By BONNIE ERBE
Scripps Howard News Service
Wednesday, June 06, 2007
A proliferation of pornography on the Internet has set up a debate about the impact on young women: is in-your-face sexuality empowering, allowing girls to act like boys, or does today's hyper-sexualized society lead to more mental-health disorders for girls?
The consumer Internet usage tracker, comScore Media Metrix, reports that more than one-third of American Internet users visited sites in the "adult" category in April 2007.
One of the Web's less admirable accomplishments is that it has allowed porn to propagate to a point once thought not imaginable. In the 1950s, could one in three Americans have visited a pornography shop?
Remember those photographs of men hiding their faces behind folded newspapers as they entered or exited such distinguished joints? Of course, it would have been unfeasible back then to have one-third of Americans routinely trafficking through them. But now pornography is accessible in your house, on your street, from the local Internet cafe, etc. To wit, it's wildly more accessible than it used to be. That doesn't mean it's good.
And porn abounds off the Net as well. I recall recently recoiling at a soft-porn scene in the Oscar-winning movie, "The Last King of Scotland," when I thought I had bought a ticket to see something more staid. Pornography and its softer sister (soft-core porn) abound in advertisements, on billboards and elsewhere. Critics say hyper-sexuality on and off the Internet has created a society obsessed with sexual exhibition and its attention-getting after-effect.
These after-effects, however, are anything but liberating for women, particularly for the young women claiming its mantra as something that empowers them. If you're wondering what I'm talking about, a visit to nakednews.com will explain all. The site was recently written up in USA Today. Some young women who take part in on-camera nudity and soft porn told the newspaper they find such behavior liberating and empowering. But a recent American Psychological Association study shows that sexualized images of women can lead to emotional and mental disorders in girls, including depression and eating disorders. Quelle surprise!!
I'm all for women's advancement, but I fail to see how pornography plays a role here. As to the argument that engaging in public sex acts and nudity "empowers" women, this is one woman who just doesn't get it.
Are male porn stars "liberated," or do they seem like pathetic souls willing to do anything for a buck? And since when did "acting like men" come to mean advancement for women? Women's advancement is about equal opportunity, particularly in the workplace. It is not about imitating disgraceful male behavior nor ever should it have been. Where do these young women get these ideas?
Feminism (a messy agglomeration of all manner of women activists) has represented a melange of views on pornography, with "Free Expression Feminists" opposing censorship and other types of feminists battling porn as harmful to women. But conservatives like to blame feminism and "women's liberation" for pornography's proliferation. Again, let me state for the record as I have in the past, I am not a feminist. I appreciate what feminist leaders have done for women's advancement, but I differ with all major political ideologies in some way, shape or form. I therefore eschew any ideological or partisan labels.
So is "women's liberation" (what an achingly archaic term) responsible for today's girls gone wild? No more so, I would argue, than conservative Christianity. Doesn't outright repression also provoke unnecessarily rebellious counter-behavior? Each is linked in a distinctive way with in-your-face hyper-sexuality.
Whatever your position on girls and porn, the reality is that what the Internet and a free society have unleashed is hardly about to be squeezed back into the bottle. The question is, how do we convince young women (and men) that pornography is disempowering, anything but empowering and damaging to one's psyche in the long run. Greater minds than mine will have to figure out that one.
(Bonnie Erbe is a TV host and writes this column for Scripps Howard News Service. E-mail bonnieerbe(at)CompuServe.com.)
I think it terribly naïve
I think it terribly naïve to suggest that pornography leads to eating disorders and depression in women over much more likely factors in a womans life.
Anyone who has any working knowledge within the adult video industry can inform you that overall porn (especially amateur porn) is populated with male and female starts that run the spectrum in terms of physical beauty. Granted the more big budget firms like (for example) Playboy push an image of the female (or male) form that is highly unrealistic.
I would think, however, that mass media in general is more to blame that the adult industry as a whole. Women (and men) are assaulted daily from unrealistic images of how they are "expected" to appear physical. From Hollywood films, to rock stars, to magazine covers, to the fashion industry, to even the anchors on the evening news. These images are much more prevalent and without a negative social stigma. I would bet that the average woman suffering from depression on an eating disorder is influence much more by those accepted forms of media than pornography.
I also am disappointed by your characterization of male porn stars. "Are male porn stars 'liberated,' or do they seem like pathetic souls willing to do anything for a buck? And since when did 'acting like men' come to mean advancement for women?" I would argue that most porn stars in general enjoy their work and like that they get paid to do something they enjoy or love. Just because you have problems with the industry doesn't mean that the performers or their audience find anything desperate, pathetic, or disgusting about it.
You again show a distasteful bias in your "like men" rhetorical question. Men have long had a social pass at more honest sexuality while women have been pressured into a suppressive chastity. To stand on equal footing with men social, being allowed to enjoy, explore, and express their sexuality without being negatively labeled as a whore, tramp, slut, etc is a victory for women's right, even if you fail to see the importance.
Like all industries there is a fair share of immoral deals, abusive employment practices, and degradation, however, the vast majority of pornography is innocent, honest, and most importantly desired.
I think all our sex lives have vastly improved with the popularity of pornography and I think we as human, recognizing and appreciating the instinctual desire to copulate is an important step forward.
But that's just me. Obviously you disagree.
acting like a porn star -- is this empowering?
I'm recently divorced after a long, monogomous marriage. I'm in my early 50's. I meet women who are in their 30's. Most say they want a serious relationship, but really just want to fxxk around. That bothers me, but just the dishonesty -- not their desire. But I met one woman, 37, very beautiful who wanted to have oral sex in a form that (at least to me) was extremely degrading to her ("I will do anything for you." "Come all over me; sex is only good when I end up feeling like a glazed donut." "Don't be so OCD, you can spray me all over my face." "I love to kneel; treat me good and I'll kneel for you every day.") And I gave in; she seemed to really like it when I would do exactly that to be found on websites like "facialabuse" or "gagonmycock. The harder the better.... I was disgusted with myself and had to break it off...she could not understand why. My question: is her behavior "normal" sex these days?
I have recently looked at a
I have recently looked at a number of free porn sites after discovering that my partner uses porn. I am a rape survivor and I will not use this space to describe how my discovery of the porn, and the content in particular, left me reliving that devastating experience.
Sexually explicit imagery certainly could theoretically liberate us sexually, were we to see a variety of acts between a variety of consenting adults. However most porn I have seen seems to focus on the exploitation of very young women and focus on the same degrading scenarios over and over. Women are called "whores" and "filthy sluts" whilst being ordered to perform degrading acts.
An acquaintance - a guy not particularly given to social analysis- said the other day "Young guys think that sex is sticking you d**k in the girl's butt and then sticking it in her mouth and that's all... and I guess the young girls think that's sex too." I think he has spoken a very saddening, devastating truth: kids growing up with the internet are being taught that "normal" sex is painful and degrading for the female - almost a "consensual" rape scenario.
I can't help but think that the girls who are coming of age in this rape culture are headed for a whole lot of depression and self-loathing in their adult years, not the sexual license that we dreamed of in heady days of pro-sex feminism.
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