posted
To me, it is pornography if it is intended to titilate. By that definition, I consider Victoria's Secret ads to be pornographic.
Posts: 16551 | Registered: Feb 2003
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Pornography is sex fiction. Pornography is any media intentionally designed to arouse. Pornography is any media which depicts sexual contact. Pornography is any media which depicts explicit sexual contact.
Note - I'm trying to come up with definitions that can be easily applied, and it's still pretty tough. I'm also not starting out with "pornography is bad, so which sexually-explicit media is bad enough to be considered pornography? Hmm..." Instead I'd rather come up with a generic definition and then subdivide.
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posted
Chris: I only changed my sig in the last edit. I didn't change any of the content concerning this topic.
I think we are much closer to agreeing than it first appeared. The scenarios you described are...well, at least in the popular culture references and in my (albeit limited) experience with those who used porn, the rare exception.
And...(with love)
katharina. katharina. There are no e's in katharina. *sings* There are no e's in kathari-eena... (sung to the tune from American Tale.)
Pornography is sex fiction. Pornography is any media intentionally designed to arouse. Pornography is any media which depicts sexual contact. Pornography is any media which depicts explicit sexual contact.
Note - I'm trying to come up with definitions that can be easily applied, and it's still pretty tough. I'm also not starting out with "pornography is bad, so which sexually-explicit media is bad enough to be considered pornography? Hmm..." Instead I'd rather come up with a generic definition and then subdivide.
See, I don't really like any of those definitions. The "sexually explicit" one maybe comes close, but then there is the whole argument about what is sexually explicit material. It just moves the fight to a new battleground. What I am thinking about is a definition that a law could be written around.
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posted
katharina - agh! My sincere apologies. You may misspell my name as you wish. I can suggest some doozies if you like
Jacare - But you're establishing a fight I have no interest in, so I can't really help you there. Try this: how would you word a law banning rap songs that glorify cop-killing and bitch-smacking, without banning pop music entirely? Figure that out and you'll be closer to where my line is.
I do wish you luck, though. The courts have ben trying for many generations now and they still haven't gotten much past "I know it when I see it."
[ April 07, 2004, 04:04 PM: Message edited by: Chris Bridges ]
Posts: 7790 | Registered: Aug 2000
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I understand your distaste with porn. I don't encourage pornography or consider it art in any fashion. It's a medium that caters to the unrealistic, and actually paints people—both men and women—in a fantasy that simply doesn't exist. Trust me, I've known porn actors and dated strippers, and there is absolutely nothing extraordinary or even interesting about the porn industry. If anything, they go through ridiculous amounts of trouble to create the illusion, made even more difficult because the only people who do anything in the industry are people who are too incompetent or untalented at the profession of making film, print, or acting/modeling.
I'm not arguing your fight against porn, I'm arguing against your "definitive" proof.
Otherwise, I could use this and this to say that Christians, and Christian Protestants in particular, are more likely to get divorced, thus Christianity is bad, and it's naive to say Christianity does not harm families.
The `rackers here wouldn't let me use the post-hoc argument then, why is it all of the sudden okay to use now? Oh, I get it... because it's arguing against something more people will find palatable to argue against.
Posts: 779 | Registered: Dec 2003
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quote: a law banning rap songs that glorify cop-killing and bitch-smacking
what about ho-slappin? that's not at all the same as bitch-smacking and i feel as though it should likewise be dealt with in it's own seperate amendable bi-law.
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posted
John it's not you, it's not even this debate. I graduate with a master's degree in three weeks despite having massive amounts of research left on my main project. I'm woefully behind, even though I've taken several days off to catch up.
In order to fully commit myself to this discussion that I started, I would have to commit a large amount of my mental faculties to it, and I can't right now.
Despite that, I'm tired. Very tired. And I still have to work for six hours tonight.
I really need a break from everything, not just this thread. I hope you don't take offense.
posted
I know. I'm just a big stick in the mud. If it makes you feel any better, I don't really have a comeback to your post, either, so I guess it is a semi-cop out..
quote: I'm not arguing your fight against porn, I'm arguing against your "definitive" proof.
