Deth-B0y (![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small} dethb0y) wrote,@ 2007-01-23 20:52:00 |
|
Christian vision strikes again
Anxiety and arousal: the lessons porn teaches at Hugo Schwyzer
To quote:
This is a classic case of missing the forest for all the trees. Blinded by his christian ideals, Hugo is unable to see the huge forest of influences on young women in today's culture, and instead focuses on the perceived immorality of pornography, grasping at any straw to justify it's outlaw.
The question i would immediately put to any of those girls that he mentions is this: Name me five women or girls you'd like to be. How many of those women would be in playboy? How many of them would be Disney princesses, or assorted romantic heroines? How many of the influences on a young woman's life come from the vast majority of material their exposed to - literature, television, movies - vs the tiny amount of pornography most are exposed to? I have a hard time envisioning a single glance at playboy turning a young woman into an anxiety ridden, socially phobic wreck, so torn by the images of glossy naked women that she can no longer function normally.
The modern american is immersed from cradle to grave in a constant stream of media. It's a literal barrage of images, expectations, and influences, that serve to categorize and quantify every single person they touch. Young women are, from birth, shown images and expectations that categorize them as individuals - they are told what to want, what to need, what to expect. And this is considered "Fun" - Disney princesses, Barbie dream houses, white weddings, being a singer/model/actress, it just goes on and on. To suggest that in this pressure cooker, this hellish environment of expectations from every quarter, that pornography serves some disproportionate role is short sighted at best.
As well, of the two women I've spoken to, both expressed that they felt much more influenced by main stream media then by any exposure to pornography. As well, there's the dirty secret of porn - that most of it is actually not that bad.
The most graphic pornography I have ever encountered entailed a woman having needles inserted, one by one, into her breasts, and then extracted. There was a trickle of blood, and it was expressed that it was painful, but overall, the atmosphere was erotic but clinical, precise. Compare this to Saw II, or Hostel, or Turistas. Is seeing someone have sex as negative an impact as seeing someone get thrown into a pit full of needles, have their kidney cut out while their awake, or have their eye torn out in graphic detail? Is seeing a woman get facialed as upsetting as seeing a man impaled on a spike? Would you rather have your children see a woman having sex, or a man being shot in the face? Hugo stands in the middle of a burning house, demanding that, right now, the candle be put out on the night stand, because it's the *real* problem, not the walls catching fire or the ceiling caving in.
Christians inevitably have a narrow vision that places their quaint morality and out-dated ideals above reality. The result is actions like this, wherein any step is taken to intrude on the behavior of others, while not going against the major grain of society. Is a young person being exposed to pornography a problem? It might or might not be, I've never seen any conclusive evidence either way, and will reserve judgment until i do. Is the effect of the media on our youth a problem? you damn well better believe it. That should be the focus of the feminist movement - changing the main stream media to present an image that puts less pressure on your young people, of both genders.
Anxiety and arousal: the lessons porn teaches at Hugo Schwyzer
To quote:
"But as the co-host last night remarked, a great many young women don’t
look at porn merely to be sexually stimulated. As we talked about on
the show, one of the things young women — particularly those
just entering adolescence — look for in pornography is not their own
arousal but cues to the nature of male arousal. Over
and over again, we hear stories from young women who discovered their
father’s Playboys (or, today, his browser history). We hear them talk
about a mix of disgust and fascination with what they found. And I’ve
heard from countless young women stories of how they carefully studied
the centerfolds and the models, asking themselves “Is this how I need
to pose? Is this what I should look like? Is this what I need to do to
be desirable?”"
This is a classic case of missing the forest for all the trees. Blinded by his christian ideals, Hugo is unable to see the huge forest of influences on young women in today's culture, and instead focuses on the perceived immorality of pornography, grasping at any straw to justify it's outlaw.
The question i would immediately put to any of those girls that he mentions is this: Name me five women or girls you'd like to be. How many of those women would be in playboy? How many of them would be Disney princesses, or assorted romantic heroines? How many of the influences on a young woman's life come from the vast majority of material their exposed to - literature, television, movies - vs the tiny amount of pornography most are exposed to? I have a hard time envisioning a single glance at playboy turning a young woman into an anxiety ridden, socially phobic wreck, so torn by the images of glossy naked women that she can no longer function normally.
The modern american is immersed from cradle to grave in a constant stream of media. It's a literal barrage of images, expectations, and influences, that serve to categorize and quantify every single person they touch. Young women are, from birth, shown images and expectations that categorize them as individuals - they are told what to want, what to need, what to expect. And this is considered "Fun" - Disney princesses, Barbie dream houses, white weddings, being a singer/model/actress, it just goes on and on. To suggest that in this pressure cooker, this hellish environment of expectations from every quarter, that pornography serves some disproportionate role is short sighted at best.
As well, of the two women I've spoken to, both expressed that they felt much more influenced by main stream media then by any exposure to pornography. As well, there's the dirty secret of porn - that most of it is actually not that bad.
The most graphic pornography I have ever encountered entailed a woman having needles inserted, one by one, into her breasts, and then extracted. There was a trickle of blood, and it was expressed that it was painful, but overall, the atmosphere was erotic but clinical, precise. Compare this to Saw II, or Hostel, or Turistas. Is seeing someone have sex as negative an impact as seeing someone get thrown into a pit full of needles, have their kidney cut out while their awake, or have their eye torn out in graphic detail? Is seeing a woman get facialed as upsetting as seeing a man impaled on a spike? Would you rather have your children see a woman having sex, or a man being shot in the face? Hugo stands in the middle of a burning house, demanding that, right now, the candle be put out on the night stand, because it's the *real* problem, not the walls catching fire or the ceiling caving in.
Christians inevitably have a narrow vision that places their quaint morality and out-dated ideals above reality. The result is actions like this, wherein any step is taken to intrude on the behavior of others, while not going against the major grain of society. Is a young person being exposed to pornography a problem? It might or might not be, I've never seen any conclusive evidence either way, and will reserve judgment until i do. Is the effect of the media on our youth a problem? you damn well better believe it. That should be the focus of the feminist movement - changing the main stream media to present an image that puts less pressure on your young people, of both genders.
