Slashdot Mirror
Pornified
stern writes "Pamela Paul’s Pornified surveys the effects of pornography in America. On the basis of the book jacket, this might seem more appropriate material for iVillage than Slashdot, except for one thing: pornography pervades the Internet and drives the adoption of new technologies. You can’t fairly tell the story of one without the other." Read on for the rest of Stern's review.
Pornified
author
Pamela Paul
pages
320
publisher
Times Books
rating
Worth reading
reviewer
Stern
ISBN
0805077456
summary
A study of the technology-fueled expansion of pornography and its effects on those who use it
Paul spoke with researchers and therapists, she surveyed the academic literature and commissioned her own study, and then, most remarkably, she tracked down more than 100 people who were willing to talk about their experiences with pornography. Men and women, detractors and fans, casual users and perverts. She arranges this material into chapters about how pornography affects men, on how it affects women, another on children, and so forth.
This is not a “gee whiz, look at all the dirty pictures” screed urging us to hang up our mice and go to church. It is more a summary of research than an opinion piece, and though the preponderance of the research presented is damning to pornography, defenders appear in most sections as well.
The book is remarkable in two ways. First, it presents a greater amount of hard data than I have ever seen on this topic before. Second, the interviews are amazing. Where does she find these people? The military man who masturbates by the side of the highway, the child porn addict who fantasizes about the girls he is teaching in Sunday school, the adult virgins with the almost clinically precise descriptions of what they expect in a woman (“I’m a big fan of full shaved,” etc.).
Pornified is worthwhile for this research and these stories, even if you disagree with the conclusions that Paul draws from them.
I found fascinating, for example, that a number of double-blind studies of the effects of pornography were completed over twenty years ago, but that the results were so damning that it has been difficult to follow up on them. The effects of dirty movies on the people who look at them were so profound that ethics boards at universities deny researchers the approval to show them to human subjects.
What are these effects? The book devotes chapters to this, and I can summarize only very briefly. For many people, porn has quasi-addictive characteristics, requiring escalation to maintain a constant level of stimulation. It dampens empathy, it changes expectations, and it damages relationships. The interviews in the book back this up; it contains example after example of people who started with modest porn searching online, then graduated to more heinous stuff.
And this is all about the Internet. Paul pays lip service to Playboy and smutty VHS tapes, but this is a story about X-rated websites, Usenet groups, and p2p file sharing.
Paul cites a study from 2000 that ties that the expansion of technological avenues for pornography to its growing more explicit, more dehumanizing, and more violent. In other words, alt.binaries.pictures.erotica was pretty tame. But then a.b.p.e.blonds and a.b.p.e.asians appeared, and these refined the expectations of their users, paving the way for the creation of a.b.p.e.bukkake and a.b.p.e.rape. And where the original newsgroup probably didn’t cause too much damage to anybody, the same can not be said for its increasingly brutal descendants.
Consider this — prior to the Internet, law enforcement believed that child porn had been basically wiped out. It was a crime from a previous age, like body snatching. But then came the Web. Between 1996 and 2004, child-porn cases handled by the FBI increased 23 fold. The research presented in Pornified argues that technology does not merely make it easier to serve an existing desire, it allows deep exposure that for many people results in stronger and more specific versions of the the original demand.
Paul presents most of this neutrally, but you can sense contempt for non-pornographic websites that link to porn sites, or endorse them. She doesn’t name any names, but the savvy reader will recognize Fark as one of her targets, and I suspect that Farkers figure among her interviewees.
Such “smut” can be defended, of course, and the book gives defenders their say. The obvious response is “porn has been around forever, so stop complaining that it is suddenly a threat to society.” But it seems to me that this response is disingenuous. You can’t compare an issue of Playboy and the Atari 2600 cartridge of “Custer’s Revenge” to the seamless infinity of smut that lives on the Internet today.
The second major response to the claims in this book follows the First Amendment. Regardless of harm, we must not start down the slippery slope of restricting access to objectionable material. Paul considers this, but her the book discusses concrete harm, and she argues that civil liberties are not absolute where one person’s rights hurt other people (not many argue for their right to cry “fire” in a crowded theater, for example).
