I read an article (Here ) interviewing Gail Dines about her new book Pornland: How Porn Has Hijacked our Sexuality about the porn industry. Her basic idea is that porn has become more violent and it's taking a toll on the bodies of the women involved in porn. Since 11 years old is when a boy usually looks at porn, then they are seeing these things and are affected by them. The more a man looks at porn, she cites, the less likely he will be able to form and maintain an intimate relationship. So, ban porn.
All throughout this interview, all I could think of is, "How does this relate to me?" She did not drive this point home. Porn is not the only reason why people are having less romantic relationships. While she mentioned that media takes ideas from porn, I don't believe this. It's society as a whole that encourages people to be selfish and encourages people to have superficial relationships where "they get theirs" and "only for fun." This can come from people who don't watch porn or watch non-violent, normal porn. The idea that sex is just for fun (not about intimacy) has emotional consequences that are not addressed by media or a support system since sex is a private act and most people don't want to talk about it. Sometimes support systems (friends, family, coworkers, acquaintances) encourage the behavior that may be destructive to the person and their health. The idea that sex is for fun affects everyone, not only men.
Also, Dines only focused on men and boys. What about girls? It is the assumption of society that girls and women don't look at porn. In fact, sex and porn are a big taboo and I don't see how a girl could resist something that is so taboo. The idea of girls and women looking at porn is such a taboo, people don't even want to research it. It might be that women are negatively affected by porn-- they may not have the body for it. They may not experience sex the same way as the women in porn. For me, when I've been interested in seeing an aspect of sex such as female ejaculation, I've found videos of it. I rarely watch porn, though. Maybe I'm not the average American but I have a feeling that there are a majority of people who rarely watch porn. Where do they fit into Dine's article? Are they affected at all? I also don't watch TV very often. How are people who don't want much TV affected by porn? Porn and sex advice/sex technique videos can be informative sometimes. Yet, more research would have to be implemented to look more closely at women who watch porn.
There was a time when I believed that porn was degrading to women, it objectified women, and that it would be better to ban it. It wasn't until college when I started to look at the converse of this belief. I wanted to know why porn was still around if it was so terrible. I found a book called Porn 101: Eroticism, Pornography and the First Amendment. Some of the articles were amazing. One was written by a sex therapist, Marty Klein. Another written by a lawyer (whose name I can't find at the moment). Marty Klein wrote about how censorship harms people. For example, when was the last time you saw a loving couple on TV who began to have a healthy sexual interaction-- kissing, foreplay, and eventually sex. What about the last time you saw someone on TV talking about the emotional aspects of sex? There might be some shows but it's not a lot. People get the extremes of sex, it's either nothing or crazy, violent porn, and people don't see the healthy aspects of sex. People might turn to porn to learn about physical aspects of sex. What other resources are readily available to a person to learn about sex? The lawyer fights for the right for the porn industry to continue. While it does fall under freedom of speech, it also is a good idea to have regulations on the industry so that preventative measures can be put in place to protect against gonorrhea of the eye or AIDS. Also, whenever there's a feminist whose trying to ban porn, I think about the porn made by women and the porn by feminist. Where does that fit into a ban on porn?
Now, I open it up for discussion. What was your first experience with porn? What impact does this have on you?
