1-Porn - New York Times Debate PDF

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Notes de cours pour le cours de cognition psych 213 a mcgill avec des notes de cours sur la déviance...

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Should Pornography Come Out of the Closet? A Debate The New York Times, November 11, 2012

Great Potential for Great Fun

Candida Royalle is a creator of feminist pornography and the author of "How to Tell a Naked Man What to Do." UPDATED NOVEMBER 11, 2012, 9:00 PM

Watching pornography is not inherently harmful to men or women. But I would offer some caveats. There are people who probably shouldn’t view porn, like those with poor body image or those who have been sexually victimized. Depending on your choice in viewing, you can develop unrealistic expectations about sex or what people like or how you’ll be expected to “perform.” And watching with someone requires true consent. When none of these red flags are up, pornography can certainly have benefits. Counselors sometimes suggest it to help people become comfortable with a particular fantasy they or their partner may have. Pornography can reboot a couple’s sex life. It can give you ideas, or help you get in touch with what turns you on. Porn can deliver you there at best, or disgust you at worst. It all depends on what you choose to watch. With the availability of porn online, it’s possible to sample enough porn quickly that you don’t have to find yourself watching wall-to-wall hard-core sex if it’s plot driven erotica that appeals to you. You’re only a victim of bad porn if you let yourself be. And a word about sex or porn addiction. I don’t believe in it. Unlike a chemical substance, like opiates, you can’t become “addicted” to sex or porn; you can become a compulsive viewer. In this case, it’s not the porn that’s the problem; it’s the compulsive personality. If it weren’t porn being used to act out one’s compulsive nature, it might be food or some other behavior. As for whether it’s harmful or beneficial to the performers, let’s take women first. There are some who choose to perform because they like sex a lot and they consider it a great way to earn a living. Then there are those who are drawn to porn as a way of acting out subconscious psychological issues – looking for daddy’s love or punishment for being a bad girl. For many, it’s probably a little of each. Even women with the best mental health will face some downsides from this work. Our culture consumes porn at record numbers, but the women who perform are still judged harshly. I’m not sure the male performers get out completely unscathed either. While they may not be judged as harshly as the women, ultimately they’re viewed as freaks who make their living with their anatomy. John Holmes’s fate is the ultimate cautionary tale. Perhaps if we weren’t still so consumed with guilt and shame about sex, neither watching nor performing in these films would carry the weight it does. But then, perhaps we wouldn’t be so interested in them, either. If the fruit were not forbidden, would anyone care to take a bite?

Not Your Father’s Playboy

Chyng Sun is a clinical associate professor of media studies in the McGhee Division of the School of Continuing and Professional Studies at New York University. She is the co-director (with Miguel Picker) of the documentary “The Price of Pleasure: Pornography, Sexuality and Relationships.” NOVEMBER 11, 2012

“If I don’t watch porn, how do I have sexual imagination?” a young man asked me. If you know what kind of pornography is mainstream and popular, you see how disturbing this statement is. One of the most prevalent sexual practices that has been ubiquitously packaged as a spectacle by the pornography industry is men ejaculating on women’s faces or in their mouths. The popularity of this kind of sexual act was confirmed by my research team’s large-scale content analysis of industry-identified bestselling and top-renting pornographic DVDs: nearly two-thirds of the analyzed scenes depicted such an act. Pornography that depicts men's external ejaculation aims to explicitly show men's orgasms, and this act’s importance is self-evident in the industry’s lingo for it: “the money shot.” But why on a woman’s face? I would argue that the erotic excitement does not lie in the physicality of the act, but rather in its underlying ideology. A pornographer who is known for the “Baker’s Dozen” series, in which 13 men routinely ejaculate on one woman’s face, said to me that this act is “like a dog marking its territory.” When I asked male interview subjects what they would like to do in bed, “ejaculation on a woman’s face” was most often at the top of their lists. But when I asked them what the attraction of this act was and whether it meant anything, their initial response was puzzlement. They had never given it much thought. With time for reflection, however, most came up with answers very similar to those of the pornographers I interviewed: it is about controlling women, doing something disgusting to them. It’s like spitting or urinating on them. Thus something unsettling about gender relationships mediated by pornography is revealed: on-screen male domination is sugar-coated -- portrayed as causing women ecstasy -- which in turn arouses further desire on the part of the male viewers: the desire to experience the pleasure derived from control and aggression. And deep down, these viewers understand it. “The second you have an orgasm and that passion sinks out of your body, and you’re still watching the movie, you start to really see what’s going on,” one male college student said. “This is not sexy. This is not sex. This is not how I want to experience sex.”

