Here's what bothers me in porn:
- When you see the thumbnail of a movie of a crying or gagged woman "raped" by several men, how can you tell if it is fiction and not a real rape with a real victim? You can't.
- Anyway, why would someone want to see such sick movies? What is so fun about seeing someone cry/suffer?
- Why is kiddie porn (often very extreme with rapes) in japanese manga (cartoons) tolerated so easily? The only positive thing is that it seems not to influence them in reality.
- Where is the fun in todays movies? Where are my damn "old-style" erotic/porn movies; I can only find "bunny-style" "butcher-style" scenes. Even women directors these days film these meat-festivals that have no fun/sensuality. It's like watching donkey sex for god sake!!!!
So, as we have junk-food, we have junk porn... Too bad.

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"Male attitudes are potentially being shaped by ugly and sometimes disgusting abuse toward women."

The key word being potentially. The author doesn't provide any information about just how many men (1) purchase and watch porn, (2) how frequently, or (3) purchase and watch the more extreme forms.

"It hurts to know that no matter who you are as a woman you can be reduced to a thing to be penetrated, and that men will buy movies about that, and that in many of those movies your humiliation will be the central theme. It hurts to know that so much of the pornography that men are buying fuses sexual desire with cruelty.

It hurts women, and men like it, and it hurts just to know that."

A huge generalization. "Men buy movies like that." "Men like it." Again no data indicating just how many do.

Another question I'd have is concerning the BDSM industry, which has plenty of female participants. Maybe they're consumers of this porn too?

And what does this have to do with masculinity? If anything, an increasing interest in extreme porn would indicate that increasingly some men are no longer being raised in an environment that is healthy for them and their needs. A perversion of normal, healthy masculinity, not a representation of it.

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The book looks interesting and the article is well written. I suppose me jerking off to Bangbus videos and laughing about it afterwards should make me feel guilty. Yes, because of what I saw and enjoyed, I'm adding to the deterioation of American social values. Porn. Of course. It has to be porn that's the root to all this horror we see. You know, I live in Japan, and let me tell you, the GONZO film industry including BUKKAKE (where several men ejaculate on a girls face, etc.) was created here. There is NOBODY that gives a flying #$ck about it and I don't see Japaense society falling apart at the seams because of it. European films are as nasty as they "cum" but you don't see anybody pointing to pornography as a source for troubling social trends over there. I'd sure love, FOR ONCE, for alternet to just try to write an article about the horrible sexual REPRESSION that goes on in America (crap, now that I've said that, I'm sure there probably has been one too... I'll look it up later). Maybe if people weren't all so scared of sex, or guilted into feeling that way by religion, etcetera, there wouldn't be a need for this guy to waste all this time and energy on a book about some dirty movies. All the points in this article are extremely interesting.... degradation and violence towards women that aren't asking to participate in it because A) they like it or B) they desperately need the money is WRONG (pretty sure there's a lot of ACTING going on in those bangbus videos, and if not, why the hell aren't the police putting a stop to it????). But if you ask me, the fact that women are having to work for the porn industry at all, or the fact that so many American men out there have nothing but porn to run to for a sexual outlet.... those are some big problems.... oh yeah, and the IRAQ WAR and HEALTH INDUSTRY problem stuff is important too. Not as important as PORN!! but well, important.

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Like much else these days, porn is about money. In the 1960s, at the height of the sexual revolution, the adult industry was nothing. Now it is a multibillion dollar industry. And all this at the height of the big family values campaign.

Capitalism has reached a phase when everything is commodified. Profit is all. Society is increasingly being run over by the onslaught of capital. This is the root of all current oppression.

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doing graphics for the box covers. Actually, I was the photo chooser and retoucher.

It's worse than the article illustrates. While I was there, porn seemed to go through a 'dog bowl' phase; it was de rigeur to have woman drink/eat out of dog/cat bowls while they were penetrated from all sides. Producers would talk about 'getting girls before they get used up' and they were ALWAYS on the lookout for new talent. The editor would tell me about what he would see in the outtakes while he was cutting the movies together--really disturbing.

Everyday there was like a surreal sitcom.

Interesting thing--all of the men who worked there could not watch anymore. Instead of arousing them, it disgusted them. I wanted to see what an actual set was like but my workmates were adamant about me not going. They insisted that it was 'gross' and that most of them couldn't tolerate it.

I've spoken with other men who've worked in the industry, even friends who had boyfriends who worked in adult bookstores. They said that sex got 'weird'; it lost its subtlety and became desireless and route. Most of the porn stars I've met seem either asexual or attracted to the sex they are not fucking on camera.

How far can you go when you reach for extremes? The inner world is vast and expansive yet so unexplored.

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Why, then, does porn is more popular?

I can't wait for the apologetics for pointing out this garble.

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I'm no fan of degradation or any of that kind of stuff, but this sounds just like the video game controversy. The problem is that you confuse the horse and the cart, or you neglect the landslide beneath. It's possible that some other force is causing the change in behavior and this purported increase in yucky pornography is just a symptom of something else. We've barely even begun to understand the strangeness of our own minds. Pretending that we've figured it out and hacking away at social institutions is not something to take lightly.

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in real life the men is the sucker, working hard, paying allowence to his former wife.
So he needs porno to get even.
There is also women friendly porno.

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From one aspect, much of what is said applies to the film industry in general. ALL genres of film are continually trying to outdo their predecessors. Teen comedies continually try to out-gross older films. Action movies want more action. Horror films try to be more, well, horrible. All trying to show us things we haven't seen before.

As such, I also think there's a bit of self-fulfillment going on here, in that one tends to find what one is looking for. Look for "harder" films, and you'll find them. Explore the cross-links between those sites, and pretty soon you'd think that those films are all that there is.

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Jensen is a professor of journalism at the University of Texas who specializes in writing books on controversial subjects. As such, I think one also needs to ask just how much of a problem actually exists. Because without the alarming "problem" the author has no book. If the situation isn't immediate and dire, then there's no publicity.

Is there a real problem? Or is this like the controversy regarding violence in video games? Games that are supposed to desensitize our youth and predispose them to violence... when in fact violent crime rates have been declining pretty much year-over-year ever since the video game was invented.

Is there a problem? Do these films mirror reality? Or are they as escapist as the exploits of Bruce Willis in the last Die Hard movie? I saw the latest version of Halloween too. Does that mean that I'm now predisposed to using a kitchen knife in an inappropriate fashion?

Should the questions the author is asking be asked? Sure. But we also need to keep in mind just who may be asking the questions, and what they have to gain in the process. Remember, the author is not a sociologist, or a psychiatrist, but a professor of Journalism. He's not an expert in the field of study.

This isn't a personal attack, but a fact we have to face and debate every time someone tells us about a "problem" about which "something must be done".

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The more we become aware of any human activity, the more likely we are to imitate it. In other words, our exposure to the thoughts and deeds of others has been hugely increased by technology.

In living memory (just!), there were photographs but not films, radio but not television, books and magazines but not DVDs, telephones but not affordable filming equipment.

Many people don't think very deeply. If porn is "normal" then it must be no big deal.

We should be moving away from simply educating people for careers and begin educating them to live meaningful lives.

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When the author quoted Andrea Dworkin - who DID condemn heterosexual sex - but wrote a lesbian porn novel thereafter, I barely managed to finish the article. This article is way light on facts - long on propaganda.

Having said that, I myself once saw a movie that still disturbs me 30 years later. This movie was set in the west and in a rape scene, one of the men repeatedly punched a barely resisting woman repeatedly in the face with full force. You will never convince me it was fake and I am still horrified by it.

The author also brings up a valid point as far as general mistreatment of the actresses is concerned. Rather than banning the porn however (which I personally find disgusting) I believe that there is plenty that can be done in terms of unionizing the actresses and banning acts that are unsafe working practices.

I like lots of nekkid girls. I find most of what is discribed here unerotic and gross - but I suspect the motive here is more about banning the viewing of what the author (and myself) find distasteful than protecting the actresses.

I am all in favor of protecting the actresses. I firmly believe there are things we can and should do in that regard and would support initiatives that actually had that as their actual aim.

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I agree with the premise. America is a cruel nation, and mainstream, degrading pornography reflects and even amplifes that cruelty.

It's extremely disheartening. Not just the cruelty towards women - though that is certainly disheartening. But the other manifestations of cruelty, too, indifference to suffering, inequities, death, where nationalism and predatory capitalism trumps humanity and morality.

But the conclusion that the answer is censorship is flawed. It's much more than a slippery slope we are talking about when we speak of censorship. It's a slippery slope aimed at totalitarianism.

In a totalitarian America, women will not fare better than they fare today. Instead, a ruling elite will exercise absolute, unconstrained power over everyone else. Excesses of brutality and cruelty will be given free reign to those who serve the regime.

Censorship is the key that unlocks that door.

Notice that I am not arguing on abstract 1st Amendment grounds. I am arguing that censorship delivers to government the power to shape what information can be heard. That power is coveted by wealthy elites; unable to obtain it through government alone, they have sought to obtain it by buying media corporations and shaping the messages they carry, which is bad enough. By advocating government censorship of morally repugnant messages, we will be playing right into their power-grubbing hands.

The author has underscored a disturbing fact about the nature of men in America and the women with whom they have relationships. Hiding it with censorship is not an answer. The answer, if there is one, lies in social engineering: attempts to restructure the society in which we live. But there are, there must be, firm limits on what government can be allowed to do. Otherwise the solutions will impose far worse damage upon our society than the problems they seek to solve.

Education is fair game; it could do a lot to dissuade willing participation by women in degrading pornography. So, too, are attempts to get the pornography industry to reign in its own excesses. But I will not willingly concede to the government the power to censor pornography, or any other protected speech. That is a road I do not want to travel.

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The style of pornography is simply a symptom, I believe, of a much greater phenomenon that is happening in this country. Do I need to remind us of the quality of the public media, the drama of this current administration of lies and brutality and dictatorship, the violence in our streets and homes, the rage that exists in this culture and perpetrated by authority figures (religion, government, banking industry, corporate culture et al)?

Fantasies can be used as a healthy outlet of unmet needs and rage/anger is also a way to focus on unmet needs. The perpetuate need to conform to feel accepted is tantamount to emotional rape that leads to physical degradation.

This issue is not only one of using/abusing women as objects, but is indicative of the rise of violence against men who have sex with men...."gay bashing" in schools, in homes, in churches, in government, in corporations. It's directly related to violence against women because "queers" are seen as just like women, "less than men". What it means to be masculine is not being feminine in any way!

I want to remind mothers of how they teach their sons to behave, what values they manifest in their lives, what beliefs they hold around what it means to be a "man". The men's movement, the feminist movement, the gay revolution have failed miserably because they have not focused on the underlying cultural commitment to "men are superior" and if you want to be a man, then you must conform to this stereotype. Otherwise, you will not make it in life.

The patriarchal order will continue to bash and demean and degrade women and other men ("sisses", "wimps", "fags") until men and women unite in changing the cultural belief system and tolerance for violence to survive in a "man eat man" world and redefine what it means to be "a man."

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porn is excellent...

woman-on-woman porn with no other person in the room...no guy to beat them, F%^& them, whatever them, just two women exploring the beauty of their bodies.

anything else is just smut and I dont care for smut. OK, I'm being mostly faceitious - but I do think that censorship in general is a terrible practice so I cannot allow myself to condemn something that was entered into willingly on both sides, no matter how foul I find it....

:-) well, that is my opinion anyway

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There are Greek vases and wall paintings in Pompeii depicting "rough sex." Sexual degredation was almost ritualized in ancient Rome: there is an entire vocabulary devoted to it. You classicists can look it up if you want to. Societies today that repress sex always seem to be founded on some male-centered Stone Age myth where the women are the property of the men and the point is to keep the women for the exclusive use of their owners. My question about pornography is: when was it ever any different? Was there some golden age when women were on an equal footing with men and the men weren't exploiting women for something? There were 10,000 prostitutes in straight-laced Victorian England.

If you check out one of the vintage porn photo sites you will see that while "propriety" may have acted as a restraint on the activities of the prostitutes and their partners in the old pictures, you can see clearly enough around the edges that not much was different 100 years ago. The internet and access to equipment and technology has put the tools to represent the sexual exploitation of women into the hands of every moron on the street. What makes the author think anything has changed?

Violence toward women (and the weak) is in the grain of society. I don't believe that the average human is more civilized today than the average citizen of Rome. We may not hold spectacles in arenas where people are impaled on sticks and eaten still alive by wild animals, but if we did, there would be sell-out audiences at $200 a ticket. In 15 years, I predict you WILL be able to witness any degraded, violent or sadistic spectacle you care to imagine thanks to the power of computing to create life-like simulacra of real events. As society skates toward the edge of oblivion, the psychotics and mal-adjusted will lead the way, as always.

The solution is tough. Look at the society with the MOST freedom and at the same time the LEAST violence and sadism and what do they have going for them? Is it Finland? Sweden? Some place like that? They have a commitment (albeit recent) toward liberal tolerance, a healthy respect for the individual, an egalitarian society that discourages excess of either poverty or wealth, respect for education and a common sense appreciation of human yearnings and suffering. It wasn't like this in Finland and Sweden 100 years ago, but it is now. It can be done, but it takes work. Is there any hope for us? I don't think so. P J Tramdack

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In my home country of Canada, there was a time when the so-called hate literature law received a lot of attention and debate. It was used to punish two men, Ernst Zündels and Jim Keegstras, for publishing amd teaching (respectively) anti-semetic theories.

The law has been challenged on grounds of violating the right to free speech, but the supreme court has upheld the law (more than once, I believe) as a valid infringement of free speech, pointing out the old adage that you can't shout "Fire!" in a movie theatre as one reason to not assume that free speech rights are absolute.

