Is Porn Bad for You?

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Re: Is Porn Bad for You?

Postby 82_28 » Tue May 25, 2010 1:42 am

(and by the way, I've seen videos and photos of women at bachelorette parties getting pretty fucking nasty with the male strippers. It ain't all rainbows and unicorns)


This was way back in the 80's and if I've been paying attention like I think I have, there was no Internet back then and much less access to porn. There wasn't a societal preoccupation with it as thus. This is what concerns me. I was disgusted back when the camera phones came out and a girl I knew had her husband send her a pic of his dick. It has only gotten worse and I don't like it. All my opinion. Do what you will. However I hate porn in the same way I hate facebook. Some things need to remain sacred, as it were. :)
There is no me. There is no you. There is all. There is no you. There is no me. And that is all. A profound acceptance of an enormous pageantry. A haunting certainty that the unifying principle of this universe is love. -- Propagandhi
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Re: Is Porn Bad for You?

Postby Nordic » Tue May 25, 2010 1:50 am

Not to you, 82. Just to the whole notion of certain things being sweepingly, generally, "bad". And to the idea that men need to change in order to make women happy.

I think before women should harp about porn, maybe they should harp more about fashion magazines, and how that affects the mind of young women (and not just young ones). Ask themselves why so many women love the show "The Bachlor"? And that sort of thing.

Why do women buy fashion magazines? Why do they pay six or seven bucks for a scrapbook of glossy advertising that is designed, deliberately, to make them feel bad about themselves?
"He who wounds the ecosphere literally wounds God" -- Philip K. Dick
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Re: Is Porn Bad for You?

Postby Nordic » Tue May 25, 2010 1:50 am

Not to you, 82. Just to the whole notion of certain things being sweepingly, generally, "bad". And to the idea that men need to change in order to make women happy.

I think before women should harp about porn, maybe they should harp more about fashion magazines, and how that affects the mind of young women (and not just young ones). Ask themselves why so many women love the show "The Bachlor"? And that sort of thing.

Why do women buy fashion magazines? Why do they pay six or seven bucks for a scrapbook of glossy advertising that is designed, deliberately, to make them feel bad about themselves?
"He who wounds the ecosphere literally wounds God" -- Philip K. Dick
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Re: Is Porn Bad for You?

Postby compared2what? » Tue May 25, 2010 4:00 am

Nordic wrote:Jesus christ, fine, let's outlaw all photographed porn, since it involves actual photographs of women doing nasty things that they must NOT like (because they're so pure!)

I'll be over here in the corner with my book of 1940's pinups .... with the "No women were actually photographed in the production of these erotic pictures" label.

Dolphin safe!

(and by the way, I've seen videos and photos of women at bachelorette parties getting pretty fucking nasty with the male strippers. It ain't all rainbows and unicorns)

Image

Image


Personally, I like both smut and dirty sex. Though not exclusively. Because among other things, as Ellen Willis pretty much says, we almost all gotta dance with the culture what brung us, if we dance at all. I mean, none of us really has much of a choice about that, beyond the same limited range of standard available options that we all incorporate effortlessly from the ambient atmosphere on street corners while growing up.

And to be honest, I can't really think of any reason why people shouldn't avail themselves of any or all of them, as the mood takes them. Unless to do so imposes on or harms their own overall well-being or that of others, of course. Which it has a fairly high potential to do in any number of common and mundane circumstances, such as -- for example -- marriage. Obviously.

But the cause of such problems -- when they occur, which they tend to do with monotonous frequency,in my experience and observation -- isn't inherently that people have whatever sexual desires they have. It's that people have whatever capacity for personal responsibility they have. Which varies on a person-by-person basis a whole lot more than sexual desire does, I'd say.

Although generally speaking, a person's capacity for personal responsibility is, at a minimum, strongly influenced by his or her understanding of (a) how adverse he/she expects the consequences of the irresponsible behavior to be; and (b) how much he/she fears that form of adversity. Whether those expectations and fears are due to the hard cold realities of their lives, or to social conditioning, or both.

In that regard, by and large, I'd say men have significantly more choices than women do, all other things being....let's say "of comparable worth," since literal equality is a biological impossibility in this context.

Not more advantages, necessarily. But usually more choices. Again, that's neither a complaint nor an accusation. Merely an observation.
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Re: Is Porn Bad for You?

Postby smiths » Tue May 25, 2010 4:04 am

nordic, did you see this recent secret sun post

http://secretsun.blogspot.com/2010/05/f ... te-of.html
the question is why, who, why, what, why, when, why and why again?
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Re: Is Porn Bad for You?

Postby compared2what? » Tue May 25, 2010 4:09 am

But wait. I had a point. And it was this:

Hey, Nordic!

Your imputations about purity and dolphins and so forth weren't justified by anything objective. Because there haven't actually been any gurlz being offended by filthy pornography on this thread.

I mean, I, a gurl, made an observation about how fully pre-excluded my perspective is from such discussions, true. But all I was saying was that you guys were taking it for granted that the direction any rigorously intuitive discussion about pornography would naturally take basically amounted to first asking the question "What's a guy to do about this glut of naked girls?," and then answering it in a way that was compatible with your own personal preferences, beliefs, experiences and circumstances.

Which is obviously a discussion that assumes that default gender norms are in effect, and one in which I have no way of participating apart from remarking on that. So I did. But my remarks didn't include any statement of my position on pornography, one way or the other. Express or implied.

