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What Porn Did to American Culture?

theatlantic.com

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Re: What Porn Did to American Culture?

#101

Post by cantrecallmypwd »

loeg wrote: post #52
whatnow37373 wrote: post #35

Not buying it. She just states “porn shaped society” without anything to prove it. Seems absurd to me on the face of it. Are men objectifying women? Yes. Have they done this since the dawn of mankind? Yes. I could easily claim the reverse. Society shapes porn. It’s a reflection, not the other way around.

Presumably to be explored further in her unreleased book. But yeah, certainly this interview is not interesting on its own.

Half of headlines trad media and social media these days tend to conceal promotion of books, other merch, harebrained utopian ideology, and/or self.

"Abundance"

"Network States"

MrBeast

half of NYC

and whomever this author is

Re: What Porn Did to American Culture?

#102

Post by incomingpain »

It's relatively trivial to avoid porn IRL. I legit dont even know if they have magazines anymore. It's perhaps less difficult online, but still easy to avoid.

So how exactly can it mold the world?

Providing 3 examples of things you actively have to seek online; admittedly i dont know instragram but given they have to then redirect you to onlyfans is just yet another hoop to jump through? Not many are actually doing this.

>mainstreaming of really ugly, regressive treatment in politics and mainstream culture—not just of women but of immigrants, gay people, trans people.

Then this absurd jump to this? Porn that's not particularly available is somehow impacting immigrant men?

This article is really about politics; but they put a sock puppet in front with unbacked up ideas they just leap over.

Re: What Porn Did to American Culture?

#103

Post by IAmBroom »

swat535 wrote: post #84
davidmurdoch wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Their view of sex is as a sin Interesting perspective. But this is actually what Protestant Christians believe: https://ca.thegospelcoalition.org/columns/ad-fontes/5-surpri...

Right, there's a popular idea that Christianity is somehow anti-sex, but that's not really accurate if you look closely at the tradition itself. The Bible doesn't condemn sex, in fact, books like Song of Songs celebrate it in pretty vivid terms (just to name an example though one could dig up much more..). What Christianity actually critiques is sex outside of marriage. The reasoning is that sex is viewed as the most…

> What Christianity actually critiques is sex outside of marriage.

You were on a good track, until that sentence.

There are multiple sects of Christianity that criticize sex for many other contexts. You may be somehow unaware of this, but homosexual pleasures are disapproved by some churches.

Historically, that's still quite wrong. The Church consistently taught (at least in the West, since circa 400 A.D.) that total abstention was required of their holy leaders.

Re: What Porn Did to American Culture?

#104

Post by IAmBroom »

mjevans wrote: post #4

Edited: Please read and reply if you disagree with my view that porn reflects the greater social contract of society . An apathetic vacuum. (American? Capitalist? Global 'Elite'?) Society does not care about the people, actively seeking to use and exploit. When things go badly who gets the pain? The common person, the modern serf. When things go well who takes the rewards? Their boss's boss's boss. Porn is just a sca…

OK, I'll bite.

"Porn is... a symptom of the larger issues."

Since male monkeys in the lab will willingly trade food for monkey porn, I think you have a pretty high hurdle to prove that societal issues cause porn.

Also, you continue the article's unproven premise that "porn is bad". That's an opinion. And objectively, what few factual studies I've seen tends the other direction: ready access to porn correlates with lower sexual violence in countries.

Re: What Porn Did to American Culture?

#105

Post by IAmBroom »

replwoacause wrote: post #48
k__ wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"I recognized its pernicious effects on me" What effects did it have on you? "made me aware of the extreme perversions" Such as?

Should be obvious if you read the article, which you clearly have not. But since you’re asking, it hijacks your dopamine system and makes you behave like a lab rat. You use it for a quick boost, to cope, etc. Really the same kind of effect you notice in other addictive behaviors like gambling and overeating. As for the perversions, you don’t need me to enumerate them. Go visit pornhub if you’re somehow still unclear.…

Your use of the word "perversions" tells me all I need to know about your mindset. You are pre-judging people who like things you do not (or at least, things you wish you did not).

Re: What Porn Did to American Culture?

#106

Post by replwoacause »

IAmBroom wrote: post #105
replwoacause wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Should be obvious if you read the article, which you clearly have not. But since you’re asking, it hijacks your dopamine system and makes you behave like a lab rat. You use it for a quick boost, to cope, etc. Really the same kind of effect you notice in other addictive behaviors like gambling and overeating. As for the perversions, you don’t need me to enumerate them. Go visit pornhub if you’re somehow still unclear.…

Your use of the word "perversions" tells me all I need to know about your mindset. You are pre-judging people who like things you do not (or at least, things you wish you did not).

No it doesn’t. And that’s a strange take and simply untrue. I don’t judge anyone for looking at porn or having tastes I can’t relate to, but I’ve seen first hand what the damaging effects of regular porn watching can be and don’t want any part of it. I think it’s odd you take issue with my usage of the word perversions, I’m referring to things like humiliation, violence, objectification, abuse, exploitation, etc. I don’t think you can argue successfully that porn doesn’t have these problems.