What puzzles me, and not just from reading this article either, is why our legal system, typically so quick to use the hate literature law to slap down anti-semetism, fails to use the same law against mysoginist publications. If I were to produce a magazine that contained no sexual picture, but proceded to argue that women were so unworthy of respect that they should be humiliated sexually whenever possible and this humiliation broadcast as widely as possible, I suspect the hate literature law would be used to stop me and punish me. I doubt anyone would object.

So it is a problem of language. When certain "porn" gives the same message, but without using words, a lot of people seem to get confused as to whether it is then somehow art.

I think it would be quite simple to define certain limits on pornography using the concepts of mysogyny and hate literature as guidelines. Oh, there might be some cases where the courts will have to get busy and define things more clearly as the laws get challenged, but that's what our legal system is for.

I think Bangbus etc. would fail the mysogyny test, even as a lot of kinky Japanese stuff would pass it. But it wouldn't be my opinion that matters; some sort of consensus would emerge eventually.

But I have to agree with the author and filmmaker that doing nothing is a very poor approach.

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I can't believe I'm hearing this regurgitated crap here, of all places. Is it the ghost of Jerry Falwell?

Conservative Christians might run a close second, but the Taliban are the most repressive people I know of. They don't tolerate porn of any kind, violent or otherwise. They don't tolerate the sight of a woman's face or ankles in public. But they are also the most violent and degrading culture toward women I know of, too.

The sight of women is not the source of lust. The portrayal of violence is NOT the source of violence. This article and it's source are far closer to that than violent pornography, which is but a symptom. Violent pornography sheds light on the fact that we have a problem, and prevents repression of that little fact. Shove it under the rug, or the Birkah, or into the hands of the executioner, and the problem is hidden along with it. Burying the murderer does not bring an end to murder.

The underlying problems are much more complex. Their solutions are far more complex and confounding than protesting violent pornography, reducing it, or bringing an end to it. I ask anyone who believes otherwise to: 1) remove head from butt, 2) open eyes, 3) seek REAL ways to help women and the many other repressed minorities upon whom violence is routinely wrought, and 4) stop wasting your time and mine.

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I don't understand this... How can porn cause the end of masculinity? Maybe I just need to re-read the article but I don't get it.

As a masculine liberal thinker I don't see much wrong with porn between consenting adults, or the viewing of that porn. Sure, there's degrading and cruel porn but it's not the mainstream of porn.

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just like back in the early 70's when the bible thumpers got ol' Tricky Dick to go after the "scourge of epidemic proportions" of the time..."DeepThroat". The same arguments were made as was the same hysterical banter. Why are we so susceptable to the gorilla in the closet trick?

The author sez:

"But the other, Gonzo, has no pretensions, and is simply the filming of sex acts, which, Jensen writes, while also occurring in features, are "performed in rougher fashion, often with more than one man involved, and more explicitly degrading language which marks women as sluts, whores, cunts, nasty bitches and so on."

It sounds like an fundementalist Southern Baptist preacherman describing a Fiddy-cent hip-hop video. There is nothing new here...and it is soooo tired.

My wife and I am are porn fans...it is a fun part of foreplay...it clears our minds of the daily grind, and on to what is important...fantasy! So, I peruse the catalogues periodically, and I have never seen anything of late that remotely looks like some of the stuff that "changed" the authors mind...the so called "Gonzo" films. I am not saying that they don't exist...I am just saying that like in many other moralistic causes, the author is hyperventilating to make his case. What are his motives? Oh yeah, he is trying to sell us something old a recycled!

It is not like we don't have real problems to deal with that are currently destroying our country and world...why are we dwelling on this trivia? Two words...sensationalism sells. I can't decide which is more smutty, porn or the whole movement trying to destroy it! The whole thing has a Repugnican smell to it to me.

In fact, I see the porn industry evolving into more of a sophisticated art form, where it isn't just the woman opening the door for the well-hung pizza boy and then they take off all their clothes and do it (which the author says he prefers!). The stuff the wife and I buy is more like a traditional movie where the love scenes are much more vivid...and real, BTW. The exponential growth of the industry is definitely going in that direction, according to the sheer number videos being offered. Like in the mainstream DVD's, many offer "Behind the Scenes" footage with interviews of the stars and starlettes, and they sure don't seem like victims to me. They are laughing all the way to the bank, and having the times of their lives doing it.

Beware of the chicken little types who are recycling old fears with hyperbole...a well-worn tactic that is employed by the conservatives and neo-cons. Ask yourself, "Why are we buying into this (again)?"

Let the stoning begin!

jimidang

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"Mirrors can be dangerous, and pornography is a mirror."

This, for me was the most lucid line in the article. Bigger than the issue of porn is the terror of sex, desire and male-female power imbalances.
America, historically has been about power hierarchies, slavery and destroying cultures we feel threatened by. There is an underlying violence and rage that
(to me) colors many of our belief systems. We look to religion and morality to keep our Id under control rather than use it for creative puposes and to accelerate vitality.

Instead, since sex cannot be supresssed, since it is the
primal urge to create life- it is expressed in dark sometimes
violent and debasing ways through pornogrpahy, sexual abuse, domestic violence, etc.
Rape is never about sex or desire but power and rage. Here- it feels the 2 are intertwined in weird unconsoius ways


Pornography (IMO) is the dark shadow side of America's fear of sex and life force that religion, politics and "morality" cannot control.
This fear has been handed down culturally and through the
Judeo-Christian religious system and other toxic limiting belief systems. We, as Americans
( as a country/culture) seem to take the most exception to sex of all kinds in a fearful way, except sex regulated by the Church or political "moral" codes- there is always going to be a dark scary energy around sex that wil be mirrored by pornography, domestic violence, rape, s&m ....Take your pick.

Personally, I am far more concerned with the destructive and highly addictive and far reachning power of the international pharmaceutical industry. What about the military -industrial complex?
What about the global weapons manufactruing industries.
These industries kill and destroy the lives of millions of people worldwide. People barely seem to have a reaction
to industries that intend to control , dominate and destroy the lives of sovereign citizens world wide.

This is an excellent and thought provoking article. It is my
belief, that until we get to the deeper spiritual imbalances around sex in this country and really address our terror
of sex and deep emotion- there will always be a porn
industry and sexually related violence

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I beg a question about a somewhat basic point, but I don't think using the term "slut" used frequently on a website such as Youporn could be anything but degrading. And regardless of whether women accept such a situation, if so, they probably need a shrink. And speaking of a psychological take, I challenge the idea that sexual violence can ever be a healthy "outlet" to deal with sexual repression. I'm tending more and more towards agreeing with a religious perspective that warns of a self-centered sexuality. If love is blind, sexuality is more blinding.

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this garbage is bareley watchable! the scary part is,a new generation of kids have been watching it on the internet with full acess,and this is thier distorted view of woman,and how they see them,and it shows! Parents,you think your parental controls are keeping your kids safe?
Do they have music downloads? Well these pear to peer sights also have millons of pages of filth,they can watch delete,change the name to a song,and you would never know!
its amazing,that are complaints about gas going up 10-30 cents reaches the whitehouse,but nobody monitors and puts limits on such mind twisting garbage that belittles woman,and makes then look like pigs,and creates monsters,rapists,abusers,from our kids generations and on! Thanks to all those woman who participate in the nasty acts,they only help to the poison!And of course the filthy minds that depict the acts!.And the men and woman whom perform this garbage! It would be fine,if it was left to natural love making and exploration of two human beings,but all the sick sick stuff today in these films,makes it unbearable to watch!
somebody clean up this world! its a filthy mess!

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Hello ? This is the pyschological backwash of a culture of women who eliminate the offspring of their mates. The reaction to 1.2 million infanticides a year for 35 years. A biological instinct for the preservation of the species, is not emerging here as an increased understanding of women. What does it take to wake you people up? This article describes the sympytom of a condition but never addresses the cause.

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The record is very clear.

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The author totally ignores the huge gay male porn in which all the "degrading" things he abhors occur to male "victims". He also ignores the Femme Dom films that show males being tortured and strap on raped.
Worse, however is his placing the cart before the horse. Porn doesn't LEAD societal behavior, it follows it.
There is more degradation of the female in todays music videos and on the big screen than in the porno industry alltogether. And awards are given for it.
If violent porn showing women being degraded and punished is popular, perhaps one should look at the ascendency of the Female in everyday relations. It is the male that is being degraded in real life. He has been deballed. He has been made to feel guilty for just being male. Perhaps THAT is why the violent porn industry is popular. It is the only "safe" way for a man to feel in control.
think about it.

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I'll agree that porno sucks.

Though I have not seen it, I'll agree that the new stuff sucks worse.

Most boys are raised and educated, until they enter high school, by women.

What causes them to hate women so much when they become men?

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Let's face the reality pornography is sick and sadistic and no one in their right mind can nor would do it in real life. First of all, no woman is going to allow herself to be treated in that fashion by any man since no man can perform like those in the films. It makes no sense to watch such films and then go have sex; tried it once and was sadly and quickly disappointed that nothing measured up - I got mad instead.

Nor is porn a substitute for the real thing; rather it is depressing and can only sustain any person (male or female) for a short period of time.

I used to complain that all I ever saw was either man/woman or woman/woman but never saw man/man which only proves that the industry makes what men want to see. So someone found a man/man film and I almost lost my lunch from the week before.

I don't know how anyone can say that the women that star in these films do it of their own free will when there are too many stories of former porn stars who speak about their drug addiction that began while they were filming. Nor can I understand how anyone can say it's between consenting adults when there are often underage girls in these films.

We wonder why disease and even rape (including child rape) is spread so far and wide and why the moral fabric of society is in shreds; need we really wonder when pornography, sex and prostitution are everywhere. You can't find decent clothing for little girls because the styles today are patterned after the "barely dressed" fashions found in such films.

We need to roll the clock back and rediscover morality and accept that women are equal to men and are not property.

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When pinpointing a problem between the sexes, I think that you have the topic nailed.
It is very true, thatthe men who watch these films mirror what they are seeing, consciously, or unconsciously.
This is probably what is happening to women in the workforce as well. Thy are paid less. they get passed over for the promotion, they are physically harassed by their male counterparts.
It is so hard to look at. It is so hard to feel anything knowing that it isn't just one person causing you harm, but a whole group of men meant to degrade you, and devalue your existence. Maybe they need to do this to women, because we don't really need them, right? there are plenty of sperm donors out there. I have always told myself what is good for the goose, is good for the gander so I have had to make my own stand. I don't put up with any of this degrading crapola.
Until a man sees himself equal to a woman he will never truly appreciate her, or all she has to offer. a woman puts up with so much!

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but only because of course it's true and just as true in the UK as the US too, if not more so.

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How can the author lay the porn phenomena, good or bad, at the feet of individuals who "tolerate violence....etc." when we live in the most over marketed, over consumered, over advertised society of all time? Have a look at adverts, tv, violent video games, and pop films... should you need an answer as to why degradation and exploitation are rife in a capitalist society. Stop looking the other way-- and laying this at the feet of people who
have been ad-washed by a society whose only objective is profit at any cost.

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Women have fantasies of being subordinate DURING SEX. And there are some fantasies that women have that they would never really act on but that may arouse them in stories or films.

But those women that do fantasize about subordination don't want that attitude to go outside the bedroom. I can all be a game that ends in the surge of hormones known as an orgasm.

Sexual fantasies are often borne out of our worst fear, eroticized. Women who wouldn't tolerate being called a bitch or slut in public might really get off on it during sex.

To me, the biggest problem with porn is that it assumes that men are the only ones watching or getting enjoyment. Porn, like most media, is filmed from a male perspective and thus rarely shows men's faces or reactions to sex, until orgasm. Female orgasms are rare and the actors almost take special care to avoid cliteral stimulation on camera.

Who we are during sex is not who we are during the rest of our lives. Porn is an extreme meant to arouse. It very well may be getting more extreme too, because we've already seen it, or maybe we're getting tired of old formulas and instead of creativity, directors went for gore.

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Even though I haven't read Jensen's book -- just Hazen's review and excerpt -- I believe I understand enough to conclude that -- regarding the "Gonzo" type pornography -- we are discussing a symptom rather than a cause.

At some early point in mankind's primal past, men realized that they were the sexually inferior sex. Not only were/are women more adept at partner selection, but their sexual capacity far exceeded/exceeds that of men. To this day, we are still dealing with a multitude of factors relating to the masculine insecurity that has developed from that realization. Territory, slavery, property rights, women's suppression issues, sexual violence and humiliation, misogyny, and even marriage are just a few of the "masculine" attempts to control and thwart the sexual advantage that women have overtly and subconsciously held over men since before the beginning of recorded history.

Only through acceptance via education can we -- both men and women -- relieve ourselves of this imbalance. Education and acceptance cannot exist in a censored environment. Furthermore, our current state of technology doesn't accelerate or antagonize these issues, but rather allows a more complete and unbiased examination -- and thus demystification through experience -- which ultimately leads to a more complete, humane and moral understanding of our communal human condition.

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"One of the things about today's porn and the extreme market, the gonzo market, is so many fans want to see much more extreme stuff that I'm always trying to figure out ways to do something different. But it seems that everybody wants to see a girl doing a double penetration or a gang bang. ... It's definitely brought porn somewhere, but I don't know where it is headed from there."

This statement is true of all addictions, at least that's what my therapist is telling me. After a while the effect wears off and the user needs more and more of the substance to get off.

Whether that be more violent porn or younger subjects or more taboos.

Not only that the men who are afflicted with the addiction to this crap (if you're a woman with a porn addicted man in your life, you feel this is crap) eventually start acting out themselves, in abberant sexual ways.

I couldn't bring myself to finish the article. And couldn't bring myself to read through the sick and sad reponses from some of the men responding to the article.

This whole topic is one of such great pain for many wives and significant others. Porn destroys even the most liberal of families. Just like crack, or alcohol or heroin....

