Is Porn Bad for You?

[82_28]

Not even equating porn "porn" to bestiality whatsoever here -- but I never even thought it to be a pornographic option before this here Internet. It seems like once I month lately, on the mainstream news, I hear of some beastiality going on out there. Before the internet all this shit was unthinkable to little old me -- including the poop and piss shit that became memes a number of years back as well. Just fwiw.

[Nordic]

Isn't pornography the supreme product of capitalism?

How do you figure?

[compared2what?]

ah, to be in any way culturally conservative on RI, the eternal 1974 of the internet(...)

...is overwhelmingly the rule and not the exception wrt sex and popular culture, especially as it putatively effects the kidz. Exactly as it is and always has been in these here United States of America.

Thanks, kool maudit. You took the words right out of my mouth. I couldn't agree with you more.

Porn can be pretty ugly. And it can also have pernicious effects on people who are -- due to one or more of a complex of environmental, experiential, and other biopsychosocial factors -- predisposed to be vulnerable to them. But no one is interested -- and consequently, no one has ever gotten rich -- talking about that. Because to do so intelligently and honestly would raise issues that had threatening implications for the sexual ego security of both men and women who aren't really at any particular risk themselves.

Beyond the universal risk that attaches to living in a culture in which attaining any degree of sexual security entails constantly fending off the guilt, fear and shame you've been taught to associate with it from the cradle, of course. Which does, of course, tend to make the threshold for what constitutes a threat to sexual ego security pretty darn low.

Wendy M. may or may not know that consciously. But I'd say it's beyond question that she knows it.

Because she's spent her entire career as a writer and advocate jumping into the shallow end of one culturally trendy revenue stream after another, where her reductive, overstated, and sometimes inaccurate but always very, very loud pronouncements about such things as "epidemics" and "cures" end up reinforcing the perception that whatever part of the grand culturally conservative narrative that defines sex as a sick thing that she purports to be (and probably is, as far as it goes) interested in exposing and debunking is, in fact, a sick thing.

It's the American way. Very well-meaning, very destructive, and utterly blind to its real strengths and weaknesses both.

Incidentally, the Lady Gaga hatred here has been making me ill for quite a while now. Absent breaking news, can we please have a short moratorium on using her as the go-to punching bag in this arena, please? It's not like she's the only innocuous young female entertainer that people love to hate that's out there, after all. There are plenty to choose from.

[brekin]

username wrote:

Agreed. But porn, imo, is the manifestation of a frustrated sex drive, and that's major. We only have societal mores to blame for that, imprisoning our sexuality in the darkness and isolation of guilt, shame, inhibition, pain, confusion...jump in anytime...

annie aronburg wrote:

Isn't pornography the supreme product of capitalism?

I think these two comments highlight the main failings of pornography. Pornography is a substitute for real human sensuality between two people. Naturally that is not always possible so porn fills a necessary function as a substitute. But because pornography is more profitable, because it is insatiable, it ends up competing with and replacing what it meant to aid. Porn is the paper plates of the soul.

Consumerism is built on the frustration of basic drives. When people are anxious, insecure and shallow they consume more. Sexuality is a prime drive to hook up to commercialism. People's anxiety and insecurities about finding an attractive mate or being considered attractive have been used repeatedly to sell products. Now porn is frustrating that anxiety even more by showing a totally unsustainable love lifestyle, not as a temporary aid or occasional diversion, but as a destination.

I always find it interesting that friends will always agree that in general America's mainstream film industry sells a lifestyle here and abroad that is totally unrealistic, juvenile and unsustainable to the detriment of its citizens and others. But if you bring up the same thing with porn they see it as a "freedom" issue. To me it's the same rationale a five year old will use if you try to deny their Disney fix. They've so matched their Desire to the Fantasy Object they have become one in the same. Trying to limit, remove or change the Fantasy Object is seen as trying to do the same with the Desire.

[JackRiddler]

I think these two comments highlight the main failings of pornography. Pornography is a substitute for real human sensuality between two people. Naturally that is not always possible so porn fills a necessary function as a substitute. But because pornography is more profitable, because it is insatiable, it ends up competing with and replacing what it meant to aid. Porn is the paper plates of the soul.

True. True. True. True. True. True. True.

And yet, aren't there dimensions of soul that are probably better expressed and explored in representation than in action, in art over life -- murder, say -- and representations that can reflect back into life constructively, serve as enhancement and not always impoverishment? Also, how much moral space are you willing to allow for fitting in entertainment as a legit and wonderful thing?

