I guess you haven’t read the Old Testament book titled “The Song of Solomon” with an open mind. It might be a love letter, but it’s still dirty (and good).
On that note, has anyone ever been to a church service where the topic of the sermon/mass was that particular book of the Bible? I keep looking at the signs of every church I pass, but to no avail.
Yes, I think you have identified a key point. I, implicitly, defined “porn” in a narrow way. In fact, I have no qualms about a film, say, showing a couple making love, in all possible ways, so long as they’re both portrayed as equals. I wouldn’t even call that “porn”
After thinking a bit more about this, I also wondered where “gay porn” would fit in. My argument would seem not to apply there too.
If you are interested in some opinions on the effects of pornography, nature v. nurture and other issues that may have a link to sex crime perpetrators I can suggest some reading. Read anything by John Douglas and Mark Olshaker such as “Anatomy of Motive”. Anything by Robert Ressler. These guys are former FBI “profilers”. And while social scientists, psychologists, and psychiatrists may look at these issues their theories and conclusions are often drawn from a broad clinical standpoint. These guys however know fully well of all the mitigating cirmcumstances behind the behavior of sexual preditors but their view is a little more up close and personal. Douglas and a few of his other collegues have studied some of our most dangerous and notorious, as well as the virtually unknown.
There has indeed been no established correlation between the consumption of pornography and violent sexual behavior. But it is true that for many sex offenders violent pornography is a stone in the path of their progression. Just as peeping and breaking and entering are often part of the progression from simple obcession and petty crime to more serious crimes of rape, sexual assualt and murder.
It was also noted that several of our very famous and very dangerous serial sexual preditors, such as Ted Bundy, had copies of “Catcher in the Rye” in their possesion at the time of arrest.
Needs2know
So what? They weren’t available to the jewish tribes at the time. And saying that “there has been por for about as long as there has been writing” is a silly generalization. You can go as far as that and cite the Venus of Willendorf as the very first nude pin-up, but that doesn’t mean it’s PORN as we know it in present days.
Yeah, but it isn’t PORN. I don’t thing God put that on the Bible for people to masturbate with.
Besides, it’s the other way around. Porn doesn’t incite sex crimes, but sex criminals buy porn by the truckloads.
Yeah, but it isn’t PORN. I don’t think God put that on the Bible for people to masturbate with.
Besides, it’s the other way around. Porn doesn’t incite sex crimes, but sex criminals buy porn by the truckloads.
It seems to me that everyone is going off in a dozen different directions without first agreeing on what you are talking about. Specifically, what is meant by porn. Any naked pictures? Just visual depictions of sexual acts? Only depictions of sexual acts that are characterized by possessiveness and domination or power and control vs. loving interaction? Is written text (i.e. descriptive stories) included, or just visual media?
Everyone is using different assumptions on the above questions and talking around each other.
How about to fit with the OP, we define “porn” to mean “depictions of sexual acts, whether visual (pictures, sculpture, movies, live simulations, etc) or written, for the purposes of sexual excitement.” The specific subset the OP was mainly interested in is violent “rape”, or “forced” extreme BDSM.
Let’s not argue if the Bible is porn or not, or how long porn has been around. Let’s stick to whether porn (especially the violent “rape” type) affects behavior, and especially any studies that correlate the two or fail to correlate the two.
Pornography does incite crime in states where masturbation is illegal. 
That generalization is far less silly than claiming that porn had not been invented at the time the bible was written or (with absolutely no evidence) that Jews would somehow not have had access to it.
The indications are that pornography is always one of the first uses to which any non-verbal medium is put: Within a year or so of the first printed bibles, people were printing pornography; within a year or so of the first tintype cameras, people were creating pornography on plates (and the same thing happened as soon as Eastman moved photography over to film); among the earliest movies were filmed sex acts; the moment that VHS cameras came out, a whole expanded industry sprang up. This has been true of all representational or literary art: as soon as a society (India, Rome, China, whoever) has gotten the knack for creating pictures of coitus–they have produced those pictures.
Given that background, speculating that pornography accompanied the earliest attempts at writing is fairly safe. (Not proven, but a safe guess.)
Asserting that the literate members of the tribes of Israel would have no access to pornography demands something more than your say so (especially given the nature of the neighboring Canaanite religions with their emphasis on fertility rites).
[QUOTE]
*Originally posted by tomndebb *
**
FERTILITY rites. That’s not porn.
FERTILITY rites, and everything that was written about that at the time, had the purpose to stimulate reproduction. Make babies.
