What is "pornography"? (Not a troll)

[Anonymous]

cwald wrote:

SamBee wrote:

…they’re actually making more money and perhaps even feeling better about themselves (even if it is “sinful”) than if they had been given a bottom rung job cleaning toilets on minimum pay.

I don’t know, I wonder what goes on in the psyche of a porn actress. I’ve never personally known one. I’m talking hard-core porn – do you really believe they have become so jaded that they no longer “feel” that what they are doing is wrong? Did they ever feel it is was wrong? I believe everyone is inherently programmed to know “right from wrong”, and we have make those choices – and I just can’t fathom one feeling “good” about mixing it up in the porn industry. Which I guess comes back to the question, “is pornography wrong?” It certainly is in my book, but I don’t think, as most here have also stated, that it is a black and white issue – however, I’m not sure I can totally agree with the DA that it is “minor” and that it “doesn’t really have much of an effect on anything.” I just don’t know, from what I understand about biochemisty, I just can’t buy into that.

Not everybody feels that pornography is wrong, and some people would argue “it’s just skin”. I suppose with promiscuity there genuinely are some people who don’t feel it’s a bad thing at all. They wouldn’t see themselves as jaded, as such, probably, but maybe “open minded” or “liberated” or free from some kind of Freudian repression.

There are a lot of people out there who would frown at having any investments in the sex industry, but seem happy to support merchant banks and mining companies which cause suffering, disease and death – even war in some cases – through their actions.

[Anonymous]

cwald wrote:

…I believe everyone is inherently programmed to know “right from wrong”, and we have make those choices – and I just can’t fathom one feeling “good” about mixing it up in the porn industry. Which I guess comes back to the question, “is pornography wrong?” It certainly is in my book, but I don’t think, as most here have also stated, that it is a black and white issue – however, I’m not sure I can totally agree with the DA that it is “minor” and that it “doesn’t really have much of an effect on anything.” I just don’t know, from what I understand about biochemisty, I just can’t buy into that.

When I said that porn doesn’t really have much of an effect on anything what I really meant was that it doesn’t typically cause people to miss work or not be able to pay their bills. It doesn’t cause college students to fail their classes. Most of all, it doesn’t cause people to die from cancer, car crashes, or liver failure. Has anyone ever overdosed on porn? Other than wives not liking it there just isn’t that much tangible evidence where you can look at it and say, “If Uncle Fred hadn’t been watching porn this tragedy never would have happened.”

I don’t doubt that porn has some effect on men that watch it, in fact this is one of the main reasons that it continues to sell. However, the problem with trying to claim that this unnatural biochemistry manipulation proves that porn is always bad for you is that people who like porn will argue that these effects are mostly positive. Personally, I think most negative side-effects related to this will typically only be noticeable if someone is doing this all the time. It’s just like gambling, alcohol, or even food. Some people just don’t know when to stop or they feel like they have no control over their compulsive behaviors. To look at real addicts and then assume that this same thing will happen to anyone who looks at porn once in a while is simply not true.

The question of whether or not porn is wrong mostly boils down to everyone’s individual opinions or value judgments so I don’t see how we can ever expect everyone to agree on this. Even if it really is wrong just how wrong is it compared to all the other problems in the world? And how exactly do we know all this? I don’t mean to discount people’s right to their opinions or strong feelings about this but at the same time I don’t think this should give people the right to impose their own rules on others just because porn doesn’t sit well with their moral assumptions or aesthetic sensibilities. If enough men really agreed that porn simply can’t be tolerated in practice for themselves rather than just giving lip service to the idea then there wouldn’t be that much of a market for it to begin with and it would be much easier to get rid of.

[Anonymous]

DA, I’m strongly biased with regard to this topic – since I have a good friend who sexaully abused his daughters after years of gradually escalating porn usage. I know there were more things involved than that – but the porn use was a large contributing factor. I wish he was the only person I know who could tell his story. I even wish he was one of only a few.

I also know too many marriages that have fallen apart because, after years of escalating porn usage, the husband started believing his wife should respond like the women he was watching regularly – no headaches, no fatigue, sex on demand, always enjoying sex, able to continue for long stretches of time, totally fine with rougher and rougher activity, fine with being a submissive and doing what they were told to do, etc. I know too many men who gave their wives sexual diseases after spending time with mistresses and/or prostitutes who would do those things when the wife wouldn’t. I know too many women whose emotional and spiritual well-being have been shattered by the betrayal and loss of trust they have experienced – without it having anything to do with social stigma caused by over-focus by the community. I know more than one person who works to rescue sex slaves around the world – and the stories they use of how porn is used in the industry they fight (both with the women who are captured and to arouse the clientile they serve) are truly sickening.

