Starwind: "Is not the preponderance of men buying porn indicative?"
No. It's indicative of men liking porn, not necessarily sex. Women may not need porn to maintain an interest in sex. Why is purchasing porn indicative of an interest in sex? Women have good imaginations. (Also, women by a lot of romance novels which have a lot of sex in them).
Again the standards are being rather arbitrarily set. Do men who don't consume porn have "less interest" in sex than men who do?
"You project an agenda on the porn producers and consumers that is not there. However, you do correctly detect such an agenda in the media. But the media and its consumer, and porn with it's consumer are two intersecting, but distinct groups."
I don't buy that! Porn is a media just like any other. It is communicating ideas and concepts in addition to entertainment. Everything from a Disney movie to porn is communicating concepts and ideas to the public. And it is all subject to criticism in one form or another.
Claiming porn is a different media is a (lame) attempt to exempt porn from free, open criticism and scrutiny. It isn't exempt. Everything in our culture from religion to porn is fair game for criticism/scrutiny!
You're going off the deep end Lorianne. Most men would take (inconsequential) sex over porn any day!
Porn can be criticized (as here on this thread). But it's main purpose is to arouse men sexually - not to send a deep message!
I advocate the criticism of porn. I advocate that no one buy porn, or create porn. I am not endeavoring in any way to shield it.
I further advocate porn be understood, criticized and scrutinized for what is. It is a purely crass commercial and corrupting enterprise with the sole purpose to increase profits via the easily exploited male tendancy to lust.
Do men who don't consume porn have "less interest" in sex than men who do?
Essentially, yes. We're not spending x hours or dollars to satisfy that addiction. Does a sober man have less interest in alcohol, than an alcoholic? Yes.
Pornographers don't hold editorial meetings to decide what message they wish to communicate to women, or to the world in general. There is no political/social message added to their product ('intellectual articles' added to provide a facade of being socially redeeming notwithstanding). They merely strive for what most cost effectively stimulates the lustful tendency in men.
That you correctly observe the objectification of women, and that women may believe a standard has been set that must be achieved, resulting from porn is correct, but the producers didn't care one wit that you would think so. They didn't care one wit that you see anything. That porn consequently results in standards perceived is true. But again, the producers aren't trying to set standards any more than tobacco companies are trying to promote health.
They only care that their product be bought. Their only agenda, beyond profit, is to make/keep the world safe for porn.
Porn is a media just like any other.
Pornographers and consumers hide behind that viewpoint. As long as their true nature is concealed uncriticized and unscrutinized, it will persist and spread, and all that you object to will get worse.
If you compare the porn of 100 years ago, the erotica was more literate and the images were of physically normal men and women.
But as porn produced an increased lust and appetite with which porn inturn had to keep pace, if not keep ahead, the producers employed ever more fanciful 'props'. Young, physically fit models, over-endowed men, increased production quality, but always the same 50-minute plot.
Computer generation now allows a new 'standard' to be set that is genetically unachievable for any of us.
Did pornographers have a strategic 5, 10, 25 year plan to do this? No. They are scrambling to competitively keep pace with or outdo each other.
If there were no competitive pressures, they could revert back to the 'standards' of yesteryear, and the porn consumer would have to take it or leave it, and in my view men would stand a better chance of declining it, and society and women would be the better for that.