In fact, insofar as I went to some trouble to post an essay that very lucidly declares that pornography is not, by definition, offensive to women, if you were going to impute any position to me, you'd have nothing but stereotypes from which to impute dolphins.

I don't really see that Username or Wendy M. or Perelandra said anything dolphin-evoking-worthy, either, for that matter. And ain't no chickens here, besides us. That I'm aware of.

In fact, now I'm kind of getting curious. Exactly where did that dolphin stuff come from, anyway?

Still not complaining or accusing, btw. Just losing track of what my points were. I'm sleepy.
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Re: Is Porn Bad for You?

Postby Username » Tue May 25, 2010 4:32 am

~
c2w? wrote:Personally, I like both smut and dirty sex. Though not exclusively. Because among other things, as Ellen Willis pretty much says, we almost all gotta dance with the culture what brung us, if we dance at all.



Personally, I don't care for smut or dirty sex, and Ellen Willis isn't exactly my cup of tea. But feel free to dance whatever kind of dance you think you're dancing.



Men and porn

Pornography is ubiquitous, more profitable, more acceptable than ever. We argue about the effects on women participants but scant attention is given to the millions of mainly male users. What does porn do to men? Edward Marriott investigates

The Guardian, Saturday 8 November 2003


There's an episode of Friends - The One With The Free Porn - in which Chandler and Joey discover they have tuned into a porn channel. And it's free. They leave the TV on, afraid switching off will mean no more pornography. By the end of the episode, Chandler is seeing the world through porn-tinted spectacles. "I was just at the bank," he complains, "and the teller didn't ask me to go do it with her in the vault." Joey, bewildered, reports a similar reaction from the pizza-delivery girl. "You know what," decides Chandler, "we have to turn off the porn."

As a society, however, we are further from turning off the porn than we have ever been. Pornography is everywhere - it masquerades as "gentlemen's entertainment" in the form of clubs such as Spearmint Rhino, it infiltrates advertising and it will soon be available in our back pockets, thanks to a deal by adult entertainment giant Private Media Group to beam porn to UK mobile phones.

In its hardcore form, pornography is now accessed in the UK by an estimated 33% of all internet users. Since the British Board of Film Classification relaxed its guidelines in 2000, hardcore video pornography now makes up between 13% and 17% of censors' viewing, compared with just 1% three years ago, a rate of growth that is being cited as a causal factor in the recent bankruptcy of Penthouse, at one time the very apotheosis of porno chic but in recent years little more risqué than Loaded. In the US, with the pornography industry bringing in up to $15bn (£8.9bn) annually, people spend more on porn every year than they do on movie tickets and all the performing arts combined. Each year, in Los Angeles alone, more than 10,000 hardcore pornographic films are made, against an annual Hollywood average of just 400 movies.

Pornography is not only bigger business than ever before, it is also more acceptable, more fashionable, more of a statement of cool. From pieces "in praise of porn" in the normally sober Prospect magazine, to such programmes as Pornography: The Musical on Channel 4 last month, to Victoria Coren and Charlie Skelton's book, published last year, about making a porn film, to the news that Val Kilmer is to play the part of pornography actor John Holmes in a new mainstream movie, there is a widespread sense that anyone who suggests pornography might have any kind of adverse effect is laughably out of touch. Coren and Skelton, former Erotic Review film critics, focus on their flip comic narrative, scarcely troubling themselves with any deeper issues. "In all our years of watching porn," they write, in a rare moment of analysis that doesn't get developed any further, "we have never properly resolved what we think about how, why and whether it is degrading to women. We suspect that it might be. We suspect that pornography might be degrading to everybody."

With pornography, it seems as if the sheer scale of the phenomenon has, in time-honoured capitalist fashion, conferred its own respectability; as a result, serious analysis is hard to come by. Only occasionally, amid porn-disguised-as-documentary that distinguishes much of Channel 5's late-night output, is there broadcasting that gives any kind of insight. Channel 4's documentary Hardcore, shown two years ago, told the story of Felicity, a single mother from Essex who travelled to Los Angeles hoping to make a career in pornography. Arriving excited, and clear about what she would not do - anal sex, double-vaginal penetration - she ended up being coerced into playing a submissive role and agreeing to anal sex. Felicity - the vicissitudes of whose own troubled relationship with her father were mirrored by the cruelty of the men with whom she ended up working - eventually escaped back to the UK.

Hardcore offered a rare, unadorned look at the inside of the industry, as did Pornography: The Musical, albeit in a more surreal form, with actors interrupting sex to break into song. Yet what about the millions who consume pornography, the men - for they are, despite pornographers' claims about growing numbers of female fans, mostly men - who habitually use it? How are they affected? Is pornography, as most these days claim, a harmless masturbatory diversion? That episode of Friends, albeit with tongue in cheek, suggested a heavy diet of porn might encourage men inappropriately to expect sex. Is that true? And what about more profound effects? How does it affect relationships? Is it addictive? Does it encourage rape, paedophilia, sexual murder? Surely tough questions need to be asked.

First, though, some definitions. According to the Shorter Oxford Dictionary, the word "pornography" dates to 1864, when it described "the life, manners, etc of prostitutes or their patrons". More recently, it has come to signify material, in the words of Chambers, "intended to arouse sexual excitement". Its most common themes, however, are power and submission. By contrast, "erotica", which is pretty hard to find now, carries additional connotations of "amorousness" and is far less concerned with control and domination. No, it is pornography plain and simple, from teen magazines such as Front to venerable "wrist mags" such as Playboy, to the almost daily bombardment of teaser pornographic emails, that confronts all of us on a ceaseless basis.

