Is Porn Bad for You?

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Re: Is Porn Bad for You?

Postby brekin » Thu Jun 03, 2010 7:44 pm

JackRiddler wrote:

brekin, it's fine.

At this point I feel you should not mind my saying that yours is not an empirical approach. You proceed from first principles, and you're not interested in modifying them. Apparently your God doesn't allow that.


Umm, excuse I haven't seen you throwing down studies refuting anything I've said. And let's face it we are projecting out quite a bit about something that is more then a little hard to determine. I think Porn is bad (specifically online porn), you think it is good. Fine, but that makes you the darling of the scientific method now? And guess what? I'm not Catholic at all. But I'm not afraid to read books written by one.

Based on what you say and especially on the books you recommend, your principles are those of a fundamentalist Catholic doctrine that stands in violent antagonism to Vatican II, modernity and the French Revolution (and presumably the Reformation), and that demonizes Jews as the agents creating the social ills it defines (among which sexual freedom is one of the worst).

There's no reason for you not to say so. If this is your flag, why not fly it? Because this isn't an Inquisition, and no one here is going to sanction you in the real world, and probably no one here would want to sanction you if they could. In the real world, anyway.


I think those things should be examined. I keep an open mind even with things which at first may seem totally implausible. And the book The Brain that remakes Itself doesn't speak to any of the things above. Christ, it's more like a Nova episode if anything.

Nor is anyone going to put you through the Ludovico technique, though it would be typical of your world-view to confuse outside criticism with torture and martyrdom.

Most of us here are simply not going to share your first principles, or even understand how anyone can seriously advance them. They will seem very remote from anything we should use as a guide to understanding.

Some of us will care just enough about your faith to reject it as irrelevant, wrong, or even pernicious. In my view, the ideas you share are more at the root of the ills you attribute to "pornography" than pornography is.


Again, I don't think you understand the first thing about my first principles or my "faith". I think the Catholic Church has historically been for the most part as benevolent as the Mafia has been.

But so what? I'm just a voice here, like yourself. Your model of reason is God-given, with an unerring and unchangeable internal moral compass. You might as well be honest, and stop presenting your faith in the guise of argument from observable evidence.

Because there isn't going to be a reconciliation, or a persuasion of one or another of us by the other. In fact, there isn't going to be very much of a common perceptual ground, one with agreed-upon definitions and referrents, within which we can engage in fruitful debate.


Again you are ascribing my motivations to a comfortable category of non-believers to the things you ascribe to. Because I think Porn is bad and I've recommended a book by a Catholic writer who has wrote in depth on the issue I believe my reason is God-given? There are a lot of things I disagree with the writer, but I don't just read books that I already agree with.

You live in a different universe, in which the Catholic God is in a rage about the Jew manipulating His flock into engaging in fornication, sodomy and baby-killing. That's what matters to you, so say it.


You know if that's what matters to me I would say it. But can you tell me where anything I've posted has even alluded to that? And your basing this on having read his book? Oh, wait no, you've read some reviews.

http://www.culturewars.com/Reviews/Libi ... views.html

Quote:
Excerpts from reviews of Libido Dominandi: Sexual Liberation and Political Control ($28 + S&H) by E. Michael Jones, Ph.D.

"a brilliant tour de force of history and interpretation. Libido Dominandi alerts Catholics to powerful enemies of the Church who have harnessed the Enlightenment idea of sexual liberation to the manipulative power of the modern media in order to gain political force. ... this book is a monumental and compelling account of the program to dismantle the Judeo-Christian culture ... a Herculean task in terms of research and documentation ... This book sounds a warning: Until Catholics stop responding to the seductive voice of the dominant culture and instead resist its covert ways, they will continue to lose their unity and their civic and moral freedom." Rosemary Hugo Fielding, Our Sunday Visitor.

SNIP

"This reviewer values the content of this book. ... a Christian culture once directed the country - even its raw capitalism - and now this influence is no more. Michael Jones provides his own well-researched explanation of this phenomenon." Msgr. George Kelly, StAR.

