Is Porn Bad for You?

[Simulist]

Sounds like a dialectical process at work: Thesis (Puritanism), Antithesis (the Sexual Revolution), Synthesis (that's being worked out, right now).

[Username]

~
Damn it, Jack, I was working on a reply from your original post, before you edited it. Let me please quote what you said before the edit.

IMO, what they called the Sexual Revolution, back in the day, was actually a severe reaction to the suppression of natural impulses through fear and intimidation, and threats of eternal damnation, brought about by ignorant and/or conniving oppressors of societies. So, as with all polarities, you go too far one way and you're bound to experience the extreme at the other end of the scale.

No?

Pornography wasn't liberating. It was/is every bit as confining and twisted as it's puritanical counterpart.

No, insofar as this conflates the "sexual revolution" of the 1960s and 1970s (which I believe was at least the third one in the 20th century) with the concommitant growth in the porn market.

Also, on the whole and acknowledging the contradictions and eddies and currents, I view that "revolution," especially women's liberation and the gay movement, as something a lot more than a "severe reaction." I don't think these went far enough, and they were diverted into false directions such as the fallacy of sexualization of the media as "liberation." That in turn was a trend very much a function of cooptation, rather than of the original thrust becoming too "extreme."

Finally, I would never say "pornography" is "every bit as confining and twisted" as its "puritanical counterpart." Rather, the way pornography is defined and thus the contours of its existence are to this day a function of puritanism, generally they go together.

But to accept for the sake of argument your dichotomy or presentation of puritanism and pornography as extremes (when they are more like two sides to the same coin), even then, until there is COMPULSORY pornography, it cannot be compared to the puritanical proscriptions on sex, which are enforced, as you say, by fear and intimidation. Who the hell is enforcing pornography? ("Thrust" marketing is not the same.)

"...women's liberation and the gay movement . . . I don't think these went far enough..."

I can see that, Jack. My mind is doing it’s best to break through the chains of opinion, but the wheels turn very slowly and reluctantly as I try to grasp the whole of what you’re saying here.


"Rather, the way pornography is defined and thus the contours of its existence are to this day a function of puritanism, generally they go together."

I have to agree with this part too . . . it being a “ function of puritanism” makes all the sense in the world, yet the blockages in my mind prevents me from seeing the entire picture clearly.

"Who the hell is enforcing pornography?"

There would be no need to enforce pornography. It would be more like suddenly releasing the restraints of the sex-starved impulse.

Anyway, I spend a great deal of time last night, reading through Wilhelm Reich’s Murder of Christ, looking for a passage or three to quote, that might bring the point home, and further subject me to the wrath of C2W, where he, not so much discusses, as rants, about the difference between what he termed the “genital embrace” and the perversion that passes for sexual relationships which permeate mankind via the "emotional plague", brought about and maintained mostly by religious institutions, turning love into hate and enslaving humanity through the suppression / perversion of his natural passions.

He doesn’t seem to have much hope for us as a race. We’ve all been infected/ affected. . . as the twig is bent . . . and only holds promise in the off chance we treat the infants and young children with the care and respect required to allow them to grow into whole beings.
~

[Simulist]

Is Porn Bad for You?

I don't know, but it probably didn't do a whole lot of good for the guy who was killed by a sword-wielding porn star last night.

LOS ANGELES — A porn actor facing eviction from a production studio killed one colleague and injured two others with a movie prop weapon during a late-night showdown in Los Angeles, police said Wednesday.

A sword as a "prop" for a porn movie...

(For some reason this reminds me of the old Johnny Carson joke about the guy who was half Japanese and half Jewish — he was circumcised at Benihanas.)

[JackRiddler]

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c2w?, if I pick out a paragraph or two in your long post to reply to, it's usually safe to assume (in your case, not in others) I'm following and agreeing with the rest of it.

Well I can't provide any evidence that advertising is the root cause of any personal or social evils, or tabloid talk shows, or hollywood movies. All I can speak from his my little circle of experience. I think your desire for proof is noble. But we are living the experiment right now. I've seen individuals and families destroyed by just online gambling. Could they have fallen apart just as easily by something else? Perhaps. The odds are that they not only could have but would have been.

Fixed.

Because absent intervention, a propensity for gambling that's strong enough to destroy a family will out eventually. And when it does something major -- possibly a family, possibly the gambler, possibly a hypothetical by-stander, but something of comparable worth to what was destroyed -- will be destroyed by it. People have that susceptibility at a majorly destructive level or they haven't. It can't be acquired.

It's possible that by the grace of god, with exceptional luck, the undetected fracture in the foundation of that home that led to its collapse might never have been touched by a tremor of stress and thus never manifested itself. And I very much wish that had been the way things went. But even if it had, the threat to that home's integrity would still have been an integral part of the home itself, and not some alien force introduced to it by the internet.

Here the social engineer in me disagrees.

Two reasons:

1. Gambling more easily than pornography can be subjected to control in a way that does not entail the establishment of a repressive tyranny. I'll get into that below.

2. Gambling is not predicated on a biological drive with highly specific physical iterations.

What the hell does the last part mean?!

Here goes:

One may have a biological drive to feel the thrill from risking one's self, or to see something come of nothing, but this can manifest in thousands of ways.

Compare it to the sex drive: no matter what objects of desire are involved, the sex drive is almost always going to aim at achieving climax via a limited set of repetitive motions. This after first achieving arousal through stimuli that may vary enormously from person to person, but for almost any given person are going to be the same damn thing over and over again. (Oh, Clooney's ass, oh, oh, Clooney's ass! Ack! Clooney's ass!!!) Is that reductive? Sure, but not very. Does it leave out a great deal about love among humans and true satisfaction and fulfillment? Absolutely, but this reductive thing is always a part of it, and that's what pornography (assisted masturbation) lives from.

I submit that the availability of gambling encourages gambling where otherwise the drive to gamble would find a different, possibly less destructive outlet.

I argue that pushing gambling (as in advertising for the lottery and Atlantic City) gets more people to gamble than would have otherwise. (Pushing pornography does not necessarily get more people to masturbate than would have otherwise, although it probably allows some to masturbate more than they would have been able to otherwise.)

I argue that while working in the office, anyone is far more likely to be visited by involuntary spontaneous thoughts of sex, even if there are no impulses reminding one of sex from the outside, than one is to have involuntary spontaneous thoughts of gambling.

Gambling involves a much more public infrastructure. Pornography generally is consumed in private.

