Because things that feel good short-term can cause damage long-term. — TaySan
also the work of Melinda Tankard Reist.// — Wayfarer
If it's good, why is there [not] an outcry against it? If it's bad how did it become a multi-billion dollar franchise? — TheMadFool
What do you think. Is porn bad for us? — TaySan
What feels good to you might not feel good to someone else — TaySan
Statistics say that 25 percent of all internet searches are related to porn. — TaySan
In 1990, the director of a Cincinnati art museum was indicted on obscenity charges for mounting an exhibit of Mapplethorpe’s photographs that only a few weeks before had been hanging at a nearby university without incident. The photos included men displaying their genitals and engaged in sex acts.
https://www.jstor.org/stable/3081936?seq=1Cosmetic surgery can be empowering for individual women while reinforcing the hegemonic ideals that oppress women as a group.
What feels good to you might not feel good to someone else — TaySan
This sentiment is precisely what I wanted to express earlier. The issue of pornography - how the demand for it sustains a large-scale industry and how, simultaneously, there are many are against it - brings to the fore a very intriguing facet to hedonism-based morality which is, if you haven't guessed already, that not all pleasurable things are good. The puzzle of pornography - how well it runs and how bad we feel because of that - is just one of the many ways in which the marriage between hedonism and morality falls apart.
Conversely, if masochists have anything to say about it, not all painful things are bad. — NOS4A2
I have this sneaking suspicion that masochism is a myth. — TheMadFool
I have seen people play rugby of their own free will — unenlightened
The puzzle of pornography - how well it runs and how bad we feel because of that - is just one of the many ways in which the marriage between hedonism and morality falls apart. — TheMadFool
There was a social phenomena during the mid 20th century, called ‘the sexual revolution’. As I’m born in the fifties, I’m aware of it, but many born in the 70’s and afterwards aren’t aware of it, because it’s become the new normal. But at the time, the sexual revolution was seen as a complete upheaval and overthrowing of prior mores regarding sexuality, marriage, procreation, family, and so on. One of the major factors was the introduction of contraceptives, of course, which severed the link between sexual intercourse and procreation. Another was sexual liberation, which basically declared that sexual pleasure and sexual identity were fundamental human rights, on par with ethnicity or religion.
Among the antecedents, I think Freud’s theories were a major factor. He introduced the notion that libido is the basic drive of all life, and that to repress it or deny it was the cause of neuroses and other ills. I think everyone now believes that. Even though much of Freud has now been forgotten, that element became well and truly embedded in the collective culture. Other elements were the Alfred Kinsey and Masters & Johnson studies of ‘sexology’. Conservatives say that Kinsey was an advocate of deviant sexuality saying that, for instance, he documented what it took to induce orgasms in children and observing the sexual activities of co-workers and peers.
Nowadays, most of the media regard the new normal as, well, normal. The only people who really talk about the sexual revolution in other-than-approving terms tend to be religious or social conservatives who are easily depicted as oppressors and enemies of freedom.
Remember how Alduous Huxley depicted sexuality in Brave New World. Women were ‘pneumatic’ and sex a form of recreational activity with no implied moral bond or parental obligation. Well, we’re living the brave, new dream. Internet porn is an aspect of it, and an incubator for it. — Wayfarer
How does pronography fit into all of that? Well, for my money, I'd say that all that's happened is the previous opaque walls that enclosed our sexual appetites have now been replaced with transparent, see-through glass. — TheMadFool
sexual fantasizing (cheap pornography) was already on the scene much before what now passes as porn. — TheMadFool
Generalization of it being good or bad isn't the best way to think of this. Far better is to make more specific questions about it. There are negative aspects to it and porn is a sad industry, yet how the society deals with pornography differs. Banning it isn't a good idea, just as the idea of prohibition of the use alcohol or drugs is bad, even if their use has far more obvious negative impacts and there is far more justification for the prohibition of the recreational use of them.but do you think the good outweighs the bad? Because I honestly don't know — TaySan
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