Pornified 622
stern writes "Pamela Paul’s Pornified surveys the effects of pornography in America. On the basis of the book jacket, this might seem more appropriate material for iVillage than Slashdot, except for one thing: pornography pervades the Internet and drives the adoption of new technologies. You can’t fairly tell the story of one without the other." Read on for the rest of Stern's review.
| Pornified | |
| author | Pamela Paul |
| pages | 320 |
| publisher | Times Books |
| rating | Worth reading |
| reviewer | Stern |
| ISBN | 0805077456 |
| summary | A study of the technology-fueled expansion of pornography and its effects on those who use it |
Paul spoke with researchers and therapists, she surveyed the academic literature and commissioned her own study, and then, most remarkably, she tracked down more than 100 people who were willing to talk about their experiences with pornography. Men and women, detractors and fans, casual users and perverts. She arranges this material into chapters about how pornography affects men, on how it affects women, another on children, and so forth.
This is not a “gee whiz, look at all the dirty pictures” screed urging us to hang up our mice and go to church. It is more a summary of research than an opinion piece, and though the preponderance of the research presented is damning to pornography, defenders appear in most sections as well.
The book is remarkable in two ways. First, it presents a greater amount of hard data than I have ever seen on this topic before. Second, the interviews are amazing. Where does she find these people? The military man who masturbates by the side of the highway, the child porn addict who fantasizes about the girls he is teaching in Sunday school, the adult virgins with the almost clinically precise descriptions of what they expect in a woman (“I’m a big fan of full shaved,” etc.).
Pornified is worthwhile for this research and these stories, even if you disagree with the conclusions that Paul draws from them.
I found fascinating, for example, that a number of double-blind studies of the effects of pornography were completed over twenty years ago, but that the results were so damning that it has been difficult to follow up on them. The effects of dirty movies on the people who look at them were so profound that ethics boards at universities deny researchers the approval to show them to human subjects.
What are these effects? The book devotes chapters to this, and I can summarize only very briefly. For many people, porn has quasi-addictive characteristics, requiring escalation to maintain a constant level of stimulation. It dampens empathy, it changes expectations, and it damages relationships. The interviews in the book back this up; it contains example after example of people who started with modest porn searching online, then graduated to more heinous stuff.
And this is all about the Internet. Paul pays lip service to Playboy and smutty VHS tapes, but this is a story about X-rated websites, Usenet groups, and p2p file sharing.
Paul cites a study from 2000 that ties that the expansion of technological avenues for pornography to its growing more explicit, more dehumanizing, and more violent. In other words, alt.binaries.pictures.erotica was pretty tame. But then a.b.p.e.blonds and a.b.p.e.asians appeared, and these refined the expectations of their users, paving the way for the creation of a.b.p.e.bukkake and a.b.p.e.rape. And where the original newsgroup probably didn’t cause too much damage to anybody, the same can not be said for its increasingly brutal descendants.
Consider this — prior to the Internet, law enforcement believed that child porn had been basically wiped out. It was a crime from a previous age, like body snatching. But then came the Web. Between 1996 and 2004, child-porn cases handled by the FBI increased 23 fold. The research presented in Pornified argues that technology does not merely make it easier to serve an existing desire, it allows deep exposure that for many people results in stronger and more specific versions of the the original demand.
Paul presents most of this neutrally, but you can sense contempt for non-pornographic websites that link to porn sites, or endorse them. She doesn’t name any names, but the savvy reader will recognize Fark as one of her targets, and I suspect that Farkers figure among her interviewees.
Such “smut” can be defended, of course, and the book gives defenders their say. The obvious response is “porn has been around forever, so stop complaining that it is suddenly a threat to society.” But it seems to me that this response is disingenuous. You can’t compare an issue of Playboy and the Atari 2600 cartridge of “Custer’s Revenge” to the seamless infinity of smut that lives on the Internet today.
The second major response to the claims in this book follows the First Amendment. Regardless of harm, we must not start down the slippery slope of restricting access to objectionable material. Paul considers this, but her the book discusses concrete harm, and she argues that civil liberties are not absolute where one person’s rights hurt other people (not many argue for their right to cry “fire” in a crowded theater, for example).
Though Paul did not set out to explore the industry of porn production and distribution, in the course of her research, she did discover things I didn’t know. For example, she interviews one man who works in the oil industry and spends 25% of every working day surfing porn sites and submitting reviews to “porn aggregators” for a fee. It’s not about the money, though; he feels pride in his influence as a kind of porno tastemaker.