Though Paul did not set out to explore the industry of porn production and distribution, in the course of her research, she did discover things I didn’t know. For example, she interviews one man who works in the oil industry and spends 25% of every working day surfing porn sites and submitting reviews to “porn aggregators” for a fee. It’s not about the money, though; he feels pride in his influence as a kind of porno tastemaker.
The material about pornography and children, and the chapter about sex addicts, were particularly strong.
Some of Paul’s interviewees play off the awkwardness of the topic, and one in particular starts something like a stand-up routine, criticizing the porn movies of the early 1980s for their lack of strong plotting. Personally, I thought it was funny that two women independently complained about the “cheesy... crappy” quality of black porn, relative to porn made for whites.
What’s bad? The topic is a difficult one, and perhaps impossible to approach without prejudice. Some readers will dislike Paul's conclusions and will dismiss the entire book as a result. Also, in the interviews, some stories leave out details the reader is bound to want to know. One of the interviewees is the “former CEO of a large international corporation,” who “lost his job due to pornography.” How? What happened? Did he dress in a leather teddy at a board meeting? The chapter about porn and relationships was less interesting to me than the rest, but your mileage may vary.
Paul comes to strong conclusions, and each reader will have to decide for himself whether or not he thinks her recommendations are wise. Her main goal, however, is probably to change the debate on pornography so that it is no longer simply about morality and free speech, but also includes a discussion of whether or not technology-fueled porn hurts people. In this regard, I think she is apt to be successful.
You can purchase Pornified from bn.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.
Paul spoke with researchers and therapists, she surveyed the academic literature and commissioned her own study, and then, most remarkably, she tracked down more than 100 people who were willing to talk about their experiences with pornography. Men and women, detractors and fans, casual users and perverts. She arranges this material into chapters about how pornography affects men, on how it affects women, another on children, and so forth.
This is not a “gee whiz, look at all the dirty pictures” screed urging us to hang up our mice and go to church. It is more a summary of research than an opinion piece, and though the preponderance of the research presented is damning to pornography, defenders appear in most sections as well.
The book is remarkable in two ways. First, it presents a greater amount of hard data than I have ever seen on this topic before. Second, the interviews are amazing. Where does she find these people? The military man who masturbates by the side of the highway, the child porn addict who fantasizes about the girls he is teaching in Sunday school, the adult virgins with the almost clinically precise descriptions of what they expect in a woman (“I’m a big fan of full shaved,” etc.).
Pornified is worthwhile for this research and these stories, even if you disagree with the conclusions that Paul draws from them.
I found fascinating, for example, that a number of double-blind studies of the effects of pornography were completed over twenty years ago, but that the results were so damning that it has been difficult to follow up on them. The effects of dirty movies on the people who look at them were so profound that ethics boards at universities deny researchers the approval to show them to human subjects.
What are these effects? The book devotes chapters to this, and I can summarize only very briefly. For many people, porn has quasi-addictive characteristics, requiring escalation to maintain a constant level of stimulation. It dampens empathy, it changes expectations, and it damages relationships. The interviews in the book back this up; it contains example after example of people who started with modest porn searching online, then graduated to more heinous stuff.
And this is all about the Internet. Paul pays lip service to Playboy and smutty VHS tapes, but this is a story about X-rated websites, Usenet groups, and p2p file sharing.
Paul cites a study from 2000 that ties that the expansion of technological avenues for pornography to its growing more explicit, more dehumanizing, and more violent. In other words, alt.binaries.pictures.erotica was pretty tame. But then a.b.p.e.blonds and a.b.p.e.asians appeared, and these refined the expectations of their users, paving the way for the creation of a.b.p.e.bukkake and a.b.p.e.rape. And where the original newsgroup probably didn’t cause too much damage to anybody, the same can not be said for its increasingly brutal descendants.
Consider this — prior to the Internet, law enforcement believed that child porn had been basically wiped out. It was a crime from a previous age, like body snatching. But then came the Web. Between 1996 and 2004, child-porn cases handled by the FBI increased 23 fold. The research presented in Pornified argues that technology does not merely make it easier to serve an existing desire, it allows deep exposure that for many people results in stronger and more specific versions of the the original demand.
