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Roll up, roll up to yet another round in the "Pornography: Harmless Enjoyment That Prevents Rape, or Degradation of Women And Should Be Banned" boxing match!
This time, news from Ireland. A study by the Economic and Social Research Institute, ‘Use of Pornography by Young Adults in Ireland’, was published today. It's generally on the negative side. I was surprised by this plum which I plucked out - men from advantaged, as opposed to disadvantaged, backgrounds use porn more.
Before anyone goes "Ah yeah, well this is what you'd expect the ESRI in Ireland to say", they're not religious, they're no more right-wing than any semi-government body, the Church has nothing to do with them, and remember we're up to our necks in Pride parades and trans non-binary gender rights (as Leo tried and failed to get with the recent referenda. Speaking of which, I'll be coming back to those elsewhere) with social liberalisation now, so it's not "little Catholic Ireland finger-wags at porn, the backwards repressed bunch".
This is the age cohort they studied, the ESRI says the study is about "pornography use among over 4,500 young adults at 20 years of age" which is when the last reporting was done:
Now! The juicy summation of findings, which is where the hair-pulling starts!
I'm leaving this here for discussion, I'm not going to express an opinion one way or the other.
It is plain to me that "pornography" - in the broadest sense of the term, any material that contains the explicit depiction of sexual activities or sexualized nudity, fictional or not, regardless of context or intended purpose - represents the most urgently necessary direction of development for art in general, the most fertile soil for aesthetic discoveries and innovations, and indeed the greatest possibility of an experience that might be called "spiritual".
Plainly there has never been an epoch of human history where sexuality was not of central importance. And consider the explicitly acknowledged centrality of sexuality in contemporary political discourse - not only the status of men and women in general, but also transsexuality and homosexuality, consent, the depiction of women's bodies. An art that does not fully develop its capacities in this domain is a dead art, an art that has abdicated its duty.
Some of the most important and advanced works of recent decades were not produced by the organs of the academy and traditional "literary circles", but are instead being circulated on obscure Japanese doujin sites and fanfiction platforms.
Anyone who flatly announces themselves as "anti-pornography", without first demonstrating that they have clearly perceived the aesthetic necessity for art to become more "pornographic", instantly arouses great mistrust in me. It is evidence that their senses have been dulled regarding certain vital matters.
I think this really quickly devolves into a semantic argument on the definition of pornography. So, let's avoid that and take it to the level of use or consumption.
If, like you, people are reading obscure Japanese doujin sites to try to explore the new depths / heights of frontier fiction, that's all well and good. I definitely don't subscribe to the idea that "Art" is only what The New Yorker deems worthy.
But hyperscale internet porn is not being used as an exploratory medium. It's an utterly cheap consumptive good that users mainline to meet base biological urges. The best comparison is absolutely processed sugar. It's such an overwhelming stimulant to the "yes, good, more!" part of the brain that it creates an almost addict like behavior pattern. When you're hyper-circuiting your brain by overcharging your endocrine system, there are no cycles left to devote to metaphysical pondering of the high concepts of art. My 3 hour jerk-fest to Backdoor Sluts 9 does not conclude with a new appreciation for the masculine-feminine dynamic.
So, this leaves us with the question of is it possible to separate and independently evaluate the medium from its most common consumption pattern? Can we look at "tasteful" amateur porn and draw some interesting conclusions about art and sexual behavior while casting away the comments section with such profound gems as "tits are meh. good bj"
I'd argue no - because the feedback loop in internet porn is inherently based on the consumption patterns of the users. PornHub makes money through data mining and algorithm building. Content creators there surf trends just as much as YouTube content creators. Indirectly, the consuming user today is the trend-setter for tomorrow. Operating at the speed and scale of the internet, this creates the insane feedback loops that lead to weird niches suddenly bubbling to the top. (faux-cest etc.)
So, is porn bad and are people who call themselves anti-porn worth taking seriously? Yes. Because they're not talking about the content in isolation, they're talking about the larger patterns, systems, and societal outcomes surrounding it. The Irish study presented above literally ends by saying "people who use porn a lot have bad lives. We don't like that they have bad lives." This is a far, far cry from the trope of a Nancy Reagan look alike waggling her finger at a few playboys found under a mattress. This is not a rejection of the primacy of human sexuality in culture. This is not puritanical rejection of the body. This is a principled stand against the degradation of beauty, intimacy, and pro-social functioning.
Well not with that attitude it won't.
Why not leave yourself open to the possibility that the phenomenon still has something in it that you haven't appreciated yet, instead of just writing it off?
To be clear I don't think there's anything particularly unique, special, or valuable about the average /r/gonewild post.
