Amy Alkon, author of I See Rude People,
has an interesting column on porn:
has an interesting column on porn:It's hard to have a rational conversation about porn because people's first reaction is so often knee-jerk hysteria. I got a lot of that in response to this particular column; for example, as one guy wrote, "Porn focuses on body parts, not on sex. This is how bestiality develops." Yes, we see that all the time: One week, a guy's surfing the net for busty blondes; the next, he's got the hots for the neighbor's Labradoodle.
posted by Helen at 1:01 PM
22 Comments:
a society that loses respect loses everything.
i live in a community that ten years ago ran all the adult movie shops out of town. now we have billboards advertising where they are right across the street from high schools.
i get that people will occasionally look at the forbidden, but to spend money monthly to have hi-def porn cabled into your home seems sort of odd to me.
it seems that our society is being programmed to accept this, opposed to this being our true nature.
i live in a community that ten years ago ran all the adult movie shops out of town. now we have billboards advertising where they are right across the street from high schools
Not to worry, they'll be out of business before too long, I suspect. Unless you don't have reliable internet service.
well, the movie shops have morphed into adult toy shops, selling all manner of surrogate materials including mannequins clearly visible from the street.
now, don`t get me wrong, i don`t see anything wrong with sex and the exploration of sexuality...i just have a rather private sexual nature and find this rapid shift from the private to the public a little disconcerting, if not outright embarrassing frankly.
my point though is not just with pornography, it seems that the government wants to ave us constantly hitting the endorphine release button in our minds with everything from sex to drugs (legal or otherwise)and gambling.
we may not agree that these things are actually addictive, but htey sure do modify one`s behaviours, and over time completely change the landscape of society as a whole.
and what pidgeon isn`t going to vote to have a button to peck for food in his cage?
That's a super fun and smart post there of Amy's, thanks. I don't think I've ever been to advicegoddess, thanks for posting.
I just got into hot water last week for having the nerve to argue some of Thomas Szasz's ideas about addiction to a friend.
I'm considering the idea that addiction to the idea of addiction - as disease - is a disease.
I've been to a couple porn sites on the web before, to read the articles.
LOL. Everyone knows gentlemen prefer Border Collies.
On any given day, more damage is done to marriages by soap operas and chick flicks than by porn.
That opinion will probably draw a lot of fire, but I believe it is true.
I believe it also, Trust, and I'll go even further: soap operas and chick flicks often are porn but they're the female-preferred sort of porn. I'll add the women's interests magazines that crowd the supermarket checkout aisles to the fem-porn category, too.
'Graphia' ain't jes pitchurs, ya know. It includes dirty thoughts put into words.
T&A = gateway to bestiality.
Nope, just not seeing it.
Trust, that's a very interesting proposition, and I think there are some good arguments to be made for it. One of the characteristics that arguably makes it worse is that it's subtle and insidious since it wraps itself up in the mantle of harmless, and even wholesome, entertainment.
I have had this discussion with my wife about the different ways that men and women find sexual stimulation in media.
she adamently disagrees that romance novels and soaps and chick-flicks are pornographic at all....even though some of the books she has provided for her daughter are graphic enough to make a sailor blush.
as a small "f" feminist (not entirely hostile toward men) she takes the victimisation stance on pornography and that the forms of exhibitionism seen in these films stem from sexual abuse, which i tend to agree with and can certainly see her position.
in many of the chick flicks, romance novels and so on, the women are much more clearly in control if not outright manipulative, and maybe that`s why there is a "it`s not porn" position amongst women, even if there is a substantially graphic nature to many of the sexual aspects in those media.
and we know how women like to be in control....
Orgasm is a powerful, powerful neurological event. Repeatedly experiencing orgasm in association with porn has to have an effect. I do not know what the effect would be, but orgams is too powerful to be minimized.
I figure the effect would be even stronger in people with little or no sexual contact. It seems logical to accept that orgasms bring a couple closer together. With more orgasms occuring without a relational partner, I worry that it would weaken relational bonds.
