Internet Porn

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1. Can kids be adversely affected by internet porn? I think the answer is yes.

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The answer is resoundingly, if not 100% definitively NO!You want a study? Go out there and look for them. There have been many studies done and the effect seen in every single one is zero, zilch, nada.The closest any study has come to finding any possible causative link between porn and behavior is increased apathy (perhaps just in attitude) towards victimization of women.... but there's a caveat! That is when the "porn" under discussion is hardcore violent porn, and researchers believe the desensitization comes from the violence and NOT the sex.As far as your questions regarding "no matter how much porn", I would point out that someone who views porn to the exclusion of all else during the day has problems BEFORE and OUTSIDE of exposure to porn. Porn does not gradually build into a stage of doing nothing but that for a normal person. If so, I would never be on this board.And as far as your question about "healthy attitudes about women", I am a bit curious how you would go about measuring this as an OBJECTIVE characteristic beyond not wanting to harm them.To my mind the Bible holds not only 0 healthy attitudes about women, but the most violent anti-women statements you can find anywhere. One passage extolls the virtue of God as he sends armies to rape and kill two girls. On the flip side many believe that feminism delivers unhealthy attitudes towards women.This is a purely subjective criteria, unless you are going to qualify it.But as far as negative beliefs about women or desire to cause harm the answer is NO.But this does raise a few questions in my head:1) what about attitudes towards men, they are in porn too?2) what about gay porn?3) why would you think viewing people having sex (the most natural act which people are born to do) would have an adverse affect, especially when kids get to think about it anyway? Just because they don't have an image does not mean the fantasies go away... if anything they have the ability to become more perverse and fetishized.

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2. Is there any reasonable way to effectively regulate internet porn? I think the answer is no.

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Actually there is. The problem is it isn't 100% childproof, and that's the problem with people saying the "availability" of porn on the internet is an issue of some kind. Yes that is true for adult spam, blindlinks, and popup ads, but the rest is kids looking for it themselves and busting through any controls that are set. The problem then is kids and not the porn websites or their owners.I think effectively dealing with S,P,B will be easy enough as it is still possible to go after most of them even in other countries.Personally, I've been thinking about ways to take care of the child problem. Right now people want to shift the entire burden off the kid and on to the rest of the world. That means screwing with people's rights to free speech.Instead society can shift the burden back to the kids. I don't see why it would be hard to mandate that children under 18 (or whatever age is appropriate for each country) must have internet accounts set up by the parent. Pretty much this is done anyway, but the parent must actually identify a specific user id for the child when (s)he logs on. At the ISP side, have it recognize child ids and put them through specific servers.As part of this process, setup a database for unique server IDs which are for children accounts (perhaps start them with 123)... as well as allowing a number of free server id registrations for children for every ISP. Then it would be relatively easy to come up with code to exclude anyone coming from a server starting with 123 (no matter the number of digits afterward).After this, if a kid is found to have gotten anything online, it would be OBVIOUS that the kid is the perpetrator.As another plan, although some may argue, I'd even be willing to start labelling site numbers by content. Thus have a rating system for sites. Not lame crap like g, pg, r, and x, but perhaps something that defines the type of content that will be seen. This would be neutral info that parents could then filter. Once again, if junior cheats then it is junior and not the rest of the world that is the problem.Some people suggest having all adult sites get a xxx domain name, but that is just stupid. First of all it pushes sites with graphic content that is not sexual or where it is not the entire focus of the content into the same category/ghetto. It would be better to have neutral ratings which better identify the nature of the site.And in that way I can equally filter out religious sites for my kids so they don't have to read filth like women getting raped and chopped into pieces, and murdered because some God does not know human anatomy and hates women... not to mention hates them as well and they have to feel guilty just for being born.

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holmes
"...what a fool believes he sees, no wise man has the power to reason away.."(D. Bros)

Schraf, the effects of sexually imagery on children has NOTHING to do with the issue of body dissatisfaction issues from ALL MEDIA. To compare the two is to make a very bad bait and switch to make a point on this topic.There are NO studies that back up a claim that sexual imagery leads to negative (bigoted or angry) influences on people toward women. In fact, almost all show the EXACT OPPOSITE.

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"Researchers found that women who looked at advertisements featuring stereotypically thin and beautiful women showed more signs of depression and were more dissatisfied with their bodies after only one to three minutes of viewing the pictures."

