Does pornography downgrade women?

Answer 1

Most women in that industry are forced into it, have drug problems, or were abused when younger. OR-have a skewed view of what success is all about.



But art is art....... www.Met-Art.com

Answer 2

It degrades men and women,but it's their choice to be involved in such a profession.

Answer 3

Of course it does. It also creates addiction and the need for more and more. Which eventually can lead to incest or rape. Pornography is a dangerous spiraling sin.

Women have no respect for men with this addiction.

Answer 4

Yeah. I'd have to say it does. But not just women. It degrades everyone involved with it - participants, observers, distributors - and it's ubiquitousness and popularity downgrades society as a whole, especially the type that sexualizes violence.

I know. When I was a kid, I, like just about every other pubescent male (12, 13, 14) who hadn't made it with a real live woman yet, went hunting for all I could find. Digging through the stacks at paper sales, shoplifting Playboys and other dirty books (we were too young to buy them) from the drug store and taking them back to the treehouse and drooling over them.

It's hard to find, even today, a kid that age that CAN find the strength to turn away from it. This a period in a male's life where he can honestly come to believe that it's possible to DIE from terminal horniness. I'm sure the men reading this know what I mean. SO the problem is that it's available. Everywhere. And thrown in your face by just about every medium.

Most males grow out of it. I did (but I've battled other addictions since). Find that it's a pretty poor substitute for the real thing once they've had some of the real thing. But there's still a period of adjustment, replacing unhealthy thought patterns with healthy ones, re-sensitizing oneself, etc. And not all males pull it off (just try to - pun intended. honk). The stuff is powerful and a budding addiction to it is self-reinforcing. Other addictions compound the problem, and the person, if he already has the inclination, can be pushed over the edge by one or more of them into varying degrees of sociopathic or semi-sociopathic behavior.

I. E., being nearly incapable of deferring gratification, being unable to get what he or she (admittedly much more likely a HE) wants and thinks he or she needs in the next ten minutes through accepted or legal means, being unable to say no to the demons driving him or her, and then just TAKING it, often without the slightest concern for the welfare, rights, well being, or, in the worst cases, even the life of anyone besides him or herself.

That's the nature of addiction. Any addiction. I never knew anyone in an active state of it that wasn't a selfish, manipulative liar, and didn't display, to some degree, mental instability, and criminal or pre-criminal behaviors.

I know. I used to be a drunk. And I was not myself when I drank. I was all the horrible things I alluded in the previous paragraph.

I've spent a little time in the slammer (not for crimes against women - mostly drunken bar brawls and the like) and I didn't meet a single person in there that was what I would refer to as a "violent criminal" that DIDN'T have an longstanding addition to pornography. And typically, they had an addiction to something else as well.

I got a handle on my demon ( I hope permanently) before it drove me as far as it did those guys. And to this day I DON'T want to know how close I came. And being around them had a lot to do with my deciding to be done with EVERYTHING (I didn't even take the pain pills they give me after surgery or drink coffee anymore) by giving me a glimpse of what my future held if I didn't. Got lucky, I guess.

There's a monster inside of the reptilian core of everyone's brain, especially males (we're more aggressive by nature - that's a fact), and no one ever really knows for sure what combination of stimuli, weaknesses, childhood trauma, whatever, it takes to turn it loose. Well, often not until it's too late, anyway. So it's best to stay away from all corrosive, addictive seeming shortcuts to happiness. All things that are addictive at least seem to promise that, including computers. So it's not even a good idea to spend TOO much time on these things. Hour a day is all I allow myself.

But, as I said, it's tough for kids not to look at porn. Especially males. So what needs to be examined is our willingness to tolerate just about anything people can make money off of, no matter how much damage it does, I guess. Hell, I don't know. I have NO idea what could be done about it. Any of it. From porn to the beer commercial where the guy buys about 70 cases of Corona while smugly grinning - as if getting ready to go on a month long beer-bender was a behavior to be admired - well, there's just too much money at stake. Might as well try to derail a freight train with a shoehorn as to make even a fraction of it go away.

While Ted Bundy's attempt to blame porn for his rampage rings pretty hollow - people are still responsible for what they do, no matter what - there is no doubt that it was anything but a negative influence and it contributed to his descent into madness. And I can think of no situation where it could be a positive one.

But it's important that we don't restrict our definition of pornography to filthy magazines and peep shows and nasty theaters frequented by the raincoat crowd. Most sitcoms are porn. Lotsa commercials are porn - jiggly-boob beer commercials especially -Pam Anderson posters are porn. The Jerry Springer show is porn. Lot of movies that don't even get an R rating are porn. A lot that do are, too (the slasher films where the babysitter humps her boyfriend and then gets sliced up in her underwear, etc.). In short, anything that sexualizes violence, encourages or passes off as healthy the reduction of a thinking human being to little more than a three dimensional mental masturbatory aid, etc. Is porn. The T-shirts that say "if it feels good, DO IT!" are porn.

I can't think of a better way to describe the code Ted Bundy lived by.

And obviously, photos and films that capture the beauty of the naked female form (or male) without dehumanizing them are NOT porn.

I could go on and on. DO what you can to explain to your kids that every addiction will result in, at best, a dreadfully difficult fight to regain one's sanity, and at worst, the slammer, an institution, or a premature death.

Don't mean to sound like some Republican prude. I'm not. Not at all. It's just that I've been there. I've seen it all firsthand. Seen too many marriges wrecked by addictions (and yeah, at least one that was wrecked because of a pornography addiction), businesses lost, etc. The worst anybody ever told you is true.

Well, like I said. Do what you can. But none if it is harmless, just a phase, whatever. Anything that has the potential to subjugate your reason in the pursuit of it is at least potentially dangerous. Most people DO turn away from it, but I don't know very many people that are glad of having had the exposure to it in the first place.

And, as I said, don't expect much help from Hollywood or the government. People in charge of both behave pretty much like sociopaths themselves.

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(fatuous and long winded as always)
shrugs

Answer 5

i think it does, i think they become a product when we sell their bodies to look at... and really what happens to the appreciation for women, if people see women's bodies, then where is the respect for them? i don't know, but to me it seems that there has to be something wrong with it... i think we lose the appreciation for the human body and its complexity if we make it as common as everyday things... and then we lose a sense of respect for something that we already have you know?

Answer 6

I do not believe they degrade women in general. Only the women that star in them

Answer 7

It may degrade them. On the other hand, they have to make a living and it's their choice.

Answer 8

Yes, it DEGRADES women. It makes women into objects and not people.

Answer 9

Hell no my tagalog speaker....there are men in porno too...does that mean it denigrades men? They do it of there own free will, no one forces them to do it, so no, it doesnt downgrade them

Answer 10

To what? Life support systems for a t.u.n.c.