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Pornified: How Pornography Is Transforming Our Lives, Our Relationships, And Our Families (2005)

Pornified: How Pornography Is Transforming Our Lives, Our Relationships, and Our Families (2005)

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3.53 of 5 Votes: 2
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ISBN
0805077456 (ISBN13: 9780805077452)
Language
English
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times books

About book Pornified: How Pornography Is Transforming Our Lives, Our Relationships, And Our Families (2005)

This book is written by a female journalist who did not initially have much of a problem with pornography, but whose research brought her to question if we have allowed our society to become far too “pornified” and what kind of action we can take to at least stem the tide. The book is subtitled “How pornography is transforming our lives, relationships, and families,” but I don't think she spends enough time discussing those things; there’s a great deal of time spent discussing how much pornography (both in terms of accessibility and degree---what was once hard core, for instance, has become soft core) has changed over the past forty years and why people (do or do not) consume it. I wish she had expanded the chapters on relationships and families and had used more statistical information. The book is very highly anecdotal, taking us through the stories of several individuals, some of whom are extreme cases. Although she does draw in several studies and polls and did conduct a massive joint poll of her own, we don’t get much information about sample, methodology, or even detailed results; rather, a statistic is thrown in here and there throughout the commentary and anecdotes. So, for instance, she might say that for many men, pornography usage leads to sexual performance issues, but then she will use a single story as a support rather than drawing in any kind of statistical evidence about what percentage of pornography users suffer these problems, and how frequently they consume pornography. If you are trying to persuade anybody of anything, it helps not to refer to Joe Smith’s personal experience but instead to present an accumulation of evidence. When she does bring in statistics, sometimes they are a little confusing. For instance, she will say 50% of women X, and 1/4th of women not X. Well, what happened to the other 1/4th, given the only choices appear to be X and not X? Did 1/4th say “I don’t know”? The book is essentially rather depressing, especially if one is raising a son or daughter in today’s “pornified” culture. The accessibility and degree means that early exposure is likely, and how does that affect the forming conscious of a young girl or boy, and how will they see sex in the future? Her leanings are clear enough, but she doesn’t take extreme positions and she doesn’t omit the counter arguments. And the argument against pornography, she concludes, ultimately need not be either religious or feminist, but simply practical. Pornography “has a corrosive effect on men’s relationships with women and a negative impact on male sexual performance and satisfaction.” Interestingly, the percentage of liberals and conservatives who are in favor of regulating pornography are about equal, although they often have different motives. And of course you have your anti-porn feminists and your pro-porn feminists. One interesting “solution” is to propose criminalizing the giving and receiving of payment to perform sexual acts, which would make the laws against many forms of pornography (and of course strip clubs) consistent with the prostitution laws. It’s an interesting theory; after all, the line that divides a strip club from a brothel is at least somewhat arbitrary (you may go this far legally and no farther; you may touch here but not here; you may be touched here in this way but not there in that way; you must wear this much clothing but may take off this much clothing while touching…the government becomes the arbiter of baselines and the definer of what is not too sexual and what is too sexual, and often society’s mores follow). The author, however, ultimately favors a censure and not a censor solution. Fighting supply is ultimately futile as long as there is a large demand for something. Changing people’s demand is a cultural (and ultimately a spiritual) issue, not a legal one. You can’t legislate the desires of the heart, but cultures can (and do) vary on which behaviors they deem acceptable and which they deem dishonorable and/or disgusting, and the messages a culture sends affects the way people behave. When it comes to sexual behavior, our own culture, over the last forty years, has greatly expanded what it considers acceptable and greatly reduced what it considers dishonorable, and there have certainly been negative consquences to this. The trick is finding a happy middle ground between oppression and libertinism, and it's a difficult trick. One warning: be aware that some of this book is quite graphic, with transcripts from chat rooms.