Paul presents most of this neutrally, but you can sense contempt for non-pornographic websites that link to porn sites, or endorse them. She doesn’t name any names, but the savvy reader will recognize Fark as one of her targets, and I suspect that Farkers figure among her interviewees.
Such “smut” can be defended, of course, and the book gives defenders their say. The obvious response is “porn has been around forever, so stop complaining that it is suddenly a threat to society.” But it seems to me that this response is disingenuous. You can’t compare an issue of Playboy and the Atari 2600 cartridge of “Custer’s Revenge” to the seamless infinity of smut that lives on the Internet today.
The second major response to the claims in this book follows the First Amendment. Regardless of harm, we must not start down the slippery slope of restricting access to objectionable material. Paul considers this, but her the book discusses concrete harm, and she argues that civil liberties are not absolute where one person’s rights hurt other people (not many argue for their right to cry “fire” in a crowded theater, for example).
Though Paul did not set out to explore the industry of porn production and distribution, in the course of her research, she did discover things I didn’t know. For example, she interviews one man who works in the oil industry and spends 25% of every working day surfing porn sites and submitting reviews to “porn aggregators” for a fee. It’s not about the money, though; he feels pride in his influence as a kind of porno tastemaker.
The material about pornography and children, and the chapter about sex addicts, were particularly strong.
Some of Paul’s interviewees play off the awkwardness of the topic, and one in particular starts something like a stand-up routine, criticizing the porn movies of the early 1980s for their lack of strong plotting. Personally, I thought it was funny that two women independently complained about the “cheesy... crappy” quality of black porn, relative to porn made for whites.
What’s bad? The topic is a difficult one, and perhaps impossible to approach without prejudice. Some readers will dislike Paul's conclusions and will dismiss the entire book as a result. Also, in the interviews, some stories leave out details the reader is bound to want to know. One of the interviewees is the “former CEO of a large international corporation,” who “lost his job due to pornography.” How? What happened? Did he dress in a leather teddy at a board meeting? The chapter about porn and relationships was less interesting to me than the rest, but your mileage may vary.
Paul comes to strong conclusions, and each reader will have to decide for himself whether or not he thinks her recommendations are wise. Her main goal, however, is probably to change the debate on pornography so that it is no longer simply about morality and free speech, but also includes a discussion of whether or not technology-fueled porn hurts people. In this regard, I think she is apt to be successful.
You can purchase Pornified from bn.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.
Sure, you told your parents that you have them for computer games, but come on - we all know why they have both advanced so quickly.
"Rocky Rococo, at your cervix!"
yeah, sure, wasn't it for tons of popups suddenly opening up and showing some rather grotesque cumshot scenes in front of your momma, popup blocking wouldn't catch up.
yay for pr0n as a new techs driving force!
I don't feel like it...
This is a bit offtopic, but I gotta ask...
[Porno] drives the adoption of new technologies
Other than VCR/DVD/Internet (video in general), what other technologies has Porno driven? We see people say it here on the Slashdot forums quite often, but I wouldn't say its a large number of technologies if I can count the list on one hand.
Maybe I haven't visited enough porno sites to know?
I'd like to know what technological breakthroughs were driven by Porn? Cameras weren't developed originally for Porn. Scanners weren't developed for Porn. Image viewers weren't originally developed for Porn. I find that to be the epitimy of Bullshit. Most of the continuing development of Computers happen to be for Highly Intense mathmatics. Video Games for instance are probably more of a driving force in technology's improvement than Porn! I can render all the porn I want on my DNS/Mail/Server. It happens to be running Linux and is only a 300 mHz pII. Yes it's old, and may take longer to render a picture than my Desktop, (1.8GHZ) but it'll never be able to run say Medal of Honor. Never! I just find that comment as ludicrous! Does anyone agree with me on this?
Generation Trance: What generation are you?
one man who works in the oil industry and spends 25% of every working day surfing porn sites and submitting reviews to porn aggregators for a fee.
Oil man's coworker: "Does anyone else smell Astroglide?"
