drmaryannesspeech2

_____________________________________________________________________

SEXUAL INTEGRITY FORUM DINNER
Dr Mary Anne Layden
Monday, 8 August 2005
_____________________________________________________________________

CHAIR: I find her absolutely inspiring, as well as very informative. It has been wonderful to get to know her a little, and I'm sure that you will really appreciate what she has to share with us tonight. Thank you Dr Layden.

DR LAYDEN: Well, I'm in fabulous company tonight. It's just inspiring to me today to have heard the things that I've heard, and I feel quite humbled. Are the PowerPoints working tonight? Are they going to go? So you can flip up the next one.

I'm going to give you my definition of the sexual exploitation industry, which for me is sexual abuse for money. Now, the fact that money is involved doesn't make it not sexually abusive. It is sexual abuse that just involves money, nothing more, nothing less.

Next one. These are some of the areas of sexual abuse. There's pornography, print, video and Internet. There is prostitution, which is street, indoor and massage parlours. There is what we call "prostitution light", where I work, which is strip clubs and phone sex, and then there's sex trafficking. And all of these are just variations of the abuse of women and children that involve money.

The next one, please. All of these are on the same continuum. And those who like to carve one out and say this one is not involved, or this one is different from the rest, that is just not true. They're all on the same continuum, and they all feed and increase each other. So that those who think pornography is not involved in prostitution and sex trafficking, you don't know anything about pornography, you don't know anything about prostitution, and you must not know anything about sex trafficking, because they're all connected. They're just variations on the same theme, and you can't separate them out.

There are several remarks I am going to throw in on here that are not on the PowerPoints, because there are several things that I have been reminded of today, and I am going to throw them in where I think I can make some points. All of these are driven by demand. All of them are driven by demand. Now, it's interesting, given that that's a truism that all of these are driven by demand that very little anywhere in the world has focused on demand. We've focused on finding the victims and maybe doing something for the victims; we've tried to figure out how to get the street prostitutes off the street and into the buildings. We've tried all kinds of things, but very little focus on demand. Very little on how do we reduce the demand for these things.

Now, it's interesting that Sweden is trying a social experiment of a different sort. And, that is, in Sweden the customers are arrested. The customers are fined. The customers are sent to jail. And the prostitutes are given rehabilitation; job training, drug rehab, whatever. So that they've flipped the model. They've flipped the model. Now, what's happened in Sweden because of this is sex traffickers don't want to go into Sweden any more. It costs them too much. The cost of doing business is too much of a problem.

So they're avoiding Sweden. But where are they going? Well, some of them are going to Germany, because Germany has legalised prostitution. And what's happened in Germany is they have gone from 11,000 child prostitutes to 15,000 child prostitutes because they've legalised prostitution, which then just increases the demand. Now, there aren't enough German women to fit the demand so we're going to have to get some kids in here to deal with this demand that we've produced by legalising.

Now, about a third of those children in Germany are sex trafficked, most of them in from Nigeria. Because if you don't have enough prostitutes in your country now that you have increased demand you are going to have to kidnap some children and some women, move them across international borders, steal their passports, beat them up, threaten their families, and then you will have enough prostitutes to meet the demand that you now have because you have legalised it. So anybody who thinks that legalisation solves the problem hasn't seen how the problem really works. You've got to work on the issue of demand. You've got to work on demand.

My perspective on the sexual exploitation industry is that it's an equal opportunity toxin. And I'm going to present tonight my point of view that says this is an industry that damages the viewer, damages the performer, damages the partners of the viewers and the performers and damages the children of the viewers of the performers. And that's so much   pretty much everybody who is in any way touched by this industry. So, you know, you can't just take one out and say these are the damaged people   all of them are damaged. All of them are damaged by this process.

Next one. I've got to say some things about consent. I know when I go around and talk about this some people say, "but these people have consented. We have got some people who are adults and they have consented, and consent makes it okay". How does consent make it okay? I don't get it? How does consent make it okay? Consent does not make it psychologically healthy, ethical, moral, legal or good for the society. And consent does not mitigate the damage that is produced by this industry. So saying some people have consented   and they say that about people who haven't consented   saying they have consented in no way mitigates this at all.

Now, I want to tell a little story, a little bad story, about the United States. And that is, we have this television show in the United States which is called 'Jackass'. Are you surprised we have a television show called 'Jackass'? And on this show people do things that make them look like a jackass. Stupid, irresponsible, idiotic things, okay.

SPEAKER: Here we call it 'Big Brother'.

DR LAYDEN: We call it 'Big Brother'. No, we have 'Jackass' and 'Big Brother'. I mean, this is

SPEAKER: Just wait. We will get it here.

DR LAYDEN: Oh, yes, I mean, that is one thing about the United States, any piece of corruption that we've got we're willing to share it with everybody. So it's coming. It's coming. Yeah, right, right. So, on this show called 'Jackass' they decided "I've got a good idea. Let's see if we can find some homeless guys and then pay them $50 to let us sock 'em in the stomach with our fist." Okay. Now, that sounds like a pretty big jackass of an idea, but some TV producer said, "Great idea. Let's do that". So they did. They went out, and lo and behold they could find some homeless guys who were willing to let them sock them in the stomach for $50; and so they did. And they filmed it and they were going to put it on TV.

Now, what do you think the police's response to that was? They said, "That is assault. We're going to arrest those TV producers". Now, interestingly enough, nobody said, "But the homeless guy consented. He consented". The police said, "It doesn't matter that he consented. It still damaged him". Okay. "We understand", say the police, "that there's a power differential between the TV producers and the homeless guy. We understand that the homeless guy is financially disadvantaged and he is psychologically disadvantaged, and so the fact that he consented didn't reduce this as a crime. You guys are arrested".

