I'm not sure if I understand why that's appropriate. I mean, I get it: I am a US citizen, and thus, held to US laws. But the mention of things in lecture (like the Thailand child sex trade) that I would think to be totally outside the bounds of American law are acts that US citizens can be tried for. The Canadian alcohol example- ok, I'll buy it. Bringing substances that are illegal for me to have here isn't so cool in the eyes of the legal system, I'm doing something in the US that I shouldn't, I probably should be thrown in the slammer. But, while the Thailand sex thing is totally a different story because of morals, it also is something that is going on in a seperate time and place, and is not abusing American law on American soil. Besides the chance of anyone finding out being rather slim, the it baffles me that something acted out in a different country with NO tie to the US except the criminal could be something charged for in the States. Although, I'm pretty sure that if an American tourist kills a foreigner overseas, they ship them here for trial sometimes. Is that kind of the same thing? I was pretty sure that local law stuck. The movie "Brokedown Palace" involves something like this, where 2 American girls have drugs planted on them and are jailed in Thailand for life. Why doesn't this apply to the American side?

So confused.

During lecture, Professor Halavais mentioned that people who make this kind of porn say that the children involved are participating consensually, that these 14 year old girls (and boys) are enjoying the sexual scenarios in which they are being placed. However, all of the other laws of our country make it clear that we don't trust people this age to make responsible decisions. And personally, I would consider 'having sex on film which can be viewed in posterity for all of time' up to par with drinking, driving, and renting a hotel room on the 'important things to decide' scale. People at this age should under no circumstances be considered to be able to make decisions or agreements of this nature. I wonder what the parental involvement here is like, if these kids are being filmed with parental consent and condoning. If so… those people should get the chair. Or something like this.  

Child pornography is basically rape. If we have outlawed forcing one's self on another person without consent, than child porn obviously falls in the same category, as they are not able to consent, just as animals aren't. I'm not sure I see where the difference lies. We are walking on very dangerous ground when we talk about free speech, as I learned in this lecture. People who support free speech are being encouraged to support child pornographers (the viewers of which, according to lecture, have a litany of reasons why they are not the guilty party and should be allowed to browse the web at lesiure and enjoy whatever they feel is appropriate), because it is the final frontier- if we allow that, everyone else will be free to do anything that falls closer to the norm. Talk about going out on a limb. There are some things that just should not be allowed, we have to draw the line somewhere. If we allow child porn (which is unarguably non-consensual), what will stop us from allowing torture and rape? Or snuff films? If everyone is legally entitled to get off on whatever they see fit, the limit will be pushed way past the point where anyone sane is comfortable.

I started off this article with a very positive outlook. I liked that he spoke about how gay pornography actually helps to build a community that otherwise may not exist and prevents alienation (to a certain extent). I also think that it was important that he pointed out the instructional aspect as well in the opening paragraphs. As we all know, anal sex is considered to be quite a bit more risky than many other types of sex play because of the delicate area involved. I have a friend who very often watches gay porn in the presence of friends, so I've seen quite a bit of it. And in my experience, (and as Lucas mentions) the filmmakers make a point to show safe sex practices (i.e. condom and lubricant usage) more often than not. While there are many filmmakers in the straight porn industry that practice this as well, it tends to be a bit more downplayed and just there to set an example. In gay porn, it makes an important statement that casual sex happens, but safety is also priority.

However, right off the bat, Lucas says some things that make me a bit wary of his arguments. While yes, it is absolutely true that men in gay porn have a choice of roles (top or bottom) and that this can be seen as empowering, not all straight porn encourages the USE of women. While most of what we see features a fair amount of hair-pulling and head pushing, there are films in which the female is allowed to take a more dominant role. Straight porn is not always about serving the male.

Also, Lucas claims that most of the time, gay porn has to be mutually enjoyable, because the male performers would not be able to… perform (for lack of a better word) if they were not happy with the situation. However, this is totally subjective. Who says that women in straight porn aren't enjoying themselves? Just because a man can keep a hard-on when he's being spit on doesn't mean he's enjoying it, and just because a woman is being spit on doesn't mean she hates it. One could make the same argument that a porn star's nipples wouldn't be erect if she didn't enjoy being noosed by a choke collar. Come on.