The material about pornography and children, and the chapter about sex addicts, were particularly strong.
Some of Paul’s interviewees play off the awkwardness of the topic, and one in particular starts something like a stand-up routine, criticizing the porn movies of the early 1980s for their lack of strong plotting. Personally, I thought it was funny that two women independently complained about the “cheesy... crappy” quality of black porn, relative to porn made for whites.
What’s bad?
The topic is a difficult one, and perhaps impossible to approach without prejudice. Some readers will dislike Paul's conclusions and will dismiss the entire book as a result. Also, in the interviews, some stories leave out details the reader is bound to want to know. One of the interviewees is the “former CEO of a large international corporation,” who “lost his job due to pornography.” How? What happened? Did he dress in a leather teddy at a board meeting? The chapter about porn and relationships was less interesting to me than the rest, but your mileage may vary.Paul comes to strong conclusions, and each reader will have to decide for himself whether or not he thinks her recommendations are wise. Her main goal, however, is probably to change the debate on pornography so that it is no longer simply about morality and free speech, but also includes a discussion of whether or not technology-fueled porn hurts people. In this regard, I think she is apt to be successful.
You can purchase Pornified from bn.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.
High Resolution Computer Graphics and Broadband (Score:5, Insightful)
MOD REVIEW DOWN! TROLL! (Score:2, Insightful)
What the fuck is this garbage? I've been with the same woman for nearly five years and just married her this weekend. If anything, porn has STRENGTHENED our relationship through mutual viewing.
Are they trying to say that porno searching online is a "gateway" to become some sort of "sexual deviant"? Give me a fucking break. Just because people's conservative sexual knowledge and behavior is the prevailing behavior (and IMHO negative) it doesn't mean that "graduating" to a different behavior is heinous.
Mod -1 Flamebait/Troll
I'm sorry, but 100 people aren't going to tell the tale of ALL those that enjoy porn either in solitary viewing or in group situations. I'd like to read this pile of shit and actually give a true account of the book rather than an obviously biased and conservative viewpoint on it.
Does anybody buy this Bullshit? (Score:5, Insightful)
I'd like to know what technological breakthroughs were driven by Porn? Cameras weren't developed originally for Porn. Scanners weren't developed for Porn. Image viewers weren't originally developed for Porn. I find that to be the epitimy of Bullshit. Most of the continuing development of Computers happen to be for Highly Intense mathmatics. Video Games for instance are probably more of a driving force in technology's improvement than Porn! I can render all the porn I want on my DNS/Mail/Server. It happens to be running Linux and is only a 300 mHz pII. Yes it's old, and may take longer to render a picture than my Desktop, (1.8GHZ) but it'll never be able to run say Medal of Honor. Never! I just find that comment as ludicrous! Does anyone agree with me on this?
And yet Europe seems to be doing fine (Score:5, Insightful)
All this talk about how bad pron is makes me scratch my head. I understand that there is validity to a lot of the statements. But personally, I'm more worried about how quickly we had gangs of thugs running through New Orleans. Which is the whole point of the subject line. Europe has a very liberated sexuality. America does not. Perhaps there is some causation to Americas reaction to porn because of the cultural stigma attached to sexuality.
Correlation does not equate to causation.
Re:MOD REVIEW DOWN! TROLL! (Score:0, Insightful)
While it's fine that you disagree with the conclusions of the reviewer and, it appears, the author as well, I have to wonder why your disagreement is so heated. The review was in a reasonable tone and focused mostly on the data, so why did it provoke such a firebreathing response?
Re:New Tech? (Score:1, Insightful)
Computer Storage
Computer Networking
E-Commerce
Color Printing
Cameras (Video and Still)
That's just a few.
Re:Does anybody buy this Bullshit? (Score:3, Insightful)
I don't know that they were actually developed for porn, but their widespread commercial (as opposed to military) adoption may have something to do with porn.
Cameras were not originally developed for porn, but some of the earliest photographic images are of nudes and pornographic poses. Ditto for film-based home movies. And accelerating the spread of video recorders, cameras, and players was family reunions? I think mom and dad probably experimented a bit with the video equipment while waiting for the next graduation/birthday/anniversary.
