Raised on Porn | Documentary Film

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one of the powers of innocence is the

ability to have a world that is safe to

be able to play

and experiment in

without the threat of danger

what happens with pornography or when

sexuality intrudes through any form

of violation

as you all of a sudden realize there's a

parallel world

next to yours

and that if you walk through this door

nothing will ever be the same

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i remember being a kid and looking at a

rosebud and thinking how pretty it was

and i remember thinking oh well i want

it to open up like a rose you know so

i'll just pull back all the petals

and it'll open up it'll be beautiful

like a rose

now i realize you can't force that

that happens when that flower is ready

to open and when it's being fed and

nurtured and it opens and it's very

similar to a child's or adolescent

sexuality you know if you try to open

those pedals too early

i mean they will grow and they will open

but they're going to be damaged

they're not going to be the same person

that they would have been

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so

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growing up my dad planted a church in a

small rural town where everyone knows

everyone

we would always hang out in the streets

you know playing football with the

neighbors and stuff like that

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we're in this playground and

a friend of mine was like hey richie i

want to show you a picture

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he shows me this picture of this topless

girl

these sensations go through my body i'm

not even aware of the language or even

what to you know recognize or call them

and

i never forgot that it was like

imprinted in my heart

the next week or so

i'm riding my bike

and out of nowhere this paper blows on

my yard

i went over there and picked it up and

it was a full page like someone ripped

it out of a playboy magazine

and i was like this is it this is like

my chance of actually

getting pornography for myself

so i actually folded it put in my pocket

and hid it in my room

every time it was time for bed i would

literally just take it out

lock the door

and just start looking at it

and i remember doing that for hours even

as a child

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from there

porn created this whole mental script

on how to relate to the opposite sex

and so i remember i wanted to pursue

girls

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and i had no idea how to approach them i

had no idea how to start the

conversation

all i knew was he you know we go to the

room and have sex

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so it's like how do you start a

conversation

so i'm like well

i'll just um

just be the shy type but it's all

manipulation

and so that's how i learned it was be a

manipulator

so

when i first had a relationship

i remember just thinking

i hope she's gonna be okay with me

putting my hands on her breasts

and i hope that i can put my hands down

her pants

in my mind i'm hoping this happens i'm

not going to push it i just want to be

one of the shy guys and just kind of

just sneak it in that way so that way i

can i can gain her trust and then i can

go ahead and just

do what i want what i saw in the

pictures

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there's pretty good documentation that

the earlier someone is exposed to really

explicit pornography and sexual imagery

the more likely it is that they're going

to have compulsive and addictive

problems around their sexuality as an

adult

because that nine-year-old does not have

the emotional and biological development

to be able to really understand what the

meaning is of what he knows it's

incredibly arousing and amazing and

distracting and fun and it feels good to

look at but their brains are really not

ready to handle it

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our sexuality is wired into us

the most sexual organ is between our

ears not between our legs

so when you are developing your brain

sexually

what happens is that pornography

begins building that script this is the

way we're supposed to think about it

and so when a young person views

pornographic material they're

neurologically now starting to put

bricks in this wall of kind of building

the structure of what sex means

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adolescent brain is not an adult brain

with less experience it is in a unique

place it is anatomically physiologically

and biologically different and what

occurs during adolescence is several

brain changes that have a purpose and

the purpose is to become very excited

about sensation seeking about rewards

about sex

and it's to become wired up actually

changing the structure of the brain to

wire up to the environment

and it has been shown to occur with

nerve connections

the way nerves connect and intertwine is

really the basis for all learning and

all memory

so what occurs is around age 11 the

adolescent brain prunes down these

connections until you're set with the

connections that will perhaps last a

lifetime

pornography is a teacher and modeler of

sexual templates

particularly when they're

modeled early

because it's a powerful neuroplasticity

device

neuroplasticity means that our brain

changes and we change when we want and

when we learn and we have seen it in

pornography now people who are watching

pornography compulsively their brains

look different from those that are not

a leading researcher said recently to me

we are in the midst of the single

largest unregulated social experiment in

human history and what he was talking

about

was the inundation

of the brains of young children

with content that they're not prepared

to deal with

and what it is doing is normalizing

behavior that is going to affect

particularly young boys is going to

affect their view of women their fewer

relationships their view of the world

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a few years ago when i was 16.

