I nearly peed my pants laughing at this comment. I keep re-reading it, and it makes me bust up every time.

>> ^andybesy:
Roundabouts are safer. But I love how wikipedia lists "elderly drivers may become confused" as one of the disadvantages of roundabouts as compared to intersections.

This is one of the best videos I've ever sifted. What's the deal? *beg

I don't think you're pervs.

Spoco, every time I've had this argument people have come out of the woodwork and made private comments congratulating me on arguing against porn. I don't think that this discussion has attracted enough attention, though.

Bah! Nothing substantial to back it up? Okay, maybe not, but QM and I are the only ones who have cited any actual scientists in this thread. EDD (who HATES it when I make claims based on my own experience) made up his own statistics, and the rest of you guys are throwing around generalizations like it's nobody's business! It's almost laughable that you ask me to back up my claims when no one who agrees with you is doing so. I just searched my college academic article resources and Google for about 30 minutes looking for studies that show that pornography is healthy. Guess what I found? Studies that show that it's unhealthy. The only scientific conclusion that I found is that occasional porn use isn't harmful. I can't find anything that says it's good for you. I found lots of proof, however, that regular porn use is unhealthy on multiple levels. I don't even have to give you links. Just do a Google search and you'll be bombarded with this stuff.

Spoco, when have I ever been reasonable?

When I say "reasonably" satisfied, I mean that you can't be fully sexually satisfied without actual sex imo. I'm just saying that you don't need porn in order to be reasonably satisfied. Porn isn't totally satisfying, and I should think you would agree with that.

You're mad at me for being stubborn, but my opinions about porn have become far more moderate that they used to be, if you remember. And what about you? Are you really listening and trying to find value in anything I say? I doubt it. Because you think that I'm incredibly wrong, and that's okay. Despite what you may think, I read and understand what you guys are trying to explain to me. Why should I be blamed for being as convinced of my opinion as you are? Because I am the only woman and only person arguing this side?

DeputyDog, I'm not a counseller or even a counselor, but why is it so hard to believe that I know three guys who have talked to me about their porn dependency? I talk about serious topics with lots of people, not just you guys. One of my good friends told me this after I knew him for about 2 weeks. I'm very open with other people about my own experiences, and they often confide in me.

I'm really sorry that I got sucked into this discussion again. I wish that the other people on this website who agree with me would come in and comment instead of making private comments on my profile. That would be really nice.

That's the key, isn't it? This so-called "need". If you don't find the love of your life and a committed relationship, is porn your only option? I don't really see what need it's fulfilling. Indeed, it seems more like an exacerbation of the problem. It is neither emotionally nor sexually satisfying. I'll be honest and say that I can't relate. To me it seems logical (but then again, I'm a girl) that if you can't get laid, you avoid sexual arousal instead of actively seeking it out. Porn is not just the release of sexual tension, it is the augmentation of it. Or so I should think? Is the need for sex such that men need to both arouse and release in order to feel fulfilled? Or could they release sexual frustration only when it happens on its own? I have a hard time believing that men are sex machines that just can't function without regular porn use. And if they are, is it a learned behavior? Not that we aren't meant to have and desire sex, because we are. But porn itself is so perverse and psychologically damaging (because of the lies and the degradation it thrives on) that I cannot believe nor accept that men are wired to need it. What did single people do before prostitutes and pornography? I'm guessing that they lived in a world where sex was something that you do with a partner, and something that you hold in cold storage as much as you possible until it's needed.

I don't think sex is bad. Sex is great and good. I just don't think that anyone truly needs to participate in sexual perversion (the porn industry) to be healthy, happy, and (reasonably) satisfied.

EDD - "The other terror that scares us from self-trust is our consistency; a reverence for our past act or word, because the eyes of others have no other data for computing our orbit than our past acts, and we are loath to disappoint them.

But why should you keep your head over your shoulder? Why drag about this corpse of your memory, lest you contradict somewhat you have stated in this or that public place? Suppose you should contradict yourself; what then? It seems to be a rule of wisdom never to rely on your memory alone, scarcely even in acts of pure memory, but to bring the past for judgment into the thousand-eyed present, and live ever in a new day. In your metaphysics you have denied personality to the Deity: yet when the devout motions of the soul come, yield to them heart and life, though they should clothe God with shape and color. Leave your theory, as Joseph his coat in the hand of the harlot, and flee.

A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines. With consistency a great soul has simply nothing to do. He may as well concern himself with his shadow on the wall. Speak what you think now in hard words, and to-morrow speak what to-morrow thinks in hard words again, though it contradict every thing you said to-day." - Ralph Waldo Emerson, Self Reliance

I don't stand by everything I've said about porn in the past. I think I've changed a lot. If you have read my posts in this thread it should be obvious to you that I've made some very different points.

I'm sure you know this, EDD, but while I may change my mind on certain points, porn is something I'll never really change my mind about. You know that feeling that you get when you're trying to explain to a Christian that God doesn't exist? Like they just don't get it because they're indoctrinated and willfully ignorant and stubborn? Like you're threatening their favorite pet and they need to defend it with everything they've got? It feels kind of like that. I am completely convinced that porn is useless, destructive filth. I may not have all of my facts straight. I may not know all of the pros and cons. I don't understand everything. But I think that the rest of you are either delusional, confused, indoctrinated, or in serious denial about how hideous porn is. I'm sorry for this condescendig attitude. I don't disrespect your intellect. I just think that you have an incredibly false and convincing set of beliefs that are virtually impossible for you to discard.

