Madam Speaker, since I will have to deliver my speech in two parts, I will begin by talking about how young men's health is affected by pornography, which has changed a lot over the years. In the second part of my speech, I will come back to how pornography affects how women and girls perceive sexuality and violence.

The overabundance of pornography available to young men has caused many of them to become addicted to it. Clinical exams of these young men reveal the classic signs of addiction. This problem is real and this addiction is such that those who have it truly need to seek help.

Unfortunately, these same people will often tend to also look for increasingly explicit material, which can cause changes in neural connections. Something that normally would not arouse someone sexually manages to do so over time, such as the association with violence, for example. That is one of the primary problems.

It has also been noted that an increasing number of young men are developing erectile dysfunction in real life, in a real sexual relationship. They are unable to get an erection because they are used to getting sexually aroused with other materials. This creates problems in their sexual health. They develop this problem in a normal relationship and then are less likely to try to have real relationships because of erectile dysfunction. They do not want to be asked why they have this problem at age 20, 22, or 25. They will isolate themselves and tend to watch even more pornography.

These are two health problems experienced by young men. These problems have been documented, discussed, and reported on. Those reports are available.

The other problems that exist really have to do with perceptions of sexuality and the effects they can cause. It is important to understand that the content available on the Internet goes a lot further than what was available 30 years ago. It is almost beyond imagination. Pornography also depicts scenes of criminal behaviour, including gang rape for example. There is a legitimate concern when it comes to the violent content that often depicts criminal activities.

When individuals are discovering their sexuality, trying to figure out what normal sexuality is, what is not normal, and what is completely fictitious, it is easy to become confused. This is especially true for adolescents who have probably never asked their friends, family, and teachers these kinds of questions. Unfortunately, many provinces stopped offering sex education as part of their curriculum for a period of time, so those conversations never happened, unlike my own experience, when some form of sex ed actually was offered at school.

As a result, some people never had a chance to ask those questions or discuss these matters in an appropriate setting. The only resource they could turn to for answers when trying to understand sexuality and how to have a healthy sex life was what was available on the Internet. It is fair to say that what is available on the Internet in no way resembles what really happens with the vast majority of couples in their sex lives.

This could lead to a completely distorted view of sexuality, which could in turn trivialize certain behaviours.

Content that provides a completely distorted view of sexuality may cause young people to think that what they are seeing is realistic and to adopt harmful sexual behaviours. What constitutes sexual consent can often be ambiguous. What is more, very few of these films depict safe sex practices, such as the use of condoms.

Christine Moore

Transcript

Private Members' Business

Discussions (0)