Now, how is it that the police got it with a homeless guy who was socked in the stomach and they arrested them for assault, even though it was consent, but the police can't get it when they say these other people, like prostitutes and some sex trafficked individuals, consented. Though, I mean, of course that is dubious that any sex trafficked individual has consented. And I have a little bit of a nasty theory, and that is the police, mostly males, don't like being socked in the stomach. But the police sort of like it when women want to have sex with them. And, so, they can sort of get it when somebody's doing something they don't particularly like, that they don't particularly enjoy, but if it's something that they enjoy, they can't quite see straight around that issue. It's sort of like the old song, this is a variation of that song, "When your genitals are on fire smoke gets in your eyes", you know. Maybe that wasn't exactly the words of the song. But it was something like that.

So I wonder if, when we're, you know, talking about some of these perspectives whether people who find some of this pleasurable find it difficult to make sense out of it, to see it in the reality of it, and they get completely confused about the issue of consent.

If you can change these. Now, I'm not going to go through all these. These are the American statistics. One in eight women are raped, 50% of women are sexually harassed on their jobs at some point in their life. By the time a female is 18 years old 38% have been sexually molested   by 18. And you understand that if we have got 38% of our females sexually molested by 18, it can't be six or seven guys doing this. You know, we are talking about millions   millions of perpetrators.

Average age of entry into prostitution is 13 in the United States. These are the people whom they are saying are consenting. These are children. These are children. Now, in some places in the United States the ages drop to 12. Okay. So these are kids that are supposedly consenting to this. Seventy per cent of the hits on the Internet sites are between 9 5 on business computers. These are just some of the statistics. If you can give me the next one.

Here are a few things that are Australian statistics. One in 6 adult women experience sexual assault before the age of 15; 1 in 4 girls, 1 in 7 boys are sexually abused. Twenty nine per cent increase in sexual assault between '99 and 2003. Risk of sexual assault for adult women is double if you were abused as a child.

So all of those statistics are just to say we've got a problem. And it's a world wide problem. We've got a whole world that is suffering from these consequences of these kinds of behaviours, these kinds of assaults, and that many of the people who are suffering are children. We are allowing the rape of our children.

When you look at an issue about prostitution you need to understand, these prostitutes are children. They are being raped. They are children. A 12 year old cannot consent to have sex with a 45 year old guy. That's not consent. That's not consent. So, we've got to take that into account when we look at these things.

Now, I'm going to start by talking a little bit about the damage to the viewer. When I talk about the damage to the viewer, I put the first issue about the issue that I think will catch most of the men's attention the most, and that is, men who are viewers of pornography are having more sexual dysfunction after they view pornography. They have more premature ejaculation. They have more erectile dysfunction. This pornography, which is supposed to stimulate their sex life, is actually destroying their sex life. It's doing just the opposite of what you wanted it to do.

When I'm working with the sex addicts, I don't start with "Do you understand how degrading this is to women what you are doing?", because they don't want to hear that. But when I tell them that their sex lives are going down the toilet they say "Oh, maybe I don't want to do this. Maybe I don't want to have erectile dysfunction, despite all the Viagra we can pump into them."

Don't you think it's really interesting that only when we have this gigantic increase in pornography we had a drug industry that said, "How about some Viagra and some Cialis and some whole bunch of other drugs that we need." I mean, in the United States, when they first started to publicise these drugs and they said, "Well, what portion of men are going to need these drugs?" And then of course there was this huge number of people who said, "Boy, we need them". To say, how did we know, who knew there were that many men with erectile dysfunction? It is really interesting that it took place right at the time when pornography was taking over.

So that is the first damage to the viewer, is that your sex life and your ability to sexually function will in fact be damaged, and you probably are concerned about that.

Next slide. The thing that concerns me, though, most, is what we call the attitude shift. Because this is potent material that shifts your attitude. And I want to put in just a little insert into this point, which is just a little statement about the difference between words and pictures because we, in the United States, are very fond of discussing our first amendment, which is freedom of speech. Now, I think the Founding Fathers of the United States didn't mean Internet pornography when they wrote that freedom of speech thing. But there are some that do argue, "Oh, no, they really did mean Internet pornography, and they did mean sadomasochistic websites". Well, no, I don't think so. But I think that in the United States the Founding Fathers were really talking about words; words coming out of your mouth, words written on a page, words written in the newspaper, words written in a book. They were talking about words, people discussing things.

Now, in the United States the Founding Fathers were really talking about political speech. You know, you should be able to say that the King smells bad and that should be all right. You shouldn't be thrown into prison. That's what they were really trying to protect, that you should be able to criticise the government. And it just sort of went haywire, that you shouldn't be able to say anything, do anything.

But, there's a difference between words and pictures. When somebody is speaking, words coming out of the mouth, like mine, right now, the people in the audience are thinking about those words and saying to themselves, "That's just your opinion. Now, I may agree with your opinion or I may not agree with your opinion, but that's just your opinion." Some of the people in the audience are say, "I'm going to spend some time thinking about counter arguing against what you are saying. And if you ever shut up I'm going to say what I want to say, which is in contrast to what you're saying." So they're thinking about an opinion and they are getting ready to challenge you, and they are having this dialogue in their mind as they are buffering what you are saying by counter arguing in their mind.

Pictures don't work that way. Nobody is counter arguing against this is a microphone. This picture is an event, because you can see it. And once you see a picture it doesn't come in as an opinion, it comes in as something that happened. And it's stored in your brain where you store the other things that have happened. So you don't challenge it. You don't buffer it. You don't say, "that's not true". You saw it. You stored it in the place where you saw the other things. So that when you have pictures of children enjoying sex with adults, that picture goes onto your brain and is stored in what they call the episodic memory of other things that you've seen that you now think to be true. You cannot buffer them. You cannot erase them. They are there forever. Which is why, when I get to the issue of pornography addiction, we're going to see why it is that pornography addicts are harder to treat than cocaine addicts; because with cocaine you can at least do detox.

