Debating Porn in NYC, Monday, November 21

The Donald & Paula Smith Family Foundation

present a debate

Porn in the Age of Instant Access:
What are the social effects of fast, cheap & stigma-free viewing?

Featuring Nick Gillespie, Editor, Reason Magazine; Rachel Kramer Bussel, Columnist, Village Voice & Penthouse; Pamela Paul, author, Pornified & The Starter Marriage; and Ben Shapiro, author, Porn Generation Robert W. Peters, president of Morality in the Media.

Moderator: Brooke Gladstone, NPR's On The Media

The Internet and digital cable have allowed the purchasing and viewing of pornography to become easier than ever. While porn consumers can now easily keep their interests private, the porn producers has become more public and corporate. The U.S. porn industry now generates $12 billion annually: more than the combined revenues of the major television networks. What are the culture effects of this mainstreaming? Can and should there be a political response to these trends?

Monday, November 21st 2005
6:30 P.M. Prompt
(Free and open to the public - Reception to follow)

The Graduate Center
The City University of New York
365 Fifth Avenue, New York
(Corner of 34th Street & 5th Avenue)

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Update: Ben S is sick, so Robert Peters, head of Morality in Media, will be taking his place.

Comments

[wellfellow]

I'll bet the societal effect is mostly negative, however, I don't think there should be a political response. Let the flaming begin.

[HEATHEN]

Fuck the goddamn troops:

(1) Most of them are conservative Christians who voted for Bush.

(2) They're not fighting for FREEDOM, they're fighting for benefits, retirement, and other selfish reasons.

[HEATHEN]

Fuck the goddamn troops:

(1) Most of them are conservative Christians who voted for Bush.

(2) They're not fighting for FREEDOM, they're fighting for benefits, retirement, and other selfish reasons.

[HEATHEN]

Fuck the goddamn troops:

(1) Most of them are conservative Christians who voted for Bush.

(2) They're not fighting for FREEDOM, they're fighting for benefits, retirement, and other selfish reasons.

[Pete Guither]

I'll take an opposite approach to wellfellow and bet that the societal effects of fast, cheap & stigma-free porn are mostly positive.

• Reduction of violent sexual crime. IMHO, most violent sexual predators were raised in a climate of bottled up sexual repression that releases in violent acts (a similar situation is the danger inherent in the impossible contradiction between strong natural urges and extreme religious beliefs claiming those to be sinful). Fasst, cheap and stigma free porn gives safe, easy opportunity for release.
• Reduction of harmful sexual stereotypes. Sure, porn is full of stereotypes, but it also has so much variety that people get exposed to a wide variety of notions, perhaps increasing tolerance.
• You generally don't get std's or unwanted pregnancies from viewing porn.
• Face it. There are some people who are so ugly or socially inept that they're going to go through life without experiencing much of the glories of sex. To take porn away from them would be cruel and unusual punishment.
• If porn was supplied free or cheap to politicians (see #4), they could spend their time masturbating instead of screwing us.

[jf]

Pete:

I've tried arguing point #1 with my girlfriend. She believes that the trend of prohibiting sex offenders from looking at anything remotely pornographic is a good thing. Slowly, though, she's come (heh, I said come) around to accepting that allowing porn as a surrogate for acting on these people's sexual impulses might actually work.

[Jennifer]

I imagine people one hundred years ago having the same earnest debate, about the social effects of a world where you regularly see women's knees in public. Standards change--it's nothing to fear.

[Jeff P.]

More money than the networks. Huh.
Imagine if porn had a sweeps period, like TV.
1: Promo lines like "See the double penetration that changes everything!"
2: Celebrity guest stars.
3: Cliffhanger endings. The guy's about to climax and the words "to be continued" appear.

[Brian Courts]

Pete,

I think you're right about point number one. It's been remarked on before but it bears repeating that the claim that pornography leads to violence has been convincingly refuted by the easy access of internet porn. All through the 90's as the internet grew and led to what can only be called an explosion of pornography viewing (nobody can really debate the point that far more people look at far more porn now that it's easy, cheap and private, than was the case at any previous time) violent crime was consistently falling. The violent crime rate is now well below what it was in the 70's and 80's. It seems very difficult to reconcile the claim of a connection between porn and violence with those facts.

[Maurice Girodias]

For the 100 years ago argument. Back then, yes, ze publication of an DB (Romance of Lust, say, or The Suburban Souls, nots to mention Teleny) in Paris, as the folk of Charles Carrington and Brancarte did. It was enough, yes, to earn you a sentence of death in absentia across the Channel. Men of the bookish sort drank poison rather than deal with the authorities in so strong a state as the UK.

Of course, some of ze readers, they do say that makes for a better book, as the author will be ever so much more descriptive when it comes to the writing of the spanking of ze bum.

We are just saying. Charles Carrington was no Marcus van Heller, after all.

[Johnny Clarke]

I love the dichotomy of porn...on one side you have politicians and all the "good people" of the world saying it's bad, bad, bad, and on the other side you have the fact that *SOMEBODY* is buying huge quantities of it. It's like they believe there's one really rich pervert out there buying it all.

I think Americans have voted with their checkbooks and porn won, erh, hands down.

[kmw]

I guess it's fun to have symposiums such as these to have a good old fashion navel-gaze. But I'm not sure what to make of the statement "Can and should there be a political response to these trends? If the question is, should it be outlawed, the obvious answer is, good luck trying.

It surprises me that the US porn industry is making so much money, when there's tons of free foreign stuff available. A lot of it is better quality IMO, because it's more natural. But whatever.

