It used to be tough to get porn. Renting an X-rated movie required sneaking into a roped-off room in the back of a video store, and eyeing a centerfold meant facing down a store clerk to buy a pornographic magazine. Now pornography is just one Google search away, and much of it is free. Age restrictions have become meaningless, too, with the advent of social media—one teenager in five has sent or posted naked pictures of themselves online, according to the National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy.
With access to pornography easier than ever before, politicians and scientists alike have renewed their interest in deciphering its psychological effects. Certainly pornography addiction or overconsumption seems to cause relationship problems [see “Sex in Bits and Bytes,” by Hal Arkowitz and Scott O. Lilienfeld; Scientific American Mind, July/August 2010]. But what about the more casual exposure typical of most porn users? Contrary to what many people believe, recent research shows that moderate pornography consumption does not make users more aggressive, promote sexism or harm relationships. If anything, some researchers suggest, exposure to pornography might make some people less likely to commit sexual crimes.
Does Porn Harm Women?
The most common concern about pornography is that it indirectly hurts women by encouraging sexism, raising sexual expectations and thereby harming relationships. Some people worry that it might even incite violence against women. The data, however, do not support these claims. “There’s absolutely no evidence that pornography does anything negative,” says Milton Diamond, director of the Pacific Center for Sex and Society at the University of Hawaii at Manoa. “It’s a moral issue, not a factual issue.”
In 2007 researchers at the University of Zagreb in Croatia surveyed 650 young men about their pornography use and sex lives. As they reported in the Archives of Sexual Behavior, the scientists found that users of mainstream, nonviolent pornography were neither more nor less sexually satisfied than nonusers. Both groups felt the same degree of intimacy in their current or recent relationships and shared the same range of sexual experiences. But when it came to violent or fetishist porn, the groups diverged. Consumers of these types of pornography appeared to masturbate more frequently, have more sexual partners over the course of their life, and experience slightly less relationship intimacy than their nonviolent porn–viewing counterparts.
Regular pornography use does not seem to encourage sexism, either. In 2007 Alan McKee, a cultural studies expert at the Queensland University of Technology in Australia, designed a questionnaire to assess sexist tendencies. He enclosed his survey in shipments of pornographic material distributed by a mail-order company and also posted it online. Responses from 1,023 pornography users indicated that the amount of pornography the subjects consumed did not predict whether they would hold negative attitudes toward women. The survey respondents who were most sexist were generally older men who voted for a right-wing political party, lived in a rural area and had a lower level of formal education.
But the questionnaire may have missed a key nuance. In a study published in 2004 in the Journal of Psychology & Human Sexuality, researchers at Texas Tech University administered a different survey to male and female college students and found that although consumers of pornography did not display more negative attitudes toward women, they were more likely than other respondents to believe that women should be protected from harm—what the investigators call “benevolent sexism.”
Self-Medicating with Fantasy
Perhaps the most serious accusation against pornography is that it incites sexual aggression. But not only do rape statistics suggest otherwise, some experts believe the consumption of pornography may actually reduce the desire to rape by offering a safe, private outlet for deviant sexual desires.
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42 Comments
Add CommentMoyer's article "The Sunny Side of Smut" is a prime example of scientific reductionism and arrogance gone awry, and a failure to grasp the "fact vs. value" distinction when interpreting scientific data – a common mistake in journalistic reporting on science.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIt also shows an incomplete picture on the true impact of internet porn: The secretive and deceptive nature of porn viewing, it's impact on marriage and family, the risk of exposure to children, and its impact on workplace productivity, to name only a few.
Moyer's selection of studies she sites is hardly comprehensive: "young Men" (2007 University of Zagreb), "regular pornography users" (2007 Queensland University), and "college students" (2004 Journal of Psychology & Human Sexuality).