You know, I don't treat the cocaine addicts that walk into my office high on cocaine. I say, "Go to detox. You've got to get the cocaine out of your system before I can treat you". When a pornography addict comes into my office, how do I detox them of the pornographic pictures that they have in their mind? You know, those pictures are permanently implanted in their brain. They can draw those up in a nanosecond from now to the rest of their life. So it's easier to treat a cocaine addict than it is to treat a pornography addict. And it's more likely that the cocaine addict will stay in remission than it is the pornography addict. The pornography addict is more likely to relapse, because this is the first addiction that we're going to have to treat where the addictive substance is permanently implanted in the brain. Never get gone.

So we should treat pictures differently from words. We shouldn't be, you know, confusing words and pictures. They're different. They're processed differently. I think you can have all the freedom of your speech that you want to have, pictures are different. Pictures are different and should be    and should be handled differently.

Now, what do these pictures convey to people? Well, in some research they have taken   and some of this research I'm going to talk about here   was done several years ago, because now it would be very hard for any research committee at any university to clear this kind of research. Because in this study that I'm going to mention here, what they did was show people a lot of pornographic imagery. Now, this was the olden days when they did this study. They showed them pornography videos and they showed them 4 hours and 48 minutes worth of pornography videos, and that was called the "massive exposure condition".

Four hours and 48 minutes of pornography was considered massive exposure. Let me say, people go on the Internet every day and have more than 4 hours and 48 minutes in a single day. But back then when they were doing this study they showed these people 4 hours and 48 minutes worth of pornography over a six week period, and that was considered massively exposed. What did we find? First, they overestimated how often people are involved in sexual psychopathology. So if we took individuals who hadn't seen this pornography and said to them "How many people in this country are having sex with Fido? You know, how many? " "How many are having sex with their dog?" And after we take the other group of people and we show them the pornography and we say, "Okay, now, how many people do you think are into bestiality, their estimates double. Show them a little pornography, and all of a sudden the number of people in the country who are having sex with their dogs has now doubled in their mind.

Ask them about other sexual psychopathology. How many people are having group sex? Well, that doubles too. How about sex involved violence? Okay, that one doubles too. So the more pornography you see the more you think the whole world is crazy and sick. But now you just don't think it's crazy and sick. So there's an attitude shift that occurs, decrease the belief that children should not be exposed to pornography. You wonder why all these people are arguing that this stuff is not so bad, "Jackie, what about these people can walk up"   because they've seen so much of it that now they don't think that we need to protect children from it. So when you hear these people arguing about "why do we need to protect children"   we hear this in the States   "well, why do we need to protect children?", you know. Well, these are people who have seen so much of it their attitude has shifted. They no longer think that we need to protect children from this.

Reduces how much time you think a rapist should spend in jail. So you can reduce that judgment by about half. You know, how many months should they stay in jail? Well, you know, it starts off with 144 months. Now I show you some pornography, "Oh, 77 is plenty". Now, the shocking thing about this is that this is seen in both men and women subjects. The men think that rapists deserve half the time in jail, and the women think that the rapist deserves half the time in jail. So it's an equal opportunity shifter in terms of attitude.

Give me the next one. Decreases the support for the women' liberation movement. Oh, yeah, in both men and women, cuts it in half. And in the men actually more than in half. Reduces them from about 75% support to about 25% support. Is that what we want; want men who no longer think that women should be equal? That you can do that with just 4 hours and 48 minutes worth of pornography. Reduces women's support for the women's liberation movement too.

Increases callousness towards women. Increases the belief in the rape myth. So now we have all these attitudes that are shifting. Now women want to be raped, need to be raped. We don't want them to be liberated. Rapists shouldn't have to go to jail. It's okay for children to see pornography. We are all having sex with Fido in groups anyway. Only took about 4 hours and 48 minutes to get there.

SPEAKER: What do you mean about the rape myth?

DR LAYDEN: The rape myth is a belief that women like to be raped, need to be raped, want to be raped. And, in fact, yesterday, I can't remember her name, there was    it was the first woman, Adel Horin, interviewed me on the telephone after I arrived from the States yesterday. And she said in the interview, "But women, you know   I remember that book that says 'women have rape fantasies and like to be raped and need to be raped'". And I was thinking, "Oh, yikes. That's still around? That's still around that women need to be raped, like to be raped".

And just a comment on that, that's such hate speech against women. It's such hate speech against women. If you look at the fantasies that were talked about in that book, these are fantasies of women who see themselves in this situation: I'm out some place and I see a man and he's extremely attractive, and I would really like to have sex with him but I don't really know him. So I'm hoping that he finds me so sexually attractive that he will just force himself on me, because I'm so desirable and so loveable, that my self esteem takes a boost because he can't control himself, because I'm so wonderful. And then he has sex with me.

That is very different from: I see a man. He is so disgusting and horrible. I wouldn't want to touch him. I can't stand to smell him. He looks horrible to me. I wouldn't even consider taking a look at him, nonetheless having sex with him. He takes me behind the bushes. He pushes me on a rock. My face is full of dirt. I am screaming and yelling. He's pulling my legs apart. He's ripping me. I'm bleeding. I'm screaming and yelling some more, and now I'm raped. No women have fantasies of that second. Okay.

So saying, you know, women like to be raped, need to be raped, want to be raped, some kind of ridiculous Freudian theory. Dr Freud had so many problems. He had so many problems, you know. I mean, truly, the man started off with a theory that said the adult psychopathology has to do with children being molested, until he found out that his own father was a molester. And then he flipped his theory upside down and he said, "I guess the children seduced the father, and that really is what was happening".

