Would society be better off without pornography?

looking_around

hatrickpatrick wrote: »

I think if you look up fellatio and cunnilingus on Wikipedia you'll find ample sources indicating evidence that these practices have been around for centuries. As for BDSM:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BDSM#History

Now unless these ancient societies had considerably better video streaming capabilities than is currently suspected.......

Its all lies!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
We all know society is getting worse!!:mad:

Billy86

nozzferrahhtoo wrote: »

I would not be surprised by this at all to be honest. And someone else on the thread also mentioned studies, which I have not myself yet read, showing that animated depiction of simulated child porn has a negative effect on the desires of pedophiles to engage in actual pedophilia. Something I hope we can explore further in a moral way.

At the same time however, despite not being anti porn, I am HYPER sensitive to correlations between rising or dropping crime rates, and one selected modality of society, such as access to porn. A correlation between dropping rates of such horrors, and an increasing access to porn, sounds good to me and my position on the matter. But I would be hyper sensitive to buying into that too readily either.

But we should be equally sensitive to arguments going the opposite direction. There are those who are anti porn that try to correlate porn use with sexual abuse and rape and more.

Their assumption: That porn caused these or influenced them somehow.

The equally valid assumption they do not make: That for such people their "evil" and their porn use are both symptomatic of their underlying issues, not that either of those issues led to the other.

Ah yeah don't get me wrong, I was in support of your point rather than opposed to it. And I also agree there are far, far too many societal variables (especially in a place like Ireland in 2014 vs 1984) to put it down to just one thing, such as porn. I just find enjoy throwing it at the "more porn = more rape, it's so obvious" brigade who don't stop and think about any of the evidence there actually is at hand.

nozzferrahhtoo

Billy86 wrote: »

Ah yeah don't get me wrong, I was in support of your point rather than opposed to it. And I also agree there are far, far too many societal variables (especially in a place like Ireland in 2014 vs 1984) to put it down to just one thing, such as porn. I just find enjoy throwing it at the "more porn = more rape, it's so obvious" brigade who don't stop and think about any of the evidence there actually is at hand.

Yeah I get it. Actually as a user showed above oral sex and BDSM have a longer history than many might think. I doubt facial ejaculation is something all that new in the lights of the undertones of intimacy and even dominance it has.

What one probably can accuse porn of therefore is not putting such ideas in peoples minds, but helping people validate them and realize "Ah it is not just me into that idea then". It might also normalize it to the point that the people wishing to engage in it feel more inclined to request it openly than they might otherwise be.

None of which is a bad thing. Quite the opposite infact. Given the number of unwanted pregnancies in our society I would happily have more people engage in facial ejaculation as a "norm".

But as we all appear to be agreed: If someone is being coerced or even tricked into consenting to sexual acts that they actually really really do not want to engage in at all.... then we have moved entirely away from a useless conversation about the merits of pornography.... and into a genuinely useful conversation about the failings of our sexual education system and our parental AND institutional guidance of our young in their sexual development.

allibastor

nozzferrahhtoo wrote: »

Yeah I get it. Actually as a user showed above oral sex and BDSM have a longer history than many might think. I doubt facial ejaculation is something all that new in the lights of the undertones of intimacy and even dominance it has.

What one probably can accuse porn of therefore is not putting such ideas in peoples minds, but helping people validate them and realize "Ah it is not just me into that idea then". It might also normalize it to the point that the people wishing to engage in it feel more inclined to request it openly than they might otherwise be.

None of which is a bad thing. Quite the opposite infact. Given the number of unwanted pregnancies in our society I would happily have more people engage in facial ejaculation as a "norm".

But as we all appear to be agreed: If someone is being coerced or even tricked into consenting to sexual acts that they actually really really do not want to engage in at all.... then we have moved entirely away from a useless conversation about the merits of pornography.... and into a genuinely useful conversation about the failings of our sexual education system and our parental AND institutional guidance of our young in their sexual development.

Well said.

I am all for people trying new things, and if ideas are gathered from porn, great, it is somewhat similar to watching grand designs.

But as you rightly said, if mis-information and coercion are going on because " I saw this and want to do it, sure everyone else does it all the time so you have to" then yes it is a problem which needs to be looked at, but as you said with porn and like the chicken and the egg, which came first.

nozzferrahhtoo

It was the Egg. Should you be interested

My intuition however would have me jump to it not coming from porn though. I doubt porn producers, looking to make money, simply throw things into porn for no reason and then the male populace go out looking to try it. That is simply a ridiculous business model that I do not buy.