The business models and incentives are very different.

The exploitative pornography industry in the end delivers roughly what it promises: you pay to watch this, it gets you aroused, and you should be able to wank off. If it promises that its product will lead to lasting happy sexual relationships with real human beings, very, very few people are going to fall for that.

There's a great deal more lying happening in the PR for your average legal casino, and it's much more effective in fooling people.

Play this, get rich. It's "the life you deserve to lead." I say this pitch is much more seductive to average people. You can blame them just the same for not paying attention to the odds, but they fall for it more readily, and there is no limit on what they can lose in cash money within mere hours.

If you open a casino in a town, there will be more people of that town gambling away money they would not have otherwise gambled away.

If the state sanctions or even owns and promotes that casino, knowing full well that the odds are rigged against the players, it is getting more people into poverty than would have otherwise been the case. It is also sending a moral signal that announces: "It is acceptable for man to deceive man." Also, "fools are fair game for frauds" and "caveat emptor" (a.k.a. "tough shit for losers"). And that's not even addressing the enormous extent to which gambling has provably opened additional avenues for corrupting the state, hello Abramoff.

I have yet to see the state sanction, own and advertise pornography, by the way, as it does gambling institutions.

(Except insofar as the gambling institutions include floor shows with underdressed women?)

My solution would not be simple prohibition. That stops some people, while advancing a criminal underground. We should not want a return to the days of the numbers games, or the only alternative that would prevent them: a police state. (Usually that would be corrupted anyway since police states raise costs of vice activities and thus their potential profits, which means even greater incentives to bribe officials, as we see operating in Mexico during the last few years.)

I would in fact maintain state-run casinos and even the pernicious lottery. But with the understanding that the primary mission of state-sanctioned gambling is to LIMIT the damage that gambling does, not to get revenue for the state. ("Education"! What a fucking crock!)

Lottos should be arranged to always have a winner, no accumulation of jackpots, and absolutely no advertising. Odds and the real prizes should be published prominently.

Note: Lotto jackpots are lies -- the "lump sum" is not the advertised amount. They should show lump sum after taxes, or the annualized payment, because this is what you get. So instead of "100 MILLION UNITS!" the jackpot would read "32 million units lump sum after taxes" or "2.5 million units per annum after taxes, paid for 26 years," and this information should be displayed at the same size as the odds: "175,000,000 to 1." Exaggerating the jackpot serves to promote word of mouth and idle dreaming.

No casino should be within easy reach of a city center. Casinos should operate under the following rules: There is a door charge, and you pay for the luxuries, such as food and drink. All games of chance are arranged such that the odds are 50-50.

Example: Poker is not a game of chance but theoretically one of zero-sum combat with a chance element waged among equal players who can only lose their original stake. Roulette is a game of pure chance. To take the latter, if there are 38 numbers, the pay-off should be 38 to 1, not the 35-1 (or lower) which guarantees the house its margin given enough volume. Red-blue would be a true 50-50, without house numbers. Given enough volume, the house merely breaks even on the gambling. It pays expenses via door charge and amenities. It does not advertise, promote, or give comps. Thanks to the odds, however, it's a lot more attractive than illegal options.

That way, at least, not every person who is drawn in and kept in the casino is guaranteed to lose if they keep playing.

And there should be a limit on what you are allowed to play in a day or month.

Design furthermore should be boring -- no lavish exciting surroundings. Shows and the like segregated from casinos. Slot machines, if employed, should also pay out what they take in.

There should also be games of chance offered not involving money, just for the thrill. Casinos should include fairs full of other offers or entertainment or pleasures that compete with them, low-priced, except that the same age restrictions are in place.

Or table mini-tournaments where everyone pays $10 into the jackpot but starts with A MILLION in chips wow oh wow! And winners also get a chance to win prizes like a flight to Bumfuck Beach, etc. etc. So they spend more of the total time engaged in relatively low-risk activities.

You can come up with your own ideas. The point should be to find ways to satisfy the biological drive behind gambling without allowing its exploitation by bad actors.

I'm describing a kind of socialist methadone clinic for gambling junkies. Drab? Too bad. The state should not be encouraging gambling, is the point.

Do you see what I'm getting at? As much as companies in the porn industry would like to arrange things such that they can hook people reliably into a monopoly and take away ALL of their money, that's simply not what happens.

Whereas it is what happens with gambling. There's generally a monopoly, or a cartel in a gambling mecca, where the odds are built to kill the gambler, who will come anyway due to predisposition, as you note, but also due to enhancement of the seduction by all the means available to The Spectacle, as I add.

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PS - Damn you, Simulist, purveyor of temptations. You give irresistible teaser and a link, drawing us in. But the story is no more than that, for now, belaying satisfaction.

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[brekin]

Well I guess I've become the lightning rod for quite a few questions and tangents.

I'm not going to be able to answer each one directly and frankly I'm spending way too much time on this thread but I'll do my best to reply to some of them. But I think it is obvious at this point this is such a big sticky topic (a la Art vs. Propaganda) that no one is going to be completely right for other people's experiences.

barracudda wrote:

Have you, then, through confrontation with the availability of the bizarre cornucopia of sexual possibilities in the course of your own travels through the wonders of the world-wide web of depravity, become, in any way, more likely to be interested in, say, for example, scat, bestiality or bukkake? Or have you, like most people, come across (no pun intended) these images and recoiled in disgust and revulsion at the perversion of human sexual dignity evidenced by the kalidescope of smutty human capacities in this regard?

umm, yeah. I think this is the perfect place for sexual predilection confessions.

So then, does constant exposure to homosexual activity in society, gay culture and sexual tastes, gradually bring one closer to a curiosity in this regard as well? Or does it simply engender a mundane acceptance of the preference or persuasion? (This hypothetical takes as given that homosexual sex is not entirely and only a predisposition, but rather a choice anyone is free to make to some degree or another.)

I think a little of both. I noticed during the gay 90's there was a lot of pressure to be bi or gay in some places I lived. Some of my more impressionable friends seemed to will themselves into being gay for awhile to gain some street cred. It got to the point where "real" gays got tired of the day trippers.

People only return to images they find appealing and erotic. No one voluntarily subjects themselves to imagery which they find distasteful. The internet is not some modified version of the Ludovico technique for home-schoolers or dilettantes of playful light bondage. It is a vast series of possibile choices which you make as an individual with all the agency your autonomous individuality implies. I can be exposed to endless hours of videos of golden showers, but I doubt strenuously that that will make the images of the activity any more appealling to me than they are already. Rather, the opposite tendency is bound to prevail. The excesses of sexual particulars in porn drive your average person eventually to boredom, not pandemonium.