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If we want to address the impact mainstream media has on self-image, perhaps what we should be doing is making people realize that they are okay no matter what mainstream media presents, rather than slamming the media.The media are simply using imagery that is going to appeal to the greatest number of people according to their demographic analyses. Back in the past it was chubby women, then it went to stick thin women, then it went back to a more normal size, and now it is going back to kind of thin. So what? These are trends in media which go back and forth.Curiously, even if one were to be concerned by this topic, you also appear to have a view that women are the only ones "affected" by the lack of diversity in body imagery in the media. Men are equally shown to be overly attractive in mainstream media... otherwise they are "losers". How about the "Average Joe" show that totally punked on any guy that wasn't a model? Damn it the whole "Queer eye for the Straight Guy" show is predicated on this belief!And there are plenty of men that do not enjoy the female body imagery found in mass media. It is attractive, but in a bland vaccuous way. This is why porn has become increasingly diversified with time. Men seek out many different "ideals" when it comes time to select imagery for masturbation... and in real life, for sexual partners.Which brings me to your trying to throw mass media into play as a stereotype of porn... have you seen modern porn by the way?... while the biggest and most mainstream porn companies do tend to use the same type of models as mainstream general media, porn is not restricted to those ancient relics of the porn industry.Modern porn (and its been growing this way for at least 15-20 years) includes all varieties of body types, and orientations. It is less skewed with body stereotyping than mass media. In fact many women (with the advent of the internet) have started their own companies to show that "regular size, average shaped" women can be sexy and sexual and they are quite succesful!While I agree that what you have brought up is an issue that needs to be addressed, I believe:1) empowering women internally to understand mass media is not where one should go to get one's perspective of self is more important than trying to blame the media...and2) it is a complete red herring (at best guilt by association) to the topic of this thread.

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holmes
"...what a fool believes he sees, no wise man has the power to reason away.."(D. Bros)

Ahhhh... added a study I see. Can you really not find the gaps in where this experiment is fluff?

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Zillman & Bryant (1999)
— 160 male and female students and community members
— watched 6 hours of

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1) Rather small group of very small representative group (though I will be happy to cede this point for the greater problems which follow.2) Watched 6 HOURS OF PORN? I do not see how this is an average input of porn in one sitting and I would likely be tired of sex in general at the end of this much less my sexual partner.

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nonviolent heterosexual pornography (exposure condition), or
sitcoms without sexual content (no exposure condition),

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3) This is the selection of controls? It doesn't even address the points which you brought up in the rest of your email. How about makeover shows, or relationship dramas/action/horror, or MTV videos, or how about asking them to think of sexual fantasies for this time (to weed out affects of fantasizing versus enhanced fantasizing), or READING sexual and nonsexual fantasy (to weed out visual versus textual effects)? On a personal note this is one of the WORST setups I have ever seen in a controlled experiment. By the way what sitcoms?4) were they sitting and viewing this porn as a lab rat, or as they would use porn for themselves? (ie were they allowed to masturbate? Was the porn chosen for them or was it selected by them according to their personal interests?) This seems to be a very important matter especially if one is forced to undergo 6 hours of inundation.

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— and then filled out questionnaires about their personal happiness, sexual attitudes, and behaviors.

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5) A notoriously bad way of determining effects of anything, especially longterm effects. I am going to try and track down this study to get a look at that questionnaire.

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— Results:

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6) Be honest, do those results even appear to be suggestive that something OBJECTIVELY harmful was a result of this viewing? The last two are not even listing of effects seen in behavior, just parameters of the two effects they saw...

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were less satisfied with their intimate partners.

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7) In what way? For what reason? Something serious? For ALL POTENTIAL PARTNERS? The last question is especially true for the question of effects on children who generally DO NOT HAVE INTIMATE PARTNERS? If this study's result is that kids will learn faster what physical/social attributes they want in a intimate partner when older, then what is the problem?8) Was this a lasting or a temporary effect? Did they check up on them after select periods of time? This smacks of the study on the "Mozart effect". Remember that study which showed (in the same kind of subjects I might add) that listening to Mozart improved thinking ability? And now parents are running out buying Mozart for Kids crap... Whoops. What the study found is that in college students audio stimulation by Mozart raised "thinking ability" for a SHORT TIME PERIOD. There is NO LONG TERM EFFECT. That's what media has been shown to do, including violent imagery... it stimulates for short periods of time.

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assigned greater importance to sex without emotional involvement.