It is simply more likely that it is porn that responds to the demands and desires of the audience from whom it looks to extract money.

allibastor

nozzferrahhtoo wrote: »

It was the Egg. Should you be interested

My intuition however would have me jump to it not coming from porn though. I doubt porn producers, looking to make money, simply throw things into porn for no reason and then the male populace go out looking to try it. That is simply a ridiculous business model that I do not buy.

It is simply more likely that it is porn that responds to the demands and desires of the audience from whom it looks to extract money.

Yes I agree, but as said when it is a group of young ladies speaking about their own (hopefully) innocent participation in it and the complete (again hopeful) lack of understanding about it as what they should or should not be expected to do is what worries me.

Rory28

I voted no because I read the question wrong. Porn all the way. Without it being single would be even harder, pardon the pun.

enfant terrible

enfant terrible wrote: »

Would you mind if your other half watched it?

Mine do on occasion. They are particularly enamoured with Abby Winters which is a porn producing website based in australia which is filmed - produced and so forth almost predominantly by a team of women.

And no - it does not bother me at all.

bk wrote: »

Actually I would say in my experience that the vast majority of women have at least a few extreme sexual fantasies.

Every single girl I've ever dated turned out to have some kinky fantasies.

Not sure sure what quantity of them have "extreme" ones to be honest. Let alone enough confidence to say it is the majority. Certainly have not read many figures on this.

My own experience is however that the fantasies the women in my social circles have tend to be more indepth and deeply thought out. Almost invariably.

This was hammered home to me at a recent enough house party where we ended up in a kind of truth/dare session going into what fantasies we have - as yet unrealized.

The guys had all the stereotypical ones - predominantly involving threesomes.

The gals however had an amazing variety of fantasies. And some of them with a level of thought out complexity that sent the eyebrows to the back of my head. One or two of them had a complexity of implementation behind them that they had clearly invested a lot of thought into it.

Putins Future Assassin

allibastor wrote: »

Yes I agree, but as said when it is a group of young ladies speaking about their own (hopefully) innocent participation in it and the complete (again hopeful) lack of understanding about it as what they should or should not be expected to do is what worries me.

That's where education comes in, we should be teaching that it is perfectly fine to have your own likes and dislikes sexually and that you shouldn't do anything that you aren't comfortable with.

dinorebel

Putins Future Assassin wrote: »

That's where education comes in, we should be teaching that there it is perfectly fine to have your own likes and dislikes sexuality and that you shouldn't do anything that you aren't comfortable with.

Teacher

"And don't forget children tomorrows lesson is Bukakke remember to do your homework"

Billy86

It's quite sad that sex education (and proper sex education at that) still isn't part of our national curriculum. Personally I think a "life skills" module involving budgeting and how to actually developing into a functional adult should be compulsory for either the leaving deaf, junior cert or both - and sex education should be a large part of it.

If I remember correctly, the only time we covered sex education in school (and I only did my leaving cert nine and a half years ago) was in junior cert religion class. In bloody religion class! Where I had a teacher who figured because Jesus was a documented real person, that every single word of the Bible was 100% literal truth. Quite sure she was a "new world" fundamentalist Christian actually.

That's not just inadequate sex education, it's downright laughable.

Uncle Ruckus

Uncle Ruckus wrote: »

I can't remember the last time I watched porn. lol It's harmless.There's no point banning nor censoring it as it would just create a black market. Supply and demand etc.

so you cannot remember as far back as this morning???:D

nozzferrahhtoo

Billy86 wrote: »

It's quite sad that sex education (and proper sex education at that) still isn't part of our national curriculum.

I think it more than sad, but positively morally criminal. After all what is school if NOT a forum for teaching children to deal with life. And what is sex if NOT a huge part of human life, culture, society, law, ethics and much much more.

It should not just be in our curriculum, it should be it's own subject and a massive one at that. It is every bit as important as every other subject we have currently got on the curriculum. And that it is essentially only dealt with in two pages of the biology section of a thick tome of science is, to my mind, a society failure.

Billy86 wrote: »

If I remember correctly, the only time we covered sex education in school (and I only did my leaving cert nine and a half years ago) was in junior cert religion class.

For me it was one page in my "Science" course before the Junior cert. And the teacher simply skipped it. After the JC "science" essentially split out into Chemistry, biology and physics. It was 2 pages in the Biology book. And it covered essentially the most basic functions, at the most basic level, and done so by a teacher who worked through it as quickly as she possibly could.

And not one of the exams I did, nor the past Leaving Cert papers I used to practice with, had a single question on the subject. Probably because writers of such exams were aware many teachers simply skip it.

This is not "laugable" as you put it. It is morally criminal.

YFlyer

bodhrandude wrote: »

Where have you been the last few years, they removed that option.

Sorted then

hatrickpatrick

bodhrandude wrote: »

Where have you been the last few years, they removed that option.

They most certainly did not