What she is clearly missing is the impact of porn on marriage and family relationships. For example, in an internet search: a study by Bridges, Bergner and Hesson-McInnis (2003) found a strong predictor of marital distress, separation and divorce (and was NOT strongly influenced by religious belief as often assumed).
In another example: Stack, Wasserman, and Kern (2004) found individuals involved in an extramarital affair were 3.18 times more likely to have used internet porn than individuals who had not had an affair. It also validated a correlation between internet porn and infidelity, and that online infidelity was seen as an act of betrayal -- similar to offline unfaithful behavior.
And Schneider, J. P. (2000), "Effects of cybersex addiction on the family: results of a survey. Sexual addiction & compulsivity" showed a negative impact of porn on sexual intimacy within marriages.
So contrary to Moyer's article, the ability to control one's sexual impulses and activities (whether mental or physical) is actually a very healthy aspect of moral judgment, maturity, trust, personal integrity and relational fidelity -- NOT the unhealthy act of "suppression" she suggests. The nod to the sweeping statement at the end -- that the negative effects or pornography can be reduced to merely a personal problem and not a material one -- is both naïve and irresponsible.
dcarollo, I believe the purpose of the article was to debunk earlier theories on pornography, specifically pointing out how any negative effects it has on young males (I don't have any statistics on me, but I think its safe to say they are the most prevalent users) are false.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisBringing up statistics on porn usage in marriage is a completely different subject. You also seem to imply that porn itself has a negative effect on married couples. The problem with this thinking is that if a married man is masturbating to pornography rather than having sex with his wife, then it implies that the actual problem is with the couple's sex life and that the pornography is simply a product of that marital struggle.
Finally, you mention something about "the secretive and deceptive nature of porn viewing." Seeing how for most normal people masturbation is perceived as a personal, private act, there is no reason why porn is not the same, nor should there be any problem with that.
I'm not convinced about the McKee study. People who will respond most probably feel strongly about the subject. Therefore, I anticipate that respondents fall in the two extremities of the question.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisdcarollo - You refer to "the secretive and deceptive nature of porn viewing". But why is porn viewing secretive and deceptive? Because society considers it to be 'bad'!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisMy wife knows that I view porn. She knows what kind of porn I view, and how often. Sometimes she views it with me. If people would stop considering viewing porn to be something dirty and shameful, then there would be no need for secrecy about it between husband and wife, and therefore no negative effects from keeping it secret.
Nothing is either good or bad, but THINKING makes it so-
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisShakespeare tHOUGHT..
'Smutty' is in the eye of the beholder!
Looking at the history of our so very special species
of fallen-angels and/or risen-apes descent,
sex, it has been said, happens mainly between the ears, anyway.
So we might even call it platonic, or placebo, for that matter..
And our brain feels just as rewarded as if it was the 'real' thing.
The fact that porn is the no. One most viewed item on the wordwide web shows that Charles and Siegmund were right!
Plus, it might have an indirect positive effect on the over population problem lol
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIf I assume you read the studies that you cite correctly and they are of good quality, you obviously interpret them incorrectly. Correlation is not causation! In Bridges, Bergner and Hesson-McInnis (2003), men increase their use of porn because of inherent or pre-existing marital problems. In Stack, Wasserman, and Kern (2004), similarly, men increase their use of porn and affairs because of inherent or pre-existing marital problems. Although (cyber) sex addiction can become a serious problem and it may cause work problems, this is true only for a minority of men. Your comments, e.g. "secretive and deceptive nature of porn viewing" are the true cause, i.e. naivety about the nature of men, women, and their relationships, of many of the problems that you think porn causes and reveal your inability to think rationally, and not emotionally, about this issue.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisTo say that porn has no negative effect is utterly ridiculous, unless you don't mind living in a society where marriages suffer because men's sexual standards and fantasies are based on porn, where women suffer discrimination and sometimes humiliation if they don't look like porn stars, where the entire culture is so highly influenced by pornography that even children are sexualized (in pageants, in the clothing marketplace, on television and in movies).
