Starting a conversation about porn
Posted on: December 26, 2008 - 10:54pm
Offline
Starting a conversation about porn
http://www.poconorecord.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20081222/NEWS04/812220313
Although I actually found it in the print version of the Florida Times Union, my local paper.
Quote:
Starting a conversation about porn
By MONA CHAREN
December 22, 2008
I will be called names for writing this column. It always happens. Raise the issue of the pornification of the culture and its fanatical devotees will come gunning for you. If they hope to be intimidating, they've forgotten what delete keys are for.
It's Christmastime and the Fox News Channel, the most conservative of the major media outlets, is running an ad for PajamaGrams, "the only gift guaranteed to get your wife or girlfriend to take her clothes off." The ads feature soft porn images of women disrobing and tossing slips and bras to the floor. The ads run at all times of the day and night. Thus do we usher in the season supposedly devoted to the Prince of Peace and the Festival of Lights.
We all know how far the pornification has gotten. A mainstream movie apparently treats the subject as cute and fun ("Zack and Miri Make a Porno"and it runs at the multiplex next to "Four Christmases" and "Madagascar." Hotels offer pornographic movies and omit the titles from the final bill. Victoria's Secret graces every mall — and its windows resemble the red light district of Amsterdam. Viagra and its imitators are hawked ceaselessly. Television, music videos, and supermarket checkout magazines contain the kinds of suggestive words and images that would once have been labeled soft porn.
We know this. But what is less well understood is the world of hard-core porn that was once the province of dingy "adults only" stores in the harsher parts of town but is now available to everyone at the click of a mouse.
Last week the Witherspoon Institute (http://www.winst.org) convened a conference on pornography at Princeton University and invited scholars from a variety of fields to contribute. The statistics are mind-numbing. Pamela Paul, author of "Pornified," reported that "Americans rent upwards of 800 million pornographic videos and DVDs per year. About one in five rented videos is porn. ... Men look at pornography online more than they look at any other subject. And 66 percent of 18- to 34-year-old men visit a pornographic site every month."
They are not, Paul and others explained, looking at Playboy magazine-like images of naked women. Instead, they are descending into darker and darker realms where sadism, fetishes and every imaginable oddity are proffered. Sex and violence are offered together. Women are presented in a degraded — not to say disgusting — fashion.
Surely only people with peculiar sexual tastes are drawn to this sort of thing, right? Not exactly. Psychiatrist and psychoanalyst Norman Doidge, author of "The Brain That Changes Itself," noted that pornography use actually changes the brains of consumers. Like other addictions, pornography use breeds tolerance and the need for more intensity to get the desired result. He quoted Tom Wolfe's "I Am Charlotte Simmons," in which a college kid asks casually, "Anybody got porn?" He is told that there are magazines on the third floor. He responds, "I've built up a tolerance to magazines ... I need videos." Tolerance is the medically correct term, Doidge notes, which is why pornography becomes more and more graphic.
The men (and they are overwhelmingly men) who become hooked on this bilge are often miserable about it. They know that it affects their capacity to love and be loved by real women. As Doidge explained, "Pornographers promise healthy pleasure and a release from sexual tension, but what they often deliver is an addiction, tolerance, and an eventual decrease in pleasure. Paradoxically, the male patients I worked with often craved pornography but didn't like it." Hugh Hefner, the godfather of mainstream porn, apparently does not have normal sex with his many girlfriends. Despite the presence of up to seven comely young women in his bed at a time, he uses porn for sexual satisfaction. Think about that.
Internet pornography truly is, as one researcher put it, "a hidden public health hazard." It isn't cute or funny. Relationships are crashing, women are suffering in silence, and men and boys are becoming entrapped by it. The Witherspoon Institute has done a valuable thing by starting a more public conversation about this cultural poison.
This woman is shocked, just shocked that people like porn. In my view, all of the things she is complaining about, as leading to the downfall of society, are all good things. Fantasy and masturbation are normal sexual behaviors. This is not a new development, its just that in less enlightened ages, this normal behavior was something you could be put in jail for.
The increased availability of porn in the privacy of ones own home, means those seedy places are obsolete. Indeed, porn is available at the click of a mouse, this is a good thing, not something to fear monger over.
What business is it of hers to control our personal lives? If there is anything that is damaging the mental health and well being of people who view porn, it is the prudish judgment of it by people who feel that it is bad or sinful. Why is being desensitized to sex bad and sinful? Because it just is? Everybody's sin is nobody's sin. As the availability of pornography has gone up, the crime rates have gone down. Places with better internet access often have lower crime rates as well. Now, this could be due to other factors, but surely, if the anti-sex crusaders belief that pornography caused all of these social ills were true, the impact is much smaller than whatever factors have been pushing them down.