i

dated this guy and we were both virgins

maybe a month into our relationship we

ended up having sex

the next morning he was like hey i want

to show you something

we watched porn and i had never seen i

didn't even know it was

a thing

until then but then that was when i

realized he watches this all the time

and he told me he's like i watch it all

the time it's not a big deal

over the course of our relationship the

different sexual things that he wanted

to do became more and more

vile and abusive and

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uh

scary for me

i just remember he would talk about

wanting to do like certain things that

he would see

in porn and he said

that

one of his favorite things about porn is

how

um at the end of some of the more

hardcore ones

the guy

will

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punch a girl in the nose

and

finish on her face

and it looks like a cherry sundae

and i was like do not do that to me you

can't do that to me and he was like i'm

not gonna tell you like when i'm gonna

do it it'll just be a surprise like you

won't even have to think about it before

and

i just

i was just scared

i just

i was really scared i didn't want that

to happen to me and that was when i

broke up with him

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it really just felt like i was an

object for his pleasure and like i owed

him anything he wanted

the whole point is that

he was a good guy who started watching

porn and somehow it escalated to

him thinking it's okay to punch his

girlfriend in the nose and finish on her

face like

like

where did that become okay like at some

point in it he stopped seeing women as

people because porn like

messed up his mind

and just like distorted his whole

thinking

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there's this very dangerous thing that's

going on in our culture right now where

we're not having a strong enough a more

vibrant conversation with young boys

about their sexual lives

in the absence of adults having

meaningful ongoing open and honest

conversations with young people about

sexual behavior their bodies intimacy

respecting themselves

the lack of that conversation enables a

very one-sided and dangerously one-sided

presentation of sexual behavior which is

the one that they have access to which

in very very often case is

pornography

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we know now that boys are accessing

pornography at age 11

and that there's an increasing

consumption of pornography from girls

and so if you think about it this way

pornography is the biggest sex educator

it is the most significant influential

sex educator that young people have

today

so we have to look at what they're

learning from this

when the average 12 year old boy puts

porn into google

he's directed immediately to the pawn

tube site such as you porn and pornhub

and the most accessible is actually

called gonzo porn that's the shorthand

term for the violent porn that has no

storyline

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if you want more soft core less violent

porn you're going to have to spend a

good 10 to 15 minutes looking for it and

don't tell me that the average 12 13

year old boy is going to start looking

for that for 10-15 minutes he's going to

go to that which is the most accessible

the most popular pornography it's always

around how men get satisfied

it's very very rarely about women's

pleasure

women are there as instruments

they're simply there as as tools

literally

for male pleasure

the images they're seeing are about

sexuality fused to domination

an aggressive sexuality

a sexuality that objectifies women

treats them as nothing more than objects

or male pleasure

it's not about equality or egalitarian

lovemaking

it's all about doing something to her

not sharing something with her

said you'll do it right

right

most porn ends up with women being not

only presented as the victims of

violence but often presented as the

victims of violence who love it

i want you to do anything you want

so girls are learning to be compliant

and they're learning that what's most

important is to be desirable to the boys

not that their own sexual agency or

their own sexual pleasure is important

at all

whatever you want to do to her

however debasing

however vile

she says yes

so in a way what you're doing is you're

socializing men into thinking that women

will consent to anything

it teaches a very one-sided dangerous

emotionless almost humanless sexual

experience that so many young men are

now seeing as being normal this is how

it happens

14 year old high school freshman daisy

coleman says matthew barnett sexually

assaulted her while she was unconscious

cornett would later claim the encounter

was consensual

22 year old madison smith says the

encounter started off with consensual

sex but things turned violent when he

started to strangle her and force her to

perform a sex act

two high school football stars sexually

assaulted a visibly intoxicated 16 year

old girl during the crime many did not

step up to help but nearly all got out

their cell phones and started snapping

pictures and tweeting

within five days children's mercy saw

444 kids for sexual assault almost half

of our perpetrators were minors

gagging strangling

when a child's acting out without

extreme violence you have to contribute

some of that to pornography because it

directly correlates with the genres that

kids are being exposed to

i've seen numbers of these cases that i

actually worked

where

kids who were sexualized early actually

act out on that because they don't have

the inhibitions or the knowledge of what

the actual sexual acts are what they

mean

now maybe they'll have the self-control

to get off that

the more time they spend reinforcing

that arousal pattern especially if

they're looking at violent porn my god

that's that's the worst possible thing

they can look at because what what it

will do will trip the wires in their

brain it will make them feel really good

about this stuff

and it will overwhelm reason in their

brain

and they could go down this road and

find that they don't have the willpower

to stop themselves from doing it

and it could surprise them how quickly

that can happen

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in previous eras to get sexually

explicit material you had to go to a

pornographic movie theater you had to go

to a bookstore now you can access

pornography sitting at home at no cost

over the internet

the internet has made porn not only

accessible it's really made it

inescapable because now of course

everybody has access to porn on their

smartphone

including children

once the online world came about it was

the game changer

i mean i went from being a private

practice clinician with one assistant to

running a clinic with eight therapists

and 150 clients a week i mean the

internet just swamped us

so many people started having so many

problems so quickly in relationship to

online porn and it was really just the

very beginning

because i'm now seeing 25 year old men

who've been looking at hardcore porn

since they were 15.

