Robert Kaplan is a frequent contributor to The Atlantic and author of Mediterranean Winter: The Pleasures of History and Landscape in Tunisia, Sicily, Dalmatia, and Greece; Balkan Ghosts: A Journey Through History; and The Ends of the Earth: A Journey at the Dawn of the Twenty-first Century. In his latest Atlantic article, “A Historian For […]
Continue reading The Importance of People’s Perceptions, Myths and Irrationalities
When violent incidents like the Columbine shootings occur, some in the media rush to deny a link between media and violence. On the other hand, producers make millions from product placement in movies, on the premise that the mere appearance of a product in a movie will affect viewer behavior. ProtectKids.com elaborates (PDF)… Film critic […]
Continue reading Link of Media to Violence Accepted, But Porn Has No Effect?
One way to get a sense of the impact of porn in today’s America is to review the historical experience in other countries. ProtectKids.com (PDF) again weighs in with interesting things to say… One area where porn advocates are happy to talk about correlational studies is in relation to Denmark, where the government lifted pornography […]
Continue reading Porn and Sex Crimes in Other Countries: The Historical Experience
If we’re going to investigate the impact of viewing porn, we need to consider where it usually starts–childhood. Colin Erasmus, Microsoft SA’s security manager, said the average age at which a child is first exposed to Internet porn is 11. This typically happens by accident while a child is searching for information for school projects, […]
Sometimes businesspeople heed the concerns of the community and change their plans. Such was the case in Hooksett, NH, where Capital Video tried to establish a porn shop in 1999. These minutes from the Hooksett Zoning Board of Adjustment tell the story… LMG PROPERTIES LIMITED PARTNERSHIP 1318 HOOKSETT ROAD, MAP 25, LOT 64 REQUEST FOR […]
Harry Brod explores what porn does to the male viewer in “Eros Thanatized: Pornography and Male Sexuality”. This essay appears in Men Confront Pornography (1990, p.190-206). The proper framework for discussion about the manufacture and distribution of pornography is neither sexual ethics nor civil liberties, but business ethics. Anti-pornography campaigns should be conceptualized not as […]
Melvin McLeod led this panel discussion on civility for Shambhala Sun (January 2005). The participants were: Patricia Schroeder: Member of the US House of Representatives from 1972 to 1996. She is now President and CEO of the Association of American Publishers. Mark Kingwell: Professor of Philosophy at the University of Toronto and author of eight […]
Long-time anti-pornographer Diana Russell takes on Nadine Strossen, president of the American Civil Liberties Union and author of Defending Pornography. Nadine Strossen’s OBJECTIVE in Defending Pornography is to destroy the reputation and achievements of the feminist movement against pornography. To this end, she dishes up the same tired old caricature of us as anti-sex prudes, […]
Continue reading Rebutting ACLU President Nadine Strossen’s Defense of Pornography
Defenders of porn often argue that it serves a cathartic function, that porn satisfies its viewers’ desires so they feel no need to act them out in real life. Diana Russell and Natalie Purcell provide a strong rebuttal to this argument: According to the catharsis theory, the repeated exposure of males to pornography “leads to […]
Here is the reality of child sexual abuse as described by the American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry: Child sexual abuse has been reported up to 80,000 times a year, but the number of unreported instances is far greater, because the children are afraid to tell anyone what has happened, and the legal procedure […]