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[quietann]

Some months ago, I posted a link to an article about feminism and so forth, that seemed to offend a lot of you. I hope that this one is better. It's about what "all porn all the time" availability has done to us. It's not terribly deep.... but rings true. Luckily my own personal life is much much better, and (relatively) untarnished by porn...

Teaser: "Is it the case that the relationship between the multi-billion-dollar porn industry, compulsiveness, and sexual appetite has become like the relationship between agribusiness, processed foods, supersize portions, and obesity? If your appetite is stimulated and fed by poor-quality material, it takes more junk to fill you up."

Comments

Junk Food for the Libido?

[marmota.livejournal.com]

A key difference being I have to eat regularly, or I'll starve and die. I don't have to get off regularly; if a few months go by without sex, I'm still fine. So, there are times a Big Mac makes sense. "Junk food sex" doesn't.
To stretch the analogy further, the article's musing on young women today striving to out-do porn stars in appearance and fashion, just to get some attention? That must work about as well as a five-star restaurant adding more sugar, salt, and grease in over to bring in the fast food crowd. A) Why would they want to, and B) what would they do once they got them? Hopefully the women described in this article will eventually realize that cheap whores make poor role models.

Most porn just gets me musing about it's target audience, or perhaps what the author or actors' lives must be like for them to waste time on such drivel. I say 'most', as there is the rare written example which, while still being porn, grabs me by having more to it's literary quality than mere prurience. And if it does titillate me, it doesn't make me want to read more or masturbate or pick up a stranger, it makes me want to hook up with someone I care about.

I'm far closer in age to the author of that article than to the twentysomethings she talks about, which is probably why I'm a bit puzzled. I, like the author and like you, grew up before porn was ubiquitous. Suburban convenience stores, at least the ones I frequented, didn't carry it (and as a horny high school kid, I certainly looked). I wonder what locker-room talk is like these days, now that it's not based solely on conjecture, but on whatever they recently downloaded.

I think there might be a parallel to how various social circles we know have drifted into more and more extreme expressions of alternate sexuality. I think there is something to the article's conjecture that when you keep escalating the threshold of expectation, you lose a lot of what once mattered. For another example of this trend, and what could happen if expressed too far too fast, read Connie Willis' short story, "All my darling daughters".

Re: Junk Food for the Libido?

[quietann.livejournal.com]

first... I think some people "fall into" looking at porn on the net the same way they fall into eating junk food on a regular basis. Most google searches come up with some porn links, and it's easy enough to be curious. Not to mention, every once in a while one's email address -- no matter who one is -- could get harvested by a porn spammer. For a while in 2001, I was regularly getting porn solicitations at my yahoo account, complete with full illustrations, sample links, etc. Thank ghu no one was around when I was going through my mail and suddenly was confronted by a nearly-life-size photo of a woman's (shaved) cunt. *if* I'd been a hormonal 18 year old, I might well have followed the link.

Also... if you've bothered to look recently, a lot of porn is not "cheap whores". The standards can be pretty high, at the very least WRT physical beauty. Speaking hypothetically here, if a guy comes to see porn models as "normal" or "expected" females, it could be pretty rough on the real females in his life.

Agreed, on the expectations bit at the end.

[lyonesse.livejournal.com]

uhh. there is a truly stunning lack of data presented in that article. real live naked people are still different from pictures of naked people -- even cheap, readily-available pictures of naked people. as somebody married to a twentysomething, i can say with great assurance that people of that generation are still responsive to the difference.

the whole thing strikes me as pretty thin tissue of reasoning. you may think it "rings true", but it doesn't have any investigative basis that might tell us whether or not it *is* true. the epistemology is just hollow, and that's how the article rings to me.

personally i suspect that the aids health crisis precipitated a lot more sex-avoidant behavior among young people than porn possibly could.

[quietann.livejournal.com]

um... I didn't give this link based on the quality of whatever "data" there are or are not out there about porn use... but porn *seems* a lot more ubiquitous.