The received wisdom, pushed hard by such mass-market magazines as Loaded and FHM, is that men derive a pretty uncomplicated enjoyment from pornography. That, certainly, is the argument put forward by such proponents as David Baddiel, AA Gill, who has directed his own pornographic film, and the musician Moby, who once said in an interview, "I like pornography - who doesn't? I don't really trust men who claim to not be interested in porn. We're biologically programmed to respond to the sight of people having sex." Danny Plunkett, then features editor of Loaded, takes an equally relaxed view: "We know that a lot of people enjoy it and take it with a pinch of salt. We certainly don't view it as dangerous."

But is it as simple as this? One of my best friends is a man for whom pornography has apparently never held even the slimmest interest. Moby may choose to distrust him, but his sex life otherwise has always seemed to me perfectly robust. He is, however, so much in the minority as to seem almost an oddity.

For most men, at some point in their lives, pornography has held a strong appeal and, before any examination of its effects, this fact has to be addressed. Like many men, I first saw pornography during puberty. At boarding school, dog-eared copies of Mayfair and Knave were stowed behind toilet cisterns; this borrow-and-return library system was considered absolutely normal, seldom commented upon and either never discovered by the masters or tacitly permitted. Long before my first sexual relationship, porn was my sex education.

No doubt (though we'd never have admitted it then) my friends and I were driven to use porn through loneliness: being away from home, we longed for love, closeness, unquestioning acceptance. The women over whom we masturbated - the surrogate mothers, if you like - seemed to be offering this but, of course, they were never going to provide it. The untruths it taught me on top of this disappointment - that women are always available, that sex is about what a man can do to a woman - I am only now, more than two decades on, finally succeeding in unlearning.

From men everywhere come similar stories. Nick Samuels, 46, an electrical contractor from Epping - now, with a wife and four children, the very image of respectable fatherhood - says he first discovered the power of pornographic images at the age of 16, when he found a copy of Mayfair in his father's garage. "I can even remember the picture. There was a woman walking topless past a building site and the builders were ogling her from the scaffolding. It was pretty soft stuff, but it heightened my senses and kicked off my interest in pornography. Before long, I was reading Whitehouse and then, through a friend at my squash club, I was introduced to hardcore videos."

Si Jones, a 39-year-old north London vicar who regularly counsels men trying to "come off" pornography, admits that, for him, too, it was his introduction to sex. "As a teenager, I watched porn films with my friends at the weekend. It was just what you did. It was cool, naughty and everyone was doing it." Set against today's habit of solitary internet masturbation, Jones's collegiate introduction to porn seems peculiarly sociable. Today, boys no longer clandestinely circulate magazines after school; nor do they need to rummage through their fathers' cupboards in search of titillating material. Access to internet pornography has never been easier, its users never younger, and the heaviest demand, according to research published in the New York Times, is for " 'deviant' material including paedophilia, bondage, sadomasochism and sex acts with various animals".

At its most basic level, pornography answers natural human curiosity. Adolescent boys want to know what sex is about, and porn certainly demonstrates the mechanics. David Morgan, consultant clinical psychologist and psychoanalyst at the Portman Clinic in London, which specialises in problems relating to sexuality and violence, describes this phase as "transitional, like a rehearsal for the real thing. The problem with pornography begins when, instead of being a temporary stop on the way to full sexual relations, it becomes a full-time place of residence." Morgan's experience of counselling men addicted to porn has convinced him that "the more time you spend in this fantasy world, the more difficult it becomes to make the transition to reality. Just like drugs, pornography provides a quick fix, a masturbatory universe people can get stuck in. This can result in their not being able to involve anyone else."

For most men, the way pornography objectifies sex strikes a visceral emotional chord. Psychotherapists Michael Thompson and Dan Kindlon, in their book Raising Cain: Protecting The Emotional Life Of Boys, suggest that objectification, for boys, starts early. "By adolescence, a boy wakes up most mornings with an erection. This can happen whether he is in a good or bad mood, whether it is a school day or a weekend ... Boys enjoy their own physical gadgetry. But the feeling isn't always, 'Look what I can do!' The feeling is often, 'Look what it can do!' - again, a reflection of the way a boy views his instrument of sexuality as just that: an object. What people might not realise when they justly criticise men for objectifying sex - viewing sex as something you do, rather than part of a relationship - is that the first experience of objectification of sexuality in a boy's life comes from his experience of his own body, having this penis that makes its own demands."

But the roots go back further still. Research has shown that boy babies are treated more harshly than their female counterparts and, as they grow up, boys are taught that success is achieved through competition. In order to deal with this harsh masculine world, boys can learn not to trust their own feelings and not to express their emotions. They become suspicious of other men, with whom they're in competition, after all, and as a result they often feel lonely and isolated.

Yet men, as much as women, hunger for intimacy. For many males, locked into a life in which self-esteem has grown intrinsically entwined with performance, sex assumes an almost unsustainable freight of demands and needs. Not only does the act itself become almost the only means through which many men can feel intimate and close, but it is also the way in which they find validation. And sex itself, of course, cannot possibly satisfy such demands.