No, I don't think any of these technologies was created soley with the purpose of producing or disseminating porn. But their wide adoption may have been accelerated by porn.
Re:High Resolution Computer Graphics and Broadband (Score:5, Insightful)
If your reason is the real one, then explain to me why South Korea has a much bigger need for porn than the rest of the world.
Re:MOD REVIEW DOWN! TROLL! (Score:4, Insightful)
You're seriously joking right? This "review" was a biased advertisement stroking the right-wing conservatives egos that their missionary-position bi-monthly sex acts are acceptable and even encouraged while their co-workers' healthy and exciting sex life is deviant and unacceptable.
There is NOTHING worse than reading that someone else finds that your exciting sex-life is "bad" because you are a bad person.
Keep the right-wing ideals out of site and off of Slashdot.
Re:MOD REVIEW DOWN! TROLL! (Score:2, Insightful)
I haven't read the book, but... (Score:5, Insightful)
You might say the same things about many other non-porn things, like eating, or gaming, or dieting, or exercising, or anything pretty much. Some people are going to react in funny ways to anything. I've never heard of anybody that takes a stand against dieting, but there are many people with eating problems (anorexics, bulemics, etc) out there. To me, personally, this just looks like someone with religiously imposed morals trying to get their way.
The well-adjusted folk of the world who can look at porn, play violent video games, and eat fatty foods without going overboard and ruining their lives wish that everybody else would just get a freaking grip already.
-Jesse
Re:MOD REVIEW DOWN! TROLL! (Score:3, Insightful)
Sure 100 people's lives were destroyed, but COME ON, I could find hundreds of thousands whose lives have been destroyed by lack of medical care or tens of thousands whose lives have been destroyed by credit cards.
Give me a break.
Re:MOD REVIEW DOWN! TROLL! (Score:3, Insightful)
sarcasm ( P ) Pronunciation Key (särkzm)
n.
A cutting, often ironic remark intended to wound.
A form of wit that is marked by the use of sarcastic language and is intended to make its victim the butt of contempt or ridicule.
See, I didn't believe that the "reviewer" gave an unbiased account of the book while trying to claim that he was going his best:
The topic is a difficult one, and perhaps impossible to approach without prejudice. Some readers will dislike Paul's conclusions and will dismiss the entire book as a result.
See, here he tries to imply that anyone that goes against the author is just dismissing it w/o reading deep into the pointless "conclusions".
Also, in the interviews, some stories leave out details the reader is bound to want to know. One of the interviewees is the "former CEO of a large international corporation," who "lost his job due to pornography." How? What happened? Did he dress in a leather teddy at a board meeting? The chapter about porn and relationships was less interesting to me than the rest, but your mileage may vary.
Ahh, the old "see -- a successful man was destroyed by foo." A popular tactic used in many forms of media including porn, pre-marital sex, and anti-drug messages.
Thanks for falling for the oldest propaganda tricks in the book.
Mod Article down Troll: 100% Bovine Excrement (Score:2, Insightful)
This biased, scientifically unfounded, completely fictional OP-ED on pornography and censorship [against the former and in favor of the later] doesn't belong on slashdot.
This is
Re:High Resolution Computer Graphics and Broadband (Score:2, Insightful)
You started your post with an assumption, built a conclusion out of thin air, and then ask me to rationalize your assumption?
Sorry, I don't do strawmen.
What I posted was a joke. South Korea is not the United States, you do not possess the data to determine whether South Korea adopted broadband because of game play, and you should quit reading too much into my words.
Thank you for your time. You may go back to whacking it in your neighbors RV.
Re:New Tech? (Score:5, Insightful)
skeptical... (Score:5, Insightful)
For one, I bet that before the internet, the FBI simply wasn't aware of child pornography trafficking, maybe because of lack of resources, or infiltrants, etc. It's a lot easier to network up pedophiles on the internet, and trafficking is probably less riskier over the internet than postal mail or commercial delivery services. Maybe that's the point they're making, but I doubt that availability of child pornography makes more pedophiles.
Secondly, I think internet porn is so pervasive, it's rediculous to talk to addicts, etc. and say this is what porn is doing. It's hard enough to get some suburban dad to admit to digital pornography use, esp. to a stranger. If you interview weirdos, of course you will get a biased sample.
Re:MOD REVIEW DOWN! TROLL! (Score:2, Insightful)
Have you graduated here yet My Wife [crazyass13.com].