- Login to post comments
People always toss off... err... toss out statistics like this as if we're supposed to be appalled by the sheer number of people who like porn. To me, it just looks like proof that people like sex. So... what's the next magical mystery revelation, Sherlock?
Funny that I wrote something peripherally about this while you were writing this. Sex and Advertising... The Sequel
People toss around words like "degraded" and "disgusting" as if their own taste dictates the taste of others. It turns out, sadism, fetishes, and every imaginable oddity are not particularly damaging at all to people with healthy attitudes about sex.
By the way, I just did a google search for "violence and sex" and came up with over a million hits. I clicked through the first twelve pages and didn't find any porn. Same for keywords "violent porn." Finally, when I tried "rape porn" I found the goldmine. Curiously, when I looked up "female rape fantasies," I found dozens of sites attesting to the fact that in study after study, somewhere approaching half of all women surveyed had fantasies about various rape scenarios. Gee... turns out women like being dominated in a controlled situation... and porn shoots are... um... controlled situations...
How interesting.
I've read some of these studies, though not this particular one. Porn does have a desensitizing effect. That much is clear. What is not clear is whether or not desensitization and escalation are the same thing, or whether or not normal healthy males are prone to escalate to criminal or unhealthy levels from lots of porn watching. In thinking about myself, I've been looking at porn on the internet since Al Gore invented the damn thing, and I still like exactly the same kind of porn I used to. Funny, that. I look at stuff I like anyway.... wow. Earth shattering.
In all fairness, we are a very sexually repressed culture, and I don't doubt that people with lots of hangups about sex do progress from looking at naked boobs to actual hardcore porn, and I don't doubt that they loosen up a little and perhaps (Oh, the horror!) even look for a more adventurous sexual relationship.
Tell me again why that's bad?
I'm calling bullshit. I've read dozens of these studies, and all I've ever seen (really. I'm not kidding.... it's the only thing I've seen) is a correlation between men who already have issues with relationships and obsessive porn use. Healthy males don't feel miserable about looking at porn, and it doesn't make them unhealthy.
He's what? Eighty fucking years old? Cut the man some slack. I'm in my thirties and can't get it up seven times in a row.
Hysterical claptrap.
Atheism isn't a lot like religion at all. Unless by "religion" you mean "not religion". --Ciarin
http://hambydammit.wordpress.com/
Books about atheism
A more appropriate title for this piece would be "Let's Get Hysterical about Porn!"
Honestly. "Hidden public health hazard" my ass. There's a big difference here between "use" and "addiction". I would guess that only a small percentage of people who use online porn are actually addicted to it.
Nobody I know was brainwashed into being an atheist.
Why Believe?
You know porn can really be a slippery slope. I too used to be like Hef tossing off to porn on the internet while 7 women were lying in my bed. But It's gotten even worse for me now. Lately I can't even get aroused unless I'm doing Pamela Paul bent over the TV while Fox News is playing and she's spanking me with a rolled up copy of the latest Porn research.
You are a sick cat.
Anyway... I'm hashing out some things about sex in advertising in that other thread I linked to (above), in the hopes of being able to convey the idea effectively in a real author page. The concept that I'm trying to effectively communicate right now is the idea of levels of social interaction. This is nothing new if you've had basic psychology. We have various levels of social interactions with other humans, from the non-person (the bus driver) to the lover (close personal interaction). There's nothing wrong with that, and in fact, it's pretty much the only way society can work. Some people have less value to us in a particular situation, but that doesn't mean we value people less than we ought, or that in a different situation we wouldn't value this person more.
Consider that we've all probably met someone in a distant social situation who turned out to be a good friend or maybe more. Suppose they were our waiter or waitress, and the first time we met them, we didn't even talk to them other than to make our order. We were treating them almost as a non-person, but that doesn't mean we don't have the capacity to move them up on the ladder, or that they are "dehumanized."
Porn is a distant social interaction. We don't care about the people in the pictures. We just want somebody to fuck someone else on camera so we can get our jollies from looking at it. We don't care who they are. This doesn't mean we couldn't or wouldn't value them as a person in another setting. It just means that this setting doesn't demand anything more.
Another way of looking at it is this. When we are looking at a photo of two people having sex, we aren't looking at the woman and assigning her "negative value." (At least, most of us aren't. I can't speak for fundamentalists here.) We're just not assigning her value disproportionate to the social interaction. For my part, I've gotten to hang out with people who make porn, and I found them to be interesting people, and afforded them everything that was appropriate for that social interaction. Unless you are particularly biased against porn stars, you wouldn't "dehumanize" them if you met them in person. Hell, you might idolize them -- and we could ask if that is actually dehumanizing, but that's another story.