and they've never had a date and they've

never had sex with a person

and online porn really feeds that in a

way that pre-digital porn didn't

there are actually studies that show

that the internet has the ability to

cause addiction-related brain changes

the same brain changes that occur in a

drug addiction so that tells us that the

internet is different

what's different is the ability to

control arousal so you're sitting there

with your mouse and you're clicking on a

i don't want to look at that i want to

look at that i want to look at it i want

to see what george is doing i'm bored

with that i want to see what this

person's doing oh what about this

message i want to read this and you can

go on and go on and what you're doing is

you're controlling your arousal you're

controlling your dopamine

is the motivation chemical to drive us

towards natural rewards such as eating

and achievement and falling in love and

sexual desire

when you're in the presence of something

as arousing as images or a drama of

sexuality

your brain is going to produce two to

four times the normal amount of dopamine

where we get the word dope

which is what our brains secrete as what

we call our pleasure drug and it gives

us a sense of motivation and joy for

living our lives

well food is about a hundred and fifty

percent spike of dopamine

and sex is 200 which is equivalent to

morphine

sexual orgasm is equivalent to a morphed

rash

that's a pretty powerful reward

there's also though the frontal area

over our forehead and these are

important in judgment and in weighing

the pleasure that we want

and so you have these competing areas

you have this dopaminergic drive that

says do it with this frontal break of

the brain it says think about it weigh

it

and in a way they're competing

in young people those rental areas

aren't fully developed

and so that break isn't there

our frontal judgment volitional areas

aren't developed until we're in our mid

to late 20s

and so you have an eight-year-old with

this undeveloped brain who doesn't

really have the ability

to weigh or to judge what they're seeing

whether it's harmful not harmful what

will the result be if they participate

in this activity they don't even know

what it is

and so when we flood the child's brain

with these powerful sexual images

provide this physical emotional overload

the child is powerless

there it's absolutely impossible for

them to resist

this kind of stimulus

now we combine that

with a young male

who has high hormones and is driven by

interest and then you combine it with

the novelty of the internet so all these

qualities are put together

and they're matched with our highest

natural reward and your genes number one

job and that's reproduction

and that's what makes today's high-speed

internet porn

so enticing

growing up i was very anti-social

never really had any friends

i'd never had a girlfriend until just a

couple years ago

so i felt like i was missing out on

something i was very frustrated i was

feel like i wasn't um like everybody

else

then

when i was about 11 12 years old

i found some porn magazines

given our household we never really

talked to much about sexuality at all so

to see something like that was just a

adrenaline rush it felt like what i

thought would feel like if i had a

girlfriend or had a relation real

relationship

and of course my progression goes along

with technology as the internet came

and we got our first computer i

would sneak in there when nobody was

looking and keep on looking at porn

after a while the stuff that worked

before didn't work as well

you'll be able to tolerance

so it would get more edgier as your

stuff stuff that i wouldn't imagine ever

looking at

then i found a file sharing program

which i was using to um download music

and stuff like that

and there uh by some accident i found

illegal pornography

childborn

and um

it was so easy to get it it was almost

as it was as easy as getting the regular

stuff

i guess my curiosity got to me so i

couldn't believe that it could be this

easy so

i downloaded it

and i saw it

and i got thrush

it worked

it worked like nothing else did anymore

as much as i tried to get away from it

from time to time i would always find

myself going back to it because i was

looking for that fix

looking back it was a very dark

journey

i didn't even come to terms until i got

caught

i was a firefighter and i was going back

home from work about a year ago

and all of a sudden i had blue lights

going by me

pulling me out my truck

handcuffed me and put me in back of a

car

pathologically speaking were you a

pedophile

no

how would you explain reaching that

point of wanting to see a child in a

sexual act

it was

the dangerous dangerousness of it it was

dangerous it was wrong and

that part was appealing too

just how wrong it was but

it was what worked it was like the

the heroin of

pornography

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for each individual it's unclear what