It is into this troubled scenario that porn finds such easy access. For in pornography, unlike in real life, there is no criticism, real or imagined, of male performance. Women are always, in the words of the average internet site, "hot and ready", eager to please. In real life, by contrast, men find women are anything but: they have higher job status, they demand that they be sexually satisfied, and they are increasingly opting to combine career and motherhood.

Men, say psychologists, also feel threatened by the "emotional power" they perceive women wielding over them. Unable to feel alive except when in relationships with women, they are at the same time painfully aware that their only salvation from isolation comes in being sexually acceptable to women. This sense of neediness can provoke intense anger that, all too often, finds expression in porn. Unlike real life, the pornographic world is a place in which men find their authority unchallenged and in which women are their willing, even grateful servants. "The illusion is created," as one male writer on pornography puts it, "that women are really in their rightful place and that there is, after all, no real and serious challenge to male authority." Seen in this light, the patently ridiculous pornography scenario of the pretty female flat-hunter (or hitch-hiker, driver with broken-down car, or any number of similar such vulnerable roles) who is happy to let herself be gang-banged by a group of overweight, hairy-shouldered couch potatoes makes perfect psychological sense.

The porn industry, of course, dismisses such talk, yet occasionally comes a glimmer of authenticity. Bill Margold, one of the industry's longest-serving film performers, was interviewed in 1991 by psychoanalyst Robert Stoller for his book Porn: Myths For The Twentieth Century. Margold made no attempt to gloss over the realities. "My whole reason for being in this industry is to satisfy the desire of the men in the world who basically don't care much for women and want to see the men in my industry getting even with the women they couldn't have when they were growing up. So we come on a woman's face or brutalise her sexually: we're getting even for lost dreams."

As well as "eroticising male supremacy", in the words of anti-porn campaigner John Stoltenberg, pornography also attempts to assuage other male fears, in particular that of erection failure. According to psychoanalytical thinking, pornography answers men's fetishistic need for visual proof of phallic potency. Lynne Segal, professor of psychology and gender studies at Birkbeck College, University of London, writes: "Men's specific fears of impotence, feeding off infantile castration anxiety, generate hostility towards women. Through pornography, real women can be avoided, male anxiety soothed and delusions of phallic prowess indulged, by intimations of the rock-hard, larger-than-life male organ."

Pornography, in other words, is a lie. It peddles falsehoods about men, women and human relationships. In the name of titillation, it seduces vulnerable, lonely men - and a small number of women - with the promise of intimacy, and delivers only a transitory masturbatory fix. Increasingly, though, men are starting to be open about the effect pornography has had upon them. David McLeod, a marketing executive, explains the cycle: "I'm drawn to porn when I'm lonely, particularly when I'm single and sexually frustrated. But I can easily get disgusted with myself. After watching a video two or three times, I'll throw it away and vow never to watch another again. But my resolve never lasts very long." He has, he says, "seen pretty much everything. I've even seen pictures of men being buggered by a pig. But once you start going down that slope, you get very quickly jaded."

Like many men, McLeod is torn. Quick to claim that porn has "no harmful effects", he is also happy to acknowledge the contradictory fact that it is "deadening". Andy Philips, a Leeds art dealer and, at 38, a father for the first time, says there have been times when he has been "a very heavy user". His initial reaction, like that of many of the men to whom I spoke, is studiedly jokey: "I love porn." Yet, as he grows more contemplative, he admits: "I've always used it secretly, never as part of a relationship. It's always been like the other woman on the side. It's something to do with being naughty, I guess."

Again and again, despite now being married, he is drawn back. "You can easily get too much of it. It's deadening, nullifying, gratuitous, unsatisfying. At one point I was single for three years and I used a lot of porn then. After a while, it made me feel worse. I'd feel disgusted with myself and have a huge purge."

Extended exposure to pornography can have a whole raft of effects. By the time Nick Samuels had reached his mid-20s, it was altering his view of what he wanted from a sexual relationship. "I used to watch porn with one of my girlfriends, and I started to want to try things I'd seen in the films: anal sex, or threesomes." Sometimes, he says, this was OK - "She was an easy-going person." At other times, "it shocked her". Married for 15 years, he admits he has carried the same sexual expectations into the marital bedroom. "There's been real friction over this: my wife simply isn't that kind of person. And it's only now, after all these years, that I'm beginning to move on from it. Porn is like alcoholism: it clings to you like a leech."

Psychoanalyst Estela Welldon, author of the classic text Mother, Madonna, Whore, has treated couples for whom such scenarios spiralled out of control. "A lot of men involve their partners in the use of porn. Typically, they will say, 'Don't you want a better sex life?' I have seen cases in which first the woman has been subjected to porn and then they have used their own children for pornographic purposes." When couples use porn together - a growing trend, if anecdotal evidence is anything to go by - there is, says Welldon, "an illusory sense that they are getting closer together. Then they film themselves having sex and feel outside themselves. This dehumanising aspect is an important part of pornography. It dehumanises the other person, the relationship, and any intimacy."

Even when in a loving sexual relationship, men who have used porn say that, all too often, they see their partner through a kind of "pornographic filter". This effect is summed up eloquently by US sociologist Harry Brod, in Segal's essay Sweet Sorrows, Painful Pleasures: "There have been too many times when I have guiltily resorted to impersonal fantasy because the genuine love I felt for a woman wasn't enough to convert feelings into performance. And in those sorry, secret moments, I have resented deeply my lifelong indoctrination into the aesthetic of the centrefold."

