Pornography: Helpful or Harmful?

As what some websites and friends label me, I am a porn addict, now pledging to a state of abstinence…until I sort this out. I stumbled across this article from Guardian Unlimited, “Men and Porn,” which somewhat effectively denounces support for the existence of pornography.

guardian.co.uk/weekend/story … 16,00.html
(please read it! it put a stutter to my ‘addiction’)

This discussion is not on the issue of legality, spouses, commitments, censorship, sexism, freedom or porn addictions, but on the basic idea: Porn - good or bad? Harmful or harmless?

Disregard for the moment the porn industry and just debate on the definition of what porn is: a visual representation of sexually arousing material.

Here are some highlights from the article that should guide this discussion:

Here’s a big one:

So, is porn bad? Sexuality and sexual desire is inherent of human nature, and so is masturbation. But must one use or need porn to satisfy this (assuming there’s no hot spouse around)?

Is there any difference between the visual representation and a desire/fantasy that may already be conjured in one’s mind? That is, if a sexual image has already been conceived in one’s mind, what’s the difference of having it in a tangible form? Or if a person were to masturbate to a hot news anchor, is that harmful?

Is pornography more similar to the concept of a cigarette, in that it leads you on towards a definitive and harmful direction, as opposed to just viewing it and being able to turn it off?

Please take the time to respond…I feel this is a very serious topic, that will probably end up spreading to issues of society and gender issues (but try to stay out of that for now…keep with the basics). No citing from overt religious(usually those christian ones) websites.

Porno is a parasite, just like the world-banks are parasites.
They leech weaknesses in the capitalist-system.

Why give into guilt?

We live in a permissive society: we’re not only taught what to want, but how to want. We’ve been made subjects, oppressed and domesticated; we are programmed to desire these false realities, just fetishistic virtual placebos. We need fantasy enjoyment, we desire violent/erotic spectacles… only because we already feel guilty about actually enjoying ourselves (and everything that would mean, i.e., discovering unpleasant or shameful truths about ourselves.)

We’ve reached the point where actual enjoyment, the flow of sexual or psychic energy, demands a fantasy in order to continue.

Remember, it’s OK not to enjoy yourself! :slight_smile: We don’t hear this message enough today.

‘All pornography ends up with S&M’???

That sounds an awful lot like saying ‘all pot smokers end up shooting heroin’. I’m also getting the sense that the people who wrote that are the same people who’d say Marilyn Manson caused the Columbine shootings and that video games promote societal violence.

And so what anyway? Bestiality, S&M, scat, rape, who the fuck cares? Talk about PC bullshit. Maybe I’m being short-sighted, but it seems to me that pornography is just another form of entertainment. And, as is the case with so many of these ‘taboos’, it always comes back to the individual in question, their ability to control themselves, either in a moral sense or otherwise, and has almost nothing to do with the concrete objects of their entertainment per se.

I’ve beaten off to pornography … hell, I couldn’t even tell you - 2,000 times? 5,000? As far as I know, I’m no better, no worse, no different. Idiots, on the other hand, can fuck up their lives with just about anything - pornography included. But that doesn’t mean there’s anything inherently wrong with someone jacking off to something other than their thoughts once in a while; and it certainly doesn’t mean there’s anything wrong with masturbation.

Literal, clinical, ‘addiction’, I suppose, is another story, and I apologize if I haven’t addressed the actual topic; but, at the same time, don’t try to feed me some shit sandwich like ‘pornography is a parasite’ (Dan~). The sexual drive is among our most powerful. Letting it take control every now and then is part of being human. Pornography, at bottom, is but an expression thereof.

Daybreak and Joe, you’ve both pretty much nailed the issue of repression and how society may have warped human sexuality, but the more I read and think about the concept of porn, I reach this type qualitative comparison:

Sexual desires:Porn
as to
Hungry stomach: Junk Food

Junk food is completely unnecessary yet because it has become so ingrained in our society that it has become a sort of norm.

Now I’m sort of introducing a new stance on the porn issue,
erotica vs. pornography

As I’ve mentioned before, pornography is like a cigarette (not trying to pick a fight with smokers) in that it can only harm (in a biological sense). Every inhalation damages your lungs just a bit more.