Empowering to the Women on Screen

Mireille Miller-Young, an associate professor of feminist studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara, is the author of the forthcoming manuscript “A Taste for Brown Sugar: Black Women, Sex Work, and Pornography” (Duke University Press, 2014) and a coeditor of the forthcoming “The Feminist Porn Book: The Politics of Producing Pleasure." UPDATED NOVEMBER 11, 2012, 8:59 PM

The popular rhetoric about pornography as violent, degrading, and harmful to women and society ignores the diverse ways that women actually interact with it. As a researcher of the porn industry for the past decade, I have interviewed dozens of performers and have found a much more varied picture of pornography in women’s lives than characterized by antiporn activists. For instance, I have found that women enter the pornography industry because they are enthusiastic about its potential for lucrative, flexible and independent work. Women who previously worked in the retail sector or in nursing found that pornography offered them greater control of their labor, and surprisingly, it treated them with more humanity. Some women found that it enabled them to rise out of poverty, take care of their families or go to college. Others emphasize the creative aspects of pornography, and say it allows them to increase their economic mobility while also making a bold statement about female pleasure. According to the performers I interviewed, the greatest challenge faced by women who work in the pornography business, in addition to social stigma, is gender and racial inequality. Overwhelmingly, women do not control the production and distribution apparatus of the business. The men who run both the large companies and the smaller, amateur businesses tend to marginalize women’s perspectives and priorities and to foster a competitive environment that pits female workers against one another. African-American women – and women and men of color in general – are paid half to three-quarters of what white actresses are paid. Like in other kinds of industries, they face prejudice and inequality in structural and interpersonal forms. But they also challenge them. Porn’s workers are fighting to achieve greater control over their labor and the products they produce. The Internet is fast democratizing the porn business. Women from all kinds of backgrounds – soccer moms, single mothers, college students – are filming themselves living out their own pornographic fantasies, and they are broadcasting these images to the world. My interviewees show that pornography is an industry with both tremendous potential and powerful constraints. The women who work in pornography believe that we should not treat porn as an intractable behemoth and social evil, but they emphasize that it can be made better, especially with respect to workers' rights. The debate about pornography should not be controlled only by academics, politicians or religious groups; a voice should be given to the performers and their complex experiences.

After the Camera Stops Rolling

Jennie Ketcham, a former pornography performer, is the author of “I Am Jennie.” NOVEMBER 11, 2012

While jobs like pornography (really any sex work, including prostitution or stripping) do offer immediate gratification of one’s need for attention and money, which might be interpreted as fun and rewarding, they aren’t exactly selfesteem builders. The emotional damage pornography causes to performers far outweighs any achievable financial gains or physical gratification. Our society considers sex inherently sacred; we cannot separate sex and intimacy. But that is exactly what sex work attempts to achieve. Receiving money for sex lessens a performer’s intrinsic enjoyment of sex, and a ripple effect occurs throughout her life. Because she frequently repeats an inauthentic sexual experience, she begins conditioning herself. When valued only for sexual prowess and youth, she begins to believe the hype. Little Albert comes to fear rabbits. A performer becomes virtually incapable of experiencing authentic, intimate relationships; she bases her selfworth on sex, which reinforces the behavior. Relearning a healthy relationship to sex, others and money takes work. Furthermore, what does the absence of a labor union imply about the industry? Labor unions protect the worker who may not otherwise be able to protect herself. Because performers lack the career longevity – and perhaps foresight – to unionize, it has taken lawmakers and a ballot initiative to create protection measures as seemingly self-evident as condom requirements. Why are performers’ careers so brief? In my experience, it’s because pornography takes a psychological toll. You get tired of feeling like and being a prostitute. A retired performer often refrains from speaking out against pornography because acknowledging her participation threatens her new reputation and emotional well-being. Some, myself included, experience symptoms similar to those of post-traumatic stress disorder. Others have insisted they are fine. Many will continue to do so. But unless our culture can separate sex and intimacy, and performers have union protection, performing in porn will continue to be harmful.