Okay. So now you know what Freud's deal is, and why he came up with things like "penis envy". You know, gosh, Freud, maybe you have penis envy. I don't know any women who really have penis envy, except when they go to picnics out in the woods where they can't pee so easily, and then they do. But other than that, no. No, no. Ar ah. That's the only time. I bet   Freud didn't mention that picnic thing, so that's not what he had in mind. No, I don't think he meant that. He had something else.

So, coming up with this women like to be raped is just ridiculous. The easiest way to get post traumatic stress is to rape somebody. Much easier to get post traumatic stress disorder by raping them than to put them on the front lines of a war. You know, more rape victims get post traumatic stress than people who are fighting on the front lines. More rape victims want to commit suicide. More of them do commit suicide. So these are not women that want to be raped, need to be raped, like to be raped. But pornography makes you think that's true.

Can I have the next one. I mentioned this morning the permission giving beliefs. These are actually so central to the whole understanding of what's going on in this that violence perpetrators of all sorts have permission giving beliefs. Beliefs that say, "what I'm doing is normal and fine and okay and doesn't hurt anybody, and I can keep doing what I'm doing". And so that's the core of all the kinds of violence that we see, whether it's sexual violence or whatever. Now, I noticed that in the patients that I treat who are sexual violence perpetrators, they all have some level of permission giving belief that says "This is normal. This is fine. This so okay". And some of the women do too. Some of the women do too.

I remember the first   many, many years ago, I was treating a rape victim. And she was a college student. And she came in and she hadn't told anybody about the rape. And she was telling me this story. And she was saying, "Well, I told him I didn't want to have sex. And he started pulling my hair. And I said I didn't want to have sex. And he pulled on my blouse and the buttons came off. And I told him I didn't want to have sex, and he pried my legs apart. And I said I didn't want to have sex. And then he had sex with me anyway and then I screamed." And so then I said to her what I thought at that moment   because I was a young psychotherapist   what was going to be a pretty bland question, and I said, "Well, when did this rape occur?" I was just looking for the timing of this. And she said, "I wasn't raped!" I said, "You weren't raped?" "No, we were going to get married. So it was okay".

She had permission giving beliefs. So did he. If we're going to get married then it's okay for me to have sex with you whenever I want to, even if I have to pull off your buttons, rip your hair, make you bleed, pull your legs apart, you know. For him, he was just having a bad sexual experience. Wasn't having rape. They were sharing permission giving beliefs.

So some of the permission giving beliefs, children enjoy sex with adults, how do they know? "Well, I've seen it. I've seen the smiling children. They're on the Internet. They're on the pictures in the books, whatever. I've seen children who are smiling and happy and enjoying sex with adults. So I know it's true. I have got the pictures branded on my brain." No.

Before we had the laws   and I'm going to talk a little bit about laws later   but before we had the laws that we had in the United States the paedophiles that I would treat would say to me, "How bad can child pornography be? You can get it at the library!" So for them if you can get it at the library it must be okay. Right. I mean, a little sweet librarian wouldn't let you have anything bad, would she? So it must be okay. And the paedophiles would go to the library and download the child porn, you know.

Women like to be raped is another permission giving belief. Oh, here's a favourite one from pornography. Women have orgasms by behaviours that in reality produce orgasms in men. Now, that's a little miseducation of pornography. Because, you know, in pornographic videos women have orgasms when they perform oral sex on men. Do you know any real women who have that? No. Well, in pornographic videos they have that. You know, I even have people who would say, "Oh, well, I was pleasuring her". "You were?" "Yeah, I was letting her perform oral sex on me". Hah? Yeah. "Oh, my gosh", that's part of the miseducation.

Next slide. Okay, so pornography distortion is a set of beliefs that come directly from pornography. And here's what the pornography message is: sex is not about   according to pornography   kindness, vulnerability, responsibility, sweetness, intimacy, communication, commitment, procreation, marriage, it is not about any of those things because you are not going to see any of those in pornography. And don't you think it is a little bit interesting and a little bit miseducation that sex has nothing to do with procreation? Wow, if it had to do with anything wouldn't it have to do with procreation?

They have taken procreation out of it. Nobody has a baby. Nobody gets pregnant. And out of that, the only kind of procreation message in there are the real Gonzo pornographic videos in which people want to have sex with people who are already pregnant, you know, which is another kind of Gonzo porn.

What is sex about? If it's not about that, according to pornography, what is it about? Well, it is about selfishness, violence, strangers, groups, faeces, objects, children, manipulation, body parts, casual recreation, prostitutional lingerie and using women's bodies as entertainment. Is that the message we want to send? And, remember, we're sending it in a potent way that is going to burn onto your memory. It is going to be printed on your brain forever. Not only is it there forever, not only is it producing arousal, we have reinforced all these messages with the orgasm. Have you noticed that the orgasm is a really reinforcing things. So we can get these messages in there permanently by reinforcing them with an orgasm.

Okay, what is the next one? Sex is not for bald men, small breasted women, older women, kind men, large women, funny men, spiritual women, thin men, disabled women, ugly men. No, none of those people get to have sex, because in pornography none of them do. No, no, you're not getting any. No. Who is it for? It's just for young people. Only young people. Physically atypically constructed people. Physically attractive people. Surgically enhanced people. Those are the only people who have sex. It is not like sex is something that is universal to all the people. No, just a small category. Just these, those surgically replayed people are getting it.

So this is called pornography distortion which is, you know, beliefs that are not true. Let me get the next one. Sex is for sale, out of control and the basis of your self esteem, because sex addicts think the more sex they have the better they are as men, and the more kinds of sex they have the better they are as men, and the more sex partners they have the better they are as men. So their self esteem is based now as a sexually based self esteem. And, for women, some women have that same kind of sexual and romantic based self esteem. So my feminine self esteem is now based on how many people I can have sex with or how many people want to have sex with me; how many people choose me. All self esteem based on the sexual currency.

