brekin wrote:
I think again people may be using the old arguments about pornography when we are approaching an epoch where the Marquis de Sade and B.F. Skinner combine to change the whole game.
This book is great because it shows what porn does to your brain. (Please inhibit the obvious brain/egg in the frying pan joke.)
The Brain That Changes Itself: Stories of Personal Triumph from the Frontiers of Brain Science
http://www.amazon.com/reader/067003830X ... 067003830X
Page 102
Quote:
The current porn epidemic gives a graphic demonstration that sexual tastes can be acquired. Pornography, delivered by high-speed Internet connections, satisfies every one of the prerequisites for neuroplastic change.
Pornography seems, at first glance, to be a purely instinctual matter: sexually explicit pictures trigger instinctual responses, which are the product of millions of years of evolution. But if that were true, pornography would be unchanging. The same triggers, bodily parts and their proportions, that appealed to our ancestors would excite us. This is what pornographers would have us believe for they claim they are battling sexual repression, taboo, and fear and that their goal is to liberate the natural, pent-up sexual instincts.
But in fact the content of pornography is a dynamic phenomenon that perfectly illustrates the progress of an acquired taste. Thirty years ago “hardcore” pornography usually meant the explicit depiction of sexual intercourse between two aroused partners, displaying their genitals. “Softcore” meant pictures of women, mostly, on a bed, at their toilette, or in some semi romantic setting in various states of dress, breasts unveiled.
Now hardcore has evolved and is increasingly dominated by the sadomasochistic themes of forced sex, ejaculations on women’s faces, and angry anal sex, all involving scripts fusing sex with hatred and humiliation. Hardcore pornography now explores the world of perversion, while softcore is now what hardcore was a few decades ago.
Page 103
Softcore pornography’s influence is now most profound because, now that it is no longer hidden, it influences young people with little sexual experience and especially plastic minds, in the process forming their sexual tastes and desires. Yet the plastic influence of pornography on adults can be profound, and those who use it have no sense of the extent to which their brains are reshaped by it.
I completely disagree with this quote, except for the part as to the influence this would have on young minds who haven't developed sexual tastes yet.
To an old guy like myself it's bullshit.
If he says this:
Quote:
Now hardcore has evolved and is increasingly dominated by the sadomasochistic themes of forced sex, ejaculations on women’s faces, and angry anal sex, all involving scripts fusing sex with hatred and humiliation.
this speaks volumes about HIS OWN porn tastes! Again, we're seeing personal sexual hangups and sexual guilt being turned into some kind of pseudo-intellectual claptrap.