My point: How far do you actually take the openness?
How far and how much is too much?
You and I both know what country we live in so you have to expect (not accept) these conservative views.
And with supreme court changes it isn't going to get better for you.
Porn in a puritan society (Score:2, Insightful)
Parents need to be more open about sexuality, because that is where much of the unhealthiness beings. Much of society too needs to chill the fuck out too, and quit demonizing sex to teenagers.
Go to a country like Brazil, where sexuality is very open, and you won't find many of these problems.
A Grain Of Truth (Score:3, Insightful)
Porn as driver of technology (Score:5, Insightful)
I remember talking on the phone with him one time in particular, when he told me about the NeXT box they had down there. Now, at the time, NeXT hardware was amazing. 'Nuff said. We all wanted to fool around with these things. I thought he was a lucky bastard to be at a university that actually had one.
"What are they using it for?" I asked him.
"Not much, really," he said. "The hard drive's pretty much just full of porn."
I mention this not just because it makes me chuckle, but because at the time it didn't surprise me at all. And it still doesn't. Throughout my experience with computers, and in particular the Internet, wherever you found a significant technological advance, somebody had found a way to use it for porn.
So, you ask "what technologies has Porno driven"? And I would say to you: The Internet. Computers.
Fancy browser programming, plug-ins, encryption, fat storage, streaming media, e-commerce
Re:MOD REVIEW DOWN! TROLL! (Score:3, Insightful)
IT's All Bush's fault!!
Wow, I'm a Republican (not a New Aged GOP member mind you) -- I really doubt that the Republican Party's line is "It's all Bush's fault".
Please also note that I am vehemently against ANY conservative pro-value politicians or individuals (i.e. Hillary, Mrs. Gore, etc).
Please don't patronize me w/some trollish, uneducated, and unresearched comment about my political views. In the future, I seriously suggest that you take the time to read through my post history and learn how I really feel about many issues including this pro-conservative push for family first.
Re:MOD REVIEW DOWN! TROLL! (Score:3, Insightful)
I don't know why we bother with science when we can just ask one random person for a subjective opinion, and then draw a conclusion based on that single piece of anecdotal evidence. Sheesh.
In other words, just because someone smokes cigarettes all their life and lives to be 90 doesn't mean that smoking doesn't dramatically shorten life on the average.
Re:MOD REVIEW DOWN! TROLL! (Score:3, Insightful)
As far as anyone is comfortable bringing it -- as well as it remains within the law (we'll ignore such laws that define sodomy in order to make homosexuality "deviant" as that's an entirely different discussion.)
You and I both know what country we live in so you have to expect (not accept) these conservative views.
I have no problems with people expressing their opinions. What I do have a problem with is people using specific language that twists the meaning around and makes a propaganda piece out of a specific media type.
This conservative viewpoint was specifically worded to make "sexual deviants" feel uncomfortable about what they do because they may "hurt" someone else. Obvious trash.
Re:MOD REVIEW DOWN! TROLL! (Score:2, Insightful)
Buy this! Everyone has it except for you! It really MATTERS!
The sky is falling!!!
Good thing I've got my porn.
Re:MOD REVIEW DOWN! TROLL! (Score:3, Insightful)
No? How about:
You have presented one single, solitary, biased anecdote and stated that your personal results apply equally to everybody across the board with no variations. Do you really not see a problem with this? Anybody who disagrees with you must receive -1? Newsflash: studies and metastudies aren't always going to validate myopia. Smoking causes cancer, but we still find the occasional 6 pack a day smoker who lives well into their 90s. Does this mean that anybody who publishes a study showing links between cancer and tobacco should be modded down? In your world, apparently.
The reviewer is not clucking his tongue at you, nor is the author wagging her finger at what you do in your own private room. It appears to be saying "there are negatives and not just 100% harmless fun as some people would claim". Nothing else.
Re:MOD REVIEW DOWN! TROLL! (Score:3, Insightful)
LOL. You know what, you're 100% right, the "porn industry" has desensitized us to "demeaning" sex acts but thankfully we have people like you, the author, and our conservative/family-first politicians to tell us that anything but missionary sex is bad.
As is described, online porn seems to lead from soft to hard core porn, and it is the rape and bukkake that damage relationships.