On a different topic, while it is sending a message to the American public about what a gay character generally is, Jack MacFarland is also one character on a sitcom that features more than one gay character. Women are endlessly portrayed as flighty shopaholics who care more about their haircut than politics, but we're not permitted to complain, it would be seen as oversensitive. Same argument: this is one case, one character. I don't think many people would find Will (a character on the same show) to be an objectionable portrayal of a gay male: he is head of a law firm, has a healthy social circle, makes a good living, and has similar problems to most middle aged single people, gay or not. The show is not trying to be insensitive: the subject of one of the caricatures just happens to be a homosexual. I do not see this as irresponsible. As far as Brokeback Mountain is concerned, the entire premise of the movie was the characters' love for one another and the obstacle of their sexuality that got in the way. And as sad as that is, it's life right now. That's what's happening, and the movie reached a lot of people in the form of an awareness tool. To have painted a picture of two homosexual cowboys skipping down Main Street hand in hand and fellow townies throwing flowers would have been awesome, but historically inaccurate. It was that way for a reason. We can only change it if we know about it. I think the industry took a HUGE step in the right direction by casting very famous actors in such a controversial movie, and the American public was accepting of it and learned something. Progress is a slow thing when we don't try and force things down people's throats, and this was gradual and brilliant.

As far as Lucas not being included in the gay and lesbian press publications: guess what. Just because people are homosexual does not mean they necessarily embrace pornography. Porn of all types is still slightly taboo, and just because someone is liberal enough to accept what is still considered an 'alternate lifestyle' doesn't necessarily mean they're chomping at the bit to embrace everything else on the liberal ticket. this 'nervousness' that Lucas refers to is present everywhere, porn is still seen as being somewhat deviant by many people in this country, gay or straight. This is also slowly changing, but again: too quick, and people will be much less forgiving.

It seems to me that Lucas is trying really hard to justify his work in an industry that is not widely accepted yet. Which is fine, and I commend his work on this important frontier. However, I also think he's asking for too much too fast, and is bitching far too much. It's important to understand that we're dealing with the RED MACHINE here (at least until 2008), and we need to watch our steps. Also, I think he's portraying the gay porn industry as this idyllic atmosphere where everyone is happy and free and orgasming everywhere. Unfortunately, it is not really like that in gay or straight porn. While his company may be doing their level best to do everything right, so are a lot of other people. Everything that he said is not so much a gay issue as a porn issue in general, and maybe we should focus on the larger scope of porn acceptance before we start bitching about how certain segments of the industry are failing.

I'm not implying that Lucas has any devious ideas here, that he's trying to get away with something. I just would like to remind everyone that it isn't so simple. So I guess my questions are tied up in there. I'd be curious as to why he thinks that females in porn are any more demeaned than men in gay porn, as well as why he thinks the gay community should be rushing to enbrace his work just because some people think it's empowering.

However, I started feeling a little off about the process right from the beginning. The third Senator to speak was one from Arkansas, Senator Blanche Lincoln. I had already started rolling my eyes from the second she started to speak, and words the likes of 'rube', 'shitkicker', et al. flew through my head. But trying not to be judgmental, I continued to listen as she discussed what she thought was the root of our problem with porn. However, very soon she hit the CNN audience with a line ending with: "…to make America's families safe again." Immediately, I made a face. Instinctively, I don't like the sound of that. So I paused the video to gather some thoughts.

Firstly, I am curious what convinced the Senator that our families were safe to begin with. Even before the internet, there were children being beaten by alcoholic parents and being kidnapped from drugstores. Even more in the same vein as child predation in chatrooms, kids have been preyed upon as long as there's been an America. My mother and aunt, who grew up in a very wealthy suburb in Westchester County, were almost attacked once by a hobo in a creek behind their property. That was in the 1950s.