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9) Hahahahahahahaha... was money and time seriously devoted to find out that after watching sexual fantasy material for extensive lengths of time that a person will assign "greater importance to sex without emotional involvement"? It's for masturbation! I'd love to know if people were allowed to cum before filling this out or not (and in six hours more than once). Of course this also falls under the problem above anyway, was this temporary or permanent?10) Even if somehow a permanent and drastic change was induced, could you please explain how disassociating sex from emotional involvement is harmful/wrong? That is at best a SUBJECTIVE judgement of the nature of sex's relationship with emotional relationships.I thank you for presenting a perfect example of a worthless study on the effects of media on human behavior... it shows what needs to be avoided in this debate.

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holmes
"...what a fool believes he sees, no wise man has the power to reason away.."(D. Bros)

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Women in porn tend to have a significantly greater range of body types, with the caveat that they tend to have similarly ridiculous breast sizes.

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That depends on what you are looking for or where you are looking. It is NOT true that going to an average porn store that MOST women in mags and videos will have ridiculous breast sizes.I will agree that some of the larger and older (ie mainstream) porn companies tend to play on the big breast thing, but that is not the dominant theme of the industry, especially not the RIDICULOUS breast thing (which makes me kind of gag).I suppose one could argue that small breasts take up less of the market place, but that is not the same as saying huge breasts dominate.Just to let you know, natural breasts (large or small) are becoming a hot ticket in porn. My gf gets good money (as well as the girls she plays with) for keeping it real.

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holmes
"...what a fool believes he sees, no wise man has the power to reason away.."(D. Bros)

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I think there's definately some breast configurations that just don't appear in porn.

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I am honestly going to tell you I do not know of, or can think of, any breast configuration that is not handled in porn... except maybe mastectomies?If you are looking for something, just email me and I'll hook you up.

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holmes
"...what a fool believes he sees, no wise man has the power to reason away.."(D. Bros)

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You don't think that women feeling dissatisfied with their bodies is a negative influence on women?

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Well to be more politically correct about it, I feel that anything which influences a person to feel disatisfied with their body is a negative influence. So yes I agree this is an issue... which I thought I made the point of saying.Where we disagree is where the locus of control is on body image.Currently our culture says "look at that person" or "watch this ad" or "look through this FASHION magazine" in order to make conclusions of self-image. This is a societal problem which cannot be blamed on the media, whose imagery and message is dictated by society.I'd like to use an example. You mentioned a young girl saying she wished she looked like Chistina Aguilera. Now maybe she finds Christina attractive. Is that wrong? Why? IMO it is only unhealthy if she becomes obsessed with having to be/look like Aguilera to the point that any difference is thought to be a problem with herself.But the more important point I want to throw back at you is what imagery can be shown if we are to make people feel good about themselves? Children especially will always feel imperfections if they are looking to imagery of ADULTS in order to make assessments of themselves. I'll tell you what I would be more alarmed if some young girl I knew (do to popular trends in media) suddenly said she wanted to look like Angela Lansbury.Awkardness and body disatisfaction is a basic part of life, especially while growing up. The key is not to change ads and imagery, but to change messages at home and to each other that conformity and appearance of material wealth is not the key to finding satisfaction with onesself.

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I'd love to see some studies which show greater positive feelings towards women (not in a sexual way) as a result of viewing sexualized images of women.

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I will get some studies for you, though I can't recall right off the bat whether they can be viewed as "not in a sexual way". What is wrong if there is no other effect than for mean to view women more positively toward women in a sexual way?Remember this is sexual fantasy, that's exactly what it's supposed to be focusing on. I am uncertain of any studies which show that action/adventure films make men feel better about women either.

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However, little children do end up seeing a lot very sexualized images... What effet do you think this has, on both the girls and the boys?

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They are more tolerant of sexual imagery. What effect, primarily negative effect, do you think this has? Remember my criteria is OBJECTIVE negative effects, and not SUBJECTIVE ones.

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That's a bit like telling kids that it's up to them to make healthy food choices when the school has pop and candy vending machines everywhere and the cafeteria serves mostly tater tots and chicken nuggets.

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What the hell has happened to the power of children? Oh yeah, we tell them they must obey whatever we say... Back when I was a kid my school switched cafeteria caterers who served junk food and essentially NO fruits/vegetables. Very popular to kids they thought. But this was back when kids apparently had guts and some self-respect. We held a boycott and after a week or so the catering company was out and we got a new menu with healthy foods.Why don't we tell them to stand up for themselves? And then why don't we respect them when they do?

