You can tell within five minutes of watching Michael Leahy mount a stage that public speaking is not his strong suit. The former IBM software designer presents a disarmingly casual persona, delivering his message in jeans and a sweater, rather than in a suit and tie. And for all his technological expertise, he appears not to have the faintest idea how a wireless microphone operates, if his habit of playing off audio malfunctions with nervous, self-deprecating apologies is any indication.
There is nothing at all remarkable about Michael Leahy, save for one thing: his courage.
Leahy is a self-confessed sex addict on the road to recovery, and he is taking his personal struggle to college campuses across the country in hopes of preventing today's twenty-somethings from falling victim to his fate. On Wednesday, Feb. 16, Leahy's crusade came to UNH as part of the ongoing MUB lecture series.
The Strafford room was filled to capacity by the time Leahy took the stage at 7:15 p.m. amid a steady hum of excited, anticipatory conversation. No one knew quite what to expect from a multimedia presentation entitled "Porn Nation."
"I'm here tonight for one reason: freedom," Leahy said at the start of his introduction. He was not, however, referring to freedom in the traditional, first amendment sense of the term. He came to provide his audience with the hope of freedom from the control of American media. He feels the media is providing the 12 to 25-year-old demographic with a gluttony of pornographic messages and imagery.
Leahy bases his analysis of America's over-sexed culture on a broad definition of what constitutes pornography, claiming that "any material designed with the express purpose of arousing people sexually" is inherently pornographic. Leahy feels that this loose definition allows him to include in his analysis television shows, music videos and films which are not usually classified as pornographic, but which he feels send out sexual messages just as strong as those found on late night cable.
"[Porn] is the 800-pound gorilla in the room that nobody's talking about," Leahy explained. "I want everyone to see the truth of what's going on."
The story of Leahy's personal struggle against sex syndrome comprised the bulk of his presentation. Leahy explained that his exposure to hardcore pornography at the age of eight led to the development of a constant appetite for sexual stimulation and a habit, during his high school and college years, of "assigning value to women based on body shape and size."
Leahy's secret addiction pursued him into adulthood, slowly eating away at his outwardly perfect marriage to "the woman of [his] dreams." His constant need for physical gratification and his inability to find satisfaction in his married relationship made Leahy "an affair waiting to happen."
Finally, unable to bear the burden of his addiction any longer, Leahy made the momentous decision to go public with his story on the ABC news program "20/20." In the end, his addiction cost him both his marriage and his career.
Leahy interspersed segments of his own story with video clips that explained the increasing prevalence of sex addiction in American society today, at a time when unprecedented advances in technology are providing individuals with access to an ever-wider range of pornographic material. Citing alarming statistics such as a 100 percent increase in breast augmentation among females under the age of 18, a 50 percent overall increase in plastic surgery among males and females aged 18 to 30, and a rate of rape on college campuses that is double that within society at large, Leahy fears that too many of today's college students are following in his horribly misguided foot steps.
"Porn Nation," which is scheduled to hit 30 more campuses after UNH, is Michael Leahy's crusade to alert young people to the damaging effects of an oversexed media, and to stem the rising tide of porn-induced sexual misconduct among the student population nationwide.
Not everyone in the Strafford room Wednesday night was impressed with Leahy's efforts, however. During a question and answer session that followed the presentation, several audience members took the opportunity to voice their criticisms of Leahy's work.
Meagan Smith, a UNH student and member of the Feminist Action League, believed that by limiting the parameters of his presentation to his own story, and refusing to take a stand against porn itself, Leahy was deliberately "tiptoeing around the issue" that widespread pornography is symptomatic of "how much men are complicit in women's oppression."
Smith's opinion was echoed by several other audience members who felt that a firm denouncement of pornography as a social cancer and some strong words toward those in the audience (particularly males, who contribute to the problem by paying to watch or read it) should have been made from the start.
Leahy explained during the Q&A session that he personally believes pornography to be morally reprehensible and apologized for not clarifying that during the presentation. In a one-on-one interview conducted after the Q&A session concluded, Leahy revealed that the feminist critique his presentation faced at UNH is a fairly common one wherever he travels. He also further explained his reasons for not taking a stronger anti-porn stance.
"If I had come out and started saying, 'Porn is bad, and all you guys out there should be ashamed of yourselves for watching it,' I would have lost half the guys there tonight," Leahy said. "And those are the guys I'm trying to reach."
As far as Michael Leahy is concerned, the more debate "Porn Nation" sparks, the better. If nothing else, at least it gets people talking about that 800-pound gorilla.
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