Secondly, I'm not sure that families are especially unsafe now. In reference to internet pornography, a lot of what we've discussed in this class makes it so that I don't believe a child stumbling upon web porn is going to particularly damage him, other than to not especially explain safe sex practices. As it pertains to meeting sexual predators online, things have clearly become less safe. But any parent should know better than to let their kids paruse the web at will before they're old enough to understand the consequences.

There is such a huge component here of parental responsibility that all of the speakers touched on… just before they plunged into their strategies to fix this on a national level, questioning the functionality of Adware and spam (all the while stumbling over terminology and basically making themselves look like the crop of old fogies they are… another part of one of the platforms was a large amount of funding going to support AVS endeavors, which anyone who has done even bare-bones research knows is an idea with JUST A FEW holes in it). It was even suggested (by the Arkansas Senator, again), that all pornography purchases be hit with a larger tax in order to fund these government endeavors that aren't working. I might be coming into this with a skewed perspective because I think a) porn is good if used responsibly and b) that being an American is all about passing the buck and washing our hands, but I feel like a lot of this legislaton has a lot to do with furthering political careers and making mountains out of molehills than taking any real steps towards pregress.

Community standards as it applies to pornography are very simple… or so it would seem. People can only be prosecuted as dictated by community standards as it pertains to obscenity, which simply means that if your local lawmakers have made it so that you are not permitted to view/ purchase/ download a certain sort of material and you do, it is only then that you will be held responsible. The goal of this individual governing is meant so that individual areas of the country that tend to lean more conservative or liberal can have laws regarding obscenity that are a little better suited for the population of that particular place. This, as opposed to huge umbrella laws that impact the entire country, is supposed to make sure everyone is comfortable.

Well, as most things in American politics, it doesn't work particularly well. No matter what, this solution will not work in the long run. In every community, there will be a diverse population where at least someone will be breaking laws on a daily basis. Sometimes people wind up in places they would otherwise have no desire to live in, except they are offered a job there, or it's where they can afford to buy a home. And they might come to realize that not only are they stuck in the moral majority, but they are committing felonies daily by indulging in some softcore satellite tv after work.

However, it's nearly impossible to break down the country into communities small enough so that the population of each group will be homogenous. It would get widly excessive, to the point that 4 houses on a street would be representative of community A with laws that allow horses, 3 in community B that insist there be no horses, and 5 down the cul-de-sac that will only tolerate it if the horse is blindfolded and duly compensated. The court systems would be completely out of hand, and we would be left with a wholly unwieldy and inconsistant legal system.

So clearly, we need to have one or the other: everything goes, or noting goes. Right? Not necessarily. As far as I, or the general population is concerned, there are some things that are undeniably obscene, and it can be defined simply as 'things which our legal code already prohibits'. Plain and simple. Rent a movie of a man banging a dead cat= not legal, animal abuse. Buy a magazine where an underaged girl is posing nude= not legal, abuse of a minor. And I don't necessarily agree or disagree with any of this, but the fact is, that is what we have already agreed to by being a US citizen. It's not as though any of this is being sprung on us: no one is shocked when a US Marshall appears at the door and is curious about the rumor that you're paying to watch a rape on slow motion. As far as anything outside of this, I am a huge advocate of 'don't like, don't look'. If you're conservative, don't buy porn. If you have easily-influenced kids, watch them. Take some responsibility for your own corneas.

We need to acknowledge that all of this micromanagement is not going to get us anywhere but a more crowded courthouse and more undercover ops being implemented, which are a great deal less safe for the performers/ purchasers/ producers. It may not be what we like, but we have to start being smart about this. Compromise is the only way we have a biting chance at freedom of speech while still keeping the innocents safe and sound.

The idea that circumcision in America is directly derived from the ideas of a doctor who had the elimination of masturbation in mind was something new to me. I had always imagined it was strictly for health purposes, as we have all been taught about the nastiness that can occur when a foreskin stays intact. I also kind of assumed it was cultural, as a lot of what we hear socially about circumcision has to do with the Judiac faith. And even as a college student who has seen a handful of naked guys (goy and non goy alike), I had no idea what an uncircumcized penis looked like until several months ago and an unfortunate Google search. I always had assumed that we did this for a good reason.

