Posted on 10/20/2005 4:56:55 PM PDT by wagglebee
A contributor to Time magazine says contemporary society has been misled into believing pornography is harmless entertainment. According to Pamela Paul, author of Pornified: How Pornography Is Transforming Our Lives, Our Relationships, and Our Families (Times Books, 2005), what was once hidden in dark alleys and seedy theaters is now being glorified and mainstreamed by today's "pornified" culture.
"There's an idea that pornography is cool and that it's perfectly normal for men to look at pornography -- that they are biologically programmed to want to look at pornography," Paul says.
And, she notes, women have been "a serious target of this message in that they are told pornography is a guy thing, and that it's not their right to complain."
In fact, Paul says, the mainstreaming of pornography has taught a generation of women to believe that porn is for the independent and liberated. But that idea could not be more wrong, she asserts, because in reality porn victimizes women, poisons men, and causes children to grow up too fast.
In her book, Pornified, Paul assembles a compilation of surveys and other research as well as anecdotal evidence of the problems porn causes. Of particular concern, she points out, are stories of young children and teens accessing pornography from school computers.
The Time magazine feature writer says it is "very disturbing" that researchers are not exactly sure how exposure to porn is going to affect children down the road. "But it's clear that kids develop sexually during adolescence," she adds, "and they learn what their sexual cues are -- what's exciting, what's appealing" to them.
"If kids are looking at hardcore pornography online and learning that this is what's normal and that this is what is supposed to be exciting and this is what they're supposed to aspire to, they're learning a very scary lesson," Paul says. And her own research indicates that the damage caused by youngsters' exposure to porn could be both extensive and long term.
In a survey the author conducted herself, the overwhelming majority of respondents cited a long list of negative effects from pornography use, including poor relationship skills and serious trust and loyalty issues. Responses also indicated that porn can lead to negative body image issues in women and can distract men from their partners, detract from their sexual skills, and damage their relationships.
Paul contends that pornography is obviously a poison and that it has unfortunately seeped into many people's everyday lives. She hopes her book will help dispel contemporary society's misconceptions that pornography is in any way normal, hip or harmless.
Reproduction is not the only function of human sexuality or we would have been designed like animals which are asexual except during periods of fertility. Since sex feels so good it is apparent that God means for us to gain enjoyment from it.
Have you ever read
the Bible, or do you just
read topic excerpts?
--------------------------------------------
Beloved
Let him kiss me with the kisses of his mouth—
for your love is more delightful than wine.
Pleasing is the fragrance of your perfumes;
your name is like perfume poured out.
No wonder the maidens love you!
Take me away with you—let us hurry!
Let the king bring me into his chambers.
Friends
We rejoice and delight in you;
we will praise your love more than wine.
Beloved
How right they are to adore you!
Dark am I, yet lovely,
O daughters of Jerusalem,
dark like the tents of Kedar,
like the tent curtains of Solomon.
Do not stare at me because I am dark,
because I am darkened by the sun.
My mother's sons were angry with me
and made me take care of the vineyards;
my own vineyard I have neglected.
Tell me, you whom I love, where you graze your flock
and where you rest your sheep at midday.
Why should I be like a veiled woman
beside the flocks of your friends?
Friends
If you do not know, most beautiful of women,
follow the tracks of the sheep
and graze your young goats
by the tents of the shepherds.
Lover
I liken you, my darling, to a mare
harnessed to one of the chariots of Pharaoh.
Your cheeks are beautiful with earrings,
your neck with strings of jewels.
We will make you earrings of gold,
studded with silver.
Beloved
While the king was at his table,
my perfume spread its fragrance.
My lover is to me a sachet of myrrh
resting between my breasts.
My lover is to me a cluster of henna blossoms
from the vineyards of En Gedi.
Lover
How beautiful you are, my darling!
Oh, how beautiful!
Your eyes are doves.
Beloved
How handsome you are, my lover!
Oh, how charming!
And our bed is verdant.
Lover
The beams of our house are cedars;
our rafters are firs.
Song of Solomon 1
Okay I have to chime in again. Abstain for about a month. The spark will billow again. And if you can't abstain for that long....then maybe you are not as bored as you think you are.
Wink wink, nudge nudge.
I don't want my children to grow up to be sewage workers. There must be something wrong with being a sewage worker. Maybe nobody should be doing sewage work.
I don't want to exactly disagree, but I do think that maxim has mislead a lot of people (and no, I don't necessarily think that is what you are trying to do.)
Saying that without qualification is sort of like watching the network news because "everything they say is true." On average, they do a good job of making sure what they do say is factually correct. Yet what they say is also almost always very misleading. They give you just the facts they want you to have and omit the (usually) larger story and background facts (context) that would lead you to a conclusion they don't want you to reach.
To simply say "God could have made us like the animals" sounds fine except that He didn't. An animal brain and a human brain are so very different. An animal brain is designed for specific tasks with minimal learning ability. A human brain has almost no behavioral hardwiring, instead it is designed around learning.
It fits right in with that design pattern that animal sex is entirely different from human sex in all but raw mechanics.
God solved the problem of human reproduction with the same design methods He used to solve the problem of human survival: We learn and make conscious decisions. That is why we enjoy sex: It drives us to make the conscious decision to learn about it and do it.
Our conscious decision around sex is set up by God in such a way that it will propagate humanity no matter what. Between humans, sex is a contract. It involves children, security, and enjoyment.
Enjoyment is what the man seeks primarily. Security is what the woman seeks. Children are what God seeks. Of course the woman wants to enjoy it, and of course almost all men and women seek children. But each comes to the relationship with their own primary concern and need to be met.
Isn't it strange, then,
that God has given women
a nervous system
that responds to sex
with multiple orgasms
while men typically
just get one per shot . . .
Women seek pleasure at least
as much as do men.
 |
Karen Carpenter (and others!) came to believe that food's "unwholesome" and eating is "bad" . . . Most things are neither. Rather our response to things defines their results. Normal people don't allow unbalanced people like anorexics or gluttons to influence our response to foods. Why do normal folks let folks who are unbalanced responding to sex influence normal appreciation of and enjoyment of sex? |
Being a sewage worker is not immoral. Do you want your children to grow up to be immoral? Do you want strangers in a dark theater slavering over your daughter's naked body? Do you want your son to be a porn stud? Do you want them to be the kind of people who see nothing wrong with stripping naked and performing lewd acts for public consumption? Do you think it is okay to do that? Would you rather your child dig ditches or be a porn star? I would rather my child dig ditches than a porn star.
Watching porn is an immoral activity. And that's the truth! ;O>
But then, not everyone feels that way, and who are you?
If you really and truly think that porn is normal it can only mean you have lost your sense of shame and your conscience with regard to porn is numb. That is of course just my humble opinion.
Stop trying to bring facts into it.
It's funny how those who try to argue an association with Nazis are often those whose rhetoric is more closely in line with them, where they talk about the "disgusting habits" of the "lesser beings" out there.
There's such interesting sociology in online debates, let alone the pron question!
Sorry, I promise it won't happen again ;)
Why, exactly, do you post in the form of Haikus? :P
Have you ever noticed the "Free Speech"freaks always refer to 'speech' involving sedition, treason and praise and protection of vice addiction?
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