Tag Archives: psychology

Porn Sucks

If anyone can articulately explain why pornography is bad, please tell my friend Robyn. Since MySpace is a crappy blogging service and you might have to be on her friends list to view the post, I'll reproduce it here.

"Has anyone else heard about this attempt by a religious faction to heal those who have been 'overcome' by porn? Of all the things in this world to focus your energies on, I have to just shake my head. Granted, extreme porn (such as that involving 'snuff films,' people under the age of 18, etc) makes me less than comfortable, I fail to see this as an epidemic of sorts."

"Sex, in its consentual form, is a perfectly natural, pleasurable thing. People have varying predilections that not everyone will understand. But, that's just the thing. You don't have to understand it. Some prefer a traditional approach with no real experimentation, and that's all fine and good. As long as no one's getting hurt (who doesn't want to be), everyone should be entitled to express their sexuality on their own terms. If that involves putting your sex life on video or in photographs, so be it."

"I just don't see porn as a real problem in society. I think one of society's problems is that society is a little too uptight. We're all naked underneath our clothes, and I'm sure we all have sexual cravings. To say that someone is wrong, or is going to Hell because of something so non threatening as viewing or creating porn, is just asinine to me. That may be your take on the subject, and sure, you're welcome to your opinion. Just don't try to force your ideology on me."

"I have a rather small collection of these aforementioned videos, I'm interested in trying different things sexually, and to be perfectly honest, I probably desire sex 90% my day. At the same time, I've had less than a handful of lovers because I'm what you'd refer to as a 'relationship girl.' Though I have no problem with others partaking in casual sex, it's just not for me. What's my point? Being sexual does not make you a bad person. It makes you human."

"That being said, I believe that in honor of this Porn Sunday, the other Adam and I need to be taking a trip to a little place on McKnight Road ;)"

"*I ask that in reading this you keep in mind that I'm referring to sex in the strictest of consentual terms*"

I'd respond at length myself, but I'm too hurt by her insensitivity. Porn has really screwed me up and I'm too emotionally raw to explain why it's such an evil thing, so I'm relying on my loyal readers. Please lend me your brains and your keyboards.

Addendum: Here are some previous posts about porn and its effects.

Not Just For Jews
Disordered Apetites
Monkey See, Monkey Do
Virtual Red Light District

Addendum #2: Here are some news stories about the "religious faction" Robyn refers to.

National Porn Sunday October 9
Mesa man hopes his story will warn of cost of porn addiction

Banning Gays From Priesthood

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There are some very reasonable, fair, open-minded, intelligent, and compassionate orthodox responses to the announcement of the new policy against the admission of gays to the priesthood, and the related inspection of American seminaries, to be found in St. Blog’s Parish. Examples are those of Mark Shea and Amy Welborn. If only we could get that side of St. Blog’s to talk peacefully to the other side, for whom I’ll use Nathan Nelson as an example.

I don’t know whether the discourse thus far has been civil because I thus far haven’t noticed any discourse (outside of echo chambers) whatsoever.

Update 09/23/05: Here are three more good responses to the policy (which I’m now hearing isn’t so new, just not enforced).

Kevin Miller
Gregory Popcak
David Morrison

The post by David Morrison is of particular interest. From David’s "About Me" page:

"David Morrison is the author of this web log and the book Beyond Gay, which Our Sunday Visitor press published in 1999 and which is still in print."

"He is also the found and moderator of Courage Online, an online support community for men and women living with some degree of same sex attraction who wish to do so chastely."

"Throughout his career so far David has written on human rights issues, population issues, pro-life issues and chastity issues. In addition to this web log and the writing for his day job, David speaks and writes on chastity and identity issues."

Electronic Leash For Children?

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Back on 8-22-05, it was reported that GPS devices were keeping track of sex offenders. Wouldn’t you know that now minors are being monitored by GPS devices. Parents can know where their son or daughter is, know how fast they’re driving, and when/if they get to class.

We can debate whether this is right or not, but I’d rather connect this to another phenomenon and expand it.

It’s really not surprising that parents are taking advantage of this new technology. This youth generation AKA Echo Boomers, Generation Y, or Millenials is "more protected".

"’Parents feel as if they’re holding onto a piece of Baccarat crystal or something that could somehow shatter at any point,’ says Levine. ‘And so parents really have a sense their kids are fragile. And parents therefore are protecting them, inflating their egos. Massaging them, fighting their battles for them.’ [60 minutes, "The Echo Boomers"]"

This can be explained by the following:

"’Because they came along at a time when we started re-valuing kids. During the ’60s and ’70s, the frontier of reproductive medicine was contraception,’ says Howe. ‘During the ’80s and beyond, it’s been fertility and scouring the world to find orphan kids that we can adopt. …The culture looked down on kids. Now it wants kids; it celebrates them.’" [Ibid]

[If children are valued so much, why is the birth rate in this country still below replacement and why is abortion still so popular? – Funky]

What will happen when each individual has to act make decisions on their own?

