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Some Links for Pornography Awareness Week
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I'm hoping to get the chance to write something for Pornography Awareness Week, but I've been pretty busy, so there's no guarantee that such an article will be forthcoming, nor that it will be substantive. In the Mean time, here are a collection of articles from around the internet which may be of some interest, beginning with the most recent. First, there is the article from the Public Discourse by Mr Blake Robinson, a financial adviser. This is a very interesting (and practical) article concerning one way to fight porn: via investments. A key excerpt (with the emphasis in the original):
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Blake Robinson wrote:
Since many hotels are publicly traded, this recommendation is a call for shareholders to make changes in their[em] business as well. Many people forget that they actually own a business when they buy a stock, equity, mutual fund, etc. As such, investors can fight pornography using the principles of socially responsible investing by not investing in companies that profit from pornography. Individuals can also become shareholders or owners of companies that earn part of their profits from pornography for the purpose of encouraging the management of the company to stop their involvement in pornography.
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Second, here is an column in National Review by an anonymous psychologist about the effects of porn on her husband, who has tragically separated from her. Key excerpt:
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from National Review wrote:
The findings of the report hit particularly close to home for me. By his own account, my husband of 13 years and high-school sweetheart, was first exposed to pornography around age ten. He viewed it regularly during high school and college — and, although he tried hard to stop, continued to do so throughout the course of our marriage. For the past few years he had taken to sleeping in the basement, distancing himself from me, emotionally and physically. Recently he began to reject my sexual advances outright, claiming he just didn’t “feel love” for me like he used to, and lamenting that he thought of me “more as the mother of our children” than as a sexual partner.
Then one morning around 2am he called, intoxicated, from his office to announce that he had “developed feelings” for someone new. The woman he became involved with was an unemployed alcoholic with all the physical qualities of a porn star — bleached blond hair, heavy makeup, provocative clothing, and large breasts. After the revelation, my husband tried to break off his relationship with this woman. But his remorse was short-lived. Within a few months he had moved permanently out of the home he shared with me and our five young children. In retrospect, I believe he succumbed to the allure of the secret fantasy life he had been indulging since his adolescence.
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Next, Ms Katherine Kersten argues that Internet Porn should be treated as a public health issue. She also argues that the porn users aren't the only ones at risk. Key excerpt:
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Katherine Kersten wrote:
Porn is far more than private, passive entertainment. It "functions as a teacher, a permission-giver and a trigger of ... negative behaviors and attitudes," according to Mary Anne Layden, coauthor of the report and director of the Sexual Trauma and Psychopathology Program at the University of Pennsylvania.
What's more, today's universally available, intensely realistic porn creates a serious risk of addiction. Recent advances in neuroscience make clear that frequent exposure can actually alter the brain by hyperstimulating its appetitive pleasure system.
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I considered not including Mr Ross Douthat's essay in The Atlantic, Is Pornography Adultery? His take on this and other social issues is often fairly unique, but in the end he makes a good point that pornography is bad in-and-of itself, and not merely because of its secondary causes. However, he argues that porn is bad because it goes against an ideal (or an ideology) for marriage. As an aside, he uses a similar argument in his more recent blog argument over gay marriage. Key excerpt from the porn essay (with original emphasis):
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Ross Douthat wrote:
In the name of providing a low-risk alternative for males who would otherwise be tempted by “real” prostitutes and “real” affairs, we’re ultimately universalizing, in a milder but not all that much milder form, the sort of degradation and betrayal that only a minority of men have traditionally been involved in.
Go back to Philip Weiss’s pal and listen to him talk: [em]Porn captures these women before they get smart … It’s painful to say, but that’s your boys’ night out. This is the language of a man who has accepted, not as a temporary lapse but as a permanent and necessary aspect of his married life, a paid sexual relationship with women other than his wife. And it’s the language of a man who has internalized a view of marriage as a sexual prison, rendered bearable only by frequent online furloughs with women more easily exploited than his spouse.
Calling porn a form of adultery isn’t about pretending that we can make it disappear. The temptation will always be there, and of course people will give in to it. I’ve looked at porn; if you’re male and breathing, chances are so have you. Rather, it’s about what sort of people we aspire to be: how we define our ideals, how we draw the lines in our relationships, and how we feel about ourselves if we cross them. And it’s about providing a way for everyone involved, men and women alike—whether they’re using porn or merely tolerating it—to think about what, precisely, they’re involving themselves in, and whether they should reconsider.
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Tags: PAW Culture Culture-of-Deat H Sexuality
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