A Habit That Can Destroy Lives

Gail Dines, a professor of sociology and women’s studies at Wheelock College in Boston, is the author of “Pornland: How Porn Has Hijacked Our Sexuality.” Robert Jensen, a professor in the School of Journalism at the University of Texas at Austin, is the author “Getting Off: Pornography and the End of Masculinity.” They are founding members of Stop Porn Culture. NOVEMBER 11, 2012

Assessing the effects of mass media is never simple, but the important questions about pornography are obvious: What happens when a culture is saturated with sexually explicit images eroticizing male domination and female subordination? When those images become increasingly cruel and degrading to women and increasingly racist? When pornography becomes the de facto sex education for most boys and an increasing number of girls? These disturbing trends do not apply to all pornography. There are many varieties made by hundreds of small producers, but the porn industry around Los Angeles dominates, shaping cultural ideas about sexuality, relationships and intimacy. Just as the food industry shapes how we eat and the fashion industry shapes how we dress, the sex industry shapes the way we think about sex. This dominant source of pornography has some consistent themes. The most extensive peer-reviewed study in the past decade found that a majority of scenes from 50 top-rented porn movies contained physical and verbal abuse of female performers. Physical aggression – including spanking, open-hand slapping and gagging – occurred in 88 percent of scenes, with expressions of verbal aggression – usually a man calling a woman derogatory names – in 48 percent. Individual experiences as a viewer of pornography differ, and many men and some women report pleasurable experiences. But clear patterns emerge from more than 30 years of academic research and organizing informed by a feminist critique of pornography. In heterosexual couples, men who habitually use pornography sometimes withdraw from intimacy with female partners, and sometimes make demands on female partners for sexual acts that are uncomfortable, painful or degrading to the woman. Women in heterosexual relationships report that both these behaviors can destroy relationships, and men sometimes report that they are aware of the damage but cannot break the habit. Anyone who doubts these trends should talk to marriage therapists and divorce lawyers. Although there is little systematic research on performers, anecdotal evidence suggests it’s a harsh business for women. The industry portrays high-profile performers with glamorous lives, but producers and directors we’ve interviewed said candidly that the industry “chews up and spits out” women. According to the Adult Industry Medical Health Care Foundation, which provided testing and health care for performers in Los Angeles until it closed last year, female performers are at risk for injuries and diseases. The group’s founder once said the average career of these women was “six months to three years, tops,” after which they must cope with a variety of physical and psychological problems. Pornography is the industrialization and commodification of sex, and like all big industries, its product is generic, formulaic and plasticized. These images tend to rob sex of its creativity, playfulness and intimacy, and hence are ultimately profoundly alienating. The performers, the consumers and the culture deserve better.

No Substitute for Sex Ed

Debby Herbenick, the co-director of the Center for Sexual Health Promotion at Indiana University, is the author, most recently, of “Sex Made Easy: Your Awkward Questions Answered -- For Better, Smarter, Amazing Sex.” NOVEMBER 11, 2012

