"... In my own interviews,
I have found that college-age men are increasingly becoming addicted to porn,
often spending huge amounts of time and money they could ill afford surfing
the porn Web sites. ..."
April 7, 2009
Personal note:
A former student of mine was sexually molested by her father repeatedly during
her elementary school years. He used "adult" videos to set the stage
- that adults do this and kids do it with adults.
The damage done on Tammy will be with her all the years of her life.
I am thankful that my family (mother, father, brothers and sisters - nor
my wife nor my children) have been subjected to such betrayals, such attack,
such degradation, such destruction of trust and love.
The thought of having one of my children or grandchildren go off to college
and to discover that there are people in leadership and authority over them
using their positions to authorize pornography as remedial, eduational, therapeutic
-would have me at the administration building.
A thanks to the author for her efforts to combat pornography!!
Porn lessons
Showing adult films on campus debases both men and women
By Gail Dines April 5, 2009
http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/opinion/oped/bal-op.porn05apr05,0,2964274.story
So the porn industry is now in the business of educating our youth. A spokesman
for Digital Playground expressed disappointment with the cancellation of a
public screening of one of the company's porn movies at the University of
Maryland, College Park, claiming that showing such a movie "opens up
a discussion, a discourse on sexuality and gender roles."
Actually, it does no such thing. Showing porn movies on campus creates a
hostile and dangerous environment for its female students, it distorts how
students think about sex and it debases both men and women.
This generation of college students has grown up with hard-core porn just
a click away, and the men who use it (the average age of first downloading
porn is 11.5 years old) begin to see the world through a pornographic lens.
Whereas previous generations had to go to seedy porn shops or movie theaters
to view porn, today there are thousands of porn sites that depict anything
from images of couples having sex to violent and degrading images of women
being verbally and physically abused as they beg for more. The porn industry
has reported that more-violent porn is the most popular among male users and
that porn fans are demanding harder and harder images. This is not good news
given what we know about the ways that porn shapes how men think about themselves,
about women and about sex.
Over the last 30 years or so, there has been a wealth of research into the
effects of porn, and the weight of the evidence suggests that men are negatively
affected by the images. Pamela Paul interviewed hundreds of men in her book
Pornified and found that regular users reported desensitization and habituation
to porn and boredom with their sex life and their sex partners. Some even
admitted to pushing women into doing sex acts that they were uncomfortable
with.
In my own interviews, I have found that college-age men are increasingly
becoming addicted to porn, often spending huge amounts of time and money they
could ill afford surfing the porn Web sites.
Psychologists Wendy Maltz and Larry Maltz state that therapists are increasingly
seeing porn addicts become a major part of their practice.
One of the main problems with porn is that it presents unreal images of men
and women. Women are reduced to a series of body parts, devoid of any humanity,
bodily integrity or free will. They exist only for sex. Women are eager to
do whatever men want to do to them. Men, on the other hand, are shown as totally
lacking any empathy or connection to other human beings. Porn images transmit
the message that women like to be sexually brutalized and debased and that
sex for men is a way to conquer women. These images are potentially lethal
in a society where women are the victims of male violence.
It is no surprise that college students want to see porn; they have grown
up in a world saturated with pornographic images. Turn on MTV, flick through
a fashion magazine or just watch the ads on television, and what you see is
a barrage of hyper-sexualized images of young, barely clothed women gazing
provocatively at the camera.
Discussions about sex and gender roles should take place at a university
because, after all, this is where students learn - or ought to learn - to
become critical thinkers about the world they live in. Classes need to focus
on the pop culture images that form our visual landscape, and the ways that
pornography is seeping into our mainstream culture. What we don't need is
to add legitimacy to the porn industry by showing one of their movies just
for fun.
Gail Dines, a sociology professor at Wheelock College in Boston, is the author
of the forthcoming book "Porn Gone Wild: How Pornography is Shaping our
Sexuality," and founding member of Stop Porn Culture. She can be contacted
at gdines@wheelock.edu.
===============
In closing, let me remind you of the valuable service made available by Steve
Ensley and the filtering service that he provides. Protect yourself and your
loved ones.
Contact Steve at: sensely@afo.net
and/or see: www.afo.net
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American Decency Association
Bill Johnson, President
P.O. Box 202
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ph: 231-924-4050
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