Pornography harmful to mind?

[AL]

I dunno how it feels to you guys but...

 

me and most of my friends experienced the feeling below

 

When ever you see porn your mind feels a little bad ....a little feeling that something is missing in your life.....

 

Also' date=' we feel distracted from work....

 

I don't know but I felt doing some maths or having a romantic talk with someone felt more pleasureful and enjoyable than WATCHING PORN

 

But I feel that it is harmless enough to see it once a while (....perhaps once a week )[/quote']

Maybe it's the whole "I feel guilty for having so much fun when there are millions of people stricken by poverty, war and famine all around the world."

 

I get that feeling sometimes when I'm having a good time (though not necessarily a porn-related good time).

[padren]

I suspect psychologically it has risks, like many things do, to be an over used crutch. What I mean is, if a person avoids actual social contact and withdraws into porn based personal fantasies, then I could see it as an issue.

 

Its not unlike people who watch tons of TV to conpensate for a social void.

 

Also, for most of us, we know exactly how to seperate what is fantasy/unreal vs reality, but if someone had almost no actual personal social sexual experiences, I could see porn potentially having a negative impact there (that could lead to high expectations in very bad pick up lines and confusion with pizza delivery personel.)

 

But those are generalizations of risks that could occur in some circumstances, not to be confused with actually likely problems.

 

Another thought, if a person has trouble meeting members of the opposite sex, to the extent they blame them for his own inadequecies and builds general resentment, I could see how porn could agitate or amplify the building cycle of rejection and resentment, but again this is just as an agitating factor in individual that already has problems.

 

I suspect most people are rather healthy and subseqently would not be harmed by it.

[why?]

I believe that porn is ok till a limit. Untill it gets really vulgur. And sometimes they potraite women as sex slaves. Sometimes.

[rthmjohn]

I suspect most people are rather healthy and subseqently would not be harmed by it.

 

Seeing as most problems caused by pornography are just perpetuations of preexisting problems in an individual, then porn really shouldn't be a big deal in our society. Since there's hardly any evidence of it destroying the minds of large populations of people, I think that the issue is more moral than psychological. When you think of it, though, a large majority of porn consists of paid pornstars, or people who willingly engage in the filmmaking. Granted there are many sad cases, especially in other countries, in which desperate women are lured by false promises of a well paying job and later forced into pornography/prostitution. I think the exploitation of struggling women should be the real issue.

[rthmjohn]

Porno has been around since the Renaissance

 

Actually, I think porn dates back to the Persians.

[TimbaLanD]

The thing I like about men is the fact that they have.....units;)

[jeskill]

Seeing as most problems caused by pornography are just perpetuations of preexisting problems in an individual, then porn really shouldn't be a big deal in our society. Since there's hardly any evidence of it destroying the minds of large populations of people, I think that the issue is more moral than psychological. When you think of it, though, a large majority of porn consists of paid pornstars, or people who willingly engage in the filmmaking. Granted there are many sad cases, especially in other countries, in which desperate women are lured by false promises of a well paying job and later forced into pornography/prostitution. I think the exploitation of struggling women should be the real issue.

 

I guess the question is, how do you know if the women (or men) are being exploited? How do we know that porn isn't psychologically damaging for the pornstars?

 

I used to be very anti-porn but now I'm more open to it. I still don't know if it's completely morally acceptable. Maybe that's why it's exciting? To me, porn is more morally acceptable than sleeping with multiple partners (when the agreement is monogamous) or getting lap dances.

[ecoli]

getting lap dances.

 

I don't get were you say that this is morally unnacceptable... What if it was a couple?

[jeskill]

I don't get were you say that this is morally unnacceptable... What if it was a couple?

 

 

Morality is subjective, right? To me, if a couple is in a monogamous relationship and the guy is getting lap dances from a third person, then I call that cheating and hence, immoral. I guess that's just where I draw the line in my personal relationships. There's something about sexual physical contact with a third person that bothers me.

[Deified]

I look at porn. Hardcore porn usually doesn't interest me. I've never liked the violent stuff. I don't know about psychological damage, but not being able to think about anything besides sex because you haven't had any sexual realease in a while isn't any fun either.