Not even equating porn "porn" to bestiality whatsoever here -- but I never even thought it to be a pornographic option before this here Internet. It seems like once I month lately, on the mainstream news, I hear of some beastiality going on out there. Before the internet all this shit was unthinkable to little old me -- including the poop and piss shit that became memes a number of years back as well. Just fwiw.

Before the mass and fast media, you also wouldn't have heard about the volcano in Iceland releasing clouds of mostly invisible ash. Or the 2004 tsunami, or the Haiti earthquake, unless you were nearby or word somehow got to you days and moinths later via a sailor. Which wouldn't happen for most pepole.

All this stuff was always around, somewhere, though it only became "memes" that could win over additional acolytes through the rise of fast media.

Pornography?

It's easy to under and over exaggerate the importance of a phenomenon like porn-per-se in contradictory ways. Its easy availability and omnipresence is definitely very bad for you, and yet at certain times for certain people very good, and it's definitely a drug in the real, chemical sense with enormous potential both for addiction and for encouraging misogyny and for reducing one's sensibilities and emotions and life to a sorry wasteland, and it's a hell on earth for those involved in its production, except for others for whom it's good and liberatory or just a better payday than the KwikyMart, and it's impossible to define clearly and yet you will know it when you see it, and it should probably absolutely pretty surely not be regulated in any way, except for the part you just have to stop but which we cannot agree on, and Iceland is right to ban strip clubs and Amsterdam is right to have a red light district, except insofar as both are wrong. Pornographic today more than ever is an excellent description of the style of most advertising and movies, though the sexual content of mass entertainments may be less explicit than 30 years ago, and there's little doubt that you couldn't conceive of pornography without puritanism and sexual repressions on a dozen levels and vectors, they go together as two sides of a coin, two projections of the same multidimensional thing, or in the same way that a frontier creates a nation.

Sorry. I'm jumping in here without having read from the beginning, so wovon man nicht sprechen kann, darueber muss man schweigen.

[Nordic]

I always find it interesting that friends will always agree that in general America's mainstream film industry sells a lifestyle here and abroad that is totally unrealistic, juvenile and unsustainable to the detriment of its citizens and others. But if you bring up the same thing with porn they see it as a "freedom" issue. To me it's the same rationale a five year old will use if you try to deny their Disney fix. They've so matched their Desire to the Fantasy Object they have become one in the same. Trying to limit, remove or change the Fantasy Object is seen as trying to do the same with the Desire.

See, that's exactly where I differ on this issue. I think that to sell, say, "Desperate Housewives" with its portrayal of "all Americans are rich" bullshit to the entire planet earth, thus planting the seeds of consumer samsara in people who might otherwise be perfectly happy, is FAR FAR more dangerous, evil, and insidious than most of your garden variety porn that's out there.

Porn is the ultimate superficial thing. Porn isn't paper plates, it's the food on them. It's hotdogs and potato chips. It's that thing you eat when real food isn't available. Once you're not hungry anymore, you throw it in the trash.

[brekin]

Nordic wrote:

See, that's exactly where I differ on this issue. I think that to sell, say, "Desperate Housewives" with its portrayal of "all Americans are rich" bullshit to the entire planet earth, thus planting the seeds of consumer samsara in people who might otherwise be perfectly happy, is FAR FAR more dangerous, evil, and insidious than most of your garden variety porn that's out there.

See for me they are an extension of each other. I think we just disagree which is the head end and the tail end. Orwell said "If you want a vision of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face - forever." That use to be your typical American action movie. Now the vision of the future is someone cumming on a human face - forever.

[JackRiddler]

Incidentally, the Lady Gaga hatred here has been making me ill for quite a while now. Absent breaking news, can we please have a short moratorium on using her as the go-to punching bag in this arena, please? It's not like she's the only innocuous young female entertainer that people love to hate that's out there, after all. There are plenty to choose from.

Hear, hear.

Did you see this thing?

[82_28]

Before the mass and fast media, you also wouldn't have heard about the volcano in Iceland releasing clouds of mostly invisible ash. Or the 2004 tsunami, or the Haiti earthquake, unless you were nearby or word somehow got to you days and moinths later via a sailor. Which wouldn't happen for most pepole.