You are saying that people *can't* enjoy being doused with semen? How the fuck do you know? It's obvious you have never done it or had it done to you... How could you possibly say, without a doubt, that it would be damaging to your relationship with your SO? You cannot.
All you can do is inject your personal opinion about something you know nothing about except from what you heard from your limited research and "personal knowledgebase". Let's keep our discussions to stuff you really have a clue about.
Rape is an illegal act and is of no relevance to the discussion. Are you not talking about criminal rape and instead simulated rape/fantasy situations where someone *could* enjoy that situation and may even fantasize about it?
Yet another situation that you have no obvious knowledge of and cannot speak on.
This also brings up another side in the viewer, as I won't watch anal, nor anything worse than that, while others may enjoy the rape or bukkake that plagues the internet.
Thank you for proving my points above.
Re:MOD REVIEW DOWN! TROLL! (Score:5, Insightful)
All this escalation talk reminds me of all the Marijuana leads to harder drugs talk in the mid 80's.
I'm still waiting to get a sudden urge to shoot some heroin into my eyeball.
I concur. Troll, indeed. (Score:5, Insightful)
While the anecdotes sound absolutely fascinating, the conclusions sound eerily similar to those of the Meese Commission [earthlink.net]. At first (1968 or thereabouts), there was a Presidential Commission put together under Nixon to research the effects of porn on people. In its final recommendation, the Presidential Commission called for (a) comprehensive sex education for everyone, (b) continued dialogue, (c) more research, and (d) citizen participation in all of the above. Hardly a stinging condemnation.
That Commission was ignored, its report buried, and upon the election of Reagan in 1980, a new Commission was founded which would give Congress the answers it expected, by simply making shit up. To quote from the article, which quotes from the Meese Report:
While admitting that establishment of a link between aggressive behavior and sexual violence "requires assumptions not found exclusively in the experimental evidence," the Commissioners go on to say , "We see no reason, however, not to make these assumptions...that are plainly justified by our own common sense"
It's the same tired shit that's been thrown against the wall since the Reagan Revolution, in the desparate hopes that it'll stick this time.
I wonder if I could write a similar book about people who overdose on Evangelical Christianity and require ever-stronger doses of legislative activism and repression of women to get their rocks off.
Congrats on your marriage, by the way.
--grendel drago
Re:High Resolution Computer Graphics and Broadband (Score:4, Insightful)
Advanced graphics are always being pushed regardless... did the jump from NES to SNES happen because of porn? No.
Broadband... came about because people are sick of slow connections in general. The speed at which data can be transferred is always improving and will continue until there is no wait whatsoever to transfer information.
These things have advanced so quickly because they're needed as our country becomes more technologically advanced, not because of porn.
Re:Mod Article down Troll: 100% Bovine Excrement (Score:5, Insightful)
I've met a number of clinical psychologists, and none of them would refer to a sexually dysfunctional person as "a pervert", which the author apparently does.
Indeed, from my limited knowledge of the subject, sexual adjustment issues begin far earlier than a child's ability to even understand what a pornographic image is.
Simply being exposed to a variety of angry, rude role models of either sex, at a young age, can cause predispositions that become (in adolescence) , sexual maladjustments.
This is not a particularly high quality post or article. Anyone can become a physcologist in a relatively short period of time, it's just a handful of university classes.
For a psychologist to classify patients or interviewees as "perverts" or to fail to mention that America (in general) has serious social and sexual issues, is a abuse of the entire field of psychology.
This paper, and the author who submitted it, should be severely suspected of motivated bias, and a general lack of crucial investigatory and scientific methodological skills.
It's a shame the parent post was modded down. I'd be suprised to see something like this republished in any professional psychological journal, anywhere.
Bukkake is violent? (Score:3, Insightful)
--grendel drago
Re:*Real cash* (Score:2, Insightful)
Justification or excuse? (Score:3, Insightful)
(I thought pc games did). Even so, it doesn't justify it's existance. Pornography is addictive, it distorts the viewers perception of reality, destroys families and eats away at the very core of our society because it dehumanizes people.
"Bad" is relative (Score:2, Insightful)
Better porn? (Score:5, Insightful)
'Course, women get their strange, sick, twisted ideas---about men on brightly shining horses carrying them off to castles where they'll play dress-up and "... and they were one" every dang night---from romance novels and the like. Girls get some pretty funky ideas about sex and relationships too, y'know.