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe mainstreaming of porn in American culture has had an enormous effect on the entertainment industry, which is at the center of the American obsession with celebrity. Disney girls leak bra shots to the Internet before they're old enough to even grow breasts, so millions of preteens across the country follow suit. These are not isolated situations; they have become the norm.
Beautiful young actresses starve themselves and then get breast and butt augmentations just to get a job. What men see in porn films influences their real-life desires, and men run the film industry. Silicone is Hollywood's version of steroids -- nobody will admit they require it, but you can't compete without it. Porn has created a collective false consciousness based on the assumption that the multibillion-dollar porn industry is about sex, when in fact it is wholly about money. It is a predatory industry with far-reaching consequences that can't be quantified in a silly study masquerading as science.
Overall, I think it's a good thing. Detractors respond usually using their protectionist view of Christianity as their base point for all following logical assumptions. To be honest, I've known porn my whole life. In no way have I ever thought to act in a way counter to my upbringing. That's where the moralist arguments fall. If one's upbringing teaches him to disrespect his fellow man, then he'll disrespect his fellow man. Sexual repression manifests itself in other self-destructive behavior. Porn offers a way out.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIn the end, it's just not that big of a deal. Humans are sexual creatures. To pretend like we're not is pure insanity.
"To say that porn has no negative effect is utterly ridiculous, unless you don't mind living in a society where marriages suffer because men's sexual standards and fantasies are based on porn..."
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI certainly would not want the opposite - where marriage standards and fantasies (or the lack of them) were based on religion. Religious views are the most repressed (EG: Catholic priest scandals) and warped anywhere.
"With or without religion, you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things.
But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion."
-- Steven Weinberg
That distinction between moral issues & factual issues is a false one. Morality is real because well-being & suffering are real; morality is a science because well-being is not random & suffering is not random. We can, should & do objectively measure morality/ethics as part of medical science.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this-anyway, porn should be regulated & it is not intrinsically immoral.
Porn is an art; maybe pop music influences some cheating, and in the case of Katy Perry it probably influences alcohol abuse & addiction, but overall it is art... the potential to enrich lives is there.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisTake away porn, and nothing changes in the scenario you describe. Advertising, Hollywood, pageants, etc., all promote the skinny-buxom body image.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisLook at porn, and you will see a far greater variety of body types than you see on the typical fashion runway: thick & thin, A-D cups, etc. Look at the various porn fetishes, and you'll see even more diversity.
All things considered, porn demonstrates healthier body-image than seen in advertising. (After all, they're selling sex, not soap, so have to appeal to what men[mostly] actually find attractive.)
This article, like so many others writing about porn, forgets one important aspect, the women who are used to make pornography themselves.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisSo a man might watch violent porn rather than going out and being violent, but the violence he watched was real, it happened to a real woman who existed, for real, in the real world (porn performers are not 'acting', the sex acts are all real, there are no computer special effects or prosthetic body parts involved).
Violence against these women doesn't count, because those women are seen as expendable, and since they're getting paid they are seen as 'choosing' the violence.
Also, how is the author of this piece, and the various researchers defining 'violence', is only BDSM porn counted as violent? What about the more subtle coercion in porn where the woman starts out saying 'no' but ends up 'enjoying' it any way, or where consent isn't shown to be negotiated at all?
We know only a tiny proportion of sexual violence gets reported, any study that treats conviction rates as an accurate reflection of the true rate of sexual violence is going to be terminally flawed. Porn may contribute to rape myths such as women say no when they really mean yes, which would discourage women from reporting violence against them. The article mentions "benevolent sexism", but the flip-side of wanting to 'protect' (ie control) women, is victim blaming, a women steps out of line and she's asking for it.
