I agree with you that the church addresses this problem largely among the priesthood members. And, to their credit, it is a problem that affects more men than women. However, I also agree with you that it is not addressed among the sisters of our church. Here are some reasons that I believe might contribute to this:

• It’s impossible for the Church to address every problem that arises for its members. I believe that they do their best to follow major trends and try to address these as they come up. There are so many different problems that surround the area of sexuality, I’m sure it’s difficult to address.
• A major trend that has been a very real issue for the women of the Church of late is the rising frequency of clinical depression. I have noticed that the talks directed towards the sisters focus more on self-acceptance, not running faster than we have strength, self-esteem, etc. I’m sure that although the leaders recognize that there are inappropriate behaviors that women are engaging in, they would rather not add one more thing to the “guilt tank” LDS women are already dealing with.
• I agree with you that in our culture in general (not just LDS) we tend to think of men as being more sexual than women. This is actually not the case at all. Our sexual templates (what turns us on) and drives may differ, but all human beings are sexual. I also agree that because of these perceptions, we tend to be surprised or excessively judgemental when we hear that a woman could be a sex addict or enjoys looking at pornography. Even women who have a higher libido than their husbands can be left feeling “weird” or inadequate. This is an area we need to become more comfortable addressing.

It’s important to remember that pornographic use does not automatically translate into pornographic addiction. Those who struggle with sex or pornographic addiction have a high likelihood of sexual trauma in their past. Remembering this can help us as members be more empathetic and understanding when these issues come up.

It is also important to be aware that some women who look at pornography do so because they feel pressured to so by their spouses as a way to liven up their sexual lives or legitimately enjoy seeing their spouses excited by the pornography. Therefore for these people, the use of pornography has more to do with the spouse than with their own desires. My findings have been that although this can create a sense of false intimacy at first, it is exactly that: false intimacy. And it then becomes a harder task to go back and recreate the true intimacy that couples want in their sexual relationships.

It is paramount for us as members to become educated about our sexual & cultural surroundings, relevant statistics, and negative trends so that we are better able to educate our children and react appropriately to friends and other members within our stakes and wards. We cannot always rely on the Church to do all of this for us.

MM readers:

What is your take on this question?  Should the church be addressing pornography use and women?

Do you agree with me that pornography use between couples results in false intimacy or not?

If a couple want to engage in watching pornography together should this be considered as part of their sexual repertoire and only their business – in other words, not needing a confession to a priesthood authority?

How would you respond if you knew of a woman who was a pornography and/or sex addict?  Would that surprise you?

If you are a woman, what perceptions do you have or have you felt regarding this issue?

I realize that this could be a sensitive topic with varying opinions, so please keep it civil.

Natasha Helfer Parker is a Licensed Clinical Marriage and Family Therapist and a member of the Church with 13 years of experience working with LDS members. Here she shares with us representative cases from her practice and insights she has gained from her work as a therapist. She blogs at mormontherapist.blogspot.com.

Seeing as how we are doing some restructuring at Mormon Matters, I am going to take advantage of this “space” to encourage communication around issues and questions that often come up on my blog.  Because sexuality represents such a high percentage of what I’m being asked about by LDS members, I am currently working on my “sex therapist” accreditation.  Although I am qualified to do sex therapy as a Marriage & Family Therapist, I am wanting extra training in this area.  So please bear with my topic and join me in sharing your thoughts on these types of  “Mormon Matters.”  Maybe my focus on sexuality will encourage those of you who want to see other topics covered on this site to submit manuscripts for possible posting   (Manuscripts can be submitted to natasha.parker@sbcglobal.net or mormonstories@gmail.com).

I think it is important to correctly define the term “erotica.”

But I want to give credit where credit is due. If you have not seen the church’s new Combating Pornography website, may I suggest you check it out. It is not just for those struggling with the addiction of pornography (yes, I said addiction), but for spouses of those struggling, parents, leaders, etc. I think everyone could glean some useful insight about an epidemic that has proved to invade nearly every life in one way or another.

