I’m anti-porn. Its either for the perverse or the desperate.

And there wouldnt be much of a demand for it if families were still strong like they used to be.

So feminism actually increases the demand for pron.

Studies, schmudies. Guns kill people, do you see anyone doing anything about reducing the number of guns being produced and sold? Porn is here to stay as a multi billion dollar industry. There will be porn as long as there are sex slaves to perform it and pervs to consume it.

Young girls think they have to be "sexual" to be attractive to male partners. They blame it on "society". Rag magazines like Cosmo and the like prominently display the word SEX on each of its issues to attract attention and sale their products to young women who read them as sort of sex manuals on how to please their men. Young males are only interested in the young female’s sexuality. When young women value themselves as something more than just a sperm receptacles for males that’s when it will be better for them.

I don’t think porn is as great a danger as some would have us believe. Besides, every culture has had it’s forms of erotica, whether it was legal or not. I don’t think it’s something you can get rid of. As long as people can be creative and produce things, sexuality is going to find it’s way into some of it.

It sounds like what you’re talking about isn’t porn, per se, but just the everyday images. Porn at least is somewhat regulated, and not in your face every day. I agree that media literacy education is the way to go. With all the advertising people are inundated with everyday, it’s a good idea to arm people with the critical thinking skills necessary to consider the messages they’re being presented with.

Porn is great. Not all porn. But overall it’s not bad. Any ill effects that it may have become true simply because people believe they will. As with any influence in your environment, you have two choices. To let it define you and change who you are or keep on being yourself and staying strong. (This is where parents are meant to guide you when you are young. NOT shelter you from reality, but help you understand things as they are.)

This is the difference between and strong and a weak person. If we did away with anything that could possibly have a bad effect on weak minded people then we’d all be sitting in an empty room with grey walls and a chair. We’d have a computer to communicate with other people and do our job. But there would be something in between that removes anything that could possibly be offensive to anyone anywhere. Even our simplest conversations would be monitored and censored.

Basically life would become a flavorless blob of tofu.

Same with alcohol, tv, video games, and other fun things… it must be done in moderation,understood with maturity and treated with respect.

Else, where would the deflavinating of our lives end?

OK, double standards covers several situations and issues.
Including men; yes to sex. women, no to sex. It is our society.
But porn. Porn makes money, a lot of money. 1/3 of the people who use the internet; look at porn. That is a LOT of people. Male, female, young and old. More than any thing else.

One girl commented that if porn becomes EVERYWHERE, after a while, we will become so use to it, we will stop looking at it, and then porn will die out as a business. A great example is the movie Knocked Up.

Three years ago, the name alone would never been allowed in the movies. When we went, it was full of people in the audience. Including little boys and girls down to age 7.

The movie did and said, and showed, all kinds of things that – 5 years ago – would have never been said, and especially shown – in any theater movie. Some laughter, but mostly people were like "who cares?" including the kids. What the movie was showing, was to all of us, as controversal as going to the beach. Been there, seen that.

Yawn.

In the future, very quickly, porn will be mainstream and everyone will be looking at it. And no one will care.

Here is my double standard. When women do things like dance with the stars. Their clothes are very limited. The men are dressed like Bond, or clothes that look terrible on them.
Men can look good to with little clothing. Look at the guys in 300, or when Schwarznegger did all those movies. Now days guys have bad hair, unshaven, and skinny or FAT.

Double standard.

I would draw a distinction between porn – which generally is only viewed by adults – and the sexualiztion of women in the media.

I’m not sure what can be done about this problem; but it does seem that it is a serious problem among girls. The efforts lately seem to be in making sure that sexually active girls are using birth control and condoms. This is essential, I agree, but it’s only part of keeping them healthy.

Another aspect of keeping them healthy might be to help girls sort through their feelings about sexuality and the way women are portrayed. Many girls are assured that if they "try hard enough" they can seperate sex from becoming emotionally attached. When they have difficulty doing this, they sometimes turn to self-abuse, such as anorexia, cutting, or drug use. The healthiest young women are often those whose parents keep them from being sexually active at all – it is difficult for a teen girl to handle it when "the love of her life" sleeps with her and quickly dumps her. (my source on this is Reviving Ophelia, among other books on the subject.)

Clearly, our current practice of throwing condoms and sex ed at girls, while they deal with being innundated with sexuality in the media, is inadequate. They are told that their only value is as sexual beings, then given birth control and told to go for it – but then they still have to deal with the possibility of pregnancy, STDs, and being dumped. And there is still some condemnation of girls who *are* sexually active. So if they go along with society, they end up feeling bad about themselves. If they don’t, they are told they have no value.

Well, first off, great question. It’s really thought-provoking and it brought the study to light for me, so I’m glad.

But I also think that you might be reading things wrong, because from what I read of both articles, we aren’t talking about porn, but rather about the sexualization of girls in common media. In fact, I believe that it is in the APA article that sexualization is defined as "when a person’s value comes only from her/his sexual appeal or behavior, to the exclusion of other characteristics".

I don’t think we should mistake porn for mainstream media sexualization. Porn is, and always has been, an explicit act of sex meant to arouse and show people being sexual. Nobody expects pornographic material to include the non-sexual capacities of its stars, just the same way that when I get services from other people- cashiers for example- I know that they are much more talented and mult-dimensional beyond their money tendering skills. But because my cashier is at a certain venue- in front of a register at a store- he or she is fulfilling that capacity. Same with porn- porn is meant to show people having sex.

Now, the problem is not from porn. I thoroughly believe that the anti-porn feminists were wrong- I detest Andrea Dworkin and throw my lot in with pro-porn and sex-positive feminists like Carol Queen, Susie Bright, Betty Dodson, Michelle Tea, and so on. The problem that I see, and which the articles seem to mention as well, is the fact that women are becoming so sexualized in non-porn media. And that IS a problem, because it suggests that women’s sole worth comes from their sex appeal and their bodies. Here is a place where women can be intellectual, artistic, political, whatever- and instead, we continue to demand that in order to be palatable, they must be practically naked and panting and writhing on the floor. Just look at the majority of rap and hip-hop videos by men- and even by some women- wherein women are not only referred to explicitly as "b*tches" and "ho’s", but whose sole representation is as sexual objects, to be used for men in a sexual way and whose worth is evaluated as such. Some might argue that porn is exactly the same way- and I’ll give them that. But the difference lies in the fact that in porn, that is the point- porn is the portrayal of a fantasy where everyone is open and available and people have sex very readily, and always the kind the other wants, and it’s always fantastic for everyone involved. That’s what porn is meant to do- it’s supposed to get you off like that. But non-pornographic venues like music, television, movies, video games, and the internet . . . those are meant to show more and other and different sides. When we continue to show women solely in a sexual manner therein, we all suffer, as the research shows, in our girls getting the wrong ideas about their own worth and in their plummeting self-esteem if they don’t hit the media mark.

So no, I don’t think that porn hurts young women and girls, but I do think that the over-sexualization of women in the mainstream media does.

Hope that helps.