--grendel drago
Re:Prudes & Sex (Score:2, Insightful)
Did she interview anyone in more permissive areas, like, say, Europe?
Re:And yet Europe seems to be doing fine (Score:4, Insightful)
It's just like alcohol and everything else here. If you repress it, it will only bubble up in other places and hurt you. But I do agree, in the USA, pornography hurts people. It's cause everyone's so damn prudish.
Re:And yet Europe seems to be doing fine (Score:5, Insightful)
Disasters bring out the best and the worst in people, and hurricane Katrina was a prime example of this. When was the last time Europe faced a disaster of this magnitude? Next time the Netherlands are hit by a category 4 hurricane that levels their dikes and floods their cities, then we will see exactly how well Europe fares. May it never be!
Besides, your logic is flawed anyway in regards to "liberated" sex since New Orleans is one of the most "liberated" cities in the United States, by your definition. Sex is very prominently and openly demonstrated in Marti Gra, and yet "we had gangs of thugs running through New Orleans". By your logic, there should have been fewer thugs and gangs.
Please understand: I am not trying to imply that the problems were a result of that lifestyle -- it is difficult for any of us to say that our communities would react any better to such dire circumstances.
Chick pr0n? (Score:3, Insightful)
What about literary [verbal] pornography largely consumed by women? Of course, I am speaking of the "Romance Novel" genre which sells surprisingly well (1/3rd? total books sales). What pernicious effects does it have on it's consumers: addictive behaviour, dehumanizing, altered expectations, ... ?
Re:MOD REVIEW DOWN! TROLL! (Score:3, Insightful)
Someone needs to be. Everyone else just either sighs and says "oh well, another political retard spreading his propaganda" or they jump up and down with excitement over "a return to 'true' American values."
Fuck all that. People need to sit down, open their fucking eyes, and stop being a bunch of cry-baby whiners that expect everything to be spoon fed to them from the "leaders" of our country.
It's morons like the author and the "reviewer" that continue to pander this nonsensical bullshit to the easily misled American public with cute propaganda messages and undertones of evildoer behavior.
Re:MOD REVIEW DOWN! TROLL! (Score:1, Insightful)
The review/book posits that the studies mentioned haven't been followed up on because their results were so disturbing. Isn't it far more likely that those results were disturbing due to their lack of connection with reality than due to their profound effect on anybody's psyche? By the by, if you're tempted to answer no to that question, you might want to do some research on the types of studies which are carried on in universities and government labs every day and get back to it.
Unless this review is a very poor representation of the book and the reviewer has disguised a large amount of his own prejudices as the book's, it seems clear that it set out with a conclusion and then found "data" to fit it. Given that, does it really surprise you that someone would have a strong reaction to it? Or is strong reaction only the purview of those without facts on their side?
Re:MOD REVIEW DOWN! TROLL! (Score:4, Insightful)
So, if a study's conclusions speak against your beliefs or way of life, suddenly it's a biased advertisement stroking the right-wing-conservatives?
(ad-hominem [wikipedia.org], anyone?)
I mean, *WHAT IF* what the book says is true? Oh of course not, that would condemn us all netporn-addicted slashdotters, so it must NOT be true! In fact, it's heresy! Lets bring our torches and burn that book!
You know, I used to think books were judged by the veracity of the facts they presented, not by whether their words made some people feel (Heaven forbid! *gasp*) judged.
A few points. (Score:5, Insightful)
The problem with this argument is that it follows the racial-profiling logic. I have caught more poeple who look like x then x's are more likely. It is arguing from noisy evidence. As has been shown with suicide rates a rise in reporting or a change in who is making the arrests (the FBI versus local or state law enforcement) does not mean that crime itself has gone up. It could be the case that the FBI chose to ignore child porn issues before or that local law enforcement shifted from covering up cases or classifying them one way (child abduction) to another (child porn).
As the recent scandals in the Catholic Church demonstrated many cases of abuse have gone unreported or underreported for years not because they weren't happening but because those in power, or those victimized chose not to pursue them.
But the comparison of Custer's revenge to the "seamless infinity of smut..." is a fallacious example. Your very choice of these two to compare shows a bias. You have offered a not-so-bad concrete example and an abstract exaggeration. A better (less biased) comparison would be between a specific piece of pornography (say a Jenna Jameson Video), and the naked dancers of ancient rome, or the Harem of Solomon. If you prefer literary comparisons we could compare some online erotic stories to the Song of Solomon from the Bible ("My beloved put in his hand by the hole of the door, and my bowels
were moved for him."). Comparisons of this time are useful and valid, comparisons of the type you presented are, by their nature, extreme and biased because of it.