Partially my concern is simply due to the classic philosophical problem of drawing boundaries. How do you say where one color ends and another begins if there's a smooth transition between them, how do you draw precise boundaries two races or two languages? How do you come up with precise criteria that will let you say - yes, this audiovisual work contains explicit depictions of sex, but it's the bad kind, mass produced pablum, prone to inducing addiction and societal decay, with no redeeming aesthetic value; and this audiovisual work contains explicit depictions of sex, but it's the good kind, ennobling and uplifting, fully meritorious, saved from being consigned to the flames because we have bestowed upon it all the protections granted by the designation of Art?
I don't trust people who call themselves "anti-porn" to make the distinction. I don't think they particularly care about getting it right in the first place. There are many historical examples of the censors getting it wrong - see the controversy that surrounded something as anodyne as Manet's Le Déjeuner sur l'herbe and the painting's initial rejection from the Paris Salon. I don't even trust myself to be able to make the distinction. Although we must of necessity classify various works as superior and inferior, such judgements are always in the last instance provisional; it is impossible to guarantee that you have exhausted all the possibilities inherent in any given work, and all judgements may be overturned by new evidence or future developments and recontextualizations.
I would also say that I believe that a certain wellspring of unrestrained sexual energy is necessary to counterbalance the encroaching technocratic, hyper-rational global order (and there are no significant public champions of this approach today, in spite of what superficial appearances might lead you to believe about the left - they are deeply mistrustful of sexuality), although this is a speculative thesis that I would probably not be able to speak cogently on at this time.
You can't / it's really hard. But this is why my post began with the intent to avoid a semantic argument which eventually gets where it starts; nowhere.
In this context, I would say the line of demarcation is "was this content produced with the intent to serve a market demand of consumers using the previous demand signals of those very consumers to design it (the content)?" If yes, then Porn.
I put "art" as a meta-concept closely related to "truth." Anything that earnestly tries to reveal the truth of something could be called art (but could also be called something else - "analysis", "philosophy" what have you. I'm just saying "art" is one possible label). But something that is designed, constructed, and broadcast solely to cater to the consumerist preferences of a group of people fails this test. To give an example; I love sports and love the emblems of certain sports teams. I think the crossed "NY" of the Yankees is almost like the Coke logo in terms of human universal recognition. Yet, I wouldn't quite call it art. Another post in the thread discussed Warhol and Campbell's soup. Although I think it was self-indulgent and eye-rollingly "hip," I can at least contemplate the argument that it was an attempt to reveal some truth about mid 20th century consumerism.
Combined with the intro sentence of that same paragraph, it appears you are close to saying "I don't trust anyone to make a distinction besides those who call themselves pro-porn and art experts?" Perhaps that's not charitable, but that's how I'm reading it. Regardless, I've set forth to you my explicit criteria (above). Also saying something like "I don't trust myself on x, but I can also spot other folks who can't be trusted" seems to be a little bit of a double-reverse. I can't quite put a finger on it, but I think this is rhetorical sleight of hand.
Yes, the future may change how we look at the past and we cannot predict the future. I don't know what point this proves other than to retreat to a milquetoast "who's to say?" Nevertheless, I do actually think it is, has, and always will be easy to designate something as porn / filth (though I don't believe we should ban it). Take James Joyce's infamous letters to his wife (or maybe mistress, I can't remember). Even when you're one of the greatest writers in 100 years, when you talk about fucking the farts out of you "shitting like a pig" girlfriend, you're getting fuckin' gross, dude. Ditto for Lord Byron and his frat house "So, I was banging this one chick, right?" poems.
The technocrats pretend to believe in that so that they can trick normies into hypersexual practices that obliterate communities. This is exactly the objective and outcome of feminism - It says young women should "express themselves" and "have fun" .... so that they then end up bitter, unmarried, childless, and neurotic at 35. It ruins souls and beauty.
What's needed is a fundamental respect for the human body across all of its dimensions, including the sexual. That's the whole point. That's what everyone anti-porn is arguing. Pornography is not only demonstrably extrinsically bad because, as the Irish study says, it turns people generally and broadly unhappy, it is intrinsically bad because its production constitutes a fundamental disrespect for human beauty and authentic sexuality or what would may be called eros. This is a little too meta to be a serious demarcation criteria, but that's what I would submit for the porn/art distinct even outside of the modern internet hyperscale context.
It is bewildering to me that so much explicit sexual content in society is broadcast out to people of all ages, without their informed consent, and then mass reaction to it is sort of a squirm-and-look-away at best. This is bad for everyone involved and everyone watching.
Couldn't agree more.
I laughed.
Let me put it this way: I have no interest in classifying works as either "mass market products" or "genuine Art". This is of no use to me (and indeed it can be actively harmful).
His letters are obviously beautiful.
I hear this idea a lot that the globalists want to push porn because it destroys people, but as far as I can tell this is contradicted by most of the available evidence. Most major corporations and websites are not very friendly to porn at all:
I mean yeah porn isn't literally illegal and is always just one click away for anyone with internet access, but, the same can be said for a lot of politically incorrect stuff.
I would contend Steam, there are actually a number of games that are outright uncensored (with no need for a patch) and/or contain explicit content in their store page materials.
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