Thursday, December 18, 2008

Pornography

The Doser became interested in the subject of pornography because of a December 17th, 2008, article on child pornography in The Oregonian. As the Ponderous Profession is wont to say: "Reasonable minds can differ on the issue." On the legal definitions, there is fair unanimity of opinion at the ends of the opinion spectrum: the Constitutional right to freedom of expression at one end (protected) and exploitation of people at the other end (not permitted.) What is in between those two poles? What are the uses made of the material? Wide range of use. Do men and women feel differently about the issue? Seems so. What actually is it? Differences, here. Is there always a societal and time-period range of tolerance? Doser thinks so. The Doser is going to look into the issue and will report his opinions. Please enter comments as you wish. Your comments will "tighten up" the research. Yesterday The Doser googled and found 15,600,00 "pornography" entries - today, there are more than sixteen million!

and, on a much less troubling note ---

A group of Portland women have been cooperating to solve commonly-experienced household problems. It would take some capable management but many difficulties or redundancies could be solved this way.

4 comments:

SueS said...

In some circles a distinction is made whereas
pornography = exploitation and erotica = consensual and non-exploitative. I think there's value to separating the two.

It seems that the biggest problem indicated in the article is not necessarily kids accessing pornography, but the lack of communication with their parents. And then, of course, there's the issue of objectification, which pornography seems to promote.

Robbie Seal said...

Child porn is nothing but vile. Those that make it or view it should be skinned alive and that would be too good for them.

As far as adult porn or erotica, if they're adults and consenting, I figure they are making thier choices. Not my place to judge, but I hope my daughter would never make that choice. I think if everyone thought of those on the computer screen as someone's daughter, maybe there wouldn't be 16 million sites.

Drew said...

I'm with Sue re the objectification of women in 99% of pornography, but I would go further. The porno industry seems to operate from a mandate that holds women to be sluts and whores, and so must portray them as such. So many billions of dollars are made with this approach that no reform efforts, in my opinion, will have meaningful results. Positive changes would ensue from society's acceptance of joyful, life-affirming depictions of erotic conntent in the arts and on the tube.

Atticus said...

Deviant sexual behavior seems to be the acting out of childhood fantasies. Somehow these people get stuck at an early age and they never grow out of it. Unfortunately there doesn't appear to be a cure.