him with a counseling center in the Camp Lejeune area which was covered by Tricare. Fleet Marine Force medical providers and Marine unit leaders must know that counseling is available to get help to Marines who wish to quit.

The dangers of pornography consumption are clear and increasingly documented in psychology and neurology research. They can affect the personal, social, and professional lives of those who consume it, leading to degraded relationships, loss of personal happiness, and at worst, commission of crimes. It is hard, if not impossible, to quantify the negative impact to unit cohesion caused by degraded views of women depicted in pornography. Yet the psychological research indicates that it does, and likely in ways that do not necessarily manifest in documented SH/A. Furthermore, despite struggling to successfully stem the rising tide of SH/A incidents in the Marine Corps, pornography as a potential contributing factor has received little attention. The service must invest in raising Marine’s awareness of the negative aspects correlated to pornography and the help that is available for those who wish to quit. Doing so will improve the cohesiveness and readiness of the force.

1. Gen David H. Berger, USA, Commandant’s Planning Guidance: 38th Commandant of the Marine Corps (Washington D.C: Headquarters, U.S. Marine Corps, July 2019), 21.
2. Chyng Sun, et. al., “Pornography and The Male Sexual Script: An Analysis Of Consumption And Sexual Relations,” Archives Of Sexual Behavior (2016), 45, 983–994.
3. Todd Love, et al., “Neuroscience of Internet Pornography Addiction: a Review and Update,” Behavioral Sciences, 5, 388–433, (2015); Sesen Negash, et al., “Trading Later Rewards for Current Pleasure: Pornography Consumption and Delay Discounting,” The Journal Of Sex Research (2015), 53(6), 698–700.
4. Vincent C. Yoder, et. al., “Internet Pornography and Loneliness, an Association?” Sexual Addiction and Compulsivity (2007), 12, 1, 19–44; Eileen M. Alexy, et al., “Pornography Use as a Risk Marker for an Aggressive Pattern of Behavior Among Sexually Reactive Children and Adolescents,” Journal of the American Psychiatric Nurses Association, (2009), 14, 6.
5. Amanda Maddox, et al., “Viewing Sexually-Explicit Materials Alone or Together: Associations with Relationship Quality,” Archives of Sexual Behavior (2011), 40, 441–48.
6. Catharine A. MacKinnon, “Pornography as Trafficking,” Michigan Journal for International Law (2005), 26, 4, 995.
7. MacKinnon, “Pornography as Trafficking,”; Melissa Farley et al., “Prostitution and Trafficking in Nine Countries: An Update on Violence and Posttraumatic Stress Disorder,” Journal of Trauma Practice (2003), 2, ¾, 33–74.
8. Catherine A. MacKinnon, Andrea Dworkin, In Harm’s Way, (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1997), 65.
9. Norman Doidge, The Brain That Changes Itself (New York: Penguin, 2007), 76–8.
10. Ana J. Bridges, et al., “Aggression and Sexual Behavior in Best-Selling Pornography Videos: A Content Analysis Update,” Violence Against Women (2010), 16, 10, 1065–1085.
11. Ana J. Bridges, “Pornography’s Effects on Interpersonal Relationships,” in J. Stoner and D. Hughes (eds.), The Social Costs Of Pornography: A Collection Of Papers (Princeton, NJ: Witherspoon Institute), 57–68.
12. Drew Kingston, et al., “Pornography Use and Sexual Aggression: The Impact of Frequency and Type of Pornography Use on Recidivism Among Sexual Offenders,” Aggressive Behavior (2008), 34, 341–51; Nicky Stanley, et al., “Pornography, Sexual Coercion, and Abuse and Sexting in Young People’s Intimate Relationships” Journal of Interpersonal Violence (2018), 33, 19, 2919–2944; Meagan J. Brem, et al., “Problematic Pornography Use and Physical and Sexual Intimate Partner Violence Perpetration Among Men in Batterer Intervention Programs,” Journal of Interpersonal Violence (2021), 36, 12; Eileen M. Alexy, et al., “Pornography Use as a Risk Marker for an Aggressive Pattern of Behavior Among Sexually Reactive Children and Adolescents,” Journal of the American Psychiatric Nurses Association (2009), 14, 6; Shawn Corne, et al., “Women’s Attitudes and Fantasies about Rape as a Function of Early Exposure to Pornography,” Journal of Interpersonal Violence (1992), 7, 4, 454–61.
13. Ana J. Bridges, “Pornography’s Effects on Interpersonal Relationships,” in J. Stoner and D. Hughes (eds.) The Social Costs Of Pornography: A Collection Of Papers (Princeton, NJ: Witherspoon Institute), 57–68.
14. Gen. David H. Berger, USA, Commandant’s Planning Guidance: 38th Commandant of the Marine Corps (Washington D.C: Headquarters, U.S. Marine Corps, July 2019), 21.