But the lecture has proven otherwise and surprised me, as it so often does. The fact that this country has such a history of sexual frigidness was always clear, but I wasn’t particularly expecting the civil rights of citizens to have come into play as it pertains to their own bodies (I mean, until the whole abortion thing threw the definition of every word into upheaval). There is actually a lot to the point that leaving the penis whole doesn’t make much difference to the overall health, and more and more parents are encouraged to refrain.

We can probably all generally agree that were it not to be looked at in a cultural context, female genital mutilation is wrong, as having a clitoris and nerve-y sex organs does not pose an immediate health risk. So that’s that, basically.

However, I am of the impression that female genital mutilation is still something we refuse (generally) to partake in in the US, because we claim it is cruel and unusual to take a body part away without consent. Many people make the argument that we are participating in a huge-scale double standard, that if it’s ok to circumsize the boys, we’re a big bunch of hypocrites. But perhaps we just need to adjust some attitudes. Personally, I think the fact that the process originated because of the supposed claim to end masturbation is absurd. I’d pay good money to see that research. If circumcision is a deterent to male masturbation, there are a lot of boys out there who are really just ‘watching a cartoon, Mom!’ every weeknight. Circumcision is unnecessary as it pertains to masturbation, it doesn’t change a thing. But we now have stumbled upon the research (or so says Cosmo aka Satan) that masturbation is healthy. It lets us get more in touch (heh) with what we particularly enjoy sexually, and can keep our partners more informed on how to provide us better service. (I imagine this is mostly for females, as figuring out the male orgasm generally ranks a 2.5 on the difficulty scale). But if there really is something to the idea that circumcision prevents STDs, we have a few options.

Uno: Wear a condom. OK bye.

Dos: Wait until the man is of voting age/ able to be drafted (depending on how many times we’ve been nuked by the time Congress starts reading my suggestions) to let him decide whether or not he’d like to be circumsized. My thoughts are these: they might be so disturbed by what it looks like with its hood intact (as are most ladies, hi) that they’ll jump at the chance to be rid of it (provided, of course, they be ritualistically knocked out and put on high doses of Percoset for the ensuing decade). Or, they’ll just abstain and will probably be fine anyway. If everyone wore condoms, as a matter of fact, we’d be better off all around. And pardon the limb-walking here, but I imagine guys would be much more inclined to wrap it up if we told them 1/20th of their penis would be cut off if they refused. Talk about population control.

While it's a bit deceptive how they go about getting site visitors, I think it's a great resource out there for people who might need to use it. I think, Christian or not, a big part of any addiction is the guilt factor. And while I personally don't think laying back and watching some naked frolicking is anything to go to confession about, it's cool that people who do feel remorse have the option to go somewhere for (kind of pressuring) 'relief'.

I also think it's really comforting that they're showing a viewpoint of acceptance, which is a lot different from how Christian organizations normally approach sexuality. The whole "Jesus Loves Porn Stars" campaign is a great way to not only get attention, but also to make the idea more accessible to the masses. God has a great marketing team in xxxchurch. com.

However, I think being too pushy about it could cause trouble. Trying to reach out too far, too soon, could (and most assuredly, would) be a setback for their entire cause, as well as to the idea that Christians can be compassionate and reasonable. As long as they stay in their little corner of the web, everything should work out just fine.

When the lecture started steering towards the studies performed in order to give a better understanding of porn's impact on the population's behavior, I was shocked at what they uncovered. While some of the studies were, as Professor Halavais said, very overcomplicated, the processes and results were generally the same. A man would have a woman behave a certain way towards him,  (nicely or rudely), and then he would be asked to watch some kind of film, anything from regular 'non-coercive' pornography to non-sexual slasher films involving female death, all the way to violent pornography. And while the findings were presented in a way I found to be a bit tangled, from what I could gather, the pornography had minimal to no effect. What did have an effect: the poor treatment by the female, and the permission to behave badly (in the case of the electric shock distribution).