the outcome of viewing pornography will

be

it's not uncommon the more you look at

porn the more you're going to stumble

into things

and so you may stumble into a genre of

pornography that's inherently violent

like rape porn

where you may stumble into an area of

pornography like child porn or something

like that

most people don't start out saying i

want to go into this particular type of

porn this is what i'm into it's that

process by which you are now caught up

in this wave of sexual arousal and

excitement and so what happens then is

you now as you're exposed to more things

you run the risk of now being bound to

more and more of these dangerous really

uh dishonoring forms of pornography or

illegal forms of pornography too

sex addiction is often about escalation

so someone could start looking at more

violent images

or more abusive images

or things that they really never even

thought would turn them on

even though it might feel shameful or

uncomfortable it's still intense and it

makes the heart beat faster and faster

and faster and that's very much what the

non-substance addictions are about

they're about adrenaline they're about

endorphins they're about dopamine

they're about feeling high and excited

and totally into what you're doing for

the sake of emotional escape

the thing i'm most concerned with is

that escalator effect

the fact that today's images

are not going to satisfy you tomorrow

and tomorrow's images are not going to

satisfy you the next day and there is a

continuing quest

for something new for something

different

and at some point because of the basic

inclination of the person

there's at least going to be a

temptation to experience it in real life

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my junior senior year of high school i

was getting more popular with not just

girls but just with the whole school

being homecoming king

i started getting a little bit away from

the porn a little bit it was just like

an afterthought unless something

triggered it

and so i graduated from high school

and i fell in love with this girl who's

not my wife

we moved from this town into actually

where our family's at and everything

both sides of our family

it was during that time where i i was

passing by a street here in town and

there was like this adult store

and i remember i'm like i don't want to

go there

i don't want to go there because if i go

there that's it i'm going to go ride

back to the bottom

sure enough i found myself opening the

door

and i'm walking right in

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this was before smartphones this was

like an 0.405

and so i would just go to the adult

store as often as i could

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from there the relationship i had with

pornography was definitely progressive

so you know first it was just a girl

and then it became two girls

and it was an orgy

then it was oh all this behavior with

certain body parts these fetishes

and i'm like i really like this

it came to a point where it's like

uh i need to experience what i'm seeing

because this is just like

amazing what i'm seeing oh but it's just

paper oh but it's just the page oh but

it's on my phone

my wife won't do any of this stuff no

way she's gonna say where are you

getting these ideas from so i'm like

a stranger

paying for it duh

i pay for it and they do what i tell

them because i'm paying for it

that was it

one night my wife was going to some

function at church

my kids were with my parents

and i had my own laptop

so i go on craigslist and i'm like

what's this personal stuff

i can contact someone here

oh i am free right now to do whatever i

want and no one knows anything

and i said

i'm gonna call

so i'm like hi

yeah we give massages and i'm like oh

that's cool all right

nude massages i'm like oh that's that's

great that's fine

so when can i come

and she's like you can come right now if

you want and i said right now that's

what i needed to hear right now

i go there and

i'm naked and she's naked

i can literally feel my heart pumping

out of my chest and my mouth dry and my

fingers shaking and i'm like what's

going on what going on what's going on

what am i doing what am i doing i'm

thinking this

but because of all those unspoken

secrets

they all just started taking over me and

saying this is your chance

this is your chance to be like a porn

star or you can say and ask the person

to do whatever you want and because

you're paying for it they will do it

when your wife was like i don't want to

do that

should this lady here she will and i

said in my mind

that is so right it's so true

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and so

that was the lowest i have ever been

and it was a porn dream that i had as a

child

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after we were finished

she looked at my ring

and she was like

how are you and your wife

and i said something so twisted

i said you know i love my wife and she

was like you do

and i said i i do

i need to go

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i gave her my money

and i left

and i went in my car

and i wept

i said i can't believe i did this oh my

gosh like this trust

am i going to tell anyone this

it was scary

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okay

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take us back to that moment that you

found out what did he say to you

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we were lying in bed and he asked me to

not get mad at him he was going to tell

me something he's like you promise you

don't get mad and i was like i promise

he's like you promise you won't get mad

and i was like yeah just tell me

um

and so he tells me

and it just like felt like i got punched

in the heart

um

and he just started crying and i just

held him

i just held him because

i've messed up really bad you know

and people would hold me

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and um

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so that was hard

because i was

you know

expressing love to him and then i felt

like i didn't want you to be by him

anymore

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and she's like richie i can't even see

you right now

you need to sleep in the boys room

so i'd be in the boys room and my boys

would be like

why are you here daddy

i remember crying i hurt mama

i hurt mommy and

i i'm here right now i need i was so

broken i just remember saying i hurt

mama

and

hearing myself saying that to my my own

son my two little boys

something in my heart was like

i remember when i was their age

i don't want this to repeat in my kids

this can't happen anymore

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so

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you