It's sad that men can't plug into a relationship but would rather view something on a screen or on paper and jerk off.

What a lonely business.

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Don Hazen writes at the beginning of his piece:

porn often represents fantasies -- though sometimes quasi-violent or degrading -- that people actually have.

Hazen's assumption here is that "fantasy" is somehow beyond critical engagement, and that because one's fantasies are, well, fantasies, that they are somehow sacrosanct and exempt from critique. This is a very popular view of how fantasy operates, and how is it mobilized by groups as some form of transgression, or even, as domination by those who seek to monitor fantasies for correct moral behavior.

While this may or may not be true, the point to reflect on is that fantasy is a wholly socially constructed concept. Fantasy, like any other social structure of affect, is formed and shaped by one's relationship with the larger social structure. One's place in society -- his/her economic, social, political "location" and experiences -- forms the basis from which fantasies are constructed. We do not all come out of the womb with the same fantasies, and fantasies have been proven to change over historical time -- it is not difficult to imagine that a man's fantasy in the 15th Century would be markedly different from one today, nor is it difficult to imagine that a woman's fantasy in the US would be markedly different from a woman's in another region of the globe.

While the point is not to play up an endless game of relativism, if we accept that most contemporary pornography images are articulations of fantasy, then we begin to ask serious political questions. If, as Hazen contends, many men have dark and violent fantasies, what does that mean, even if they are never acted out in "real" life? What structures and experiences have shaped these fantasies -- and, importantly, what does this mean when such fantasies and pornography coalesce?

Once we accept that "fantasy" is part of the social fabric, firmly within the dominant social structures of contemporary society and a wholly manufactured precept, we can begin to reflect on how our own individual fantasies have been shaped, limited and constrained --- and through that, may very well wind up to find that fantasy can be a moment of transgression. But to continue to cordon off fantasy as irreducible and beyond critique naively allows for such fantasy to be manipulated and mobilized towards narrow ends, similarly to how concepts of "freedom" and "democracy" are perverted by powerful groups.

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I think the problem with our understanding of the role of male sexuality is applying the ethical and moral standards that developed relatively recently to a primal act. I liken it to the cartoons we all saw, and sometimes still see, that show a cavemen hitting a woman with a club and dragging her back to his cave. Isn't that rape? If an animal coerces with physical strength another animal we don't intercede or call it rape. It seems to me that the crux of the problem is that in the last two generations women have gained through the pill and the feminist movement a new sexuality. We men who for millennia have had the easy option of taking, and buying women, of acting on our most necessary and basic urge with impunity are having to mature, to change a structured biological urge through the essential use of our social science. This is not easy and we must approach it head on. Not as some failure of male morality, but rather a new and chaotic social "problem" brought about by our technology and our decision to live differently than by the dictates of pure instinct. Young men need to be educated that they will, like all their ancestors have the urge to "take" a woman. Not necessarily physical coercion, but the raw need itself that ensures the continuity of life regardless of the emotions of the persons involved. This isn't a moral failure but a biological imperative. However, because we are not just animals, we don't allow that kind of behavior, except between consenting adults. Personally I believe that its utterly necessary to allow the animal side of the human personality a healthy expression in a way that doesn't harm society rather than attack it, suppress it, and ensure that it finds its expression in some unhealthy way.

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everybody else is into porn.

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I think most of the porn movies out there today are complete garbage. I don't understand why someone would make them or who enjoys them.

When watching a video I want to see the girl enjoying herself and orgasm, not the gagging, or the jackhammering where the girl looks back and the audio cuts out cause they edit out her telling the guy to slow down cause he is hurting her.

And as I said in the beginning, I probably watch more porn than anyone else who has commented here.

I do find it hard to believe people actually enjoy that stuff but then again I find it hard to believe that people enjoy jackass, or viva la bam, or all the abuse that the obese uncle takes in that show.

I think people are different, a certain segment of society seems to enjoy doing stupid things, taking it up a notch, and abusing others. I don't get it.

I think it comes down to a person's character which is pretty solidified in their formative childhood years.

I think if abuse is statistically rising then its probably due to more and more children not getting good parenting and learning to care about their fellow man rather than see them degraded.

This shouldn't surprise us that much as most families need to have both parents working in order to make ends meet, something that was not the case a generation ago.

If the right and left are truly pro-family they would work to fix the economy so that we can go back to having 1 parent work and 1 stay at home or both parents work but only half days.


I don't think there should be censorship in porn

The Nanny government is a terrible idea that constantly gets resurrected by both sides of the isle when people do things they do not approve of.

The Nanny government is why prostitution between 2 or more consenting adults is illegal. The Nanny government is why gays can't marry. The Nanny government is why more than 2 people can't marry. They Nanny government is why certain drugs are illegal.

The Nanny government, a government which presumes to tell each individual what they can and cannot do with their own body, is an anathema to freedom. We can find alternatives.

Why not regulate the industry more, require every film to obtain an ID number, require the actress to bring a friend, supporter, someone that can use a beeper type device to log her complaints during the making of the video if the guy is too rough or does things she does not want. Allow it to log, wirelessly to a central database in realtime any unwanted abuse that takes place and the actor(s) that committed it.

Women would choose to work with actors who had a clean record rather than ones who committed abuse.

This is by no means a perfect idea but I came up with it while typing this comment, the point is we as a community can come up with ways to empower women and ensure they are not abused, ways that would in fact stop the abuse while it is happening rather than censor films after they are made.

Censorship is a horrible idea, once we as a community can decide what the individual is allowed to do with themself there is no stopping the tyranny of the majority.

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In epidemiology, there is a concept of the "reservoir of pathogens," the place where the germs live to get spread to the general population. The classics are Typhoid Mary and the Cholera Well in London. In analyzing rape and dominance as a social disease, I have concluded that the reservoir of the rape meme, the thought concept equivalent of a germ, is the male prison system, where all relations are characterized by concerns of dominance.
In prisons, anyone who allows himself to be dominated becomes a "bitch." If one is young and attractive, one can "buy" protection by becoming the sexual property of a dominant prisoner. The examples can go on...
From an epidemiological perspective, the only way to eliminate the disease in the population is to eliminate the reservoir of pathogens.
From Hazen's review, Jensen's exploration of pornography using Dworkin's analytic framework is long overdue. The social commentary perspective serves well the objective of raising consciousness, but to change masculinity means understanding dominance as a pathology and using analytic tools that understand pathology to locate its reservoir and and distribution vectors. I wonder who will take that one on?

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Jensen either is ignoring important facts and statistics or is so incompetent that he hasn't bothered to do sufficient research.

1. He can cite all the acts of degradation he wants; and either they are real, which I doubt, or they are mere performances, but he ignores a monumentally major effect porn has on society. Huge numbers of men use porn as an ALTERNATIVE to rape & other forms of sexual violence. How many women were spared from violence and forced sex because men first vent with the fantasy of porn? Jensen either doesn't know or doesn't care because it wouldn't further his agenda.

2. I have downloaded about one thousand porn video clips from the internet over the past year, and NOT A SINGLE ONE has had any more violence than a mild fanny slap. I never even saw the title of a video that hinted at violence. I should add that I only download from P2P sites and never from a fee-based site.

3. As an aside, I did download two clips wherein men had sex with a child about 12-14 years old. They disgusted and angered me so much that, had I the opportunity, I would have shot any of the men involved on the spot. I deleted them as soon as I realized what they were. They were both from Russia; and, as a result, I no longer download anything that has a high level domain "ru."

As is true most of the time, writers cherry-pick "facts" to suit their own agendas and are very far from objective.

As always, I use my real name and real e-mail address and I welcome all comments.
Dave Silverman

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"If pornography is increasingly cruel and degrading, why is it increasingly commonplace instead of more marginalized? In a society that purports to be civilized, wouldn't we expect most people to reject sexual material that becomes evermore dismissive of the humanity of women? How do we explain the simultaneous appearance of more, and increasingly more intense, ways to humiliate women sexually and the rising popularity of the films that present those activities?"

I think he answers his own questions in the excerpt. He states that the conservative side (from the 17th century on, in whatever form) has tried to keep sexuality in a box. True, and that box was built on patriarchal norms of subordinating women. If you can keep women, and the fear of sex (with others that is), in that box (the home), then control mechanisms are relatively easy. However, things have changed, as women entered the public sphere and notions of sex and sexuality challenged prevailing norms, the box shifted. But, we didn't get rid of it. The box built on patriarchy is still very much a part of us. Ideas of masculinity and feminity are built on it. We still try to adhere to old notions of what it is to be male (dominant) and female (subservient). But, how do you show that when the box is no longer the home? You can't keep the other half locked away--so make that distinction public, just as women entered the public sphere, so must their subordinate status. Porn enters the fray. Like the author, I'm not against porn. I wholeheartedly agree, though, that it is a reflection of society--as all "art" forms are. As traditional conceptions of masculinity are being challenged they must find ever more "creative" ways to reassert themselves. This is, I believe, where today's extreme porn is coming from. Its a reactionary form to those challenges. How do (traditional) men assert themselves in a public arena that is increasingly challenging their "authority?" Take it back to the bedroom, if you will. It doesn't get more raw or basic than that. And that does speak volumes about why patriarchy and masculinity MUST be challenged, rendered, and transformed. It is anathema to freedom, liberty, and justice--it is the justification of our wars (the manly west and feminized orientalist east). Time to realize this and make change.

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There are lots of great comments here, so I'll highlight one thing. "Lipstick" feminism: A woman can dress like a street whore, showing nearly all of her body, but a man is a total pervert for even noticing her body. This is using the female sexuality to get what she wants, but denying the female sexuality to those ensnared. So, not surprisingly, there is a correlation between the rise of lipstick feminism and the increase in violent, fetishistic, degrading pornography. The two react to each other.

I'm not saying feminism in general is bad - it's a good thing, just like masculinism. I'm saying that women who dress extremely provocatively and sexually, yet want to be considered more than sex objects, are obviously creating their own problem. Men who are immasculated or negatively judged for even noticing their bodies, are reacting by asserting dominance and fantasy in or through the pornography - they are reacting naturally with masculinism.

So, "Sex in the City" is over, girls. If women want respect and equality, they can start by being worthy of it. Stop the cock-teasing. Stop the double-standard sexuality. Stop sending men the signal that you're nothing more than sexual, while also trying to immasculate them for noticing that you're at all sexual. If men want control, they can start by ignoring what this new conflicted, "lipstic" generation of women are doing, and avoid giving them the power they are unworthy of in the first place.

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Bravo to Don Hazen and Robert Jensen. We need more men's voices on this wildly distrubing problem. It is a relief to read their work and know that it isn't only women out there trying to fight this horrific reality.

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Men control the work (and political and economic etc) arena. But when it comes to love, and to sex -- well there men are not always in control.

Why are the most violent video games rated "T" but the sexy video games are rated "adult"? Because men feel in control when they experience the emotions of anger, of revenge. But when men experience the emotions of love, longing and desire they do not feel in control.

Why of the so-called 10 commandment, why is adultery the big no-no, when greed is not? (Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's wife -- well we saw what happened with Bill Clinton. Thou shalt not covet thy neigbhor's goods -- come on! Bush *told us* it was our duty to shop, to covet.)

The answer is the same -- men don't like it when women share the power. So, porn that is degrading and humiliating to women solves that problem. Men are still in control and it's still about power and dominance. Love has left the arena.

And you know, I don't even like saying "men" here. It's that the power structure supports the hyper-male view that dominates the world now. Women's voices are marginalized and ignored. This is just one more example. But it's not just women's voices. It's the voices of all (including some men) who don't share the dominant power structure view that are degraded and marginalized.

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Porn movies? But not alcohol and tobacco, gun, car, war, criminality (OMG; Sopranos got another Emmy?), etc, etc, etc movies? Gimme a break.

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I have to wonder. Gay bashing is almost exclusively perpetrated by repressed homosexuals. It stands to reason that the author is most likely a pervert of the first order attempting to draw attention away from themselves.

Sexual repression causes more messed up attitudes and violence than porn ever could. This feminist attitude of blaming free expressions of sexuality for societal ills is ludicrous at best. Men are naturally dominant sexually and women are naturally submissive sexually to varying degrees so what's the problem with expressing that? Shall we instead turn against our own nature's and try to box ourselves into a hallucinatory norm with which YOU feel comfortable? This can only lead to REAL rape and violence just as the suppression of homosexual urges among catholic men leads to homosexual child rape perpetrated by catholic priests who thought that by joining the clergy God would cure their "bad feelings".

It is rather disingenuous to blame gonzo porn on men alone. I often sleep with women who want to be be beaten during sex up to and including having cigarette butts put out on their backs while being sodomized. I accomodate such wishes to the extent that I am comfortable with. If porn goes beyond your personal bounderies just turn it off!

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What's really amazing to me is that neither the article nor a single one of the above comments mentions this basic fact.

It's normal to desire sex - that's a basic biological phenomenon. However, history and experience and science have all shown that 'free love' - uninhibited sex with multiple partners - creates all kinds of problems including, spread of transmissable diseases, disruption of social networks, and so on. I don't care how 'open-minded' you are, if you find your partner in bed with your best friend you're probably going to be upset.

Really, it's surprisingly like a chimpanzee tribe in many cases - the alpha male is supposed to get his pick of the females, but genetic studies show that the non-alpha males father a good number of chimpanzee children while the alpha male is off doing something else.

Advertising relies on the manipulation of basic psychology, and so does propaganda. The Catholic Church got it started with their theme of "Original Sin" which required repentance, i.e. paying a tithe to the church. Now that's clever! Similarly, advertising relies heavily on associating consumer products with sex, whether it's a car or a pharmaceutical drug or a loan.