 

I have a question in the same theme. Those of you who say it's a question of morality: is looking at nude women immoral? I find the female form to be one of the most beautiful forms that exists (thank you evolution) and I can't understand people who say that it's indecent to have (artful) nude pictures around the house. The nude form has certainly been an artistic theme for lord knows how long. Isn't the earliest known artwork a small statue of a naked woman?

[Mokele]

Actually, I think porn dates back to the Persians.

 

Off by quite a bit: we have stone-age sculptures of naked women and men, and also carved stone "toys".

 

I guess the question is, how do you know if the women (or men) are being exploited? How do we know that porn isn't psychologically damaging for the pornstars?

 

Well, it depends on the porn. I can see the possibility that there can be exploitative porn made (and there's probably quite a lot), but there's also porn made by companies where the health, safety, and well-being of the actors is primary. There's always some bad apples, but that doesn't negate the whole.

 

Morality is subjective, right? To me, if a couple is in a monogamous relationship and the guy is getting lap dances from a third person, then I call that cheating and hence, immoral. I guess that's just where I draw the line in my personal relationships. There's something about sexual physical contact with a third person that bothers me

 

It's all about the people involved, their comfort levels, and how they want a relationship to be. I'm in a monogamous relationship now, but that's not been the case for prior relationships.

 

Mokele

[Dale Gribble]

Off by quite a bit: we have stone-age sculptures of naked women and men, and also carved stone "toys".

 

The interpretation of all of which is a bit iffy. The statues were most likely religious fetishes. The "toys" you speak of I haven't heard about, but being as they're most likely simple phalac shaped bits of stone, any interpretation of them as sex toys would be highly subjecitve.

[starbug1]

If you're in a relationship with a girl and she doesn't approve of porn, downright hates it, I think this has a bigger impact on the individual than cultural beliefs. This builds up tension. So with instances like this I think it is appropriate to relieve tension (maybe if you're girlfriend is 'not very active'), and maybe even violence. Regardless, you can't get rid of porn, it will always be widespread and commonplace.

 

Concerning pornography and the effects it has on the mind. eh. I'd say by the time you are a teenager you've seen enough, heard enough not to be damaged by it. (However, there are cases of overobsession for those who don't have self-control). But if you are exposed to it too young...well, I'd say that's how and why some kids grow up disturbed...or sex perverts.

 

I find the female form to be one of the most beautiful forms that exists (thank you evolution) and I can't understand people who say that it's indecent to have (artful) nude pictures around the house. The nude form has certainly been an artistic theme for lord knows how long. Isn't the earliest known artwork a small statue of a naked woman?

 

This is an unavoidable trait of masculinity. Our hormones make it so. Along these lines, we go through puberty to become more involved with the opposite sex. It can be argued that a lot, if not most, of our subsequent actions are directly involved with these feelings. To put it simply, it is a form of manlihood, something, like sex, that just has to be experienced. Also, there is the power, dominance factor, which is only a different way to say manlihood. Porn for women, on the other hand, despite the posts here of women saying they look at porn, if something much less common. I can honestly say that I count on my fingers the women I know who will admit to watching porn. I think this, in effect, is on account of the 'women society.' I am under the belief that women, or at least sects of girls in school, have reputations that cannot be blemished. This, and a less aggressive (by nature) sex drive, and a later puberty is why women don't do it as much. I'm taking a stab in the dark, but for the majority of women maybe they have an innate sense of what I'll call 'porno taboo.' Who the hell knows.

[rthmjohn]

Off by quite a bit: we have stone-age sculptures of naked women and men, and also carved stone "toys".

 

Seems to me porn is a natural part of society, although it was most definitely founded by men, and it seems like most people turn out alright. I've read somewhere that porn can relieve stress and allow for relaxation (hope that doesn't sound too weird).

 

And as for the actors/models in porn, maybe they are psychologically harmed, but they, or paid models at least, chose that career. I mean, look at Brianna Banks or Jezebelle Bond, or Mimi MacPherson, or any of the Playboy centerfolds... I'm sure they all chose to do what they do, and any psychological harm is probably just compounding preexisting issues.