Otherwise, I could use this and this to say that Christians, and Christian Protestants in particular, are more likely to get divorced, thus Christianity is bad, and it's naive to say Christianity does not harm families.
The `rackers here wouldn't let me use the post-hoc argument then, why is it all of the sudden okay to use now? Oh, I get it... because it's arguing against something more people will find palatable to argue against.
The proof is by no means definitive. In fact, I made the argument a short time ago that nothing more than correlation can ever be shown for human behavioral studies.
As a matter of fact, I would say that the data you presented does indeed show correlation between divorce rate and born-again christian religions, although I would like to know more about the statistics used in arriving at the numbers they cite- did they include other variables beyond religion and divorce rate such as education level and income level? This is certainly an ancillary point, but there are certainly other factors at work in the bible belt than just the religion aspect. Of course the same argument applies for Patrick's data: did they include other factors in their study or not?
At any rate you will note that my argument does not rely on any studies of questionable statistical significance. If you like please feel free to attack my position based on the five logical steps I posted earlier.
And, just for the sake of disputing your broad generalization of christianity drawn from one segment of christianity: linkPosts: 4548 | Registered: May 2001
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quote:By those definitions, half of CT's posts would be illegal.
My darling, I am wounded to the core. I had no idea you thought me so indelicate.
*swoons at the very thought of indecency
As a general piece of advice on this topic, remember that one is likely to get a very skewed idea of how pornography affects people if one only talks to those who have problems with it. Just as interviewing disgruntled former members would give you a warped picture of the Church of LDS, so would interviewing only those who have bad experiences with porn. But then, that likely reflects more on what the individual brought to the experience than on the church or the porn.
Unfortunately, liking porn is pretty heavily stigmatized in the US. So trying to find out porn's true full impact (across healthy and unhealthy persons and relationships) would be like trying to find out about the LDS Church's impact by asking around town during the times when LDS members were actively persecuted, e.g., by being driven out of the greater community. Not unsuprisingly, those that were willing to give out information would be much safer if they spoke disparagingly.*
Not that LDS = porn, of course. It's merely a matter of how the context can skew the data being collected, and a reminder of things to keep in mind while puzzling through a messy topic.
(*And so I boldly declare yet again: I love porn. And I'm happily married and a contributing member of society, more or less. A bit dorkish, though, but that's to be expected. )
posted
I'm going to have to dig up a solid reference to this, but I had read "Reefer Madness : Sex, Drugs, and Cheap Labor in the American Black Market" by Eric Schlosser, and he raises two interesting issues (among others) regarding pornography and sex-crimes.
First: he claims that the American demand for pornography is in part driven by its "forbidden fruit" aspect--and that in countries where is it not restricted (the Netherlands, I believe, were mentioned), sure, there's a brief upsurge in its popularity when its decriminalized/destigmatized, but then the popularity wanes, and actually sinks reasonably below its initial numbers. True, the Netherlands don't/didn't have the same Puritanical history that the US has, but the point should be noted (again--assuming that there are other sources besides Schlosser to find this to be true).
Last: He also claims that a majority of sex offenders were not brought up in households full of pornographic material. In fact, he claims the opposite is true--that many sex offenders were brought up in overly strict households. Pornography came later.
Both these points seem to point towards (among other things) a difficulty in discussing pornography--or, more fairly, sex and sexual relationships--as an important marker in a person's (and a country's) attitude towards pornography, sexual material, and relationships between men and women (and, now, as we know, between men and men, and between women and women).
And that last paragraph seems to point towards my difficulty in avoiding parentheses in any discussion!
Everyone loves to refer to the US as "puritanical"... do you honestly think we have any sort of puritan influence left? The Netherlands was, in fact, every bit as puritanical as the US - in addition to being a haven for persecuted religious groups such as puritans, quakers, and jansenists, the population was largely calvinist and about as morally stark as you can get. This was, of course, in the 17th century - the same time period in which the US was home to the puritans. Today, the Netherlands is known as one of the most morally permissible countries. The reasons for this are probably related to its democratic and capitalistic ideals, which have totally overrun any lingering "puritanical" influence. Can not the United States have undergone similar change with similar secular and democratic influences throughout the centuries? Anyone who thinks the United States is in any way largely "puritanical" needs to spend some time in an islamic or devoutly catholic country. I assure you, we are not the prudes we should be.