Also, as the violence against porn performers isn't counted, violence against prostitutes isn't counted either. Men go to prostitutes to play out what they see in pornography. From a recent Newsweek article (http://www.newsweek.com/2011/07/17/the-growing-demand-for-prostitution.html):
Many johns view their payment as giving them unfettered permission to degrade and assault women. “You get to treat a ho like a ho,” one john said. “You can find a ho for any type of need—slapping, choking, aggressive sex beyond what your girlfriend will do.”
"It’s all about “personal views and personal values,” Twohig says. In other words, the effects of pornography—positive or negative—have little to do with the medium itself and everything to do with the person viewing it."
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisBut human beings don't develop in a vacuum, we exist in a culture, and porn is part of that culture, its imagery and ideas cross-over into the mainstream, and the internet means we are exposed to a greater quantity of, and more explicit pornography, from a younger age.
Misogyny obviously existed before modern pornography, but we can't say it has no affect - you might as well try to claim that film, TV and advertising can't have an effect on our 'personal views and personal values' because human culture has existed long before these things.
Not only do men go to prostitutes for a 'porn star experience', increasing numbers of women are having their genitals mutilated to look more like what they see in porn (and I would count having your labia removed, which can lead to a loss of sensation or chronic pain, as violence, even if the women does 'choose' it).
From: http://www.womensenews.org/story/health/041114/more-women-seek-vaginal-plastic-surgery
Many doctors who perform the surgeries say while there are some women who opt for the surgery because they are unhappy or their labia has caused them physical discomfort, the bulk of the women getting this surgery are ultimately being pressured by men who want them to conform to a idea of beauty most often seen in the porn industry. Doctors say these women request the procedure because they are afraid of having "old looking" vaginas. Doctors Loftus and Young say feedback from male partners is the number one reason women request the surgery.
What evidence can you provide to warrant the claim that pornography is the opposite of religion?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisTo all of you who even think this is even worth discussion and the fool who titled the article:
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThanks for the great laugh today.
Sincerely,
Adam
Some kind of root movie acts, for example the ejaculation out of vagina and on the body do induce or reinforce the psychodynamics of unwanted sexual features such as premature ejaculation. For unexperienced people, especially kids, watching porn may stablish a too early connection between the approach to the desired sex and genital activity, that in the end may even difficult personal realtionships and even sex inside couples. I can hardly imagine any advantage of porn, besides filling the bank accounts of porn movies industry members.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe giant hole in these kind of studies is that we, the readers, are supposed to accept on faith the representations of the survey-authors when they say make claims they are designed to ferret out attitudes in some supposedly neutral way.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThis is virtually never the case... and it involves a grandiosity on the part of the survey-authors that borders on the sociopathic.
They would believe themselves if such superior intellect that they can pretty much fool everyone who takes the survey. They claim to be able to erase all of their prejudices for desired results from the survey.
This, of course, is so rarely the case that we can say it never happens. We always see predetermined desired results to flow forth from these things.
It is ever so tiresome to see weak intellects using amusements like we see as filler in the comic sections of the Sunday papers as "research tools".
They inevitably proclaim some profound findings.. that 'just happen' to coincide with their sociopolitical views.
They then falsely claim that their 'druthers" socially or politically are based in 'objective science' when the very opposite is the case.
They cook up pseudo-science bunkum while wearing a lab coat to lull the gullible into accepting their opinions as "fact'.
Hey @candide. My sentiments exactly. For a sex-obsessed society like the one we live in, we sure are a bunch of conflicted little apes aint we? Well said.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisFor your study of whether or not porn might be harmful, you took a test administered to college students. Colleges take the cream of the crop of available young people. College students are goal directed people able to look at porn and put it aside to work differential equations. If they can't, they flunk out.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI invite you to come to the prison where I have worked. I will show you the results of porn. I invite you to come to the slums of cities. I will show you the results of porn. Go there and administer your tests.
One who thinks that colleges represent "the cream of the crop" of youth.... is not too worldly.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisColleges are packed to the brim with mediocre intellects intent on buying a degree by taking a large number of courses at about the 8th grade level.