[starbug1]

A look at the Japanese history of pornography:

 

http://www.tranquileye.com/historyofporn/japanese_porn.html

 

Beginning in the early '60s and running through today' date=' Japanese filmmakers combined sex with violence to make a product far nastier than that allowed by America and many European countries. One early title well sums up the Japanese idea of eroticism, The Joys of Torture.

In Kaneto Shindo Onibaba, two nymphomaniacs lure warriers into traps before raping and eating them. In Kiyonori Suzuki's Nikutai no Mon, a group of prostitutes living in an abandoned house punish each other for break house rules. Some victims are suspended from the ceiling and whipped, others are shaved and placed in a net for public view. Suzuki's films of the early '60s - The Brute, The Woman Sharper, Flower and Blood - took place in the slums of Tokyo. His characters are prostitutes, pimps and gangsters.

 

"The Japanese seem absolutely fascinated with bondage, torture and sexual status," writes William Rotsler in his 1973 book Contemporary Erotic Cinema. "Or so it seems from their exported sex films and magazines. It is always the women who are tied and tortured and I wonder if this is a manifestation of the rise of women crying for their rights in a country that historically has relegated women tot he lowest social rung. perhaps the Japanese male feels threatened by this upsurge and gets gratification in seeing woman after woman humiliated, hurt, subjected to violent rapes, tied helpless, cut, beaten, tattooed, and whipped.

 

"The Orientals are so much into that male-superiority shit that they just don't care about you," said Valerie.

 

"While I was in Tokyo I was offered this part in a film... They were supposed to drag me into this torture chamber at their stronghold and in I went, wearing only this dumb rag tied around me and these actors copping feels on my tits and ass whenever they could.

 

"I was tied to a waterwheel and half drowned. They spun the wheel and held me upside down under water until I was supposed to give up... I couldn't move. The ropes and knots were real! The water was real! I was really drowning!

 

"I did one [film'] in the Philippines where I didn't take my clothes off but all the rest were nudies. I never had any leads... I was just a body. I was raped a lot. They really like rapes over there, especially white girls.

 

"In Hong Kong I heard about some white girls doing pornography for these Chinese guys from Macao, which is one of the really evil places on this earth! I heard, too, that some of the white chicks have never come back from there!"

 

Male superiority, rape, its barbarous.

[rthmjohn]

THAT, definitely is satanic! This is exactly the stuff that I feel should be banned. These films are absolutely immoral and outrageously sexist. I also believe that this form of pornography should be distinguished from other less sexist and immoral forms.

[Baldur]

For instance many will argue that extreem fetishes like violet porn, kiddie porn, and beastiality are a result of sex being portrayed as something sinful or negative. People are sexual creatures (for the most part) thus if someone both thinks sex is negative but yet can't help but crave it than it increases the chance that they will crave negative violent, dirogetory, etc. actions along with it.

 

There is doubtless something to this, but in the case of kiddie porn it probably also has something to do with 90% of men getting turned on by naked little girls, and about 30% of men finding girls to be as attractive or more attractive than women. (Numbers vary depending on the study, but hover around 25-30% for the latter figure.)

 

That is to say, while the aura of the forbidden has its own attraction, at least in the case of kiddie porn there is probably another dynamic going on - sexual orientation.

 

Of course, there may be other dynamics going on in the other cases, too. Violent porn (depicting pain) I don't understand at all, but another poster mentions that it may reflect a desire to dominate, not necessarily to hurt anyone. Pseudo-rape porn (much of which is not especially violent beyond minimal use of force) may have more to do with wanting to be in control of one's own sexuality than with really wishing to force sex on someone else. By comparison, many women have rape fantasies that they also don't really want to come true - but these are fantasies that, in a sense, give them control of their own sexuality, in that through such fantasies they can pretend that they are so desirable that men (or at least the right man) cannot resist their allure, or they can indulge in a fantasy where they cannot be held responsible for their sexual desire, which is frowned on by many cultures.

 

Oh! and to follow up on JonM's comment about porn dating back to the Renaissance - although others have commented, I would add that Australian Aborigines have pornographic cave art that dates back to time immemorial. The Aborigines claim to have been there 50,000 years. . . .

 

 

 

Baldur