All this talk about how bad pron is makes me scratch my head. I understand that there is validity to a lot of the statements. But personally, I'm more worried about how quickly we had gangs of thugs running through New Orleans. Which is the whole point of the subject line. Europe has a very liberated sexuality. America does not. Perhaps there is some causation to Americas reaction to porn because of the cultural stigma attached to sexuality.
Correlation does not equate to causation.
"The bass, the rock, the mic, the treble. I like my coffee black, just like my metal" - Mindless Self Indulgence
anyone else remember that when you d/l'd porn line by line at 9600 you could see that the top line in a trinitron monitor usually lined up with the nipples on a full body shot?
Remember, when Bram wanted folks to test BitTorrent, he put up a porn flic -- he knew there'd be enough who'd want to get it that they'd download and install BitTorrent, and then wait for the porn to (maybe) download.
I bet porn leads to people installing lots of software, good and bad.
http://www.thebricktestament.com/the_law/when_to_
The review was in a reasonable tone and focused mostly on the data, so why did it provoke such a firebreathing response?
You're seriously joking right? This "review" was a biased advertisement stroking the right-wing conservatives egos that their missionary-position bi-monthly sex acts are acceptable and even encouraged while their co-workers' healthy and exciting sex life is deviant and unacceptable.
There is NOTHING worse than reading that someone else finds that your exciting sex-life is "bad" because you are a bad person.
Keep the right-wing ideals out of site and off of Slashdot.
On the basis of the book jacket, this might seem more appropriate material for iVillage than Slashdot
/. readership usually welcomes any story that lets them post countless old porn jokes and anecdotes about how they can never get laid.
No, I'm pretty sure the
What are these effects? The book devotes chapters to this, and I can summarize only very briefly. For many people, porn has quasi-addictive characteristics, requiring escalation to maintain a constant level of stimulation. It dampens empathy, it changes expectations, and it damages relationships.
You might say the same things about many other non-porn things, like eating, or gaming, or dieting, or exercising, or anything pretty much. Some people are going to react in funny ways to anything. I've never heard of anybody that takes a stand against dieting, but there are many people with eating problems (anorexics, bulemics, etc) out there. To me, personally, this just looks like someone with religiously imposed morals trying to get their way.
The well-adjusted folk of the world who can look at porn, play violent video games, and eat fatty foods without going overboard and ruining their lives wish that everybody else would just get a freaking grip already.
-Jesse
Nothing says "unprofessional job" like wrinkles in your duct tape.
"The book is remarkable in two ways. First, it presents a greater amount of hard data than I have ever seen on this topic before."
i bet.
...because you never know who you're dealing with.
FTR: "I found fascinating, for example, that a number of double-blind studies of the effects of pornography were completed over twenty years ago, but that the results were so damning that it has been difficult to follow up on them (emphasis mine)
WTF? I was always told it would make me go blind, but how much did they have to do it to go double-blind?
"Trolls they were, but filled with the evil will of their master: a fell race..." -- J.R.R. Tolkien on Olog-hai
For one, I bet that before the internet, the FBI simply wasn't aware of child pornography trafficking, maybe because of lack of resources, or infiltrants, etc. It's a lot easier to network up pedophiles on the internet, and trafficking is probably less riskier over the internet than postal mail or commercial delivery services. Maybe that's the point they're making, but I doubt that availability of child pornography makes more pedophiles.
Secondly, I think internet porn is so pervasive, it's rediculous to talk to addicts, etc. and say this is what porn is doing. It's hard enough to get some suburban dad to admit to digital pornography use, esp. to a stranger. If you interview weirdos, of course you will get a biased sample.
Computers are useless. They can only give you answers.
-- Pablo Picasso
Back in 1991 or thereabouts, a friend of mine went to college at UCSC, where he was opened up to a whole world of new and amazing computing paraphernalia. We had previously both been computer geeks -- I on an Apple ][, he with a Kaypro, and both later on IBM PCs -- but this was the first time he had really been exposed to Unix, X terminals, big servers, fast Internet, and the like.