Oh there may be some few actual strong intellects attending college but, on the whole, collegians hardly represents the best and the brightest.
No.. what we see now are vast numbers of people who simply will never, ever be able to function at a truly collegiate level and for whom ridiculously elementary courses of study have been invented in order to separate them from whatever tuition funding they may have located.
Add into that that large numbers of them will never wholly mature into adults because they are sheltered from "real life" during the very time in their lives when they might be tempered by life experience into adulthood.
The most common product of our collegiate system is an eternal adolescent who has memorized a whole lot of 8th grade material but who is more a pet held in common by society than a usefully freethinking, truly adult citizen.
Although I do not have knowledge of scientific studies evaluating the effects of pornography, I thought I would enter this discussion based on personal experience.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisMy wife and I have been married for more than sixty years. She is aware that I watch porn and has sometimes watched it with me but she does not find it that interesting.
My wife and I have a large, intact extended family with few divorces. We have family get-togethers annually and, thanks to social media, remain in constant communication with each other, celebrating accomplishments with text and photos. We feel very fortunate.
I can see how if I watched pornography rather than attend events where our children and grandchildren participated that pornography could indeed be considered harmful. But I know homes where husbands viewed sporting events unreservedly to the detriment of their families.
I probably sound old fashioned but I believe in moderation in all personal endeavors. Most things, if done to excess, are harmful.
To censor or attempt to prohibit pornography would make it and antisocial behavior that much more of a problem (like Prohibition).
In Denmark quite some time ago, the porn laws were gutted. Then numerous businesses sprang up with all kinds of shows including live sex. Data showed that the incidence of rape and other sex crimes went DOWN in the years following this. What also happened was the most of the businesses collapsed and the customers were now mostly tourists. Apparently the natives got enough of it. I am not saying that some people don't have problems with porn, but anything can be abused, even the Bible, as some religious gun nuts show every so often
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI am a senior family and individual psychotherapist. My long experience is that pornography is not at all harmful to anyone, even adolescents. I am a clinician however, and not a scientist.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI do know that statistics establish correlations, not causes or effects. The correlations cited below about bad marriages and pornography do not establish anything causal. Spouses who are jealous of their partners' auto-erotic, private life need to grow up. A jealous partner who interprets the other's interest in porn as rejection might consider whether the other finds one an unsatisfactory partner in sex and life in general, and get to work on making things better.
You have bought into a poor philosophical argument written by a bad philosopher with a windmill to tilt at and an ax to grind. He is a bad writer, a poor scientist and a weak philosopher. Don't get me wrong, it is easy to see and should be easy to craft a good argument for a scientific basis for morality, but the authority you paraphrase failed utterly to do so.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI am amused at the number of angry feminists willing and seemingly eager to dismiss the findings because they do not conform to their pore-existing beliefs. Assuming of course that the female sounding names actually are being used by females.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisFacts are facts, whether they demonstrate that the universe is aprox 13.7 bill yrs of age, the earth is aprox 4 bill yrs of age or that sex crime and violence goes down as access to porn goes up. Denial of facts simply makes the deniers look stupid.
Interesting report. But please consider the evidence I present here:
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this"<a href="http://safelibraries.blogspot.com/2011/07/porn-and-sex-abuse-in-our-public.html">Porn and Sex Abuse In Our Public Libraries: Public Library Porn Harms Children, Patrons, Librarians, and Porn Industry Actors</a>"
http://safelibraries.blogspot.com/2011/07/porn-and-sex-abuse-in-our-public.html
What other profession besides librarianship allows porn viewers to sexually harass you, and if you don't like it, you're told to get out? And exactly how does that make porn harmless, or even beneficial?
PS, I love Scientific American.
