Jeannine LeBlanc
PORNOGRAPHY HAS A PLACE IN SOCIETY
So what then is the problem with pornography? None of these issues is new. Is it morally wrong in and of itself? The conclusion
has to be no. Pornography no more contributes to crime and deviant behavior than does the writer who creates the murder
mystery. It is merely a tool, and likely one of many, for the deviant mind that chooses to commit an act of violence.
In the 1965 Gephard study it was confirmed from police reports that sex offenders often have pornography in their possession.
But this same study also concluded that there was no difference between male sex offenders and nonoffenders in their exposure
rates to pornography. (Olen & Barry, 1996). People read about murder in great detail today, but relatively few commit the act
as a result. Even if a sex offender views pornography, how can anyone be certain that he would not have committed the crime
anyway?
Not even the U.S. Commission on Pornography and Obscenity can conclusively say there is a link between pornography and
negative sociocultural effects. One objection seems to be that of forcing individuals to either participate in it or to view it against
their will. And, as always and without question, it is considered immoral to bring children into this dark world for the obvious
reasons.
Not everyone holds a negative view of the pornography industry. If one accepts the view that pornography leads to violence
and sexual aggression it will be difficult for them to look at the other side. Pornography can provide pleasure to those who find it
appealing, and it can boost a waning sexual relationship.
It is used in therapeutic techniques as discussed by Barry M. Maletsky in his book Treating the Sexual Offender. He has
designed a reconditioning exercise called Saturation Aversion that involves requiring the client to masturbate to pornographic
material and to continue this exercise for the 30 minutes immediately following orgasm. The client reported physical irritation and
lack of rearousal during this period, sensations that would hopefully teach him to associate a negative result with his behavior.
(Maletzsky, 1991).
Another technique, called fading, used also as a reconditioning exercise for treating pedophiles, involves showing slides of young
girls to the client, followed by a rapid change to pornographic slides of adult women. The slides of the young girls are gradually
decreased over time until only adult slides remain. Ideally, sexual pleasure becomes associated with the adult slides rather than
the pictures of young girls over the treatment time. (Maletzsky, 1991)
The Sexual Abuse Clinic of Portland, Oregon has an elaborate collection of pornographic videos, slides, photographs, and
audio tapes for its various treatment plans. All were collected from various patients or confiscated through police investigations.
(Maletzsky,1991).
CONCLUSION
No matter the source, it can be assumed that, in some ways at least, pornography has a positive place in society. To attempt to
censor it, regulate it, or otherwise altar a freedom to choose what one reads or watches for entertainment, gives a few
individuals the power to regulate the arts for the rest of society. What's destroyed in this process may be worse than what's
there in the beginning.
One's feelings about pornography can be determined by whether the individual is taking a passive or active role in either the
viewing or the producing, his or her intentions in this role, and social factors such as age, gender, and religion. With the
exception of perhaps murder, it is difficult to find anything that can universally offend a population,which is the ultimate necessity
for censorship of this material.
This writer concludes that since no one is culture neutral, pornography's effects on society are largely in the eyes of the
beholder, and that issues with pornography and a propensity toward sexual deviation are in the genes, or is it jeans?
References
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http://www.afa.net/outreach
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Loth, David. (1961). The erotic in literature: a historical survey of pornography as delightful as it is indiscreet. New York, NY:
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Maletzsky, Barry M. (1991). Treating the sexual offender. Newbury Park, CA: SAGE Publishers, Inc.
Mcclelland, Abbey. (1997). The effects of pornography. [online]. Available: http://samiam.colorado.edu/~mcclelaj/negative.html
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Available: http://www.secularhumanism.org/library/fi/matrix_17_4.html
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"The nature of the liberal and libertarian errors is easily seen in discussions of pornography. The leader of the explosion of pornographic videos, described admiringly by a competitor as the Ted Turner of the business, offers the usual defenses of decadence: 'Adults have the right to see [pornography] if they want to. If it offends you, don't buy it.' Those statements neatly sum up both the errors and the (unintended) perniciousness of the alliance between libertarians and modern liberals with respect to popular culture.
"Modern liberals employ the rhetoric of 'rights' incessantly, not only to delegitimate the idea of restraints on individuals by communities but to prevent discussion of the topic. Once something is announced, usually flatly or stridently, to be a right --whether pornography or abortion or what have you-- discussion becomes difficult to impossible. Rights inhere in the person, are claimed to be absolute, and cannot be deminished or taken away by reason; in fact, reason that suggests the non-existence of an asserted right is viewed as a moral evil by the claimant. If there is to be anything that can be called a community, rather than an agglomeration of hedonists, the case for previously unrecognized individual freedoms (as well as some that have been previously recognized) must be thought through and argued, and "rights" cannot win every time. Why there is a right for adults to enjoy pornography remains unexplained and unexplainable.