I don't think people only return to images they find appealing and erotic. I think many people for whatever reason become haunted by certain disturbing images and will return to them to reenact them or because trigger something deeper. I watch Horror movies not because I find them appealing or erotic but I want to be scared shit less. Have you seen the Hot Chip I Feel Better Video? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MaCZN2N6Q_I (You have to give it a full minute.)
I return to it because it in differing degrees attracts and repels me.
Why do I watch the rapper kid with Progeria? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bH3i3xotvFk
I don't think it is because I find such things appealing but as Robert Jay Lifton noted we need more and more intense stimuli to break through the psychic numbing (or what Delillo called the White Noise) of society that deadens us to sensation. As you say the excesses eventually drive the average person eventually to boredom. I think right there is the crux. When the endless viewings of golden showers leave you bored, you are going to need something more extreme to get the excitement back.

Jack Riddler wrote:

Right, brekin, barracuda has asked some great questions. In a nutshell, if you discover something distatesteful to you is available, why would you return to it? If the distasteful thing is then displayed to you repeatedly (which anyway isn't what happens on the Internet - you have to choose that), do you start liking it? Your thesis of a lowering threshold seems predicated on the idea that we're all secretly longing to get into the hardcore porn you find distasteful, and its mere availability pushes us down the slippery slope. Far more logical is that people go search for what they want in the first place. What's different with Internet is abundant coverage for every potential niche taste, but that's hardly limited to porn, inherent in a free Internet, and not the original master plan of some Overcontrollers.

See above. But again In the Brain that Remakes Itself there is an interesting case study of a guy who's preferred fetish was something so arcane and specific (something like Dutch Lesbian shower sex or something) there was no way he could have been looking for it in the beginning (He had no idea it even existed). But by following and upping his curiosity he was lead down a labyrinth to that spot. I think we all like excitement and are curious about sex. Porn is valuable in the sense it shows what is possible, but I think because it demands new thrills continuously people can end up places they never intended.
I remember the first time I saw a porn film as a youth and only being used to the hollywood sex scenes was actually physically nauseated at first and didn't find it appealing at all. But I went back. And back. Why do people smoke or drink after being sick the first dozen times?

Joe Hillhoist wrote:

Athough porn is sposed to be "worse" and more easily available today, there was this "legendary" porn movie doing the rounds when I was in high school (in the mid 80s.) It was called "Animal Farm" and you can guess what it was about. I never saw it actually, which I'm kind of thankful for, but apparently it had among other stuff blokes fucking chooks to death.

Now that movie is no doubt at the fingertips of any person who can spell and has some time in front of the computer. A kid in junior high doing a report on the book Animal Farm or a kid in elementary school doing a report on Old MacDonald could even accidentally come across it. That is I think the difference between now and then. Also it's easy availability legitimizes and normalizes it to some degree. I worked with youth in a computer lab years ago and I was amazed at how I would have to explain to them that downloading music without paying was illegal. Mind you not that it should or shouldn't be, but that it was. Many assumed that because it was "so easy" and there were no controls (other then filtering software that didn't work) it was ok. Growing up with that is a totally different experience then I think what most of us have experienced. We tend to carry our notions that have shaped us into the new medium instead of considering what someone who has forming notions is experiencing.

I'll try to write more later, this working for a living is getting in the way..

[compared2what?]

Anyway, I spend a great deal of time last night, reading through Wilhelm Reich’s Murder of Christ, looking for a passage or three to quote, that might bring the point home, and further subject me to the wrath of C2W, where he, not so much discusses, as rants, about the difference between what he termed the “genital embrace” and the perversion that passes for sexual relationships which permeate mankind via the "emotional plague", brought about and maintained mostly by religious institutions, turning love into hate and enslaving humanity through the suppression / perversion of his natural passions.

Username, please don't feel my mad fondness and respect for you as wrath.

And please do blame me unilaterally for expressing said fondness and respect in a way that was mistakable for wrath.

I didn't mean to do that at all. Sometimes I get lost in thought and....Not exactly oblivious to all other considerations, but less alert to them than I am when not in that state. Not so much that I'm constantly wandering into traffic and grievously offending other people IRL or anything like that. But enough that I'd readily concede that people who know me are correct in thinking me a little daffy in that regard.

Anyway. In this medium, absent the cues that would either cause me to remember myself or reflexively respond by bringing my tone, comportment and posture into more readily recognizable alignment with conventional signifiers of affection and respect, I'm probably hurting people who feel wrath from me I don't feel toward them much more often than I know, I guess.

Which is just a terrible, horrible thought. I'll try to be more....um...vigilant. It being my problem. Which I'm deeply and sincerely sorry for imposing on you.

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.

Yours, fondly and respectfully,

c2w

[brekin]

Back for more.

compared2what? wrote:

brekin wrote:
I think we may be coming from two different directions. I think you may be saying porn doesn't create certain sexual expressions or appetites tabula rasa? There is usually are other mitigating circumstances that are more important? Where I'm saying porn can shape the targets and forms of expression of that expression.


Encountered in adulthood, or even in mid-adolescence, when personhood and sexuality are pretty well formed, for someone who's otherwise normally socialized within very broad parameters, actually: No, it can't. Or not so as anyone's been able to notice so far. And it's sure not that people haven't tried really, really hard to notice.

See, I have to disagree. I think you were the one who said sexuality is dynamic not static? Obviously its a big shift to change gender or species preference. But how many people prefer porn from the era they were originally introduced to it? Porn from the 80's to me is like watching Family Ties or something. So dated. Sexuality seems tied to the new and novelty. It may even be a biological imperative to chase after the strange.

I mean, brekin, have you never wondered why none of the numerous deep-pocketed and highly motivated crusaders against pornography, from Edwin Meese to Catherine McKinnon to the author of the OP, ever cite any statistics, studies, or other data, apart from anecdotal data? Because there is a reason and it's this: All such research that's ever been done says that pornography doesn't cause paraphilias or greatly affect the psycho-social aspects of human sexual development.

Well first I had to find out what Paraphilias means:

Paraphilias is a biomedical term used to describe sexual arousal to objects, situations, or individuals that are not part of normative stimulation and that may cause distress or serious problems for the paraphiliac or persons associated with him or her. A paraphilia is a condition involving sex fetishes where a person's sexual arousal and gratification depend on fantasizing about, and engaging in, sexual behavior that is atypical and extreme.