Now I guess we’ll have to delve momentarily into a “what is art” debate. In order to speed things up, I’m going to say this:

-Erotica (art, which elevates humanity above basic nature) celebrates and allows us to explore our sexuality

-Porn commands attention by cheap, shocking or sloppy images

You have to agree with me on this point as I bring in the porn industry - most porn videos today are horrible. Horrible acting, directing…the quality is just terrible. The goal of the porn industry is to provide you with quick excitement that will keep you attracted…addicted…as it is a money making business (that is very successful.)

Other porn materials not associated with the industry, say for example, a picture of a horses’ penis in a woman’s mouth, is just as poorly made, created not with creative planning but just for the main purpose of shocking (not deriding beastiality…as I’m sure a true zoophiliac would also rally against this sort of image.)

Back when porn was in, with movies such as Taboo or Behind the Green Door, they were somewhat respected and reviewed by regular movie critics. But along the way, due to society’s hush-hush policy on anything sexual and the media illiteracy of millions (which still goes on today…just look at how popular Ghost Rider was), porn has been able to exist and even grow due to a sort of non-regulation. The people in the porn business are just in it for the money, the same way the Camel Joe execs are in it for their millions, and the amateur materials are able to exist because no one is there to comment or grade it, as one would do upon something of artistic worth.

So that’s it. Porn is ‘bad’ because it’s the wrong idea toward sexuality. Porn isn’t art. Porn is a separate category of its own, and porn only leads to more porn, not sexual confidence or freedom.

Just as Ghost Rider is total crap compared to a movie by Bergman, porn is worthless and has no reason to exist compared to the powerful purpose of Erotica…

…of course, I really don’t know what erotica is since porn has dominated that ‘sexual corner’ of society. I’m gonna look it up right now.

Marcello,

We owe our survival as a species, in part, to the ageless, coming-of age of fifteen year-old boys; who until the age of twenty five, or so, spend a fair measure of their waking hours consumed by and obsessed with sex. Bear in mind that the average life expectancy of a human was, until recently, approximately eighteen years. Had adolescent boys been as moody about sex as girls, we likely would have gone the way of Neanderthal man.

Of course, those days are behind us, at least for the present. Unfortunately, we’re still hobbled with the same ape-man biology that served us so well in the past. In this age of rampant overpopulation, human sperm has become as toxic as Plutonium to the continued well-being of our species. Accordingly, adolescent male hyper-sexuality is no longer a cause for communal rejoicing, but a reason for social embarassment.

Having, myself, just turned fifty, my advice to a young man is to enjoy your sexuality. Spinoza wasn’t much younger than me when he wrote

”Nothing forbids our pleasure except a savage and bad superstition.”

The ancient Greeks were advanced in their recognition of the many and varied forms of love. Among them all, eros ranked the lowest; more often judged as a mania that one gave thanks to the Gods to be rid of, rather than a condition to be actively nurtured.

In your pleasure remember this; you aren’t a mere sex machine; rather, you are a Person. And far more important than your bag, or indeed, your bag of bones, is your Honor. And this virtue will not permit your pleasure at the expense of another’s degradation. No matter how base, there is no girl who is, or was, not someone’s beloved daughter. And do bear in mind that as good as sex is, sex without love, with or without a female receptacle, is essentially masturbation.

And so my advice to a young man is to savor your pleasure, but treasure your Honor.

Cheers,
Michael

Porn is nothing more than the instruments of the sexually frustrated and repressed.

It is a weakness born out of civilization along with many other devices.

Am I opposed to it? As a personal code of my own yes I am but the parasitical masses don’t care about my opinions or anyone else on this board for that matter.

At the end of the day parasites will still be parasites and the porn industry will be racking up money on a sixteen year old girl pretending to be eighteen playing in some cheap movie called " She Goes For All The Holes."

( Somewhere in the world her daddy rests asleep at night wondering how his little princess is developing in the world.)

The world we live in no longer cares about honor and living but instead only cares about profit. Once any man understands that particular futility of our contemporary times one understands that sometimes you just have to let the sheep be lambs of the slaughter passing by as a horrified walking observer taking care of your own necessities instead.

Like everything, it has the potential to be good or bad. It depends on how it’s used, who for, where, when, why, etc.

For example:

A book can be a good thing or a bad thing. It depends how you use it. If you read it to do something that makes you happy then it is good. If someone uses a book to drop onto your head from a tall building than it is bad.

