Is porn good for us?

http://www.the-scientist.com/article/display/57169/

by dirtbox • 16 years ago

45 74 16 years ago

the-scientist.com

mvandemar• 16 years ago

The only issue I contend with personally on porn is the number of women who create it in order to support a drug habit, thus removing a portion of the voluntariness from it. I know that factor does not apply to all women creating porn, not by a long shot, but by knowing the stories of women in the exotic dancing industry, where many porn actresses are recruited from, it's hard to ignore the reality once you become aware of it.

Also, like any fantasy based pasttime porn has it's own addiction dangers that would not necessarily be considered 'healthy'. Although this of course would not apply to people who are not prone to fantasy addiction in the first place, there is a reason that internet porn is a multi-billion dollar industry.

>Note: Just to clarify, I don't have any issues with the act of making, staring in, or viewing porn itself. I do watch porn. And I know that addiction occurs across all industries and walks of life. It does happen to have a higher occurrences in certain industries though, such as, for example, adult entertainment or telemarketing. I personally do not view porn as either bad or immoral.

dirtbox• 16 years ago

There's little doubt there's still a very seedy side to the business despite it being commercialised and regulated to a high extent. Although it's worth mentioning that a lot of the stars aren't your regular girl or boy next door types, they often have a troubled past and their own emotional luggage before they get into pornography. In many cases, the problems you outline are an extension of that.

pavel_lishin2• 16 years ago

Couldn't that be an issue with virtually any job? Do you take issue with factory jobs, due to the number of alcoholics working there just to support their beer-purchasing habits?

It is an issue for sure, but not one specific to pornography.

dgabriel6• 16 years ago

The social stigma applied to porn actresses is enormous. Working a factory job will not exclude you from other lines of work later in your life, nor is it necessary to hide former factory work from your parents or acquaintances. Even a brief stint in porn can cause long lasting deleterious effects in a woman's life.

Grinnmarr• 16 years ago

I think your contention better supports an argument for the decriminalization of drugs than it does regarding the social ills of porn. As far as "voluntariness" goes I have known a number of high billing IT contractors over the years that work to support an expensive cocaine habit.

yters3• 16 years ago

We should just decriminalize everything, which would completely eliminate every legal problem on the books.

Alex3917• 16 years ago

"The only issue I contend with personally on porn is the number of women who create it in order to support a drug habit, thus removing a portion of the voluntariness from it."

You could say this about any actor. I heard David Bowie didn't even know he'd starred in Labyrinth until he saw the video on sale at Blockbuster a couple years later.

autarch• 16 years ago

The problem with this article, and those that assert the opposite, is that it's barely science.

There's no good control, and there are so many possible confounding factors that it's impossible to know what's really happening.

Even worse, if you read the comments, it seems that people can't even agree on whether or not sexual violence has increased or decreased in the US over the past 40 years or so!

Has anyone actually done any real science in this area? It seems like all we see are a bunch of ideologically motivated people selectively interpreting the data for their preferred viewpoint.

jessriedel2• 16 years ago

"Despite the widespread and increasing availability of sexually explicit materials, according to national FBI Department of Justice statistics, the incidence of rape declined markedly from 1975 to 1995. This was particularly seen in the age categories 20–24 and 25–34, the people most likely to use the Internet."

The article is filled with statements like this without telling us if researchers controlled for any of the infinite possible confounding factors. This may be just a bad article, and the research may actually support the hypothesis of a causal link (perhaps even through a controlled experiment, rather than a statistical survey). But as it is, there's really no strong evidence at all in this article. Unless someone writes a more competent article, one would need to go read the actual studies.

EDIT: Wait, they are giving the internet credit for reducing rape between 1975 and 1995? The first graphical web browser, Mosaic, wasn't developed until 1992. OK, this article is total baloney.

epochwolf• 16 years ago

After reading the paper, I find it just as bad as the article. (The article is a surprisingly good summary of the paper)

yters3• 16 years ago

Also, why do those metrics matter? We could dramatically decrease the murder rate by removing everybody's limbs.

