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Don’t misunderstand the title. Snark isn’t intended, but seriously there are people out there who think that porn is the cornerstone of domestic Armageddon.
Consider this piece:
Imagine a drug so powerful it can destroy a family simply by distorting a man’s perception of his wife. Picture an addiction so lethal it has the potential to render an entire generation incapable of forming lasting marriages and so widespread that it produces more annual revenue — $97 billion worldwide in 2006 — than all of the leading technology companies combined. Consider a narcotic so insidious that it evades serious scientific study and legislative action for decades, thriving instead under the ever-expanding banner of the First Amendment.
The comment isn’t the view of the columnist, Dr Helen Smith, who noticed it, but isn’t it an over dramatization of porn? Dare I say that the view is a little representative of confirmation bias – finding the evidence to suit a warped view, based on personal bias/experience that may not reflect the general population? Sure, people do look at porn, but it doesn’t mean that it has magical powers. To say that it does, to the point where it is considered a concrete entity, attributes reification which tends to overlook logic.
Like Dr Helen says, marriages fail for many reasons.
Porn tends to be a symptom of a fault, now whether the fault is perceived or real is an interesting question. A woman may discover porn and think that her partner uses it to overlook her perceived inadequacies -something that has never been confirmed to be the case and vica versa; I’ve dated a couple of men who weren’t into the idea of me viewing male nudity, not so much porn. Porn tends to be the male leveler for men; when they watch porn, they see the average male fucking a bevy of (artificially) beautiful women. They may not view the women as being more beautiful than their partners, they’re just – and I shudder to say it, but I’m basing that on the view among some male friends of mine, and two ex boyfriends – different to their spouse. That difference may play into the evolutionary biologist’s view of relationships and sexuality, usually extrapolated from fossils and cave paintings and modern relationships, as it’s impossible and unscientific to evaluate prehistoric relationships. As for the popular radical feminist view of porn and its role to rape, it’s a baseless view, and a view that I think is based on a confusion between correlation and causation; no study actually finds causation and correlation is essentially a representation of two variables that move together, not a representation of cause: one causing the other or one leading to the other.
Anyway, is porn the end of the civilized world and does it spell the end of relationships?
That’s for you to decide. Leave your views in the comments below.
Image: Lillith Ezine
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Oh Please!!!Porn is not the end of civilization.Porn has been around for a long, long time.Both my wife and i enjoy viewing porn.But it is not a substitute for our love life.And it definitely does not colour how either of us view adults. ‘Mattress Actors/Actresses’ have a job to do and they do it. Some do it well and others, well, they don’t last as long.I once saw a documentary that said they generally last between one and a half years to fours years. I heard that is about the same length of time a social worker lasts.
Hi Spencer,
I’m with you on that one. Moral panics (usually over porn) tend to make me gnash my teeth because I tend to see them as distractions, most are egocentric (of the “I found my partner using porn, I am demoralized, etc”) and things like that tend to direct my attention toward personality flaws that distress spouses (not the porn).
Social workers tend to burn out quickly. I think most western countries have a high social worker turnover rate; people enthusiastically study social work and sociology, to get into the work, to be limited by governmental bureaucrats. I’m surprised how the sociology department at my university tries to lure people each year (for the fees, I’m guessing). That’s not to reduce the significance of sociology, but it seems that there are few social strides that are made, meanwhile porn is always the easy target.
Honestly, Farmville is about as bad now. It’s ending marriages, and is more popular than Twitter. As long as they don’t make Farmville Porn.
Hello Dee,I believe that most so-called moral panics over porn are more about promoting the the agenda of the person who has ‘found the porn’ or ‘found their partner using porn’, than they are about the concept of porn itself.It does not surprise me that sociology departments of universities tries to lure people into joining. With such a high turn over rate, there will always be a market for new social workers.