Running like a watermark through all pornography use, according to Morgan at the Portman Clinic, is the desire for control. This need, he says, has its roots in early childhood. "A typical example might be a boy with fairly absent parents, either in emotional terms or in actual fact." The boy, wishing his parents were more present - more within his control, as it were - can grow up wishing "to find something over which he can have control. Pornography fills that space."

But the user of pornography is also psychologically on the run, Welldon adds. "People who use pornography feel dead inside, and they are trying to avoid being aware of that pain. There is a sense of liberation, which is temporary: that's why pornography is so repetitive - you have to go back again and again."

Lost in a world of pornographic fantasy, men can become less inclined, as well as increasingly less able, to form lasting relationships. In part, this is due to the underlying message of pornography. Ray Wyre, a specialist in sexual crime, says pornography "encourages transience, experimentation and moving between partners". Morgan goes further: "Pornography does damage," he says, "because it encourages people to make their home in shallow relationships."

Jan Woolf believes it might also prevent a relationship getting started. A former special needs teacher, she lasted only six months in the job of BBFC censor in 2001. During this time, she watched hundreds of hours of hardcore videos. At the time, she was single. "If I'd been in the early stages of a relationship, it would have been very difficult, because I'd have been watching what I might have been expected to be doing, except it would never have been like that." She left the job because the porn was starting to make her feel "depressed - I wanted my lively mind back".

The more powerful the sense of pre-existing internal distress, the more compelling becomes the pull towards pornography. For John-Paul Day, a 50-year-old Edinburgh architect in his first "non-addictive" sexual relationship, the experience of being a small boy with a dying mother drove him to seek solace in masturbation. He says he has been "addicted" to pornography his entire adult life. "The thing about it is that, unlike real life, it is incredibly safe," Day says. "I'm frightened of real sex, which is unscripted and unpredictable. And so I engage in pornography, which is totally under my control. But, of course, it also brings intense disappointment, precisely because it is not what I'm really searching for. It's rather like a hungry person standing outside the window of a restaurant, thinking that they're going to get fed."

Day, who has attended meetings of Sex Addicts Anonymous for 12 years, says, "Pornography is central to my own sex addiction in as much as sex addiction has to do with the use of fantasy as a way of escaping from reality. Even in my fantasies about 'real' people, I am really transforming them into pieces of walking pornography. It is not the reality of who they are that I focus on, but the fantasy I project on to them."

Like drugs and drink, pornography - as Day has realised - is an addictive substance. Porn actor Kelly Cooke, one of the stars of Pornography: The Musical, says this applies on either side of the camera: "It got to the point where I considered having sex the way most people consider getting a hamburger. But when you try to give it up - that's when you realise how addictive it is, both for consumers and performers. It's a class A drug, and it's hell coming off it."

The cycle of addiction leads one way: towards ever harder material. Morgan believes "all pornography ends up with S&M". The now-infamous Carnegie Mellon study of porn on the internet found that images of hardcore sex were in far less demand than more extreme material. Images of women engaging in acts of bestiality were hugely popular, the most frequently downloaded being of a brunette with - in the pornographer's trusty lexicon - "a huge horse cock in her tight pussy".

The mechanics of the pornographic search - craving, discovery of the "right" image, masturbation, relief - makes it, says Morgan, work like "a sort of drug, an antidepressant". The myth about porn, as a witness told the 1983 Minneapolis city council public hearings on it, is that "it frees the libido and gives men an outlet for sexual expression. This is truly a myth. I have found pornography not only does not liberate men, but on the contrary is a source of bondage. Men masturbate to pornography only to become addicted to the fantasy. There is no liberation for men in pornography. [It] becomes a source of addiction, much like alcohol. There is no temporary relief. It is mood-altering. And reinforcing, ie, 'you want more' because 'you got relief'. It is this reinforcing characteristic that leads men to want the experience they have in pornographic fantasy to happen in real life."

In its most severe form, this can lead to sexual crime, though the links between the two remain controversial and much argued-over. Wyre, from his work with sex offenders, says, "It is impossible not to believe pornography plays a part in sexual violence. As we constantly confront sex offenders about their behaviour, they display a wide range of distorted views that they then use to excuse their behaviour, justify their actions, blame the victim and minimise the effect of their offending. They seek to make their own behaviour seem normal, and interpret the behaviour of the victim as consent, rather than a survival strategy. Pornography legitimises these views."

One of the most extreme examples of this is Ted Bundy, the US serial sexual murderer executed for his crimes in January 1989. The night before his death, he explained his addiction to pornography in a radio interview: "It happened in stages, gradually ... My experience with ... pornography that deals on a violent level with sexuality is that, once you become addicted to it, and I look at this as a kind of addiction like other kinds of addiction, I would keep looking for more potent, more explicit, more graphic kinds of material. Like an addiction, you keep craving something which is harder, harder, something which gives you a greater sense of excitement, until you reach the point where the pornography only goes so far ... It reaches that jumping-off point where you begin to wonder if, maybe, actually doing it will give you that which is beyond just reading about it or looking at it."

Bundy, as damaged as he was, stopped short of blaming pornography for his actions, though it was, he believed, an intrinsic part of the picture. "I tell you that I am not blaming pornography ... I take full responsibility for whatever I've done and all the things I've done ... I don't want to infer that I was some helpless kind of victim. And yet we're talking about an influence that is the influence of violent types of media and violent pornography, which was an indispensable link in the chain ... of events that led to behaviours, to the assaults, to the murders." In the understated words of Wyre, "The very least pornography does is make sexism sexy."