_pius• 16 years ago

They matter because anti-pornography activists typically cite these statistics as proof or supporting evidence for the negative impact of pornography.

wooster• 16 years ago

VHS was released in the mid-1970's. Betamax was released in 1975. They are widely considered to have popularized (or been popularized by?) video porn.

jessriedel2• 16 years ago

First, Playboy and other print pornography were available long before VHS and Betamax. Is the claim that video pornography is the key product which reduced sexual violence?

Second, what fraction of young men regularly viewed pornography on videotape from 1975-1990? It has to be much, much lower than the (near-ubiquitous) viewing of online pornography today. (Then again, maybe those most at risk to commit sexual violence were much more likely to purchase pornography on video.)

breck• 16 years ago

Google thinks so.

> adheresToDontBeEvil("incognito mode") > true

chasingsparks• 16 years ago

No correlation has been found between exposure to porn and negative attitudes towards women.

As other commenters have stated, it is really difficult to conduct a good experiment given the difficulty controlling for other variables. However, I'm not even sure it is the right question. I'd be more interested in men's attitudes towards themselves given habitual exposure to porn.

The same experimental difficulty exists, but I think it is more "upstream" from negative attitudes towards women. That is, in the course of the hypothesized man turned sexual predator, there is probably a period of sexual frustration that may be exacerbated by the non-reality of porn. This then develops into the deviant.

TechStuff• 16 years ago

no

lotharbot2• 16 years ago

The question in the article's title is "is porn good for us?" That's not the question they actually answer.

The question they actually attempt to answer is "does porn availability increase sex crimes or lead to unhealthy attitudes about women?" Their answer is that it actually improves both situations, though it's poorly supported by the data. (As others have noted, it's a mere statistical survey with no good control and many confounding factors.)

If they wanted to answer "is porn good for us", they'd have to investigate a number of situations -- porn use within a relationship, for example. I suspect they'd find it has some serious downsides.

drunkpotato• 16 years ago

I suspect they'd find it has some serious downsides.

Gaaah, this comment was so good until you whiffed at the end! You point out that their methodology was sloppy, that the title is not apropos, and then assert your own unfounded opinion right at the end.

lotharbot2• 16 years ago

I've done enough marriage counseling to know of the existence of serious downsides to pornography, which is all I asserted. This is not an unfounded opinion.

Had I expressed some statistical conclusion (say, that the downsides outnumbered the upsides, or that under some particular weighting scheme the downsides were 62% worse than the upsides) your criticism would be valid.

ErrantX• 16 years ago

The only thing I think anyone can tell you about porn for certain is that it is, literally, everywhere (I'd say around 95% of the computers I poke around inside of contain porn).

j_baker2• 16 years ago

The idea that pornography only objectifies women is inherently sexist. There are men in porn too. I think people take this point of view out of some antiquated notion of chivaly: women need to be protected because they obviously can't do it for themselves.

dgabriel6• 16 years ago

The vast majority of porn is created for men, and the men in these films are not objectified in the same way women are. This has nothing to do with chivalry.

marshallp3• 16 years ago

Secretly, most, maybe all, women like be objectified to an extent, it's part of their dna. Find me a woman who says they wouldn't secretly like to show a bit of flesh in a magazine and i'll show a liar.

roc• 16 years ago

The prevalence of 'porn for men' [1] doesn't counter the argument. You're just pointing out a (largely historically-biased) discrepancy in the target market.

'Porn for women' exists. The day it sells as well as 'porn for men', will something about 'porn for men' have magically changed?

Frankly, that it's not yet as popular says more about our society's remaining sexism [2] than it does about whether pornography, as a concept, is inherently sexist.

And I'd also argue the point of whether the male actors are objectified in the same way the women are.

There is no shortage of 'porn for men' that revolves around the concept of the 'hapless delivery guy as sexual object'.

The assumption that this isn't equivalent is purely sexist. The argument ("what red-blooded male isn't Ok with that?") presumes that no red-blooded female should be Ok with a 'hapless secretary as sexual object' fantasy.