Sex is not sacred. It is not sacred. In no pornography do we ever get a message that there is anything sacred about sexuality. So this is pornography distortion, which is the message we are sending in the most potent way that we can send a message. Believe me, there is no school curriculum that anybody in this country has developed, anybody in my country has developed, that is as strongly displayed or strongly impacting as pornography. Because pornography has arousal, and it's got the orgasm, and it comes in pictures. You are not going to come up with something that will talk away, remove in any way with the use of words the impact of pornography. And I'm sorry to say that those who are in media education that says, "Well, let people look at all these kinds of media and have all these kinds of images and then we'll just talk to them and we'll just dampen the impact by talking to them", no way, Honey.

You do not dampen the impact of these pictures by the words that you say after the pictures are delivered. That is not going to happen. It does not happen. I mean, even if you take something that is extremely mild, like the advertising industry. Now, the advertising industry presents its stuff in pictures, and so, you know, in magazines and on TV. They have these little one minute movies on TV; these one minute movies on TV they call advertisements. And they think these little one minute movies change your attitudes and your behaviours. You now think this is a good kind of soap and you are going to buy this kind of soap. And they expect these little one minute movies are going to change you. Okay.

And they don't have much arousal. They certainly don't have much orgasm connected to them, but the advertising industry is basing billions of dollar on the idea that these little one minute movies are going to change your attitudes and your behaviours. Now, I understand that they are people who say, "Well, advertising does not affect me. I know it affects all these other people, but advertising does not affect me". That is usually said by someone who is wearing a Budweiser hat. "It doesn't affect me. No, no. I'm immuned to that stuff." Budweiser cap. All right.

SPEAKER: Not here in Australia. Not here in Australia. Fosters.

DR LAYDEN: Fosters. I should have gotten

SPEAKER: VB.

DR LAYDEN: So, in fact, advertising affects us. And those are just little one minute movies. So those people who are saying "Oh, that pornography is not affecting me", silly, silly, silly statements. Silly statements. You are not going to talk it away. And now the pornography is everywhere. We have the pornography of everyday life, which is the billboard. And in the United States we have the Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue, though, some of those girls have forgotten to put on their swimsuits for the swimsuit issue. You know, we've got all of that, the pornography of everyday life and all those people saying   it's everywhere. It's everywhere, to the point that we didn't notice it. We don't notice it now because it's everywhere. And now it's sort of gone from our perception and, you know, if we were going to discover water it wouldn't be done by a fish, because we're just swimming in it. We're swimming in it so we're not noticing it.

So one of the studies that I did in this area was to look at attitude shifts and pornography distortion, and what the permission giving beliefs are. As I asked non patients   because I get this question, "These are all patients, right? So they're all sick people?" No. No. Research is done on normal    normal individuals. So I did some research where I asked college students, "Have you ever gone to a prostitute? Do you intend to go to a prostitute in the future?" It's interesting, because now we've got two groups. One who say, "I've already gone to a prostitute" and one who said, "I haven't gone yet but I'm going to go". So this is interesting for those of you who are interested in research design. You know, can make statements about causality, because they haven't been to the prostitute yet. So we can talk about the pornography has already happen, but the prostitution visit has not happened yet. So at least there is timeframe.

So what about the ones who say "I don't go to prostitutes"? What stops them? Let's look at these answers. "It could cause health problems like sexually transmitted diseases". Now, you see the first answer   and this is the highest rated answer   is a self interest one. "It doesn't fit my idea of what kind of person I am". Somebody has taught this guy that you are not the kind of man who would go to a prostitute. Somebody in his family, somebody in his friend group, somebody somewhere said "you're not the kind". "It's being unfaithful to a lover or spouse". "I think you should have sexual self control." Now, he's got the opposite message of the other guy. The first guy was saying sexual self control is a limiting thing, a bad thing. He is now saying you are supposed to have it.

"I think sex should have some emotional involvement." "Sex should be between persons of equal power to say yes or no to sex." "I think it's morally wrong." I'm sorry to say, it only came up as the seventh answer. "My sex needs are being met in other ways." "I don't think I'm like the guys who do go." Again and again is the issue. "I'm not like them, those guys who go." "I think it is unethical." "I would be afraid that my spouse or lover would find out and would be angry." "I think sex should not be with strangers." So obviously there is a significant difference in belief from guys who say "I'm going to go in the future" to guys who say "I'm not going to go in the future".

So this gives us a little bit of a map of what needs to be changed. We need to be challenging those first set of beliefs. We need to be supporting the second set of beliefs. I agree with the speaker this morning who said we need to start in grade school   in primary school. We need to start with little ones. How hard would it be to get a bit of sex education in the curriculum? "Don't go to prostitutes." It's only a sentence.

The reporter I spoke to yesterday on the phone said, "Well, we wouldn't want to have anything in our sex education curriculum that implied any form of judgment of what you should and should not do". Yikes. Okay, then just accept everything, including HIV and everything else. I mean, that was    that was stunning.

Now, we can go on to this next one. Okay, now, there is a behavioural shift too. We have just been talking about the attitude shift, but there is a behavioural shift. First we find that those who use pornography are more involved in non consensual sex. And some examples from the research are: getting somebody to have sex with you by lying to them or by using physical force. So the more pornography you use the more you will be involved in that. Engage in sexual behaviours if you think you wouldn't get caught, including things such as rape. What would you be willing to do if you thought you couldn't get caught? The more pornography you will use the more you will be willing to do all kinds of things if you thought you weren't going to get caught. The more pornography you use the more likely you are to go to a prostitute. If you're a batterer, you're involved in domestic violence and you use pornography, you are more likely to not only batter your spouse but sexually abuse your spouse as well. So you have a double whammy for these women who are being battered. And it also increases fetishes.