WOW...doesn't take long for the Gail Dines contingent to react, doesn't it?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisPhorestPhire's "analysis" is really nothing more than the standard antiporn 'radicalfeminist" claptrap that denies women who produce or consume porn any self-agency or willfull intent or consent in their participation therein, reduces even the most consensual acts in porn production to "violence" and "coercion", denies the exhibitionist/performance arousal factor for women who choose to produce and/or consume porn; reduces all male/female interaction within porn to the extreme of men "degrading" or "dominating" women (as if female domination or gay male/lesbian/transsexual porn is somehow nonexistent), and essentially promotes the repeatedly disproven meme that porn is directly responsible for negative attitudes and body images towards women, rather than mainstream advertising or dominant conservative cultural mores.
Even worse, PhorestPhire's reductionist argument of sex worker clients ("johns") as innately wanting "violence" or "degradation" of their providers, and his/her conflation of such clients with porn consumers, watchers, is simply breathtakingly obtuse. Not all sex worker clients or porn consumers are into "slapping, choking, [and] aggressive sex", and those who may be into such (and it's not nearly as violent as PP depicts, as many women and men who are willing into such will attest to) are still perfectly capable of treating their participants as full human beings.
In any case, PP still manages to miss the point of the original article, which essentially debunks with actual evidence and real empirical research the myths that porn is responsible for violence against women.
Anthony
And the myopia gets even thicker.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisNewsflash, PP: Modern-day porn has only been legalized and integrated in the popular culture since the 1980s with the dawn of first VCR's, then the personal camcorders, and finally the Internet and personal CD's/DVDs. I can assure you that attitudes of hostility towards women have predicated porn's growth by decades, if not millenia.
No one is saying that there is absolutely no effect from advertising or the mechanisms of pop culture delivered by modern media on social attitudes. However, such attitudes are so varied and so wide-ranging that there is simply no way to determine which particular attitudes are the result of "media pressure" and which are more likely the result of personal decisions. Human beings are capable of rejecting media sells, you know.
Besides that, most advertising tends to sell their particular brand name as superior to the other brand names. They don't necessarily attempt to create out of thin air desires, because they already exist...unless such desires are repressed via censorship or violence.
As for the example of women performing labioplasty as a result of porn: well, very few women in porn actually choose that option, so there really isn't that much "pressure" to do so (indeed, the reaction of most women is exactly the opposite); and because such procedures are out of the financial reach of most women to begin with, I'd hardly think that it will become anything more than a passing fad. Plus, one woman's "genital mutilation" is another woman's art form Are clitoral rings or body art also considered forms of "genital mutilation" as well??
Finally...you can talk about "feedback from male partners" all you want, FF, but in the end it is still the WOMAN'S final decision to do whatever surgery she wants, and to take responsibility and ownership of her body. I thought that that was the essence of feminism that women should have control over their own bodies...or did that get overruled by the "Patriachy"...or the RadicalFeminist Sex Police??
Anthony
Oh, please...sexual abuse in libraries?? Really??
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisConsidering that most libraries in the US filter their Internet spaces to disallow access to explicit sexual content, and that those who don't place specific and generally well enforced rules upon accessibility restrictions, I'd hardly think that libraries are becoming the next great hook-up space....let alone, havens for sexual violence.
But...nice attempt at spamming anyway.
Anthony
No, that was no spamming. This is a Sci Am well-respected news source saying what it said. I was, on the other hand, countering with a ton of evidence on the harm of pornography in public libraries. Comments are here to allow people to raise issues just like I did. I hope the author of this Sci Am article takes note of what I said and at least considers it.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWith all due respect, and not even questioning your right to your opinion....simply posting links to your own sites to promote your viewpoints unvarnished by actual evidence is, in my view, spamming.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisNot to mention, the actual facts don't agree with your contentions.