... all of these things have been pushed forward by the public's seemingly insatiable demand for porn. I'm not saying porn caused these things to be invented, though I suppose that's possible in some cases. I'm saying that people who sell porn make money, and they spend that money on technology, and in so doing they advance the technology industry. And I believe they do it to more of a degree than you realize.
I remember talking on the phone with him one time in particular, when he told me about the NeXT box they had down there. Now, at the time, NeXT hardware was amazing. 'Nuff said. We all wanted to fool around with these things. I thought he was a lucky bastard to be at a university that actually had one.
"What are they using it for?" I asked him.
"Not much, really," he said. "The hard drive's pretty much just full of porn."
I mention this not just because it makes me chuckle, but because at the time it didn't surprise me at all. And it still doesn't. Throughout my experience with computers, and in particular the Internet, wherever you found a significant technological advance, somebody had found a way to use it for porn.
So, you ask "what technologies has Porno driven"? And I would say to you: The Internet. Computers.
Fancy browser programming, plug-ins, encryption, fat storage, streaming media, e-commerce
Breakfast served all day!
Is that how it's being portrayed in Europe? No wonder you guys are so hostile towards Bush (I have my own reasons, but not because of misinformation).
No troops were withdrawn from the middle east. These national guard soldiers were home on a regular rotation, and instead of getting some time off, were ordered to disaster relief duty.
And AFAIK, the only people that the troops shot were part of a group that was itself shooting at some engineers working on a bridge. They got what they deserved.
"Ask not what your country can do for you." --John F. Kennedy
The items that porn has driven into the mass market:
- The VCR, especially VHS. Before the VCR you had to go to a porno thatre and sit in a dark room with abunch of other lonely guys doing things you didn't want to know about. With the VCR you could watch your porn in the privacy of your own home. Hell, you could even watch it with your wife, who would rather die than be seen going into a porno thatre. I was there. I saw it happen with my own eyes.
- The CR-ROM drive. The first three products that came out for the CD-ROM drive were Bible-search programs, MYST and porn. Porn was the main reason many people bought CD-ROM drives.
- DVD players/DVD-ROM drives. These made porn movies even easier to watch than VCRs as the discs were smaller, the image quality better (yay, the pimples on Ron Jeremy's butt are much more visible!) and you can skip to your favorite parts. And as of today, porn is one of the few genres in video to bother using the multi-angle option.
- Broadband Internet: What do people use all that bandwitdh for? Porn. More than pirated movies, warez, and music, it's porn. Look around Usenet sometime. The busiest newsgroups are the porn groups in the ALT branch.
Now, none of these technologies were created for the expressed purpose of make, selling, or dispributing porn. And the author didn't say they were. These technologies were first exploited by the porn industry.Boobies never hurt anyone. - Sherry Glaser.
But does this mean that child porn has actually increased or that the internet has just made it easier to find? I hate when people try to use a statistic like this to prove some point, becuase it doesn't really prove anything.
My days of not taking you seriously are certainly coming to a middle...
Does it have pictures?
The type of porn in question is the hardcore demeananizing porn that the porn industry seems to have led to.
LOL. You know what, you're 100% right, the "porn industry" has desensitized us to "demeaning" sex acts but thankfully we have people like you, the author, and our conservative/family-first politicians to tell us that anything but missionary sex is bad.
As is described, online porn seems to lead from soft to hard core porn, and it is the rape and bukkake that damage relationships.
You are saying that people *can't* enjoy being doused with semen? How the fuck do you know? It's obvious you have never done it or had it done to you... How could you possibly say, without a doubt, that it would be damaging to your relationship with your SO? You cannot.
All you can do is inject your personal opinion about something you know nothing about except from what you heard from your limited research and "personal knowledgebase". Let's keep our discussions to stuff you really have a clue about.
Rape is an illegal act and is of no relevance to the discussion. Are you not talking about criminal rape and instead simulated rape/fantasy situations where someone *could* enjoy that situation and may even fantasize about it?
Yet another situation that you have no obvious knowledge of and cannot speak on.
This also brings up another side in the viewer, as I won't watch anal, nor anything worse than that, while others may enjoy the rape or bukkake that plagues the internet.
