January 5, 2009
Personal note:
The article below by Mona Charen speaks of a few of the varieties of ways
in which pornography is weaseling its way into mainstream venues thereby demeaning
and sullying the lives of all who come in its wake. I'll pick up on a few
other thoughts after the article.
See below.
Tis the Season for Porn?
written by:
Mona Charen
I will be called names for writing this column. It always happens. Raise
the issue of the pornification of the culture and its fanatical devotees will
come gunning for you. If they hope to be intimidating, they've forgotten what
delete keys are for.
It's Christmastime and the Fox News Channel, the most conservative of the
major media outlets, is running an ad for PajamaGrams, "the only gift
guaranteed to get your wife or girlfriend to take her clothes off." The
ads feature soft porn images of women disrobing and tossing slips and bras
to the floor. The ads run at all times of the day and night. Thus do we usher
in the season supposedly devoted to the Prince of Peace and the Festival of
Lights.
We all know how far the pornification has gotten. A mainstream movie apparently
treats the subject as cute and fun ("Zack and Miri Make a Porno")
and it runs at the multiplex next to "Four Christmases" and "Madagascar."
Hotels offer pornographic movies and omit the titles from the final bill.
Victoria's Secret graces every mall — and its windows resemble the red
light district of Amsterdam. Viagra and its imitators are hawked ceaselessly.
Television, music videos, and supermarket checkout magazines contain the kinds
of suggestive words and images that would once have been labeled soft porn.
We know this. But what is less well understood is the world of hard-core
porn that was once the province of dingy "adults only" stores in
the harsher parts of town but is now available to everyone at the click of
a mouse.
Last week [December 11-13] the Witherspoon Institute (http://www.winst.org)
convened a conference on pornography at Princeton University and invited scholars
from a variety of fields to contribute. The statistics are mind-numbing. Pamela
Paul, author of "Pornified," reported that "Americans rent
upwards of 800 million pornographic videos and DVDs per year. About one in
five rented videos is porn. … Men look at pornography online more than
they look at any other subject. And 66 percent of 18-34 year old men visit
a pornographic site every month."
They are not, Paul and others explained, looking at Playboy magazine-like
images of naked women. Instead, they are descending into darker and darker
realms where sadism, fetishes, and every imaginable oddity are proffered.
Sex and violence are offered together. Women are presented in a degraded —
not to say disgusting — fashion.
Surely only people with peculiar sexual tastes are drawn to this sort of
thing, right? Not exactly. Psychiatrist and psychoanalyst Norman Doidge, author
of "The Brain That Changes Itself," noted that pornography use actually
changes the brains of consumers. Like other addictions, pornography use breeds
tolerance and the need for more intensity to get the desired result. He quoted
Tom Wolfe's "I Am Charlotte Simmons," in which a college kid asks
casually, "Anybody got porn?" He is told that there are magazines
on the third floor. He responds, "I've built up a tolerance to magazines
… I need videos." Tolerance is the medically correct term, Doidge
notes, which is why pornography becomes more and more graphic.
The men (and they are overwhelmingly men) who become hooked on this bilge
are often miserable about it. They know that it affects their capacity to
love and be loved by real women. As Doidge explained, "Pornographers
promise healthy pleasure and a release from sexual tension, but what they
often deliver is an addiction, tolerance, and an eventual decrease in pleasure.
Paradoxically, the male patients I worked with often craved pornography but
didn't like it." Hugh Hefner, the godfather of mainstream porn, apparently
does not have normal sex with his many girlfriends. Despite the presence of
up to seven comely young women in his bed at a time, he uses porn for sexual
satisfaction. Think about that.
Internet pornography truly is, as one researcher put it, "a hidden public
health hazard." It isn't cute or funny. Relationships are crashing, women
are suffering in silence, and men and boys are becoming entrapped by it. The
Witherspoon Institute has done a valuable thing by starting a more public
conversation about this cultural poison.
http://www.creators.com/opinion/mona-charen.html
Personal note continued:
I had the opportunity to attend the above conference at Princeton.
I encourage you to visit the website at:
http://www.winst.org/family_marriage_and_democracy/social_costs_of_pornography/consultation2008.php
Check out the number of articles on the right hand side of the webpage at:
Pre-Consultation
Paper Drafts
In closing, I will echo Mona Charen's concluding statement:
" ... The Witherspoon Institute has done a valuable thing by starting
a more public conversation about this cultural poison."
The battle rages on in 2009. There is much at stake. The laborers for decency
are few. Nonetheless there are millions who have not been duped nor hooked
on pornography who are concerned - very concerned!
=================
To donate online:
http://americandecency.org/folder.php?f=donate
=============================
American Decency Association
Bill Johnson, President
P.O. Box 202
Fremont, MI 49412
ph: 231-924-4050
http://www.americandecency.org
