A Hard One for Jeffrey Toobin
At our six-person family dinner table, the gutsy opinions of The New Yorker columnist and CNN legal analyst Jeffrey Toobin have fueled captivating exchanges — about the inner workings of SCOTUS, the impeachment hearings, the Mueller investigation — for years. The dogged research behind his eight books, his ability to talk straight and deliver well-reasoned positions, have encouraged reflection on our institutions, our society, ourselves.
Which is why the disclosure last month that Toobin was fired from The New Yorker following reports of a Pee-wee Herman-esque incident where he was caught masturbating to internet porn while on a Zoom call with coworkers, felt like such a disheartening, degrading betrayal.
For sure, the scene must have far-surpassed in shock value any of the featherbrained antics Pee-wee himself performed on camera before his late-80’s Pee-wee’s Playhouse children’s show was abruptly pulled off air.
But still, and perhaps even more now, it’s important that Toobin be featured in conversations at our dinner table, especially with the young adults seated at it.
Here’s what I hope they can take away from his story.
It doesn’t take a huge leap of imagination to understand how Toobin found himself in front of a computer, and in front of a porn video. Porn is ubiquitous; inescapable. In the U.S. alone, the industry is estimated conservatively at $15bn, bigger than not only Netflix but Hollywood as a whole.
And during the Covid crisis the internet porn industry has been skyrocketing. Pornhub, one of the world’s largest porn purveyors with 42 billion visits in 2019, has stood by its viewers — who are at least 75% male — by offering free premium memberships to encourage “staying home and practicing social distancing.” This stalwart act of fellowship yielded a 24% spike in traffic.
Now, about the fact that Toobin was masturbating. While different people have different views on self-loving; I say a big ‘so what?’ Research shows it offers many benefits, including heart health and better sleep. A study from Harvard medical School showed that men who ejaculated 21 times or more a month had a 31% reduced risk of prostate cancer. Psychology Today reports that it “releases feel-good neurochemicals like dopamine and oxytocin that lift your spirits, boost your satisfaction and activate reward circuits in your brain.”
So, that’s all great for Jeffrey Toobin.
What is worth pausing on, though, is research showing that excessive masturbating to porn can cause an addictive dopamine loop, altering the brain and linking it’s reward center to the images on-screen; and where the desire for the ‘hit’ overrules reasoned judgement about when (‘Maybe now? While on a work call?’) to seek it. One of the first questions a porn addiction therapist will ask a new client is whether their habit has interfered with their school, career, marriage, family, friendships.
In Toobin’s case, the answer is a resounding ‘yes.’
This isn’t necessarily to label Toobin a porn addict.
But it does reveal serious character flaws, especially if you embrace what author H. Jackson Brown, Jr. once said: “Our character is what we do when we think no one is looking.”
Toobin’s flaws include an immense self-absorption and a profound disregard for others. These others, at the least, include his colleagues, and the women on the call, who likely assumed he was prioritizing the team’s time investment, and the content and aims of the meeting, over his self-diddling; colleagues who didn’t log on to be virtual — if unknowing — participants in his humiliating multi-tasking.
And these others also include the women featured in the porn he was using. Today, garden variety porn is extraordinarily degrading to women. Research indicates 88% of scenes depict violence against women including slapping, spitting, hair-pulling, choking, kicking. The April 2020 Journal of Pediatric Child Health reports early exposure to porn is a risk factor for engaging in sexually abusive behaviors. This is particularly problematic given the average age a boy first sees porn is 11 years old; while 81% of 14–16 year old’s look at porn at home.
Widespread adolescent porn-viewing, according to Dr. Michael Rich, Director of the Clinic for Interactive Media and Internet Disorders at Boston Children’s Hospital, plays into one of his largest developmental concerns about young adults: their “retarded sexuality.”
“Porn is show biz, and the performers are freaks of nature that rely on chemicals and surgery to look the way they do — nobody looks that way in real life…They are desperately desirous of sex any time, any way, which is not normal,” says Rich.
Rich’s patients include young adults who spent their adolescence masturbating to porn and never figured out how to translate their sex drives into overcoming the fears of intimacy and awkwardness necessary to establish a relationship. “They are sort of helpless, don’t know what do to, and feel way behind everyone else.”
What young adults do need– especially in our increasingly digitized world — are adult role models willing to have uncomfortable conversations, even at the dinner table, that help distinguish between Pro Wrestling-type sex and caring physical intimacy. (Don’t count on school sex ed classes; there was a dearth of them anyways, even before the pandemic.)
But in a conversation void, young adults may struggle to be the same caring citizens in their increasingly digital worlds that we hope they will be in their physical ones. The pandemic offers an ideal opportunity to have these conversations, as our kids come of age in a world that has become increasingly virtual.
Yet, in a recent Harvard study, 75% of 18–25-year-olds report never having had a single conversation with their parents about how to avoid sexually harassing someone.
It’s difficult, after imagining Toobin in his own, self-created playhouse, to ever see him again as a sage arbiter of truth and fairness.
But maybe his current calamity — as humiliating as it might be — can inform his next in-depth piece of investigative work, focusing on the legalities of the poorly-regulated porn industry itself, the intoxicating effect it can have on us, our relationships, our judgement.
Maybe he can help fuel, constructively, another important conversation.
Now, that would be gutsy — and redemptive
Julie Vogel is a published writer and sexual assault prevention advocate. Her upcoming novel, Pinned, tells the tragic story of a star high school wrestler who relied on porn as sex ed, and is based on real life events drawn from conversations with prison-based sex offenders, victims, DA’s, probation officers, criminal defense attorneys, sex addiction treatment professionals, parents, college and boarding school presidents.