Take all this, look at it objectively, and what you'd predict is a society that is completely obssessed with sex as well as with self-image. From a well-adjusted perspective, porn is just hilarious - assuming that we're talking about consenting adults being paid for their performances here, not some criminal slavery situation. Paying money to watch other people have sex? Huh? Would you pay money to watch other people eat food?

The issue of the 'kind of porn' is a little silly. This reflects the slightly different theme of the dominator culture that is just a reflection of corporate heirarchical structure - Newt Gringrich was notorious for forcing sexual advances on his aides, but that's likely true for the majority of Senators. However, what are we saying here? Is dominatrix porn (woman on man?) acceptable? Is Karl Rove's favorite, (man on man?) acceptable? Is 'loving porn that portrays a healthy relationship between progressive couples' acceptable? Whatever.

The combination of a Puritan streak in American society, plus the endless use of sex in advertising, plus the emphasis on sex as sinful in religious institutions, creates this phenomena - obssession with sex.

It's simple: "Don't think of a blue elephant. Especially, don't think of a scantily clad blue elephant doing a pole dance. And don't ever, ever think of blue elephants performing oral sex on one another - that is so very sinful! Shocking! Damn it, I told you not to think about that! You're going to hell for sure now, unless you give me twenty bucks and beat yourself with a stick!"

Eventually, people just can't stand it anymore, and they rush off to buy some porn to take the pressure off. Sad but true. Or, like Larry Craig and Bob Allen, they start cruising men's bathrooms - or like Mark Foley, they send dirty messages to teenage boys - or like Ted Haggard, they arrange for methamphetamine-spike hot oil massages with male prostitutes.

Don't let the advertisers push your buttons, in other words. In fact, you really ought to just notice when someone's trying to push your buttons, and not respond.

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Porn outsells all other forms of entertainment because men and women LOVE PORN. We all love to see sex, imagine sex, engage in sex, and fantasize about sex because men AND WOMEN are primates. We are monkeys with brains too big for our species. So stop with the nonsense about degradation and mistreating women, they get paid more, they do it willingly and millions of women around the world LOVE TO WATCH FUCKING.

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all this moral righteousness coming from a population of sheep who recoil in horror at the sight of Janet Jackson's bare breast and chuckle at Bill Maher who thinks breastfeeding is akin to masturbating in public...please...
violence in porn is a symptom of a much much larger problem: consumer capitalism...

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In a society that purports to be civilized, wouldn't we expect most people to reject sexual material that becomes evermore dismissive of the humanity of women? How do we explain the simultaneous appearance of more, and increasingly more intense, ways to humiliate women sexually and the rising popularity of the films that present those activities?

As is often the case, this paradox can be resolved by recognizing that one of the assumptions is wrong. Here, it's the assumption that U.S. society routinely rejects cruelty and degradation.

Umm, let me offer up an alternative assumption that's wrong: the idea that we, as a society, are open enough about pornography to apply social norms to it. I mean, what's the social vehicle that we could use to keep pornography in the acceptable realm? Where can we say, 'Hey, I think it's ok if you watch this porn that shows good, healthy relationships, but if you are going to watch this kind of misogynist porn then we're going to condemn you for it'? As long as there is a social stigma with admitting to watching and enjoying porn in the first place, then there won't be a way for society to exert influence over what kinds of porn is consumed by those who do watch it.

In that way, being opposed to pornography in general shares certain features with the abstinence movement. If you say that people should abstain from sex outside of marriage, and in order to encourage that you shouldn't teach them about things like contraceptives and safe sex, then it means that you run the risk that the people who do go ahead and have extramarital/non-monogamous sex will do so in an unsafe way. Similarly, if you say that pornography is bad in general and people shouldn't watch it, then you've lost the ability to influence what porn people watch when they do.

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With the rise of internet porn and especially websites like YouPorn.com, so called 'amatuers' with cameras in their own homes can now take the lead in putting the degrading, women hating California-style of pornography OUT OF BUSINESS and replacing it with REAL (instead of scripted) sexual acts between consenting and loving partners.

Only an idiot buys porn in the 21st Century. Indeed, the market for pornography on DVDs is basically collapsing as we speak. HELL YES -- let us continue to put these California scumbags out of business!

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(I know, I know - just mentioning this archaic, non-PC word is bound to set of alarm bells warning of religion and other anti-progressive horrors, but stay the dismay for a moment if you can.)

Reading the posts and comments reveals some honest confusion and soul-searching that speaks well of the book and of the contributors. There seems to be some bewilderment with the idea that porn is demeaning and that the level of violence is ever increasing, but this should be no surprise at all. There also seems to be some confusion between pornography and freedom of expression in both sexuality and the arts, whereas there is no connection whatsoever between them.

It may help resolve both of these confusions if a clear line is drawn between pornography, which is a manifestation of evil, and sexuality, which permeates the most creative of human activity. Sexuality is our great mystery and playground - the way we find out who we are in the process of honoring and celebrating one another - the two equal and opposite parts of what it is to be human. Pornography is evil.

Evil is a nasty business that needs to be de-mythologized. It is nothing other-worldly or supernatural - it is thoroughly human behavior. Evil is the deep end of the spectrum of nasty things we all do when - for whatever reason, valid or otherwise - we feel powerless and wronged. When we are hurt, we sometimes reach out to hurt someone else (or ourselves) as a way of regaining the illusion of control over our life. This is stupid and self-defeating, of course, but we all do it. Humans are like that - we all do wrong at times, and we all know it.

But again, evil is the deep end of wrong-doing. Definition Time: "Evil is the lustful pursuit of pleasure through destruction and degradation." When we have fallen into evil, we "get off" on destruction and degradation - of one another, of the environment, of our business or political competition, and even of ourselves. It is a lustful urge, which means (as was pointed out in the book and comments) that it can never be sated -it spirals down into self-destruction.

Pornography is minor league evil, in a way, but like a cancer it can spread and kill the soul. Combat veterans and police who are exposed to the evil of one-on-one killing - either as the killers or as witnesses - sometimes fall into the evil of killing lust. I have veteran comrades still on the streets from Viet Nam who still commune with those demons, and are now, sadly being joined by vets from Iraq and Afghanistan who have seen and done things that no human can encounter without a wound to the soul.

Men and women alike fall into evil and do terrible things to one another and to themselves in the process of self-destruction. Pornography exploits male-on-female violence, of course, but the existence of female-on-female and female-on-male violence (sometimes physical, more often psychological) should be noted in passing.

Pornography is seen as dirty for a reason - because most of us recoil from and disavow it, as we do all evil. The reactions from those who have been close to the "industry" is instructive - everyone feels soiled. All evil is like that.

Hope this is helpful.

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" But what has become clear to me is that, under the guise of the first amendment, a huge and powerful porn industrial complex has grown out of control."

Here is another reason that US culture is unpopular in the Middled East Islamic nations. Anther reason they hate us.

They don't want a constitution that protects this sort of decadence. Yes the ME Islamic nations go too far the other way many times. But when they equate US freedom to the great amount decadence coming from here, how can we respond?

SamFox

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...I can see that it's easy to blame the newer, rougher, Gonzo porn for taking the industry into more extreme territory. However, I think it's because of the so called "milder" stuff, like simply ONLY showing sex-crazed, plastic-perfect models in submissive sexual positions, that has led men down this wicked path to needing more and more extreme visuals to get off at all.

In an era where gore and violence is okay, even encouraged (like war,) but one tit on TV is a violation of our values, I think it only makes sense to combine the two (sex and violence) to capitalize on what American men have come to find stimulating (I don't blame the individual, we're all barbarians together.)

Anyone seen Quentin Tarentino's "Death-Proof?" This is snuff film-making at it's finest, replete with hot young women giving lap dances, a smooth talking, over-the-hill anti-hero, and a bad-ass car all whipped up with a hefty dose of head-splattering and dismemberment (of the women, of course.) Sure, the villain gets his come-uppance at the end when girls beat the sh*t out of him, but not before the film has shown us all the gory manly pornography we can stomach. And my normally very supportive, sensitive, feminist, kinda "metro" boyfriend was literally drooling waiting for this to come out on tape.

The solution for men lies in taking back your sexuality from the people who would capitalize on it, and trying somehow to reacquaint yourself with a touch...a kiss...moist skin...soft bodies...and all the other delectables of the REAL sexual act. Screw the imitations.

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Read this great comment about from linked text

"Professional vice hunters typically talk about violent entertainment the same way they characterize pornography: as an addictive force for which you rapidly acquire a tolerance, necessitating increasing amounts of transgression to satiate your craving. But consider the success of Maxim magazine and the Girls Gone Wild videos, both of which debuted in the late ’90s, precisely as the Internet was revolutionizing the distribution of strains of hard-core porn that even most perverts didn’t know existed. According to the addiction/escalation theory, Maxim and Girls Gone Wild should be obsolete by now. Why pay good money for a few photos of Eva Longoria in her bathing suit when you can watch golden shower orgies for free at the click of a button?"

Exactly!! Just because these things exist doesn't automatically make it an epidemic. They said the same things when playboy first came out - it's going to ruin society and lead us down into the muck. Sorry, but we're doing fine and now playboy seems quaint and safe.

Now, I realize there's a lot of weird and scary shit out there, but until somone shows me a study that proves a CAUSE (not a correlation or close relationship) between looking at "gonzo" porn and violence against partners, then frankly I'm not going to get worried. Porn often gets mired in how in makes people feel without statistics to back it up (sorry the size of the industry doesn't inherently make it problematic - I want statistics and longitudinal studies, measuring the actual effect porn has on attitudes and behaviors). The fact is that there are some people who like strange stuff sexually and unless that desire is physically hurting non-concenting parnters, it's none of my damn business.

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The author insists he's not becoming a prude. Methinks he doth protest too much. The day that women stop giggling in porno films is the day that I might accept the argument as coming from reason and not prejudice.

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One basic fact for the existence of porn is that people are naturally voyeurs, there I said it, face that fact please. Secondly, many people are just not getting laid, or getting laid the way they REALLY want to (especially if you are married, or worse, have children) so they have an easy outlet with pornography-but when you combine that with the fact that many people are indeed deranged mental patients- this combination IS frightening. America is also a nation of highly imitative individuals, so yes, the negative implications of gonzo porn are real-- for the single loner with a large porn collection, a three year dry spell, and rape fantasies.

On the flip side many couples do get off on extreme sex acts, and porn is just an instructional video for amazing sex. And like it or not there is a healthy population of strong free-willed women out there who simply get off on being manhandled and submitting on their own terms, with or without the existence of pornography,this is also true. And for the record, I do like some gonzo, but multiple dudes on one girl (creampies etc...) and the bukkake or transexual nonsense has no business in straight porn, 'nuff said.

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Men control the work (and political and economic etc) arena. But when it comes to love, and to sex -- well there men are not always in control.

Why are the most violent video games rated "T" but the sexy video games are rated "adult"? Because men feel in control when they experience the emotions of anger, of revenge. But when men experience the emotions of love, longing and desire they do not feel in control.

Why of the so-called 10 commandment, why is adultery the big no-no, when greed is not? (Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's wife -- well we saw what happened with Bill Clinton. Thou shalt not covet thy neigbhor's goods -- come on! Bush *told us* it was our duty to shop, to covet.)

The answer is the same -- men don't like it when women share the power. So, porn that is degrading and humiliating to women solves that problem. Men are still in control and it's still about power and dominance. Love has left the arena.

And you know, I don't even like saying "men" here. It's that the power structure supports the hyper-male view that dominates the world now. Women's voices are marginalized and ignored. This is just one more example. But it's not just women's voices. It's the voices of all (including some men) who don't share the dominant power structure view that are degraded and marginalized.

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Reference book: "Sexual Signatures" by John Money &
Patricia Tucker
"True Confessions" type magazines and soap operas are
women's porn. Why are they never mentioned?
Women's porn is much more degrading to men than men's
porn is to women. Notice that all of the men in soap
operas are either in jail or just got out of jail or are about to
be in jail. Sexual equality requires that women's porn
receive the same treatment as men's porn. So get soap
operas off of airwaves TV and get "True Confessions" out
of grocery stores.
This last came up on June 28, 2007. Why has Alternet
forgotten about womens' pornography so soon? Alternet
must be sexist/female chauvenist.

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Not since the beginning of the Woman's Movement have I read such a penetrating, insightful, and accurate desription of the pornographic mind. My thanks to both Don Hazen and Robert Jensen. The comments, mostly by men, stand as proof of the thesis of this article and book. It is hard for one to understand a woman's complicity in this unless you look at the culture at large. Pick up any teen or fashion magazine and the pornographic image of women is what you see. Women, young and old, are taught, "be this to get love." Pornography, violence, war, racism, these are all part and parcel of a certain mind set that seeks to humilate and destroy that which it fears. An early feminist, Susan Griffin, wrote a wonderful book in 1981, Pornography and Silence. In it the pornographic mind is laid bare along with deep insight into the minds of women whose own experience of self is destroyed and replaced with the pornographic ideal. Marilyn Monroe was such a woman. Pornography is destructive to all of society. I feel encouraged that this time it is two men who have come forward to address this issue!!! Thanks guys!!! You are Men!!!!

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I ask the author, Don Hazen, and Professor Jensen, a very simple question - what's your alternative to pornography?

The reality is, there is a large population of unpartnered men - guys (like me) who, for a variety of reasons, don't have a woman and aren't likely to have a woman any time in the near future.

Parallel to us unpartnered guys there is an even larger population of involuntarily celebate partnered men - guys who have a woman in their life, but who's woman won't have sex with them anymore.

Spend a lot of time around middle aged working class married guys (the sort of fellows you'd run into on a construction site or in a factory - the kind of guys I work with every day) and you will run into lots of these men.

Without porn, what are we supposed to do for a sexual outlet?

Do you have any suggestions, Mr Hazen and Professor Jensen?

