An interesting article.

[hkellick]

I stumbled upon this article via someone's journal. The article is written by a university professor about the harm that the porn industry is doing to women. I'd like to suggest everyone read it, regardless of sex or how much porn you may watch/have watched. A warning, though, that it is very long.
I feel like this article is important, not because I feel like I've sinned (In my entire life, I've only watched two porn movies.. a really bad Hentai Cartoon and (I swear to god, this IS true), a really bad Star Trek parody porn where we fast forwarded through the sex scenes and just watched the really bad conversation.), but because, I guess, I never really knew how harmful these were.
I don't believe that Playboy and Strip Clubs are necessarily harmful to women and that there probably is no connection between reading a Playboy and raping a woman. But porn videos on the other hand... well, like I said, I had no idea. I've never seen any.
Just go read.. and feel free to discuss here, if you so choose.

Comments

PART I

[lawchicky.livejournal.com]

It's an interesting article, though I find the author a little over the top with all of this. He talk about things like women and childred being forced into watching or making pornography, but then he never links up how most pornographic videos/films would do that.

Then he goes on and on about how he watching 25 hours of porn videos, and wound up feeling really sad for the women at the end of the day. FIRST of all, I think the way porn is set up to turn on the viewers is in short viewing segments. (The author acknowledges and agrees with this). Many of the videos are very graphic, but I think it's because the makers of the porn are well aware of what they need to raise in the men/women watching the video in order to sell it in the first place. People get turned on by their hormones, by adrenaline and testosterone, etc. These hormones are activated by things like graphic images. In short bursts, those hormones feel good, hence, people are turned on, hence the videos will sell. So why did he feel so awful after watching 8 hours of porn a day? This is what happens when you have TOO many graphic images thrust at you. Coming down from your hormones is quite a bit like coming down from drugs or alcohal, they physically change your body for a period of time.

Not for a second do I believe that watching a porn video is a sin. Most porn videos (I'm talking mainstream porn a la the porn industry) is made by actors, who are doing a job, acting! They are not forced into completing sex scenes, and at the end of the day, the same woman who had eight men ejaculate in her face is going home with a paycheck.. no different than the paycheck I might collect from defending a criminal. We all have choices with what we do in our lives, and I don't feel bad if a consenting adult decides to act in porn videos to support herself. Do I think it's a terrible/horrible/inhuman thing to FORCE someone into creating a porn video? OF COURSE, but this is not the case with the majority of what's out there.

Does porn make/encourage men to rape? I don't think so.. at least no more than any other medium may make/encourage a man to rape. Having studied criminal behavior, I feel strongly that there are two type of men in the world (I'm just talking about "men" to make things easier, the same applies for women). There are men who would violate another person's free will, and men who would not. A man who would not violate another person's free will is not going to watch a porn and decide that it might be a good idea to indulge his fantasy of raping women. People DO NOT drop their morals and values based on something they may or may not have seen in a porn video-- not for something as serious as violating another person. Now, a man who WOULD violate another person's free will is another story. This type of guy could get ideas from a porn video. Of course, this type of guy could get ideas from ANYWHERE, and it would be unfair to the media to blame them for causually being connected to a crime. With people who rape/murder/etc, there is something far more seriously wrong than whatever they may or may not have seen on television. (Example- a woman may kill her husband because he beats/abuses her. You can't blame the movie Chicago for encouraging her to kill her husband because a character killed her husband and got away with it).