There is a lot we can take from this. Scientifically, we do not need to be as concerned about the effects of pornography as we have been. That's the idea, anyway. There is all kinds of evidence that it isn't porn that is causing people to rape women or participate in deviant sexual behaviors: Japan and Denmark are cited as examples of societies that are wholly rife with pornography, the graphic-ness of which we are miles behind, who have much lower sex crime statistics than we do in America. And the reasoning we're given is that violent porn may very well be cathartic: if people have the freedom to watch violence at their leisure, it will allow them to relieve stress in a 'healthy' way (meaning, not running down the street and molesting numerous women out of stress and frustration).

Well… I'm a Psychology student. We're supposed to buy into the scientific method, and take note of the results of properly-administered self-measure reports, read data as though it's the Old Testament, and generally believe the researchers when they say everything checks out. However, being a Psych student, I also know a lot about confounds. Simply speaking, a confound is something that messes up your experiment. One of the most crucial is the confound of external validity, which means that the experiment should be something that can be seen as realistic as it applies to society in general. And I can almost guarantee these studies were lacking in external validity for several reasons, the most important of which goes along the lines of the Hawthorne Effect. The Hawthorne Effect basically says that when people know they are being watched, they will very often perform better than if they were not suspecting the impending evaluation of their actions.

Anyone who has ever participated in one of the studies in one of the research labs at UB has had this internal conflict: the survey you're filling out asks a question that, if you answered it honestly, would make it look like there's something wrong with you (you have an eating disorder, you have a drug problem/ an alcohol dependance issue/ low self-esteem). You are naturally hesitant to respond naturally. If you really care about the integrity of the experiment, you will be honest and try to pretend there is no implication made by the nature of your answer. However, not everyone is so honest, nor do they care about screwing up someone's data. So in the interest of not looking like an alkie, you mark d) instead of a). I would be shocked if the same conflict did not appear in these studies. What man would not feel like a monster if he reported feeling that a sudden surge in aggression against a female would make it seem more reasonable than usual to raise a hand to her?

I feel like there are too many confounds in these studies to provide an accurate measure of how porn is affecting us. Look at video games and tv shows. They have been PROVEN to increase violence, especially among children. Children are impressionable, and can not always distinguish between reality and fantasy. So fine, kids shouldn't be watching porn. But to be fair, there are a lot of legal-aged people who are out of touch with society and are dependant on porn (they don't have a significant other, are lonely/depressed, etc), who can easily forget that what they are watching is not reality. They are probably the same people who would have enough screws lose to commit a sexual assault. Hence, the same correlation should be present between porn and violence on tv. I think the main problem is that while we could all actually live without violent tv (even though it would suck… a lot), porn is something we have come to depend on as a society. It is a biological urge, and it gives us the freedom and power to be satiated whenever we want satisfaction. To lose it, for a society that prides itself on consumption, demand, and power, would be crippling. So as long as we really really want to believe porn isn't hurting us, we can consume it at will, unchecked. It's just a shame women will continue to be the sacrificial lamb so America can keep feeding it's urge.

When I think about how I dressed when I was in 5th grade, I shudder. There was a lot of spandex and that’s all I’m saying. But when I look at my friends’ siblings who are still in middle school wearing things that would make some boys on UB’s campus blush… it is clear that something is very wrong with the picture. Clothing styles that encourage teenagers to grow up too quickly, movies that congratulate the reckless wielding of a firearm… even if this is not specifically meant for our youngest generation to absorb, they are the most influenced audience by miles. And they are becoming the most damaged.

