Feminists with Female Sexual Dysfunction

For (belated) Lady Porn Day: What are the experts saying?

February 22 was Lady Porn Day, a blogging event organized by Rachel Rabbit Write. This is the same blogger who, last year, organized “No makeup week.” In this case, “Day” is something of a misnomer, as today is actually the last day of the week-long Lady Porn event. (A good thing, too, considering my recent writer’s block.) In an interview with the Huffington Post, Write said the purpose of Lady Porn Day was to, “Essentially to celebrate porn and masturbation. I’m inviting everyone to talk about their porn experiences, share stories and to ultimately share their porn recommendations. This is about not only opening up a dialog about how porn is good, but also how porn is hard, how it can be an issue for women, in terms of dealing with guilt or body image or their sexuality.”

What’s been on my mind for awhile and has finally been knocked loose by this event is the subject of pornography and sex therapy. I’ve been thinking about this topic because I’m seeing a conflict between sex therapists who embrace pornography as a healthy & valid part of human sexuality vs. those who view it as the source of all kinds of sexual problems. Sex therapy is a possible treatment option for some folks with sexual dysfunctions and problems, so clients could find themselves in the middle of a political, academic & psychological tug-of-war between experts.
I’ll show you what I’m talking about, but with a caveat: you must bear in mind that I myself have not had sex therapy and I have absolutely no desire to do so, to the point where I’m actually quite resistant to sex therapy as a treatment for my dysfunction.

Whether or not sex therapists and sex educators are pro-porn or anti-porn looks to me like it’s largely a function of their own personal politics.

Notable sex educators who have articulated porn-positive arguments include the following:

Dr. Marty Klein is a long-term sex therapist and author who is very much anti-censorship and who consistently defends the use of pornography. He does identify as feminist and is clearly pro-choice; however one theme I’ve noticed in some of Klein’s writing is that he is critical of feminism – or at least, select vocal feminists and feminist groups. Oh well, so am I.
Dr. Leonore Tiefer, a feminist sexologist who is highly critical of female sexual dysfunction and so spearheaded the New View perspective of FSD (a perspective which I myself am highly critical of,) likewise recognizes a valid place for pornography in women’s sexuality.
Jessi Fischer is a sex educator who you may know better as The Sexademic. She recently got into an academic debate about pornography, opposite Gail Dines and Shelley Lubben – two notable anti-porn activists. (Each side of the debate was joined by additional activists, so it wasn’t just Fischer Vs. Dines & Lubben.) The pro-porn side of the debate came out on top – the audience members voted on who made the more convincing argument and decided it was Fischer’s team.
Dr. Carol Queen, sex educator with GoodVibes, wrote a post in favor of porn and Lady Porn Day – which makes sense considering her involvement with instructional & graphic sex videos. Most porn is not for educational purposes, but there’s some out there that is.

Nonetheless, porn-positive activists can be critical of porn. Pornography can, and often does, have problems. Criticisms of porn from sex-positive therapists may consist of something like, “This element is good, that element is neutral, and if you will look over there there, there is the element is the inherently problematic one that needs fixing.” And the element that needs fixing may be something like, the marketing of porn rather than the content itself. A great example of this took place a few weeks ago when actress Nicki Blue elected to film her first vaginal intercourse experience for the pornographic website, kink.com. The initial marketing for Blue’s film shoot was highly exploitative and inaccurate.

But I’ve seen activists, educators and licensed therapists go in the opposite direction too, and come down hard against pornography. Often this stance against pornography is lumped with a warning against sex and masturbation addiction – which is another extremely controversial topic. However, I’ve repeatedly seen more acceptance of the term “Compulsion” instead of “addiction” to describe obsessive sexual behaviors, to the point where such behaviors interfere with someone’s personal or sexual life.

Dr. Mary Anne Layden is a clinical psychotherapist and Director of Education at the Center for Cognitive Therapy, part of the University of Pennsylvania. In 2004, she went before the US Senate to talk about the so-called dangers of pornography. In another interview with the Washington Examiner, she talked about the process of becoming addicted to porn when she said, “There’s always an escalation process. We don’t know what the threshold is, and those with addictive personalities will start it earlier. But I see a lot of people who didn’t show any psychological problems before [viewing porn].”
Jason McClain is a UK therapist who considers himself to be a former porn addict. He runs an organization, Quit Porn Addiction, and now he counsels clients who likewise want to break away from porn.
Dr. Alvin Cooper is a sex therapist and director of the San Jose Marital & Sexuality Center who contributed to a documentary, A Drug Called Pornography. According to the linked synopsis, this film’s thesis is that, “Pornography is an addiction. Its effects on users and their loved ones are just as habit-forming and destructive as heroin, tobacco, or any other addictive agent… The program features disturbing interviews with pornography addicts, many of whom are convicted sex offenders. They talk frankly about how pornography affects their psyches and systems, coloring all their activities and relationships.” And according to this Time article, Cooper also gives seminars about addiction to cybersex.