"E. Michael Jones, Catholic muckraker extraordinairre, has written his most compelling book to date - the quintessential history of the sexual revolution. ... part history of sexual liberation, part history of modern psychology and part history of psychological warfare - all woven masterfully into a coherent tapestry of conspiracy, evil genius, and subtle manipulation revealing the tragic consequences of the sexual revolution in the modern world. ... not for the faint of heart or those who blush easily." Joseph O'Brien, Times Review.

http://www.staugustine.net/libido%20dominandi.html

Quote:
Libido Dominandi – the term is taken from Book I of Augustine’s City of God – is the definitive history of that sexual revolution, from 1773 to the present.

Unlike the standard version of the sexual revolution, Libido Dominandi shows how sexual liberation was from its inception a form of control. Those who wished to liberate man from the moral order needed to impose social controls as soon as they succeeded because liberated libido led inevitably to anarchy. Aldous Huxley wrote in his preface to the 1946 edition of Brave New World that “as political and economic freedom diminishes, sexual freedom tends compensatingly to increase.” This book is about the converse of that statement. It explains how the rhetoric of sexual freedom was used to engineer a system of covert political and social control. Over the course of the two-hundred-year span covered by this book, the development of echnologies of communication, reproduction, and psychic control – including psychotherapy, behaviorism, advertising, sensitivity training, pornography, and plain old blackmail – allowed the Enlightenment and its heirs to turn Augustine’s insight on its head and create masters out of men’s vices. Libido Dominandi is the story of how that happened.


The author, E. Michael Jones, has a site and magazine called
http://www.culturewars.com/


Quote:
Is Notre Dame Still Catholic? by E. Michael Jones. Revised Second Edition. When Notre Dame President John Jenkins, CSC, announced the university would give President Barack Obama an honorary doctorate, more than 250,000 people signed a petition condemning that act, and Bishop Thomas J. Olmstead joined Bishop D'Arcy in denouncing Jenkins' decision, calling it a "public act of disobedience" and a "grave mistake." This updated and expanded book collects 25 years of investigative journalism - an extensive dossier of what went wrong at Notre Dame and, indeed, in Catholic higher education in America. Read More Read Reviews

He includes a review of his book, "The Jewish Revolutionary Spirit and Its Impact on World History." The review is titled, "The Revolutionary Jew would like a word with you."

http://www.culturewars.com/Reviews/NDad.html

Quote:
To do justice to this wonderful work
would take a book in itself. So packed is it with mind-numbing facts
and insightful commentary that one is tempted to embark on a trip to
a remote place and lock oneself up in a room and absorb every word.
When the excursion is over, your whole view of the world will be dramatically
changed. You will see the inner workings of life that only a
genius the likes of Dr. Jones, unclouded by the lust for power, fame
or fortune, and spurred on only by his sincere and undying love for
Jesus Christ and the Catholic Church, could give you. Not only will
it change you, but this book has the potential of changing the world.
Note well, the revelations you are about to read in Jones’ book are not
things you will ever hear in a history class at Berkeley or on the website
of the Anti-Defamation League. Be prepared to be shocked and awed.
My recommendation is: stop what you are doing, purchase the book,
and don’t come back to civilization until you’ve completed it. It is that
good. But let me also warn you. Like me, after seeing utter devastation
that has been done to our society and especially its root causes, you
may find yourself weeping by the time you get to the end, even as Jesus
once did when he wept for Jerusalem.

Dr. Sungenis is not alone in sensing that The Jewish Revolutionary Spirit is a world-changing book. Israel Shamir, author of Flowers of Galilee and Pardes: An Etude in Cabbala, writes that

The Jewish Revolutionary Spirit by the revolutionary Catholic E. Michael Jones is a long-waited-for revolt against Vatican II and Nostra Aetate with its disastrous philosemitic bias. This monumental book scoops two thousand years of troublesome relations between Christendom and the Jews, and endeavors to connect Jewish strategies of permanent revolution with the permanent Jewish rebellion against Christ (=Logos). This timely book may help to regain the lost balance between Judaic and Christian tendencies in the Western mind.