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It's a two way street, here. The ad companies get demographic information, true, but they also work very hard to tell us what is beautiful and what is desireable so we will buy their mascara or their shampoo or their exercise machine.

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This is true. There will always be hucksterism, snake-oil, whatever. Is the key to this not to clamp down on imagery in media, but rather to teach those around us to be above relying on the media... teach them how to beat the hucksters?By the way, I have never felt the need to become impotent in order to get on the bandwagon of viagra, though I have been wondering if there are enough advertisements played often enough if it will subliminally induce impotence.Perhaps what we could do is restrict advertising?

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Men are most certainly allowed to be something other than model-like in mainstream media.

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I think your suggestion that most men are homely... especially when you talked about Friends. You appear to have a skewed vision of what "average" men look like.How about shows like Roseanne or Golden Girls?Your criticism of music videos is valid, but then the music industry in general is not too nice on women. I'd back you on that... though I would say that it makes more sense for a rapper rapping about his material success to have mainstream women hanging off of him. The bigger problem is whatever happened to the Janis Joplin's?

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Where is the male equivalent to Christine Aguillera and Brittany Spears in which a scantilly-clad buff young teenage boy is heavily marketed to 8 year old males to emulate?

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Women are more likely to find women and men appealing, while guys are more likely to only find women appealing. Thus the selling ticket is girls girls girls.Perhaps it is as Elaine said on Seinfeld... women's bodies are a work of art, men's bodies are utilitarian, like jeeps.By the way, since the topic is porn... go to a porn store and you will find men and women's bodies and plenty of varied shapes of women, more so than in the magazine rack of the grocery store.

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Queer Eye... are not at all about making everyone think they need to look like a model. In fact, they seem to me to be the opposite.

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Personally I like Queer Eye, but I am not going to apologize for what it is. It is a statement that to be attractive one must conform and project an image of material wealth (which includes stereotypes of sexuality). Getting rid of a toupe is simply a style choice, and NOT about self-acceptance when they also change his clothes and house to be "better". You will note how many guys they send to the gym, or to tanning salons.

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Does this mean that there has been a decrease in the number of breast augmentations in female porn workers? Just curious.

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I have heard that there is, but am uncertain of any study on it. I'll look it up.

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What do you consider "modern"? Does Japanese porn count? What about internet porn viewing by mistake?

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Current, as in what is out there now or over the last few years... No, if your criticism is of American Porn (and even if we included Japanese porn it is a known niche market)... No, because mistakenly bumping into something gives one NOTHING from which to judge the rest of an industry it is a part of.

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I wouldn't see 95% mass market, blonde, thin, tall, fake boobs, mainstream stuff?

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Well I guess I cannot make a blanket statement for EVERY store, but if you go to a number of them you will find on average that 95% doesn't cover most of anything. Blonde certainly NOT (ethnic movies are HUGE), thin maybe 40-80% (depends on what you mean by thin), tall (?, I've never even noticed this as a standard), fake boobs are hard to say since movies generally contain more than one starlet (however HUGE tits are becoming the niche market and moving out of mainstream).Since the focus of this thread is the internet then 95% is a clearly inapplicable. Content runs the gamut. As I have already said one of the largest growing sectors is women and couples making their own porn, or people focusing on natural beauty of human bodies/sexuality.I won't give a link but let me give two names of very successful sites run by women and that focus on natural beauty. They are good examples of a rising trend. NakkidNerds and Abbywinters. Both are dotcoms so it won't be hard to find. The first one may sound derogative but it is selfnamed and focuses on intelligent girls.

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Just because there is more interesting porn, or more realistic depictions of bodies in some porn, doesn't mean that's what everybody is watching.

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I am uncertain how this stands as a criticism of the porn industry or of anything I said. If people all decide to drink coke instead of orange juice, who is to blame?

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but what if the media is partially to blame?

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There choices of what to print are their own. The amount of power one ascribes to what they print in judging ones own life is one's own.Who makes the grass green? You do.

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holmes
"...what a fool believes he sees, no wise man has the power to reason away.."(D. Bros)

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Isn't it more likely to generate unhealthy attitudes towards sex and sexuality by prohibition rather than exposure?

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I agree. Though I do believe that is up to the parents to decide, and so companies should not be overriding parental consent by using sexual spam, blindlinking, or popups.

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I doubt most kids are that interested until their sexual functions start to come on line anyhow.

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I think this is not true. Most kids are just plain inquisitive about everything. They will not distinguish between sexual and nonsexual subjects unless taught otherwise. The only difference is in entering puberty, kids become more proactive in seeking out sources of sexual gratification. Thus they move from interested to "gotta get some".

