Pornified

How Pornography Is Damaging Our Lives, Our Relationships, and Our Families

Pamela Paul

St. Martin's Griffin

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“Strips porn of its culture-war claptrap . . . Pornified may stand as a Kinsey Report for our time.”—San Francisco Chronicle

Porn in America is everywhere—not just in cybersex and Playboy but in popular video games, advice columns, and reality television shows, and on the bestseller lists. Even more striking, as porn has become affordable, accessible, and anonymous, it has become increasingly acceptable—and a big part of the personal lives of many men and women.

In this controversial and critically acclaimed book, Pamela Paul argues that as porn becomes more pervasive, it is destroying our marriages and families as well as distorting our children’s ideas of sex and sexuality. Based on more than one hundred interviews and a nationally representative poll, Pornified exposes how porn has infiltrated our lives, from the wife agonizing over the late-night hours her husband spends on porn Web sites to the parents stunned to learn their twelve-year-old son has seen a hardcore porn film.

Pornified is an insightful, shocking, and important investigation into the costs and consequences of pornography for our families and our culture.

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Book Excerpts

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Introduction
A Pornified World
 
“What’s a nice girl like you doing writing a book about porn?”
 
This was the first question editors asked when I initially proposed this book. And I was asked over and over again. Two months into my research, I was hunched over a worn paperback, making cramped notes in the margins, on a bench outside Independence Hall in Philadelphia. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw the well-dressed man seated next to me lean over and peer at the book cradled in my lap.

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Praise for Pornified

"Pornified is rife with tales of Americans experiencing a new level of sexual pathos, filled with snapshots of surreptitious lives: it is as compelling as it is troubling. A provocative book, sure to stir debate and reflection."—Margaret Talbot, senior fellow, New American Foundation, and staff writer, The New Yorker

"Pamela Paul convincingly and sometimes shockingly details the effects on men, women, and children living in a 'pornified' world. Her book should be a wake-up call for parents and should change the way we view—and rationalize viewing—pornography today. As Paul makes clear, porn is not 'cool,' or 'liberating,' or basically benign. It is a poison eroding relationships between men and women and darkening our children's horizons."—Judith Warner, author of Perfect Madness

"This is a quietly forceful book. It helps everyone—from libertarian to moralist—by offering a common ground from which to proceed: pornography is one more alienating product of a consumer culture, and in some ways a particularly lonely one. By definition it is selfish. That doesn't mean it needs to be banned; it does mean we need to think about what it's doing to each of us, and to our shared society."—Bill McKibben, author of The End of Nature and Enough


"Pornified is rife with the tales of Americans experiencing a new level of sexual pathos, filled with snapshots of surreptitious lives: it is as compelling as it is troubling. A provocative book, sure to stir debate and reflection."
— Alissa Quart, author of Branded: The Buying and Selling of Teenagers
 
“A sharp rebuke to porn’s glamorization.”—Los Angeles Times Book Review

“An alarming, thought-provoking overview of today’s cyber-sexual society.”
—The Seattle Times
 
“Pamela Paul sets out to scare readers about the effects of pornography on American society, and she succeeds mightily.”—St. Louis Post-Dispatch

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About the Author

Pamela Paul

Pamela Paul is a contributor to Time magazine and the author of The Starter Marriage and the Future of Matrimony. Formerly a senior editor at American Demographics, she writes for such publications as Psychology Today, Self, Marie Claire, Ladies’ Home Journal, The Economist, and The New York Times Book Review. She lives in New York.

Pamela Paul

Marion Ettlinger
Pamela Paul

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Available Formats and Book Details

Pornified
How Pornography Is Damaging Our Lives, Our Relationships, and Our Families
Pamela Paul

Trade Paperback

Trade Paperback
St. Martin's Press
St. Martin's Griffin
August 2006
Trade Paperback
ISBN: 9780805081329
ISBN10: 0805081321
5 1/2 x 8 1/4 inches, 320 pages
$18.00
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Hardcover

Learn more about this edition
Hardcover
Henry Holt and Co.
Times Books
September 2005
Hardcover
ISBN: 9780805077452
ISBN10: 0805077456
6 1/8 x 9 1/4 inches, 320 pages
$25.00

e-Book Agency

Learn more about this edition
e-Book Agency
Henry Holt and Co.
Times Books
April 2007
e-Book Agency
ISBN: 9781429900799
ISBN10: 1429900792
320 pages
$9.99
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