We Are The Porn Generation
thoughtcatalog.com
thoughtcatalog.com
I think the point of the article is that all media is entertainment, and journalism has lost it's informant pretense. A legit point, I don't care for porn bashing though.
The manga world is often in stark contrast to the reality tubes. Some of them will make you angry and some will make you fell in love with the characters. They are also often beautiful.
Even though they are high quality, they might as well be mass produced. The reality tubes is mass produced but is of bad quality.
However, the real point I'd like to make is this: you are right when you mention that the author was actually discussing the perils of everything being entertaining. He'd do well to read Neil Postman's Amusing Ourselves To Death. It is downright chilling to read when you realize it was written in the eighties as the cultural impact of pervasive television was beginning to become apparent.
I think we can all agree that erotica is a proper art form. It's nudes in tasteful poses, usually with artistic intent. Hell, one could argue that most art produced in the renaissance was erotica. Or the Statue of David for instance.
Ok so that's art.
Similarly, we all consider most types of drawings to be art. People drawing on canvas to produce emotionally and visually stimulating stuff has always been art.
Then take Pollock for instance. He is the complete bastardization of visual art. Pure colour and emotion with wanton disregard for any "form".
That is still considered art.
However, when you do the same to erotica and come up with porn ... it suddenly isn't art anymore?
Why?
Erotica is art because it's beautiful. Sex stories, however explicit, is beautiful. Hentai are often beautiful because they are drawn by artists who care about beauty.
Porn are usually not beautiful. They have ugly characters and they are often completely forgettable.
I didn't say painting aren't art. I say that beautiful things are not art. That being said, beautiful is a spectrum. So in my view, something could be art if it is slightly beautiful or done with some slight skills.
However, the ultimate test is whether or not it would be mistaken as trash.
Thought I'd share that. :)
By this definition, porn is probably the only art :/
In fact, the OP is slightly off about the question of actual porn--porn is more or less the distilled version of erotica, not film, that takes away the art.
Now if you try to make porn, or make something that has the superficial appearance of porn, and then by accident or design end up creating something that's capable of greater intellectual or emotional depth, maybe that could be art. For instance, if the girl was holding the camera, it would be a subversive commentary on the male gaze. Creating art like that in the nominal form of pornography would in fact be deeply ironic simply because porn isn't art. (It wouldn't necessarily be erotica, because you've distilled the art away from the erotica to make the porn, and then added a different, ironic aspect of art on top of it.)
I don't think that holds true for everyone. My observation is that some people are primarily seeking emotional release, which may or may not lead to or involve "physiological release". It seems to me that emotional appeal is a large factor in much of what we call art.
Also the sex drive is quite important for the human species. It's a huge motivator.
This discussion reminds me a bit of the "sugar/fructose" discussion the other day. Humans are built to crave sugary, high-calorie food. Modern society allows for an endless supply of sugar. Cue rampant obesity.
I think it's beneficial to question everything; to completely detach oneself from the hivemind. Just because everyone watches porn (or it provides short-term positive benefits) does not mean it's innately good, or could/should be consumed in endless quantities, or has no negative implications.
Real ones or just pictures and videos? Big difference.
And most animals would see a Miró and pee on it. I don't see how is that helpful in determining whether porn is beneficial or not.
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Porn is a reaction to our cultural practices from the past. If it weren't for porn, maybe our societies would be more open sex-wise.
Can I ask on what do you base this? Because I see sexually liberated subcultures making and sharing their own (non-commercial) porn. http://www.freedomporn.org/ is a good example.
(from "A Feminist Defense of Pornography"; can be found by Googling it; originally included the link but post became dead immediately after submitting and I think that's why.)
"
* It gives a panoramic view of the world's sexual possibilities. This is true even of basic sexual information such as masturbation. It is not uncommon for women to reach adulthood without knowing how to give themselves pleasure.
* It allows women to "safely" experience sexual alternatives and satisfy a healthy sexual curiosity. The world is a dangerous place. By contrast, pornography can be a source of solitary enlightenment.
* It offers the emotional information that comes only from experiencing something either directly or vicariously. It provides us with a sense how it would "feel" to do something. "
I'd think the same would also be true for men.
Women use and enjoy porn the same as men do - visual to physiological and to release. Period.
Porn is beneficial to women in many ways as consumers. Until people wake up to this, revenue streams and culture (of consent and equality, experience and discourse) alike will be hobbled.
Your heart is in the right place. But you're missing the rest of reality, as is this entire HN discussion.
The post I replied to asked "Well, what's the benefit of porn?" and I felt the physiological aspects were already covered. There was no need for me to correct it to say "women like the physiological aspects, too" since I already know that to be true and didn't see anybody stating otherwise who needed to be corrected.
The fact that there is a significant movement toward legitimacy and depth in pornography is a testament to that fact. And I have considerable respect for sites that encourage amateur content, in the (perhaps naive) hope that it will encourage more realistic expectations among the sexually inexperienced.
probably a good indication that the article is pretty spot on.