In addition, Googling search terms such as, “Sex therapy addiction” or “Sex therapy porn” brought up many, many more results for therapists and organizations that prominently feature treating sex and masturbation addiction among their services.

I am confounded, though not surprised, to see that sexuality experts with licenses, teaching jobs and more credibility than me have not come to a unified agreement on porn’s place in sex therapy. It’s not surprising that sex therapists haven’t come to a standard approach on how to deal with pornography, because there’s precedent for a lack of resolution: Pro-and-anti- porn debates in politics, academia and feminism remain unsettled.
But it is confounding, because who am I supposed to believe, and why?

Actually, I have been convinced by the arguments of the porn-positive side. I especially appreciated Violet Blue’s analysis of the for-profit agenda of major anti-porn activists. This analysis, and others like it, also note that anti-porn rhetoric is also often anti-masturbation – a healthy sexual activity. There are numerous other arguments in favor of pornography that I have heard which have contributed to my “Up with porn” POV… the only reason I’m not getting into them right now is because it will take too long to document everything.
Though I’ll also admit that most porn has problems which could and should be handled better (but won’t,) and, like just about any other tool, it can be used for the forces of good or for evil… and everything in between.
(Plus I’ll admit to some potential bias – I have a subscription to a porn site which I regularly check on. I have not noticed any ill effects from doing so…)

So there’s a couple of scenarios with regard to porn use that I envision as potential problems in a sex therapy setting. While I have no experience with sex therapy myself, I nonetheless speculate that these scenarios have probably come up before many, many times in clinical practice. So I would be surprised if practicing therapists and educators didn’t have tools in place to address such situations. How could such conflicts not come up?
The problem is, because so many google search results for “Sex therapy addiction” or “Sex therapy porn” result in facilities looking to treat addiction to porn & masturbation, I am not able to find out what these client-therapist conflict-resolving tools may be. The search results are too bogged down with stuff I’m not looking for. (Little help? Anyone?)

One of my concerns is with regard to pornography and sex therapy is that if you’re entering into a therapeutic relationship with a licensed professional, there’s inherently going to be a power imbalance. The therapist has probably had more exposure to educational materials, which may have their own biases & agendas. You and your therapist are probably going into that relationship with some ideas about pornography to begin with. If there’s a match between your beliefs and your therapist’s, then in terms of personality you may not have a problem, and you may be able to swiftly work out a plan of action. But if you and your therapist have conflicting beliefs about pornography as a tool in your sexuality, then you may have a problem.

So what happens if you are someone with a sexual problem or dysfunction who just happens to have a history of porn use? If you find a sex therapist who is anti-porn, will your previous or current use be zoomed in on as the source of your problems to the exclusion of other contributing factors?

Or what happens if, due to the conflict between you and your therapist re: use of porn in sexuality, you decide to find another therapist? That may be possible, depending on your geographic location. Finding a good therapist may take time and transportation, depending on where you live and what sort of resources are available in your area. Checking my own local area via the American Association of Sexuality Educators and Certified Therapists, I was surprised to find one licensed sex therapist! The next “Local” one, though, would be about 45 minutes away by car – not exactly the worst commute, but certainly not convenient, either. Finding Kink-aware therapists may be another option.
I’d like to imagine that sex therapy may be easier to provide now and in the future though, thanks to technology like Skype, though this is speculation – I do not know if there are any therapists willing to use this remote communication service with clients. But,  hypothetically, if I were very unlucky, then I might be stuck with a therapist I don’t agree with, or no therapist at all.

Basically, for Lady Porn Day, like many bloggers my concern is what happens to the porn users and their partners who are stuck in the middle of it all. This conflict between professionals is unlikely to be resolved  any time soon. The most neutral article about porn use in a relationship was this one from About.com, which says, in the end, “Whether or not pornography will add to or lessen a couple’s sexual enjoyment is up to each couple.”