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Forgive me, but when I read something like this article that pretty much strikes my logic and common sense circuits in the same way that "Increasing Global Warming from CO2 will suffocate the entire planet by 2015" or "Blood will run in the streets if we let people carry guns whenever they want to" does, I just gotta go look at who the "author" of the piece is.

Marnia Robinson is a former corporate attorney with degrees from Brown and Yale who writes books about the unwelcome effects of evolutionary biology on intimate relationships and the striking parallels between recent scientific discoveries and traditional sacred-sex texts. Her cross-disciplinary perspective incorporates the insights of psychologists, psychiatrists, neuroscientists, evolutionary biologists, anthropologists and even ancient sages. With her husband Gary Wilson, who taught anatomy and physiology for years and is a neuroscience enthusiast, she writes articles for publications as diverse as The Evolutionary Review and the award-winning anthology Toward 2012: Perspectives on the Next Age. With Gary's help, she also blogs on "The Huffington Post" and "The Good Men Project." Cupid is available on Kindle and has been published in German.

At least she only specializes in "unwelcome effects of evolutionary biology on intimate relationships". Lord only knows what she'd find if she looked at "welcome effects" on things. But I can't help but wonder, although I can't find, if she specialized in "Womyn's studies" and "Gender studies". Well, she's a lawyer and has worked for Campbell's Soup, at least. And not to put too fine a point on it, she blogs at the Huff'nPuff.

Another red flag is when I see "cross-disciplinary perspective" or "interdisciplinary studies" in the biography of these "researchers." An interesting quote from her LinkedIn page: "No mammals are sexually monogamous, and yet close, trusted relationships are our best health insurance." HUH??

We all know that men are horny, pr0n addicted misogynists, but some statistics (from 2005-2006 but probably still valid) indicate that one in three visitors to pornographic websites are women. But 70% of them keep their cyber activities secret. Also, 17% of women admit to being addicted to pornography. Twice as many women as men favor chat rooms. And "Women, far more than men, are likely to act out their behaviors in real life, such as having multiple partners, casual sex or affairs." Or "Statistics indicate the term “sex” was searched for as often by female consumers as it was by males."

I wonder if Ms. Robinson read any of these statistics in her "cross-disciplinary" research on the "unwelcome effects" of porn.

It's always amazing to watch the knee jerk reaction against anything considered "porn", especially when you consider that Saudia Arabia, Iran, Syria, Bahrain, Egypt, UAE, Kuwait, Malaysia, Indonesia, Singapore, Kenya, India, Cuba, China are the top pornography banning countries; while searches for the keyword "sex" are from the countries 1. Pakistan, 2. India, 3. Egypt, 4. Turkey 5. Algeria 6.Morocco, 7. Indonesia, 8. Vietnam 9. Iran 10. Croatia. -- notice any sharia law countries in that list? Hmmmm? Poor little muzzies with their burqa clad wimmen can't get enough T & A? (Won't get into the list for "xxx" or "porn".)

Then there's this little gem: "Promise Keeper men who viewed pornography in last week - 53%". (But it was just for "research", I'm sure.)

While "The pornography industry is larger than the revenues of the top technology companies combined: Microsoft, Google, Amazon, eBay, Yahoo!, Apple, Netflix and EarthLink" and "US porn revenue exceeds the combined revenues of ABC, CBS, and NBC", China, South Korea and Japan have larger revenues from porn than the U.S. In fact, those top three countries' porn revenues are larger than all the rest combined... including the U.S.

Isn't it interesting that something so universally disparaged, excoriated and legislated against is still so popular with nearly every facet of the human population. Even those who are most against it. I think Ms. Robinson needs to take her "cross-disciplinary", gender studies glasses off and maybe look at the forest instead of the trees.

I posted the article here because I thought my fellow FReepers would have interesting things to say about it. Thank you for confirming my theory.

Frankly, I’m a little skeptical about those revenue estimates for the porn industry, just because these days so much is given away for free. I have to wonder what businesses are included in that estimate (e.g., would strip clubs count?), and how they got their numbers.

when I read something like this article that pretty much strikes my logic and common sense circuits in the same way that "Increasing Global Warming from CO2 will suffocate the entire planet by 2015" or "Blood will run in the streets if we let people carry guns whenever they want to" doe

That makes two of us, then. I was just making that very point on an ONOZ Population Growth Is Slowing Down And Soon The Earth Will Be Empty (aka "Population Bomb II: Electric Boogaloo") thread.