We probably will never see eye to eye on this, because our experiences with it appear to be so radically different. I am nowhere near an extremist on nearly all issues, but on this one . . .

I also am all too aware of the truth for many people of the statement: “There but for the grace of God go I.”

[Anonymous]

SamBee wrote:

There are a lot of people out there who would frown at having any investments in the sex industry, but seem happy to support merchant banks and mining companies which cause suffering, disease and death – even war in some cases – through their actions.

I happen to work for a mining company. We’ve never started wars, suffering or diseases. There have been 2 deaths that I know of when employees ignored our stringent safety procedures…but our safety record is so far below industry averages for any kind of company, people don’t realize how much emphasis on safety and environmental responsibility our company goes through. I can be a part of it because we are ethical and responsible in a very dangerous industry. And I don’t know if people understand the value of mining…we really depend on these natural resources being provided to our society.

That isn’t to say there aren’t bad mining companies out there (despite how the Avatar movie depicts it)…but my point is that we have to be careful about making broad judgments based on stories we hear about extreme examples. The outliers don’t accurately describe the characteristics of the population. Yet the outliers can alert us to special situations that if left unchecked can continue to happen, even if they aren’t typical of the general population, or those few outliers come at such a high cost, it can’t be dismissed as just a bad apple in the bunch…it is a serious thing.

I think that relates to this topic as well. And I’d go further to say I don’t see any redeeming value that outweigh the evil influences, so even if if doesn’t mean every girl is a sex slave, or it doesn’t cause every father to abuse his children or cheat on his wife…it happens enough for me to avoid it.

[Anonymous]

I am not referring to ALL mining companies, but there are certainly a good few who have been involved in dodgy operations. Aside from the silly James Cameron film, there are plenty of examples of big mining companies covering their tracks or using bribery and brutality to get their way.

Rio Tinto Zinc used mercenaries to put down a rebellion in Bougainville, an island off Papua New Guinea, because the locals didn’t want their mine.

I found this with a quick google, and there’s plenty more like it –

http://inquirer.gn.apc.org/boug.html

RTZ have not exactly been saints in South America either. The Anaconda Mining Company in Chile was notorious too, and even gets mentioned in the writings of Che Guevara.

Then there’s the link up between the murder of Ken Saro-Wiwa by the Nigerian government, and the poet’s criticism of Shell Oil.

As for diseases, silicosis is a big one here, has been for decades. There are other problems involving mining companies polluting ground water etc.

Banks’ loans to African dictatorships hardly need to be mentioned again.

My point is that various multinationals are responsible for the repression, pain and death of thousands of people. And yet they’re looked upon as somehow better than the sex industry. Companies such as Mitsubishi and even IBM also profited off the regimes we fought against in WWII.

[Anonymous]

Quote:

I’m strongly biased with regard to this topic – since I have a good friend who sexaully abused his daughters after years of gradually escalating porn usage. I know there were more things involved than that – but the porn use was a large contributing factor. I wish he was the only person I know who could tell his story. I even wish he was one of only a few.

Pretty much every boy I was at school with got to see porn at one point or another (one magazine would get passed round dozens of people), but I’d say that most of them didn’t come out as sexual monsters. If they had problems, they seem to be in other areas, as many have become good fathers and husbands.

Quote:

I also know too many marriages that have fallen apart because, after years of escalating porn usage, the husband started believing his wife should respond like the women he was watching regularly – no headaches, no fatigue, sex on demand, always enjoying sex, able to continue for long stretches of time, totally fine with rougher and rougher activity, fine with being a submissive and doing what they were told to do, etc. I know too many men who gave their wives sexual diseases after spending time with mistresses and/or prostitutes who would do those things when the wife wouldn’t. I know too many women whose emotional and spiritual well-being have been shattered by the betrayal and loss of trust they have experienced – without it having anything to do with social stigma caused by over-focus by the community. I know more than one person who works to rescue sex slaves around the world – and the stories they use of how porn is used in the industry they fight (both with the women who are captured and to arouse the clientile they serve) are truly sickening.

