SuaSponte wrote:
Every woman you’ve had sex with looked bored? 
Thanks polycarp, thats exactly what I meant.
Lamia, my comment wasn’t an attack on your position and I’m sorry if it sounded that way. My point was that keeping children from things that are bad for them is simply not effective in the long term. If parents actually took the time to educate their kids about sex and drugs, and gave them the tools to handle these situations when confronted with them in life, many of the social problems that we have today would be far diminished, IMHO. If parents in general, took more responsibility with their kids, perhaps the government wouldn’t need to fill that role.
I feel that if we are ever going to win a war on drugs or teen pregnancy, or AIDS, it is going to come from honest education and parental involvement, and not legislation ad nausium. More laws simply infringe upon our right to make our own decisions as adults.
Actually, one of the many reasons this wouldn’t really tell you much is because the segment of the porn-consuming population that actually * goes to an adult store, * particularly in this day and age, is incredibly tiny, and I would venture a relatively educated guess that this segment of the porn-consuming population is not particularly representative of the porn-consuming population overall, for a variety of reasons.
There were two developments which allowed pretty much everybody to indulge their desire for porn: VCRs and then the Net.
40+ years ago, when porn was something you had to know somebody to get your hands on, the porn-consuming population was mostly really committed porn-o-philes.
Then, in the 60’s, with Playboy on the stands and people generally loosening up, it became something you could legally purchase, although you still had to be willing to go to kinda icky locations or know someone who knew someone who could get you mail order. (And man, it was outrageously expensive!! I have movies in my collection still in their original boxes that were $75 for 10 minutes. I have magazines that were $25. And this is 30 -35 years ago… adjusted to today’s dollars, that magazine would cost ya around $75-$100!)
Then the 70’s and Deep Throat, and going to the Pussycat was considered not such a big deal by a much larger segment of the population. Then the 80’s and VCRs, and renting a video was even less embarassing than that, and of course, with the advent of the Net, and total anonymity, we now have come to understand that the world is brimming with pretty freaky folks, and almost everybody looks sometimes.
The access didn’t change who people were to start with, it just made it easier for them to do what they always wanted to do anyway: look at other people doin’ it.
stoid
something of an expert
Merely because most people think something doesn’t mean it’s fact. A hundred years ago, it was almost universally accepted that masturbation was harmful to children and they should be prevented from doing so by any means. I actually have a hard time seeing how porn in and of itself does all that much damage to a kid; children are naturally curious about sex, but before puberty they’re not exactly interested in having it. Of course, when your parents react to your “What’s this?” as though you’d just fished up a uranium rod, that can be fairly traumatic.
After puberty…
We live in a nation where the mean age of loss of virginity is 16 and the onset of puberty is 12-13. It is illegal for people to look at images of people having sex until the age of 18. Does anyone else think that this is totally absurd?
I agree completely. There seems to be a rising conviction that the best way to raise a child is to keep him or her basically sealed in a Ziplock bag until 18. Do these parents believe that the Judgment Fairy will descend on their child’s 18th birthday and impart all adult knowledge and coping skills? This is like raising a wolf cub like a dachsund puppy and then dropping it in the middle of a forest and expecting it to survive in the wild.
“Childhood innocence” is a crock. What I remember of that is mostly learning that it was a good idea to conceal the extent of what I knew or wanted to experiment with from my parents.
[QUOTE]
*Originally posted by CriticalCat *
**
This is a very interesting question and I’m surprised that it just dropped to the floor without being caught.
As a gay man who looks at gay porn (too frequently, perhaps) and also has some experience with straight porn (from before I was out of the closet), I have to say that there is a difference in perception, at least to me. I’ve occasionally seen straight porn as being degrading to the women involved. Of course, I focus on things that the usual watchers of straight porn don’t. The fact that the man/men in the scene might as well not even really be there as far as the camera’s concerned, for one thing. The fact that the women are often physically manipulated by the man/men in the scene, as if they were sex toys rather than partners, for another.