This rant has nothing to do with the discussion at large. You may now return to your regularly scheduled porn thread.
Posts: 8504 | Registered: Aug 1999
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posted
because the word "puritanical" has come to mean "those who oppress others sexually."
this may be a bit prideful of me, but it seems to me that there is a LOT of unhealthy attitude towards sex in both directions... we nonsensically wallow in it and suppress it out of fear simultaneously.
Posts: 26 | Registered: Apr 2004
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quote:In fact, I made the argument a short time ago that nothing more than correlation can ever be shown for human behavioral studies.
*sigh* You really don't have any idea about what I do, do you? For anyone who knows a little bit about social scientific research, that's an absurd statement. You may as well say that medical studies can't show anything more than correlation. I wouldn't accuse you of lying Jacare, because I'm pretty sure you have little to no knowledge about what you were talking about. You weren't lying, but you sure don't seem to have a lot of intellectual integrity. Why not just say that social scientists just make everything up? It would be just about as accurate as what you did say.
Theoretically, experiments are the only direct way to demonstrate causuality. However, in both psychological and medical research, experiments are often impossible due to ethical and/or practical concerns. In an experiment, you have to have control over all significant independent variables and often this just isn't the case.
That leaves us with surveying populations and using inferential statistical analysis to tease out likely causality. This is a standard and acceptable for determining causuality in both psychological cases and when looking at posibile causes of a disease.
I have only a passing acquaintence with the literature on porn addiction, but I know a bit more about the addictive personality, so I'll use that as my example for how this was isolated. You start out with a cross-sectional (one time observation, wide subject pool) studies of populations that have people who are suffering from addictions. You use this data to determine in what ways addicted people differ from the non-addicted people. Next, you use cohort (multiple observations over an extended period of time) studies of non-addicted people to study those who, over time, develop addictions. You use this data to determine what the differences are between those people who didn't develop addictions and those that did. Through this information, if it has high significance and low unaccounted for variation, you can say a lot about causality even without direct manipulations such as what you can do in an experiment.
One of the big concepts here that Pat and other people weren't accounting for is variation. That is if comparable segments of your addicted population and your non-addicted population were exposed in equal amounts to the same variable (say, looking at porn), then this variable doesn't discriminate between the comparable groups at all and doesn't account for any of the variation between them. It's a common flaw to look at this sort of thing from only one side (e.g. guy exposed to porn becomes porn addict) without looking at the other side (e.g. other guy exposed doesn't become porn addict). In fact, more than a few times, social scientists have found a relation opposite to the expected one, such as if (and that's a big if) in this case more people who were exposed to high levels of porn didn't develop an addiction than those who did, this would suggest that exposure to high levels of porn acutally decreases the possiblilty that someone would develop an addiction.
All of this knowledge is one of the first things taught when talking about social scientific research. It's also readily available to anyone who's at all interested in the subject. I think that it's fair to say that someone who doesn't know it, most likely doesn't know much of anything about social scientific research and is in no position to say much of anything with any authority about it. So it sort of pisses me off when people do. I work hard for my knowledge. If you want to spout off ignorant BS, don't expect me to respect you for it.
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posted
Puritanical doesn't mean having influences directly descended from the Puritans, annie. Its entered the language as a more generic word, the same as hookers and so many other words. Just because it meant one thing a long time ago doesn't mean it means that today.
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posted
"That leaves us with surveying populations and using inferential statistical analysis to tease out likely causality. This is a standard and acceptable for determining causuality"
Squick, doesn't this basically translate -- once you strip it of the excessive ego -- to "we social scientists agree that, if you control for enough variation, correlation can be said to equate to causality closely enough for government work?"
Posts: 37449 | Registered: May 1999
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quote: *sigh* You really don't have any idea about what I do, do you? For anyone who knows a little bit about social scientific research, that's an absurd statement.
Oooh... shall we compare credentials? A titanic battle of authoritarian assertions?
quote: You may as well say that medical studies can't show anything more than correlation.