WRT real live naked people vs. photos thereof... I think you may have missed or dismissed (more likely) a point NW was trying to make, which is that *photos* are much easier to deal with in some ways, and compared to the complexities of a real, live person, photos are certainly *easier*. Yes, that leads to loneliness and isolation and what have you, but for some people it might be better than the lottery of dating.

And yes, avoiding HIV might be behind a lot of this (though amongst young *gay* men, the HIV rates are going *up*)... having all the porn around would just make it easier to not even have to think about it.

[lyonesse.livejournal.com]

lack of data troubles me. sloppy epistemology leads to meaningless conclusions. it makes me nervous.

real live naked people are substantially more erotic to most folks than pictures thereof. this relationship does not disappear with the accessibility of smut. loneliness and isolation have *always* been easier than dating. but i have to say that when i was lonely and isolated, i did not personally find porn to be of any meaningful quantity of consolation. porn doesn't make a person think about sex or not think about sex -- sexuality is an endogenous drive, not an exogenous one. and frankly, i don't think that very many people find their sex drives well-satisfied by porn, even of the cheap and ubiquitous variety.

i do think that std concerns and general societal conservativism tend to support the supression of sexual behavior -- i saw data for that back at jhh. but i haven't seen the same effect of porn. i don't find the model presented compelling at all of itself -- i could equally well posit that porn *inspires* and *drives* sexual behavior, stimulating the imagination and thus the behavior. (i don't think that's true either, though.) and regardless, without any actual data, it's all just based in hot air.

[donnad.livejournal.com]

Having been in a relationship (many many years ago in another life) where my pertner could not get off when he was with me "in the flesh" but had no problems at all when he was looking at his magazines... I can agree with some of what is being said here.

But what bothers me is that the author seems to be lumping all into the same category. There are people out there, male and female, that like me find most porn so unrealistic it's hilarious.
The same thing about lumping all 20somethings into one category. There are some 20somethings, 30somethings or even 40somethings I am sure feel the same way.

I think much of it comes down to obsessive behaviors. I think that if one is prone to obsessive behavior they are more likely to be influenced by porn's image of the perfect woman(or man), And that would affect the way they relate to other potential partners.

[quietann.livejournal.com]

That is certainly an issue, see lyonesse's comments which are along the same lines (although I don't see how *her* anecdotal sample is any more representative than anyone else's).

I've never had a partner who preferred porn over me, although there was *one* who used to threaten me that way (literally -- he'd jack off to porn right in front of me to get under my skin when he thought I wasn't paying him enough attention! And to think I almost married the guy....)

And I did have one partner who was completely not into porn, but that may have been because he was legally blind, so the medium did nothing for him :) In fact, I am pretty sure that was the case, because he also had cerebral palsy which made him walk very clumsily, and mentioned "randomly crashing into women" when he was horny... And he always had a reasonably excuse ("Sorry, miss; I really can't see very well at all, and...") He was a sweet guy, but he didn't want to marry me (pout!)

[ommango.livejournal.com]

The article makes a couple of assumptions. One is that men are looking at porn. Women are too, although I think many women prefer stories versus pictures. It assumes that women have to compete with pornographic pictures for men's interest. That assumes women need men to feel sexually satisfied. Many can satify themselves and each other at times when no man is available or if they prefer it that way to begin with. It also implies that looking at photos of perfect women will satisfy men, and they won't want real sex. I don't think it is true, as I think men will want to have the real sex in addition to looking at photos or movies. Porn has been around for a long time, prior to the Internet, but the theory is that the Internet has made pornography ubiquitous. Maybe that is true.

Something my sweetheart brought up is his concern that Internet porn would make western ideas of what is beautiful more homogenous throughout the world. In India and developing countries larger body types are desired as fatter women have more wealth and are better fed supposedly, and therefore are objects of beauty. I have seen how formula and other American ideas (related to poplular culture) are spread throughout the world via TV, movies, and other ways. I think it could happen that skinny big busted blonde women become the world idea of what is beautiful. A great world would be one where we relate to the people inside the skins and let go of the fixation of the outside.

It was an interesting and thought provoking article- so thanks for pointing it out.