[...]

When the Jews rejected Christ, they rejected Logos in all of its forms and became, as a result, enemies of the social order. When the Jews chose Barabbas over Christ, in other words, they became revolutionaries. For 2000 years now we have been living with the consequences of their decision. For over 40 years now, a veil of silence has descended over a topic which Americans can no longer ignore. That veil has now been rent.


I hardly think it is a secret that powerful forces have historically tried to stem the influence of the Catholic Church. Some of them (gasp!) have been Jewish. I read a book by someone who says such things and I want to take society back into the middle ages?

Internet shatters focus, as we discovered on another thread.


Yeah, people will make sweeping generalizations on a person based on some book reviews of a book they haven't taken the time to read.

I already knew before about your world-view, brekin, but I'd forgotten. It might have saved me a lot of time I just wasted here trying to engage you with my merely secular, Jew-influenced, Logos-hating logic.


I think it might be time to review your logic, because I'm not seeing the logic in it.

The template through which you view society hasn't changed since Bosch painted "The Garden of Earthly Delights."

Image

Which is a reminder of the aesthetic greatness of traditional Christendom, really my favorite thing about it.


OK, to sum up: Because I don't think online porn is good I'm a medieval Catholic? Did I miss anything?
Last edited by brekin on Thu Jun 03, 2010 7:47 pm, edited 1 time in total.
If I knew all mysteries and all knowledge, and have not charity, I am nothing. St. Paul
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Re: Is Porn Bad for You?

Postby barracuda » Thu Jun 03, 2010 7:47 pm

JackRiddler wrote:Let's look at some porn and then decide.


What a fine idea.

Image

Image
The most dangerous traps are the ones you set for yourself. - Phillip Marlowe
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Re: Is Porn Bad for You?

Postby JackRiddler » Thu Jun 03, 2010 8:18 pm

brekin,

Technically speaking - and I do tend to read and write like a lawyer - I said you were proceeding from first principles that happen to be shared with E. Michael Jones. I'll stand by it. (You may not be Catholic, but so what? Lots of Catholics would dispute Jones's idea of Catholicism.)

I read everything you wrote in this thread. You recommend his book in glowing terms. I see what you wrote corresponds to Jones's ideas on the subject, such as that sexual liberation is a means by which certain elites enslave the masses.

These ideas in turn come from first principles, prior to empirical examination. God's word defines what is good and evil. A faith. I don't know if you get it from God, but you do share the faith as far as porn is concerned. It's evil because it's evil.

Correction: I never said porn was "good." If you go back to my first post on this thread, you'll see I don't believe that.

Mainly I object to your estimate of just how bad it is.

Misrepresentation: I based my judgement of Jones's theses in Libido Dominandi on the materials Jones presents on his Web site. Those aren't merely reviews. They are the reviews he uses to promote his book. I give him credit for presenting his ideas clearly and honestly enough that these can be critiqued based on his presentation. (There's more, such as that what he writes and presents on his site conforms fully with an ideology I feel I've already read enough of in my life to identify it when I see it. Life's unfair that way, but I don't get to read every book in the universe.)

OK, to sum up: Because I don't think online porn is good I'm a medieval Catholic? Did I miss anything?


No to the first question, yes to the second.

Here is what I said:

You think online porn is one of the greatest disasters in history, just like the medieval Catholic whose book you recommend.
We meet at the borders of our being, we dream something of each others reality. - Harvey of R.I.

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I am by virtue of its might divine,
The highest Wisdom and the first Love.

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Re: Is Porn Bad for You?

Postby Username » Thu Jun 03, 2010 8:26 pm

~
Jack wrote:I advocate an empirical approach. Let's look at some porn and then decide.


sharkie wrote:What a fine idea.


