Buy:al_bundy
11-16-06, 09:40 AM
NYC has a bunch of free newspapers and here is the best editorial i have ever read
http://ny.metro.us/metro/blog/my_view/
The world needs more pornography. Considering the number of porn sites on the Web alone, I realize that this is a suspect statement, but quality porn plays an important role in society. It acknowledges that normal people, including women, have sexual desires and need consensual fulfillment. While American culture remains very puritanical and sex-negative — and sex is used to sell everything from car waxes to diet colas to Britney Spears’ “music” — pornography is one of the only genres that advocates for positive sexual experimentation, openness and expression. The porn that we need more of is the kind that portrays men and women as sexual equals and revels in the glories of mutual pleasure between willing individuals, whether involving one, two or more.
Often those who object to pornography insist that it is degrading, objectifies women or encourages violence. I suggest they watch more prime-time television and compare what they see there to “mainstream” porn. Last fall, CBS premiered a show featuring a wife unwillingly restrained in a dog collar by her spouse (“Close to Home”), and one featuring a bloodied woman in a cage tormented by a faceless captor (“Criminal Mind”). Fox premiered a show featuring a woman paralyzed by spider bites being raped as the venom killed her (“Killer Instinct”). While the latter was mercifully canceled, the two other shows still on the air continue to offer plots turning upon lurid sexual violence.
As the recently deceased pro-sex advocate Ellen Willis wrote, “The claim that ‘pornography is violence against women’ was code for the neo-Victorian idea that men want sex and women endure it.” When challenged by censorship advocates about the depiction of women in pornography, filmmaker Lydia Lunch simply answers, “Women never look foolish in pornography ... they get paid more than the average day job, and they’re doing what they like to do.” In order to promote sexual equality free of gender stereotyping, we need more pornography that addresses and affirms our sexuality as human beings. This does not include products like “Girls Gone Wild,” in which inebriated young women on Spring Break are encouraged to doff their clothes and make out with their girlfriends.
It’s interesting to note that studies find a positive correlation between a society’s consumption of pornography and its level of equal opportunity for women in education, employment and politics. Residents of Sweden and Denmark view a large amount of porn, but the countries have high rates of gender equality and low levels of violence against women, especially when compared to the United States. If mainstream porn objectifies women to any extent, its effects appear to be less harmful than anything Paris Hilton has done for the status of women recently.
The more society engages in open sexual discourse, the more opposition between the artificial dichotomies of male and female, subject and object, active and passive, begins to break down. Honesty and openness end sexual stereotypes, while repression helps create and maintain them. This is why a pro-sex attitude is healthier than a negative anti-porn one, and why more pro-sex porn is needed.
http://ny.metro.us/metro/blog/my_view/
The world needs more pornography. Considering the number of porn sites on the Web alone, I realize that this is a suspect statement, but quality porn plays an important role in society. It acknowledges that normal people, including women, have sexual desires and need consensual fulfillment. While American culture remains very puritanical and sex-negative — and sex is used to sell everything from car waxes to diet colas to Britney Spears’ “music” — pornography is one of the only genres that advocates for positive sexual experimentation, openness and expression. The porn that we need more of is the kind that portrays men and women as sexual equals and revels in the glories of mutual pleasure between willing individuals, whether involving one, two or more.
Often those who object to pornography insist that it is degrading, objectifies women or encourages violence. I suggest they watch more prime-time television and compare what they see there to “mainstream” porn. Last fall, CBS premiered a show featuring a wife unwillingly restrained in a dog collar by her spouse (“Close to Home”), and one featuring a bloodied woman in a cage tormented by a faceless captor (“Criminal Mind”). Fox premiered a show featuring a woman paralyzed by spider bites being raped as the venom killed her (“Killer Instinct”). While the latter was mercifully canceled, the two other shows still on the air continue to offer plots turning upon lurid sexual violence.
As the recently deceased pro-sex advocate Ellen Willis wrote, “The claim that ‘pornography is violence against women’ was code for the neo-Victorian idea that men want sex and women endure it.” When challenged by censorship advocates about the depiction of women in pornography, filmmaker Lydia Lunch simply answers, “Women never look foolish in pornography ... they get paid more than the average day job, and they’re doing what they like to do.” In order to promote sexual equality free of gender stereotyping, we need more pornography that addresses and affirms our sexuality as human beings. This does not include products like “Girls Gone Wild,” in which inebriated young women on Spring Break are encouraged to doff their clothes and make out with their girlfriends.
It’s interesting to note that studies find a positive correlation between a society’s consumption of pornography and its level of equal opportunity for women in education, employment and politics. Residents of Sweden and Denmark view a large amount of porn, but the countries have high rates of gender equality and low levels of violence against women, especially when compared to the United States. If mainstream porn objectifies women to any extent, its effects appear to be less harmful than anything Paris Hilton has done for the status of women recently.
The more society engages in open sexual discourse, the more opposition between the artificial dichotomies of male and female, subject and object, active and passive, begins to break down. Honesty and openness end sexual stereotypes, while repression helps create and maintain them. This is why a pro-sex attitude is healthier than a negative anti-porn one, and why more pro-sex porn is needed.