Medical studies do not rely solely on subjective data. There is organic chemistry and biology involved which can provide objective evidence.
quote: I wouldn't accuse you of lying Jacare, because I'm pretty sure you have little to no knowledge about what you were talking about. You weren't lying, but you sure don't seem to have a lot of intellectual integrity.
What do we call someone without intellectual integrity? A liar! So you are accusing me of lying when I make this assertion:
quote: In fact, I made the argument a short time ago that nothing more than correlation can ever be shown for human behavioral studies.
And then in the same breath you say:
quote:Theoretically, experiments are the only direct way to demonstrate causuality. However, in both psychological and medical research, experiments are often impossible due to ethical and/or practical concerns. In an experiment, you have to have control over all significant independent variables and often this just isn't the case.
which is exactly the same thing. In a scientific experiment in an area such as chemistry one can control most important variables. In a human behavioral experiment one can control only a very limited set of variables. Ethically human subjects can only be made to jump through so many hoops, but even if ethics were ignored completely the very fact of setting up a controlled experiemnt negates to some extent the applicability of the results to conclusions drawn in real life settings.
quote: One of the big concepts here that Pat and other people weren't accounting for is variation. That is if comparable segments of your addicted population and your non-addicted population were exposed in equal amounts to the same variable (say, looking at porn), then this variable doesn't discriminate between the comparable groups at all and doesn't account for any of the variation between them.
In this example the dependent variable is exposure to porn and the independent is the response to stimulus. However, the assumption that "exposure to porn" is a single equivalent variable already introduces a vast array of variability (ie what kind, how often etc) which cannot be controlled. If a controlled experiment is designed in which everyone is showed the same pictures then the applicability of the findings become dependent on the exact type of porn shown as well as the degree to which the group of subjects studied represents the wider population. If the study is done via survey then there is the huge confounding factor of truthfulness and degree of accuracy. These factors mean that inferring casuality is a fool's errand. Only correlation can be shown. Further, the conclusion you draw from your hypothetical situation is pure speculation. You said:
quote: It's a common flaw to look at this sort of thing from only one side (e.g. guy exposed to porn becomes porn addict) without looking at the other side (e.g. other guy exposed doesn't become porn addict). In fact, more than a few times, social scientists have found a relation opposite to the expected one, such as if (and that's a big if) in this case more people who were exposed to high levels of porn didn't develop an addiction than those who did, this would suggest that exposure to high levels of porn acutally decreases the possiblilty that someone would develop an addiction.
The only conclusion you could possibly draw from such a situation is that some people are not interested in porn when exposed to high levels. Perhaps the amount or type of porn actually has a negative feedback effect with over exposure leading to disgust and disinterest while weaker levels may have been more interesting.
quote: I think that it's fair to say that someone who doesn't know it, most likely doesn't know much of anything about social scientific research and is in no position to say much of anything with any authority about it. So it sort of pisses me off when people do. I work hard for my knowledge. If you want to spout off ignorant BS, don't expect me to respect you for it.
What pisses you off is when people don't bow down to the sort of authoritarian stance you are so fond of taking. An advanced degree doesn't mean a bloody thing when drawing subjective conclusions about subjective data taken in uncontrolled and uncontrollable studies. That is why the social sciences are called the soft sciences.
posted
I have a lot of stuff I am going to say here, but I'm certain I will only be shot down for providing anecdotes.
the divorce rate among fire fighter's is very high. At hubby's current station, there is no one that has not been divorced.
Before I go further let me point out I am not trying to say pornography caused those divorces. I am not saying that. Okay? I just brought up the stat because it's indicative that this is a population that statistically has troubled marriages. (and no surprise, considering the schedule)
Pornography is readily available at the fire stations. It's available in both print format and video. In my husband's experience it's hard to get away from. One station he worked in had six televisions, and on certain shifts every one of the six would be tuned in to a pornographic channel or DVD or video.
The only place he could go where it wasn't being shown was the kitchen or the bathroom, and of course in the bathroom there were magazines. He joked once that there were two stalls, one had a stack of penthouse and the other had a Bible on the back of the toilet and he said he was the only person in recent memory that could remember changing the toilet paper in the Bible stall.