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holmes
"...what a fool believes he sees, no wise man has the power to reason away.."(D. Bros)

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And I'd love to see some studies which show greater positive feelings towards women... as a result of viewing sexualized images of women.

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Ooooohhh, I am so pissed at myself. In addition to college coursework in pornography, I was assembling a documentary on pornography about 2 years ago. I had a nice list of studies I thought I would just cut and past into here. I went to my archives and discovered my list was GONE. The only thing I had left were my lists of land use studies (correlating pornography on communities instead of individuals).This is not an excuse, but an explanation that what I will list here is much smaller than I could have posted (coming from a short text document I had used to prepare part of my later list). You can poke around on your own of course after checking out these, but what you will find are more studies which back up these.Oh yeah, and before anyone thinks I am buying the results of these studies completely, this is not true. I am very critical of social research studies, especially if they come with self-reporting. However this shows some of the ones with a bit better way of linking assessment and result, as well as the fact that OBJECTIVE negative results are not generally seen linked to porn in research at all...Exposure to pornography and attitudes about women and rape: A correlational study. Garcia,L.T. J. Sex Res. 1986 22: 378-385
Abstract: Investigated the relationship between exposure to sexually explicit material and attitudes toward rape in 115 male undergraduates. Data provide mixed support for the hypothesis that exposure to pornographic material would be correlated with less liberal attitudes toward women: Only exposure to coercive or violent sexual themes was related to more traditional attitudes about women. Contrary to predictions, subjects having greater exposure to sexual materials were found to express more liberal attitudes toward women in the area of sexual behavior.Feminist perspectives on sexuality. Baron,L. J. Sex Res. 1990 27:363-380.
Abstract: Examined the relationship between the circulation rates of soft-core pornographic magazines and gender equality in the 50 American states. Gender equality was measure with the Gender Equality Index (GEX), which combines 24 indicators of the status of women relative to men in the 3 institutional domains of politics, economics, and legal rights. Multiple regression analysis was used to test the hypothesis that the higher the circulation rate of soft-core pornographic magazines, the lower the level of gender equality. Contrary to the hypothesis, the results show that gender equality was higher in states characterized by higher circulation rates of
pornography, suggesting that pornography and gender equality both flourish in politically tolerant societies.Violent pornography, antiwoman thoughts, and antiwoman acts: In search of reliable effects. Fischer, W. A. and Greneir,G. J. Sex Res. 1994, 31: 23-38
Abstract: Described experiments that examined the impact of violent pornography on 79 male undergraduates' fantasies, attitudes, and behaviors toward women. Exp 1, Subjects (Ss) were exposed to violent pornographic stimuli, nonviolent erotic stimuli, or to neutral stimuli. Ss' sexual arousal, perceptions of the stimulus, post-exposure sexual fantasies, and post exposure attitudes toward women were measured. In Exp 2 Ss were provoked by a female researcher and were then required to view a violent
pornographic stimulus portraying a woman who had been sexually assaulted, but was aroused by the assault. Ss could then respond to the woman who had provoked them by speaking to her over an intercom or by sending her an electric shock. Exposure to violent pornography, even after provocation, produced essentially no antiwoman aggression, fantasies, or attitudes.Ahhhhh... but porn is not the perfect panacea for sexual related problems. Where researchers have found a connection between porn and negative attitudes is when violent pornography is used by those already prone to violence (esp. toward women).Repeated exposure to violent and nonviolent pornography: Likelihood of raping ratings and laboratory aggression against women. Malamuth,N.M. and Ceniti,J. Aggressive Behav. 1986 12: 129- 137.
Abstract: Examined the long-term effects of repeated exposure to violent and nonviolent pornography on males' laboratory aggression against women and their self-reported likelihood of raping. 42 university students were randomly assigned to the sexually violent, sexually nonviolent or control exposure conditions. Those assigned to the sexually violent or sexually nonviolent conditions were exposed over a 4-wk period to 10 stimuli including feature-length films and written and pictorial depictions, whereas controls were not exposed to any stimuli. Following the end of the exposure phase, subjects participated in what they believed to be a totally unrelated experiment in which aggression was assessed within a Buss paradigm. Exposure to the violent or nonviolent pornographic stimuli did not affect laboratory aggression, but likelihood of raping ratings predicted laboratory aggression.Sexually violent pornography, anti-women attitudes, and sexual aggression: A structural equation model Demare, D. et al, J. Res. Person. 1993 27:285-300.
Abstract: Using data provided by 383 male university students, several structural equation models were developed and tested to asses the interrelationship of pornography use, anti-women attitudes, and propensity for sexual violence. The model best fitting the data is one in which use of Sexually Violent Pornography and Anti-Women Attitudes are exogenous latent variables predicting self-reported Likelihood of Rape and Likelihood of using Sexual Force, as well as self-reported
history of having achieved sexual intercourse by use of Coercion and Force. A variation of this model that includes use of Nonviolent Pornography as an exogenous variable was also tested. Use of nonviolent pornography was not uniquely associated with potential or actual sexual aggression. The findings suggest the potential roles of both attitudes and sexually violent pornography in the occurrence of sexual aggression.A question arises on how this plays out over an entire community. Will psychos suddenly be popping out because of porn? The results of studies based on rates of violence and availability do not show this...Pornography and rape: Theory and practice? Evidence from crime data in four countries where pornography is easily available. Kutchinsky,B. Int. J. Law Psych. 26: 47-64.
Abstract: Reviews the evidence regarding the postulated causal link between pornography and rape, using data on the incidence of rape in 4 societies (Denmark, Sweden, Germany, and the US) where pornography is widely available. While earlier research found no evidence of a causal link between pornography and rape, a new generation of behavioral scientists has attempted to prove such a connection, especially for aggressive pornography. Aggregate data on rape and other violent or
sexual offenses in these 4 countries seem to exclude the possibility that the availability of pornography has any detrimental effects in the form of increased sexual violence.This same thing is found in land use studies if you would like me to start moving into those.

