Hello, everyone, welcome to the summer 2024 edition of Rewarding News.

We hope you have been enjoying the Olympic season and what there is of the sunshine.

In this edition we have a bumper crop of new research items for you highlighting why issues around porn are so under reported in the media. It’s not just because it’s an icky subject, but because of the infamous “playbook”. More on that below.

We also bring you words of love, a book recommendation, an update on where we’ve been recently and what we’ve achieved in the past 10 years, plus a reminder to have a look at our online course. See last item below.

The online course is in the process of being renamed “Problematic Pornography Use” as part of its annual update. We also plan to divide it up into smaller two hour chunks to make it more accessible and specific to your needs. It will be especially useful as a back up for teachers and youth leaders using our free lesson plans given the direct input of healthcare professionals.

If there are any other subjects you’d like us to cover or wish to give us feedback on, please contact me at: [email protected].

Warmest wishes,

Mary Sharpe, CEO

L’Hymne à l’Amour

Le ciel bleu, sur nous, peut s’effondrer, et la Terre peut bien s’écrouler

Peu m’importe si tu m’aimes, je me fous du monde entier

Tant qu’l’amour inondera mes matins, que mon corps frémira sous tes mains

Peu m’importent les grands problems, mon amour, puisque tu m’aimes.

J’irai jusqu’au bout du monde, je me ferais teindre en blonde, si tu me le demandais.

J’irai décrocher la Lune, j’irais voler la fortune, si tu me le demandais.

J’irai loin ma patrie, je renierais mes amis, si tu me le demandais.

On peut bien rire de moi, je ferais n’importe quoi, si tu me le demandais.

Si un jour, la vie t’arrache à moi, si tu meurs, que tu sois loin de moi

Peu m’importe si tu m’aimes, car moi, je mourrai aussi.

Nous aurons pour nous l’éternité dans le bleu de toute l’immensité.

Dans le ciel, plus de problems, mon amour, crois-tu qu’on s’aime ?

Dieu réunit ceux qui s’aiment

Hymn to Love

The sky above us can melt away and the earth can fall away,

nothing matters if you love me.

I don’t care about the rest of the world so long as love floods my mornings

and my body quivers under your hands.

The big problems don’t matter, my love, since you love me.

I will go to the ends of the earth, I will dye my hair blond, if you would ask me to.

I will draw down the moon, I would steal a fortune, if you would ask me to.

I will go far from home, my own friends I would disown, if you would ask me to.

People can laugh at me, I would do anything if you asked it of me.

If one day, life tears you away from me. If you die, and you’d be far away from me

it won’t matter if you love me. For I will die too.

We will have eternity on our side in the blue of all the immensity in the sky, no more problems. My love, do you believe that we love each other?

God reunites those who love each other.”

Ever wondered why, if pornography is so harmful, that there are so few articles around explaining that? You can thank the multibillion-dollar pornography industry’s disinformation campaign to create confusion and cause doubt in the mind of the public, media and decision makers. The job of the porn industry shills is to attack those, especially journalists and educators, who dare to say that the product or service is potentially harmful. Harm-revealing science is bad for business.

Big Tobacco developed a campaign starting in the 1950s called “The playbook”. Back then, scientists, cosy with the tobacco industry, denied any link between smoking and lung cancer. Instead, they promoted fake research that sought to blame other factors, despite the mounting evidence of nicotine and tobacco as the culprits. They fielded bullying PR types to mislead usually underinformed interviewers. Other industries have followed in their footsteps. The latest one to use the infamous playbook is the pornography industry.

Several leading social science academics at universities including Harvard, George Washington, Stanford and Cambridge have written books about the playbook. However, so far there is little reference to the pernicious pornography industry. These writers include Oreskes & Conway, 2011; Michaels, 2023; Jacquet, 2023; and Van der Linden, 2023. The BBC Radio 4 documentary series called How they made us doubt everything is excellent (Pomerantsev, 2020). It still available on BBC i-player, and a second series of that name has just started. Here is a short video about the porn playbook.

Two recent peer-reviewed papers by TRF’s chair, Dr Darryl Mead show the lengths the pornography industry are willing to go to in attacking educators. There is more on this theme in the book review later in this newsletter.

See our two blogs on these papers with excerpts and links to the full papers:

Pornography Industry’s Disinformation Campaign (on Addiction Recovery Resources) Part One

Abstract

As pornography became increasingly popular online, many unsuspecting consumers reported adverse effects. These included sexual dysfunctions, such as lack of response with real partners, delayed ejaculation, erectile difficulties, and sexual compulsivity. Some pornography consumers began congregating in online self-help portals (forums and websites) to assist one another in quitting or reducing problematic pornography use. The popularity of the self-help resources and their potential to dampen the profits of a lucrative industry resulted in disinformation campaigns run by individuals connected to the pornography industry.