I want to talk a little bit about cybersex addiction. This is the new way. That is, those who are going online and looking at pornography sites. This is a particular concern because everything about cybersex is the complete antithesis of what we want in terms of relationship. It is exactly the opposite of anything we want in terms of relationship. First, it's a one way street that focuses on your own pleasure. So you go online. You don't care what that person online is feeling. It doesn't matter what that person online is feeling. You don't care what they want. You know it doesn't matter what they want. It's a one way street. It's all about me. This is not so good in real relationships. Okay.

Number 2. You get designer sex. Click, click, click. Want this one, click. Give me another one, click. Give me some other type. Different hair, click. Different body parts. Designer sex. You know, this doesn't work in real life. With a real partner you can't just click them into another image. So it is damaging to real life relationships.

It produces quick orgasms. I'm sorry, but quick orgasms are not good in real relationships. We don't want those quick orgasms. But that's what you get on cybersex, get to it fast. Get to it fast. Partners often think it is infidelity. Well, that's not very helpful in real relationships. If your partner thinks that going online is just a version of visional infidelity, this is now damaging your relationships. Some pornography found on the internet is pathological. And the Gonzo type of pornography, which is now just flooding the Internet, sex with animals, sex with faeces, sex with objects, sex with   every form of pathological sex, is abundantly represented on the Internet. Religions universally condemn the use of pornography, so it damages your sense of your religious self, which is not particularly helpful.

Companies have zero tolerance policies for using pornography on work computers. So now it is going to damage your career, which is not helpful in your real life. And the women who pose on the Internet never say no. So we're teaching people don't ever expect no. Don't know what "no" means. They think that everybody is going to give you exactly what you want when you want it. So we are producing the sexual narcissism, the sexual entitlement that is actually the fueler for things such as rape. So cybersex addiction is a tremendous threat to real relationships, and increasing sexual violence.

Here's some statistics about sex addicts. This is not too good here. Forty per cent of the sex addicts will lose their spouse for this reason alone. You put all the other stressors in there, and other reasons to lose their spouse, 58% of sex addicts will have financial difficulties, some losing all their savings and their earnings; 27% of sex addicts will lose their job or be demoted; 40% of sex addicts who are professionals will lose their professions because they are acting out on their jobs, and then they will no longer be able to function in those professional careers, lose their licences and so on. So all of these are damages to the viewer. Attitude shifts, behavioural shifts, all kinds of problems to the viewer.

Let's go on to the next one. Damages to the performers. Now, I talked this morning about prostitutes and those who want to call it work. But it's the only kind of career that says a prerequisite for being in this job is you have to be raped as a child and you have to be homeless, and it would be helpful if you were a drug abuser too. So that these are things that are damages before they enter the sex industry. And what happens after they get into the sex industry? Well, how about this as some of the consequences of your job: depression, post traumatic stress disorder, dissociative identity disorder    I'm going to talk about that in a bit   substance abuse disorder, eating disorders, low self esteem, and traumatic re enactment. You want the job? You like this job so far?

Okay. So, dissociative identity disorder   oops. That was okay. If you can go back that is fine. I'll just talk about the bits. Dissociative identity disorder is a disorder in which a person disassociates, meaning, I can't stay in my body psychologically. I can't be at home in my body. It typically starts when a child is being sexually abused. So if you rape a child, one thing a child does to tolerate that immense horror is to leave their body, go up to the ceiling and watch the child being raped from the ceiling. So "It's not me. It's somebody else. I'm watching it. I'm out of my body. I don't have to feel it. It's not happening to me. And when I'm an adult I can still use it as a coping strategy. Go out of my body and dissociate".

Eating disorders, low self esteem, traumatic re enactment, we talked about that this morning, about the repetition that happens. When this little girl has been raped in her childhood, that visual invasion and physical invasion now seems normal. As an adult she repeats that. So she will become a stripper, she will become a porn model, she will become a prostitute. Those are just a repeat now, with the customer playing the role of the perpetrator. So we have the whole cycle in the repeat.

If you go to the next slide you will see the numbers that I am talking about. And you have to know what the numbers of these are in the normal population to understand that these numbers are enormous. You know, when we have sexual abuse at the 65% level, if we have got dissociation at the 35% level. Thirty five per cent of these strippers are dissociated. In the normal population the number of people who dissociate is so far below 1%, we're not even sure how much below 1% is. Thirty five per cent in this population who need to dissociate in order to go to work. In order to tolerate being at work.

DR LAYDEN: In this study they found that the prostitutes had actually less levels of those particular problems. We don't know exactly why. Though, one person said to me, "When you're a stripper and you have to be physically and visually invaded every day by many people at once, that the damage is even greater than the one to one invasion. And, you know, the men who go to strip clubs will say to me, "Oh, those women, they are really attracted to me, and they really like me and they"   I'm thinking, "Have you ever talked to a striper? Have you ever heard what they say about men?" They're acting like "I'm really excited by you. I'm really desirous of you. And I'm thinking, I hate your guts. You're a pig. I don't want you to touch me. You disgust me. I wouldn't go out on a date with you if you had all the money in the world. You are such a horrible thing. You make me want to puke. And I have to do this with many, many people who are now visually invading me, and I'm being intimate with people I'm not intimate with. And I better get out of my body or I will go crazy".

Though, many strippers say, "well if I can't dissociant any more I will just have to use cocaine or alcohol. They also work to get me out of my body to go to work". So you want the job so far? You have to be drunk on the job. You have to be high on the job or have to be able to dissociate to get through the day. And you're probably going to be depressed and you're probably going to use some kind of substances to get through. So, you know, what kind of work   we're talking about work   what kind of work involves these kinds of conditions, these kinds of outcomes?