At any rate, whatever the effects, porn is here to stay. Even if the US bans all porn production, there are just so many other countries with lenient sex laws, it'll all be moot.

I hope that the do-gooders realize there's nothing that they can do about demand, and in a world-wide market, supply won't be a problem either.

[Matt]

Too bad Ben Shapiro is sick. I'd go just to throw shit at him.

[Johnny Clarke]

kmw-Good point. With the internet explosion porn became free, so why have sales been going through the roof? It is...a puzzlement. Possibly the recording industry should examine this phenomenon more closely.

[Brian Courts]

Apparently, after having the whole porn causes violence claim resoundingly refuted, the anti-porn crusaders have stumbled onto an even more shocking finding in need of immediate federal action: porn causes masturbation!

Seriously, you can't make this stuff up; Brownback and his cast of wingnuts have descended into self-parody. Be sure to check out the whole piece at The Agitator, but this bit is too good not to quote.

"This is not just a simple, benign form of expression, but rather a potentially addictive substance," explained one of the subcommittee's panelists, Jill Manning, a sociologist from Brigham Young University. "People watch a movie, read a book, listen to music, but they masturbate to pornography. In that difference, you have a different stimulation to the brain."

(emphasis mine)
No wonder she has a PhD, it must take years of specialized training to get such subtle insights into human behavior.

She went on to explain that the experience of masturbation activates about 14 neurotransmitters and hormones, causing a quick chain reaction of brain activity. "There have been some experts who have even argued that, in and of itself, overrides informed consent when encountering this material," she said, apparently suggesting that an adult's own sexual self-stimulation can lead to a loss of judgment.

It's hard to know which way Congress should go with this information - should it be a crime to force yourself to look at porn against your will, or should they just ban self-pollution all together? Because, after all, if informed consent is indeed overridden in such a flood of manually-induced neurotransmitters, how do we know that people aren't forcing themselves to masturbate against their will?

[Jennifer]

Because, after all, if informed consent is indeed overridden in such a flood of manually-induced neurotransmitters, how do we know that people aren't forcing themselves to masturbate against their will?

I'm more concerned about how we can punish the criminals without further victimizing the victims of such sex crimes.

[kmw]

"Sen. Orrin Hatch attended a portion of the hearing to voice his support for a clampdown on pornography. He compared explicit sexual material to high-fat food and secondhand smoke, saying this was a "problem of harm, not an issue of taste."

The difference between porn, and cigs/fastfood/pot/coke/etc is that you have a physical commodity with the latter.

In the meantime, however, the Justice Department continues to win obscenity convictions. Just a few weeks ago, Edward Wedelstedt, the millionaire owner of a chain of adult video stores, pled guilty to distributing a video later deemed obscene in Texas, "Tits & Ass #8."

Do these people just not understand the situation? Even if they pick off the business owners, they're trying to catch a tsunami with a thimble. Texas must feel so proud.

[Brian Courts]

I'm more concerned about how we can punish the criminals without further victimizing the victims of such sex crimes.

Heh. Good question - I wonder if the victim will be forced to testify against the victimizer and, if so, would that raise fifth amendment issues?

...pled guilty to distributing a video later deemed obscene in Texas, "Tits & Ass #8."

Unbelievable... I mean, come on, everyone knows Tits & Ass #8 wasn't half as obscene as the first three. That series really went downhill starting with #5...

[Johnny Clarke]

With the way this country's going right now, busting someone for obscenity is like handing out speeding tickets at the Indianapolis 500...

Besides, I've lived in Texas, and they've got way more problems than folks watching "Tits and Ass #8".

[mediageek]

You know, you would think that for all the hand-wringing about porno shops in the local neighborhood or *gasp* within ten miles of the local grade school, that these people would embrace the ability to download more porn than you can...er...shake a stick at, without ever having to leave warm, pretty glow of the computer screen.

This makes the Parents' Television Council look downright rational by comparison. At least they're getting upset over stuff broadcast publicly to everyone. But how you can force your way into someone's house, and get offended at what they're viewing on a computer monitor behind closed doors at 2am is just beyond me.

[mediageek]

"Heh. Good question - I wonder if the victim will be forced to testify against the victimizer and, if so, would that raise fifth amendment issues?"

Anyone else remember the sketch from "The Kids in the Hall" where the office manager takes the witness stand in a lawsuit where he's suing himself for sexual harassment?

[Jim Walsh]

What's really scary about the Brownback story is that BYU has a sociology department...

[Jon H]

"Imagine if porn had a sweeps period, like TV.
1: Promo lines like "See the double penetration that changes everything!""

Or like comics hype:

"See the double penetration that will split the internet in half!

[dead_elvis]

What's really scary about the Brownback story is that BYU has a sociology department...

How else are they going to figure out the effects of various social policies on your people when you get your own planet? Duh.

[peachy]

It is my firm (hehe) belief that most of the anti-porn crusaders are one good whack away from changing their minds. All Brownback needs is a couple of hours with a 20" flatscreen and DSL...

(And yes, the irony of the crusader-in-chief sporting a name that ought to grace a gay porn star is overwhelming. No wonder he has issues.)

[clarityiniowa]

Personally, I think online porn has done more to end age and gender bias than any other societal force. Hottest trends in porn today include larger women, older women and MILFS.

Old, chubby and baby-spread is the new young, thin and tight! Isn't that what the feminists wanted in the first place?

[Stevo Darkly]

Imagine if porn had a sweeps period, like TV.

"Tonight, on a very special episode of Gonzo Plumpers..."