Corporate Profits Versus Costs of Pornography

The Social Impact of Porn on Youth and Adults Transcends Profits

Nov 27, 2008 Nelson Acquilano

In the 50s and 60s pornography was "soft porn", usually pictures of topless women in enticing and titillating poses. Hard porn was not available or tolerated by society.

Beginning with Hugh Hefner and the development of the Playboy empire, and then Penthouse and Hustler, pornography became a growth industry. It also became crude, rude and vulgar. It became explicit, graphic, sexist and exploitive of women. It also became extremely profitable. Since then, pornography has expanded without restraint, and has now become a primary industry of profit in America. On the internet, the domain name “business.com” recently sold for a record-breaking $7.5 million, but the domain name “sex.com” was valued at $65 million. The pornography industry takes in billions each year.

Size of the Pornography Industry

Worldwide, porn is a 97 billion dollar industry. The United States is a major contributor being the fourth largest producer of porn in the world (Top Ten Reviews, Internet Pornography Statistics, Jerry Ropelato, 2006.)

Pornography is a major profit industry in America. Pornography has grown into a $10 billion business -- bigger than the NFL, the NBA and Major League Baseball combined -- and some of the nation's best-known corporations are quietly sharing the profits (Porn Profits: Corporate America's Secret - Corporate America Is Profiting From Porn - Quietly, ABC Primetime, May 27, 2004.) According to Adult Video News, an estimated 11,000 hard-core porn movies are produced in the United States annually, many of them in California's San Fernando Valley, where modern porn was born. It is known as San Pornando Valley.

Significant Social Costs of Pornography

But there are significant social costs of pornography. Pornography has a negative social impact and contributes to specific psychological damage.

Research shows that pornography leads to sexual addiction. Several researchers have noted that pornography’s effect on the brain mirrors addiction to heroin or crack cocaine. It is no secret that many corporate executives arrive at work at 9 a.m. each day, log onto Internet porn sites, and don’t log off until 5 p.m. Sexual response is rooted in a biochemical basis, and as with drugs can be very addicting. As important though, porn leads to a “sexual callousness” that can lead into a self-centeredness and disregard for others, and ultimately back into diminished sexual satisfaction.

Pornography may also be a great risk factor for youth. Pornographers teach that sex without responsibility is acceptable and desirable, and because pornography encourages sexual expression without responsibility, it endangers children's health (How Pornography Harms Children, Protecting Your Children In Cyberspace, Donna Rice Hughes, September 1998, Protectkids.com.) Researchers show that porn can have a strong effect on teen sexuality, and may contribute to the high incidence of out-of-wedlock births -- nearly four-out-of-ten (Mike Stobbe, AP, Nov 21, 2008), and the fact that 25 percent of teen girls and 48 percent of black girls have a sexually transmitted disease (Centers for Disease Control, March 11, 2008.)

Pornography also affects the psyche of teens, about their beliefs in marriage, their self-esteem, their self-identity, their character, their values, their relationships, even the duration and quality of their family. It can also have a detrimental effect on adult women. Andrea Dworkin, a feminist and civil rights activist once said, “Pornography is the orchestrated destruction of women's bodies and souls ... it is war on women, serial assaults on dignity, identity, and human worth; it is tyranny. Each woman who has survived knows from the experience of her own life that pornography is captivity.”

Pornography: A Weapon of Mass Destruction?

Pornography has contributed to a shift in the American culture, to a promiscuous, free-love culture. This includes a shift to using people for self-gratification, and a prominent shift to sex as a recreational activity.

Yes, pornography is a growth industry and profitable for corporate America. Even government profits through the corporate and personal tax structure. But although the costs of porn are subtle, they are very real and very significant. At the very least pornography has had a slow corrosive effect on all of society. It is the unseen factor, especially for this present generation. So, corporate America needs to rethink a serious question. Does America really need pornography, or is it really a weapon of mass destruction?

For Further Reading

Study Proves That Pornography is Harmful

The Pornography Problem by Elisabeth Deffner

The copyright of the article Corporate Profits Versus Costs of Pornography in Social Corporate Responsibility is owned by Nelson Acquilano. Permission to republish Corporate Profits Versus Costs of Pornography in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.

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