Yes we do have limits where we bump up against the rights of others and, as Thomas Jefferson put it in his "Notes on the State of Virginia"
Re:MOD REVIEW DOWN! TROLL! (Score:1, Insightful)
This "review" was a biased advertisement stroking the right-wing conservatives egos that their missionary-position bi-monthly sex acts are acceptable and even encouraged while their co-workers' healthy and exciting sex life is deviant and unacceptable.
I just re-read the review, and I have to say that I can't see where you're getting that. At all. It doesn't say anything at all about what kind of sex is or should be acceptable. It doesn't even say that people who view pornography are bad... only that pornography can have bad effects on people.
So, what you appear to have done is to assume that because the authors of the book and the review see problems with porn, that they also consider any sort of "non-traditional" (whatever that is) sex as bad, and further that they see you as a bad person because you don't view sex the same way that you presume they do.
Don't presume statements not in evidence, or you're as bad as any TV preacher convinced that the homosexual community is forcing our kids to become gay.
Also, I have to say that, as a conservative myself, your characterization of conservative sex is way off base. It's not that we right-wingers don't have interesting sex, and plenty of it, it's just that we don't feel the need to talk about it. Polls show that married, monogamous couples, on average, rate their sex lives as far more satisfying than do those with other lifestyles. I suppose that could be just lower expectations, but, hey, if you're happy, you're happy, right?
I don't begrudge you whatever sort of sex life you'd like to have, and if you really think porn helps your marriage, I think you should buy lots and use it regularly. But please keep in mind that just because you think it works for you doesn't mean it's a good thing for everyone. I'm opposed to censoring it, but I'm all for making sure that people can make informed choices. Research on actual, quantifiable effects is good. Having the ability to choose *not* to see porn is just as good as having the ability choose to see it. Being able to manage what your children seen is also good. I think we as a society can manage all of the above, without anyone feeling like they're having someone else's viewpoint forced on them.
There's no need for knee-jerk reflexes.
I am more concerned of... (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Better porn? (Score:5, Insightful)
How about open and frank discussions about sex so that 14 year old boys are able to categorize crazy porn right up there with Buggs bunny in terms of unrealistic vrs realistic and so that 14 year old girls don't get the idea that wanting sex is something they are not supposed to ever admit lest every one think they are a skanky slut. These problems are not near what they once were... say when Kinsey did his report. But they are still very much present. Note the Meese commission suggested education was the largest need in response to porn... not the erradication of porn.
By the way people here can argue the personal experience vrs data argument all day. But guys look at porn. In my experience even the least technically savy of men exposed to a computer connection and time alone know how to find pr0n. And most guys I know are not sexually dysfunctional. And the deffinition of dysfuntional is the inability to perform sexually without some kink/fetish present in the sex. So either I have a statistical aberation in my friends and aquaintances... or this book is a pile of manure trying to pass itself off as scientific. All in all the review seems to indicate the interviewies were self selected outliers who were not really chosen at random.... or at best were chosen at random from a non random pool.
Not to say pron cannot be detrimental and that it is all harmless fun. But to portray it as a universal detriment of such magnitude when considering that porn surffing is damn near universal among internet denziens (particularly male) and that such detriment is so hidden it must be 'revealed' in this study is silly. If the problem were was big as this book apparently hints at then the problem would not be so unknown as to need to be revealed.
Nothing to see here. Move along.... the people who value what this thing says are the same that once upon a time told their kids masturbation would cause fur to grow on their palms and make them blind. Incidently they are the same people that refuse to be open about discussing sex therby insuring that their childrens formative sex education will be at the hands of whatever they can find on their own. Thus ensuring that they are at high risk of forming false notions regarding sex that may take a long time to overcome later in life. Irony at its finest if you ask me.
Re:MOD REVIEW DOWN! TROLL! (Score:3, Insightful)
Essentially yes.
We as a species have decided that some viewpoints are bad. This is not news.
This country's founding was the peak of the Liberal movement.
Leftish ideals (ideals, mind you) are for greater liberty for everybody. This is an American ideal
Rightish ideals are for less liberty for everybody except for the richest and most powerful. This ideal is purely anti-American.