Incidentally, this is precisely the phenomenon that formed my original opinion on the fateful day of 9/11/01. My parents were in northern Alaska. It took them close to 2 weeks to even hear of it. I then imagined of something hella crazy happening 150 years ago on the east coast and being someone who was out in the boondocks of somewhere way out west. It might have taken months I thought, to ever get word of a "war on terror" in 1850's terms and thus making this instant war on terror impossible with the technology of that time. Thus, I called it bunk on that basis alone -- as basic human actions haven't sped up anymore than . More followed obviously, but that is what gave me the inkling honestly that I needed to look into it further. Now I'm a conspiracy theorist! Hardly. Total realist. Somebody knew what they were doing that day and this needed lightspeed information dissemination in order to pull off. Etc etc.. .

[smiths]

permanent war is the ultimate product of capitalism,

sex related art and titillation is as old as humans

this thread is fascinating not for the quality of comments but as a representation of human derangement

imagine saying to a bonobo, "you seem a bit a obsessed with the opposite sex and representations of the opposite sex', the bonobo would reply that we have become deeply confused about what we are

sex is the most important procedure any species performs,
i dont know the names of species who werent very good at sex because they dont exist,
because of hardwired biological differences men and women approach sex differently
any discussion of sex that tries to get round this is fundamentally pointless (wanking, if you will)
men dont get as much casual sex as they would like to
again, argue with this statement if you want but you are basically arguing against the wind or the rising sun
whilst you can imagine a scenario with some lovely girl that helps you masturbate, it is a lot easier to look at a picture ... again, thats just humans and their nature

asking is pornography bad is stupid self-defeating misguided excercise


i remember years ago sitting with a female friend and observing a group of old men who were watching intently as a beautiful girl of about 18 walked past
"look at those old perverts" my friend said to me
"perversion is a deviation from the norm" i replied, and since all men across all cultures through all time long, very briefly, for a young women in some fantasy as she strolls confidently past, it cannot be described as a perversion

i think we would do well to focus on the real issues,
mutual respect for all peoples regardless of sex, race age etc
freedom from subjugation of any kind whether it be psychological, physical or sexual abuse,
the provision of a safe world for children, women and men,
the restoration and maintenance of a culture that puts a premium on strong loving relationships and family units of whatever shape people desire to have

[Username]

~


Donald and Lydia

Artist: Prine John
Album: Great Days: The John Prine Anthology

Small town, bright lights, Saturday night,
Pinballs and pool halls flashing their lights.
Making change behind the counter in a penny arcade
Sat the fat girl daughter of Virginia and Ray

Lydia (spoken)

Lydia hid her thoughts like a cat
Behind her small eyes sunk deep in her fat.
She read romance magazines up in her room
And felt just like Sunday on Saturday afternoon.

Chorus:
But dreaming just comes natural
Like the first breath from a baby,
Like sunshine feeding daisies,
Like the love hidden deep in your heart.

Bunk beds, shaved heads, Saturday night,
A warehouse of strangers with sixty watt lights.
Staring through the ceiling, just wanting to be
Lay one of too many, a young PFC:

Donald (spoken)

There were spaces between Donald and whatever he said.
Strangers had forced him to live in his head.
He envisioned the details of romantic scenes
After midnight in the stillness of the barracks latrine.

Chorus:
But dreaming just comes natural
Like the first breath from a baby,
Like sunshine feeding daisies,
Like the love hidden deep in your heart.

Hot love, cold love, no love at all.
A portrait of guilt is hung on the wall.
Nothing is wrong, nothing is right.
Donald and Lydia made love that night.

Love (spoken)

The made love in the mountains, they made love in the streams,
They made love in the valleys, they made love in their dreams.
But when they were finished there was nothing to say,
'Cause mostly they made love from ten miles away.

Chorus:
But dreaming just comes natural
Like the first breath from a baby,
Like sunshine feeding daisies,
Like the love hidden deep in your heart.
~

[Crow]

The majority of [heterosexual] porn depicts a fantasy world where men are completely dominant and the women perpetually turned-on and servile.

Yeah, but porn in which the men are completely submissive and the women never want to have sex doesn't quite live up to the reputation. At the very least, it's probably a niche market.

It sure would be funny, though.