Now who could have seen that coming?

Shoo. The both of you. Take your debauchery somewhere else.
~
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Re: Is Porn Bad for You?

Postby barracuda » Thu Jun 03, 2010 8:36 pm

I have not yet begun to debauch!

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Re: Is Porn Bad for You?

Postby Username » Thu Jun 03, 2010 8:51 pm

~
:naughty:

Then I'll call the moderaaaaaa . . . oh. Fine then.
~
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Re: Is Porn Bad for You?

Postby Username » Thu Jun 03, 2010 10:09 pm

~
C2W wrote:If you're in a forgiving mood, though, and don't mind telling me, I'd be interested in hearing why Ellen Willis isn't your cup of tea. Not for fighting-over-it reasons. I just don't see (and wouldn't have expected there to be) anything in her work I understand you not to care for. She was Reichier than Reich, practically. To a fault, sometimes, even. So I wonder. But if you don't feel like elaborating, I can live with it. So as you prefer.


Thank you for this post, C2W. I appreciate the sentiment, and wish to reply in kind, but if I told you the reasons I said Ellen Willis was not my cup of tea, you'd most likely say I was an idiot and you'd probably be correct, because I haven't read that much by or about Ms. Willis.

Feminism, as a movement, has left a bad taste in my mouth, and if she's in any way responsible for what happened to feminism back in the day, which obviously, she played a very big part, then I'd have to classify her among the social movers who helped to drive everything off into the ditch.

With these prejudices in place, I viewed her wiki page you linked to, and the conspiratorial red flags started to fly. I mean, her father was a cop. Need I say more?

The fact she was placed in so many areas of influence and then settled into a job as a professor of journalism at NYU . . . hey, just like that Bill Ayers fellow. Bad-ass radical - cushy job in the end. Just makes me want to go, hmmm.

I prefer my hero's books to be burned by the govt., and die in prison. Then you'd know they were genuine, and maybe even onto something.

I know . . . most people would hate to be me.

So tell me, how was she "Reichier than Reich"?

Most of the women I knew back then who became dissatisfied with the status quo and angered about their men behaving badly remedied their feelings of inequality by becoming as crass as the objects of their resentment. This was their solution. It never appealed to me. That is, I couldn’t pull it off and feel good about myself.

There were times in my life I could have come away with the attitude of hating all men. Easily. But I never had enough imagination to picture myself being with another woman.

I'd have to be a hermit.
~
Last edited by Username on Thu Jun 03, 2010 11:03 pm, edited 2 times in total.
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Re: Is Porn Bad for You?

Postby compared2what? » Thu Jun 03, 2010 10:21 pm

Username wrote:~
heh . . . I wondered when someone was going to notice that.

I looked up E. Michael Jones and his book Libido Dominandi: Sexual Liberation and Political Control, (2nd post, pg. 1) and found nothing useful. Only jew-hating websites.
~


I noticed it the first time it was mentioned, but forebore from mentioning it. Initially out of courtesy, and eventually to see whether -- as seemed possible, given the insistent repetition of the reference -- it was being done intentionally to provoke.

A point on which I reached no conclusion. Plus, I stopped forebearing a few pages ago. I was just kind of low-key about it.

c2w wrote:
brekin wrote:I encourage you to read The Brain that Makes Itself for the science side of things and Libido Dominandi for the cultural side of things because I think you would find much of value in both, although I think you may be looking for information when what is required is experience....


I'm pretty widely read on both the science and the cultural side of things already. WRT neuroplasticity....assuming that you mean The Brain That Changes Itself. But that doesn't mean I wouldn't enjoy reading it, or that I have nothing to learn from doing so. Plus, it got good reviews. So your encouragement just might be the bridge I need to move from benign apathy to productive action wrt reading it. Thank you.

