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One of the most common responses to the anti-porn critiques of pornography is that they’re sex-negative and all too often, that ends up creating a “no we’re not/yes you are” argument. And yet, whenever I read the anti-porn side of things, I’m struck by how often sex-negativity is woven into their claims, although in all fairness, that’s not always the case.
I couldn’t figure out exactly what it was that bothered me by the way that Gail Dines keeps talking about gagfactor.com, a website that focuses on men facefucking women. And then it hit me- there are two parts to it. First, Dines is trying to foment a moral panic. And second, she simply doesn’t understand sex.
I can explain the first point better
Continue reading 7 Ways to Create a Sex-Positive Critique of Porn
I have to admit that I find the debates about porn fascinating. Actually, they’re not really debates since, more often than not, what I see is people yelling at each other. Calling it a debate would imply that there’s a deeper level of dialogue than actually exists. I find this rather frustrating because I can understand the perspectives of the different sides.
So I was gratified to see this summary of some of the research on the effects of porn in this post on scienceblogs.com. Of course, the research on the topic is wide-ranging and it’s hard to grasp it all, especially since different definitions of pornography and harm are used. That makes it hard to compare studies and limits how well we can generalize.
Continue reading The Both/And of the Porn Wars
Many of my sex-positive, pro-porn friends are talking about the Stop Porn Culture conference in a couple of weeks. I was resisting writing something about this because I don’t want to give them more attention (or, for that matter, more of my bandwidth). And after sitting with it for a bit, I realized I had something I wanted to say.
First things first. I really understand many of the critiques that anti-porn folks have. In fact, I share some of them, myself. There’s a lot of porn that is based on and reinforces maladaptive gender roles, performance-based models of sex, racist, sexist and/or homophobic stereotypes, narrow definitions of pleasure, and more. I absolutely get that and I feel a lot of anger around that.
Continue reading Sigh. Another Conference Against Porn
This post also appeared on the Good Vibrations Magazine.
The internet is abuzz with the latest back and forth about porn between Apple and the rest of the world. Ryan Tate at Gawker.com had an interesting conversation with him, and he’s posted the entire thing here:
Clipped from: gawker.com by clp.ly
In particular, there are two snippets of the emails from Jobs that I think are important:
Yep, freedom from programs that steal your private data. Freedom from programs that trash your battery. Freedom from porn. Yep, freedom. The times they are a changin’, and some traditional PC folks feel like their world is slipping away.
and
And you might care about porn more when you have kids
The first thing I want to
Continue reading Freedom From Porn and the iPhone
But it often is.
The NY Times has an article about the first Christian ministry to address porn addiction with female clients. I’ve written about my thoughts on sex addiction and I think that many of them carry over to porn addiction as well. The short version is that I recognize that many people feel out of control with their porn habits and they need some support for dealing with that. By the same token, some people are out of control with their spending, eating, or video game habits. People seem to get hooked into cycles of behavior that cause problems for them for lots of reasons and in lots of ways, so I think it’s important to have help when they want to
Continue reading Anti-Porn Doesn’t Have to Be Anti-Sex…
Whenever people push the edges how sex is portrayed, it causes an uproar. It really doesn’t matter whether the new frontier is a new technology (like the VHS porn revolution) or a sexual act (like Britney Spears and Madonna kissing). What matters is that crossing a boundary that was previously seemingly solid gets people wound up.
So it’s worth taking a look at this great article on Gawker. It’s chock full of interesting photos and movie clips that document some of the sexual milestones of Hollywood’s past. Just to whet your appetite, here’s a snippet of The Kiss, which was so incendiary that there were protests and editorials calling for police intervention.
Other significant events of sex in film that you can find at
Continue reading Those Who Forget the Past…
Clipped from: www.vancouversun.com by clp.ly
The Vancouver Sun has an article today about the potential impact of the mainstream media on safer sex practices in which they quote an editorial by researchers at the Annenberg Public Policy Center at the University of Pennsylvania:
The media is influencing their normative beliefs about sex: whether or not they think everyone around them is having sex, kids like them are having sex,” Bleakley says. “Risk and responsibility accounts for a very small proportion of the sexual content that’s out there, whether it’s teens being portrayed or shows that teens watch. Using a condom, having someone get pregnant and have to make those decisions, transmission of an STI — those things just don’t really come up.
There’s
Continue reading What Responsibility Does the Media Have Around Safer Sex?
On one of the sex education email lists that I follow, someone posted a question about “porn use.” And while I’ve seen this phrase used more times than I can count, it suddenly seemed to me that the term implies a bias that runs so deeply that it’s effectively invisible.
I think it’s rather interesting that people often talk about “porn use” even though they don’t talk about “sitcom use,” “talk show use,” or “romantic comedy use.” Instead, we might ask someone how often they watch TV, or talk shows, or movies. We might say that we enjoy Law & Order, but I don’t think I’ve ever heard someone say that they “use” Law & Order.
But when we get into the area of
Continue reading Why Do We Call It “Using Porn”?
I went to the AVN Expo last week to teach a seminar on sex education in retail settings for Good Vibrations. I’ve been to a few shows before, so it wasn’t new. That’s a good thing because I find Las Vegas a bit much even without dozens of porn performers wandering around in skimpy clothing, hundreds of fans getting autographed copies of DVDs, flashing lights, loud (and bad) music, and giant screens showing porn clips.
I’m not the only one who noticed that this year’s show was a lot smaller than past ones. There were fewer booths and many companies had smaller spaces. There also seemed to be fewer fans and the awards show was in a smaller venue. Of course, no industry is
Continue reading Is the Porn Bubble About to Pop?
“It’s unfortunate what we find pleasing to the touch and pleasing to the eye is seldom the same.” Fabienne, Pulp Fiction
One of the sticking points in many of the debates and conversations that I’ve participated in around porn is that porn sex doesn’t look like real-life sex. Unfortunately, if the only images that we have about how to have sex come from porn, it’s easy to see how that can skew people’s perception of sex.
I’ve heard of a growing number of people in their early 20′s, especially men, who have trouble in their sexual relationships and say that it’s due, at least in part, to their porn viewing habits during their adolescence. Of course, nobody under 18 is supposed to look at internet
Continue reading Pleasing to the Eye
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