"The second bit of advice --'If it offends you, don't buy it' -- is both lulling and destructive. Whether you buy it or not, you will be greatly affected by those who do. The aesthetic and moral environment in which you and your family live will be coarsened and degraded. Economists call the effects an activity has on others 'externalities'; why so many of them do not understand the externalities here is a mystery. They understand quite well that a person who decides not to run a smelter will nevertheless be seriously affected if someone else runs one nearby.
"Free market economists are particularly vulnerable to the libertarian virus. They know that free economic exchanges usually benefit both parties to them. But they mistake that general rule for a universal rule. Benefits do not invariably result from free market exchanges. When it comes to pornography or addictive drugs, libertarians all too often confuse the idea that markets should be free with the idea that everything should be available on the market. The first of those ideas rests on the efficacy of the free market in satisfying wants. The second ignores the question of which wants it is moral to satisfy. That is a question of an entirely different nature. I have heard economists say that, as economists, they do no deal with questions of morality. Quite right. But nobody is just an economist. Economists are also fathers and mothers, husbands or wives, voters citizens, members of communities. In these latter roles, they cannot avoid questions of morality.
"The externalities of depictions of violence and pornography are clear. To complaints about those products being on the market, libertarians respond with something like 'Just hit the remote control and change channels on your TV set.' But, like the person who chooses not to run a smelter while others do, you, your family, and your neighbors will be affected by the people who do not change the channel, who do rent the pornographic videos, who do read alt.sex.stories. As film critic Michael Medved put it: ' To say that if you don't like the popular culture, then turn it off, is like saying if you don't like the smog, stop breathing. . . .There are Amish kids in Pennsylvania who know about Madonna.' And their parents can do nothing about it.
"Can there be any doubt that as pornography and depictions of violence become increasingly popular and increasingly accessible, attitudes about marriage, fidelity, divorce, obligations to children, the use of force, and permissible public behavior and language will change? Or that with the changes in attitudes will come changes in conduct, both public and private? We have seen those changes already and they are continuing. Advocates of liberal arts education assure us that those studies improve character. Can it be that only uplifting reading affects character and the most degrading reading has no effects whatever? 'Don't buy it' and 'change the channel,' however intended, are effectively advice to accept a degenerating culture and its consequences.
"The obstacles to censorship of pornographic and viloence-filled materials are, of course, enormous. Radical individualism in such matters is now pervasive even among sedate, upper middle-class people. At a dinner I sat next to a retired Army general who was no a senior corporate executive. The subject of Robert Mapplethorpe's photographs came up. This most conventional of dinner companions said casually that people ought to be allowed to see whatever they wanted to see. It would seem to follow that others ought to be allowed to do whatever some want to see.... Any serious attempt to root out the worst in our popular culture may be doomed unless the judiciary comes to understand that the First Amendment was adopted for good reasons, and those reasons did not include the furtherance of radical personal autonomy."
Robert Bork, Slouching Towards Gomorrah, pp. 150-152.
Unfortunately, this study is not online to look into more thoroughly. Obviously one causative indication is that offenders, at some point, are induced by porn to offend, since offenders 'often have porn', and by implication very few offenders are induced by some other non-porn factor (e.g. anger).
Further, It would be interesting to see how long they tracked offenders and non-offenders. The assumption is the non-offenders won't ever offend, whereas in fact the only conclusion that can be drawn, is they have porn, but haven't offended yet.
And then there is the obvious unknown, they're only measuring the offenders who have been caught.
Pornography can ...[snip...] boost a waning sexual relationship.
But like any stimulant, it wears off and requires either a greater dosage, or the user crashes, usually with worse effects. How often does porn save a marriage, indefinitely?
Another technique, called fading, used also as a reconditioning exercise for treating pedophiles
I thought the reports out of the Catholic clergy pedophiles indicated a high rate of recidivism?
What about the so many who become addicted to it, ignoring their spouses and children and jobs? What about the many husbands who no longer find their wives sexually attractive, given the unavailable women they get off to sexually with their porn? What about the men and women who become entangled in dangerous sex practices as a result of using porn (and being tempted by what it displays). It's basically a narcotic for many, which sets off sections of the brain. Little of any good comes from it, and a lot of bad does.