I worry at times that my non-fiction reading is an echo chamber where I just read books that reinforce my pre-existing biases. So, I figured I'd read something I expected to disagree with - Pamela Paul's Pornified - and later read Anne G. Sabo's retort in After Pornified. I have come to regret this decision.Pornified is the Reefer Madness of sexuality books. I thought I'd be getting updated 2nd wave radical feminist arguments against porn. What I got was disingenuous and surprising avoidance of what I think of as radical feminist thought - which is to say, feminism that operates from the premise of the existence of the patriarchy.The difficulty of women's body image, for example, is one of the classic problems with patriarchal oppression. Performing femininity for the male gaze, evaluating one's self against an unobtainable beauty ideal is a symptom of the pervasive system of values that make society unequal and unfair. Or, if you go with Pamela Paul, the problem is just that porn is presenting that image, and if we get rid of it, body image issues will go away, too.I was expecting an update on Dworkin and MacKinnon, and instead I got lines like this: "Pro-porn feminists battled it out with anti-porn feminists while most men observed the catfight in delight or ignored it altogether". Which manages to be insulting to both feminists and men, I think. The only direct callback is to borrow MacKinnon's definition of porn vs. erotica, which boils down to "if it's gross sex stuff, it's porn. If not, it's erotica". (And yes, that is unfair paraphrasing on my part)The structure of the book is largely quotations and paraphrases from interviews with people on the subject of porn, often with a line or two of editorial snark afterwards. By selecting and editing the words of her interviewees, Paul is able to imply the points she wants to make without having to state them outright, and without having to provide backing evidence. Things implied by Pornified:* Male fondness for large breasts is entirely caused by porn. No man would have a breast size preference without porn.* Masturbation is infidelity* If you look at porn, you will naturally progress to child porn and then abusing actual children. * Pedophiles only abuse children because they look at porn first.* If a women says she likes porn, she is only doing it to please men.* Things no real woman would ever want to do: "anal sex, double penetration, or multiple orgasms". These are things that are manufactured porn desires that don't exist absent porn's influence.* When someone buys a minivan with a DVD player in it, it's so they can watch porn while driving.* Without porn, all men would be easily monogamous, and never have lustful thoughts about women other than their wives.* Porn also causes impotence* Porn causes men to be violent towards womenThe interviewees were a troubled bunch, but it seemed to me that their problems were not caused by porn. These folks all seem to have serious issues with sex, sexuality and gender. Eradicating porn isn't going to make those problems go away. There are a lot of problems with the modern porn industry, and how porn is woven into our society. Pornified manages to miss most of them, instead calling for a ban on things that are gross. This was an awful book, and I am very glad to be done reading it.

Do You like book Pornified: How Pornography Is Transforming Our Lives, Our Relationships, And Our Families (2005)?

This was an eye-opener. I was unaware of the prevalence of "hard core" pornography so readily available now, and this had very little opinion on the subject. Although this is probably classified in women's studies or feminism, I thought that it was as unbiased as possible, since it consisted mainly of interviews from people- mostly male porn addicts. I'm really disturbed by the material in this book and I agree that things need to change in the way we view sex in order for women (and men) to move forward. I highly recommend this book, and I find myself referencing it often, as it applies to other addictions as well.
—Bullet

Recently in doing some research for an article, I read Pamela Paul’s Pornified: How Pornography Is Transforming Our Lives, Our Relationships and Our Families. The book is four years old and the situation has grown much worse, but it points out how devalued and objectified women are now because of the sex industry.The media exploits women everywhere: in fashion magazines, television programs, billboards, social networking sites, motion pictures, music videos. But the chief factor in accelerating the lusts of males has been the pornography industry.Subsequently, how men and women relate — or fail to relate — has fundamentally changed. Girls and women are involved in a never-ending effort to try to please males, who by repeated exposure to porn have unrealistic expectations of what females should be and do. So women dress provocatively, buy breast implants, consent to participate in “sex tapes” and have abortions, all to no avail. Porn is the reason behind unbridled lust and sex trafficking exploding around the world.Paul’s book points out how pornography has convinced males that anal sex and more bizarre behavior should be expected from a female, even on a first date. Pornified shows how many males can no longer function in a normal sexual state because they’ve been so warped by images of group sex and other sinful activities.“Many men don’t even realize that what they’re asking for is degrading or unpleasant to women,” Paul writes. “But the costs to our relationships, our families and our culture are great, and will continue to mount.”The book left me sad at how debased we have become, and how harmful and corrosive pornography is. I apologize to women for buying into this dysfunctional view of sexuality and my role in exploiting you.
—John Kennedy

This was an interesting book, and it accurately depicts what's out there and what people (usually men) can get themselves into. But I was looking for a more comprehensive study of how the sexual revolution, and the current trends toward accepting more and more extreme and disconnected forms of sexual expression have affected society as a WHOLE, rather than individual people. The book jacket was a bit misleading in that sense. Individuals have obsessions and mentalities that feed right into the anonymity of Internet porn. They may be laying waste to their lives and realize it, or not realize it. But for the larger world, including people who keep well away from porn, and even the mass-sexualization of our culture, there is still a cost to pay. We all have to live in the same world. Does anyone know of a book about that?
—Rachel

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