And please don't say "erotica" - honestly, that stuff is boring, and totally alien to male sexuality

Trust me, I've looked at that stuff, and TRIED to get off on it.... reminding myself that I'm a communist and a supporter of woman's rights, and I'm SUPPOSED to like this kind of 'woman friendly' erotic material - it just didn't work!!!

If you guys have a realistic alternative to porn for the legion of men who don't have a sex partner, please share the information with us - I'm sure we'd love to have a sexual outlet that's not sexist!!!

Until then, please leave the porno alone!!

On behalf of all the unsexually fulfilled men in America, I thank you!

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To be accurate, you'd have to say that women have 100% of the power when it comes to sex!

In our society, women are the "gatekeepers" - they decide which men get sex, and which men are consigned to involuntary celibacy.

Porn is nothing more or nothing less than a healthy sexual outlet for those men who are denied sex by women.

Yeah, I'd freely admit that a LOT of porn is sexist (remember, the men who are it's intended audience seriously resent women, for denying them sex) - but, do you have an alternative?

And would you really want to live in a society where unpartnered men - and men who's partners deny them sex - did NOT have porn as an outlet?

A society like that would have a lot of rapes (just look at Pakistan, Saudi Arabia or any other country that bans porn to confirm that fact).

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Where's the evidence that this is, in fact, increasing violence against women?

Not in this article. This whole piece reminds me of something that someone once pointed out--people in the US look to the left for some sort of release from the sexual repression in our society, but they never find it, because the left in America can be every bit as prudish as the right. The left just disguises its prudery under the guise of social causes.

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What the hell is this article's writer even trying to say? Porn is alright, as long it's the porn I like, but all other forms of porn hurt humanity, but I would never go out on limb to try to ban it? Your opinion is horse shit. Who writes this garbage? Who publishes this stuff? Of course if someone goes around looking for porn, trying to find something twisted and offensive, they're going to find something twisted offensive. Who cares what you have to say about it? Go find something more productive to do with your time.

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This article sooooooo makes me want to castrate myself. It's crap, it's all hysterical crap. Too bad it isn't a female author, I will tell her to get a hysterectomy, get it? hahahah
I bet he's trying to impress some women in his life by being so sensitive, venerable and - I know the femafascists hate it - chivalrous.

I had to suffer through Robert Jensen's hysteria at UT in Austin. Once again a real man truly empathetic to the plight of porno prostitutes. I bet deep down inside her yearns to be an OB/GYN, salivating as this fetish of his about "Getting Off" really DOES get him off. We all have a little pervert brimming inside.

WOMEN NEED OUR HELP MEN OF THE WORLD!! WOMEN ARE FULLY UNAWARE AUTOMATONS NOT EVER KNOWING WHEN THEY ARE BEING OBJECTIFIED. WE CAN START BY BEING DISCIPLES OF MR. HAZEN AND MR. JENSEN: The Sheriff and his Deputy.

ONWARD!! DOWN WITH PORN, UP WITH .................... something

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See? You just end up being what you condemn. Yes, just start with movies that are too "rough". Then movies that do not show proper "respect". Then move on to pics with naked women, no sex at all. All the while, more violence, more imprisonment, more stings, more survelliance, more raids, more killing, more trials, more police, more soldiers, more, and more and more.

Maybe someday the US can be like Iraq, with constant "crackdowns" and constant "surveillance" and the rule of law gone with the wind...

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After reading the comments and seeing all the different versions of the subject, there is one question that puzzles me.

Why do the actresses who do the porn movies put themselves into this demeaning situation? Is it the money? Is it the sex? Is it the publicity? Afterall no one ties them to the bed and forces them. They are willing. What kind of woman would let someone do this to her?

Why are the troops in Afghanistan and Iraq? Did someone force them to be there? They are there because they wanted to be there, so they have to take the consequenses.

It is a free country with free speech. How you use the freedom is each individual's choice.

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I sometimes watch certain kinds of porn.

So, the kinds of porn you watch is okay and not degrading to anyone, but the kinds of porn other people watch is not? I guess we all should just do as you do. If you're not around to tell us what to watch, who should we consider as our decider for porn? George Bush? Tipper Gore?

How about a compromise -- Jenna Bush?

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Well this may seem naive, or oversimplified, but I think we can all do a lot individually to combat uncivilized attitudes in our own lives. There is a lot of hate out there, but porn is just one manifestation of it. We need to reject people in our own lives who have ugly schoolyard bully personalities. As an example, I am aware that 'skinhead' punk has regrettably come back. Many of these kids are neo-Nazis and well, just very ugly souls in general. I actually had an ex who started hanging out with similar types. He did start getting abusive with me per their influence. And guess what? He was out of my life faster than the fastest punk song. So yeah, lets all ditch the abusive losers we know personally, and they will indeed be forced back underground. No more mainstream for them!

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Look at the societies that ban pornography : muslim theocracies, as well as Spain under Franco. Now look at the societies known for the production and tolerance of porn : Sweden and, Denmark especially, and the West generally. I'm not saying there is any causal effect between pornograpy and women's rights, but the same freedom that allows the publication and filming of sex (however kinky you may find it), also allows women to vote, use birth control and abortion, and engage in consensual sex without being locked up by male relatives. So if you don't like porn, just look the other way, and be glad you don't live in a repressed and over-controlled society.

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This is just too much self righteous impotent yada yada yada. The real pornography is the hundreds of thousands murdered in Iraq by our brave raping, murdering troops who see Iraqis as warm bodies to be exploited in Abu Grabe or raped in front of their families before murdering them. We have problems that are far bigger than what consenting adults do on film. Perhaps the author should stop trolling the internet and take his hand out of his pants before writing the next article.

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how sad

many thanks to Robert Jensen for having the guts/balls to stand up and speak truth to ignorance - I am interested as a woman in his perspective since the porn industry is targeted specially to men - his views are intelligent and incredibly important to me as woman - an insight into why so many girls go down this road, looking for respect via sex, giving the guy what he wants, explaining away her degredation with his rhetoric

the porn industry breed the pedophile industry and like the kill kill game industry or the kill kill movie industry or the kill kill military industrial complex or the kill kill sound of war drums beaten by politicians or the kill kill kill sermons fundamentalists give or the kill kill crys of racist groups all reveal the true shadow side of a male contrived a male defined and a male dominated humanity

In the end though even the men loose - the women as we well know have already lost, the right to vote has been squandered by those two willing to be manipulated by the dominant sex

and like the label thrown at anyone who speaks out against Israel - so also the person who speaks out against porn, the degradation of the feminine of the human in all its forms

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What planet was this article written for? Because anyone here on earth who has taken a little time to study the portrayal of women in mainstream media such as popular television shows can't help but notice how much things have improved in the last 20-30 years. Compare Bewitched to Buffy or James Bond to Alias or the original Star Trek to Voyager. American culture has as a whole made enormous strides in its conceptualization of women. Any assertion that things "are going downhill" and attributing it to "porn" is completely absurd. Obviously video games, rock music, and atheism are the real causes behind all of today's woes.

Also, I hope the book actually contains some facts and data, because all I personally saw in the article and the excerpt was a lot of wildly speculative assertions. This line is rising and that line is rising and there is this one website that is really disgusting and there are these screwed up people. I especially like the avoidance of a core issue: do violent people like violent media or does violent media make people violent? Does watching bangbus make men into cretins, or are cretins the only people who like bangbus? Personally I find it hard to believe that a nice person would become evil if exposed to PORNAGRAPHY.

Finally, I read an article recently in which a study was done that correlated increased access to pornography with decreased violence towards women. Possibly giving an outlet to people who have violence problems? Who knows...

Cheers,
A

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Abused mothers of Christian patriarchal households confuse and anger their male children. The boys see their mothers oppressed by their angry dads, they learn in their religion that women are second class citizens and they are angered at a very young age. When a child is 3-5 years old he models his view of the world on how Mom and Dad get along. Most women are domintated, degraded and abused in a Christian household. Christianity does not allow equality of the sexes. He is angry at his Mom for being a wimp, he is angry at his Dad for being a bully, but he identifies with Dad and is told by his religion to opress women and degrade them. It is Christianity at it's finest. Most Americans are influenced by this freaky culture, even if their parents aren't very religious because it is considered to be the "social norm" here in the US. The US is a sick and fucked up place. It is the birth place of capitalism, which is another word for expoitation. Why should womens bodies be respected more than anything else in this Patriarchal Jesus Freak society?

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Before we knuckle under to the rantings of the Religious Right who want literally "blanket censorship" yet will be happy to make hay with strange bedfellows here on Alternet, we should ask some probing questions of ourselves.

Were we better in the days before sex education? Living in darkness and ignorance about basic hygience and anatomy and the art of lovemaking?

Would we be better served by revering the family values crowd of pedophile Mark Foley, anono-sex shopper Larry Craig, and "Mr. Christian" Ted Haggard? All these men of honor and integrity knew and preached the dirtiness of sex and (especially homosexuality) yet were actively violating their own words. They were especially critical of pornography but saw no problem carrying on illicit sex affairs of their own for years.

What does the BIBLE have to say? Apparently God approves and promotes polygamy and multiple partners especially for Solomon, King David and others. Really? Read the passages for yourself:

http://ChristianPolygamy.com
http://BiblicalPolygamy.com

Folks, if God promotes polygamy, and "watches over all that we do", doesn't that make him the unchallenged King of Porn? If its OK for God to create, promote, and encourage sex, should we be so skittish about it?

Conservatives like Dobson, Fallwell, Jim Bakker, and Sweaty Sinner Swaggert have been waging a war against sex for years but never get called on polygamy in the Bible.
Why do they get a free pass when God's view of sex is much more permissive?

How many thousands of porn viewers have become more confident, more creative, and overall better lovers?

I would bet there are thousands if not millions who've benefitted from porn.

Just like watching any sport, you become more knowledgable and proficient by watching the pros.

I'm not talking about the degrading language and violence that's sometimes present. That's an abomination and should be banned as a form of disrespect and abuse.

But sex itself is not. It is a joyful form of love and fundamental part of human expression. There are many who view Porn as the Olympics of sex and use it as an learning and enhancement tool. They take what is good and drop what is bad and that seems a most sensible practice. I've noticed that these folks have less hang ups and contradiction between what they say and what they actually do and that's a more honest and refreshing way to address human psycology and sexuality in the end.

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I saw my first porno movie last week. I finally got up and left....after 8 hours. Anyway I had to, the screen was irritating my nose.

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"Institutionalized in sports, the military, acculturated sexuality, the history and mythology of heroism, violence is taught to boys until they becomes its advocates." - Andrea Dworkin

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Hi. I think the fashion industry does far, far more harm than the violent porn industry.

The violent porn industry may be huge. But I feel certain that the fashion industry is "alot more huge".

Many people respond to this idea as absurd, because there is no violence in fashion magazines. But the dehumanization of women in fashion magazines (an almost undeniable truth, I think) plays an analagous role in our culture to apathetic citizens who are vaguely opposed to the war in Iraq but continue to pay taxes - a 'perfectly harmless' thing to do - they're 'not really contributing' to violence. The violent porn is like the killing that occurs in the war...paid for by our tax money.

It's also analagous to people in our culture who drive cars, take airplanes, use electricity - even though we have a potentially disastrous environmental crisis. It's not the big polluters running the power companies, or the auto industry executives, who are fundamentally at fault. We all are.

This is why I think women's representation in the media culture - as epitomized by the fashion industry, though it's much broader than just fashion magazines - add up to an industry that is much more harmful than the industry of violent porn.

If we had a world without fashion magazines, a world in which women in the media were treated with their sexuality balanced with other aspects of being human - we'd have a world without violent degrading porn. But keep the media culture as it is - violent porn will be inevitable.

If you get down to it, the degradation of women in the media culture exists for the same reason poor people are degraded by the culture at large. In our culture, people are perceived as more sexually attractive if they are more successful. Poor people are told they need to behave, and then they will succeed. For many, this is a myth. When you tell men (or women) lies about the sexual rewards they will obtain if they play by the rules, they will become diseased on the inside. They will want to degrade the women whose own degradation by the media culture - devoid of balance with other aspects of being human - has been held up as a shining spotlight of what is the only way to engage sexual desire in the public world, namely by being a responsible, successful citizen confronted constantly by hypersexualized images of women while behaving with them based on a forced illusion that they are exhibiting other aspects of being human besides sexuality. The images of women in the fashion industry and in the media at large strongly act to eliminate or hide every aspect of women's humanity besides their sexuality. I think this latter point is hard to deny.

Dan Nissenbaum

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Couldn't they have had a picture of a guy in a trench coat furtively entering a 42st Adult bookstore. Did we really need to see some homely kid on a toilet seat. This is the kind of thing that earn the left so much opprobrium.

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I think advertising and constant marketing through sex might be to blame here. Society as a whole is much more sexualized than when I was growing up in the early 60s.

What I think *might* be happening is that sex is now used to sell us everything and as a result:

1) men, who are probably more sensitive to visual sexual stimulation than women, are *constantly* being stimulated. A person can't drive down the street in the U.S., or turn on TV, or read a magazine or a newspaper, without constantly having naked or near naked women shoved in their faces.

I remember reading an account by a man who went to Nicaragua after the revolution to help with the harvest, and after a month there, noticed that his sex drive, which had been driving him crazy with frustration, was no longer so frustrating. He felt "normal", just not driven nuts by it. Maybe it was the hard physical labor he was doing, but he himself thought it was that the Sandinistas had banned overtly sexual billboards. He remarked that the frustration immediately started up again when he got back home.

2) As a result of any kind of constant exposure, people become resistant. Naomi Klein and others have talked about how advertising companies are very worried because people have developed a resistance to traditional advertising strategies and so now ads have to be much more creative, they're frantically working on product placement in movies & TV, etc.