Porn is all about sexual behavior that is atypical and extreme and narratives that are not part of the normative situation. The research I have heard about is that if someone uses this repeatedly for arousal and satisfaction they are less likely to find typical sexual partners and situations enough. And really where do the atypical and extreme fixations come from if not porn? It is like saying people would just naturally be obsessed with wearing pointy ears and building models of the star trek enterprise even if they never had been exposed to any science fiction at all.

I mean, obviously, it might transiently freak someone out, or give someone a wrong impression about what he or she was going to be getting into when he or she became sexually active. Or later in life, someone might see a video that made him (or her) realize for the first time that X, Y, or Z kind of consensual role play would be hella fun or that he'd really like to see his wife wearing split-crotch PVC panties or whatever. But there's nothing deviant or harmful about that. At worst, it might lead to a heated argument about who in the relationship owed whom what in bed and why. But people fight about that shit anyway. Or so movies and television have led me to believe, anyway.

Try thinking about it this way: Most guys (and gals) have some "type" -- either physical or personality -- they find especially attractive, in some cases exclusively, although most people aren't that narrowly choosy.

I agree most people have a "type" or few they find especially attractive.

But either way, they don't discover whom they're attracted to by perusing a manual, nor do they form strong and exclusive desires solely for the one type featured in the manuals to which they happen to have access. They just are attracted to the people they find attractive, and aren't attracted to the people they don't find attractive. For a whole complex of known and unknown reasons. Same for people who have a special hot feeling but not a fetish for some body part -- as they say, a leg man, or whatever -- or who have a special preference for some sexual act, position, or situation but aren't so hung up on it that it's the only thing that turns them on. Those aren't always -- or even often -- simply explicable acquired tastes and preferences that have a one-to-one correspondence with a neatly matched feeling they harbor about themselves or others or the world at large. And -- as I said -- they're not always fixed and static irrespective of partner, mood, circumstance and all other factors, a change in any of which might bring a different taste or preference into play.

I disagree, I think the type can be discovered, modified and reinforced by "perusing a manual". Obviously (and hopefully) it can be a person to person thing but how many were in love (or are still) with Marylin Monroe? Betty Page? Or Madonna? Or Britney Spears? Didn't they create types? fetishes? Some people have types that geographically or even chronologically they have little to no direct contact with. If someone can be attracted to someone so abstract and create a fixation so remote from their direct experience why can't they also become fixated on a atypical, extreme sexual narrative that isn't healthy? Especially if their type is the one waving them on?

Except that in reality it's gazillion times more nuanced and complicated than that (and also hotter, it is much to be hoped), that's reality. Porn used for masturbatory fantasy purposes belongs to the realm of fantasy. And people who aren't already, for whatever reason, already so crazy or damaged that they can't distinguish between reality and fantasy do -- astonishingly -- generally grasp that not-at-all complicated concept. Just as well wrt sex as they do wrt videogames. If you give the subject a few moment's thought, it almost immediately becomes apparent that not only are people highly unlikely to slip over that boundary so easily that they didn't know they'd done so, t would actually be very difficult -- if not impossible -- for most guys and gals who were correctly oriented to person, place and time even to get mildly confused about it. Unless they found having a psychotic break as effortless as breathing.

I imagine at different points in history the sexual mores of the generation preceding or following a certain transitory generation would see them living a fantasy they only could imagine. I see my generation and my parents generation completely out of whack with reality just on the influence of television and movies. But in many ways we are living a fantasy life that was unimaginable. Even some of the sci-fi from the 70's and 80's seems quaint when you confront the awesome reality of the internet. I think if you sell someone a dream long enough though they come to expect it. And instead of individuals having a psychotic break a whole culture can. Porn is advertising a sexual bacchanal and people are buying it.People of all ages think nothing of performing sexual acts to thousands, perhaps millions of complete strangers. Releasing a sex tape seems to be on par with making a soda commercial for young celebrities. I can guarantee you more people are watching more porn for longer periods then anytime in history and I don't see anything to show it slowing down.

What part of that, if any, doesn't make sense to you, or doesn't ring true, or is contradicted by your own experience or observation? I implore you to tell me. Because among other things, if you really don't know that's the way people are, I'd be kind of worried about you.

That is touching but for some reason I doubt you are being sincere. I think your perspective is a little too prescriptive and not descriptive enough. It would be nice if people could separate fantasy from reality but I implore you to tell me with everything you have seen in your experience with people how that is so? Haven't many people you know long ago chosen a manufactured dream over reality in every sphere? Why with sexuality, especially with sexuality, wouldn't they start to choose the myth over the reality? I think the upsurge in porn is happening in part because of the great amounts of frustration and anxiety western civilization is experiencing and the dream is starting to erode. So the dream has to become more explicit, more extreme, more brutal to put off reality a little longer.

[JackRiddler]

The research I have heard about is that if someone uses this repeatedly for arousal and satisfaction they are less likely to find typical sexual partners and situations enough. And really where do the atypical and extreme fixations come from if not porn? It is like saying people would just naturally be obsessed with wearing pointy ears and building models of the star trek enterprise even if they never had been exposed to any science fiction at all.

What research did you hear about? What are "typical" sexual partners (!!) and situations? When were they "enough," and to whom? When was there a time without "atypical"?

If people get their ideas from porn and Star Trek, where do their creators get their ideas? Some people would be obsessed with costumes and building models or decorations or dwellings or sculptures no matter what, and their ideas would come from some input around them.



What was this guy exposed to?

It's like saying Bosch wouldn't have obsessively painted Christian themes (with his own twist) if he had lived in a non-Christian society that didn't have painting. But he would have very likely obsessively devoted himself to whatever art that society had, assuming he had the freedom to choose.

I disagree, I think the type can be discovered, modified and reinforced by "perusing a manual". Obviously (and hopefully) it can be a person to person thing but how many were in love (or are still) with Marylin Monroe? Betty Page? Or Madonna? Or Britney Spears? Didn't they create types? fetishes?

So what? People have been in love with and longed for imagined or distant beings forever. People have also always lusted after others in their village they couldn't or shouldn't have. They've also used sex as a way to express power, and engaged in abuse and rape. This has never been otherwise. Never, never.