Thank you for proving my points above.
All this escalation talk reminds me of all the Marijuana leads to harder drugs talk in the mid 80's.
I'm still waiting to get a sudden urge to shoot some heroin into my eyeball.
My days of not taking you seriously are certainly coming to a middle...
You should be thankful that the reviewer didn't start blathering on about "erototoxins".
While the anecdotes sound absolutely fascinating, the conclusions sound eerily similar to those of the Meese Commission. At first (1968 or thereabouts), there was a Presidential Commission put together under Nixon to research the effects of porn on people. In its final recommendation, the Presidential Commission called for (a) comprehensive sex education for everyone, (b) continued dialogue, (c) more research, and (d) citizen participation in all of the above. Hardly a stinging condemnation.
That Commission was ignored, its report buried, and upon the election of Reagan in 1980, a new Commission was founded which would give Congress the answers it expected, by simply making shit up. To quote from the article, which quotes from the Meese Report:
While admitting that establishment of a link between aggressive behavior and sexual violence "requires assumptions not found exclusively in the experimental evidence," the Commissioners go on to say , "We see no reason, however, not to make these assumptions...that are plainly justified by our own common sense"
It's the same tired shit that's been thrown against the wall since the Reagan Revolution, in the desparate hopes that it'll stick this time.
I wonder if I could write a similar book about people who overdose on Evangelical Christianity and require ever-stronger doses of legislative activism and repression of women to get their rocks off.
Congrats on your marriage, by the way.
--grendel drago
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
It's a shame that the parent post was modded down.
I've met a number of clinical psychologists, and none of them would refer to a sexually dysfunctional person as "a pervert", which the author apparently does.
Indeed, from my limited knowledge of the subject, sexual adjustment issues begin far earlier than a child's ability to even understand what a pornographic image is.
Simply being exposed to a variety of angry, rude role models of either sex, at a young age, can cause predispositions that become (in adolescence) , sexual maladjustments.
This is not a particularly high quality post or article. Anyone can become a physcologist in a relatively short period of time, it's just a handful of university classes.
For a psychologist to classify patients or interviewees as "perverts" or to fail to mention that America (in general) has serious social and sexual issues, is a abuse of the entire field of psychology.
This paper, and the author who submitted it, should be severely suspected of motivated bias, and a general lack of crucial investigatory and scientific methodological skills.
It's a shame the parent post was modded down. I'd be suprised to see something like this republished in any professional psychological journal, anywhere.
The best documentary on the business of pornograrphy (from "mom and pop" operations to Fortune 500 companies) is American Porn, produced by Frontline for PBS. It's hard to imagine that the need to feed thousands of websites and their user/subscribers with high quality/high bandwidth pictures isn't significantly driving both internet bandwidth demand and digital photography. BTW, you can watch a streaming video (MS Media Player or Real Player) of that entire documentary for free at Frontline: American Porn
Hmm. If boys get their ideas about sex from porn, and porn is awful... well, there are two options here; one, make it so boys don't get their ideas for porn, or make better porn. I suppose it'd be a little difficult to say "I want to make porn that won't give a fourteen year old unrealistic expectations of women!", though.
'Course, women get their strange, sick, twisted ideas---about men on brightly shining horses carrying them off to castles where they'll play dress-up and "... and they were one" every dang night---from romance novels and the like. Girls get some pretty funky ideas about sex and relationships too, y'know.
--grendel drago
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
Cohen collected a batch of free porn and used it to lure beta testers.
You might like how I found this.
There's a really neat website called "google.com". I just found out about it a few years ago.
You can type in queries like "bram porn bittorrent" and somehow you'll get a bunch of links to things related to what you've typed. It is really neat, and I recommend you try it out.
http://www.thebricktestament.com/the_law/when_to_
(From The Economist print edition August 18th 2005)
Before you too readily sneer at my assertion that I'm an addict, consider this:
- I used to surf porn at work ~ when I knew there was a zero tolerance policy and I would well lose my job. I _wanted_ to stop. It wasn't _doing_ anything for me. But I _couldn't_. (and don't give me any shit about "if you wanted to you could." Know any alcoholics? Ask them just how easy it is to "just say no"...)