If you give me the next one. Here are some of the other problems that the performers experience. Marriage problems. In fact, one study said that the women have about a 25% chance of making a marriage that lasts as long as three years. Three years! A 25% chance of making a marriage that will last as long as three years. Now, it is a group of prostitutes and strippers. Right.

Now, for those who say that pornography really is a marriage aid and it really stimulates my marriage, I'm saying, you know, if that is true then the people who were most deeply involved in it would have the best marriages.

So is that what you want? Okay. The ostracizing is terrible. It's horrendous. It's re traumatising as they are ostracized in the society. Sexual harassment on the job. Self harming. And some of the typical self harming, the cutting and the burning, is just one form. But also you see self harming behaviours that are, in some ways, accepted in this society. So that almost 100% of the strippers that I've ever had to deal with, and almost 100% of the strippers out in the world, have had fake breasts implanted. They have to as part of their job requirement, is to get some fake breasts. Because now men have become so used to women with gigantic breasts that they think that's normal, and they want to see stripers who look like Barbie doll. You know, 18 inch waist and 40 inch chest. You know, tiny little thing with the huge   as if you can convince all the fat on your body to go to one spot, you know, like genetically.

Poor little Barbie, if she ever was a person, if she ever walked she would fall down and not be able to stand up. That poor soul is not walking through the world in any kind of functional way. And most of you may know that Barbie doll was based on a prostitute in Germany, before she was brought to the United States by Ruth Handler, to give to Mattel to make a doll for children. Barbie doll is based on Lily, who was a famous prostitute in Germany. And the doll itself, Ruth Handler bought the porn shop in Germany and brought it back to the United States. And Barbie doll became a phenomenon after that.

So these women are getting these breast implants. Now, we now have four studies, four gigantic, huge, some of them national sized studies in four different cultures that say women who get breast implants are three to four times as likely to commit suicide. Okay. So you want that job requirement, get something that puts you more at risk for suicide? So that kind of self harming, verbal and physical abuse on the job, stalking, difficulty changing jobs, difficulty finishing your education. All of those strippers that say "I'm going to be a stripper and make some money for college", they never make it back to college. They are not going through their education. College is done for them.

So, now lest you think all of these problems that we have just named in the performers have to do with the fact that it's illegal, and that's what is causing the damage, and if we could just legalise it we could mitigate all this damage   give me the next slide   this is strippers, and strippers in the United States are legal. And here are some of the things that happen to them on their job. And these are behaviours by customers. Thirty six per cent are bitten, 24% are slapped. Fifty eight per cent are pinched, 28% have their hair pulled. Seventy three per cent have their breast grabbed, 90% have their buttocks grabbed.

Next slide. Eighty one per cent have their arm grabbed, 76% are pelted by ice or cigarettes or coins. Ninety one per cent are verbally abused, 52% are called cunt. Sixty one per cent are called whore, 85% are called bitch. Seventy per cent are followed home, 42% are stalked.

Want this job? Like this one? This job is legal. This is what is happening to these people. So you are thinking, if we make it legal we'll make the job site work well? You can't legalise out the degradation that men feel for these women who work in the sexual exploitation industry, because the men feel degraded and they know they are degrading the women. And the hostility and the anger that come out of those men will not be legalised away. It will not be legalised away. So you can't fix this by legalising it.

Now, lest you think that this is only the stuff that is done to strippers by customers    give me the next slide    here is what is done by the management and staff. Okay, 12% are slapped by the management, 12% pinched by the management. Eighty five per cent are verbally abused by the management, 21% are called cunt, 18% are called slut, 33% are called bitch by their boss. You want that job, where your boss calls you a cunt and a slut and a bitch when you go to work, and slaps you and so far. So do you want to call this work? Does it seem like work to you? You know, this is legal, and this is what is happening on this job. Now, this is just some of the damages to the performers. Go to the next slide.

What about the partners and the children? Relationship damage to the partners and to the children. The example that I use, and I've heard this on variations in so many of the patients that I deal with, the woman comes in and she says, "My husband and I are having problems in our marriage, and so we went to see this marital therapist who told us to use some pornography. And so we did. We used the pornography together, and the initial reaction was it sort of stimulated our marriage and we were having more sex and we were having stronger orgasms and we were saying 'this is pretty good' and then"   I'm always waiting as she is telling this story because the "and then" always comes    "and then"   I'll get some variation on this theme   "one night I'm having sex with him and he's turning around and looking at the pornography on the TV screen while he's having sex with me. And I'm thinking, he's not having sex with me. He's having sex with her. He's masturbating in my body but he is having sex with her".

And then it occurs to them, this pornography actually reduced the intimacy in our marriage. It reduced the connectedness in our marriage. It reduced the commitment in our marriage. Any time you bring anybody into your marriage other than you and your partner, anybody, into the intimacy of that, you are going to reduce and dilute the intimacy of that marriage. So, for those who say "It just stimulates him and then, you know, he comes home and has sex with me", he's having sex with her. He's having sex with her. So it dilutes the relationship. So that the marriage partners are being damaged by this as well.

Okay. And the kids, what do the kids telling me? You know, the kids say, "When daddy looks at me it feels yukky". They don't know about the sexualised gazes. They don't know the term. They don't know the term "emotional incest". They don't know the term. They just know that "daddy gives me creepies". He looks at me in that way and something about him is not right. So the relationship between the parent and the child is now damaged. Okay.

Job and educational problems. You know, one study said that 45% of those students who flunk out of college in their first year who are capable, flunk out for inappropriate Internet use. Forty five per cent of our college students who are capable of making it through college who still flunk out. Flunk out because of Internet use.

Job problems, if they are using this on their job. Low self esteem. Invariably the women of the porn addicts have low self esteem. Eating disorders, substance abuse disorders in the partners, depression in the partners and in the children. Self harming also in the partners and in the children. We see these women are also getting breast implants. The wives of the pornography addicts are likely to go to the plastic surgeons and say "I need the big breasts"; put themselves at risk, you know, of all the sorts of risk.