Those clay figurines interpreted by modern-day archaeologists as fertility goddesses very likely caused people of the time to yearn for that type. And no, other than Betty Page your examples didn't create but embodied or revived types. But if they did, so what? Is it bad that there is more than one "type" for people to lust after? What is your ideal, a world where everyone lusts after only one person who is their spouse -- in a "typical" relationship that brings full satisfaction?

And instead of individuals having a psychotic break a whole culture can. Porn is advertising a sexual bacchanal and people are buying it.People of all ages think nothing of performing sexual acts to thousands, perhaps millions of complete strangers. Releasing a sex tape seems to be on par with making a soda commercial for young celebrities. I can guarantee you more people are watching more porn for longer periods then anytime in history and I don't see anything to show it slowing down.

Your case seems based on the circular argument that porn is bad because porn is very, very bad. Apparently a bacchanal is bad. (Where are these damn bacchanals and why have I missed out?)

I believe I've seen the culture have a series of psychotic breaks in my lifetime, at least one a decade, and these generally have involved very bloody wars and great devastation. This shouldn't be attributed to, conflated with, or trivialized by a comparison to the mere multiplication of images. I find it a lot more disturbing that killers coming home from invasions are celebrated before the million millions for having performed a "service" to their "country," than that people fuck in public view, as you say. Recruitment for the armed forces of an empire engaged in aggressive wars is a much greater social ill than pornography. Count me with Col. Kurtz: "Airmen can drop bombs on women and children, but they can't write fuck on their airplanes because it's obscene."

And if they're of all ages, so much the better. But anyway, there's a lot less fucking in public view than you seem to think. This is the kind of thing that the most psychotic institutions in our society like to complain about. Megachurches and banking as practiced in the real world are each about 14 million times more disturbing than porn, and their depravities can't be blamed on porn. And the soda commercial at best is on a moral par with the sex film, there's no way it's a more admirable pursuit in itself. (Art can be applied to either form, though it's likelier in the one that makes more money.)

But here again, you dispense with empiricism. Or maybe I missed the recent trend among filmmakers and artists to go through the ritual of releasing their very own sex film? (Seriously: maybe I did. So give me some examples.)

[barracuda]

umm, yeah. I think this is the perfect place for sexual predilection confessions.

Oh come, now. An anonymous internet bulletin board is about as safe a venue as one might wish for for any such entre nous revelation.

Have you seen the Hot Chip I Feel Better Video? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MaCZN2N6Q_I (You have to give it a full minute.)
I return to it because it in differing degrees attracts and repels me.

I posted it in the lounge a few months ago because I liked the beat and the crazy skinny guy. What's not to like? Surely you're not in some way shocked or dismayed by the video or song. It's pretty run of the mill, all things considered. I don't think it would be significantly repellant or outre even decades ago. Taste is funny that way. I consider your threshold of shockedness to be astonishingly low, and I would have felt the same way about it thirty five years ago.

Why do I watch the rapper kid with Progeria? I don't think it is because I find such things appealing but as Robert Jay Lifton noted we need more and more intense stimuli to break through the psychic numbing (or what Delillo called the White Noise) of society that deadens us to sensation. As you say the excesses eventually drive the average person eventually to boredom. I think right there is the crux. When the endless viewings of golden showers leave you bored, you are going to need something more extreme to get the excitement back.

Please stop pulling my leg. You're telling me you need more and more intense stimuli to break through the psychic numbing of society, so you turn to Justin, aka MC Progeria? That's pretty funny. He is a bit of a train wreck, but the attraction of entertainers such as he is nothing particularly new, at all, or endemic in particular to contemporary life. It's a freak show, baby, on the dance floor, and always has been.

I remember the first time I saw a porn film as a youth and only being used to the hollywood sex scenes was actually physically nauseated at first...

Now we're getting somewhere. This confession is an important first step on the road to your recovery.

Porn from the 80's to me is like watching Family Ties or something. So dated. Sexuality seems tied to the new and novelty. It may even be a biological imperative to chase after the strange.

Okay, I don't mean to continue horning in on your conversation with compared, but I couldn't resist this one. What exactly becomes dated about two people fucking? This seems like a rather eternal human condition, one way or the other, unless you mean the clothing styles before they come off. We must have been watching very different porn in the eighties, because the movies I was watching (The Devil In Miss Jones, Parts Three and Four, or John Leslie's Smoker, for example) would stand toe to toe (or something to something) with any such fare available on the intertubular highway today. I mean, even a man in a frilly dress sodomizing a pooping mule is pretty much the same in form and essence now just as it has been throughout history, whether you are reading about it or watching a mpeg file. And the availability of that mulish experience hasn't changed the fact that only very, very "special" tastes are interested in it, or ever have been. High-ho, silver.

[Simulist]

Okay, I don't mean to continue horning in on your conversation with compared, but I couldn't resist this one. What exactly becomes dated about two people fucking?

The "bell bottoms" on all the naked people, of course.

[compared2what?]

Back for more.

compared2what? wrote:

brekin wrote:
I think we may be coming from two different directions. I think you may be saying porn doesn't create certain sexual expressions or appetites tabula rasa? There is usually are other mitigating circumstances that are more important? Where I'm saying porn can shape the targets and forms of expression of that expression.


Encountered in adulthood, or even in mid-adolescence, when personhood and sexuality are pretty well formed, for someone who's otherwise normally socialized within very broad parameters, actually: No, it can't. Or not so as anyone's been able to notice so far. And it's sure not that people haven't tried really, really hard to notice.

See, I have to disagree.

That is your right, which I respect.

I mean, brekin, have you never wondered why none of the numerous deep-pocketed and highly motivated crusaders against pornography, from Edwin Meese to Catherine McKinnon to the author of the OP, ever cite any statistics, studies, or other data, apart from anecdotal data? Because there is a reason and it's this: All such research that's ever been done says that pornography doesn't cause paraphilias or greatly affect the psycho-social aspects of human sexual development.

Well first I had to find out what Paraphilias means:

Paraphilias is a biomedical term used to describe sexual arousal to objects, situations, or individuals that are not part of normative stimulation and that may cause distress or serious problems for the paraphiliac or persons associated with him or her. A paraphilia is a condition involving sex fetishes where a person's sexual arousal and gratification depend on fantasizing about, and engaging in, sexual behavior that is atypical and extreme.

Porn is all about sexual behavior that is atypical and extreme and narratives that are not part of the normative situation. The research I have heard about is that if someone uses this repeatedly for arousal and satisfaction they are less likely to find typical sexual partners and situations enough. And really where do the atypical and extreme fixations come from if not porn? It is like saying people would just naturally be obsessed with wearing pointy ears and building models of the star trek enterprise even if they never had been exposed to any science fiction at all.