There is nothing the least bit hypocritical about this. It is quite clear that one of these is a good ideal and the other is bad.
Just because you probably don't actually understand what the left and the right are does not mean that people who do understand them are bad for not being ignorant, much as your politicians and pundits try to make it seem so.
Re:Oh, I'd wait on that. (Score:2, Insightful)
just 1 example please of these already imported traditions.
(While Europe might by more sexually liberated. Most countries are far less liberal towards this kind of hatespeak)
Cause/Effect? (Score:3, Insightful)
"Consider this -- prior to the Internet, law enforcement believed that child porn had been basically wiped out. It was a crime from a previous age, like body snatching. But then came the Web. Between 1996 and 2004, child-porn cases handled by the FBI increased 23 fold."
It seems the reviewer is assuming that greater access to child pornography has triggered a surge, but even he used the word "believed." Simply because prosecutors didn't find any evidence of child porn activity does't mean it didn't exist. All I see here is that easy access to Usenet made it easier to find evidence.
And in general the reviewer mentions certain anecdotes for their shock value while never making the case that easy access caused this behavior (if anything, I can see this behavior causing a desire to look at the porn in question, not the other way around). It seems it would be possible to find a verified normal, healthy person, throw porn at them and see if there's empirical evidence of a change in the person, but the only answer given is another anecdote that some schools think it would be "too dangerous," regardless of whether the porn in question is late-night Skinemax or Rape Fantasies, Inc. Is it more dangerous than, say, pharmecutical testing?
And even if it can be shown that porn, any porn, is psychologicall damaging, I still don't see anything suggesting that a normal, healthy person would actually seek out this damaging material on their own, or at least wouldn't have a natural aversion to it if unwittingly exposed to it.
Re:MOD REVIEW DOWN! TROLL! (Score:2, Insightful)
Well, you know, in the same way that most of the global warming studies are biased advertisements stroking the left-wing-liberals, and evolution is just a theory. In fairness, there are probably plenty of left-wing-liberal women on the "porn is evil" bandwagon.
I mean, *WHAT IF* what the book says is true? Oh of course not, that would condemn us all netporn-addicted slashdotters, so it must NOT be true! In fact, it's heresy! Lets bring our torches and burn that book!
I think the point is that the review is bad. I agree it was closer to an advertisement than a review. Calling it a review is like calling most U.S. news productions journalism.
Is the author specifically selecting studies which backup her position, or does a random sampling of studies lead to the same conclusions? This review simply recites the claims made by the book and agrees with them. Besides hinting at lots of data/studies, the review gives no specific references. The reviewer talks about the authors conclusions, but doesn't really spell out what those are, aside from the general tone of "oh my, the Internet has made porn so much worse!".
You know, I used to think books were judged by the veracity of the facts they presented, not by whether their words made some people feel (Heaven forbid! *gasp*) judged.
Then you should be agreeing that this "review" sucked. The author of the "review" agrees with the author of the book. The reviewer did nothing to check the veracity of the facts. Stern seems to take the facts as presented at face value without question. This is a good book because it makes him feel judged, "correct". I mean, how can the author "presents most of this neutrally", while showing "contempt for non-pornographic websites that link to porn sites". What does the author show for sites that actually have porn? The bias is clear; it just happens to agree with the reviewer's opinion. This book is not an objective study, and neither is the review.
The reviewer seems impressed by anecdotes, stories, and simple conclusions. For example, I doubt law enforcement ever thought that child porn had been wiped out. If it had been, wouldn't prosecutions have risen more dramatically? 23 times "wiped out" is not really threatening. Digital media and the Internet have dramatically increased the trade in all types of information. I find the fact it has increased the trade in child porn unremarkable. Digital media and the Internet also make this trade more open and easier to infiltrate. The reviewer and possibly the book fail to mention the ways the Internet enables law enforcement to locate and catch those involved in child porn, or how much that may contribute to the increase in prosecutions. And, I'm pretty sure there were Sunday school teachers eyeing their pupils long before the Internet.
I don't even think the reviewer supports his own conclusion. I don't see how showing how the Internet has made porn so much "worse" moves the debate from morality vs. free speech. At least by his review, it sounds like the book is simply attempting to strengthen the "morality" argument by making porn that much more threatening. The role of technology seems to be dealt with in a very superficial and one-sided way.