Now, my husband and I have a wonderful relationship and we can talk openly about many things. I was honored that he came to me and told me that this was going on - he didn't want there to be any secrecy, because keeping things secret often increases their hold over you. We have talked about how pervasive it was, how tempting it was, and how he sometimes felt he couldn't even control his own reactions. He recognized that he didn't like the fact that he found himself thinking about the things he'd seen, and he made a personal decision that he would not allow porn to be a part of his life. I supported him and we began to pray earnestly about it. Soon, he received a transfer to another station (he didn't ask for it) and found himself working with some fellow Christians in a place where the fight over the TV always revolved around sporting events, not which x-rated movie to see. We think the transfer was an answer to prayer, because he was having a hard time being comfortable in a place where he really could not get away from it. In the other station he couldn't even go get something out of his locker without seeing the TV, and like he said even when he kept his eyes lowered he could still hear things. Even the bedroom wasn't "safe", there are no walls that separate sleeping spaces.
I can't tell you what harm was done to families from the porn shown in that station, I don't know. I know it was harmful to him, if only that it really put a strain on him because it affected his relationships with other fireman, and I hated seeing him go through that. It didn't harm our marriage and I'm convinced one reason is because he was open and honest with me from the very start, the very day he first went there he came home and told me that porn was everywhere, so I never felt there was a secret being kept from me.
This is an anecdote, which you are free to dismiss, but I don't dismiss it. One firefighter who worked at that same station is dead now. He commmitted suicide after being charged with sexually molesting his 13 year old stepson. He left behind several letters, and in one he described how he began watching porn at the station, and soon found that it wasn't enough, he required more hardcore stuff to keep him stimulated. He moved beyond to the internet, then to prostitutes, and then to his stepson. He said he killed himself because he knew he could never stop.
The porn didn't molest that boy. The man was sick, and who knows why or how that happened. But I refuse to believe the porn didn't have any effect whatsoever.
*shrug* I guess I'm not saying anything new and not adding to the discussion except to bring in another anecdote no one will pay attention to. But, I wanted to at least share my thoughts - I think it has the potential to be incredibly harmful and I think that it's too easily available to children.
Example - I went to google image search and typed in "mermaid picture" trying to get some clipart of a little mermaid type cartoon (not the Disney one itself, but one similar) so I could digitize it and emroider it on a dress for my niece. I was shocked at the images that appeared on my screen.
Are we doing enough to keep it from kids if a child can go looking for a picture of a mermaid to print and color and gets subjected to pornographic images?
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posted
Belle - while we've been on opposing sides of these types of discussions before, I for one still want to hear your experiences. While I still maintain that porn does not "cause" anything, I do believe it can influence (as you suggest). To believe that media cannot influence is to suggest that media cannot inspire, and I don't believe that either.
And I definitely agree that access should be much more limited than it is now. A few years back my younger son was complaining about never getting mail, so I figured I'd sign him up for some toy catalogs. You know what you get when you go to Yahoo and type in "toy catalog"?
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posted
are you saying that you are the only one that gets to watch mudwrestling, or that mudwrestling is ok as long as you are participating?
Posts: 26 | Registered: Apr 2004
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sorry for getting all silly here, especially after Belle's heartfelt post (which struck me so much that I called Mama Squirrel "Belle" in another thread) but I just felt the need to lighten up all of a sudden.
Posts: 26 | Registered: Apr 2004
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posted
Gah, I missed Belle's post. Now I feel bad. I was posting when she was.
I'm glad your husband is so committed, Belle. It feels like there's someone out there who wouldn't think that my hubby is weird for all the things he does to avoid seeing porn or explicit things.
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quote:The proof is by no means definitive. In fact, I made the argument a short time ago that nothing more than correlation can ever be shown for human behavioral studies.