[compared2what?]

permanent war is the ultimate product of capitalism,

sex related art and titillation is as old as humans

this thread is fascinating not for the quality of comments but as a representation of human derangement

imagine saying to a bonobo, "you seem a bit a obsessed with the opposite sex and representations of the opposite sex', the bonobo would reply that we have become deeply confused about what we are

sex is the most important procedure any species performs,
i dont know the names of species who werent very good at sex because they dont exist,
because of hardwired biological differences men and women approach sex differently
any discussion of sex that tries to get round this is fundamentally pointless (wanking, if you will)
men dont get as much casual sex as they would like to
again, argue with this statement if you want but you are basically arguing against the wind or the rising sun
whilst you can imagine a scenario with some lovely girl that helps you masturbate, it is a lot easier to look at a picture ... again, thats just humans and their nature

asking is pornography bad is stupid self-defeating misguided excercise


i remember years ago sitting with a female friend and observing a group of old men who were watching intently as a beautiful girl of about 18 walked past
"look at those old perverts" my friend said to me
"perversion is a deviation from the norm" i replied, and since all men across all cultures through all time long, very briefly, for a young women in some fantasy as she strolls confidently past, it cannot be described as a perversion

i think we would do well to focus on the real issues,
mutual respect for all peoples regardless of sex, race age etc
freedom from subjugation of any kind whether it be psychological, physical or sexual abuse,
the provision of a safe world for children, women and men,
the restoration and maintenance of a culture that puts a premium on strong loving relationships and family units of whatever shape people desire to have

I agree with all of the above.

The only time I can even remember calling anyone a pervert or even feeling that kind of disgust/anger/hostility toward men who were freely and frankly sharing their spontaneous sexual response to seeing girls on the street was to three guys who were being a little too frank and a little too detailed in their commentary when I was walking down the street with my then-just-14-year-old goddaughter and her best friend on a hot day on some holiday weekend in the spring or summer when people drink.

I think my exact words were, "They're fourteen and I'm 45, you fucking perverts." Also, I was not exactly shouting, but speaking with more real rage and force than I would ordinarily do when in the company of children whose emotional security was in some measure dependent on my being a cool, calm and together person.

But the strength of my reaction has absolutely nothing to do with really thinking they were perverts. They were drunk, and on walk-by basis, you couldn't really tell if the girls were 14 or in their twenties. Plus, they both were and are gorgeous enough that drunk or sober, I wouldn't really most people seeing the three of us walk by to register more about my appearance than that I was an adult female of roughly the same height and weight as my white-hot foxy (presumptive) girlfriends. I was just on very on edge (not to say in a permanent state of high anxiety and extreme terror) about the safety of my goddaughter at that time.

Because she'd gone from looking like a child to being dangerously beautiful and sexually alluring practically overnight at some point maybe five or six months earlier. And that's the exact age at which you (the adult) want to foster and encourage some independence and self-reliance wrt stuff like taking the subway someplace without adult supervision.

During the day. To a familiar and safe public place, where you (the 14-year-old) and your friends plan to do something non-harmful, the details of which are known to the adults responsible for your care. With whom you (still the 14-year-old) will check in on some predetermined schedule. While you (still the 14-year-old) are wearing something that isn't your very short denim skirt, or your ripped punk-rock fishnet leggings, or I-can't-even-remember-how-many-you're-not-leaving-the-house-wearing-that items there turned out to be. But there were a surprisingly large number.

And since, of course, you (the adult) also certainly wouldn't want to encourage a beautiful 14-year-old female child whom you love to think that her attainment of physical sexual maturity was primarily as an invitation to danger and cause for fear, there is a certain amount of inherent tension involved in the whole process. Of the kind that might make you suddenly snap and start calling harmless, horny drunks cursed perverts, for example.
________________

....I'll be right back.

[smiths]

the thing is though c2w, that behavior is problematic because it is threatening enough to create reasonable fear in you which is out of order

i was on a train recently when a man of about 60 got on and sat down and immediately commented on a girls legs who was not very far away and about 16 years old
i think he said pretty much, "ooh you have lovely legs"
she immediately looked very embarrassed and uncomfortable and started moving away
he turned and looked up the carriage and and said "ooh theres another one with lovely legs"
at which point a man who was quite close and well dressed said
"why dont you keep your thoughts to yourself mate, because we dont all want to her them"
although it was reasonably polite he implied that he was quite prepared to shut the old man up if he kept going,
every women on the train at that point looked a little bit more relieved,
because every women had felt infringed and alarmed by it all

the interesting thing was that the old man seemed quite harmless, was making remarks that most men would think but not say and immediately shut up when told,
and yet,
he had infringed upon the rights of all the women to feel safe, unhassled and unobjectified

it was quite an interesting incident

[compared2what?]

Okay.

I didn't just retail the above anecdote*** for its inherent entertainment value, in part since it barely has any.