Although pornography isn’t made for adolescents, it would be naïve to believe they don’t watch it. Earlier generations snuck peeks at their parents’ magazine or VHS collections. Today most U.S. teenagers have Internet access and thus a virtual buffet of porn. But how does such exposure affect them? Scientifically, it is difficult to tease out the effects that porn use has on adolescents; some of the correlations may not be causations. Research has found that adolescents who seek out porn are more likely to engage in certain sexual behaviors (like anal sex and group sex) and to begin having sex at younger ages. But are they engaging in more varied sex acts and at younger ages because they watched porn? Or are they highly sexually interested young women and men who sought out sexual stimulation in the form of both pornography and partners? Of course, porn isn’t going anywhere – nor is it becoming more vanilla or true to life.A recent study found that popular mainstream porn featured anal sex in about 55 percent of scenes. However, my research team’s data suggest that only about 4 percent of Americans engaged in anal sex during their most recent sexual experience -- a sizable difference that emphasizes that porn is fiction. Other issues that concern people include how porn generally depicts women, shows sex as casual rather than intimate, and frequently has partners couple and part ways without exchanging names or wearing condoms.

Yes, pornography is fiction. That’s part of why many people enjoy it. However, there’s a risk if young women and men misunderstand sex as a result of a porn-only sex education. Many of my college students who have watched porn but had little sex education (whether in schools or from their families) often have a skewed view of sex. They may believe that anal sex and group sex are common, that genitals should be hairless, and that facials (not the spa kind) are par for the course. Once they engage in a real relationship with someone they care for, many of their beliefs are challenged and they find themselves readjusting to sex in the real world -- very different from the sex they’ve seen online. Then again, young women whose ideas about sex and love are shaped by “Fifty Shades of Grey” or Hollywood romantic comedies will also have to make room for reality. It’s the larger context of sex education that is critical to examine. Pornography and “Fifty Shades” aren’t the problem. Many college students say I am the first adult to teach them about sex. This is striking. If parents and schools don’t teach teenagers about sex, intimacy and healthy relationships, then pornography will remain their primary source of sex information. It doesn’t have to be that way. We need age- and developmentally appropriate sex education in schools that spans years, not just a single video about puberty in fifth grade. Young women and men need to learn about their bodies, how to be emotionally vulnerable with one another, and what’s common (and not) about sexuality so that when they’re faced with creating their own sexual lives, they can create the sexual life that feels good to them rather than recreating the fictionalized, and often risky, sex they’ve seen online. They’ll know that pornography and romantic novels are fictions of sex and love -- and that it’s for them to create reality.

It’s Demonized, but Not a Demon

David Loftus, an actor and writer in Portland, Ore., is the author of “Watching Sex: How Men Really Respond to Pornography.” NOVEMBER 11, 2012

Is pornography harmful to viewers? Yes. No. Yes and no. It depends on the person, not what’s on the screen. Pornography is like alcohol: a substance that’s toxic for some, neutral to others and a harmless pleasure for still others. Of course pornography can have a harmful effect on some people; we’ve heard about them from the religious right and feminist left for decades. But since the early 1990s, more voices of the feminist left -- theorists like Linda Williams, Avedon Carol and Susie Bright -- have addressed the flawed logic in the pornography critique, and noted that in many cases, men and women (and women and women, and men and men) enjoy porn, singly and together, with no untoward consequences. In working on a book about how men respond to pornography, I also talked with many such men (and a few women, though their input was not the focus). Based on my research into viewers' responses, the men who have difficulties with pornography, much like many who cannot relate well to others and turn to crime, tend to come from dysfunctional backgrounds, where stringent rules, hypocrisy, unhappiness and even violence abounded. Statistically, sex criminals are more likely to come from strict, religious homes and less likely to use pornography. The real “problem” with porn is that its iffy social reputation and legal status allow so many myths to linger. Activists, politicians and leering TV news reports use pornography as a handy demon, crying “We have to protect the children!” to get attention, votes and support for legislation. But most of us first saw pornography as children and are none the worse for wear. The average age of first exposure for the men I talked to was less than 11. We have to stop granting pornography such unwarranted power.

Some Scenes Are Wholesome, Others Degrading

Ana Bridges is an assistant professor of psychology at the University of Arkansas. NOVEMBER 11, 2012

Like people whose lives have been affected by pornography, researchers who have asked “Is pornography harmful?” understand that the answer must be “It depends.” Can pornography harm users? Yes, in some cases it can, but in the vast majority of cases it do...