In short, I think the site is brilliant, and I give much kudos to the church for the content and purpose. I really think it’s great! Here’s what I like about it:

1. The star article (IMHO) is a well researched, well documented, elaboration on the nature of pornography addiction, by a renowned expert in the field. The second to last paragraph is my favorite:
   

   Why is it important to understand that compulsive pornography use is an actual addiction? By recognizing this, we will treat it with the respect required to overcome an addiction. For instance, no spiritual leader would tell a member who confesses an alcohol addiction to pray and repent without recommending counseling and 12-step support in such programs as the Addiction Recovery Program with LDS Family Services and Alcoholics Anonymous. Similarly, with the proper perspective on sexual addiction, we should also recommend that those afflicted with pornography and other sexual addictions, in addition to proceeding through the steps of repentance, will also seek recovery with therapy and group support.

2. The site references sources and scholarship about overcoming pornography. While I am not a social worker, or clinical psychologist, I recognize the most commonly accepted patterns in treating addiction/depression. See here, and here for great examples.
3. There is practical advice in Mormonism’s favorite form – a checklist.
4. There is a good mix of emphasis on moral cleanliness, openness in discussing human sexuality, physical reality, and spiritual ideology. When I read the articles I get the impression that we’re not in the business of simply condemning this as sin and parroting to people they “pray and read scriptures” more diligently. We are acknowledging a deeper problem in human psychology/biology that warrants our most sincere efforts.
5. The church is sincerely dedicated to helping people with this problem. There are conference talks (at least one every six months), there is a website, there are very inexpensive counselling and other professional services, there is a booklet and associated meetings for overcoming addiction, etc.

I really do believe that the LDS church does a lot of great things in this world. There are people who are hurt by the culture, there are social and cultural problems I wish were different, and there are issues in our theology that don’t work for me. But for this very uncertain Mormon, I am truly grateful to be a part of an organization that does try, in many ways, to influence people for the better.

Recently, I stumbled upon this little gem of a study (warning–link goes to pdf) over at a blog (which I do not regularly read, but one of my friends does) called Gene Expression (first link goes to summary, second link goes to actual study).  Two facts immediately jumped out at me from looking at the map of the United States all coded–first off, Utah, with it’s incredibly dense population of LDS members is one of the highest consumers of online pornography and second, Idaho, with a nearly equally high density population of LDS is among the lowest.  What gives?  Unlike the Gene Expression folks, the conclusion of religiosity fails to satisfy me as an immediate explanation.

This data was collected by asking a single provider of multiple sources of online pornography to provide the zipcodes of all subscribers in their database.  This is actually a very solid method, although (as I’ll discuss a bit more later on) having a second provider for this same information would go along way to make this an ever more useful study.  From a methodological viewpoint, however, there is little to argue with.

The author of the study is careful to normalize the data to account for income after looking at the raw data–which is a good idea.  After this adjustment, the following table (looking at the far right column) shows that Utah has the highest subscription rate and Idaho has the lowest: 1.89 versus -1.11.

Note that in the table below the data in the far right column has been adjusted for market demographics such as household income, household size and similar factors.  Note that it doesn’t matter HOW you slice it, Utah is STILL the highest subscriber and Idaho is STILL one of the absolute lowest.  There is something seriously odd about that.

From the original article, the author makes this following statement:

“Subscriptions are slightly more prevalent in states that have enacted conservative
legislation on sexuality (regression results on file with the author). In the 27
states where “defense of marriage” amendments have been adopted (making
same-sex marriage, and/or civil unions unconstitutional), subscriptions to this
adult entertainment service are weakly more prevalent than in other states (p 
0.096). In such states, there were 0.2 more subscribers to this adult web site per
thousand broadband households, 11 percent more than in other states. (Edelman, 2009, p. 11)”

But in looking at Wikipedia we see that Utah is 58% LDS (I know, the bane of scholarship–I was doing so well and then I go to wikipedia for my census data!) and Idaho is about 22.8% LDS.  It’s a big difference.  It also makes me think that all the talks I’ve been hearing in General Conference about pornography are pretty much on target, but depressingly ineffective.  From the study:

The fourth column reports that in regions where more people report regularly
attending religious services (per National Election Studies 2004), overall subscription
rates are not statistically significantly different from subscriptions elsewhere
(p = 0.848). However, in such regions, a statistically significantly smaller proportion
of subscriptions begin on Sundays, compared with other regions. In particular,
a 1 percent increase in the proportion of people who report regularly attending
religious services is associated with a 0.10 percent reduction in the proportion of
purchases that occur on Sunday. This analysis suggests that, on the whole, those
who attend religious services shift their consumption of adult entertainment to
other days of the week, despite on average consuming the same amount of adult entertainment as others. (As an interesting comparison, Malhotra, 2008, finds that
religious people are more charitable only on Sundays.) (Edelman, 2009, p. 10)

This suggests that whatever lessons we are hearing on pornography are not effective in achieving their goals (at least, not in Utah).  Now there are some alternate conclusions that I would like to put forward, lest I be thought to be unnecessarily harsh.