Contrasted with gay porn, where both/all of the participants are more or less equally focused on (even in scenes that highlight a very top/bottom relationship) and where both/all of the participants are pretty much active/willing/enthusiastic (barring the occasional straight-to-gay porn star who just looks like he wants to get off and get paid), with a more genuine-looking enthusiasm (as contrasted with the usually frantic, obviously false enthusiasm of the straight porn female). And I rarely feel a sense of degradation/inequality when watching gay porn.
This is, of course, just my perception and may be entirely BS. YMMV…
jayjay
jayjay wrote:
Um … how is that degrading to the woman?
Heh…okay, it could be seen that way, I guess. But it doesn’t feel as if the men are being degraded, despite that.
And I’d like to clarify that it’s not all straight porn that has these qualities. A lot of it, yes. But formula rules, and that’s the formula.
jayjay
I think it is absurd. Many parts of Europe and other nations have far less puritanical views on sex and pornography. They are far less tolerant however of violence. They don’t have the same problems that we are faced with. Nobody is shooting up their schools, the kids are actually learning something there, and the sex crimes pale by comparison.
**
Most of the kids I knew that had very strict, puritanical parents, could drink like fish, took every drug there was, and had sex with anything that moved. In contrast, I have two close friends that were both flower children of the 60’s, were pro-drug, and lived in communes. But when they had a child, they passed as much knowledge as possible to him. They never kept anything a secret and rather chose to be honest with him and stress communication. He never took a drug, got straight A’s, went to the Air Force Academy, and is flying an F-18 in Afghanistan. When he gets out, he is going to NASA. This occurred not because they were hippies, but because instead of protecting and suppressing their child, they chose to educate and communicate. By the time he was faced with all of the dangers that most people are afraid of their kids being exposed to, it was a non-issue.
Wow people, defensive much?
I ask you to do a simple test and tell me what you see and then I told you some of what I see. I didn’t think it was that big of a deal, but then Inertia calls me a mindreader (as if facial expressions never give anyone a clue about someone’s state of mind).
Me: "Hey, that girl is smiling, perhaps she is happy.
Inertia “How can you make that assumption? What are you, a mindreader?”
rjung An honest answer, but then you diss religion? I didn’t see anything about religion in the OP, and I didn’t mention it, so where did that come from?
SuaSponte You state that I need more evidence before seeing women in porn thumbnails as small, powerless, worthless, and at the mercy of others.
I was considering that I might agree with you, until (on the evidence of two posts in this thread) you declare that I have “considerably more experience with pornography” than you and that I may be projecting!
And you get all that from two posts? I think you need to take your own advice and not judge based on minimal evidence.
RickJay So - every woman on a porn site is an actress and you know what everyone else sees?
I’m the one who makes assumptions?
You guys make me laugh.
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So far, yes. I’ve never seen an exception. The vast majority of porn is just actors having sex, and the vast majority of porn that isn’t actors having sex is people making porn just for their own enjoyment. Neither falls into either of your stated categories.
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Yes, I absolutely DO know what you’re “seeing” when you watch a movie. You’re seeing actors. If you choose to imagine you’re seeing something else, that’s up to you, I guess, but the sky is still blue, three outs still make an innings, squares still have four sides, and the people in movies - porn or otherwise - are just actors. I DO know that you aren’t a psychic, because psychics do not exist, and that your “test” was a meaningless false dilemma.
Your point was made right up to here.
Time for my favorite quote, which is unfortunately paraphrased and unattributed: “It is the height of arrogance to assume that the limits of ** your ** perception constitute the limits of what there is to be perceived.”
Hey, Enuma Elish… how many porn actresses do you know personally?
The problems with pornography are:
- that it can potentially take time away from developing real intimate relationships, if one is not careful.
- pornography content contains, generally, the wrongest approach to foster an intimate relationship, and depicts sexual activities that should not be done between strangers. In many adult films, there is a disclaimer reflecting that. No man should approach a woman like Max Steiner does in his films.
- and probably most important, although the films are labeled ‘adult’, the characters depicted do not behave like adults do, or as adults should do.
A general change in adult content is way, way overdue.
Whoa there, young Meese.
