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http://www.deseretnews.com/article/865640022/How-porn-influences-mainstream-culture-and-childrens-future-relationships.html ” class=”bbcode_url”> http://www.deseretnews.com/article/865640022/How-porn-influences-mainstream-culture-and-childrens-future-relationships.html The writer (and perhaps the writers she references) clearly have a different definition of porn than I do. If the point is that there are more sexual references in mainstream media now than before, I agree with that. There certainly are things even in early prime time television that I winced at when my children were younger – I just didn’t want them exposed at that age to that sort of outright sexuality and innuendo. (Think Survivor here, for example.) However, that is NOT porn. Stiletto heels were born from the porn industry so they’re porn? First I thought they were born of the fashion industry and I don’t see how shoes by themselves are porn. I also don’t see how the violent porn mentioned is mainstreamed, except perhaps in games like Grand Theft Auto which are intended for and clearly labeled for adults. I have other issues with the whole premise of the article – but the biggest is what is and isn’t porn. Sexuality and sexualization
= porn, and I think that’s a problem among the religious right (including the church).I read it and have to agree. There is a correct point that more sexualization all over the place does affect us. Go over to parts of Europe and you will see what would shock someone from America. Sometimes it does cause issues with some people – so does sexual repression.
I also dislike how many don’t differentiate erotica, nudity, sexuality. My wife the other day paused some ED advertisement when only her and I were home. The lady talking wasn’t skimply dressed at all. All that she did saw was technically very correct. It was just facts. I had to scratch my head.
I appreciate that the proposed solution is to talk more openly about sex and relationships. I am trying to help my children have a healthy view of their bodies. It is such a delicate balancing act fighting against uber-modesty on one hand and skimpy clothing on the other. I hope more than anything that my children will know that they are great individuals and that someday, when they are ready, people of the opposite gender will start to notice and appreciate them just for who they naturally are.
Confusing kids and adults by calling things porn that are not porn is not going to help the situation. Quote:Confusing kids and adults by calling things porn that are not porn is not going to help the situation.
Quote:I also dislike how many don’t differentiate erotica, nudity, sexuality.
Yep.
That’s a large part of what has caused our current mess when it comes to dealing with all things sexual.
As a naturist I believe that raising children in an open door home goes a long way to dispel the notion that nudity=sexuality and can demystify the body for children in their formative years. Letting people see the body as it is and not the air brushed, nipped and tucked and photo shopped images in the media is one way to remove the curiosity that can lead to getting involved in pornography. You don’t have to be a nudist/naturist to have a home that’s free of body shame. Just see the body as good, natural, and normal and the effect on children will be positive and long lasting. Here’s a link to a post by an LDS naturist that you might find interesting. http://www.ldssdf.org/v2/default.aspx?g=posts&m=19019#post19019 Heber13 wrote:Confusing kids and adults by calling things porn that are not porn is not going to help the situation.
I agree. In another thread I jokingly said that it’s probably not a good idea to get people that think an Irish Spring (soap) commercial is pornography to teach about sexuality. For me this is one of those cases where humor is based on reality.
I was going to say that we’ve moved from “lady in the kitchen wearing an apron and smiling while holding at a bar of soap that’s still in the box” to “let’s see the soap in action, bow chicka wow wow” but then I went looking. The first video that came up in a search for ‘old soap commercials’:
Dove, 1957:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jWD0co3qFpIhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jWD0co3qFpI” class=”bbcode_url”> So about the same.
LookingHard wrote:Go over to parts of Europe and you will see what would shock someone from America.
Do we create our own problems? If we made shins taboo, something that must be covered at all times, do we unnecessarily sexualize shins in the process? People are always going to chase something. There’s a line but a lot of what we do amounts to moving goalposts.
LookingHard wrote:Sometimes it does cause issues with some people – so does sexual repression.
Yeah, extremes aren’t healthy.