I wonder if it's not a matter of on the one hand having the horniness level always on high, while at the same time needing more and more stimulation to get off.

BTW, whether it causes extremes in porn or not, I think constantly stimulating men with sexual ads is a very cruel thing to do to men. I've had a lot of conversations with men who talk about how frustrated they feel, how it's NOT necessarily a good, nice feeling to be horny all the time, especially if you have no one to have sex with. I've met men in their late 30s and 40s who have expressed relief that they are no longer thinking every 3 minutes about sex.

The answer to the porn problem then, assuming that it really IS a problem and porn is getting way degrading, might be to limit sex in ads, while continuing to NOT censor porn, keep the strip clubs open, etc.

I don't have a problem with sex work, per se. What makes me furious, though, is the way one of the most beautiful and basic things in life gets turned on us to make profits for corporations. Despite what the Supreme Court has said, I *don't* think corporations have the same rights to free speech as individual human beings. I'd LOVE to see laws passed restricting sex in advertising, especially billboards, as well as laws prohibiting advertising of alcohol and cigarettes except in very special situations.

The other answer, of course, would be to make sure that people in the sex industry (as others have pointed out, many men are in porn and prostitution too) are unionized, and have proper on-the-job protections. You'd be surprised at how little many of these folks are paid.

I'd like to see the establishment of red-light districts where those who want strippers or hookers or sex shows, whatever, can go and have those desires satisfied. I'd like to see these districts controlled by the people who work there, so we don't wind up with just another set of Mustang Ranch type brothels while people are prohibited from working for themselves.

Again, I'm not entirely sure we have a problem, but I have heard from a lot of folks that porn has gotten much more extreme, and sex workers in porn are really pushed to do more and more things that ultimately are damaging to them. I don't know how great a percentage of porn that actually comprises, but I don't want to see anyone who does this work hurt.

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Porn is just the reflexion of the social circumstances its consumers are living in: dependence, exploration, abuse, humiliation are natural conditions of our industrial lives, because the structure of companies and adminstration we are working in and depending on isn't democratic at all.

As every mirror image, pornography is mirror-inverted somehow. To find out how the projection works may be the most interesting question, because it tells most about our actual condition.

My guess is that women appear as objects of abuse because their nature has never been fully compatible to "male" capitalism. Feminity though may be a main force of a dawning new era, but for now has to "suffer" simbolicly for the currently dissatisfying circumstances. For this kind of humiliation, which place could be better than the shows of a industry which produces nothing but the pretention of satisfaction?

May be it is the destiny of everey upcoming social force, as long as they are not strong enough to rule themselves: Their first role is to play the scapegoat for the failure of those still in power, as at the same time they are constantly told by the old forces: See, you'll never make it!

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To me there is no difference between a woman in the porn industry and a male professional athlete: they are both two dimensional objects used to entertain the masses and thrown away when finished. (And, no money is not fair compensation for such degrading and destructive treatment.) So, for me, it is not an issue of one gender dominating the other, but that our society and culture as a whole is losing it's dignity and self esteem.

Porn is how a declining culture diminishes women; gladiatorial events are how a declining culture diminishes men. The only issue is that we are declining.

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Vagina Monologues is NOT porn. It empowers women and encourages them to be comfortable with their own sexuality. Yet it gets lumped in with porn by prudes. The having women cover up and not talk about their bodies and fear sexuality is also a form of hatered towards women. I see it as more dangerous than sexy lips on Bratz dolls. It creates a culture of silence and shame.

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Considering there's nothing new here, this article takes up alot of space. Sex has been under a microscope for decades. Like many other things it's being talked to death. All this analysis will make sex boring like lots of other things that people used to enjoy. We're ruining another good thing. Thanks, ANNA

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"You'll get my Digital Video Camera when you pry it from my cold dead fingers" Max Proctor Home Grown Adult Videographer

My girlfriend and I have been making and selling gang bang and sex party DVDs and contributing content to "amateur" adult sites for 7 years. We make very good money for a part-time fun business. She's 39, has paid for a boob job, car, half a house by having pictures taken of something she was doing before anyway. She's been into group sex since college, enjoy multiple penetrations and all that you assume is degrading is to her raucous fun. She's naturally exhibitionist and has weird ideas of what gets her off. You ought to see the one where she rides a champagne bottle and sucks 3 guys off. The pumping up and down causes the open bottle still full to explore in and all over her - as of last week we have directly sold over 1000 home made copies at $25 7 years ago she would have blown the 3 guys just for the face full.

Look at Carol Cox, now a millionaire with her Canadian porno empire! She was just a local slut that used the net to enjoy herself for millions.
See REDCLOUDS all "amateur" 1000s off contributors worldwide.
Porn to the PEOPLE!

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I think this article has generated more than 300 comments because it shows what Jensen's ultimate message is--women and men are now and will always be at odds with each other because of what we are taught about gender roles and characteristics. Porn--whether it is mainstream stuff or this newly popular gonzo amateur horror show--innately has the same underlying messages for both genders. It is growing in popularity because men and women are so polarized from one another. Instead of seeing the sameness in our humanity, we attack each other's differences. I don't think Jensen or Pamela Paul (author of "Pornified") are saying that porn censorship is the answer. They are asking us to stop watching porn for a minute and contemplate how this multi-billion dollar media conglomerate is affecting our lives with one another and, most importantly, how it will affect the future lives of kids actually growing up on an Internet porn diet. If things are bad now between men and women, imagine 25 years from now. You don't have to ban porn, although it could be regulated much better. If you are a couple who enjoys porn together or makes porn together, then I hope you are happy. But, not all of us feel that porn is the best and only way or means to an enjoying, fulfilling sex life. To me, if human sexuality and all its possibilities and complications is likened to an iceberg, porn is just the very tip of that giant piece of ice. I don't want to follow a porn script in order to have a hot sex life. I know there's more to sex than that. That said, if you actually think that the biggest media industry--bigger than all other media put together--is not having an affect on the real people that buy into it, then you aren't paying close enough attention.

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Neither Jensen nor Hazen, I gather, has any inclination to watch it. But if they did, they would find men treating *men* in the same way women are treated in the alternative genre. I don't know what this fact does to the thesis of Jensen's book, but a fact it is and should be acknowledged.

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Here are the roots:
Prison/Slavery
foul...rampant...unchecked:

KimBuchananImpunityArticle
ISHappening in Our Country..Prison Rape
And of course exported:
IRAQ
To really get the FULL force of what is being carried out in IRAQ...you should advanced search Google 'rape' , 'girl' , ''tear' and 'secondary' as words and as an EXACT phrase:
''abu ghraib'. It is the 'Hampton Roads Independent Media Coalition' result that you want...its description starts out with
.."An 11-year-old-girl.." You will have to select the CACHED copy...
This stuff has been tolerated in the American racist gulag
prison system for decades. As long as the victims were WOC and/or white women of marginal financial resource or social
status..nobody gave a shit...it was a big joke. Read thru that
'CACHED' material...if you can stomach it....and having done so...don't ask any more 'dumb shirt' 'why-oh-why'..'how can this be' questions about American porn....

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For Jensen, masculinity must fit in with his worldview of man’s inhumanity to man and so he dredges the sea bottom of the porn purveyors in order to pull up the scum he needs to bolster is own nefarious notions. And Gonzo films do it for him.

I think Jensen should widen his peep hole, pal around with a wider circle of pornoholics. Ask Pee Wee Herman if he can sample from his selection. I seriously doubt the general patrons of porn are any different than you or me who have normal, healthy relationships with our better halves unless, of course, we are alone, dick in hand, taking it out on her!

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"If pornography is increasingly cruel and degrading, why is it increasingly commonplace instead of more marginalized?"

That's ONE kind of pornography. If you go out on the net seeking the "cruelest" sick shit, guess what? You're going to find it. As if pornography and sexual deviation are some new phenomenon. Please.

Not one word about soft pornography, which is at least half of the industry. No one even touching anyone else, just a revealing of beautiful bodies. Even as you unfairly attack Playboy, which is strictly soft-porn, this is a dishonest and completely skewed (hysterical?) presentation of the porn industry. You have attempted to smear the entire concept because of a guilt by association logical fallacy.


"People routinely assume that pornography is such a difficult and divisive issue because it's about sex. In fact, this culture struggles unsuccessfully with pornography because it is about men's cruelty to women, and the pleasure men sometimes take in that cruelty."

More hysterical generalization that just doesn't match reality. Most (hard) porn IS sex, and IS just consenting adults having pleasurable sex. What you're trying to present as the majority is quite a small minority of deviants who get off on that sort of thing. This is a dishonest article for that reason.


"The values that drive the slutbus also drive the larger culture."

Says you. Lacking evidence.


"The editorial director of Playboy, who says that his company has "an emphasis on party," tells potential advertisers: "We're in the mainstream."

And they do some better investigative reporting than Alternet.


"First, imagine what we could call the cruelty line -- the measure of the level of overt cruelty toward, and degradation of, women in contemporary mass-marketed pornography. That line is heading up, sharply."

It's easier to find, a la the Internet. If that's what you're looking for, you will find it.

In the past that sort of thing was hard to find and underground (S&M).


"How do we explain the simultaneous appearance of more, and increasingly more intense, ways to humiliate women sexually and the rising popularity of the films that present those activities?"

Because any idiot with a camcorder can go into the business. Any moron with a computer can watch it. Is this so subtle that it's a mystery? It's also created and marketed all over the world, and not just our "culture." This is a global phenomenon with global reach. If you haven't considered the global implications of the Internet yet, why are you writing such drivel?


"This is a culture with a well-developed legal regime that generally protects individuals' rights and freedoms, and yet it also is a strikingly cruel culture in the way it accepts brutality and inequality."

True, as all western cultures have been since they started colonizing other peoples. This is an old story, and better presented in our acceptance of war criminals running the nation, than in dishonestly trying to pretend the "cruel" pornographers are poised to take over the nation.

John Doraemi publishes Crimes of the State Blog (no hystrionics, just the facts)
http://crimesofthestate.blogspot.com/

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This commentary on porn is a commentary on the denigration
of women.....we give you birth, we are your mothers, sisters,
aunties, etc.....I am woman, womb of humanity, womb of my
son...It is this woeful inadequacy and lack of capacity to LOVE
that makes true love impossible....I gave up relationships w/
men 20 years ago...I had a wonderful husband....but, he lost
me when he had a 5 minute fling w/ my uncle's wife, while I
was setting up our new apt...he went w/ her to pick up the last
of our things....I felt it happening before I ever looked at him when he got back...I have never loved like that again, nor am
I interested in any "love" which seems to be, as this porn article clearly shows....sex is not making love, and it does not
engender LOVE!! I have felt saddened by this great proliferation of pornographic SPEAK & ACTION...This is a sad
commentary on the state of life for women, and reveals a great resentment of mother, woman, wife....I mother and care for others, but, I have no desire to have a man in my life as partner....two of my best friends were gay men, one was very funny & a loyal & sensitive man...the other was an artist,
they were both great friends and very loyal, sharing, caring,
etc......as for the rest, I have plenty of people of both sexes
who enjoy life, conversations of politics, love, mysteries of life....I'll keep these to me, even tho some are long gone...Count me as one who finds anything that shines with love & understanding, and respect!! For couples who like sex v. making love to one you have care & feeling for, I find there must be something very lacking inside oneself....indeed, porn
strikes like a hot poker, that love is the part of this that has
been lost....sexuality shared w/ love is never porn..."making love & peace" is sublime!!

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Why is anybody shocked? This is the USA, you stab'em, we slab'em. 500.00 Iraqi children can die in Iraq because of sanctions, And Madeline Albright can say it was worth it. Face it, man. We are a CRUEL people!

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I'm certainly not surprised by anything in this article, although I don't watch porn. It's no secret that the majority of men view women as receptacles to be used and tossed aside. It's no secret that we live in a culture that gets high on torture, degradation, and abuse. It's practically enshrined in this country, to treat people badly whenever you're in a position to get away with it. You don't have to watch porn to see that - all you have to do is watch Reality TV, and the news. Being a woman means being viewed as less than human. This has been true for my entire life. I'm treated like I exist for no other purpose than to provide sexual release for males. I look forward to the day I will be too old to even look at - although I realize, due to the rapes of elderly women, that day may never come. It seems it doesn't even matter how unattractive a woman is - sexual harrassment never ends.

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Not all the women in the porn industry choose to be there. Let's not forget millions are trafficked every year across boarders and forced into the industry. If there wasn't a demand for this sickness women and children wouldn't be abducted and exploited.
http://www.humantrafficking.org/updates/498

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Most of us end up in jobs by taking account of our realistic qualifications and then leveraging one of them into a position where we can maximize our potential pay. Personally I've been in retail management for years and it's no different than being fucked in the ass while being filmed. As for the girls that get dumped off the Bangbus with no pay, rest assured that they were sent to this jobsite by an agency and they not only were better paid than you and me, but the agency made a percentage as well. It's the bangbus girls that are laughing at us for paying them the same amount for one hour of work that the rest of us make in a week! Welcome to the side of the road.

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with out cheap energy many societal problems would not exist.

http://video.google.com/videosearch?num=10&so=0&q= A+Crude+Awakening+- +The+Oil+Crash+duration%3Amedium&start=0

good luck, get out of debt, go off grid, buy silver coins

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One in 4 women experiences sexual abuse before the age of 18. Children who are sexually abused are often "groomed" by sex offenders to be compliant, keep secrets and "care for" their abuser. A childhood of sexual abuse is often a precursor to involvement in the sex industry and pornography as adults, the female thinks " I am already damaged goods and this is what I am good at and valued for" The sexual exploitation of females and female children is an epidemic in our society, porn is just a sad reflection of our every day reality. The men who victimize children or rape women tend to be immature, lacking in self-esteem, fearful, insecure and are unable to sustain loving, healthy adult realtionships. What does this say about the men who consume this sicko porn?