Sadly, it would almost be a crime against nature for me to read E. Michael Smith. Because I wouldn't enjoy it at all, and I'd worry that my thoughts might end up hurting him in some obscure and indirect way. So no thank you.


Although it's been The Brain That Remakes Itself the last few times. So I'm still not 100 percent sure what the book in question is.

Also, this:

Username wrote:~
You know, that's a real piss poor argument I hear way too often, and there's probably a name for it which I'm not aware of, but it's pretty lame when someone says, for instance, "OMG, look what you've done." and the comeback will be, "Well THEY did something worse."

Does that make what you've done any less horrendous?

or for example: "THIS is fucking evil."

"Well, THAT'S more evil."

Is that really an argument at all?

Does it mean we shouldn't be discussing whatever it is being discussed, because there are worse things we can find?

No.
~

^^

Quoted for truth.

Plus, personally speaking, I'd say that the problematic aspects of pornography aren't just, like, some insignificant little thing, anyway. They're part of an enormous, pervasive soul-destroying evil that it's very challenging and difficult to define and discuss productively. Which I personally don't think has its true locus in porn. But that's just my opinion, it's not, like, a creed that I insist all others swear by. It's only because I worry about the potential for sexually repressive and/or free-speech-chilling coat-tail campaigns, I get scared and go on those "But. It's. Not. The. Problem." rants.

And double-also, Nordic:

I'm sorry that the thread became boring for you. But that post wasn't so much an expression of your opinion on the topic -- to which you would be and are, of course, fully entitled -- as it was a blatant, arrogant insult to the posters whose dullness has been keeping you away despite all your best-faith efforts to overcome the stupor-inducing obstacle represented by their posts.

None of which is to say that I don't still love you to death, of course. But still.
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Re: Is Porn Bad for You?

Postby JackRiddler » Thu Jun 03, 2010 11:14 pm

Image

Image

Image

Image
We meet at the borders of our being, we dream something of each others reality. - Harvey of R.I.

To Justice my maker from on high did incline:
I am by virtue of its might divine,
The highest Wisdom and the first Love.

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Re: Is Porn Bad for You?

Postby compared2what? » Fri Jun 04, 2010 1:18 am

Hey, we had near-crosspostiness!

Username wrote:~
C2W wrote:If you're in a forgiving mood, though, and don't mind telling me, I'd be interested in hearing why Ellen Willis isn't your cup of tea. Not for fighting-over-it reasons. I just don't see (and wouldn't have expected there to be) anything in her work I understand you not to care for. She was Reichier than Reich, practically. To a fault, sometimes, even. So I wonder. But if you don't feel like elaborating, I can live with it. So as you prefer.


Thank you for this post, C2W. I appreciate the sentiment, and wish to reply in kind, but if I told you the reasons I said Ellen Willis was not my cup of tea, you'd most likely say I was an idiot and you'd probably be correct, because I haven't read that much by or about Ms. Willis.

Feminism, as a movement, has left a bad taste in my mouth, and if she's in any way responsible for what happened to feminism back in the day, which obviously, she played a very big part, then I'd have to classify her among the social movers who helped to drive everything off into the ditch.

With these prejudices in place, I viewed her wiki page you linked to, and the conspiratorial red flags started to fly. I mean, her father was a cop. Need I say more?

The fact she was placed in so many areas of influence and then settled into a job as a professor of journalism at NYU . . . hey, just like that Bill Ayers fellow. Bad-ass radical - cushy job in the end. Just makes me want to go, hmmm.

I prefer my hero's books to be burned by the govt., and die in prison. Then you'd know they were genuine, and maybe even onto something.

I know . . . most people would hate to be me.

So tell me, how was she "Reichier than Reich"?

Most of the women I knew back then who became dissatisfied with the status quo and angered about their men behaving badly remedied their feelings of inequality by becoming as crass as the objects of their resentment. This was their solution. It never appealed to me. That is, I couldn’t pull it off and feel good about myself.