In this article, I examine how a paper containing significant inaccuracies about the people organising the online recovery forums passed the peer-review process while failing to disclose the author’s conflicts of interest. The author of the case study has documented affiliations with a major pornography company, MindGeek* (the owner of Pornhub). Somehow, it passed peer review, lending it a false halo of credibility. Pornography industry-connected individuals then repeatedly exploited it, for example, on social media and Wikipedia, to discredit pornography self-help recovery resources. (Emphasis added)

and

Pornography Industry’s Disinformation Campaign (to Deny Harms Caused by Pornography Use) Part Two

Abstract

This case study uses routine activity theory to contextualise the method used by an external bad actor to create fake links within the Internet Archive for the Web site Yourbrainonporn.com. It then discusses the social media campaign which occurred two years later using screenshots of these fake links accessed via the Wayback Machine to defame the site owner. An organised disinformation campaign on social media began attacking the site owner of Yourbrainonporn.com (a pornography recovery Web site) for allegedly, accidentally, posting evidence on his own site of him searching for and hosting hardcore pornography.

In fact, the list of purportedly incriminating links did not point to any content, but the defamers’ intentions seemed to have always been to setup a smear campaign against a particular site and its author. Options are discussed for the Internet Archive to provide improved guardianship and to educate the public to minimise harm from this type of social media attack based on screenshots of fake URLs. (Emphasis added) 

Prevalence of Sexual Strangulation/Choking Among Australian 18–35 Year‑Olds

Abstract

In Australia, strangulation has been explicitly criminalized in all states and territories. However, it continues to be a “normalized” sexual practice despite its potentially fatal consequences and associated short and long-term sequelae. This research aimed to establish the prevalence of strangulation during sex and examine predictors of positive perceptions toward sexual strangulation in Australia.

Confidential, cross-sectional online surveys were conducted with 4702 Australians aged 18–35 years. Participants were 47% cis-men, 48% cis-women, and 4% trans or gender diverse. A total of 57% reported ever being sexually strangled (61% women, 43% men, 79% trans or gender diverse) and 51% reported ever strangling a partner (40% women, 59% men, 74% trans or gender diverse). Differences were found across genders on all variables of sexual strangulation, including frequency of engagement, level of pressure on the neck, consequences, wanting and enjoyment, and how consent was given/received.

However, when split by gender, sexual orientation of men and women revealed further differences in behaviors, consequences, and wanting, particularly among straight and bisexual women. After accounting for exposure to strangulation in pornography and previous experience of sexual strangulation, positive perceptions of being strangled (R2 = .51) and strangling a partner (R2 = .53) were predicted by ratings that it could be done safely and social normative factors. These findings suggest strangulation is common during sex among young Australians. Non-stigmatizing education strategies are needed to engage with young people so they have a better understanding of the risks involved and how to negotiate consent and safety regarding sexual strangulation. [Emphasis added].

https://x.com/citizenlenz/status/1808337793904697675?t=AbXsUHHs0my6yJ-ooyNsjA

See our earlier blog on called “Breath Play aka Strangulation – Rising Fast” 

Appetitive conditioning with pornographic stimuli elicits stronger activation in reward regions than monetary and gaming-related stimuli

“These results align with previous research indicating that pornography has a high addictive potential due to its strong affective and arousal properties.”

Abstract

Appetitive conditioning plays an important role in the development and maintenance of pornography-use and gaming disorders. It is assumed that primary and secondary reinforcers are involved in these processes. Despite the common use of pornography and gaming in the general population appetitive conditioning processes in this context are still not well studied. This study aims to compare appetitive conditioning processes using primary (pornographic) and secondary (monetary and gaming-related) rewards as unconditioned stimuli (UCS) in the general population…

NCOSE exists to build a world where people can live and love without sexual abuse and exploitation. These aims and values chime with those of The Reward Foundation. So TRF took advantage of the opportunity at the NCOSE Summit in Washington DC to promote our research, materials and meet influencers in the field operating in countries across the world. We met colleagues from Australia, Canada, Jamaica, South Africa, England, around the USA, Russia, Jordan, etc. This included talks with 2 Attorneys General in the US, (the Honorable Raúl Torrez of New Mexico and the Honorable Jason Miyares of Virginia).