I mean, you know, the fake breasts have all kinds of problems. The digestive disorders, the immune system disorders and the babies of the women who have breast implants. Can you imagine how bad your self esteem has to be to be willing to have a threat to your baby but you still need to get the breast implants. How strong is the message that you are not okay unless you have those fake sized breasts. And you will never be able to get a clean mammogram again in your life. So put yourself at risk for breast cancer. But you need the breast implants so much that you would do that.

Now, these are all   you know, I started off saying this is equal opportunity toxin and it hurts, you know, the viewer and the performer and the partners and the children and it hurts everybody. And now what can we do about it? Well, we can do things about it. The Swedish model is something you can do about it. You can send the message that we are going to change the system. You can try to roll back the biggest permission giving belief there is, which is it's legal. Roll it back. You don't want to be sending that message.

You can do   I mean, we've tried a lot of laws in the United States. Some of them have not survived. But one of them has survived, which is the legislators tried multiple times to get laws which said we can keep the pornography away from our children, we can block it in the libraries. We can block it in the schools. And every time we pass a law in the United States the American Civil Liberties Union came up and said "free speech". "Free speech. Our Founding Fathers wanted our children to have pornography, you know". Oh, right. Okay.

Well, we finally got one, and we got it through the issue of money. Because the Government said to the libraries, "If you want any Federal funding for your library Internet use you've got to have filters on your library computers. All those librarians who were saying "We want to have complete unfetterred access in our library and we don't want to have any limitations in our library"   "oh, you are going to take our money away. Okay, put a filter on. Okay, that would be okay. I'll take the filter. That would be okay."

So now our libraries are filtered. Now our libraries are filtered. So through the wisdom of the legislators, through the persistence of the legislators, and because you hit them in their money, now our libraries are filtered. So there are things you can do. There are things you can do.

But, let me say this: If you sit in silence, if you do not speak up, if you know the truth and you do not speak truth to authority, your silence is complicity. So you cannot be silent. Warwick and Alison have given you a gift of this conference to help you know the truth. And, for me, when I finally got the lesson that silence was complicity, and when I finally understood in my life that those psychological cannibals in the world, the pornographers, the sex traffickers, the pimps, the ones who are feeding upon the psychological vulnerabilities of others were dependent on my silence. They were dependent on my silence. And so, you can take a message from me to anybody in that realm, any pornographer, any pimp, any sex trafficker, you can tell them for me that I said to them: You will never have the comfort of my silence again. And if that is true for you as well, you can be the kinds of heroes that this planet deeply hungers for, and I hope it is true. Thank you.

SPEAKER: We don't have time for questions, I'm sorry. Could Mr. Michael Ferguson please come to the podium. And he is going to give a vote of thanks.

MR FERGUSON: Well, good evening. Mary Anne, that was awful.

DR LAYDEN: Thank you. Thank you.

MR FERGUSON: I'm sure that everybody knows exactly what I mean by that. Mary Anne, you have been a great inspiration tonight. You are obviously a very strong and proud woman. And that stands out and strikes me very potently. You clearly are a true believer, and you really do believe in not a religion, not a creed, but you obviously believe in people and protecting them, and defending what you believe is right, and defending what you know to be right for your fellow men and women and their children.

It really was awful. It makes me feel quite ill to have heard a lot of what you have said tonight, and it really troubles me. Actually, it really, really troubles me. And it has exposed to me the way in which even an intelligent, educated, successful member of parliament, how even people like me can have some of those messages diluted. And you have re exposed me to the truth of the cause that you are rallying us to, and I really feel proud to have heard tonight's message. I didn't quite know what to expect, but I'm proud to have heard it. You've activated something in me. I think that there have been a few fires lit tonight. And, gee, I wish you could come to Tasmania.

DR LAYDEN: I am coming to Tasmania.

MR FERGUSON: Well, I really would like you to go to Hobart.

DR LAYDEN: I am.

MR FERGUSON: Well, is that right. We have got a few Tasmanians here tonight. And I'd like to contribute toward your visit in a practical way. So I'll hopefully make contact with you tonight about that, and would encourage others to do the same. Words are inadequate, Mary Anne.

And may I just say to Jenny, who was actually asked to give the vote of thanks tonight but deferred to me, I think that's a great credit to you, Jenny. I was pleased to be able to stand in support, and speak in support of your private members' motion on trafficking, just a few months ago. And I just wanted to mention that and thank you for deferring.

So good on you Jenny, and maybe tomorrow we need to start working more closely together in our roles as representatives.

Mary Anne, thank you very much for your academic talk, but a talk that really touched my heart, and I think the hearts of a lot of people around here. I'm just so pleased that you are here, and I think that the message that you have is infectious, and it will grow and it will spread, and that you have    though you baffled me, as a 31 year old, I didn't get your joke about, "If your genitals are on fire smoke gets in your eyes". I suspect that was an older song. I'm not sure. Everything else I understood.

DR LAYDEN: You have to be an oldy.

MR FERGUSON: Mary Anne, enough of me. But thank you sincerely from the bottom of our hearts for activating us tonight and for coming all this way, for sharing and giving us the benefit of your research and, you know, your conviction. You have made me very proud. So please join with me in thanking Mary Anne.

DR LAYDEN: And can I just thank Warwick and Alison. I didn't know who Warwick was when he called me on the phone and said, "Would you mind flying 24 hours continuously to come to Australia and give a speech". And he's infectious, and convinced me to do that, and got me through all the rocky parts about my getting here. And I feel very grateful. And I apologise to Warwick for all the troubles I gave him about being here, but I thank you. And you are all so fortunate to have people like that among you.

ENDS