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holmes
"...what a fool believes he sees, no wise man has the power to reason away.."(D. Bros)

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how does "no negative attitudes" equal "positive attitudes?"

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The first one showed some positive attitudes, though they were sexual in nature. Unfortunately the very studies I was hoping to post... which had more positive results... were some of the ones I mentioned had been lost. I'll try and dig them up again, but it's going to take a bit of digging.I figured the ones I did post were helpful. I DO have some land studies which indicate some positive trends with pornography, but I realize that is not the same as a social study indicating positive attitudes.

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I also wonder if there are many studies of women, and if their self esteem or negative body image is affected by watching porn, or by viewing soft core magazine images, or whatever.

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I am unsure, but I would suspect there are studies like this somewhere. Then again any effects would likely depend on the kind of porn or bodies depicted... and the length of the effect may be pretty limited.

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Oh, and you mentioned Japanese porn to be in a niche by itself, but that's not really accurate, at least according to what I saw when I was there.

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I think there may have been a miscommunication. When you said Japanese porn I thought you meant porn being manufactured in Japan, and not the kinds of porn you will find in a Japanese porn store. There is a distinction.Japanese manufactured porn on average... well, almost exclusively as far as I can tell... deals with power issues. Men control women and either degrade them, or introduce them to something the women feel is degrading before learning they like it. A lot of control, including binding and force, and iconography of youth, inexperience, and purity for the women.Thus "Japanese Porn" is a niche market in the US. Although the Japanese may have porn pretty close to what one finds around the world...

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Kiddie porn is also more accepted there, and a lot of the artist depictions on the posters were very icky. Some of the highest-paid female porn workers there are those that are tiny and undeveloped enough to pass for little girls.

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That's because it's a different culture. Up until the US started enforcing its culture on the Japanese they were able to depict their own sexual beliefs and practices.Not finding sex repulsive and dirty and finding youth attractive and energetic, they had no concept that youths engaging in sex was something disgusting or "unnatural" and so their laws reflected this. I believe their age of consent laws are still low (around 14 or something), but recently laws have been put in place (at the insistence of US) to restrict them from depicting this reality.You might be surprised if you ever go to Europe as well. Many countries there also allow for different ages and imagery to reflect this. Let's forget the hardcore sadomasochism, bathroom stuff, and bestiality (all legal and widespread) to focus on what seems to be your main concern: age. Until the mid-late 80's childporn was legal in the Netherlands and I believe Denmark (through the 70's). Once again, different cultural attitudes toward sex.Age of consent (up until last year) was 12 in Holland, and I think 13-15 in Scandinavia. Due to the US applying pressure, they lost the ability to depict this kind of sexuality. It still remained lower than US porn standards, but higher than their consent standards.Yet even with this adoption of more acceptable US standards, what you would most likely consider "softcore porn" involving youth is still allowed, or should I say "accepted"? They have different attitudes about what nudity, sexuality, and body identity means.I was shocked a number of years ago, when I discovered that a normal. popular TV guide in Denmark included nude pictorials throughout. That included girls down to the age of 13. So for what (in the US) you get put in the slammer for years, in Denmark you get to see what's good on TV for the night.Not above my own socialization, when I was staying with a family in Denmark I felt uncomfortable flipping through the TV guide with their kids hanging around, but to them it was natural, nothing. In one surreal moment one of their little girls started handing me a popular kid's candy at the time... giant gummi breasts and asses.Talk about culture shock. I just had to laugh. Yeah, outside the US, even I can end up looking like a prude.

