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Psycho
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This editorial from WIRED sums up my view on this topic pretty well:
http://www.wired.com/news/culture/0,1284,65831,00.html
Quote:
Porn Prohibitionists Miss Point*
By Regina Lynn**
All week I've been thinking about the recent "porn is heroin" hearing, which concluded that porn bypasses the cognitive speechmaking part of the brain, turns men into rapists and -- my favorite -- releases damaging "erototoxins" into the bloodstream.
The stated point of the hearing was to determine whether Congress should fund studies about the effects of pornography addiction on families and communities, and whether it should launch a public health campaign to warn people of the dangers of online porn.
If it's going to spend money in this arena at all, I'd rather Congress fund studies about the effects of pornography in general, including its effect on the economy, on technological innovation, on sexual function and dysfunction, and so on. Even the anti-porn panelists who testified before Sen. Sam Brownback (R-Kansas) admitted the dearth of such studies.
I would hate to see anyone confuse "addiction to porn" with "existence of porn" and pursue a study about addiction without establishing a base line for normal use. Porn did not become a billion-dollar industry on addiction alone.
Porn addiction -- which I define as an overwhelming compulsion to watch porn, such that viewing porn becomes your top priority, taking precedence over work and family -- is certainly a cause for concern and possibly intervention.
Yet like any addiction, when the substance in question is relatively harmless to most people, as porn seems to be, criminalizing that substance backfires. Porn, like alcohol, is an indulgence that I suspect the vast majority of people enjoy in moderation, in small doses or not at all.
And porn, like alcohol, is meant to be a treat for adults. In fact, everyone I've spoken within the adult industry also supports the separation of children and adult content -- that's why it's called adult content.
The panel's concern that the internet makes pornography much more available to children than it was in the good ol' days of the printing press is a valid one. I have no objection to increasing our efforts to educate adults in how they can keep pornography away from children, or to developing better content filters, age-validation tactics and other yet-to-be-invented technologies that would make it almost impossible for kids to find porn online.
If nothing else, just think of the pool of brilliant problem-solvers we'll create, and the security experts that will arise out of a generation of Sneakers.
As a whole, however, the witnesses in this particular hearing fail to inspire my confidence. While some of their concerns make sense -- I mean, really, who could argue that addiction is healthy or that young children should view sexual imagery? -- some of their examples expose the shaky foundation beneath their case.
To wit: Psychiatrist Jeffrey Satinover claims that porn "causes masturbation."
What's so bad about masturbation? We're born sexual beings -- even infants masturbate, long before they can say "free porn," much less Google it. Given the other challenges we're facing, from the war in Iraq to the 30 percent of American children living in poverty, autoeroticism is hardly high on the list of threats to families or society. I'd hate to have to replace it with macramé just because a handful of people can't stand the thought that I might be taking longer showers than they deem necessary.
And it wouldn't hurt certain people to let go of their obsessive guilt and add this simple pleasure to their daily routine.
Dr. Mary Anne Layden states that "the myth that women are sexually aroused by engaging in behaviors that are actually sexually pleasuring to men is a particularly narcissistic invention of the pornography industry."
What? I'm plenty aroused by fellatio and other "behaviors" that are "pleasuring to men." That's why I'm fun in bed, even though I may inadvertently be proving her point, as my delight in such activities is a result of the healing power of cybersex. (Cybersex did more to help me overcome childhood sexual trauma than two years of therapy. But that's another column.)
And then Dr. Judith Reisman says that police always find pornography when searching the homes of rapists and pedophiles, and suggests that porn consumption leads to crime.
I'm more inclined to believe that poverty, disenfranchisement, desperation, racism, child abuse, ignorance and gang mentality contribute more to serious crimes than pornography does. I also suspect that almost everyone, especially males, keeps a stash of adult content somewhere. I have a small cache myself. But of course most of us aren't subject to police searches, and therefore our collections remain private.
It seems to me that if Congress were to fund an in-depth, scientifically valid, nonpartisan study on porn's role in society, we could lay this question to rest. Then the porn prohibitionists would have to stop inventing scare tactics to support their agenda. They'll either be proven right, which they won't be, or they'll be exposed for the meddling, big-government proponents they are.
Now, where can I get those erototoxins?
See you next Friday,
Regina Lynn
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__________________
Remember, wherever you go... there you are.
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