I too would like to know what research you've heard about, of course. But beyond that, still respecting your right to the same disagreement as above.

Try thinking about it this way: Most guys (and gals) have some "type" -- either physical or personality -- they find especially attractive, in some cases exclusively, although most people aren't that narrowly choosy.

I agree most people have a "type" or few they find especially attractive.

Yay!

But either way, they don't discover whom they're attracted to by perusing a manual [etc.]

I disagree, I think the type can be discovered, modified and reinforced by "perusing a manual". Obviously (and hopefully) it can be a person to person thing but how many were in love (or are still) with Marylin Monroe? Betty Page? Or Madonna? Or Britney Spears? Didn't they create types? fetishes? Some people have types that geographically or even chronologically they have little to no direct contact with. If someone can be attracted to someone so abstract and create a fixation so remote from their direct experience why can't they also become fixated on a atypical, extreme sexual narrative that isn't healthy? Especially if their type is the one waving them on?

I've explained on what I base my confident belief that pornography, per se, doesn't wreak that kind of change already, and respect your right to disagree with it.

Except that in reality it's gazillion times more nuanced and complicated than that (and also hotter, it is much to be hoped), that's reality. Porn used for masturbatory fantasy purposes belongs to the realm of fantasy. And people who aren't already, for whatever reason, already so crazy or damaged that they can't distinguish between reality and fantasy do -- astonishingly -- generally grasp that not-at-all complicated concept. Just as well wrt sex as they do wrt videogames. If you give the subject a few moment's thought, it almost immediately becomes apparent that not only are people highly unlikely to slip over that boundary so easily that they didn't know they'd done so, t would actually be very difficult -- if not impossible -- for most guys and gals who were correctly oriented to person, place and time even to get mildly confused about it. Unless they found having a psychotic break as effortless as breathing.

I imagine at different points in history the sexual mores of the generation preceding or following a certain transitory generation would see them living a fantasy they only could imagine. I see my generation and my parents generation completely out of whack with reality just on the influence of television and movies. But in many ways we are living a fantasy life that was unimaginable. Even some of the sci-fi from the 70's and 80's seems quaint when you confront the awesome reality of the internet. I think if you sell someone a dream long enough though they come to expect it. And instead of individuals having a psychotic break a whole culture can. Porn is advertising a sexual bacchanal and people are buying it.People of all ages think nothing of performing sexual acts to thousands, perhaps millions of complete strangers. Releasing a sex tape seems to be on par with making a soda commercial for young celebrities. I can guarantee you more people are watching more porn for longer periods then anytime in history and I don't see anything to show it slowing down.

I respect your right to your own opinion.

What part of that, if any, doesn't make sense to you, or doesn't ring true, or is contradicted by your own experience or observation? I implore you to tell me. Because among other things, if you really don't know that's the way people are, I'd be kind of worried about you.

That is touching but for some reason I doubt you are being sincere.

I was TOTALLY being sincere, in that I meant it affectionately. I wasn't serious about being worried about you. But only because you don't seem to be in distress or in danger or at risk. Not because I wouldn't be if you were.

I think your perspective is a little too prescriptive and not descriptive enough. It would be nice if people could separate fantasy from reality but I implore you to tell me with everything you have seen in your experience with people how that is so?

There's actually something about fantasy and reality in this context that I've been wanting to say for pages by now. Which I've been planning to do as soon as I have the time. I doubt it will persuade you to change your mind about the point in question. However, it is loosely related to it! But I'm afraid that's the best that I can do. The disparity between my understanding of how people live with themselves and in the world and yours is so vast, we're not even really talking about the same thing when we use the word "people."

Which is fine. I genuinely respect it. We just don't agree.

Haven't many people you know long ago chosen a manufactured dream over reality in every sphere?

Honestly, no. I don't know anyone who's chosen that. I personally don't believe it's possible to choose to live that way, as you know. I wish that it were, though. Because I'd have manufactured a dream world and moved into it before I'd even finished typing this sentence if that were an option.

Why with sexuality, especially with sexuality, wouldn't they start to choose the myth over the reality? I think the upsurge in porn is happening in part because of the great amounts of frustration and anxiety western civilization is experiencing and the dream is starting to erode. So the dream has to become more explicit, more extreme, more brutal to put off reality a little longer.

Again, I totally agree with you in spirit.

Cheers to you, my friend.

[compared2what?]

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c2w?, if I pick out a paragraph or two in your long post to reply to, it's usually safe to assume (in your case, not in others) I'm following and agreeing with the rest of it.

Well I can't provide any evidence that advertising is the root cause of any personal or social evils, or tabloid talk shows, or hollywood movies. All I can speak from his my little circle of experience. I think your desire for proof is noble. But we are living the experiment right now. I've seen individuals and families destroyed by just online gambling. Could they have fallen apart just as easily by something else? Perhaps. The odds are that they not only could have but would have been.

Fixed.

Because absent intervention, a propensity for gambling that's strong enough to destroy a family will out eventually. And when it does something major -- possibly a family, possibly the gambler, possibly a hypothetical by-stander, but something of comparable worth to what was destroyed -- will be destroyed by it. People have that susceptibility at a majorly destructive level or they haven't. It can't be acquired.

It's possible that by the grace of god, with exceptional luck, the undetected fracture in the foundation of that home that led to its collapse might never have been touched by a tremor of stress and thus never manifested itself. And I very much wish that had been the way things went. But even if it had, the threat to that home's integrity would still have been an integral part of the home itself, and not some alien force introduced to it by the internet.

Here the social engineer in me disagrees.

Two reasons:

1. Gambling more easily than pornography can be subjected to control in a way that does not entail the establishment of a repressive tyranny. I'll get into that below.

2. Gambling is not predicated on a biological drive with highly specific physical iterations.

What the hell does the last part mean?!

Honestly and on consideration, the only "fix" I would make that sentence were I it's author (all other things remaining equal -- ie, my not having any more information about the family in question than what brekin supplied) would be:

Well I can't provide any evidence that advertising is the root cause of any personal or social evils, or tabloid talk shows, or hollywood movies. All I can speak from his my little circle of experience. I think your desire for proof is noble. But we are living the experiment right now. I've seen individuals and families destroyed by just online gambling. Could they have fallen apart just as easily by something else? Perhaps. Who knows?