This is a chicken and egg situation. Of course it caters to a fantasy world, but it is likely that the husband started viewing porn because of boredom with his marital sex life. I suspect that the view that sex is some massive evil affects all sex, whether it is the frowned upon fornication and adultery or the approved kind found in marriage. I have heard a good many horror stories about wedding nights when one or the other of the spouses doesn’t know what to do, or what’s going on. The wife or the husband might not do certain things with the spouse because they’ve been told they’re evil – some of which are ridiculously trivial. I won’t go into details here, but I’m told that some Christians have believed that the sin of Gomorrah (as opposed to Sodom) was the position of the female. I think that’s nonsense, but it does display the mindset. Other couples refuse to take their clothes off, which defeats the point of getting married in the first place.

Someone has once said that good sex is a minor part of a marriage/relationship, but that bad sex, or no sex is a massive part of it. Of course, in such a fantasy world, people don’t snore, don’t have arguments often, don’t have to raise children or usually pay the bills.

The flip-side to all this is that modern media doesn’t pay enough attention to the love side of marriage, which is essential, or even the platonic aspects of it. I don’t believe any marriage can exist without that. I’m lucky in that my parents had a very strong relationship in that sense.

Some women in porn or the sex industry are slaves. Some aren’t and even claim to enjoy it, as well. I know a few women who worked as strippers to get through college… they’re not particularly ashamed of it, and they don’t feel that they were exploited. Whether that’s right or wrong, of course is another question, but the point here is that not all such people come into the country in the back of a Russian mafia truck.

This thread hasn’t gone quite the direction I’d hoped, but anyway…

[Anonymous]

SamBee, I am going to say this one more time very carefully and then stop:

Please be careful of dismissing things out of a mistaken idea of what someone is saying. I know I used the extreme examples, but I never said what your comment implies I said. I have not equated occasionally viewing Playboy with hard-core porn, and I have never claimed that all who look at porn become addicted monsters. I choose my words very, very carefully, and I edit each comment multiple times before I post it. I do that spefically so others don’t misunderstand or misrepresent what I mean. I’m not always successful, but I try – so when I read a response to something that I’ve written that totally mischaracterizes what I actually said . . . (I don’t mean that to be harsh, which is why I’m adding this disclaimer – and why I changed a couple of words in it upon re-reading it. I’m simply trying to point out what I am about to say.)

All I have said in that regard is that the “extremes” happen WAY more often than most people realize and experience. Unfortunately, I’ve see those extremes more than most people – or, to be more precise, I have seen the effects of those extremes more than most people. Based on my own experiences, I simply can’t say something like, “Very few people are hurt by porn. It really is a small issue in the grand scheme of things.” That isn’t consistent with my own experiences, so it’s not “true” for me.

To get back to your original questions, I’m not sure exactly how I would define porn – but I am sure that the hard-core varieties aren’t worth the damage they cause in far too many people.

[Anonymous]

Old-Timer wrote:

DA, I’m strongly biased with regard to this topic – since I have a good friend who sexaully abused his daughters after years of gradually escalating porn usage. I know there were more things involved than that – but the porn use was a large contributing factor. I wish he was the only person I know who could tell his story. I even wish he was one of only a few.

I also know too many marriages that have fallen apart because, after years of escalating porn usage, the husband started believing his wife should respond like the women he was watching regularly – no headaches, no fatigue, sex on demand, always enjoying sex, able to continue for long stretches of time, totally fine with rougher and rougher activity, fine with being a submissive and doing what they were told to do, etc. I know too many men who gave their wives sexual diseases after spending time with mistresses and/or prostitutes who would do those things when the wife wouldn’t…

We probably will never see eye to eye on this, because our experiences with it appear to be so radically different. I am nowhere near an extremist on nearly all issues, but on this one . . .

I guess I have a hard time believing that all this was primarily caused by porn because no one I know of that has ever looked at porn (hard-core or not) has ever done anything half that bad. In fact, part of the reason I don’t think this is really that big of a deal in most cases is because I know that so many people are doing it and more often than not nothing bad ever happened as a direct result. My guess is that for every 100 men that look at porn I’d be surprised if 1 or 2 ever move on to do something like this and even then I wouldn’t be convinced that porn is the primary reason why. Some people already have a nasty or abusive streak without really needing to watch porn to make them this way.

[Anonymous]

SamBee wrote:

Okay, I’ll steer this back to the original subject matter, which is along the lines of “which of my PG-13 films should I be throwing out?!”

SamBee wrote:

…This thread hasn’t gone quite the direction I’d hoped, but anyway…

Sorry if I hijacked your thread SamBee, I just thought it was a porn free-for-all and the most interesting things about this topic to me as a lifelong Church member are some of the hard-line zero tolerance attitudes many have about porn, the general lack of common sense justification for this policy, and the complete disaster this is starting to become in many cases now thanks in part to the internet. I would spin off another thread called “Porn: is it worth getting divorced over?” but I’ve already said pretty much everything I wanted to say about it on this thread.