That's because the internet has stripped profits away. It's like reality shows being the trend in television because expensive productions don't have as much profit margin as they used to.
My view of porn is essentially what Naomi Wolfe's was in 2003: http://nymag.com/nymetro/news/trends/n_9437/
The only thing I'd add is that as we become more saturated in stimulation, it takes more extremes to get the dopamine hit. This goes for porn or anything else he mentions in his article.
>Why You Should Start Smoking
>6 Rules For Increasing Your Chances Of Getting Laid At Parties For The Chronically Alienated, Interspersed With Songs I Like Right Now, Vol. 1
> Paid Distribution What Your "Drink" Says About You on a Date
It's a great way to unintentionally strengthening the authors argument.
Edit:
Seriously though, I would replace 'the porn generation' with 'the porned generation'.
"Corporations are not looking out for your best interests; they’re looking to make as much money as possible."
That's the obvious part. But the interesting part is how all this big corporations managed it to finally break into our lives. Not only the sell us all kinds off stuff we don't need. They also very actively comment our consume behavior. Something is always wrong with our lives. We are too fat, too boring, our relationships are not thrilling enough, we don't manage to get what we deserve.
Corporations are not longer selling stuff to us in the traditional way, from producer to consumer. For them, we are gigantic consumption mass, trained to buy and to be evaluated from day one.
We are not consumers, we are here to be consumed. We get porned.
http://thelastpsychiatrist.com/2011/02/hes_just_not_that_int...
In other words, online porn isn't a drug, it isn't an addiction, it isn't a sign of deviancy or a trigger for disease: porn is junk food. It is a bag of potato chips you eat when you aren't even hungry, and once you start and the initial "mmmm!" passes you're all in, may as well finish the bag, you've ruined your diet/night already, start over clean tomorrow.
After a while potato chips just figure into your routine, there's a passing thought that perhaps you shouldn't but since there aren't any obvious and immediate consequences... And now it's part of who you are.
But no one would ever say that "other foods don't measure up", no one says that potato chips taste better than steak not because they don't but because no sane person makes those kinds of comparisons. If you did, if you played it all out in your head and now deliberately avoid eating a steak in order to get to potato chips-- then you have a problem that is deeper than steak or potato chips.
Junk food is stripped of the essentials of real food, leaving just the vulgar, the simple, the obvious of taste: sugar, salt, fat, repeat. It is the pornographization of food. The mistake people make is that they think it is delicious, but it's really just easy, comforting, reliable, satisfying. And that's where we are now: online porn is the pornographization of porn.
I also don't get when he says
If you’re a vegetarian… Well, you’re shit out of luck.
Ya, I'll just skip this rant of his and wait for the full length film of this article.
Its funny how the author is using a medium in which he describes as fading to convey his distaste in another medium which "everyone" is using. But, expects us to use the fading medium to understand his "vegetarian" ideas.
Yes, this article was THAT confusing.
There are plenty of other ways to consume porn beyond this (magazines, books, theaters, consuming internet/TV via other people.)
I'm not criticizing you in any way for not watching it. Doesn't matter to me. I just think it's really odd to drop "I'm in a very healthy relationship" into this conversation, as if that fact by itself means you don't consume porn.
You seem to believe that women deciding to be dominated sexually must be subjugated, and that her choice is a result of the oppressiveness of our society. Many women would find that view very offensive.
But I disagree when you say women deciding to be dominated. I don't see how one can decide to be dominated. If we follow this argument that we can say that men and women in a China factory decided to work 16 hours a day, conveying the idea that there is nothing wrong with it.
Read up on "dominance and submission" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dominance_and_submission).
It seems about 30% of all internet traffic disagrees with you. Yes, that's bigger than youtube.
but its effect on society and its subjugation of half of said society far outweigh those few technological insights.
Then our society is doomed!
Or perhaps it's just you being a little prude?
http://www.springerlink.com/content/v046j3g178147772/fulltex...
> it degrades women
But not men?
Also, how do you decide when someone else is being degraded? Should they also get to decide when you're being degraded?
Erotica = porn that women like
http://foodnetworkhumor.com/2009/12/the-top-10-biggest-food-...
Firstly, (almost) everyone watches porn: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/relationships/6709646/All-men-wat...
Second, nothing in consuming porn inherently means the person "lacks self-control" (there's certainly porn addicts, but they're not the majority) or "settles for fantasy" - in fact, many couples watch porn together and use it to improve their own sex life.
Thirdly, porn is a highly competitive industry with a lot of talent in producing, managing and distributing content, both online and offline. They run very big websites and serve huge amounts of video traffic per minute. Xvideos alone has twice the page views of Reddit.
But I'd like to say that personally, I prefer to let women decide for themselves what degrades them, instead of taking the position that I know best, and considering that many women nowadays watch porn (1 in 3 porn viewers, according to Nielsen), I'm not sure if they feel that way.
Most pornography is not degrading to anybody—it’s merely people seeking to make money or have a good time—and a considerable portion of it doesn’t even involve women. To say nothing of the female viewers of porn.