The average man, of course, whatever his consumption of pornography, is no Bundy. Yet for those who have become addicted, the road to a pornography-free life can be long and arduous. Si Jones advises accountability: "Make your computer accountable, let other people check what you've been looking at."

And the alternative to pornography, says Morgan, is not always easy. "Relationships are difficult. Intimacy, having a good relationship, loving your children, involves work. Pornography is fantasy in the place of reality. But it is just that: fantasy. Pornography is not real, and the only thing human beings get nourishment from is reality: real relationships. And, anyway, what do you want to say when you get to the end of your life? That you wish you'd spent more time wanking on the internet? I hardly think so."
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Re: Is Porn Bad for You?

Postby semper occultus » Tue May 25, 2010 5:07 am

...and the heaviest demand, according to research published in the New York Times, is for " 'deviant' material including paedophilia, bondage, sadomasochism and sex acts with various animals".


hmmmmm.....not sure I believe that

....I've even seen pictures of men being buggered by a pig...


sounds like a pretty good description of the TARP programme

Nordic wrote:It's not what you're looking at, it's feeling that you're missing something that's better.

Next thing you know, you've been on for hours.


ha ! so true
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Re: Is Porn Bad for You?

Postby compared2what? » Tue May 25, 2010 5:30 am

And I didn't even really notice this. Jeebus.

Nordic wrote:Not to you, 82. Just to the whole notion of certain things being sweepingly, generally, "bad". And to the idea that men need to change in order to make women happy.

I think before women should harp about porn, maybe they should harp more about fashion magazines, and how that affects the mind of young women (and not just young ones). Ask themselves why so many women love the show "The Bachlor"? And that sort of thing.

Why do women buy fashion magazines? Why do they pay six or seven bucks for a scrapbook of glossy advertising that is designed, deliberately, to make them feel bad about themselves?


Nobody has suggested that certain things were sweepingly, generally "bad." With the possible exception of 82_28 in connection with nasty ass fetishes. And no women have been harping about porn. Nor have any women been aggressively snarling about the idea that men need to change in order to make women happy.

One woman (me) observed for the one-millionth time in her life that men were talking about heterosexual subject matter as if there were only one gender present whose experiences and opinions were implicated by it. So one woman (me) remarked on that, explicitly and clearly stating that I didn't find it objectionable, didn't want you to do anything else, and viewed it as normal, same as you do.

I also tried to explain what normality was like for a normal, fluent native female occupant of a world in which the default-norm perspective is male. And that wasn't because I was demanding that you change to make me happy. For one thing, I'm not actually unhappy, and didn't say that I was. It was basically as much out of the spirit of reciprocity as it was anything else that I brought it up, to be completely fucking candid. Because I often feel that it's not quite fair that I'm not only a fluent native occupant of the male-normative real world that I live in, as are you, I'm also a fluent native occupant of the female-normative figurative world that's comprised of my own identity. To which men have no direct access, and very little indirect access, since it's a condition of living in a male-normative world to keep it to yourself.

So I was attempting to fucking share. Neither my tone nor the plain meaning of what I wrote was angry or resentful or reproachful or sexually disapproving, particularly. The first part of it was ironic, in the common-as-dirt, forum-post somewhat snarky tradition, true. But that's why I made a point of adding in simple and easy-to-read words that it wasn't expressive of complaint or accusation, for pity's sake.

Because dealing with men whose sensitivity to sexually hypercritical ghosts from their past (or their subconscious, or some other party of their psyche that I have no more access to than they do to mine) is great enough that they start throwing television shows you don't watch and magazines you don't buy at you if they so much as imagine that you might be looking at them funny is normal for me. As it is for most straight women. And I not only don't resent that at all, btw, I appreciate it. Because it helps me to act with more consideration and understanding toward the men I love, in order to make sure that they not only feel my love for them, but also feel secure in it and in themselves. Which is nothing but a pure, pure pleasure to do.

Although of course, IRL, I couldn't do that if I went around speaking about it in terms that were as far out of conformity with traditional views of which gender is the emotionally sensitive and which the tough one as the ones I just used are. But please, please don't take my use of them as a criticism or an attack, nordic. Because they don't represent one. They represent my love for men in the abstract, my affection for you in particular, and my frustration at being misunderstood, all three. But not scary angry frustration. Just ordinary, aw-man-try-paying-attention discussion board frustration.

In any event, please quit the counterpunching at women, okay? It's totally superfluous and entirely unnecessary. No punches were thrown at you by women on this thread, and none are being thrown now.

I swear it in a cross-my-heart, lock-it, and throw-away-the-key vow. Are you good with that? And please let me know if you're not, I'm really and truly not finding fault with you and don't wish to injure you or anyone else by leaving them in any doubt about it.
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Re: Is Porn Bad for You?

Postby 82_28 » Tue May 25, 2010 5:34 am

Goddamn that was a good article, username. Sums it up exactly.