Which is a very, very slight alteration, in literal terms. But nevertheless one that would make it expressive of my worldview in a way that it isn't and shouldn't be as written. Obviously. Since it wasn't written by me.

That last part. What it means. Well...Remember I put a note indicating that I'd deleted a dissertation-length digression a few posts upthread? That was about the differences between compulsions and addictions, and I guess I still had it on my mind, because I assumed -- thus making an ass out of myself and me -- that a single member of the family was a compulsory gambler, which had destroyed the family. Whereas, for all I know, the entire family gambled non-compulsorily which led to its destruction in some way unknown to me.

There's a little subset of high-risk behaviors that some people engage in to excess that are commonly referred to as addictions -- among others, gambling and sex-to-the-point-of-risk-in-some-way -- that could present in a way that would strongly suggest that they were part of (or due to) some other disorder (what's presently classified as Bipolar 1, for example); or they could present in a way that didn't obviously meet the criteria for any currently formally recognized disorder (either because the DSM is woefully inadequate and also way out-of-date, or because they weren't, properly speaking, mental disorders but rather problem behaviors); or they could present in a way that was more like OCD than anything else (because, imo, that's what they were).

So. I was assuming a compulsive gambler, who wouldn't meaningfully be choosing to gamble excessively and who would have a problem with a strong biological component that might never manifest itself if he or she lived a one-hundred percent stress- and virtually stimulus-free life. Or, I guess, if he or she had some other exceptional attribute that allowed him or her to compensate for the obsessive-compulsion. Which could happen, with lottery-odds luck. But even if it did, the fault-line would be there, in the person. Because of the strong biological component.

That's what the hell the last part meant.

Here goes:

One may have a biological drive to feel the thrill from risking one's self, or to see something come of nothing, but this can manifest in thousands of ways.

Compare it to the sex drive: no matter what objects of desire are involved, the sex drive is almost always going to aim at achieving climax via a limited set of repetitive motions. This after first achieving arousal through stimuli that may vary enormously from person to person, but for almost any given person are going to be the same damn thing over and over again. (Oh, Clooney's ass, oh, oh, Clooney's ass! Ack! Clooney's ass!!!) Is that reductive? Sure, but not very. Does it leave out a great deal about love among humans and true satisfaction and fulfillment? Absolutely, but this reductive thing is always a part of it, and that's what pornography (assisted masturbation) lives from.

I submit that the availability of gambling encourages gambling where otherwise the drive to gamble would find a different, possibly less destructive outlet.

I argue that pushing gambling (as in advertising for the lottery and Atlantic City) gets more people to gamble than would have otherwise. (Pushing pornography does not necessarily get more people to masturbate than would have otherwise, although it probably allows some to masturbate more than they would have been able to otherwise.)

I argue that while working in the office, anyone is far more likely to be visited by involuntary spontaneous thoughts of sex, even if there are no impulses reminding one of sex from the outside, than one is to have involuntary spontaneous thoughts of gambling.

Gambling involves a much more public infrastructure. Pornography generally is consumed in private.

The business models and incentives are very different.

The exploitative pornography industry in the end delivers roughly what it promises: you pay to watch this, it gets you aroused, and you should be able to wank off. If it promises that its product will lead to lasting happy sexual relationships with real human beings, very, very few people are going to fall for that.

There's a great deal more lying happening in the PR for your average legal casino, and it's much more effective in fooling people.

Play this, get rich. It's "the life you deserve to lead." I say this pitch is much more seductive to average people. You can blame them just the same for not paying attention to the odds, but they fall for it more readily, and there is no limit on what they can lose in cash money within mere hours.

If you open a casino in a town, there will be more people of that town gambling away money they would not have otherwise gambled away.

If the state sanctions or even owns and promotes that casino, knowing full well that the odds are rigged against the players, it is getting more people into poverty than would have otherwise been the case. It is also sending a moral signal that announces: "It is acceptable for man to deceive man." Also, "fools are fair game for frauds" and "caveat emptor" (a.k.a. "tough shit for losers"). And that's not even addressing the enormous extent to which gambling has provably opened additional avenues for corrupting the state, hello Abramoff.

I have yet to see the state sanction, own and advertise pornography, by the way, as it does gambling institutions.

(Except insofar as the gambling institutions include floor shows with underdressed women?)

My solution would not be simple prohibition. That stops some people, while advancing a criminal underground. We should not want a return to the days of the numbers games, or the only alternative that would prevent them: a police state. (Usually that would be corrupted anyway since police states raise costs of vice activities and thus their potential profits, which means even greater incentives to bribe officials, as we see operating in Mexico during the last few years.)

I would in fact maintain state-run casinos and even the pernicious lottery. But with the understanding that the primary mission of state-sanctioned gambling is to LIMIT the damage that gambling does, not to get revenue for the state. ("Education"! What a fucking crock!)

Lottos should be arranged to always have a winner, no accumulation of jackpots, and absolutely no advertising. Odds and the real prizes should be published prominently.

Note: Lotto jackpots are lies -- the "lump sum" is not the advertised amount. They should show lump sum after taxes, or the annualized payment, because this is what you get. So instead of "100 MILLION UNITS!" the jackpot would read "32 million units lump sum after taxes" or "2.5 million units per annum after taxes, paid for 26 years," and this information should be displayed at the same size as the odds: "175,000,000 to 1." Exaggerating the jackpot serves to promote word of mouth and idle dreaming.

No casino should be within easy reach of a city center. Casinos should operate under the following rules: There is a door charge, and you pay for the luxuries, such as food and drink. All games of chance are arranged such that the odds are 50-50.

Example: Poker is not a game of chance but theoretically one of zero-sum combat with a chance element waged among equal players who can only lose their original stake. Roulette is a game of pure chance. To take the latter, if there are 38 numbers, the pay-off should be 38 to 1, not the 35-1 (or lower) which guarantees the house its margin given enough volume. Red-blue would be a true 50-50, without house numbers. Given enough volume, the house merely breaks even on the gambling. It pays expenses via door charge and amenities. It does not advertise, promote, or give comps. Thanks to the odds, however, it's a lot more attractive than illegal options.

That way, at least, not every person who is drawn in and kept in the casino is guaranteed to lose if they keep playing.

And there should be a limit on what you are allowed to play in a day or month.

Design furthermore should be boring -- no lavish exciting surroundings. Shows and the like segregated from casinos. Slot machines, if employed, should also pay out what they take in.