I see this article as mostly a lame collection of unfounded assertions, wild speculation, and over-the-top fear-mongering. First of all, I don’t believe that that porn/nudity and other sexualized messages, images, etc. in mainstream media sources has had a negative impact on very many relationships that much if at all. It is probably over 90% of men that have viewed porn/nudity repeatedly already and over 70% that continue to view it occasionally but I just don’t see that much of a difference or hear about tangible negative consequences in real life compared to before the internet made porn/nudity so easy to access and I suspect that most people are able to separate fiction from reality much more easily than some of these overzealous anti-porn crusaders give them credit for. For example, people see cold-blooded murder, high-speed car chases, etc. in PG-rated movies and TV shows all the time without automatically being convinced this would be a good idea in real life and I don’t see why sex, nudity, etc. should be treated as so much more serious than other entertainment. Even if this kind of thing is more prevalent than in the past that doesn’t mean it is bad or automatically a change for the worse. In fact, it sounds like violent sex crimes actually decreased noticeably in some countries after porn became more popular and widely accepted, legalized, etc. which is exactly the opposite of what this article theorizes should be the likely result of “desensitization” and the like. About the only things I agree with in this article are that thinking censorship is possible to achieve is not very realistic and that it isn’t only porn that sends the message that the main thing women are valued for is being physically attractive because even Disney movies, mainstream women’s fashion magazines, TV shows, etc. do the same thing to a large extent.
I don’t agree with much of the article, but I do know of far too many situations where true porn addiction had terrible consequences to individuals and families. I also know how abominable and truly evil much of the porn industry is. We can disagree reasonably with various approaches to the issue of porn, but to deny it is an issue is either naive or an attempt at justification, in my opinion – and it is an example, I believe, of the flip side of the orthodox, Victorian view. As with so many things, it is more complicated than either of those extremes.
Quote:Ray wrote:
We can disagree reasonably with various approaches to the issue of porn, but to deny it is an issue is either naive or an attempt at justification, in my opinion – and it is an example, I believe, of the flip side of the orthodox, Victorian view. As with so many things, it is more complicated than either of those extremes.
Well stated.
I read this with interest. Immorality is a scourge. However, sexusl repression that spills over into marriage is, imho, just as bad.
Lots of time is often spend talking about how acting out of marriage is a bad thing, for married, non married, and children. Very little is ever said about the damage caused by acting in, by sexusl repression and refusal in marriage.
Someone above said it’s a mess. I agree.
People have feelings and desires. If a man or womam have no place to bring those feelings in marriage, acting out becomes much more tempting. We spend all out time condemning the sin but not enough time, in this particular situation , addressing a significant contributing factor.
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Old-Timer wrote:I don’t agree with much of the article,
but I do know of far too many situations where true porn addiction had terrible consequences to individuals and families. I also know how abominable and truly evil much of the porn industry is…We can disagree reasonably with various approaches to the issue of porn, but to deny it is an issue is either naive or an attempt at justification, in my opinion – and it is an example, I believe, of the flip side of the orthodox, Victorian view. As with so many things, it is more complicated than either of those extremes. I’m not saying that real hard-core porn is completely harmless especially for some of the performers that possibly feel pressured into this. However, the article makes it sound as if the sky is falling, the world is literally going to hell, etc. and that’s what I disagree with because in my experience when I look around it has to be at least 20-to-1 in terms of the number of men that have already viewed porn/nudity repeatedly at some point versus those that have ever experienced very serious negative consequences as a direct result to the point of divorce, losing their job, spending a significant amount of time or money on it, etc. Meanwhile, I see people getting divorced, not even being able to pay their mortgage or rent, and sometimes literally dying for other reasons that in many cases no one is freaking out about half as much as porn/nudity in the Church. In other words, it looks like the level of fear and condemation is way out of proportion compared to other potential problems based on typical results in real life.
Also, the article makes it sound like the “sexualization of America” is definitely a bad thing that is supposedly driven by porn. Well what makes this sexualization such a terrible development in general and how do we know it was caused by porn? For example, maybe sex sells as well as it does not because of some perverse outside influence (Satan, depraved pornographers pushing this, etc.) as much as simply because people naturally like sex, sexuality, etc. and this is normal and to be expected going forward whereas maybe it was actually the especially uptight attitudes about nudity, sex, provocative clothing, etc. in America that were artificially imposed on people and learned from the culture to suppress people’s natural instincts and preferences in the first place. That explanation certainly makes more sense to me simply based on looking at the history of some cultures without the same puritan/Victorian background and modern countries where people typically don’t make as big of a deal out of nudity and sex as we still see in America.
Sexual repression in marriage is a serious problem…it causes divorce as well. The message about condemning porn and sexuality in general in many instances, has the unintended affect of marginalizing healthy lusty sex in marriage, IMHO (and I’ve got a few heavy PhD hitters to back me on this).
And then we condemn men (and women) because they find pornography as perhaps their only sexual outlet?
The message is over the top,..and I think it does damage as well.
Thanks for the clarification, DA. I would say it’s not good to be tied up in knots over sexuality, but there are too many ways to interpret that – so I won’t say it.
I answered a question about the negative consequences of pornography on Quora (just to add one more perspective): http://qr.ae/Rkzdrb
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