We’ve Come A Long Way
From Playboy and Dad’s Drawers
I was an impressionable adolescent when I would sneak out and go with a few other lascivious partners in crime to my friend Tony’s house where we’d rummage through his father’s drawers until we found it, 8 mm porn and then we’d proceed to view this wondrous discovery frame by frame by frame and then, fearing his mother or father would arrive and catch us drooling over the forbidden fruit, we’d stash the films back in the drawer as if nothing had gone askew and we’d go home more satisfied that we had seen something that was verboten rather than that we’d seen porn, if you get my point. We never did get caught and we didn’t go to Tony’s house too often probably more because looking at tiny naked figures who all seemed to have very dark complexions, doing things we couldn’t imagine yet, had become, well, boring. Aside from these taboo pictures, which may or may not have been legal, the closest we could get to porn was Playboy, which in our day was terribly titillating even though other than the breasts, the genitals were always cleverly obscured.
The discovery of those sex pictures looks so incredibly banal today when anyone can see virtually anything they want in the privacy of their own home or classroom or car or anywhere their computer can connect to the Internet. That is anyone, including pre-teens whose knowledge about sex is formed completely by pornography or their friends’ misinformation. Granted, it is difficult for a minor to access pornography because they have to vouch that they are over 18 but kids would never lie.
It is a very unhealthy situation for many reasons, but principally pornography is not sex but rather violence toward a partner, whether it is a man or a woman and watching enough of it normalizes the demeaning, violent nature of it, especially in the undeveloped, immature minds and then we wonder why we have such a sexist, violent culture. No longer do kids have to sneak into the bedroom of a friend’s father to see porn and the dangers with pornography are magnified by the Internet for a population who has become distant, with their lives largely ruled by texting and social media and so porn becomes a substitute for real human connections, not a good situation.
I’m not a prude and I admit that porn is often a turn-on but I have always mostly been turned off by porn because it is so demeaning and impersonal, particularly on-line porn, where the participants might as well be on the moon and any link between the physical and the amorous is nowhere to be found. Not that I believe partners must be madly in love to have sex but they ought to at least know each other’s names and they ought to treat each other with at least a bit of respect and a semblance of conviviality because if there is one thing I do know, it is that sex is so infinitely better with a loving partner and it’s kind of hard to get that with digital images, no pun intended. And then I wonder just who are these people and how can they perform sexually in front of a camera and others and how can they even get turned on under such circumstances. I feel sympathy, particularly for the women who submit to pornography for profit and are willing to go through terribly degrading actions, but the men also are being manipulated for profit.
In the old days, Playboy offered its form of soft porn, so called because it was all about the body, specifically the female body and while it is insulting to insinuate that a woman’s most important quality is the size of their breasts, it is not violence, at least not physical violence. The naked photos were sandwiched between legitimate and often interesting interviews and feature stories, letting the viewer at least deceive himself that he bought the magazine for the story by Norman Mailer. Today, there is nothing sandwiched, nothing hidden, nothing left to the imagination and when that happens, sex loses its mystical quality and becomes nothing more than a physical act, which is OK as long as it at least implies affection and respect.
The National Institutes of Health reported that an estimated 3 percent to 15 percent of child pornography consumers are juveniles. According to a 2012 study by Schneider et al, “long-term exposure of nonviolent pornography can increase negative attitudes towards women, can influence changes in family values, increases interests in other types of pornography, and can occasionally result in sexual callousness.”
Research studies regarding any amount of exposure of violent pornography in men have shown “an increase in sexual arousal, an increase of rape fantasies, desensitization of embedded sexual violence, acceptance of violence towards women, and desensitization towards rape and rapists.”
According to the everaccountable.com website, boys have a 90 percent chance of being exposed to porn before the age of 18, and girls will have around a 60 percent chance. One study showed that half of boys and a third of girls younger than 13 will have been exposed to pornography in some way. Almost a third of boys younger than 10, will be exposed to pornography and most of the exposure is unwanted and unwarranted. It’s come a long way from rummaging through the drawers of my friend’s father, trolling for dirty pictures.