Most pornography does not trivialise intimacy, and there are vast amounts of erotic fiction and pornography with legitimate, deep characters with whom the audience is meant to be emotionally involved. In addition, not all intimacy in real life is deep: people often have “meaningless” sex even within the context of a relationship. If you’ll pardon the wording, it’s okay if a happy couple feels less like “making love” and more like “fucking”. And this is both natural and healthy.
As for toxicity to children and families, I’m baffled as to how knowledge of sexuality could be at all detrimental to the welfare of a child or family structure. Most children find sexual topics boring or revolting anyway, and I strongly doubt that pornography alone is sufficient to tear a family apart. Of course, pornography of children is another matter entirely.
But junk food for the mind? Absolutely! Porn is not necessary—I used to watch porn mainly when I was bored and lonely, and by avoiding things that bore me and keeping myself in the company of others, there is much less of a reason for me to seek it out.
Still, I don’t see the need to spurn it outright—people watch porn every day and it doesn’t hurt anybody.
It's amazing how many people think it's their place to decide when someone else is being degraded.
Also, why women? Why single out a specific gender?
While I don't happen to agree with such views I think there are some good reasons why they exist and men who hold such views often do so out of a sense of protectiveness for women generally. But if women are to achieve equality, such things need to change. Unfortunately, idealistically protesting the supposed degradation of women basically agrees with the default cultural assumption that women are mere sex objects who get used by men and thus tends to reinforce it rather than undermine it. As a woman, I have found that whining and complaining that men should not treat women as sex objects is a really weak position to take because it respects the assumption that all the power to change things is held by men, not women. A far stronger position is to turn the tables on men and talk about them like they are sex objects for my pleasure. Edit: I mean as a form of rebuttal/to make a point. In practice -- i.e. in a relationship -- I don't think it really works for either party to be objectified.
Somewhat in Space Dragon's defense, I think there may be some correlation between a man liking porn and a man treating women as mere sex objects. I cannot say though which is cause and which is effect -- i.e. whether men who view women as mere sex objects are more attracted to porn or whether watching porn promotes such attitudes. I only know that men who treated me decently tended to have little interest in porn. I don't much care for it myself, though that isn't out of judgmentalism. It simply doesn't float my boat.
I doubt it, given the negative correlation between porn and sex crimes:
http://www.springerlink.com/content/v046j3g178147772/fulltex...
Maybe it's the case that those who most objectify others will be satisfied with using porn pretty much exclusively if that's an option, but I doubt it works like that. I think porn simply fulfills the 'punching bag' need, and allows other emotions to come to the fore in the real world.
> I have found that whining and complaining that men should not treat women as sex objects is a really weak position to take because it respects the assumption that all the power to change things is held by men
I fully agree.
I also think that one part of achieving equality is to realize that women objectify men, and that it's in their power to stop such behavior. Especially since any man who objects to being objectified by a woman is placed in a very precarious position in our current society, much like how people pretty much assume it's impossible for women to rape or abuse men.
In any case, I don't see how porn being or not a respectable genre does in any way invalidate what I wrote.
"Science fiction should get out of the classroom and back in the gutter where it belongs!" -Dena Benatan Brown.
Sci-fi is decently respected now, but some authors have gladly embraced Dena Brown's advice. When writing science fiction, you shouldn't care about respectability. That's not the point.
So yeah. Same goes with porn. Porn doesn't care if it's respectable. That is not porn's goal.
As for TV and movies, mostly true.
No. People knew novels were degrading and debilitating long before TV even existed:
http://www.merrycoz.org/books/CONFESSN.HTM
"This course of reading exacted no effort from the mind, and the more I indulged in it the more averse I became to the drudgery of business, and the more incapable of that accurate thinking and careful analysis required in the practice of the law."
"My fondness for romance, now become my ruling passion, not only impaired my powers of reasoning and investigation, but destroyed the balance of my mind by giving an undue preponderance to the imagination. The unnatural activity of that faculty, by presenting false and exaggerated views of persons and events, was frequently a serious disadvantage to me in my profession. Often when I was wrought into a fever of excitement by an ideal state of facts, the reality has so differed from my preconceived hypothesis, as to produce a sudden syncope of all my faculties."
"The excitement of novel reading is akin to intoxication. When it subsides, it leaves the mind collapsed and imbecile, without the capacity or the inclination for active exertion."
He wrote that in 1839, just 12 years before Moby Dick was published. Wonder what he thought of that fiction book, generally considered to be one of, if not the, best English language novels written.
I dispute this statement. For one, more people alive now can read than could read back then.
Also, we no longer engage in the sport of bear-baiting.
> Wonder what he thought of that fiction book [Moby Dick], generally considered to be one of, if not the, best English language novels written.
He likely thought it was crap, because the British reviewers thought it was crap, because they got a mutilated copy to review. It wasn't until Melville was dead that the book actually got a fair shake.
What I meant is that I'm pretty sure that reading even a salacious fiction book today is better for your mind than most movies. Active vs passive engagement, etc.