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PaperclipPerfector  1yr ago (text post)   29475 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of March 11, 2024

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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:

This cohort started in 2008 with 8,500 children aged 9 years. Information was collected from parents, teachers, Principals and the children themselves. Additional perspectives were collected by post from non-resident parents and regular carers of the Study Child. This cohort was revisited at age 13 years, 17/18 years and at age 20. Fieldwork for Cohort ’98 at 25 is currently underway.

Growing Up in Ireland is the national longitudinal study of children and young people, a joint project of the Department of Children, Equality, Disability, Integration and Youth (DCEDIY) and the Central Statistics Office (CSO). Since 2006, the study has provided Government with an evidence base to make informed policy decisions on a wide range of issues based on data from children and young people living in Ireland.

For over 15 years, the study has followed the progress of two groups of children: 8,000 9-year-olds (Cohort ’98) and 10,000 9-month-olds (Cohort ’08). The members of Cohort ’98 are now 25-26 years old and those of Cohort ’08 are around 16 years old. In 2023, the study launched a new third cohort of babies who will be 9 months old in 2024.

Now! The juicy summation of findings, which is where the hair-pulling starts!

(O)nline pornography use in Ireland is highly gendered, with 64 per cent of young men and 13 per cent of young women reporting use.

Key findings:

  • Different factors are linked to pornography use for men and women.
  • Men from more advantaged backgrounds are more likely to use pornography. In contrast, there is little systematic variation by social background for women.
  • Men from lone-parent families are less likely than those from two-parent families to use pornography, while rates of use are higher for women from lone-parent families.
  • Pornography use is lower among those with a religious affiliation and where there is greater parental monitoring of behaviour in adolescence.
  • There is no strong relationship evident between the provision of Relationship and Sexuality Education (RSE) at school and pornography use. However, this finding is limited by the fact that the GUI study did not collect data on the quality or extent of RSE received by young people.
  • Young people who are more reliant on the Internet or (in the case of men in particular) their friends rather than their parents for information about sex are significantly more likely to use pornography. LGBTQ+ individuals, particularly women in this group, are more likely to use pornography. This may reflect information-seeking among this group or their lack of contact with other LGBTQ+ youth.

The study also looked at the relationship between pornography use and two sets of outcomes: sexual behaviour and wellbeing.

  • In general, users and non-users of pornography do not differ in their use of contraception, but users of pornography are significantly less likely to use condoms regularly.
  • Men who use pornography have poorer wellbeing than non-users, being less satisfied with their lives, reporting more depressive symptoms and having a poorer self-image. This pattern is evident even taking account of levels of wellbeing at 17 years of age.
  • Among both women and men, those who use pornography have higher levels of aggression and are more likely to cope with stress by using negative strategies, such as drinking alcohol or drug-taking, or taking to their bed.

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.

Dude, Pornhub is not out there trying to enhance the spiritual achievement of the race, it's trying to make money out of people who want to watch naked bodies going at it in their favourite fetish. I don't see that a fetish about eating shit is going to move the spiritual needle upwards, even making all the allowances for the left hand path and the aghori.

Broke: Some of the most important and advanced works of recent decades were produced on obscure Japanese doujin sites and fanfiction platforms.

Woke: Pornhub is not out there trying to enhance the spiritual achievement of the race, it's trying to make money out of people who want to watch naked bodies going at it in their favourite fetish.

Bespoke: Pornhub is not trying to make money, it's actively trying to drag down and destroy the spiritual achievement of the race.

That's actually a valid question. Does Pornhub make money? I... assume it does, but I don't see how. I know most of their content is stolen or free, but hosting videos at scale is expensive. I can't see most of their users paying for premium, or advertisers paying much for ads there. And these days Onlyfans dominates the market of people paying for adult videos. What the hell is Pornhub doing?

In fairness, ever since the big controversy with GirlsDoPorn and the temporary financial deplatforming they went through, they got rid of uploads from "unverified" users and have pivoted to adding OnlyFans/ManyVids-type features. Also, I think you underestimate the ad revenue.

They probably do make money. I'd be interested to see some actual numbers though, even a rough estimate.

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