When we think of this as it relates to pornography, we see a far more dangerous kind of modeling. While the porn industry (for the most part) is very responsible about keeping its stars and starlets safe under the spotlight, it is done with slight of hand, and is never made obvious to the audience. For the general population watching porn, seeing the condom in a sceneshot or two is reminder enough that it’s there, and whether they choose to ignore it or not is a different story. But a huge percentage of children are exposed to pornography just slightly before they themselves become sexually active, and those kids don’t attribute the shiny ring on the shaft with a contraceptive. Nor do many know what a condom is, or how to utilize one, or how to utilize one properly. There are also a lot of practices in pornography that could give young teenagers the wrong idea, and even influences watchers in their late teens and early twenties. In most pornography, women are insatiable and down for anything when it comes to sex, and many men then expect the same gritty willingness from their real-life partners. This can damage relationships and cause women to feel demeaned, and also puts a lot of pressure on males to perform better based on the standards set by pornography, which is ultimately, the fantasy sex scenario.
While pornography can be helpful as it pertains to getting a few tips here and there, those tips will only do any good if you already know what you’re dealing with before you get there. If you’ve never been in close proximity to the naked anatomy before and you follow Jenna’s bedroom-eyed example, you might end up getting some nasty illnesses, a bad taste in your mouth, or some broken bones. It pays to do some hands-on research first, and seeing as we’re in college, it shouldn’t be too hard to find.

But apparently there is a dark, seedy underbelly to daily porn consumption that we often neglect to notice. Because of the very characteristics that make it appaealing to the large percentage of us that use porn responsibly, there is a decent chance the tables will be turned, and as Porn Nation so cleverly phrased it, porn will use us. The fact that it can be free is very much tied in with the idea of internet porn being anonymous: there will never be any evidence of a problem as there would be with another addiction (alcohol, drugs, gambling, shopping), because no money is being squandered, there is no record of activity aside from what could look like a very normal AOL account bill. Also, there is incessant access to the addiction fodder: most Americans have access to a computer in their homes, and many have at least some rudimentary form of internet available to them somewhere. So, again with the anonyminity: whereas gambling generally occurs in a casino, and someone doing lines off the copy machine might raise some eyebrows, patrons can view pornography on their personal computers at work with no one the wiser. It’s an addiction that’s easy to get away with, and human beings have a sex drive that steers most of our daily thoughts. The two in combination make for a very dangerous reaction when you incorporate the factor of self-control.

And this is where I find a very big argument. I don’t think there is anything wrong with viewing pornography casually, and I’m not convinced that damage could be done by viewing it daily or with higher regularity. In my experience, people (especially college kids) think about sex 98% of the time, and the other 2% are a good fight between food and sleep. So when they are using a medium like pornography, it speeds up the process and allows the person to be a part of fucntioning society again sooner. Obviously, I mean this facetiously, but in all seriousness- generally people have some iota of self-control and know when whipping it out would be improper and impolite. Porn isn’t the issue here: if someone’s sex drive were that insatiable, they would not require constant porn, just a lot of tissues. Saying one is a porn addict is a copout, I think. Sex fiend would be more like it, someone with a sexual form of binge eating disorder, requiring psychological counseling. I feel very much that to say one is a porn addict is very much like crying SEX ADDICT (i.e. Bill Clinton, Maury show guests, etc), and is not as much an illness most of the time as it is a justification for what is considered to be ‘bad’ (while still natural) human behavior.

Reminds me a great deal of that delightful man who hosted Porn Nation. He blamed the breakup of his marriage and the dissolving of his family on his porn addiction. While he did not go into much further detail, he admitted that the final straw was when he cheated continuously on his wife with a patron of his company. Just to try and re-corral the few skeptics, he correlated this to the porn addiction by suggesting the woman with whom he was cheating was exactly the type of woman he was forced into being attracted to via pornography, and the addiction overcame him.

Pardon the cynicism, but I find it very difficult to believe that what was habitually a single-handed activity would transition to an affair with a real human so easily and without many glitches. I get the impression that in order to be a porn addict, porn… must be present, at least. And I would imagine it would imply some form of sexual dysfunction that occured when away from the computer screen. But apparently this guy had no trouble, he mentioned that the affair lasted for a great deal of time. So yes. An addiction where the illness is consistant even when the stimulant is not. Sure. I’m a Psychology student, you can’t fool me. I very much believe that while there may be something to the ‘addiction to pornography’ idea, it is much more an issue of self-indulgence, self-esteem, and gluttony. I don’t mean to sound insensitive, but without a physical dependance for the medium itself, and not just sex, there cannot be an illness named. So Bill, you’re out of luck- Hillary may have bought it, but Maddi don’t play that.