... here are two items of interest. Both deal with sensitive issues, and may be offensive to some readers, so I suggest you don't read further if you want to avoid such difficulties. Also, if you haven't yet read yesterday's article, I suggest you do so before continuing.
First, here's a TEDx talk by Gail Dines titled "Growing Up in a Pornified Culture". It shows very clearly the sort of society in which our young ladies are growing up - and it's terrifying to anyone of a more traditional morality. If you're a parent, you should watch the whole thing.
Next, an article that appeared this morning at The Free Press titled "The Woman Who Stood Up to the Porn Industry—and Won". Here's an excerpt.
Not only has Schlegel curbed the billion-dollar online porn industry for the first time in history, forcing websites to protect kids in Louisiana and pull out of at least three U.S. states, she has offered a legislative blueprint for others across the country.
“I am truly humbled to see that we began a movement that has swept the country and began a long overdue conversation about how we can protect kids from hardcore pornography,” she says.
Schlegel’s crusade started back in December 2021. She had listened to The Howard Stern Show and 21-year-old pop sensation Billie Eilish talking about online porn. Eilish told Stern that she began watching “abusive” images at the age of 11, and that this had warped her sense of how to behave during sex and what women’s bodies look like.
“No vagina looks like this,” Eilish told Stern. “I feel incredibly devastated that I was exposed to so much porn.”
Schlegel was struck by Eilish’s openness, that she was “just a young girl being vulnerable enough to share those details with the world.”
The singer’s story also chimed with Schlegel’s professional experience both as a sex addiction therapist and a court-appointed special advocate for abused and neglected children in the foster care system. She knew the issues facing young clients raised on unlimited free online porn—the decoupling of intimacy from sex; the inability to get aroused without porn playing in the background; a warped idea of what your partner actually wants.
“If you’ve never had your first kiss but you’ve seen hardcore pornography, it’s going to mold the way you view sexuality,” Schlegel said. “You’re not dealing with a fully formed adult brain that's like, ‘Oh, so I shouldn’t strangle my partner?’ ”
If Schlegel understood the damage pornography causes, she also knew how easy it is for children to access it. And she realized that now she was a state legislator, she was uniquely positioned to do something about it.
There's more at the link. Recommended reading.
Both of these resources help to explain why modern relationships are so sexualized, and how they exclude so many traditional aspects of femininity and the marital bond that we discussed yesterday. I hope they help make sense of the mess so many of our relationships are in.
Peter
7 comments:
The first porn I ever saw was a Playboy, under my dad's bed. That was in the early 70s.
In the late 70s, long before the internet, those images and stories had already warped my concept of "normal" girls.
When I discovered internet porn, well, let's just say the mental damage was worse. Much worse.
I never signed up for any sites, never paid any subscriptions. And though I was already well over 18, if a site had any "gateway" at all, it was just a "Are you at least 18 years old?" question, with a yes or no box. Gee, would a minor intent on looking at porn lie upon seeing that question?
We're going to need some serious repercussions for the porn industry before it's going to start scaling back.
Bill
Sad state of affairs, and not going to get better...
The ubiquitous presence of pornography is a direct result of the near universal availability of Internet access. The Internet,like television, offered society two paths to take. One was limited use for communication and education. The other was near total availability for entertainment, indoctrination...and profit. Because we are not an intelligent species, merely a clever one the choice of how to use both was preordained. Pornography addresses a very base instinctual level of the brain...and rewires it. The result is invariably dysfunctional.
A British play with muppets, called Avenue Q - a parody of Sesame Street, I believe. Here's the relevant section: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=74bkUkVGvgg
Peter you are well off the mark with this one.
Gail Dines carrying on as if she is describing ALL young women.
She is accurately describing a very small and very particular cross-section of women (such as the mentally ill like Billie Eye-lash) .
The section where supposedly all the sweet innocent young girls turning up on set "porn-ready" was truly annoying propaganda. For me, the video went downhill badly from that moment. What circles she must frequent eh ?
When she proudly admitted she was a feminist & academic - I realised it explained why everything in this whining video was utterly slanted against men, and truly nothing was the women's fault.
Notice how it is NEVER the women's fault?
In the adult world, once you are over 18 you are an adult - MAN or WOMAN, and you have accountability for your choices and actions.
At 18 years old, a man can be sent to put his life on the line on the battlefield: as you know only too well.
But for these "sweet, innocent young women" the fact that they can't keep their legs closed is supposedly everyone else's fault but theirs alone? Society, images in the media, blah blah blah - it's all pure EXCUSES !
Girls mature faster than boys, as we are always told. I've always doubted that. They discover their unstoppable power they have over males when they hit puberty - and sadly - without guidance from a loving family, many become blind drunk with this power. That is the woman Gail is describing so accurately.
See also the writings of Louise Perry and Mary Harrington, both British feminists who have come to the conclusion that the sexual revolution was in fact a disaster for most women
I liked this book a lot - https://www.amazon.com/Case-Against-Sexual-Revolution-ebook/dp/B0B1TBS69S/ - but I admit it's kind of costly especially as an ebook
@ 10:48
This conversation isn’t about adult women making choices, it’s about the young undeveloped minds being warped by a society in the throes of hyper sexuality leading to poor mental health and healthy sexuality.
Post a Comment