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holmes
"...what a fool believes he sees, no wise man has the power to reason away.."(D. Bros)

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Personally I object to being inflicted with any kind of unsolicited advertising

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Absolutely. I've always wondered if it would be unconstitutional to make a law saying that advertisements would have to have AD placed in the subject line. That way people can filter it easily using software, and what freedom of speech issues could the advertisers complain about?

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I guess it depends on maturity levels and ages, but my experience of kids is that adult oriented stuff doesn't cause much of a response until they've been taught that it's 'naughty'.

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I would certainly agree that to the degree it is considered forbidden, the more you arouse the interest of children in seeking it out. However, I have had different experiences with kids (including my own childhood) than you have. It certainly doesn't create the same level of stir as when hormones are raging, but its not like there's no curiosity.Even in Denmark they had a curiosity. There just wan't an added dimension of shock or embarrassment or guilty when they "explored" such things. I thought that was healthier as it did not leave people scarred for just being curious about bodies and sexuality. Of course like I said, it was no help for me that was already socialized to treat it as a "secret" that kids are "supposed" to be kept away from.Oh yeah, I forgot to mention that my mind was blown when in corner mom & pop grocery stores the hardcore porn videos/mags were right next to the snack and candy section for kids. The full penetration (and more) images were not covered up at all. Heck porn shops had their wares right out in the windows for kids to see. Actually this latter thing is true in Holland as well. I definitely wished I had grown up there.I notice you are in the UK, what is the current state of porn in there? I heard at one time that hardcore porn was completely illegal.

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holmes
"...what a fool believes he sees, no wise man has the power to reason away.."(D. Bros)

This is post is not meant as further debate, but just to supply more information on the subject. Here is an excellent overview of the current state of research on the effects of porn. While it touches on most of the studies I gave in my last post, it explains their relationship within the entire scope of such studies. This is a long article but a great reference. This link is a short article on the state of the Japanese porn industry, specifically discussing how it changed under initial US pressure, where it is now, and where some pioneers are hoping to puch it. It includes this interesting quote: The irony is that while it includes this history of how the US influenced Japanese porn by imposing its moral culture on the Japanese... and it turned out for the absurd... the changes the people are currently trying to make in Japan are the imposition of current US morals on Japan! They champion the recent illegalization of child porn, and the current agendas of eliminating violence, but lifting bans on explicit imagery. I guess 50 years from now we can read an article on the absurd results imposing US morals on another culture for a second time has produced. This is a link on Brazilian porn. It shows how yet another culture which is different than the prudish cultures of the US and Australia results in a lot of head scratching when cultures collide. The irony in this is that we say we are the ones that are free, but in reality others are.On studies that show positive effects, as I had stated in an earlier post I was unsure if there were any that were not linked to positive attitudes of a sexual nature. I have been unable to find any individual level studies that show positive affects outside of the sexual realm.One of the studies I have already mentioned showed this kind of effect, but I realize that isn't what you were looking for.All positive effects results outside of the sexual realm, were found in large scale studies, finding links between cultural attitude identifiers, or crime statistics, and availability of porn. Some of the best ones were noted in my previous list. You can find more along these lines in the link above, or if you do further research, but the point is made in those. There is a pretty definitive link between increased availability and decrease in sexual crimes. That includes Japan which up until two years ago included childporn and massive amounts of violent sexual imagery.There are also studies (which you will find in the top link) which show that violent sexual offenders more often than not have been brought up in sexually restrictive environments with little exposure to pornography, or where porn existed a much greater exposure to violence (outside of porn) and a negative attitude toward sex.I am sceptical of those studies however, even if they make the point I myself would like to make.Anyway, I hope you find this material helpful in understanding the current scientific knowledge regarding the effects of porn, as well as an insight on how ethnocentrism has influenced evaluations of porn in other cultures.[This message has been edited by holmes, 02-26-2004]

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holmes
"...what a fool believes he sees, no wise man has the power to reason away.."(D. Bros)

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Oogling women's hips or backsides seems to make a lot more sense to me.