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The subject of anal sex deserves a book of its own.
The gay subculture sociologists and physicians who treat gays are well aware of the statistical detrius of anal sex. Yet heterosexual anal sex is implicitly more healthy? Its the same orifice whether female or male and simply the wrong bung. In addition to AIDS, anal sex eratta include inumerable fungus, bacterial and parasitic micro flora and fauna that go way beyond the dangers of vaginal and oral sex.

Why is AIDS, for example, a heterosexual plague in Africa? Your county health nurses will tell you. Anal sex is commonly practised as a means of birth control. Whole gernerations are being lost in Central Africa, as we are generally aware. What epidemiology we are not aware of yet, are the increased mortality rates in the US due to heterosexual anal sex. Current porn is promoting anal sex as normative to unsuspecting adolescents. What used to be called' fudge packing' by the homosexual 'bashers', begs attention in the degradation of women by the sexually insecure. Authors Hazen and Jensen could do better by paying more attention to health effects of things mentioned in passing like anal immediately followed by oral sex. Public health is a compelling issue for Hazen to cite in his apologies. Tragedy is masquerading as passion.

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I'm deeply troubled that an Alternet editor would be willing to compromise on something as fundamental as free speech in order to deal with a problem as trivial as extreme pornography.

1. Decades ago, a friend of mine showed me his dad's collection of hard-core porn mags. Double penetration and all the rest of the really ugly stuff were well-represented. Subsequent exposure to magazines left lying around in factory offices over the years indicate that this is anything but a new trend. Like incidents of wife abuse, the problem isn't so much that there's more of it, but that we're more aware of it.

2. As soon as you get on that "slippery slope" away from the First Amendment, a lot of very rich, very powerful, very motivated people, corporations and governments who stand to profit from "bringing sanity to the violent anarchy of free speech" (or however they choose to sell it) will ensure that you never, ever get it back again.

Why do you think the Iraq invasion was so easy to sell? It's because the people who profit from such things took a long look at how TV news brought Viet Nam home to America and ended the war. They decided that it would never be allowed to happen again, and have very successfully whipped the news media into line.

3. The word is straitjacket, not "straight jacket"; strait, as in narrow and confining.

4. Nobody on any side of the debate wants to admit that a lot of women get involved in porn because they'd rather have sex on camera for good money than get screamed at and harassed by a jerk boss for a few bucks an hour, then go to their night job, where they serve drinks to creepy old men who "accidentally" brush up against them at every excuse. And get screamed at and harassed by another jerk boss.

5. I simply cannot understand how anyone with a working brain can buy into the argument that something as one-dimensional as pornography can drive a whole culture to any meaningful degree. If that were the case, the level of violence routinely spewed out by American network television would be reflected in similar levels of violence in both the United States and Canada (more than 90% of the Canadian population lives within range of the major U.S. broadcasters). This is manifestly not the case. The two societies remain profoundly different.

Yes, there are lonely, pathetic individuals who define their relationships in terms of their porn collection. Those people are not the norm. Remember "snuff" films, and how they were supposed to represent a horrible new social trend? Don't you wish you'd given up your First Amendment rights to deal with them, as some at the time suggested?

Quit trying to kill a fly with a sledge hammer. Leave the First Amendment alone.

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Thanks for the review, it's important to to talk about porn in this way. I am not surprised to see so many men in the comments, scrambling to defend their porn and put down anyone that points out the problems with it. As the article says, porn isn't about sex. It's about hurting and degrading, about torturing women and the fantasy that women enjoy being hurt. You should be asking yourselves why you feel the need to defend it, why is it so important to you to try to convince yourselves that it is harmless?
Many like to claim "porn has been around forever and there's nothing you can do about it." Murder has been around forever, too, but as a species we do try to rise above our murderous impulses, and contain those who can't. We don't throw up our hands and surrender to the inevitability of murder, we shouldn't surrender to porn, either.

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"Men watch porn because it's fun, it's convenient, and because sometimes it's the only thing that will take away the pain of the emptiness it creates." - From the book "Men Fake Foreplay; and Other Lies That Are True" by Mike Dugan

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Is that wrong..?


Who cares..!

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Let's analyze this - first of all, lumping all "porn" into a single category that "degrades women" is idiotic and superficial. There are many kinds of sexual expression in print and film, and probably the vast majority does not involve "degradation" unless you accept the extremist view that "lusting" after a woman's body is "degrading". This view is essentially no different than any other puritanical ideology. Of course, some porn doesn't even involve women - it's called gay male porn, and often involves sadomasochistic fantasies. Is that degrading too? Or are we just talking about male-female relationships? Second, so called "porn", which is a loaded word anyway, is so perennially popular because it relates to undeniable primitive urges, not intellectual ones. It feeds on these primal urges, and like our primate ancestors, we have genetically programmed animal instincts which involve aggression, domination, and submission. We can attempt to repress these, but like Prohibition, it won't work. It creates hopeless Republican neurotics and liberals like Don Hazen who think we must keep it all bottled up lest some of it go too far. Like football, "porn" can function as a wonderful safety valve for aggressive fantasies which have their root in the unconscious mind. Now of course, there must be limits. Films that involve nonconsensual activity (or even consensual activity that results in irreparable harm) must be illegal. I have no problem with that. But to suggest as Dworkin and others have that we somehow don't have a need to dominate or submit, to be aggressive in our sexual impulses, is purely wishful thinking on their part. Perhaps THEY don't have the need, but don't force the rest of us to comply with their vanilla viewpoint. Early sex education, making children aware, particularly boys, who are not the same as girls on account of an entirely different hormonal makeup, that they are subject to potentially aggressive fantasies and helping them deal with, rather than suppress, their animal desires, is the only sensible way to prevent aggressive fantasies from being twisted into criminal aggression.

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So much of porn is glamourized rape! When you look at most state laws for sexual assault definition of sexual assault includes humulation of the woman. As described in the article, all the acts are acts of power by the male to humilate and victimize the female.

Women who watch porn are conned to believe that "sexual" acts such as this are normal. As women and men watch porn more and more even on Late night Cinemax, they will feel it is more acceptable and will be more open to participating.
In reality, women find these "sex" acts to the contrary or glamour that is portrayed on film and on the net. Many woman are devestated afterwards.

There are more men in the correction systems accross the country for sex crimes than ever before. The rise of porn is a major contributor. This is a complex issue that needs lots of attention. It does not just affect women. Our men are becoming more angry and more misogynistic. Our prisons are filling with viont repeat sex offenders!

Porn desensitizes the viewer and encourages violence. There is no such thing as "soft-porn" anymore.There are more and more sex addicts as a result of porn on the net. Time to look at porn in a new light.

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One reason why Dworkinites are not trusted is their general disregard for the truth.

No, Nina Hartley is not a "former" porn star. She is currently making and starring in the adult film and video industry, now in her 24th year in the adult film and video industry. She has been a member of the National Organization for Women and a life-long feminist in general.

Jensen claims to "respect" her voice (yeah, right!) but privileges the views of other, non-feminist sex workers over hers. Jensen claims to be a man of the Left, yet automatically rejects the views of Hartley, a socialist.

Jensen is supposed to be a professor of media studies, yet royally screws up the definition of the gonzo genre. "Gonzo" porn is not wall-to-wall sex - it is sex where the performers openly acknowledge the presence of the audience and the camera, thereby changing the interplay between the viewer and the viewed. This was adapted from the concept of Gonzo coined by renowned journalist Hunter Thompson, who was pro-porn himself and worked for the Mitchell Brothers in San Francisco before his career took off. [The Mitchell Brothers made the classic "Behind the Green Door"].

Porn where there is no narrative but just sex acts is called "Wall-to-Wall", not gonzo. Jensen writes as if he never heard of Hunter Thompson.

Jensen's descriptions of porn have to be challenged . His description of a Vivid feature, "Delusional" was dissected on the Pro-Porn Activist blog. In it, he ignored scenes where the man performed cunniligus on the woman and where every sex act they performed was a result of her stated request.

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obviously the article and possible the book seriously simplifies what porn is. i have no way of refuting the claim that porn is becoming more degrading to women. if it is, i think that is "bad." S&M aficionados of both sexes aside.

what i am more interested in is the connection to the theme of the "end of masculinity." if what American masculinity (which i agree to be fucked up) simply boils down to subjection and domination (which i think is another irresponsible simplification) HOW do we END this? what i get from this article is: "some porn is degrading to women and, if you're not into gross things, it is gross, and that it is somehow connected to men being big tough guys."

hazen (or jensen) write that porn reflects...

"the logic of domination and subordination that is central to patriarchy, hyper-patriotic nationalism, white supremacy, and a predatory corporate capitalism."

you HAVE to flush this out and qualify and explore it. this is the last paragraph of the article. it should be the first one and it needs to have more specific examples besides the fact that america goes to war (as pretty much all powerful countries (hypermasculine or not) have done throughout history) and movies are becoming more violent. i think there is some merit to this statement but it is pretty basic essay-writing procedure to prove your main theme, rather than just state it.

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I'd like to see some real evidence to back the claims in this article because I have plenty of first hand knowledge to the contrary.

I know 3 girls who have worked in real hardcore porn movies. They have done ass to mouth, group sex gangbangs, intense anal, ass licking, verbal abuse, ect. and not one of them was ever forced or felt uneasy about doing these things. One even jumped in to some of these acts on her first scene and wasn't phased at all. They do it for money and often times they enjoy it.

The more you think that women aren't just as perverted and up for abuse as men are......the more you miss the point of feminism completely. I've also met plenty of girls in my personal life who enjoy very rough and dirty (even demeaning sex) and gotten me more into these kinds of sex acts that I would have ever gotten from just watching porn.

Also, why do we never hear about these issues within gay porn circles? Why are the men degraded by men not on the same level as these poor porn starlets who have to do double penetration?

Because women are easy targets for feminists. Porn stars, strippers, and sex workers are easy targets and victims of moral outrage from people who should be supporting them. People who don't have the guts to take on the real problems in society, like the church, the institution of marriage, and how subcultures are just as bad as the heterosexual models they attack.


Sex isn't getting rougher. Do some research on the history of sex and human culture. It's jut that our generation is stripping away more and more of the context of the 50's and we're being vilified for it. It's a reflection of how one feels.

Keep politics out of the bedroom.

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"A few men who appear to be in their 20s drive around in a minivan with a video camera. They ask women if they want a ride. Once in the van, the women are asked if they would be willing to have sex on camera for money. The women do. When the sex is over, the women get out of the van and one of the men hands the women a wad of bills as payment. Just as she reaches for the money, the van drives off, leaving her on the side of the road looking foolish. There are trailers for 10 videos on the website. All appear to use the same "plot" structure."

If you took the time to actually ask a porn star you would know that these are all 100 percent staged. Everything is planned out well in advance and the girl agrees to all of it.

"But after three hours of information, analysis, and discussion of the commercial heterosexual pornography industry, many of these women are drained. Sadness hangs over the room."


Also why are you asking rape victims how they feel about porn? Isn't that like asking a burn victim how they feel about walking on hot coals? Of course they will be full of sadness on the topic.

And you bring up a good point, the reason none of these abuse/rape survivors can't match the stories of heterosexual porn is because PORN ISN'T RAPE! Even when it's porn about fake rape it's not rape at all. It's fantasy.

Rape is about power and has nothing to do with sex at all.

Porn is about sex and the fantasy of power.

How could somebody with so little understanding of the subject write an article on it?

Again, homosexual porn is just as bad (and if you'd done any research you'd know that) not to mention S&M torture porn.......but for some reason it doesn't get this critical eye that straight porn gets.

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Mr. Jensen's "radical" stand is actually ethical and compassionate. Another sign of a "real" man is fag-bashing...something which, as a gay activist, I often speak out against. Even here in "Gay Mecca" San Francisco, homophobia and misogyny are alive and thriving. Any man who admires the beauty of another male is at risk of violence or, at best, public disgust and derision.

I consider this pornographication of women to be horrific and an utter degradation of any society. And seems about to cross the line into popularizing snuff films. It is this commonly shared violence of male machismo which closely unites the cause of both women and sexual minorities. I have also come to the realization--after many years introspection--that worldwide violence (war, poverty, famine, slavery, etc.) will only come to an end, once homophobia is eradicated. Notice how much better a nation fares, when it comes to respect its own LGBT community: all other minorities (and females) win, too. Those nations would be most of Western Europe (especially Scandinavia and Holland), and the former British Commonwealth of Canada, New Zealand and Australia. In fact, it is the European Union pressing member-wannabes to cease their homophobic attitudes, as a prerequisite for joining their civilized network.

Social engineering is why we are constantly bombarded by heterocentric notions, in the media via movies, advertisements and most other entertainment and news. In fact, I propose renaming movie theaters "heterosexist indoctrination centers," to more accurately define their true purpose. This is a crude form of social engineering, though most effective. Turn off the machismo spigot, and watch how quickly bisexuality becomes the norm...and as a consequence, respect towards females and queers. Men will no longer feel pressured to produce unwanted babies simply to prove to the public, their manliness and non-gayness. They will no longer be coerced to threaten and bash queers to likewise prove their masculinity.

In fact, I believe that the very root of war is this subliminal current of machismo: all these red-blooded, infuriated males all riled up to fight any culture Uncle Sam perceives as "wimpy" and unamerikan. Just look at how redneck citizens view our European (and Canadian) allies: as a bunch of simpering faggots. Not shown in the mainstream news re. the war on Iraq, is our own soldiers scrawling homophobic graffiti throughout "enemy" territory. Of course, this exacerbates Arabs, because they have proven to be even more gay-hating than the USofA. And so it goes, round and round.