Your first point is valid, as far as it goes. The important issue is that one be careful. And you can’t be careful where legislative authority has pre-determined that you don’t have the capacity to make that kind of decision in the first place. That is precisely what censorship does.
Having no knowledge of Max Steiner, I do know several happily-married or long-term relationship couples who videotape their sexual activities. Whether they watch these movies themselves, trade them with others who do the same thing (hey, it’s not my cup of tea, but they are adults), or post them on their websites, they’re doing what the First Amendment in your country and the Charter in mine allows them to do.
Your, or anyone else’s puritanical ideas of “What Sex Is” and “What Sex Is Not” does not nor should not have any relevance outside your bedroom.
z
I think there’s a fundamental difference between porn and erotica: porn is about power and erotica is about sex. I would see something like Playboy as erotica (appreciation of beauty, sensuousness) while something like Teenage Sluts Taking Dorks in Every Oriface is more about dominating said woman. Look at whatever you want, but if you substitute porn for a normal relationship (or think that porn is representative of said relationships) that’s just unhealthy. And Enuma Elish: I agree with you 100%. I stopped looking at porn (and even most erotica, actually) when I started looking at their eyes. They just looked so…tired. I dunno, maybe I’m just projecting but I know that I personally can’t look at it any more. But–feel free to peruse those sites to your hearts content. I seriously doubt I’m going to single-handedly turn around a multi-billion dollar industry…
I’m sorry, just a slight nitpick, but technically an inning is actually 6 outs. 3 for each side.
Not in cricket, IIRC… “innings” as a singular noun is the key.
I’m a little lit so I’m just gonna make one quick point and come back later for more.
I agree with you. But if you look at the last paragraph of my post:
**
Italics added.
I understand that it wouldn’t answer all of the questions, nor would it necessarily be representative of the majority of porn watchers, but, like so much social research, it would give you clues where to look next (example: if the majority of people who frequent a porn shop regularly were sexually disfunctional beforehand, how does that stack up against the a random sample of the population who watch porn semi-frequently, or, as a different study, was there a common event in these peoples lives that caused them to develop poor relationships before they started viewing pornography).
My point is that you can do studies that can attempt to determine what is the cause and effect of the porn and poor relationship correlation. Also, if I’m wrong, I’d like to point out that if can’t determine causation then the existing correlation doesn’t add much to this debate since we can’t say for sure if viewing pornography causes deviancy.
Rickjay Try reading the OP before you go off on tangents. It was not about video you can buy or rent at the local video store (where laws/standards are already in place to prevent minors from renting/purchasing porn).
The OP was about COPA (Child Online Protection Act) and my posts were about porn you can see online.
I don’t know what impression women in porn videos would give me, because I don’t watch porn videos.
I used to look at a some porn on the internet until I noticed the difference between the looks on the faces of women on non-porn sites as compared to the looks on the faces of women on porn sites.
The difference was so startling that it lead me to stop looking at pornography.
I have made no claim to being psychic.
By the way, what is your IQ? For the sake of argument, lets say it is 125. Does that mean that all IQs are 125, or do some people have lower IQs, and some have higher IQs?
You mentioned Cricket. If you play the game, do you acknowledge that there are better and worse players than you?
In fact isn’t it true that for whatever skills, intelligence, knowledge, and awareness you have, there are people who have greater or lesser levels than you?
Do you see where I am going with this?
No?
Sigh.
Stoid Since I did not bring up the subject of actresses (RickJay did) and since I have not made any claims concerning them, what is your point?
If you have something to add based on ‘inside knowledge’ then by all means, add it. (Put the pin back in your grenade and play nice. :rolleyes: )
The porn you see online is, for the most part, the same crap you buy in the stores and get in magazines. Believe me, original work is not necessary to make a pile of money in the porn industry. Recycled porn will do just fine.
As for the entire IQ bit, the fact remains that you aren’t a psychic and neither is anyone else (sorry, Stoid, but ESP doesn’t exist, unless you have evidence to the contrary) and your initial post is still a false dilemma. I’ve yet to see you address any of that.