There should also be games of chance offered not involving money, just for the thrill. Casinos should include fairs full of other offers or entertainment or pleasures that compete with them, low-priced, except that the same age restrictions are in place.

Or table mini-tournaments where everyone pays $10 into the jackpot but starts with A MILLION in chips wow oh wow! And winners also get a chance to win prizes like a flight to Bumfuck Beach, etc. etc. So they spend more of the total time engaged in relatively low-risk activities.

You can come up with your own ideas. The point should be to find ways to satisfy the biological drive behind gambling without allowing its exploitation by bad actors.

I'm describing a kind of socialist methadone clinic for gambling junkies. Drab? Too bad. The state should not be encouraging gambling, is the point.

Do you see what I'm getting at? As much as companies in the porn industry would like to arrange things such that they can hook people reliably into a monopoly and take away ALL of their money, that's simply not what happens.

Whereas it is what happens with gambling. There's generally a monopoly, or a cartel in a gambling mecca, where the odds are built to kill the gambler, who will come anyway due to predisposition, as you note, but also due to enhancement of the seduction by all the means available to The Spectacle, as I add.

No arguments here, really.

Unless we're talking about a hypothetical peron with a gambling compulsion that was classically OCD-ish. In which case, I'm standing by what I said and not budging. Until the APA drags itself into at least the last two decades of the twentieth century, scientifically speaking or I die of sheer obstinacy. Whichever comes first.

[AhabsOtherLeg]

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I read this piece by Martin Amis a while back. Yeah, Martin Amis again, sorry. It said that porn is probably quite bad for you, but even worse than that, it is bad for the actors, actresses, and producers involved. Who knew?

He went on to compare porn stars to the old Roman Gladiators and their trainers. The piece suggested they should all get together and unionise - but they kind of beat him to that idea, long ago, and have been unionised and efficiently self-regulating for a couple of decades now. I'm not saying that their self-regulation is perfect, or free of organised crime, or even that it is good, or even much better than nothing. But they're self-regulating better than the banks ever did. A damn sight better.

Temptress and Shy Love are now running their own studios, after decades of service on the shop floor.
You really can start at the bottom and work your way up to the top. That myth is not as much of a myth in the porno industry as it is in, say, the auto industry. Promotions still actually happen in porn. You have to work really hard and take everything God sends, but you can achieve great things if you've a mind for it.

Reliable pensions, though, not so much - but, once again, that's like every other industry nowadays.

Now this Stephen Hill, aka "Steve Driver" has proven a point that didn't need proving - he has shown that the porn industry is just like any other industry, and that working within it is is every bit as boring, shaky and bad as working for the post office or a taxi firm, or that infamous i-phone factory in China.

But I read this thing by Martin Amis a while back that was pretty good. The Guardian had seen fit to mispell a lot of the stuff in it, and thereby ruined the overall flow of the piece, but it was still good. Here's the start of it.

.
Pussies are bullshit. Don't let them tell you any different.

"Answer me something," I said to John Stagliano. We were stepping out of the porno home - on to the porno patio with its porno pool. This was Malibu. Down the slope and beyond the road lay the Pacific Ocean; but the Staglianos have no access to its porno shore. In the evening they can watch the porno sunset with its porno pink and mauve and blood-orange, and then linger awhile, perhaps, under a porno moon.

"Answer me something. How do you account for the emphasis, not just in your . . . work but in the industry in general, how do you account for the truly incredible emphasis on anal sex?"

After a minimal shrug and a minimal pause Stagliano said, "Pussies are bullshit." Now John was being obedient to the dictionary definition of "bullshit" which is nonsense intended to deceive.

With vaginal, Stagliano elaborated - well, here you have some chick chirruping away. And the genuinely discerning viewer (jack-knifed over his flying fist) has got to be thinking: Is this for real? Or is it just bullshit?

With anal, on the other hand, the actress is obliged to produce a different order of response: more guttural, more animal. As Stagliano quaintly puts it, "Her personality comes out." He goes on: "You want guys who can fuck really good and make the girls look more . . . virile." Virile of course, means manly; but once again Stagliano is using the King's English. You want the girls to show you "their testosterone".

The name of Rocco Siffredi, again and again, was wistfully and reverently conjured. Rocco, the big-dorked Italian, and porno's premier buttbanger or assbuster (to use the dialect of this tribe).

"Rocco has far more power in this industry than any actress," said Stagliano, pleased to be pulling one back for the boys (generally speaking, men are the also-rans of porno). "I was the first to shoot Rocco. Together we evolved toward rougher stuff. He started to spit on girls. A strong male-dominant thing, with women being pushed to their limit. It looks like violence but it's not. I mean, pleasure and pain are the same thing, right? Rocco is driven by the market. What makes it in today's market place is reality."

And assholes are reality. And pussies are bullshit.

Part 1- http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2001/ma ... artinamis1
Part 2 - http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2001/ma ... martinamis

It is a good read on this subject, I think, but it won't really answer anything either way. But it's a good read.

[Simulist]

Here's some rather surprising stuff about porn that was on The Huffington Post this morning. You may find some of this interesting.

Online Porn Stats That Will Make Your Head Spin

From Online MBA comes a stunning infographic that presents some mind blowing statistics about online pornography, from its prevalence to its popularity to who consumes what and when.

A few highlights:

* A full 12% of websites on the net are pornographic.
* A quarter of search engine queries (around 68 million a day) are related to porn.
* The top pornography-related search terms are "sex," "adult dating," and "porn." There are some 116,000 searches for "child pornography" daily.
* Sunday is the most popular day for viewing porn online. Thanksgiving day the least popular day.
* The "average age at which a child first sees porn online is 11."
* Twenty percent of men and 13% of women say they have watched porn online while at work.

See the infographic below.

The Stats on Internet Pornography

internet-porn.jpg

[barracuda]

A few thoughts on that graphic...

- Since when is "adult dating" a porn search? If this is included among the results of the statistics here, the results are highly skewed.

- Considering that Google itself conducts about three hundred million searches per day, 116,000 searches for "child pornography" daily seems miniscule.

-The entire worldwide porn industry pulls in under five billion annually? I'm sorry, but isn't that less money than Johnny Depp movies alone make?

- "The average age at which a child first sees porn online is 11." This statistic is less shocking than it seems. I'm sure I was about nine when I first saw a "dirty picture".

-8% of all emails are pornographic? Does that include Viagra (etc.) spam, or are people sending each other naughty letters through the pipe? I'd consider the latter to be a very good thing, and the former to be the probable cause of this stat.