Then again, we have to realize that devaluing porn stars is just a matter of personal taste. I devalue Republicans. Seriously. When I find out that someone is a Republican, I think less of them as a person and don't want to be their friend anymore. I'm not bragging. Rather, I'm trying to illustrate that we all rank other people based on our own biases, and participating in sexual advertising is not inherently valued in any particular way.
Atheism isn't a lot like religion at all. Unless by "religion" you mean "not religion". --Ciarin
http://hambydammit.wordpress.com/
Books about atheism
Well done. Create a strong readership bias right off the bat.
At least now we know the quality of the article likely to follow.
...Your point? Are you saying that people shouldn't want their spouse or girlfriend to disrobe?
That seems rather counter-productive to courtship.
Perhaps you're saying that you don't like the sight of that much bare skin yourself? Perfectly fine.
Change the channel for a few moments. Watch something other than Fox. Do something other than watch TV. Etc.
Zack and Miri make a porno is a film being shown in theatres. That is to say, you actually have to go to the theatre, pay money for a ticket, sit down in a theatre seat and watch it before you can be harassed by any content within it that you don't like.
Some day it'll be on DVD, and if you want to watch it then, you'll have to go buy the DVD, bring it home and put it in your DVD player for the same effect.
Yes, it is being shown at the same theatre as children's movies. And it will be on the same DVD shelf. Your point? Are you saying that the fleshy scenes can somehow propagate from one medium to another, somehow, through their proximity? Because I'm pretty sure they can't.
If you don't like the fleshy underwear ads at the mall, dont go through the mall. Go shop at individual stores. Or go write a formal complaint to the mall (as is your right). Or go be a fucking hermit for all I care.
You appear to be under the ludicrous assumption that because something happens to offend you, you should have the right to have it censored. Well, guess what? You don't have that right.
'Once only the province of dingy "adults only" stores'?
And when was this? Since when has pornogrpahy not been available at any bookstore, retail store, gas station or convenience store you walked into?
Must've been an awfully long time ago (certainly wasn't within my lifetime).
'Descending'? Doubtful, as that would imply that fetishes are something 'new' (among other implications), which is a bald-faced lie.
Violence? I mean, I won't totally rule it out, but I'm extremely dubious. If you're talking about thing like chloroform / mock-rape fetish (...which, *ahem*, happens to be a pet fetish of mine, just to admit my bias), the industry underlying it is hugely based on fully consenting actresses who enjoy what they do and (typically) report that the men who 'manhandle' them in the films/pictures are rather gentle souls and that no harm has ever come to them (otherwise they wouldn't likely be interested in doing the films, would they?).
Women are certainly not presented in a 'degraded' fashion. About 3/4s of the mock-rape scenes available on the internet involve females molesting other females, so I fail to see where you could fairly attempt to play the feminist card.
What point do you wish to make by alluding to the results of the study, anyway? Again, it seems like you're projecting.
Again, I'm dubious. Was 'Th Brain That Changes Itself' a peer-reviewed article? No?
Big surprise.
Pornography has been around as long as humanity's had taboos. That's an awfully long time. If the effect was destructive, it'd have been relegated to a fringe deviant activity, or the species would've been snuffed-out.
Oh, wait. I forgot. Someone ignorant enough to write an article like this one likely doesn't believe in evolution, nor a world beyond roughly 6,000 years old. Nevermind.
If Doidge is so certain of his hypothesis, he can feel free to submit it to academic scrutiny. Until he does, it has no merit.
Porn can become destructively addictive. So can work. Is work therefore a terrible thing that will doom society? The notion that it somehow magically 'effects one's ability to love and be loved by real women' is nothing but parroting the dogma that one should be 'saving their sanctity' for that one special someone.
It's utter nonsense.
'As one researcher put it'? Whom was this researcher? Where did they write that statement? What was the context in which they wrote it?
Relationships have always been crashing. It's the nature of monogamous courtships; you experiment with early partnerships, and each one expires until you find one that really 'clicks' for you (well, if you ever find one such relationship). Women in the sex industry are not 'suffering' - most enjoy what they do and are well compensated for it. Men and boys are not becoming 'entrapped' by the sex industry - they enjoy what it has to offer, and pay for it's services.