- I'm in fucking IT (heh), so I know there is no such thing as "anonymous" access.
- Yes, I've pulled the NIC from my system after one binge out of fear that I'd be traced.
- Porn does kill intimacy. It objectifies the opposite sex. It conveniently numbs pretty much everything emotion-related. (as a survival mechanism for dealing with life not being happy, it works well)
- Porn is NOT a problem for everyone ~ just as alcohol and illegal narcotics had zero appeal to me not everyone will get "hooked" on porn.
- That said, it is a very, very powerful draw. Seemingly anonymous and free, (ha! tell that to the men and women in my SAA group that have spent hours and hours and hours and lost marriages/families/self respect!) it seems like a perfect "clean", and harmless addiction.
- like any good drug addiction, it does need to have the ante upped. I started with soft core stuff, but with the availability via the internet I was able to progress...rapidly.
Sound like insane behavior? Risking your job, your family (yes, I'm married and have 3 kids) for looking at some (not-even-real) titty? Sounds insane to me. Even when I was doing it and couldn't stop, it sounded insane.Does this make "the internet" bad? Of course not. I'm just saying that's how I got to it.
Does this remove responsibility for action? Absolutly not. I decided to do what I did. There were reasons for it, but ultimately I am responsible for my actions.
Those who haven't experienced the insanity of an addiction cannot empathize, and really cannot understand. And I accept that. But for those of you out there who are struggling with this you're not alone. It is real. And no, you can't stop on your own. You've tried ~ remember? You've promised yourself never again (after being picked up/jailed/publically humiliated).
All that to say, porn isn't really the core issue. As with drugs/alcohol/workaholism/etc, it was my way of dealing with life/stress/pain.
Patrick Cairns: Out of the Shadows is an excellent book dealing with both sex addiction as well as underlying issues.
Need to get help? Sex Addicts Anonymous and Sexaholics Anonymous are both based on the 12 steps of AA and work well. It's hard work, but recovery is possible.
I'm (trying) to blog bits and pieces of mine at http://cluelessrealist.blogspot.com/
My .02.
Peace.
-adb
You're seriously joking right? This "review" was a biased advertisement stroking the right-wing conservatives egos blahblahblah
So, if a study's conclusions speak against your beliefs or way of life, suddenly it's a biased advertisement stroking the right-wing-conservatives?
(ad-hominem, anyone?)
I mean, *WHAT IF* what the book says is true? Oh of course not, that would condemn us all netporn-addicted slashdotters, so it must NOT be true! In fact, it's heresy! Lets bring our torches and burn that book!
You know, I used to think books were judged by the veracity of the facts they presented, not by whether their words made some people feel (Heaven forbid! *gasp*) judged.
The problem with this argument is that it follows the racial-profiling logic. I have caught more poeple who look like x then x's are more likely. It is arguing from noisy evidence. As has been shown with suicide rates a rise in reporting or a change in who is making the arrests (the FBI versus local or state law enforcement) does not mean that crime itself has gone up. It could be the case that the FBI chose to ignore child porn issues before or that local law enforcement shifted from covering up cases or classifying them one way (child abduction) to another (child porn).
As the recent scandals in the Catholic Church demonstrated many cases of abuse have gone unreported or underreported for years not because they weren't happening but because those in power, or those victimized chose not to pursue them.
But the comparison of Custer's revenge to the "seamless infinity of smut..." is a fallacious example. Your very choice of these two to compare shows a bias. You have offered a not-so-bad concrete example and an abstract exaggeration. A better (less biased) comparison would be between a specific piece of pornography (say a Jenna Jameson Video), and the naked dancers of ancient rome, or the Harem of Solomon. If you prefer literary comparisons we could compare some online erotic stories to the Song of Solomon from the Bible ("My beloved put in his hand by the hole of the door, and my bowels
were moved for him."). Comparisons of this time are useful and valid, comparisons of the type you presented are, by their nature, extreme and biased because of it.
Yes we do have limits where we bump up against the rights of others and, as Thomas Jefferson put it in his "Notes on the State of Virginia"