Pornography, in other words, is a lie. It peddles falsehoods about men, women and human relationships. In the name of titillation, it seduces vulnerable, lonely men - and a small number of women - with the promise of intimacy, and delivers only a transitory masturbatory fix. Increasingly, though, men are starting to be open about the effect pornography has had upon them. David McLeod, a marketing executive, explains the cycle: "I'm drawn to porn when I'm lonely, particularly when I'm single and sexually frustrated. But I can easily get disgusted with myself. After watching a video two or three times, I'll throw it away and vow never to watch another again. But my resolve never lasts very long." He has, he says, "seen pretty much everything. I've even seen pictures of men being buggered by a pig. But once you start going down that slope, you get very quickly jaded."


Precisely. Love is what is needed. Not sex of any sort. Sex comes naturally after love. Love is most important.

I go down to this convenience store and there often men who buy their porn mags there. I am more worried about their lack of Internet usage. Kidding. But seriously, Porn to me is a symptom of a sick societal frame of mind. I don't even look at hot chicks anymore with sexual ambitions. I want to know who they are. I resent that being a male, I cannot get to know some of my brethren because it is assumed that all I want is hot dirty sex.

I have never had a problem with getting girls. In fact, in my past, I got the very best of the crop -- joke! Dazed and Confused reference. But you get to an age and through the intuitions given to us, you get over it. Some may call it aging. Sure. Aging. I am aging. It sucks. I would love to go back to the time I looked at every girl as a potential "sex partner". However, now, they are my friends and I prefer them that way, rather than objects of which I can have sex with. I have noticed that I can look at a lady's ass and I don't think about it in the same way any more. I can appreciate her beauty. But it is her beauty, not for me. Not because I am shit outta luck, but because, she is who she is. And I prefer to respect her rather than ogle her. This shit is very hard to prove to them though. Women assume you're a sicko when you are merely friendly with them. I don't like that.

As I have stated in earlier posts about all this bullshit, my girlfriend works for a huge cosmetics company. I go through this shit daily, listening to her stories about the industry, customers etc. It's no bueno. It's a fucking scam. Porn, cosmetics, lotions, creams, stupid ass unhealthy shoes, the constant flow of new clothes etc, are all scams meant to subjugate women. This is my opinion and only my opinion. I will continue to argue this, but understand any arguing by me will not be hateful.
There is no me. There is no you. There is all. There is no you. There is no me. And that is all. A profound acceptance of an enormous pageantry. A haunting certainty that the unifying principle of this universe is love. -- Propagandhi
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Re: Is Porn Bad for You?

Postby stefano » Tue May 25, 2010 5:38 am

Its most common themes, however, are power and submission.

This is flatly untrue. Its most common theme is wanton lust. It's true that there is porn showing submission and male dominance, but I've never liked it and judging by the output of the biggest porn production houses, it's not what most people want. Unless I'm out of touch, but the following quote struck me as very unlikely:

the heaviest demand, according to research published in the New York Times, is for " 'deviant' material including paedophilia, bondage, sadomasochism and sex acts with various animals".


The women over whom we masturbated - the surrogate mothers, if you like

Jesus, Edward! Keep it in therapy!

David McLeod, a marketing executive, explains the cycle: "I'm drawn to porn when I'm lonely, particularly when I'm single and sexually frustrated.

Well, yes. Porn is an aid to masturbation, and you masturbate most when you're single.

The problem that comes out from all this research is with men who prefer masturbating to having sex. That really is a problem, but I think its causes are wider than just the fact of porn being increasingly widely available. Consumerist culture seeks to make us 'atomised', as Houellebecq's first novel was called in English, to isolate us and make us spend money for fulfilment. The closing paragraph of the article sums it up nicely, but I think the writer suffers from a kind of professional propensity to give the most importance to his field of interest.

the only thing human beings get nourishment from is reality: real relationships.
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Re: Is Porn Bad for You?

Postby 82_28 » Tue May 25, 2010 5:47 am

stefano wrote:
Its most common themes, however, are power and submission.

This is flatly untrue. Its most common theme is wanton lust. It's true that there is porn showing submission and male dominance, but I've never liked it and judging by the output of the biggest porn production houses, it's not what most people want. Unless I'm out of touch, but the following quote struck me as very unlikely:

the heaviest demand, according to research published in the New York Times, is for " 'deviant' material including paedophilia, bondage, sadomasochism and sex acts with various animals".


The women over whom we masturbated - the surrogate mothers, if you like

Jesus, Edward! Keep it in therapy!

David McLeod, a marketing executive, explains the cycle: "I'm drawn to porn when I'm lonely, particularly when I'm single and sexually frustrated.

Well, yes. Porn is an aid to masturbation, and you masturbate most when you're single.

The problem that comes out from all this research is with men who prefer masturbating to having sex. That really is a problem, but I think its causes are wider than just the fact of porn being increasingly widely available. Consumerist culture seeks to make us 'atomised', as Houellebecq's first novel was called in English, to isolate us and make us spend money for fulfilment. The closing paragraph of the article sums it up nicely, but I think the writer suffers from a kind of professional propensity to give the most importance to his field of interest.

the only thing human beings get nourishment from is reality: real relationships.


Well, it comes down to, once again, love. A simplification. Not a complex love with all kinds of bullshit that is required these days. I'm talking wearing sackcloth and just loving who you love and knowing that other loves you. Pornography dilutes this. You know that human will be there, not for you, but with you for all time. It is very difficult, but I plan on having who I am with me for the rest of my life. Sex is sex is sex. But Love is love. We need more love.
There is no me. There is no you. There is all. There is no you. There is no me. And that is all. A profound acceptance of an enormous pageantry. A haunting certainty that the unifying principle of this universe is love. -- Propagandhi
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Re: Is Porn Bad for You?