What the Hell is your problem? Has someone stuck a gun to your head and forced you to watch 'Assablanca' or 'Bukkake Wars: A New Choke'? If you don't like the sex industry, don't buy it's products or services. If you don't like sex, don't have any (it'll be a favor to the rest of us too, believe you me). This is really simple stuff.
Pornography is not some corrosive toxin eating away at the underbelly of civilization. It's an expression of who we are, just as much as music, visual art, poetry, creative writing and even science are (...in fact, porn can even fit into all of those categories). We enjoy sex, we play with sex, we experiment with sex and we share sex with others. Considering it's importance to our genes it should come as no surprise.
- Leon Trotsky, Last Will & Testament
February 27, 1940
If that is the case then I want your sex life. I can barely get one woman into bed with me, much less the seven that Hef has.
"You say that it is your custom to burn widows. Very well. We also have a custom: when men burn a woman alive, we tie a rope around their necks and we hang them. Build your funeral pyre; beside it, my carpenters will build a gallows. You may follow your custom. And then we will follow ours."
British General Charles Napier while in India
never mind,TMI.
Pornography has long been one of conservative fundamentalist Christianity's favorite scapegoats in public discourse. It is also an example of one of that brand of religion's most egregious examples of projecting (i.e. attributing one's own faults and shortcomings to another). To wit:
1. Religious fundamentalists claim that pornography fosters an unhealthy or unnatural attitude towards sex. In reality, it is religion and its influence on our culture that is primarily responsible for such attitudes.
2. Religious fundamentalists claim that pornography denigrates and degrades women. In reality, it is religious doctrines and traditional attitudes that do so.
3. Religious fundamentalists claim that pornography interferes with a male's ability to have a normal, fulfilling relationship with a real live woman. Really. How many virile young priests or monks have taken vows of celibacy?
4. Religious fundamentalists claim that pornography causes intense, debilitating feelings of guilt to those who use it. These guilt feelings exist precisely and only because they are instilled by the religion-based attitudes toward sex.
5. Religious fundamentalists claim that pornography is responsible for the development of sexual perversions, deviances, and even to sex crimes such as rape. In reality, it is the repression fostered by the religious attitudes toward sex that cause such things to fester. The epidemic of catholic priests who have been revealed to be child-molesters is ample evidence of this.
Did someone say PORN! ?
" The ads feature soft porn images of women disrobing and tossing slips and bras to the floor."
Shit, I didn't know I was a porn star every single night. Where is my money.
Slowly building a blog at ~
http://obsidianwords.wordpress.com/
This.
- Leon Trotsky, Last Will & Testament
February 27, 1940
When correctly viewed, Everything is lewd
So the rational person learns the proper point of view.
Mona Charen, the woman who never met a war she didn't like, defender of the criminal invasion of Iraq, takes it on herself to lecture on porn like a school marm. As Tom Lehrer noted this has to be fought on 1st amendment grounds because freedom of pleasure is unfortunately not protected by the constitution.
Ms Charen, married to Snakehead, is quite old enough to have known the US before the USSC stepped in on the side of freedom of pleasure. Back when Congress supeoned Betty Page it had just succeeded in cleaning up the comic book industry which was the cause of juvenile delinquency and we all know how well that worked. If you are old enough you can remember when the shocking thing of the week was the mere sound of a toilet flush on All in the Family.
We have a social benchmark back in the 1950s. She recites some of the "evils" which pornography causes. Pick a few benchmarks and compare statistics from a half century ago and today. I know they can and will do that.
However, if they claim a statistic claimed by some other reformers I get to lock them all in a room and only have to deal with the survivor. She can't have murder statistics unless she manages to kill off the Brady Foundation's claim to them to support restrictions on handguns in mortal combat.
In the 50s Alan Turing chose chemical castration over prison for his crime of being gay. He suicided. He was only given the choice because of his insights into computers. In the 50s Lady Chatterley's Lover was official porn while Irving Klaw was sold under the counter and Betty Page, PBUH, was the acceptable pin-up girl and the (something) throb of the bondage and spanking fans.
Which gets us to the claim that it degrades women. Pardon me but Betty Page and all the rest of the women were free agents who willingly participated. If there is any degradation going on women are up their necks, or whatever, in it.
As for tolerance, other than production values, Betty Page is still popular today. So much for building up a tolerance.
Jews stole the land. The owners want it back. That is all anyone needs to know about Israel. That is all there is to know about Israel.
www.ussliberty.org
www.giwersworld.org/made-in-alexandria/index.html
www.giwersworld.org/00_files/zion-hit-points.phtml
Just another bad scientist who starts with a conclusion, and finds (or invents) evidence to support it.
www.RichWoodsBlog.com