And there's absolutely no basis for that assertion. Objectification is high on the list of fantasies for any gender and any orientation. Assuming it's something women shouldn't or don't want is sexist repression, pure and simple.

[1] The idea of 'porn for men' vs 'porn for women' is pretty useless. The genres of porn are many and varied and have wildly differing levels of objectification of the parties involved, wholly separate from the concern of who their typical consumers are.

[2] Our society holds women to a far higher sexual standard of chastity and more-harshly represses any exploration they may do, as compared to their male peers. To say nothing of what we imply their fantasies and erotic consumption habits are or should be.

j_baker2• 16 years ago

You've obviously never heard of a little thing called "gay porn".

cookiecaper5• 16 years ago

I think the idea is that most porn focuses on the woman as the object of sexual gratification. The men involved are merely instrumental to getting the desired reaction out of the woman.

Of course, pornography makes victims of all of its constituents, viewers and participants included.

PostOnce2• 16 years ago

Consumers of pornography are victims?

daniel-cussen• 16 years ago

Besides, you can't compare porn for men to porn for women. You have to compare it to romantic comedies, and romantic movies in general.

For example, watching Nights in Rodanthe, it was just ridiculous how much they mentioned that the guy Richard Gere plays is a doctor. His son was a doctor too. They must mention it eight times. Why? Because for a woman past her mid-thirties, there is no better thing to marry than a guy with a safe and very bankable job. Very objectified.

erickerr• 16 years ago

"As the use of porn increases, the rate of sex crimes goes down"

This is a perfect application of "Correlation does not imply causation". It's very likely that over time (during which internet porn has skyrocketed and made consumption frictionless) the awareness for supporting victims of sexual assault as also gone up.. from completely unrelated trends like rises in feminism and an overall decrease in crime over the last 15 years.

Source 1995: http://www.fbi.gov/filelink.html?file=/ucr/Cius_97/95CRIME/9... 2008: http://www.fbi.gov/ucr/cius2008/data/table_25.html

brianobush4• 16 years ago

I am on the pro-porn side since my job and company is built on its existence. Luckily, our technology works well and if you don't like pornography, you can easily buy products/services that will block porn (and other harmful content, e.g., hate, drugs, abortion, etc).

Leveling-up I see pornography as content that will exist irregardless of laws, restrictions, etc. It is human nature that is simply exploiting the Internet medium to the fullest. I.e., it won't go away that easy.

jrockway3• 16 years ago

Legal rights protected by the supreme court are "harmful content" now? I didn't get that memo.

brianobush4• 16 years ago

Well, as a parent, I want to protect my children from seeing the Internet in the raw form. Seriously, look at the content on the Internet. There is an amazing amount of content, not all of it is safe for children to view. Heck sometimes I see stuff that I would rather not. Don't confuse the issue here - it has nothing to do with rights.

jackfoxy• 16 years ago

It's interesting how much of HN comments are devoted to media criticism, often focusing on the sad state of science journalism. Maybe with the demise of Editor & Publisher there's room for a start-up here.

bd• 16 years ago

"According to the conservative media watchdog group Family Safe Media, the porn industry makes more money than the top technology companies combined, including Microsoft, Google, Apple, and Amazon."

No way. Let's keep things in perspective.

These four companies had combined revenues of almost $150 billion (2009).

All porn total revenue estimates are maximum in single digit billions.

Even the smallest company in Fortune 500 had at least $18.5 billion revenue.

Despite appearances, porn is niche.

rogermugs• 16 years ago

And in every region investigated, researchers have found that as pornography has increased in availability, sex crimes have either decreased or not increased.

ridiculous

Jun85• 16 years ago

I would recommend photographer Timothy Greenfield-Sanders's book, "30 Porn-Star Portraits" (http://www.amazon.com/XXX-Porn-Star-Portraits-Timothy-Greenf...) to gain a better understanding of how and why people choose to work in the porn industry. In addition to nice photos (of course) it includes essays by porn workers, e.g. Nina Hartley (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nina_Hartley) and biographical information. This comes in handy next time you encounter someone who claims all porn actresses are drug addicted victims who are either brainless or over-sexed.