Does porn cause harm?

[juliod]

It's been a long time since I've debated pornography. But it used to be a staple during my early internet days.

Some posters here occasionally refer to porn as it it were understood to be a Bad Thing. So I think we should debate the point.

My claim is that porn has been studied extensively since the 70's, and the harm attributable to porn is still zero.

DanZ

[Nyril]

I'm with juliod. Anything to do with extremely specific harms (children/women/black market) can be said of almost any industry.

[Cathar1950]

I am into art and free speech and never thought about it.
If you have seen one xxx movie you have seen them all.
But tonight I heard Steven Baldwin on tv complaining about porno.
Now I am all for it. It makes money and people spend it. It is the American way. I read that people that work for the 700 club have more divorces then the average. The average being 50%. It is a coin toss. So it don't think it is porno. I do have to clean many computers that have all kinds of ad-ware and junk from porno sites. I tell my friends to clean then regularly.

[McCulloch]

What do you mean by "porn"? One definition is any sexually explicit writing and/or picture intended to arouse sexual desire. While others insist that the definition include only sexually explicit material which is obscene and offensive. The degree of explicitness, obscenity and offensiveness is, of course, entirely subjective. Another definition is creative activity (writing or pictures or films etc.) of no literary or artistic value other than to stimulate sexual desire. Again, whether or not the material has any literary or artistic value is quite subjective.

I expect that our response might be different to:

1. Explicit graphic depiction of a couple of consenting adults in a committed long term relationship enjoying a sexual encounter together.
2. Explicit graphic depiction of a brutal rape and murder of an underaged teen by a criminal gang.

[Cephus]

There isn't really any harm in porn, taken in moderation. Now the people who get addicted to it or particularly deviant or dangerous or harmful versions of it, that's another thing, but in moderation, there isn't much that's outright harmful.

That said, I think there's too much emphasis on it in the US, mostly because it's a very sexually repressed culture.

[Cathar1950]

What about born again virgins?
I wonder how many women get pregnant because the decided to remain virgins so did not practice safe sex or birth control?
Yes we are sexually repressed; maybe even neurotic.

[juliod]

What do you mean by "porn"?

Porn can mean many different things. Often it is necessary to describe clearly what you are talking about. OTOH, some people often intentionally confuse one or more types of porn to muddy the waters.

The definitions you mentioned are more attempts to define "obscenity" in a legal context. In the US, pornography is legal, but obscenity is illegal in many places. Thus the legal definition is critical. But for our purposes it is unimportant in deciding whether porn is harmful.

The most common differentiation of porn is into "hardcore" and "softcore". Hardcore being the depiction of actual sex acts, while softcore being limited to nakedness. You may or may not consider softcore to be pornography at all. Likewise you may or may not consider art-nudes to be porn.

Likewise it may be useful at some point to distinguish between photographs and movies (with real performers) from texts and drawings or cartoons (where there are no performers).

Explicit graphic depiction of a brutal rape and murder of an underaged teen by a criminal gang.

It's one of the interesting aspects of the debate abnout porn that while depictions like the above are worrisome to many, they are essentially absent from the porn that is actually produced. But while absent from porn these images are common, almost ubiquitous, in mainstream movies. Violence, even exteme gratuitous violence, being a regular feature of such movies, which aren't porn because only limited (if any) nudity is shown and the sex is simulated. So we often find people condemning porn for content that is present in another media altogether.

(Also, that tiny fraction of porn that is "violent" is almost entirely limited to stylized BDSM fetishist scenes. definitely not representative of sexual violence.)

DanZ

[Cephus]

I wonder how many women get pregnant because the decided to remain virgins so did not practice safe sex or birth control?

Exactly how can a virgin get pregnant? You don't need safe sex or birth control if you never have sex at all, do you? And if you do, you're not a virgin, are you?

[Cathar1950]

Exactly how can a virgin get pregnant? You don't need safe sex or birth control if you never have sex at all, do you? And if you do, you're not a virgin, are you?

I think that is the point Cephus. They are divorced from reality.
These born again virgins are not virgins. The ones that are trying to practice abstanace end up doing the human thing and being in denial and lacking sex education.
I didn't say it made sense.

[QED]

I'm waiting to hand out a Darwin Award for the first person to argue that sex is unnatural.