First it is entirely possible that in states with very conservative laws about access to pornography that those who are not religious are using the internet to access material that they have trouble getting otherwise.  This is a pleasing idea, but fails to explain the Sunday-only drop in online sales. A second idea is needed to explain that: perhaps these people are spending more time with their family or are otherwise engaged on Sundays, and are therefore less inclined to make the sales at that time.  It may be that the family is home more, and therefore they have less opportunity for viewing on that day.  Numerous plausible explanations exist to deal with the Sunday-only drop.  Occam’s Razor doesn’t really apply here since we are not really adding more assumptions in either case.

Second, there is a major flaw in the study–it should be noted that this is an analysis of data from only one particular online provider of pornography (and the author of the study is aware of this limitation and notes it as such).  This isn’t a show-stopper, but it is something to consider.  It could well be that a different purveyor of pornography possibly provides pertinent information of a different sort.  Alliteration aside.

So here’s the question: the data are available on the matter, do you agree that this is a problem that is tied to religion or is it better explained by something else?  If it is a problem unique to religion what else can the church do to help achieve the goals of reducing interest in this?  I know that not everyone is going to agree with that goal, but I will say that regardless of your views on the subject, it is fairly easy to agree on the idea that the CHURCH has the goal of reducing viewership of pornography by it’s adherents.  What more can the church do that will actually be effective?  Because there does seem to be a problem.

• Double Standards:  Breast vs. Bottle.  Is breastfeeding shameful or obscene?  Should breastfed babies be neither seen nor heard at least in “the act”?  Perhaps bottle-fed babies should also be closeted away in fairness or stuffed under a hot blanket for cover.  Who is to blame:  the baby or the mother?
• Double Standards:  Sexism.  Does the female nipple have special powers not housed in the male nipple?  After all, males are capable of both lactation and breast cancer.  Is this bias strictly because men are more visually stimulated by women than women are by men?  Other examples of female nipple prudery:
  • “topless” models at BYU must wear bathing suit tops
  • Barbie has no nipples.  Except the ones we poked into her with a pin.  Ouch!
  • Thanks to TiVO, Janet Jackson’s “wardrobe malfunction” had 125% viewership, meaning people who were watching TV watched it on average 1.25 times.  That would not have happened if 1) she had actually had a wardrobe malfunction (and it had stayed intact) and 2) access to nipple imagery was commonplace and 3) it had been an exposed male nipple.
• Double Standards:  Racism.  And why are only native people portrayed topless with their nipples brushed out (or never brushed in)?  Could they have instead done the Mike Myers thing where they hold up various potted plants or small woodland animals to hide the naughty bits?
• Extreme prudery.  If men’s visible nipples are perfectly acceptable in polite society (including YM/YW pool parties–you can’t airbrush actual nipples off an actual chest), why are they too obscene for Mormon BOM vids and temple murals featuring topless native people?  Other examples of male nipple prudery:
  • Rodin’s statue “The Kiss” was deemed too racy.
  • ZCMI attempted to censor be-nippled male mannequins and Tarzan comics.
  • The famed copy of David in the British Museum comes with a detachable fig leaf that could be used to cover his naughty bits when Victorian ladies came to the exhibit.  Nips were okay, though.  It takes a lot of prudery to out-prude the Victorians!
  • Chad Hardy’s calendar of shirtless missionaries could be added here, although the objection was more due to brand image rather than the male nipple per se.

Here are a few thoughts on the topic from various ends of the spectrum:

“While it wouldn’t be hard to come up with examples of Mormon literature that convey a sense of repressed or frustrated sexuality, rarely do we find Mormon artists and writers willing to celebrate the beauty of the naked body.”  Hugo Olaiz

“Michaelangelo’s David is a prototype of pornography.”  Orem high school sophomore at a Scorn Porn rally

““Don’t be paralyzed by prudery. Don’t fall into the opposite excess of pornography.”  Levi Peterson

Is this (pardon the expression) making a mountain out of a molehill or does the mere site of male nips send you into a frenzy of sin?  Discuss.