Gays are like the bonobos chimps of the human race. Distribute us in strategic places of government, and we'll really show you how to make love, not war. Brotherly (and sisterly) love. Homosexuals are the tempering force of society, and once we are allowed to breathe free, we will dismantle all forces that seek to rape, pillage, and otherwise decimate what goodness and joy exists in any culture. It's our nature.

But until societies across the world wake up to the very fact that resolving homophobia will also resolve male violence and war, we will continue down this sorry path of terror and Fascism. Even (with rare exception) our most liberal and progressive movements continue to trivialize the utter importance of gay liberation, to their own detriment, and to Amerika's, and the world's.

I nonetheless applaud those still way-too-few media/political/social outlets who are finally waking up, including AlterNet.org. Salud!

Sinqueerly yours,

Zeke Krahlin

--
Lavender-Velvet Revolution
http://www.gay-bible.org

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This is a real eye-opener, especially the final paragraph. A more apt caption would be "Porn and our culture of male violence." But it makes connections that are rarely acknowledged or understood between various forms of troublesome violence, especially our propensity for military aggression, sexual and spouse abuse and our media culture that glorifies violence.
The article highlights the need for psychological profiles of men who engage in and promote sexual exploitation and women who willingly submit to being degraded and abused.
What kind of mothering and fathering have they had, what kind of homes do they come from? What sort of porn films, magazines, websites were they exposed to as kids? They are not simply products of our culture but of certain kinds of parenting. This would be very useful information.

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Does all this really even matter? Don't we have bigger problems to focus on?

Anone who agrees to screw a stranger in a bus/van is a dumbass or a sex addict. They had it coming. But they are all acting anyway!!! Are people in horror movies really killing people?

Reading all this makes me see that nothing has changed.
These actions (women and men) in porn will do what they feel they can for the money they are offered... degrading or not. If they can't handle ATM then quit. When making it sometimes actors start laughing, joke around or totally lose balance and slip up....and even give each other stage directions of sorts. I'd like to see what more actors in the industry think about this article.

Porn is a gateway to fantasies. It's amazing what some women end up wanting to have done to them once in the bedroom. I don't know if they were traumatized when young or if they have had loving rewarding relationships but you'd be surprised how many women like the idea of double or triple penetration. Some even like to be dominated, slapped, yelled at...whatever. So to each their own.

Don't buy it or watch it if you can't handle it. But as Americans we are free to watch whatever bullshit porn, bad sitcoms, or dumb game shows we want. It's our own choice of fantasy!!

And if you don't agree with me...I don't care because this is such a waste of time. Changing porn is not going to change bad men or society. This has always been the case and nothing has really changed or will. Sorry.

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~~~S.O.S.~~~MayDay***
~~~"Suicidal thoughts, up since Katrina, PTSD survey says........"
------->>>"Suicide rate among girls skyrockets 76%, says Centers for Disease Control & Prevention"

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This article was provocative and interesting despite flaws in factual aspects pointed out by some commentors. Lots of good comments too, pointing out different aspects and dimensions of the issue which I see truth in all different sides of the issue. I'm glad this article was presented, it was a needed presentation of an issue that really has not been discussed in this particular manner for quite a while.

One thing that's gotten forgotten is corporate money in the role of porn. Now that TimeWarner and big Hotel chains make big profits of off porn on TV in people's homes and hotelrooms, the role of corporate profit in keeping this industry going is another factor to consider.

Is porn demeaning or destructive? I think the comments illustrated my view that is sometimes yes, sometimes no, and getting all this stuff 'out into the open' is the only way we're going to grapple as a society with dealing with abuses and allowing that which is not.

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" Life is difficult enough without knowing things like that, without having to face that one lives in a society in which no matter who you are -- as an individual, as a person with hopes and dreams, with strengths and weaknesses -- you are something to be fucked and laughed at and left on the side of the road by men. Because you are a woman."

Yes, and this society also has people who commit violence against children, start unnecessary wars, kill millions in genocide; a society where women kill their own children for no apparent reason. Yes, it is 'difficult' to live in such a society, but just because these things DO occur, it doesn't mean that all or even most of men or women do these things.

The above quote implies that ALL men treat women this way or are capable of it. I don't think so.

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Last time I went into a triple XXX video store, I saw more women customers than men. Second, I know several women who love to have cum shot on their faces. To them its a turn on.

Porn exists just like fetishes do, because for some people its a turn on. Not just for men, but for women as well.

As to your concerns for our society, Denmark, Holland and Japan have not succumbed to your fears.

A factor in its growth in our country may be more to do with the repression of sex in our society as influenced by the Puritans in history. Even today Europeans laugh at our censorship of a womans breast.

Michael Hansen
www.michaelhansen.us

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Sex is treated like a commodity. It shouldn't be.
Men and women do not run out of sex.
There is nothing precious about virginity...look at the labels we have used...A woman's honor...some nutty religious groups still treat this natural thing like it is something rare....it is just sex.
Men should see women as more than a collection of body parts and women should understand that men are programmed to focus on sex ... nature wants people to do one thing ...Have Sex.
Do it. Pornography,prostitution exist because of the dumb constructs people have put on sex.

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...pornography needs government regulation.

Like ANY industry, without regulation it runs on greed with no sense of 'decnecy'.

>>But what has become clear to me is that, under the guise of the First Amendment, a huge and powerful porn industrial complex has grown out of control.

Capitalism "works' because it is, and has always been, successfully regulated by government.

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"Pornography as a mirror shows us how men see women."

NO. Getting closer to the source:
Pornography as a mirror shows how men see themselves -- as unable to live up to the paradigm of masculinity.

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The author starts this piece by writing about "gonzo" porn as "the source of increased violence against and degradation of women."

Some statistics from the Department of Justice website (number of victims per 1,000):
Year___Rape___Violent Crime
1973___2.5____47.7
1980___2.5____49.4
1990___1.7____44.1
2000___0.6____27.4
2005___0.5____21.0

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Oh tremble, Amerika, you land of Moloch,
for you have greatly broken my covenant:
that you should speak for The Angel of Democracy
to every corner of the world.

What have you done, Amerika, spreading fear
of your own self (instead of love for freedom)
to every nation, to every person;
yeah, even unto your own citizens,
that they tremble so before you,
Oh Hand of Satanic Ruin?

Amerika, you are NO LONGER God's country,
for you have broken your covenant with me,
in a most grevious manner.
You have invented A NEW ARROGANCE which hubris
even I have never seen, nor Lucifer ever conceived;
in such unbridled malice of your own loyal
Homophile citizens, WHO ARE ALSO MY ANGELS!

Oh, Amerika, tremble now, for the hour has arrived:
for amber waves of grain to wither under a Great Drought,
for purple mountain majesty to shower pestilence
upon the fruited plain,
and for fiery whirlwinds to level your great cities
that lay parched of spirit and void of compassion.

My hetero Amerikans: return to your homes,
complacent in your gender supremacy,
believing that you are righteous
in your condemnation of homosexuals,
or in your tolerating these citizens
(as long as they don't demand equal treatment
under your laws).

Amerika-Moloch, you ARE hypocrite
unlike any other under the sun,
and your time in this age has come to a close.
You have sealed your own fate:
of a terrible Civil War of many deaths and unholy
destruction.
Vermont shall go insane with rabid homophobia
and rape herself into many pieces;
while Florida burns from political fires,
and sinks into the Atlantic,
her great smoky plume turning all of Mexico into midnight
for eleven dark months.

And all lands in between and west of these two raging
states,
shall likewise be consumed by plagues and madness
of myriad types.
The Great Mississippi shall overflow with the blood
of you hypocrites,
drowning many in your sleep;
and your towns shall stink of your children's putrifying
flesh.

---finis

--
Zeke Krahlin
(Jehovah's Queer Witness)
http://www.gay-bible.org

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... porn has been around since the first Cro-Magnon or Neanderthal took a pice of charcoal and drew a pussy on a cave wall.

Get over it.

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Correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't see discussion of less mainstream porn. What about bisexual, homosexual, or femdom porn, just to name a few. What does that say about masculinity?

I recall this website on anal sex that I googled. I can't recall it offhand, but it can't be that uncommon. But, the author in this guide said something, like having homosexual sex was a way to understand what woman have to endure everyday.

What kind of masculinity is this author trying to put across?

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I suppose then that gay porn is the only kind that should be allowed?

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Something for everyone, the list goes on!

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a reach-around is fair play?

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From my experience, men have a lot of anger at women. I don't think violent porn is the cause of this. This is how I see it. Men want contol. They want a woman how will be submissive and give in to their needs and desires. They do not comprehend that women have needs and desires. We are all blow up sex dolls to be discarded after sex. I get this from the men I've been with who consider themselves liberals. The only time the men in my life have treated me how I wanted to be treated was when it was over for me and I made that clear. I am fed up with the situation. At 44 I am ready to give up on men.

I embrace my sexuality, but I refuse to be treated as if I am only a body. As far as I can tell men all want a double standard where they are free to have multiple sexual partners, but a woman is trash if she has multiple partners. What they don't get is if they have multiple partners woman have to have them too. Men want a woman who will love them no matter what they do. They don't understand that loving someone is not the same as allowing abuse. Women need to stand up and not take it anymore. It is ok to be alone. I will be until I find a man who will treat me the way every person deserves to be treated. With love and respect.

Woman can live without sex. I'm not so sure men can. Women need to take back our power. Stop putting up with abuse. I took a training on Domestic Violence. I liked how the intructors worded the dynamics of why a woman accepts abuse. They said it is like being in a room where grains of sand fall. One barely notices the sand. Until one is burried too deep to get out. No one wants to be hurt. Woman need to teach themselves the warning signs of an abusive relationship and have a no tolerance stance to abuse.

As I said, It is ok to be alone. It is better than being abused.

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So men don't have to fool women into relationships when all they want is sex and woman don't have to get pregnant to try to trap them.....

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SUICIDE VACCINE
[It works, which is the only point, Eh?!]
http://CaptainChurch.proboards57.com
http://s2.excoboard.com/exco/index.php?boardid=24582
http://b4.boards2go.com/boards/board.cgi?user=ChurchCaptain
http://groups.google.com/group/TeenAnswers
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/BestTeenAnswers

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'Cos sex is the best thing in most peoples lives. It was said on a sex documentary on TV, so don't refer to it as "just" sex! After all would anybody give up sex altogether for 10 million dollars???? I rest my case!!!

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As much as this site continually wants to blame either men or corporations/rich this is a problem created by women. Women simply reinforce this behavior by rewarding it. How far does the nerd that respects women get with them? No where. How far does the asshole that treats women like meat get? Everywhere. This is where it starts, not porn. I have had buddies tell me to my face that they treat women like dirt because otherwise they would get nowhere with them. Time to stop with the blaming of everyone else and accept personal responsibility. Or admit that women secretly like this sort of treatment. Blaming others may make you feel better but in the end it doesn't solve any problems.

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But don't forget that love's a game......

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My personal belief is that males are HARD WIRED to seek out sexual encounters. No amount of careful reasoning, or sober logic will ever dissuade me of this position. It is simply the product of biological survival-forming. And women are in the unenviable position of (generally) playing defense.

I can understand how women might feel like men only see them as "things to be penetrated". Just as a cat sees a mouse only as a "thing to be caught". (There is nothing derogatory in this comparison: cats and humans are both mammals.) But consider for a moment that in physiological terms women ARE penetrated, and men ARE the penetrators. This puts men in a diabolically tenuous moral position: we don't aim to be aggressors, yet naturally we must behave as aggressors if we are to successfully sow our seed. On top of that, our brains are wired to release those delicious pleasure chemicals every time we contemplate sex.

This is all very biological and scientific etcetera, and some of you are no doubt tsk tsking, but don't for a minute think that we humans are more than a few cave paintings away from our evolutionary roots.

We are a civilization, true, and as such men (and women) must suppress their desires, and prevent themselves from acting out some of their fantasies. Enter: pornography.

SOME of the sex acts described are, in my modest opinion, unfairly characterized as degrading to women. I just don't agree with this. Some of these acts may, on the face of it, appear rather less than civilized, but since when is sex civilized??? Sex is a romp. Sex is a workout. Sex is, according to Seinfeld, "like a car accident". It is a releasing of energy. No, where some see degradation, I see an intense, fiery, passionate, and CONSENSUAL union of two people.

What next? Are we to become the Bush administration and redefine "sex" simply to meet our purposes?

But pornography has its darker side (show me something human-made that doesn't). Some people take things too far; they push the limits, get more extreme--as is done with everything--until the limits have been explored. Then we go back and reinvent ourselves; find new joys in other areas. How else do you explain the explosion of nude art and softcore erotic photography websites in recent years? Was this simply an untapped market all that time?

But what is this notion of humiliation? Obviously I don't form a part of the percentage of men who apparently find satisfaction in belittling a woman during sex, but that should not imply that the depiction of all sexual acts--pornography--is, de facto, humiliating. Nor should it imply that all men who may engage in those acts are, de facto, the humiliators.

The rise of "amateur sex" videos should give one pause. While not generally as extreme as some of the for-profit website porn farms, SOME of the sexual behaviors that have been vilified as degrading to women are apparently alive and well, and form what, by all appearances, looks to be a normal and healthy part of "real people's" sexual lives. I'm sure some of it is fake, but don't spin this and tell me it's all fake.

Again, this is a physiological reality: men can only ever appear as the aggressors, and women can only ever appear as the victims. The man is the "giver" and the woman is the "receiver". In some cases women truly ARE the victims, but my view is that in their quest for absolute and perfect equality (rightly so) women perceive the sex act itself--really, no matter what form it may take--as inherently degrading.

It's like going #2 in the bathroom--imagine the horror of someone walking in just as you were wiping? Would that not also be humiliating and degrading? I see these in the same light.

Consider: What if the woman was the "giver"? How would that change perception? Gay men could, indeed, enlighten us here.

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