Anthony
I did not "simply post links to my site." I asked "What other profession besides librarianship allows porn viewers to sexually harass you, and if you don't like it, you're told to get out? And exactly how does that make porn harmless, or even beneficial?" And that goes directly to the heart of the issue. Further, I needed to add my link because the evidence is so voluminous that my link was the simplest means by which to make my point in the least space possible.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAnd "unvarnished by actual evidence'? Really, you obviously did not read what I have. I have legal documents, reliable sources, multiple media sources, on and on and on. I know how Sci Am works and they are a reputable business. I make may claims and back it up with hard evidence.
Your need to set aside the issues to make false statements about me tells me that I have hit the nail on the head. Thank you.
Is child porn neither good nor bad?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisOf course we're "sexual creatures". But we're also relational, loving (usually) creatures as well. Many of us are also parents.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisA total sexual life must understand its context in regard to relationships, and that none of our behavior (sexual or not) can ultimately be isolated and reduced to matters of private taste. Our inner, private life has impacts on our external public life as well.
To think we can divorce the two is simply being delusional.
@candide: "I certainly would not want the opposite - where marriage standards and fantasies (or the lack of them) were based on religion. Religious views are the most repressed (EG: Catholic priest scandals) and warped anywhere."
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this@candide: "I certainly would not want the opposite - where marriage standards and fantasies (or the lack of them) were based on religion. Religious views are the most repressed (EG: Catholic priest scandals) and warped anywhere."
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this"I certainly would not want the opposite - where marriage standards and fantasies (or the lack of them) were based on religion. Religious views are the most repressed (EG: Catholic priest scandals) and warped anywhere."
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe anomoly of Priest scandals aside -- and given a choice: I would choose the Catholic emphasis on marital fidelity, mutual love and respect and lifetime commitment OVER the self-indulgent, myopic adolescence of secularism any day.
But these are all basic human values that correspond to a proper understanding (and functioning) of our human nature -- Our basic and objective needs for meaningful, stable relationships, to trust others and be trusted ourselves.
As we think --- so we are.
I consider myself a radical feminist, which to clarify, means to me that I care about more than just pay equity and am heavily invested in social change, too.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI think the idea that porn inherently degrades women no matter what is short sighted. Many types of porn include imagery, acts, and scenarios which reinforce sexist ideas, but that doesn't mean porn itself reinforces sexist ideas. If we're all mature enough to accept that naked bodies are no longer the core of the porn debate, then it's clear to me that the problems many folks have with porn are the same problems they have with advertising, TV, etc.
The difference is that porn is usually viewed in private and wants to make the viewer feel good, while advertising bombards everyone and wants to make you feel bad. When the two have a lot in common, it's the result of a general attitude that femaleness/femininity is something which is dirty or needs to be controlled. I think it'd be tough to argue with that since being called a girl is still a hurtful thing to say.
However, perhaps because porn is a largely private thing, it hits us in a vulnerable place. It's easy to get a little paranoid, it's also easy to react with disgust and fear when we've been told porn is dirty for other reasons for so long. It's no wonder women feel pressure in general to look and screw a certain way, and some men really do egg it on. But why target porn as the culprit when it's really just sexism in general that makes us miserable?
Some porn makes me roll my eyes, some creeps me out, some turns me on because it shows me things I would want to do, and some turns me on even though it's nothing close to what I would want to do in real life. I can say, from a woman's point of view, that I definitely know the difference between fantasy and reality, and a lot of men probably do, too. If porn were really getting in the way of my relationship, I would have to ask myself if it were because I was afraid that sexual desirability was the only thing we had in common! If someone loves you for more than that, it shouldn't be a problem. If they really are pressuring you to be something/one you're not, you may have yourself a creeper. Don't waste time "making it work", find someone cool who you can share fantasies and curiosities with openly, and with a sense of humor!
Does porn harm women? It certainly is a good question. Please watch the video an then make up your minds.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thishttp://www.youtube.com/verify_age?next_url=/watch%3Ffeature%3Dplayer_embedded%26v%3DBAPDjRA3z3U
Porn is the only Reality T V there is . Everything else , including the News , is fantasy .
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this