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What is online pornography doing to sexual tastes and youngsters’ minds?

economist.com

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Re: What is online pornography doing to sexual tastes and youngsters’ minds?

#101

Post by 6d0debc071 »

int_handler wrote: post #88
6d0debc071 wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Certainly. However, there are many things where people are expected to reach agreement. It's not clear that this has to be the matter on which they learn it. Indeed, considering the harm that can result, it's probably better if they learn to reach agreement on some other matter first.

Can you elaborate? There is potential risk of harm resulting for many other areas of personal developments as well.

Specifically on risks of harm? Sure:

Faults in agreement include parties generating agreement that doesn't reflect their values and/or desires, and the illusion of agreement by one or both parties.

While there is potential risk of harm in many other areas of development - including other areas of agreement - the stakes are not usually so high. Getting an illusion of agreement for what movie to see, what restaurant to eat at, or (at a younger age) what toy to play with, will tend to have less severe consequences than an illusion of agreement over whether to sleep with someone.

It is not clear that someone gains the most from risking the most. Why is an agreement over sex the defining developmental step of the skill? Especially since there are so many easy ways to reach such an agreement if you're not particularly picky. (I believe the classical example is, 'You give me money and I sleep with you.')

Re: What is online pornography doing to sexual tastes and youngsters’ minds?

#102

Post by zo1 »

gizmo686 wrote: post #81
zo1 wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is a shadow ban? Any links?

A shadow ban is where you do not inform a user that he has been banned, but silently hide all posts from said user. In your profile settings, you can set showdead to "yes" to see comments made by shadowbanned users.

Thanks for the info!

Re: What is online pornography doing to sexual tastes and youngsters’ minds?

#103

Post by mattstreet »

reader5000 wrote: post #11

It is very easy to find sexual release with internet porn. More difficult with a real life woman. And therein lies the collapse of western civilization.

You know people masturbated well before porn of any kind existed right? And that people frequently do more difficult but higher reward thing? And that there are other motivators for meaningful relationships than just sex?

Maybe this was just a joke that I didn't find very funny?

Re: What is online pornography doing to sexual tastes and youngsters’ minds?

#104

Post by facepalm »

elorant wrote: post #99
facepalm wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Perhaps you can explain to me what "objectification of women" means? Does it mean being attracted to their bodies? So what would be an OK thing to be attracted to - their ability to recite the digits of PI perhaps? To me it seems that the "anti-objectification" campaign only seeks to replace one attractor with another. So maybe less pretty women would prefer to be measured by their IQ? Why is one better than the othe…

It means having sex for a half hour without one kissing the other even once. It also means that women must have at least a dozen plastic surgeries to be considered acceptable by the industry.

The plastic surgery part certainly isn't true. The porn industry caters to all sorts of tastes, including imperfect bodies. A single visit to a popular porn site will demonstrate that.

As for kissing - OK, so that is one understandable definition, thank you for that.

I think sex is simply weird - if you think rationally about sex it is not really appealing. It only works in a state of arousal. That plays into the hands of feminists who frame sex as something disgusting being done to women - it works because people are rarely aroused while reading feminist pamphlets...

Re: What is online pornography doing to sexual tastes and youngsters’ minds?

#105

Post by azth »

yc1010 wrote: post #36
reader5000 wrote: post #11

It is very easy to find sexual release with internet porn. More difficult with a real life woman. And therein lies the collapse of western civilization.

I wonder how many problems in the middle east would be solved by bringing em' easy access to porn...

What is that even supposed to mean?

Re: What is online pornography doing to sexual tastes and youngsters’ minds?

#106

Post by ephelon »

sandworm101 wrote: post #16

So kids are forgoing realworld sex. When did that become a bad thing? My whole school life I was 'encouraged' to avoid sex, alcohol and every other vice at all costs. Going to a party on a friday night was a bad thing. Sex, whether through disease or pregnancy, would destroy your life. This is still the mantra, although nobody then told me that sex would send me to hell. That part is new. So why are we not surprised…

The danger is not that teenagers are avoiding real world sex, but that they have unrealistic ideas about sex. Kids see graphic sex and think that is how it's done. Consequently girls are subjected to unrealistic expectations and learn to hate sex. Source: My wife has spoken to many young girls who are the victims of "porn-style" sex.

Re: What is online pornography doing to sexual tastes and youngsters’ minds?

#107

Post by pluma »

elorant wrote: post #23

From my point of view online porn looks boring because it objectifies women too much. It’s just so mechanical nowadays. Whenever I happen to view porn from the eighties it looked much more natural. But then again I guess back then porn actors where only a few dozen and they knew each other quite well so this allowed some kind of intimacy to grow between them. Now porn has become a commodity, there are thousands of ac…

The problem with saying that porn objectifies women is that it's only half-true. Porn objectifies women as well as men. The only difference between the two is that for cultural reasons we consider sex something "men do to women". But if you think all porn portrays women as the passive "recipient" of sexual activities, you haven't been paying attention.

The problem is that even when women play the active part it they're considered victims because a) we see sex as something "done to women" and b) most porn is targeted at men (so porn consumers "use" the women, too).

Of course what this really boils down to is the sexist idea that men can't be raped (without being penetrated) and therefore can't be the "object" of porn to the same extent as women (except in gay porn because we like to pretend gay men are just men acting as if they were women).

In the end, the most common arguments against porn can be summarized as "I don't like it, therefore you shouldn't like it either" (or "I feel guilty, therefore you should feel guilty too").

Re: What is online pornography doing to sexual tastes and youngsters’ minds?

#108

Post by pluma »

douche wrote: post #85
artnep wrote: post #79

The first myth addressed by makelovenotporn.com (mentioned in the article) regards "facials". I wonder how much men's desire to do this comes from watching porn. Any grecian urns with men "dropping loads"?

Does anybody actually want to do this or have it done to them? There are a lot of weird tropes in porn, but this has to be one of the weirdest wide-spread ones. Really, you might as well just squirt super-glue at somebody. Seems like it would make a hell of a mess, and it also makes me think of this joke from Good Will Hunting: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6il6tocb4ic

I've heard several explanations.

The negative explanation is that it degrades the recipient (i.e. women), adding to the sadist/misogynist aspect of heterosexual intercourse.

The pragmatic explanation is that it provides a visual cue for the viewer (particularly those who are more visually oriented) indicating the climax of the sexual act. If the orgasm were internal, it'd be hard to miss (though there's an entire niche for that, of course). As to why it's the face in particular: it's the easiest way to directly show the recipient's reaction at the same time, especially on low-resolution or small-scale displays (plus on those devices a close-up tends to be easier to recognize).

The psychological explanation has something to do with there being a long-standing trope of portraying cannibalism as the ultimate infatuation (e.g. the communion of the Holy Spirit in Christianity representing "becoming one with Jesus" by consuming his flesh and blood) and ejaculate representing the "essence" of the male orgasm (biologically speaking the entire "point" of sex is to put one person's sperm in the other person's body).

It may seem odd that there are people who are into the ejaculate itself but it's far more straightforward than a lot of other things some people enjoy (including pretty much everything else that can come out of a person's body, apparently non-sexual body parts and things that aren't even related to persons, or even BDSM which is so much about psychology it can get away without any actual intercourse taking place).

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