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I can't remember the doc I watched... I think it was on the science channel... but they discussed the nature of male oggling and female development. I guess the going theory is that breasts are generally formed in a way to mimic the same visual stimulation men get from women's asses (or is it vise versa?).Breast cleavage and ass "cleavage" are two clefts bounded by luscious globular objects... all set to drive a man (and some women) to drooling.But to be honest, what in sexuality is anything greater than childlike behavior in either men or women?

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holmes
"...what a fool believes he sees, no wise man has the power to reason away.."(D. Bros)

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Well, one thing that springs to mind is delayed gratification. That's fairly important to good sex most of the time and this skill is definitely NOT something common to children.

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Point taken... sort of. Delayed gratification is a way to heighten sexual pleasure. I am not sure if I can call it fairly important to good sex. That depends on how much delay and which gratifications one is delaying.I also do not want to say that understanding delayed gratification is uncommon to children. It is uncommon in those without experience, but experience does not make one's pursuits any less childlike.Sorry if this seems like semantics, but I think it is important to distinguish between childlike, childish, and simple lack of experience.Some children learn very quickly that delayed gratification can heighten enjoyment (lets say of candy) and so create rituals to delay being able to eat it. That does not make them any less childish about focusing on themselves, or childlike in enjoying the material gratification of candy.Certainly in sex this will be more common than candy when we are talking about children, but this is because in our culture kids experience with sex is strangled from the very beginning.

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Anoter is the concept of sharing and of thinking of others before oneself...Those are concepts the little self-centered rugrats have to be taught, and so are not childish.

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Also point taken... though again I would want to distinguish between childlike, childish, and simple lack of experience. I also believe kids don't have to be taught sharing, though that speeds up the process. Kids are able to learn this on their own through interaction with others (and not explicit instruction).A guy might love eating pussy, or a girl sucking cock. Does that make them more sharing or mature because they enjoy getting the other person off? Attention to one's partner may be just as childlike in its subject, and childish in its pursuit, even if experience guides how they are expressed.On a funny note... I knew one guy that said publicly sex was just mutual masturbation, and the girls loved him even after they heard that. I also knew another guy that refused to eat girls out, yet girls were pretty much lined up to give him head any time he wanted despite the fact they knew they'd get nothing in return.Peoples is funny.

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holmes
"...what a fool believes he sees, no wise man has the power to reason away.."(D. Bros)

Or is it the great openness and beauty of Rome and Greece? Gods let it be, in all the Gods' names. Thanks in advance.As far as I can tell most cultures founded on monotheism (particularly the popular ones of our day) were/are more depraved than Rome and Greece. They continued to take pleasure in people's pains just the same, but twisted life to yield yet more pain from the very idea of OTHER people's pleasures.Thus all of the worst those ancient societies had to offer, but little of the beauty.What a truly sad despicable world view that is... to me anyway.Indeed I still have no idea how Xians rationalize this as judgement itself was taught to be the equivalent of any "sin" being judged.Judge not lest ye be judged appears to be the first thing Xians forget in their quest to garner God's attention for themselves, apparently by converting or damning souls for him.Sexual freedom is real freedom, Steve. Sexual fascism is real fascism.If you don't like porn, don't watch... If thine eyes continue to offend thee, pluck them out. But leave my balls alone ya jerk.Heheheh.

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holmes
"...what a fool believes he sees, no wise man has the power to reason away.."(D. Bros)

I don't have stats at hand, but I may be intrigued enough to look for some recent ones sometime this week.What I can say is that I think Crash was overstating the real stat. I do not believe that couples are the largest group of porn consumers. However if I remember correctly they are the largest growing market of consumers.Men buy porn at about the same rate, but the rates of women and couples buying porn together is growing fast. Or was anyway.Of course if we altered the definition of porn so that it included textual pornography, then my guess would women would outrank everyone. Those smut novels with Fabio engorged covers are a pretty darn big industry, just as cheaply made and sex-filled as commercial porn, and pretty much an all woman market.Definitely in Europe it is even more of a couples thing than in the US. You find women browsing and buying here quite a bit (with boyfriend or girlfriend).

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holmes
"...what a fool believes he sees, no wise man has the power to reason away.."(D. Bros)