Anti-Pornography | velvetverbosity.com

Contents Under Pressure

Nick — Wed, 28 May 2008 09:33:21 +0000

Though this video is about human sex trafficking, it touches on how pornography and the pornification of our culture is driving demand that is creating more and more victims every year. I found this through the Second Carnival Against Pornography and Prostitution where I was linked. Not sure how they found me, but I’m honored to be doing my part. Over at A Room of Mama’s Own, MPJ sums up pretty well how it is a problem of the spirit, not one of morality, prudishness, or censorship. I agree with her, though I still think things go much deeper and there is clear and compelling evidence that actual people are being harmed directly and indirectly. This video highlights how demand drives the sex industry as a whole, and thus contributes to human sex trafficking. I won’t apologize for making you feel squirmy. We all should.

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=8237966222974862949&hl=en

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Another Reason I Hate Porn

Nick — Sun, 27 Apr 2008 09:32:26 +0000

Because if you’re online AT ALL, you can’t avoid it. It’s one thing if there’s a product out there, and sure I don’t mind if they spend some money on advertising because even if I don’t want their product, someone else might, or I might change my mind later, and it’s good to know what’s out there. But when you come on to MY turf and bombard me with your product again and again, it’s ANNOYING. Here I am, changing my blog real estate, paying for my own nice digs, and now that I’m just settling in, ready to do some decorating, feeling good, what do I get? Up to 5 long-a** spam porn comments a day. It’s annoying. It’s more than annoying, it’s disturbing. And to be quite honest, it’s reminiscent of how the tobacco industry behaved for a very long time. Peddling their product while sending us the message that everyone was doing it, that all the cool cats were smoking, and no harm was being done. They never mentioned the addiction. They never mentioned the disease. The tobacco industry single-handedly changed our culture, and if anyone objected, cautioned, or even tried to tell the truth, they were considered to be uptight. The top players in the tobacco industry knew long before we did that what they were selling was harmful, but that didn’t matter to the bottom line. They infiltrated our psyche in magazines, newspapers, television and movies. It wasn’t just the advertisements either. They knew full well if they got actors to smoke, they would not only hook the actors, they would hook the masses.

The porn industry already has more money than God. Why do they need to try to break into my comments on MY blog? Why bother with my humble little blip in the universe? They’ve already secured magazines, books, television, and Hollywood in general. They already own more internet real estate than most industries combined. They’ve got people talking and acting like porn is just a normal everyday part of life. They’ve managed to drive labiaplasty to be the largest growing form of plastic surgery. What more? Sexual stimulation rewards the dopamine pathway. The addiction highway. The internet delivered by computer is as close to a Skinner Box environment as you could create outside a lab. Directly reward the dopamine pathway with a click, increase the stimulus with each click, and you’ve got yourself some pretty slick conditioning right there. So when they send out millions of spam comments, emails, popups, whatever, they know that for every X number of people that ignore or delete, Y number won’t be able to resist having just one look. “Just one look” at porn is like trying to eat one french fry. Practically impossible. The porn industry knows it, and just like the tobacco industry got the majority of an entire culture to get hooked on its product, so too will the porn industry continue to spam my blog and everyone else until they’ve hooked as many people as they can.

Someday the studies will come out and the porn industry will be saying, “whoops, my bad”.

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Where do We Draw the Line?

Nick — Sun, 12 Mar 2006 09:08:22 +0000

Just finished reading an essay by Margaret Atwood on pornography. Here is some of what she had to say:

“This leads us back to the key question: what’s the harm? Nobody knows, but this society should find out fast, before the saturation point is reached. The Scandinavian studies that showed a connection between depictions of sexual violence and increased impulse toward it on the part of male viewers would be a starting point, but many more questions remain to be raised as well as answered. What, for instance, is the crucial difference between men who are users and men who are not? Is there a clear line between erotica and violent pornography, or are they on an escalating continuum? Is this a “men versus women” issue, with all the men secretly siding with the proporners and all women secretly siding against? (I think not; there are lots of men who don’t think that running their true love through the Cuisinart is the best way they can think of to spend a Saturday night, and they’re just as nauseated by films of someone else doing it as women are.) Is pornography merely an expression of the sexual confusion of this age or an active contributer to it?

Noboby wants to go back to the age of official repression…Neither do we want to end up in George Orwell’s 1984, in which pornography is turned out by the State to keep the proles in a state of torpor, sex itself is considered dirty and the approved practise is only for reproduction. But Rome under the emperors isn’t such a good model either.”

It is important to note that she is discussing hardcore and violent pornography, NOT erotica.

Should there be regulations? Do you think it is harmful? How do we protect ourselves and maintain freedom?

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So Tell Me Again That Pornography and a Pornified Media are Not Harmful?

Nick — Mon, 25 Feb 2002 09:30:25 +0000

Girls Accepting Sexual Assault At School As Fact Of Life: Reports

The article doesn’t actually make any correlations between over 20% of girls being sexually assaulted in Toronto schools and expecting it and the pornification of our culture. The only conclusions the experts can draw is to say that the problem is that “most kids don’t actually know what sexual assault is”. Really? Now why wouldn’t they know what sexual assault entails when this is the generation of kids that grew up with “innappropriate touching” education? And why, like the title suggests, are girls accepting this as part of school life?

Someone please give me an intelligent answer to this, because I’d really like to hear it. Be forewarned, don’t use the party line that this has been going on all along, because I’m not buying it. I went to school. Boys cat-called, and on dates they sometimes tried to get more than they were going to get, but I don’t remember one single incident of a girl telling me that a guy followed her into the bathroom and stuck his hands down her shirt, and she thought this was to be expected! There have been times in history and places on the map where women have been subjected to this type of treatment, and that’s because they lived in a time or culture of oppression. How do we explain that in a time and place where women are supposed to more or less have equal rights, that this is happening? How do we explain the conflict between being told we are in a “sex-positive” and “sexually liberated” culture that brings us such gems as Girls Gone Wild and the fact that young girls don’t feel safe getting their EDUCATION? Is it at all possible that the sex industry that has leaked into every facet of our daily life and portrays women liking being objectified, used, and abused and as nothing more than a commodity to be obtained for male pleasure is having any influence at all on young minds?

All I ask is that you open your eyes and take a look around. Listen to the music. It’s not just about sex, it’s about sexually degrading women. Pay attention to the television, the movies, the ads, the stuff that is all around us everyday and how it is not just about sex, but about women being objects. Do this for a few days. Do it honestly. Then come back and give me your answer.

While you’re thinking about it, you can start with this thoughtful video: Hip Hop – Beyond Beats and Rhymes. Pay particular attention to what the people on the street are saying starting at about three minutes in. Watch the full length video here.

***On a lighter note, “note to self”. When putting on a turtleneck sweater, if the neck is so tight you feel like you’re being birthed all over again, it’s time to stop putting said turtleneck sweater in the dryer. Capiche?

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