Watching sex : how men really respond to pornography (5/10)

"How much easier it is to be critical than to be correct." - Benjamin Disraeli

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Watching sex : how men really respond to pornography / David Loftus


Public Policy: Should Society Control the Use Of Pornography?

"I think it’s basically benign,” wrote a 29-year-old technical writer. “I don't think it warps people’s brains any more than commercial advertising, religion, or any other contact with society does. The people who say 'Pornography Made Me Do It' are the same people who would be manipulated by the most basic propaganda in our society.”...

'I don’t see porn as intrinsically harmful, even within a relationship (although I am dubious in the latter case). I don’t think the debate whether porn encourages sexual deviancy is worth arguing about. Some people with dangerous sexual interests use porn, and in some cases such use probably acts like a safety valve, in other cases it probably encourages the problem. However, the underlying problem is that people have not learned to resist their sexual urges, not that they can get their hands on porn. I believe that the demonization of porn does far more to encourage such dangerous behavior than porn itself. And I believe this extreme rejection of porn arises only because of a more general problem people have dealing with their own sexuality and sexual urges.'...

Several men who thought pornography was harmful also implicated the larger culture. “I think what has a much more degrading effect are magazine ads which are much more pervasive and much more dishonest, than actual porn where you are using it purely for a sexual purpose, argued a 31-year-old literature professor...

“I’ve heard women claim that is harmful,” said one [gay]. “But then I have heard some women claim gay porn is harmful to women too—because there are no women in it.”
A 33-year-old said: “I think it is really just a vocal group’s vision of what they see as sexually acceptable—and they’re trying to tell us all what types of sex and sources of arousal are appropriate. I think many women simply don’t understand men’s interest in porn, so it is written off as dirty, unacceptable—something watched by people who have sexual or personality deficiency.”...

'I think [porn is] harmful only to the extent that people allow themselves to be harmed.” Just as alcohol, chocolate, guns, and many other obsessions become harmful only when misused. Men who misread the messages of pornography, who take its conventions seriously, are most likely maladjusted in other ways, and pornography is not to be blamed for the misbehavior of such men. Any thoughtful guy can see how pornography is not like life; if he pays more attention to the lessons of the former, then he’s just stupid.'

In discussing the pornography industry and whether or not it exploits women, quite a few men suggested that performers were not being exploited if they received payment. “The women who work in pornography are paid for their work, just like any other job,” one said; “A woman who trades on her appearance or her sexual talent is not being ‘exploited’ any more than a woman who trades on her brains.”...

One man who said he had carefully studied the arguments about pornography’s harmful effects in the feminist press said, “I have consistently found these arguments to be lacking in analysis, lacking in evidence, and lacking in even basic reality testing. They seem to me to verge on dogma, and to be entirely disconnected from the reality of’ pornography and human sexuality.” For example, “opponents of pornography believe that the producers effectively decide that women wiii model, and then impose that decision by force.” On the contrary, he argued, “the pornography industry is mediated by money, not force. And that means that each model decides, for herself, on the day of the shoot, that she’s willing to model in exchange for the money that she’s being paid.”...

A 22- year-old single Canadian remarked. “I know that many porno actresses are really desperate, runaways, uneducated, who would rather be doing something else,” said another man, “Yet I’m glad that at least they can make some money off this huge industry taking advantage of our silly male weakness.”...

One suggested, performers may be vulnerable to abuse because they get caught in a crossfire between the legal marginality of industry, the firm social disapproval of it, and the market demand...

Several men believed the growth of amateur porn was proof against the claim that women would never perform sexually for a camera if they had sufficient economic alternatives and were not forced. “I know from the amateurs I know who produce their own porn that they get off on being exhibitionists, and weren’t pressured into it,” said a married 43- year-old accountant. The symphonic musician agreed:

'There are thousands of these amateur tapes! How is it possible for all those women—people like those who live next door, video-ing their own sexual behavior for anyone to see—to feel degraded? Many of them must feel turned on by acting out in front of the camera.'...

'Some people find it easier to take on a multi- billion dollar industry than to accept women as sexual beings.'...

If anyone is exploited, it’s men,” claimed a p.r. man, “but whether they are stuffing their wages into G-strings just to get a pretty girl to smile at them, or they are authorizing $4-per-minute charges to their phone in exchange for dirty talk, they are doing it willingly.” The Canadian professor who avoided porn felt the same: 'I think it’s more harmful to men than to many women. We’re the ones who waste our time and money on it. Who is harmed by heroin—the poppy growers or the junkies?'

About a fifth of the men in the survey took the trouble to suggest how the possible harms inherent in pornography might be alleviated. Their recommendations can be summed up as: better quality and improved social attitudes. “once people learn that it’s OK to consume porn, market demand for ‘good’ porn will help quell ‘bad’ porn,” wrote a chemical engineer. A 22-year-old who believed porn was often degrading to women also felt pornography could be employed to “remove sexist ideas from people’s heads, if more sexually explicit material picturing women as equals to men were released and made publicly available.”...

Several men called on the makers of porn to do more: “Making the industry more respectable would give the performers more rights,” said a married professor...