Sometimes some things can be good and bad, like people. People give you both pleasure and pain. They’re not always good or bad. It depends on the time and place, how, when, where, and why. Some relationships are good for a couple months, then go bad, and some go for a couple of days and go bad. Some can last forever. Either way, it won’t always be good and always be bad. The same goes for smut, art, literature, objects, everything.

Porn for you is both good and bad. For other people it may be all good, all bad, or good and bad like you.

I don’t believe in neutral systems as every creation of man is built upon scenarios,intentions,goals and functions that develops out of individuals or group think tanks.

I have no idea what you’re talking about.

I am saying the term neutral is a oxy moron as nothing that exists is completely neutral.

What does that have to do with with me?

It just seemed like you were making out man’s creations to be entirely neutral of course it could of been a misunderstanding on my part.

Sorry for the confusion.

Wait a second…
What’s wrong w/ a little S&M?

He’s saying nothing is ever just good or bad, it has to fit circumstance.

Something can be good for one, bad for another.

I will tell you what the psychological community will tell you.

If it’s not affecting your job and your will to pay more taxes, please keep doing it.

A California lawmaker recently proposed taxing pornography.

I guess the lesson is that pornography is a lot like drugs, or other kinds of ‘excess’ which the system on the one hand prohibits as ‘moral’ problems, but on the other ‘secretly’ endorses, because they help keep social and psychic energy in check, at bay, safely diverted in fantasy realms where ‘they can do no harm.’

But we know that those reactionary parents-against-censorship do have a point. It’s not healthy to adopt a masochistic video game persona, or to inundate yourself with erotic/violent fantasy images. The deeper you fall into the spectacle, the more the consumer feels his ‘real’ life is really the false one, that the persona in the video game, the fantasy persona, more closely resonantes with our personality. It feeds some deep-seated need that’s deeper than our conscious self-programming.

In truth, there’s only so far we can detach. The environment itself is polluted with obscene images, commands to ‘enjoy ourselves.’ Universal perversity is the natural state in a ‘permissive’ society: you can go all the way ‘to the end’ with your desire… as long as it’s virtual, as long as it’s ‘just’ a fantasy!!

haha, it probably requires a whole separate thread to discuss this.

Most texts against porn viewing note these four stages:
Addiction
Escalation
Desensitization
Acting out Sexually

Besides the fact that these arguments don’t even the human element of sexuality (which I’ll probably start a new thread on), is there any proof that those who view an extreme pornographic material will act out? I’d say no, considering the material in Japan, which is one the highest ranked country in safety.

Addictions and perversions (whatever those may be) occur, I’m guessing, because of America’s puritanical history, and the continued irrational crusade against all things logical and human.

And is “Desensitization” all that bad? Images in pornography are not alien; they come from other human beings. Just because one has been exposed to images not in the norm, does not, and should not (in any healthy human) further them into criminal and harmful behavior.

The more you know, the safer you are, the more you understand. A Clockwork Orange, Kubrick’s version, is a perfect example of this. You cannot repress what circulates in your mind, as it restricts will - the whole idea of being human. This doesn’t mean everything that passes through your thoughts will be clean and peaceful, but this also doesn’t equate to being sick or having the need to ‘act out’ and hurt others.

If someone were to harm another after viewing porn or using porn to harm someone…why haven’t the billion of men who watch porn done this? This reasoning, as Daybreak said, is just as ridiculous as the video game or rap music controversies.

A person with a mentally skewed mind will harm others no matter the case, or they are the extreme exception, and obviously, pornography was not the one at fault.

It seems I’m preaching to myself and the choir, as most of you see no problem with porn. Is there anyone against it, who can provide an argument or alternative?

Pornography is bad, in my opinion, and not because i’m hung up by the sexual and religious taboos of the culture.

i think it’s bad because it’s fake

you can bleed your essence away to pornography

I think pornography’s simply another area of the market which caters for human desires/drives. Just like tobacco, alcohol, chocolate or salt it can cause problems if sought too much. As Aristotle saw, a happy person is one who pursues pleasures in moderation, never indulging too much in particular pleasures to destructive degrees.
Just because it’s ‘sex’ people love taking the moral high ground. It’s not the content or products as such which are wrong or bad. Exploitation can happen anywhere.

Break from your petty and groundless taboos, wherever they come from (probably religion).

What the hell does that mean. How could porn be real? Does that mean movies, plays and novels are bad too? Synthetic drugs perhaps?

Human exploitation and irresponsibility can make anything ‘bad’.