There were times in my life I could have come away with the attitude of hating all men. Easily. But I never had enough imagination to picture myself being with another woman.

I'd have to be a hermit.
~


No, I don't think you're stupid at all. She's not and wasn't that well known. Also, fwiw, I totally understand and agree with and actually share your feelings about and assessment of what feminism in the '70s became. And for the most part always was, truth be told. I just didn't stop being a feminist as a result of it. Because I didn't and still don't see why I should let a bunch of fools get in the way of my strong opposition to the culturally systemic oppression, subjugation, exploitation and abuse of women. I have enough trouble not getting in my own way on that tip as it is, since I'm both a member of that very culture and a woman, and therefore in a permanent state of principled steely resistance to myself.

Also I can see how that wiki entry would make her seem like a big wheel. But she wasn't, that's mostly the post-humousness speaking. I mean, she was there from the very start of the feminist movement, for sure. But she was always a dissident who remained uncompromisingly left, and therefore also basically an outcast wrt the reception of professional graces and favors, or board membership positions, and so forth, by the time the women she started out with were in a position to bestow them. She mostly eked out a living at The Village Voice until they fired her -- IIRC in the early '90s -- in a purge that didn't make distinctions between whatever dedicated radical leftist original thinkers hadn't found a cushier berth or been beaten off the masthead already and the much larger number of freaks and lunatics who all ended up stagnating there for decades.

Anyway. She wasn't a go-getter, and she didn't publish big books on hot topics or go around pimping the brand of herself and so on. Which is why I wouldn't expect you or anyone who didn't have an exceptional interest in her areas to have heard of her. She was basically a bohemian intellectual who managed to make a living being one until times changed to much for there to be any demand for them. However, NYU was starting its American Cultural Studies program around then.

So she didn't end up just fading away in total obscurity, which was nice. She merited recognition. She was not the be-all and end-all of feminist thought, but in my view, that's a strength not a weakness. Because no one person can be that to all people in a mass-media era. And most who try also happen to be assholes. She was just a very lucid and graceful political polemicist who wrote in a popular idiom. I always liked her work, though, and can't recall ever strongly disagreeing with it.

And....She was Reich-y in that she was a serious Reichian. Although she wasn't really Reichier than Reich. That was hyperbole.

I'd say that she was basically a commie Reichian feminist thinker who did some very nice rock criticism before she grew up. I mostly thought of the piece I posted because it was very memorable when originally published. She was the lone, sole and only person with any public platform at all who ever said, "Hey, wait a minute" for the right reasons to all the various crypto-puritanical fads that crypto-puritanical soi-disant feminists used regularly to introduce to enthusiastic popular acclaim every six months or so back in the day. You know. Until crypto-fascist soi-disant feminist-libertarians of the Camille Paglia/Katie Roiphe type came along and stole their thunder.

Which did at least leave paradoxically mushily-new-age killer careerist soi-disant feminists of the Gloria Steinem/Naomi Wolf ilk stewing in their aromatherapeutic juices, it must be said. But I can't really count that as progress, since they're not really mutually opposed forces, they're just two sides of the same coin.

Possibly kind of like whatever it was JackR said that about somewhere upthread, regarding which I can't at the moment recall a single detail except that I agreed with him.

Did I mention that I can understand your antipathy to the feminist movement?

Because I can. I mean, they had a very hard row to hoe. Which is probably why it's still immutably there with nary a ho even staggering into it with her Sex and the City Cosmopolitan for long enough to leave her little stiletto-heel imprints on its cold and unyielding surface nowadays. But they did fuck the mission up, no question.

Not that there's anything wrong with stiletto heels, per se, if you're not going hiking in them or something, I should probably say. Because I wouldn't want there to be any ambiguity or confusion about that.

I'm staunchly pro-choice when it comes to issues of footwear freedom.
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Re: Is Porn Bad for You?

Postby Nordic » Fri Jun 04, 2010 1:36 am

I finally discovered what destroyed the Greek empire:

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Re: Is Porn Bad for You?