A 21-year-old gay student made an even stronger statement:

'American society as a whole is screwed up about lots of things and one of them is porn. We’re so bombarded with messages about what’s wrong and morally disgusting, and I think it’s a load of crap. We’re too uptight about little things that wouldn’t be problems if we didn’t make them problems. The only worry I have about the availability of porn is that someday the radicals are going to get it banned and it won’t be available.'...

'People who are already unstable or inclined to rape are going to consume porn in unhealthy amounts.

My take on these concerns is that rape comes out of some other sick need,
and has much more to do with violence than sex—so porn has little to do with it. One testimonial I recall hearing was from someone who got off on the thought of drowning someone. He loved seeing scenes of people on TV who were drowning (movies that depict it, etc.). This really got him off. We could eliminate all the porn in the world, and this guy would still have something to get off on.'...

Remarked a 42-year-old professor:

'I feel that the right to read/think/watch what you want is pretty much paramount and should come before the tenuous links between what someone reads and their behavior—or soon Marx will be banned (as would the Bible—some of the stuff people do in the Bible is nasty).'

A 41-year-old man in education administration defended the right to view porn despite his own addictive experiences: “I am a recovering alcoholic—if it were up to me I would ban alcohol and drugs. But that would only benefit me and deprive others for whom pleasure is derived from those substances. I can’t hold the liquor companies and drug deal ers responsible for my disease and the effect of alcohol and drugs on my life. The same would go for pornography.”...

A couple of men simply noted the distinction in the way erotica and pornography are treated by society... “Erotica, I notice, is something publishers call a book when they want to get it into a table bookstore.” Another man complained of a double standard in the U.S. with regard to graphic material: “National Geographic magazine can show naked children, some with small breasts, and get by with it, but let someone else do it and they are in the slammer.”

... A graduate student in mathematics cut to the chase: “The people who try to differentiate between erotica and pornogniphy are usually just censors.”

Quite a few men remarked on the class aspect. “Erotica is for intellectual, cultured, rich people,” a biochemistry graduate student remarked, “Sort of like the difference between being crazy and being eccentric. Depends on how much money you’ve got or which social circles you run in.”...

A 43-year-old married man offered an analogy:

'Erotica is coffee-table book porn. A pretty cover on the same thing. Maria Maples marries Donald Trump, an obvious jerk; a girl on E. Colfax sucks a cock for $15. Maria Maples is to erotica as the girl on Colfax is to pornography. A poor pervert is a pervert, a rich pervert is eccentric, and so on. Bottom line: same content, different marketing and packaging. If it makes your dick hard, it makes your dick hard.'

“Erotica’ is what you call pornography if you want to hang it in a gallery, isn’t it?” a law student asked rhetorically...

The best illustration of the semantic and subjective confusion over sexual imagery was offered by Steve, the 49-year-old British male who had little interest in pornography but saw no harm in it:

'No, I see no distinction, not even an aesthetic one. The only difference is in the speaker’s mind: “pornography” is a “boo word” and “erotica” is a “rah word.” To give a concrete example: During a debate on pornographic images, the proponent of censorship gave as an example of the utterly obscene, indefensible, and unacceptable, “pictures of women having sex with animals.” As it happens, I own a reproduction of such a picture. The original is in the Spiridon Collection in Rome, and is entitled “Leda and the Swan.” The pervert who painted it was Leonardo da Vinci.'...

A professor in France described the issues in Europe:

'Nobody should care about erotica as a problem. Advertising is erotica (at least in France). As far as pornography is concerned, there are laws; some are OK, some are hypocritical. In France you may not represent a membei of the church in porn movies. And this is a true problem, as for instance watching nuns making love is the Italians’ kick. It is lawful [apparently he meant available] in Italy, where pornography is curiously prohibited (but sold publicly), but unlawful in France, where pornography is permitted. Now on the other hand, European laws should nowadays be the same all over Europe. So what is the next step? French freedom of lovemaking, but with no priests involved, or Italian abstinence, with nuns banging themselves all over the place? Ask a lawyer!'...

Several men suggested that age restrictions on pornography could be eased if there were better and more widespread sex education. “I think that sexuality should be encouraged at an early age, but it should not come without some sort of contextualization, some sort of education as to its function and role(s),” remarked a married bisexual male. “Without context, many pornographic images are degrading, violent, at least confusing. I think that age has something to do with wisdom, but I also think that education should be encouraged at an earlier age—not just the birds and bees, but how sexual relations affect people, what such relations mean, etc.”...

A 56-year-old married professor said, “I have some concerns about kiddie porn, bestiality, and torture, but it is much better to view these things than to do them. If porn can act as a substitute for the real thing, then it should be allowed.”...

“Even age requirements seem silly to me. What exactly do we gain by prohibiting little Johnny from reading 'Busty Babes in Bondage'? A lot of prudery and superstition has given classier names and just sticks around in disguise.” A 21-year-old computer consultant, heterosexual but “bi-curious,” felt the tension and secrecy sparked an interest that just wouldn’t be there if were out in the open: “Even with children, do you think if pornographic magazines were not hidden off in the back shelves, a child would ever attempt to ‘get away’ with looking at them? How many children, if shown Debbie Does Dallas as well as The Mighty Morphin Power Rangers, would choose to watch Debbie a second time?”"