Postby compared2what? » Tue May 25, 2010 8:30 am

Username wrote:~
c2w? wrote:Personally, I like both smut and dirty sex. Though not exclusively. Because among other things, as Ellen Willis pretty much says, we almost all gotta dance with the culture what brung us, if we dance at all.



Personally, I don't care for smut or dirty sex, and Ellen Willis isn't exactly my cup of tea. But feel free to dance whatever kind of dance you think you're dancing.


Unless I'm misreading you, I'd say that "you think" was uncalled for, Senator.

I'd also say that the article you posted does not even come close to establishing that there's a cause-and-effect relationship between porn and emotional damage to anyone who does not either work in the porn industry or have sex-addiction problems that include excessive porn consumption. And it emphatically doesn't persuasively demonstrate that porn is the force that molds men's minds in such a way that it's porn, rather than the traumas sustained during the rough treatment to which they're subjected from infancy, that ends up overriding their natural desire for emotionally intimate relationships to the point that it encourages them instead to seek shallow relationships.

If in fact, men are now doing that in increasing numbers that have something resembling a correlation to the increasing availability of porn. Which I couldn't say that I have any evidence that they are, the author of that article having been apparently been so unable to come up with any that he ended up having to support the assertion with the random statement of a man whose listed credentials don't particularly qualify him to speak to that issue with any more authority than anybody else with an opinion has got.

I'd further say that when something that purports to be a thoughtfully researched feature article has been written by someone who's given it so little thought that he thinks a John Holmes biopic could conceivably make the porn industry look like anything other than the predatory abuse and exploitation of vulnerable and ultimately helpless people by criminals, and done so little research that he apparently doesn't even have any anecdotal evidence about non-fictional people that's strong enough to build his lede on, it will never ever be my cup of tea, irrespective of whether its overall thesis is agreeable to me or not.

And even still yet further, nor will it ever be the cup of tea of anyone from whose lips I have some chance of diverting it before they drink its poisonous contents, if it's at all within my power to do so.

Because, oddly enough, it's nothing but pure supposition to suggest that anyone, including sociopathic sex killers, routinely so completely mistakes the blatantly unconvincing acting in pornos for an accurate depiction of sex that there's a meaningful risk that large numbers of young boys will suddenly start to develop dangerously unrealistic expectations and attitudes solely as a result of having been exposed to porn.

However, there's an overwhelming amount of evidence that so many people are routinely long-accustomed to mistaking what they read in the newspaper for the documented truth. Just as long as -- and this is true no matter how hollow, poorly supported, and rhetorically sloppy the work may manifestly be -- it's telling them something they want to hear. And the whole world is greatly endangered as a result of that, in more ways than I can even begin to count. But just to give one example, it's been a direct contributing factor to hundreds of thousands of fatalities over the last decade or so alone. And that's at a conservative estimate.

Username, believe it or not, I am as serious as death about this:

You simply cannot afford to make a habit out of relying on the transient and dubious relief from stress and care offered by the skyrocketing availability of cheap and exploitative imitations of well-researched and reliable news stories. They're produced purely for profit by a completely amoral and unscrupulous industry that doesn't think twice about seducing you with false appeals aimed directly at your greatest areas of emotional vulnerability, when the last thing on earth they have any intention of doing is respectig or caring for or meeting your needs.

On the contrary, they'll do everything they can to maximize the arousal of the very fear and anger that they appear, superficially, to be allaying. Because that's what will keep you coming back for more emotionally manipulative and virtually fact-free assurances and validations.

The entire racket is a menace to public health. It's built on lies and it preys on human frailty. Plus, it's highly addictive. At best, it's not safe to fool around with it unless you're prepared to challenge every element of it as vigorously as you would if it were pushing a line of thought that was uncongenial to you. And at worst, it's a threat to your life and health.

The world is much too sexually abusive and hypocritically double-dealing about being so already. Please don't go seeking out exposure to any more smiling liars and defenders of the status quo than you can help. I know that if you make an effort to look hard at that article with impartial eyes, you're both too smart and have too much respect for yourself to stay in denial about what it's really up to, just for ego's sake.

And I really hope you will make that effort. I don't care at all if you change your opinion about the dangers of pornography. In fact, I urge you not to. I'm fine with an honest, well-intentioned and good-faith disagreement, and that's what it seems to me that you and I have here. I just genuinely believe that accepting shoddy and dishonest work as if it weren't base coinage helps no cause worth advancing. So read it again, and critically, when you have the time. You'll recognize it for what it is, I'm sure.

Apart from that, please stick to your guns.

Cheers.
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Re: Is Porn Bad for You?

Postby Crow » Tue May 25, 2010 12:34 pm

82_28 wrote:Here's the thing with porn as I see it: it's in your face. I've seen dudes I grew up with become total assholes to women and have nothing ever to say about a female that didn't have some sexual connotation and not in the "man do I absolutely love making love to my girlfriend" way etc. It's always "nasty ass" talk about people I always considered to be humans too and they just so happen to be female.


Snipped for space.

Your girlfriend's a lucky woman.
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Re: Is Porn Bad for You?

Postby Crow » Tue May 25, 2010 12:46 pm

Nordic wrote:And to the idea that men need to change in order to make women happy.


And to the idea that women need to change in order to make men happy...
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