Postby lupercal » Fri Jun 04, 2010 2:11 am

JackRiddler wrote:I advocate an empirical approach. Let's look at some porn and then decide.

Image


Interesting. Having seen this statue in Florence recently I can tell you that it's gigantic, three or four times life-size, and mounted like a rocket on a launchpad under that well-lit dome in the middle of a functioning art academy, complete with students and sketchpads, cheek by jowl with teeming tourists.

The point though is that your examples aren't really porn at all, much less internet porn, and that's what brekin is specifically talking about. So I think you're changing the subject. As to whether internet porn is bad for you: tough question, partly because of this generic slipperiness, or let's call it ambiguity. When does porn become social networking? When does it become adultery? When is it as healthy and helpful as Wonder Bread? To make a long story short, I'd have to side with brekin and conclude that, as pleasurable and quotidian as porn often is, it's still a vice, whether teeny or David-size, and therefore not good, and that goes beyond purely religious considerations.
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Re: Is Porn Bad for You?

Postby The Consul » Fri Jun 04, 2010 2:23 am

I don't think I really knew what porn was until once as a kid in a Korean grocery store on a shelf above the freezer with the ice cream sandwich I wanted was a magazine rack and the magazines were all in shrink wrap paper the title of one of which branded into my mind foreverly "Anal F*ck Fest!" Weirded me out big time. Forgot why I was there. Still don't know.
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Re: Is Porn Bad for You?

Postby JackRiddler » Fri Jun 04, 2010 9:52 am

lupercal wrote:The point though is that your examples aren't really porn at all, much less internet porn, and that's what brekin is specifically talking about. So I think you're changing the subject.


Several examples I've posted are porn by any current definition. If the Kama Sutra sculptures had been produced today they'd be x-rated, at best "erotic art."

If the people who made those frescoes were here today, they'd very likely be photographing real people performing these positions, in addition to sculpting them. In fact, others are doing so.

All of the examples are porn by someone's definition - in the case of David and many hundreds of other classical cultures, the use of a fig leaf is proof of that, and of my (by no means absolute, but general) thesis that puritanism defines pornography.

some site about David wrote:The story goes that on her first encounter with the cast of David at the Museum, Queen Victoria was so shocked by the nudity that a proportionally accurate fig leaf was commissioned. It was then kept in readiness for any royal visits, when it was hung on the figure using two strategically placed hooks. In a photograph of the Art Museum taken around 1857-9 the figure of David is shown wearing a fig leaf. The fig leaf is likely to have been made by the Anglo-Italian firm D. Brucciani & Co., based in London.


lupercal wrote: As to whether internet porn is bad for you: tough question, partly because of this generic slipperiness, or let's call it ambiguity. When does porn become social networking? When does it become adultery? When is it as healthy and helpful as Wonder Bread? To make a long story short, I'd have to side with brekin and conclude that, as pleasurable and quotidian as porn often is, it's still a vice, whether teeny or David-size, and therefore not good, and that goes beyond purely religious considerations.


Confusing. First you note the varieties and ambiguities, then somehow by one or several steps I missed ("long story made short") the many definitions resolve into a singular something that is a "vice" and "therefore not good." (Is that the definition or a necessary condition of vice, that it's not good?)

Can't we all agree that children might be traumatized to see a mag called "Anal Sex Rape" in the back of a news store (although a trauma involving sudden discovery of unpleasant realities about sex at some point in a child's development may be an existential inevitability, and this is by no means the most harmful imaginable), but also that this is an example from one end of a spectrum of phenomena that might be grouped by some people under the "porn" label?
We meet at the borders of our being, we dream something of each others reality. - Harvey of R.I.

To Justice my maker from on high did incline:
I am by virtue of its might divine,
The highest Wisdom and the first Love.

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Re: Is Porn Bad for You?

Postby barracuda » Fri Jun 04, 2010 1:15 pm

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