I wanted to get a start on illustrating the point that while it's true that men have always found comparatively newly nubile teen girls very sexually alluring and it's not at all perverse that they do so, you can't simply to reach that happy conclusion and then move on to a focus on the real issues.

Because in itself, that truth has major ramifications for many of the real issues on which it would be necessary to focus if the desired outcome was race-, gender- and age-blind mutual respect for all people, freedom from subjugation of every kind, and the provision of a safe world for women, children and men.

I mean, for example, there's a very, very unexamined premise just in the attribution of confidence to the stroll of the young woman whose passage has universally prompted all men in all cultures from all ages to feel sexual longing and have sexual fantasies.

Because at least in this age and culture, you couldn't be more right that it's very close to universal. In fact, even a passably attractive young woman is almost certain to be the object of much more sexual attention than she could possibly overlook everywhere she goes either by herself or with female friends for years. But that's not at all productive of confidence, in most cases. Far from it.

To go with the mildest representative hypothetical I can think of:

In the rosiest of all possible scenarios and at a minimum, that truth makes it very, very difficult for a passably attractive young woman to know how to comport herself in ordinary social situations in a way that creates an enormous amount of anxiety the expression of which would be met with scorn, assuming that it was a safe enough circumstance to reveal that you were feeling such an easily exploitable emotion. Which it might not be.

And that's not really anyone's fault, with the possible exception of people who are so obdurately opposed to hearing about it at all that they refuse to do so. It's just the way of the world. For one thing (and it's one among many), most young women arrive at young-womanhood immediately after spending the whole of their childhoods being taught both directly and indirectly that it's nice to be friendly, pleasant and accommodating to others. Which it is, actually. And not just because society smiles upon it, either. It's a very enjoyable aspect of selfhood, in itself.

Pretty much right up until you very suddenly become an object of sexual attention everywhere you go, at which point it either becomes a semi-permanent cause of guilt and disappointment with yourself for having failed to please and accommodate others; or a significant part of the internal emotional dynamic that leads you to cooperate with the subjugation of your own will; or ends up leaving you confused, uncertain of yourself and conflicted about what the hell your will even is; or (the virtual infinitude of other possibilities I'm not going to bother listing).

That certainly doesn't make daily life any kind of hellish and traumatic nightmare, by any means, and I'm not saying that it does. Furthermore, young manhood often isn't exactly a walk in the park either, socio-sexually speaking, I completely and fully concede.

But smiths, seriously. It's really a very, very stressful way to live for years on end being on the receiving end of that much or that kind of attention, which nothing has prepared you to deal with at all. As I'm sure you can imagine.

And to the best of my knowledge, conviction, belief, experience and observation -- ie, I'm not just speaking casually or off-the-cuff, I've devoted a fair amount of time, consideration and energy to examining the subject over the years; but I am, after all, just one non-omniscient person -- not uncommonly, it's sufficiently stressful to have a lasting influence on a young woman's sense of herself in relation to the world and a lasting impact on the manner in which she approaches it. For better or for worse.

But either way, what you described isn't only and solely a natural thing that's not perverse from the male perspective. Although it is both natural and non-perverse from every perspective, I quite agree with you about that.

Nevertheless. That doesn't enable me to un-know that it's a significant and formative deal for the young women, or that it's not simply the fleeting and not entirely unpleasant internal experience for them that it is for men. It's a long-term fact of life, and not a fun one, for the most part. Or a confidence-builder.

And....That's about it.

Though I guess it's probably worth bearing in mind that I was just describing a hypothetical as it might be in the rosiest of all possible scenarios. Because the experience of most passably attractive 18-to-21-ish-year-old young woman probably includes one or more encounters with stuff that lies at various points on the rougher and decidedly unrosy side of the being-an-object-of-desire-to-all-men-in-all-cultures-and-ages continuum.

________________

PLEASE NOTE

I say again, and emphatically, that the above is neither a complaint about being a woman nor an indictment of male sexual desire as it naturally occurs, nor a demand that anyone change to make anyone else happy, nor any conceivable other type of rabble-rousing, carping, trouble-making, or nagging along those general lines.

Because it's not.

It's just a considered statement from a perspective that's natural to me, though not normative in the culture. And I offer it solely in the spirit of making the component parts of one of the real issues associated with the subject visible enough to everyone that the mutually respectful group focus will be able to perceive them if its gaze happens to turn in that direction.
_________________

***On edit: I mean the one told by me, obviously.

Although the one told by smiths is equally illustrative of the point, if not more so. Thanks, smiths.