[Anonymous]

Old-Timer wrote:

Please be careful of dismissing things out of a mistaken idea of what someone is saying. … I choose my words very, very carefully, and I edit each comment multiple times before I post it. I do that spefically so others don’t misunderstand or misrepresent what I mean. I’m not always successful, but I try – so when I read a response to something that I’ve written that totally mischaracterizes what I actually said . . .

I wouldn’t know anything about that Ray.

DevilsAdvocate wrote:

…Sorry if I hijacked your thread SamBee, I just thought it was a porn free-for-all …

I’ve been very interested in this thread. I think the “porn free for all” has been very enlightening and worth the time. Thanks all.

[Anonymous]

Quote:

I guess I have a hard time believing that all this was primarily caused by porn because no one I know of that has ever looked at porn (hard-core or not) has ever done anything half that bad.

I never once said porn was the “primary cause”. I even said quite clearly it wasn’t – and I mentioned escalating usage over time. I specifically exempted those who only can be described as having “looked at porn”.

Also, I have stated clearly that my experiences are not typical – that I have been exposed to the things of which I am talking FAR more than most people ever will.

We really are talking past each other, so I will stop.

[Anonymous]

DevilsAdvocate wrote:

SamBee wrote:

Okay, I’ll steer this back to the original subject matter, which is along the lines of “which of my PG-13 films should I be throwing out?!”

SamBee wrote:

…This thread hasn’t gone quite the direction I’d hoped, but anyway…

Sorry if I hijacked your thread SamBee, I just thought it was a porn free-for-all and the most interesting things about this topic to me as a lifelong Church member are some of the hard-line zero tolerance attitudes many have about porn, the general lack of common sense justification for this policy, and the complete disaster this is starting to become in many cases now thanks in part to the internet. I would spin off another thread called “Porn: is it worth getting divorced over?” but I’ve already said pretty much everything I wanted to say about it on this thread.

I thought it would end up this way, but it was really for me to gauge how much of my film collection is forbidden! I’ve nothing that I consider pornographic, but the church might beg to differ. Spencer W. Kimball’s Miracle of Forgiveness seems to think porn is anything which “stimulates”, which would presumably rule out quite a few James Bond films for example!

In reply to Ray – I think while some people are corrupted by porn (not perhaps in the ways that we traditionally think though, necessarily), there may be others who have other issues, which are exacerbated by looking at it. For example, if someone has deep seated sadistic or power issues, then these might be somehow enhanced by looking at it. But I suspect that they may already be happening in their lives, whether they bully their siblings, their parents, pets, employees or other work colleagues. (This is one reason why I think S&M isn’t a good thing at all – I think pain is a warning, and not something to be enjoyed) I have known people who’ve become too interested in hardcore stuff (which was much more difficult to get hold of here than the States until a few years ago), but usually they end up jaded couch potatoes. I personally think if we’re looking for moral panics – real ones – we need to look at some of the aspects of rap music, which reinforces sexism and racist stereotypes, video games which are often seriously violent, hard drugs and militarization of society etc.

[Anonymous]

Sam, I agree – with your last sentence, especially – but I happen to put hard-core porn within the group of things you mention.

[Anonymous]

I agree that there is no defense of hard-core porn. It panders to the absolute worst in any of us.

I will say however, that from my experience, and I’ve been very close to this in ways similar to what Ray has mentioned, that it’s not the porn but the forbidden nature of porn and the taboo nature of sexuality in general that have led to most abuses.

Traumatic childhood experiences which involved some form of sexual abuse has been the biggest “trigger” for those whose paths led to abuse. But the way in which sexuality is treated in the church and the church culture has been the next biggest “trigger”. I would put porn in the category of accelerant, not “trigger” in all of the cases that I’m familiar with that led to abuse. And, I’m including emotional abuse with the other forms of abuse, like sexual and physical, all three of which tend to go together when left unchecked.

[Anonymous]

The bullied often become bullies…

I think sexuality is probably the elephant in the room with a lot of people on this board. I don’t mean homosexuality, because that’s partly an identity related issue, but I have to admit there are a lot of questions floating around my head around the question of temple weddings, and being pressurized to marry someone rather than the one. I suspect the stigma attached to sexuality outside marriage may actually harm it within the marriage in some cases – people might have hang ups in bed, and guilt about certain things.

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