Keyword: pornography

Segal, David; Does Porn Hurt Children?; New York Times Sunday Review
[...] After sifting through [276 research] papers, the report [of a Commision] found a link between exposure to pornography and engagement in risky behavior, such as unprotected sex or sex at a young age. But little could be said about that link. Most important, “causal relationships” between pornography and risky behavior “could not be established". [...]
Among the most prolific and revered researchers to examine teenagers and pornography is a duo in the Netherlands, Jochen Peter and Patti M. Valkenburg. The pair has been publishing studies about this issue for nearly a decade, most of it based on surveys of teenagers. “when teens watch more porn they tend to be more dissatisfied with their sexual lives. This effect is not really a strong effect, though." ... The pair also found that adolescents who watch more porn than their typical peers are generally less averse to casual sex. [...]
“I would be very cautious saying that what we found in the Netherlands is applicable in the U.S.,” Mr. Peter said. “Our findings are in a country that is pretty liberal when it comes to adolescent sexuality.” [...]
“One of our recommendations is that children should be taught about relationships and sex at a young age,” Professor Horvath “One of our recommendations is that children should be taught about relationships and sex at a young age,” Professor Horvath said. [...]
At a minimum, researchers believe a parent-teenager conversation about sexuality and pornography is a good idea, as unnerving to both sides as that may sound.
Kingston, Drew A., Fedoroff Paul, Firestone Philip, & Bradford John M.; Pornography Use and Sexual Aggression; Aggressive Behavior; 35, 1-11
In this study, we examined the unique contribution of pornography consumption to the longitudinal prediction of criminal recidivism in a sample of 341 child molesters. We specifically tested the hypothesis, based on predictions informed by the confluence model of sexual aggression that pornography will be a risk factor for recidivism only for those individuals classified as relatively high risk for re-offending. [...]
Results for both frequency and type of pornography use were generally consistent with our predictions. Most importantly, after controlling for general and specific risk factors for sexual aggression, pornography added significantly to the prediction of recidivism. Statistical interactions indicated
(1) that frequency of pornography use was primarily a risk factor for higher-risk offenders, when compared with lower-risk offenders, and
(2) that content of pornography (i.e., pornography containing deviant content) was a risk factor for all groups. The importance of conceptualizing particular risk factors (e.g., pornography), within the context of other individual characteristics is discussed.
Duvert, Tony; Other People's Eroticism, an essay; From the Semiotexte website & http://denniscooper-theweaklings.blogspot.com.es
During the controversy provoked by pornographic productions, someone quoted this sentence:
"Pornography is other people's eroticism." ...
Since majority eroticism has beauty for its principal trait, any ugliness, vulgarity, stupidity, gratuitous obscenity, in the representation of sexuality, is our signal that it is not ours, but that of the X's. ...
I have said how the two genres were distinguished: since majority eroticism has beauty for its principal trait, any ugliness, vulgarity, stupidity, gratuitous obscenity, in the representation of sexuality, is our signal that it is not ours, but that of the X's. ...
It is up to us to emancipate ourselves from the clichés, the illusions that our sexual conditioning and our frustrations have produced. The expression of sexuality need not be either beautiful or ugly, cultivated or crude, brilliant or idiotic: but it must become the free discourse of desire authentically expressed and no longer the staging of an eroticism we dream up for ourselves when we are deprived of the right to experience any at all.
Diamond, Milton, Jozifkova Eva, & Weiss Petr; Pornography and Sex Crimes in the Czech Republic; Archives of Sexual Behavior; 2010 Nov 30,
Pornography continues to be a contentious matter with those on the one side arguing it detrimental to society while others argue it is pleasurable to many and a feature of free speech. The advent of the Internet with the ready availability of sexually explicit materials thereon particularly has seemed to raise questions of its influence.

Following the effects of a new law in the Czech Republic that allowed pornography to a society previously having forbidden it allowed us to monitor the change in sex related crime that followed the change.

As found in all other countries in which the phenomenon has been studied, rape and other sex crimes did not increase. Of particular note is that this country, like Denmark and Japan, had a prolonged interval during which possession of child pornography was not illegal and, like those other countries, showed a significant decrease in the incidence of child sex abuse.
Carol, Avedon; Fake Science And Pornography
Many researchers reveal shoddy, irresponsible work that you have to be a genius as well as an expert at reading these things to be able to give any kind of reasonable interpretation to their data. But shabby study results are being released into popular culture at such a rapid rate that one can hardly keep up with them.

Lately I spend the bulk of my time trying to counteract widely-held beliefs that have taken hold in the general culture because unsafe interpretations of raw results, some of these themselves of dubious reliability, are being spread around by speakers who pretend to be experts in the fields of sex, sex crime, pornography, aggression, women, men, and other related areas.

You can impel whole rooms full of angry women to march in the streets by telling them that "Studies in America showed that men became more violent after watching pornography," but you might merely bore them by trying to explain that no one has been able to duplicate this result, and in the two studies quoted, one was not using actual pornography but was using general release films.
Nathan, Debbie; Child porn: real or virtual?; Personal Blog, Apr 30 2008
Debbie Nathan writes a personal blog about a conference about (child) pornography on the Internet. The main theme was how to see the differences of virtual images (permitted in the USA as a form of Free Speech) and images of real children (not permitted). It appeared to be quite difficult to make this difference.
Goodman, Silas; Sex Offenders: The Modern Day Leper, Mar 27 2009
I want to tell you about Scott, a friend of mine who lives in the upstate of South Carolina. After a year and a half of being a modern day leper, he finally agreed to my interview. No, Scott does not have Hansen's disease. However, he has been shunned and forced to live on the edges of society, similar to the lepers of Biblical times.