That's really all I was saying: using the correlation as definitive proof is the real naivete. It's that kind of correlation in an argument that make for insulting assumptions about things—like being black automagically makes you prone to criminal behavior because the majority of inmates are black—based on too few facts and some "leap" conclusions.
quote:As a matter of fact, I would say that the data you presented does indeed show correlation between divorce rate and born-again christian religions, although I would like to know more about the statistics used in arriving at the numbers they cite- did they include other variables beyond religion and divorce rate such as education level and income level? This is certainly an ancillary point, but there are certainly other factors at work in the bible belt than just the religion aspect. Of course the same argument applies for Patrick's data: did they include other factors in their study or not?
I know that in one of the links, financial status and other factors were mentioned as definite contributors, and that religion is a "maybe" that not all experts wanted to touch (though some made some guesses). The point I was making was not that Christianity is bad, it's that trying to lay blame to only one factor is misleading, especially when that one factor may be a symptom and not a cause. There's no proof that porn is a cause and not a symptom.
quote:And, just for the sake of disputing your broad generalization of christianity drawn from one segment of christianity: link
And notice the difference between temple marriages and legal marriages. That's very telling, both in defense and offense of the idea. See my point?
It goes down to the "power / corruption" argument, which I don't agree with. It's not that power makes one corrupt, but that power is almost exclusively sought by those who are corruptable. The same could be applied to pornography: porn doesn't make one a sexual deviant or criminal, but it is most attractive overall to those who have those propensities. Not that everyone who likes it is a tentative criminal, no more than every person in power is inherently corrupt(able). It plays a more meaningful role as a symptom, not a cause, and that symptom is not exclusive to criminal behavior or sexual deviance. The problem is in such an idea being acceptable (though it would certainly mitigate the use of "it's not my fault! The devil made me do it!" defenses).
Annie:
quote:Just a small tangent rant...
Everyone loves to refer to the US as "puritanical"... do you honestly think we have any sort of puritan influence left?
Considering the Puritans allowed for premarital sex (actually condoned it in some towns), and had some ideas concerning sexuality that would seem racy by today's standards, I'd say the entire use of the term "puritanical" is a misnomer, at best.
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posted
For one, shotgun weddings—where the bride was already pregnant—were not looked upon with disdain. In fact, the majority of marriages were with a pregnant bride.
Posts: 779 | Registered: Dec 2003
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posted
Don't get it wrong: they didn't go around willy-nilly humping each other. In fact, sexual relations and their faith were intrinsically tied. Prostitution was abhorrent, as was what could be called a "slut" (male or female) by today's standards. However, the idea that Puritan = sexually repressed prude is a total mischaracterization.
Posts: 779 | Registered: Dec 2003
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posted
Read a book covering their habits. I can give you textbooks to look for. I don't have any links. You can google it if you want. I'm sure you could find just as many links saying the opposite, as well. The more I learn, the less I find the internet a reliable source for information, especially when it comes to history.
Posts: 779 | Registered: Dec 2003
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posted
Let me give you something to go on, though: Look for Anne Hutchence, who was someone who was excommunicated, but not because of her "free love" teachings. She was excommunicated because she would not defer to the male leaders of the towns. There were many women who did as she, teaching young women to be better lovers to their men, and sometimes "grooming" young inexperienced men. I'm positive some hits on Hutchence will yield some other names of women who were not excommunicated, specifically because they deferred to the town leaders.
Also, note that the most accurate characterization of Puritanism is not in their sexual mores, but in their isolationist politics. They had great successes, but they were so isolationist that the influx of immigrants to the lands wound up in their own towns becoming outmatched by the newer towns, or immigrants moving in and driving the Puritans out. Most people who came from Western Europe, who were either part of the Anglican or Catholic church, found the Puritan ideals to be unpalatable, mostly because the parts which were liberal were not compatible with the parts of liberal European society (i.e.—Puritans did not abide masturbation, prostitution, or nonchelant meaningless relations).
Posts: 779 | Registered: Dec 2003
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quote: For one, shotgun weddings—where the bride was already pregnant—were not looked upon with disdain. In fact, the majority of marriages were with a pregnant bride.
Wait, I don't see how a shotgun wedding is condoning premarital sex, especially when the other choice was forcing the bride to raise the child alone. It seems like they were trying to make the groom take responsibility for what they saw as a sin.
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