Speaker explores porn prevalence at colleges

This past Monday, Feb. 13, Tech hosted Michael Leahy and his multimedia presentation Porn Nation—The Naked Truth. Campus organizations such as Campus Crusade for Christ (CCC), the Interfraternity Council and the Women’s Resource Center sponsored the event.

The groups arranged the program as a way “to inform students about how [porn] affects your life [and] really talk about the consequences,” said Marti Sanders, a full-time CCC staff member.

Leahy has recovered from what he calls a “35-year relationship with pornography,” which cost him a 15-year marriage, his relationship with his two children and his business partner.

The Atlanta native has visited around 50 campuses in the United States and Canada before bringing his program to Tech.

Although sidewalk chalkings and posters for Porn Nation made the event seem like a giant sex-fest, it was really about how sexual addiction can affect a person.

The main question Leahy wanted to answer was “How does porn affect us as individuals in the way we view ourselves” and the way others view us?

He addressed this question with a combination of prepared video segments and personal testimony about his own problem with pornography.

The presentation started with a video of students around the country sharing their thoughts on porn, such as “It’s better than unsafe sex.” When asked how many people they thought used porn, the interviewees responded anywhere between 30 and 99%.

Leahy came on stage and opened with some background information about the porn industry. It is a $57 billion a year business—200 new adult websites open every day, there are more adult bookstores in the U.S. than McDonald’ses by a two to one ratio and the industry releases around 11,000 videos a year, compared to 400 or 500 Hollywood titles released in the same period of time.

According to Leahy, the definition of pornography is “any material designed with the express purpose of arousing you sexually;” while it is “the result of a creative process,” it lacks artistic value.

Many things that were once considered pornographic are now commonplace; advertisers use sex as a tool to sell products, and because television is most people’s primary information source, the increasing sexualization of television affects culture. Teenagers see an average of 14,000 sexual images or messages every year.

His story is a sad one. He was first exposed to porn at the age of 11, when he saw another child’s pack of playing cards adorned with topless women.

He said that he liked it but had an opposing feeling to it; like most people, he decided to keep it a secret. This was the beginning of 35 years of keeping his secret.

“It was more than a sideline thing or a novelty,” Leahy said. “It was a relationship.” Because of his addiction to porn, dating became a game to Leahy; the object was to get as far as he could with women, who he saw as sex objects.

At the base of his addiction, he said, was a flawed belief system, which is what most counselors say. Leahy developed what he calls “sex syndrome,” which is a “pathological state.”

Continued exposure to pornographic material causes an inverse ability to experience real intimacy, Leahy said.

This portion of the program was perhaps the most fascinating. Leahy called the brain “the largest sex organ in our body.”

According to Leahy, sex syndrome leads to the replacement of dopamine, which is a chemical related to pleasure, with the chemical oxytocin, which is released in nursing mothers and when people hug their relatives.

The body builds a tolerance to dopamine because of continued and increased exposure to porn; the user needs to find more and more arousing images to get the same “high,” just like any other addiction. They eventually have to pursue it to feel normal instead of to feel the “rush.”

For a presentation aimed at college students, Porn Nation focused very little on the effects of porn on the intended, assembled audience. Leahy did briefly mention his online survey for college students at mysexsurvey.com.

Two thirds of the 12,000 students that have responded to his survey nationwide said that they are often preoccupied with “sexual or romantic fantasies.” How many of those students are among the 18 to 20 million sexually addicted Americans though?

Leahy had a four-minute break worked into the program to allow those who wished to leave before the last section of the program, which involved his spiritual beliefs, to exit.

He spoke at length about how finding God changed his life; the final video was also about this theme.

Porn Nation was a well-integrated mix of personal testimony and informative video. The videos were full of testimonies, including those of former sex addicts, a former Playboy playmate, a former prostitute and several counselors.

Overall student response to the program was positive. “I have a lot of friends who invited me,” said Rob Poppell, first-year Architecture major.

He was “interested in what the speaker had to say, [because] I know porn is a growing problem.” So how was the program? “It was awesome,” he said.

Ben Perry, a first-year Computer Engineering major, came to the program “as a bible study event.” He thought it was “informative” and “stressed the importance of keeping the negativity out of your life.”

Civil Engineering graduate student Kennan Crane also thought it was “a really cool presentation.” It “really portrayed some non-religious aspects porn has on our culture” in a “non-confrontational” way.

Porn Nation “made the issue available to people who otherwise wouldn’t ask questions about it,” said Christy Crane.