UN Special Rapporteur on Violence Against Women and Girls

Our CEO was pleased to have an opportunity to chat with the impressive UN Special Rapporteur on Violence Against Women and Girls, Reem Alsalem (see photo). Here is a link to her recent report . In it she refers to pornography as “filmed prostitution”. She argues against using the term “sex work” stating:

“Given the immense harm experienced by women and girls in prostitution, it is important to use terminology that aligns with international human rights law and standards. Terms like ‘sex work’ sanitise the harmful reality of prostitution.” …

“The violence enacted against women in pornography, such as strangulation and defecation, is often re-enacted against girls and women by those who consume pornography in the physical world, such as strangulation and defecation. The increase in rape, including gang rape, can be linked to the increased male consumption of pornography.”

Our Chair, Dr Darryl Mead, presented 2 papers at the summit, one mentioned above, and a new one with the statistics on pornography use worldwide and what that means for the health burden for countries dealing with an increase in porn-related mental health disorders and physical issues. There are simply not enough health care providers to cope with the staggering rise in numbers of people with pornography-related health issues. This means we all have to do more work on prevention through education and legislation. Both papers went down extremely well. We’ve met lots of excellent people with whom to collaborate and share resources.

If you want to understand how one woman took on the Goliath pornography industry see Laila Mickelwait’s revelatory new book “Takedown”. It’s a national best seller in the USA.

“The gripping, true story of one woman’s battle to expose and shut down a criminal online porn empire.

Pornhub was the 10th most visited site on the Internet, often praised as a progressive champion of women. Then one day, an activist discovered a secret they had been keeping from the world for over a decade: it was infested with child sexual abuse and rape videos.

Now for the first time, anti-trafficking expert and mother of two Laila Mickelwait tells the story of her battle against Pornhub’s billionaire executives and the credit card companies who helped them monetize the abuse of countless victims—some as young as three years old.”

This book complements the reports we’ve made above about the profit-obsessed focus of the pornography industry and its bullying PR teams determined to destroy our work and that of our colleagues across the globe.

We’d like to take this opportunity to thank everyone who has supported us in a variety of ways these past 10 years.  Cases of problematic pornography use have soared along with a drastic increase in health problems and sexual offending. Relationships are struggling and more people than ever are seeking help from healthcare and other professionals to deal with their porn-related issues. Children and adolescents are being robbed of healthy sexual development by stumbling across or being sent hardcore pornography. Pornography is widely found in social media including X, formerly Twitter. This can leave some with mental scars or trigger a pathological curiosity that develops into compulsive use or aggressive behaviour. Pornography addiction indicates more divorces and relationship break ups. We have discussed above the disturbing rise in sexual strangulation as a form of high-risk sexual play among young adults.

During these years we have been busy!

The Reward Foundation has:

• created free lesson plans for schools based on our live discussions with pupils, teachers and parents
• produced an online and in-person training course (Problematic Pornography Use) for professionals including teachers. For the past seven years it was accredited by the Royal College of General Practitioners (family doctors)
• created a free parents’ guide to internet pornography
• made free videos available on our YouTube channel
• attended conferences worldwide
• built relationships with journalists and taken part in interviews, live debates on TV and radio and in podcasts online
• established our website and social media profile.
• answered national and international government consultations on porn-related issues- be it age verification legislation or violence against women and children
• produced nine research papers and in addition have collaborated with academics around the world
• helped promote Gary Wilson’s book Your Brain on Porn – Internet Pornography and the Emerging Science of Addiction. It is now available in 14 languages with more in the pipeline.
• and we have directed countless people seeking help to find resources and trained therapists.

Moving forward, we hope to provide more free materials. Look out for announcements. Support us by making a donation to our charity. Help spread the word about our work. Have a look at our website for more information. A big thank you from all the team.

Please follow us on x.com for regular updates throughout 2024.

Our online course for healthcare and other professionals is the world’s first ever one for healthcare and other professionals on Problematic Pornography Use. There are 8 interactive modules.

It was developed by the TRF team during the CEO’s time as a visiting scholar at the University of Cambridge. The course is evidence-based and does not show pornography.

You will learn from experts in the field to give you confidence to ask appropriate questions and offer the latest treatment options to clients, patients or service users.

What is in the course?
There are 8 interactive modules

• The basics – pornography’s impact on the brain
• Screening tools for compulsive sexual behaviour disorder and sexual dysfunctions
• Sexual dysfunctions in men who are pornography users
• Sexual dysfunctions in women who are pornography users
• Pornography use in stable couples
• Pornography and intimate partner violence
• Pornography and adolescents
• Treatment options

Learn more about the course here.

Introductory price:  £120.00. Sign up here. Please spread the word.