PORN’s goal, per se, is make people jack off. And with condoms, onanistic techniques and variant places to deposit sperm (breats, face, etc), babies are an item left out of the mix.
[QUOTE]
*Originally posted by smartt *
**
You know the difference between a “fertility” rite and “pornography”? One is condoned by the local diety’s PR people. You seem to be pretty clueless about your own industry “Mr.Porn Magazine Editor”. As for how long porn has been available to people. I’m not sure about in written form but there is a temple in India that has stone carvings predating Christ by a good many years and all the carvings are of some really kinky sex acts. Also there are cave paintings depicting such things as beastiality as well as regular coitus between cave man and cave woman. Tell me, is deer humping a fertility rite? Wonder what the deer think about it.
smartt, good way to avoid the rest of your errors.
In fact, while the religious acts of fertility rites are, indeed, not created for pornographic intent (and the majority of the Victorians who drooled over the subject seriously overstated the orgiastic nature of most such rites), those same rites (and any accompanying literature), when viewed from outside the culture/religion that bred them tend to be treated as pornography (hence the drooling Victorians).
Look, you threw out a flawed one-liner and got called on it. Let it go and move on.
Tom~
Well said. You have been here a lot longer than me so maybe you could answer a question I have that relates to this. I know it’s not good to say something like “smart you are a moron” for example, but is it ok to say “I would like to say samrt, that you are a moron. But I wont.”?
Just hypothetically speaking, of course.
Does it smell like rook in here or is that just me?
Sure. Everybody’s here’s perfect but me. Yeah, right.
So? That’s taking things out of context. HUSTLER was intended to be pornographic since day one. But if fertility rites are VIEWED as pornographic by another society with different P.O.V., that a completely different matter.
And about the bestiality aspect of some carvings, those aren’t fertility rites, NOT porn. In fact, Cecil wrote about it. Go look for it before you bash me with more bull.
You just LOVE to incite a flame, don’t you? Sorry dude, I’m not fall for that.
You just LOVE to incite a flame, don’t you? Sorry dude, I’m not falling for that.
What can I say? When you’re right, you’re right!
Look. You made the claim that pornography had not been invented at the time the bible was written. I have no idea why you would make such a strange claim, but it simply is not a supportable assertion. You can dance around the topic and redefine pornography to mean some really specific type of literature that only appeared when you want it to have appeared, but I would suggest that your time would be better spent doing a search on erotic literature or pornography among ancient cultures so that you don’t make the same sort of mistake in the future. (I would think that as a purveyor of such stuff, you’d take a proprietary interest in knowing as much about the history of your product as you could. Claiming that pornography was invented sometime after 1300 BCE is simply going to get you in trouble.)
I’m done with this hijack.
This thread reminds me of something I heard many years ago: All cucumber eaters get colon cancer.
Stupid as it is this fallacy demonstrates that two differet events may be superficially connected, but causatively totally unrelated.
First of all, I’d like to use “rape”, instead of vague “sex crimes”. Besides, as I said, “sex crimes” is a misnomer.
I think that rape was known before pornografy was invented. I do not think that painting sexual scenes or viewing them encouraged rape. I’d rather they were painted by rapists.
I’ll never rape anyone. You may show me pornography 24/7, it won’t change it. I do not know if all rapists view pornography, but I think that more sex-offenders will be found among stip-joint visitors than among library readers. Do rapists do pornography as a warm up for rape? And total ban on pornography will diminish the imcidence of rape? Will complete “freedom” of pornography produce more rapists? I think that potential rapists may view pornography, but pornography by itself cannot attract uninterested men or make anyone a rapist. I remember seeing dozens of pornmagazines covers on Italian newsstands everywhere. In America, “Playboy” or “Hustler” are displayed with only the title visible. Not once I saw genitalia there when I saw full covers. In Italy, not only what commonly known as “external genitalia” was very visible, but much more. Everyone sees them, children… I know about Italian mafia, etc., but I’ve never heard of rape there as a major crime problem.
I’d like to see the opinions of our Scandinavian friends.
Not exactly pornography, topless dancing can be viewed on broadcst (not cable) TV in many countries.
Once again, sexual urges can motivate masturbation. Violent personality underlies rape.
zen101, hypothetically speaking, you can’t say things against people in this forum. You can say whatever you want about a person’s ideas in this forum, and you can insult people in the BBQ Pit, if you so choose (I believe that smartt already has a thread dedicated to him there). Take your pick. Meanwhile, if you have any suspiscions about a person’s identity, the open board is not the place to discuss them. Send an e-mail to a moderator or administrator, and we can investigate it and take any appropriate action.
Well I’m glad I asked first then.