"’Sometimes, they don’t know what to do if they’re just left outside and you say, ‘Well, just do something by yourself for a while,” says Howe. ‘They’ll look around stunned. You know, ‘What are we supposed to do now?”" [Ibid]

It’s probably my bias, but isn’t there some worth to just being able to do what you want for a time? Can’t it be better for the family as a whole?

It’s almost as if children have become more important than family relationships, especially between parents. Without being over-scheduled, families can sit down together for meal(s). Family activities that truly get a family to interact can help fulfill everyone’s emotional and even physical needs (interacting with the family).

Further, the parents who can have more time for themselves instead of trucking the children to the plethora of events has to be a good thing. The overall marriage relationship, which is most important within the family, has to be supported in each other.

IPIP-NEO/Political Compass Meme

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IMPORTANT: If you came here because I emailed you about this meme, you should know that I’ve modified it. I was pretty psyched about the idea, but a friend of mine convinced me that it could backfire in its original form. Specifically:

"Originally, I was going to do the IPIP-NEO/Political Compass Meme. Ales Rarus passed it along as a fun idea. I think the originator of the meme was well-intentioned. But as I typed in my IPIP-NEO results, I became concerned. The IPIP-NEO is a psychological inventory test. I don’t know it’s validity. I’m not going to bother to look up it’s validity because whether it’s valid or not, I don’t want someone having access to ‘my’ results."

"Do I want a prospective employer Googling those results? If they’re not accurate, they could cost me a job. If they are accurate, I want that prospective employer to justify his need for them and then leave the decision to me. Putting them on the net is a bad idea, at least for me. I suspect it’s a universally bad idea."

I’m indebted to my friend for pointing this out. Rather than bag the whole thing, however, I’ve deleted my sub-section scores and only left the main section scores (I’ve left the political coordinates, though.). Perhaps the research possiblities for the meme are reduced that way, but people, including me, ought to feel safer. Without further ado, here’s the slightly modified IPIP-NEO/Political Compass Meme.

This is a cool meme that I think is worth passing on.

"The idea of a Go-meme (which I owe to Nova Spivack) is that it involves a ‘track list’ at the end of the post, rather like an extended hat-tip, with links to those who passed on the meme ‘upstream’ of you. This allows us to track the meme’s propagation through blog-space: just search google for your GUID (global unique identifier – it should be a short string that currently yields no results in a google search) to find all those who subsequently picked up the meme ‘downstream’ from you. It also provides an incentive to join the meme, so as to receive all those bonus links."

"To enhance the information value of the [IPIP-NEO personality test] data that this meme produces, I’ve added a few demographic questions, plus the two dimensions assessed by the Political Compass quiz. I think it would be especially interesting to learn if there are any correlations between particular personality traits and political or religious positions." [emphasis mine]

On a side note, If you decide to take the Political Compass quiz, please leave a comment with your score. I’d like graph the political leanings of my readers. If that turns out as well as I hope, I’ll post the results and hopefully other bloggers will inspired to do likewise. You also might wish to submit your coordinates to the Blogosphere Political Compass Project.

The Blogosphere Political Compass Project is graphing the approximate political affiliation of bloggers from all corners of the Internet. The chart below shows the relative positions of the bloggers who have responded thus far; graphing is done two-dimensionally in order to show both economic (liberal vs. conservative) and social (authoritarian vs. libertarian) leanings.

I’ve added Chris Lightfoot’s improvement upon the Political Compass quiz (on which I scored left/right: -2.568 and pragmatism/idealism: -5.2243) to the meme. If you give me a score for that test, I’ll map it as well.

OK. Enough hype.

Continue reading →

Monkey See, Monkey Do

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Monkeys Pay to See Female Monkey Bottoms

A new study found that male monkeys will give up their juice rewards in order to ogle pictures of female monkey’s bottoms. The way the experiment was set up, the act is akin to paying for the images, the researchers say.

[…]

The study, announced Friday, is far from monkey business. It was sponsored by the National Institute of Mental Health and the Cure Autism Now Foundation. The goal is to learn more about the social machinery of the brain with an eye toward helping autism patients.

So does this mean that attraction to and obsession with pornography are neurologically
similar to autism? As someone who has been struggling to overcome addiction
to porn, I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that it’s related to other dysfunctional
behaviors.

(Fedora Tip: Counseling Notes

BTW, since we’re on the subject, be sure to check out my links to resources for escaping porn.