That is my particular worry, and I do not have data to back it up. But it is only prudent to think that repeated orgasm in response to porn has some effect. And it would surprise me if the effect were small. I mean, look what gambling with its intermittent and sparse reinforcement does to some people!
Trey
Alkon does like th e reductio ad absurdum play, doesn't she.
What I've seen is a lot of women married to or living with these slobs who smoke pot, look at porn and jerk off all day. Usually obese. Maybe they manage to hold a job, maybe not. They're convinced all other dudes are the same way. The guy starts to demand porn-style service, and eventually they break up.
I went with a couple lite porn fans myself, and broke with them too. I had no respect. I thought of them as jerk-offs, as not-men. And not all men are like that, but maybe the younger ones are nowadays. The older ones tended to think it was pathetic.
That's just the way I am. It must be in my genes, or something.
Carol opines "The older ones tended to think it was pathetic."
----
Well, I'm getting to be an old geezer and I am getting more and more empathy with men. And I kind of think women with entitled ways of thinking - like you - are pathetic.
I guess it's the shaming war of patheticness. Except men don't usually say it.
Oh, and I've had a job for the last 30 years - even a good one lately. Do you even work yourself, Carol?
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Wow. Carol is certainly into stereotyping.
Well, I'm getting to be an old geezer and I am getting more and more empathy with men. And I kind of think women with entitled ways of thinking - like you - are pathetic.
Same here.
my wife and i have sex because we like eachother and we like the feelings we share.
not as a reward or an incentive or whatever, and my wife genuinely like the act (s).
we are rare animals in this pay-per-use society.
and carol sounds frigid.
porn-syle service?
stop watching porn carol, it`s rotting your brain.
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I posted this on Amy's article in response to someone who thinks men would b mocked if acting like fictional men, and doesn't think entertainment has much of an impact on girls and women:
I have no doubt that men would be mocked if they acted like Edward "I want to kill you but I'm a sweetheart" Cullen, but that doesn't stop women from feeling like their men are deficient after crushing on him.
I think modern entertainment (actually, not so modern) has more of an impact on girls and women than most suspect. We start them off in their cribs reading about the frog prince (your kiss will transform toads into princes). Then we move them on to Lady and the Tramp (homeless, unemployed chicken thief tramps are good matches for nice girls with sheltered lives). We then have a steady regimen of Disney which impresses upon girls that they can make a man out of a monster (Beauty and the Beast), and thieves are really diamonds in the rough who will show them a world that they have not even seen themselves (Aladdin). Then, as these girls start becoming women, we'll teach them that the best men always crash onto the scene on a motorcycle beating up the villains, who are always educated rich men wearing ties (almost any soap opera). From there, a buffet of chick flicks (where bad men always change), with a yummy dessert assortment of vampires who are have an urge to kill them (Twilight) and werewolves who they can't make too upset lest they turn and eat them (Twilight sequels). Sprinkle some anti-husband hostility from talk shows, magazines, friends, co-workers, hair stylist, and most groups of women, and you have a recipe for a wife that *sarcasm on* so appreciates *sarcasm off* her husband.
Of course, if this very same husband was given sex every 2 or 3 days during courtship, is now working 60 hours a week to make all her dreams come true, and now only gets sex once every 2 or 3 years... if he in his involuntary celibacy turns to porn rather than adultery, he is destroying his marriage. The reverse is not true, as men don't have feelings anyway.
Trust,
I wish there was a way to get a permalink to your comment. Some people write posts and struggle to hit the nail on the head. You just hit a row of nails on the head. Well done.
W
Thanks, William.
According to the blog, the permalink is supposed to be this:
http://drhelen.blogspot.com/2011/02/amy-alkon-author-of-i-see-rude-people.html#5232031855610596052
But it doesn't seem to go straight to the comment. Maybe it's just my machine.
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