Re: What Porn Did to American Culture?

#107

Post by whatnow37373 »

-__---____-ZXyw wrote: post #87
whatnow37373 wrote: post #35

Not buying it. She just states “porn shaped society” without anything to prove it. Seems absurd to me on the face of it. Are men objectifying women? Yes. Have they done this since the dawn of mankind? Yes. I could easily claim the reverse. Society shapes porn. It’s a reflection, not the other way around.

I think "society shapes porn" was totally true up until the point where it no longer was. Porn shapes society the exact moment when the majority of young people get the majority of their beliefs and views on sexuality, romance, relationships, gender roles, sensuality, etc, from porn. This isn't true of all groups of humans everywhere, but it's definitely true of many societies right now already, and I would say obvio…

> the majority of young people get the majority of their beliefs and views on sexuality, romance, relationships, gender roles, sensuality, etc, from porn

You state this casually, but it is one hell of a thing to claim.

In my experience this is not true at all. Porn shaped my opinion on sexuality and relationships like GTA informed my social norms and my stance on the use of violence. Sometimes things just are .. relief and don’t mean anything. It’s an escape not an education.

Ironically it is the organized religions that are by and large the most dominant factor in all types of dysfunction surrounding relationships and female rights. Porn is 1,5% of the problem compared to what those guys are doing.

Your 125 IQ mother being a stay at home mom while your deadbeat barely literate dad gets to work and rule “the household”. Now that’s a potent toxin to mess up youth. Funny how those guys tend to focus on porn, but now I’m just ranting. Excuse me.

Re: What Porn Did to American Culture?

#108

Post by glimshe »

SequoiaHope wrote: post #64
mystraline wrote: post #22

The article claims porn, and sure, that's a part. The bigger issue here is outmoded predominant protestant christian views of 'morality'. And that percolates all through the rest of USA culture, including into advertisements and commercialism. Their view of sex is as a sin, so its shamed, hidden, and secretly desired. All these things have popped up with all these pretty terrible results. Sexuality is 'tittalting' so…

Sex parties are fun! I’m in the “embrace sex, skip the shame” boat. In the Bay Area there’s a really solid polyamory community. I’ve been reading the books and working on my own communication issues and anxieties for a good 15 years now and at this point things flow so smoothly. I have so many people in my life I’m on a kissing basis with. It’s so lovely! I’m surrounded by genuine connection and affection. Me and my…

There is nothing wrong with your point of view. But does it scale? We got here after thousands of years of societies shaped by religion and its various concepts of family.

Can your alternative produce a strong society that can survive external threats? Maybe it can, but intuitively I think it can't. And what would happen, then, is that a society based on polyamory would be destroyed and/or conquered by others who believe in traditional families.

I'm not saying that societies that preach traditional families are good or bad, just that they have a long history of surviving.

Re: What Porn Did to American Culture?

#109

Post by thraway79879s8d »

cryptonector wrote: post #99
thraway79879s8d wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're right, but I don't think "just go to a sex party" scales up. There is simply way more male interest in such things. (Though yes, a lot of men would chicken-out last minute too.) A gestalt of 3rd wave feminisism is "maybe if women are liberated, they will be hornier like men", and there was a huge amount of cultural messaging in this direction. It does not work, and as the interview entails, there is a lot of r…

If women are not happy with the hookup culture, then maybe you need to add one more option to your "either" list: marriage. I know that sounds quaint, but look around this thread and see that marriage need not mean monogamy, for a lot of people anyways, but stability (emotional, financial, familial, sexual). Besides, your list comes across as very male-centered[0]: how do we provide men with all the sex they neeEeEed…

[dead]

Re: What Porn Did to American Culture?

#110

Post by -__---____-ZXyw »

whatnow37373 wrote: post #107
-__---____-ZXyw wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think "society shapes porn" was totally true up until the point where it no longer was. Porn shapes society the exact moment when the majority of young people get the majority of their beliefs and views on sexuality, romance, relationships, gender roles, sensuality, etc, from porn. This isn't true of all groups of humans everywhere, but it's definitely true of many societies right now already, and I would say obvio…

> the majority of young people get the majority of their beliefs and views on sexuality, romance, relationships, gender roles, sensuality, etc, from porn You state this casually, but it is one hell of a thing to claim. In my experience this is not true at all. Porn shaped my opinion on sexuality and relationships like GTA informed my social norms and my stance on the use of violence. Sometimes things just are .. reli…

I appreciate the sincere engagement.

I wasn't saying that statement you quote is true for all groups everywhere, I was explicit about that, if you reread. I was saying that if that threshold is met in a specific society at a given time, maybe then at that stage we could say that porn was "shaping society" there more than society was shaping porn. As in, it could be a threshold we could look at.

While I agree that it's a large claim by itself, and that it's going to be hard (or impossible) to measure, I think having an idea of a threshold like that can be useful for thinking about where we are. And I do think that "where we are" with porn and its influence is a lot more serious than people are comfortable admitting.

So yes, while I very much agree that religion is maybe the single other huge thing, the effect porn is likely having on human sexuality is something I think we vastly underestimate.

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