And I don't know why you think that I haven't taken a more moderate stance on porn. I definitely have. Did I mention sexual crime even once in this thread? Nope. I don't blame pornography for sexual crime, but in some cases it probably doesn't help. False schemas and lies about sex and relationships that are told by porn (especially the degradation of women and the idea that sex is something men do to women) may have the power to influence the weak-minded and borderline insane people that commit sexual crime. I don't really know.

I don't have a vendetta against porn because I've been personally hurt by it, I hate porn because it is the repulsive, cancerous, deceptive opposite of art.

Don't sass me, boy.

I followed these links and determined that what you think is trolling is not trolling at all, at least not in QM's case. Disagreeing with popular opinion is not trolling. I promise. You may think he's wrong, but he seems to be honestly stating his opinion, and not just to be inflammatory. You're committing the affective fallacy. When something angers you, it doesn't mean that the purpose of the comment was to anger you.

The banana comment was pretty inappropriate, I'll give you that. But I think that he was attempting to make an actual point.

>> ^vairetube:
Well, Choggie is gone. BillO is gone.
QM is still here, making formulaic trolling statements and downvoting things for no real reason other than dislike of the poster. Even I don't do that to "him", at least as far as sifted videos are concerned.
Other people who are clear in their bigoted opinions are around.
None of them have ever made me laugh. Westy has. Gwiz did too. Because they are just kidding, and will take their medicine and accept the consequences when they cross the community line.
It's pretty fair I suppose... but ban westy and you have to ban QM for the constant trolling and lack of constructive contribution to anything whatsoever.
Actually , I propose a sacrifice: IP Ban me on the stipulation that QM gets an ip ban. I will be alright. I assume it would end a big part of their life, though. If we're going to rid the sift of trash, let's do it right. I just like watching videos and reading comments anyway.

^AMEN!!!

*beg

MaxWilder,

I am not saying that all porn users are weird or confused or sexually deviant. I'm sure that many decent people watch porn. I do, however, believe that a world without porn would be healthier, happier, and less confused.

Not all men use porn. It's amazing to me that so many people of my generation seem to believe that. It's almost as if your comment is a checklist of lies that porn has taught you.

Most men seem to believe that women aren't as sexual as men. This is a chauvenistic idea that has been used for hundreds of years to repress the sexuality of women. It is true, however, that men are more drawn to visual stimulation.

I don't even know why I'm typing this. I'm not going to make a dent.

Skeeve, to me this statement is evidence that your perception of sex has been warped (possibly by porn?): "If his wife wont do these things with him then that is her problem, not his and definitely not porn's fault."

I don't know what you mean by this. Are you suggesting that women should consent to doing whatever a man wants to do in the bedroom? Couples have to compromise about sex as with anything else. He is saying that he can't be satisfied without doing these things, and that IS porn's fault, not his wife's.

"...a marriage in which the partners don't agree on matters of sex is a marriage that shouldn't last. This is something that had been known for thousands of years by nearly every civilization... until Christianity started forcing itself into the bedroom."

What does this even mean? And what's up the whole part about Christianity? How does that make any sense whatsoever? Christianity ruined sex or something?

If a couple can't agree on matters of sex, it's just like everything else in a relationship. They have to work it out. I agree that sex is extremely important for healthy relationships, but it isn't the MOST important thing. I know a lady who was sexually abused as a child. She remained a virgin until after her marriage. The couple soon realized that her sexual abuse had seriously undermined her ability to have a good sexual relationship. He loved her, so they went to counselors and therapy and they worked it out. They've been married for over 30 years now.

In my culture, porn is discouraged. Believe it or not, many men and women don't use it. Also, many people are virgins when they get married. Sex is kind of amazing in that if you're attracted to someone, it usually works just fine. It's as if people have been having sex for thousands of years! It's almost like it's a natural thing that people do, even without porn! It's amazing!

To me it seems obvious that if you use porn and need to fantasize about other women to perform, sex in general isn't going to be as satisfying or as intimate. I would venture to say that most people who use porn think that fantasizing about someone other than your partner is normal, even necessary. And, actually, it may be more common than not. This is the result of a diseased, confused society. It's emotional infidelity. It is neither natural nor necessary. Porn makes thousands of women feel inadequate. When guys don't use porn, their sexual partner (and perhaps some useful ideas on how to keep your sex life exciting) is all that they need for a good sex life. It worked that way for thousands of years.

I chose selections from an article about male porn habit that addresses the subject for your reading pleasure. I have a few problems with the article. It seems to assume that only lonely and hurting people use porn, and that isn't true. Still, it makes some good points:

"How addictive is pornography?

‘I'm frightened of real sex, which is unscripted and unpredictable so I engage in pornography, which is totally under my control. But it brings intense disappointment because it is not what I'm really searching for. It's rather like a hungry person standing outside the window of a restaurant, thinking that they're going to get fed.’ That’s how one man described his porn addiction to Edward Marriott...

...Like many men, I first saw pornography during puberty. At boarding school...long before my first sexual relationship, porn was my sex education....Being away from home, my friends and I longed for love, closeness, acceptance. The women over whom we masturbated - surrogate mothers, if you like - seemed to be offering this but, of course, were never going to provide it. The untruths it taught me on top of this disappointment - that women are always available, that sex is about what a man can do to a woman - I am only now succeeding in unlearning.

...'Just like drugs, pornography provides a quick fix, a masturbatory universe people can get stuck in. This can result in their not being able to involve anyone else.’

...Men, as much as women, hunger for intimacy. For many males, locked into a life in which self-esteem has grown intrinsically entwined with performance, sex assumes a freight of demands and needs...

...It is into this troubled scenario that porn finds easy access. For in pornography, unlike in real life, there is no criticism, real or imagined, of male performance...

...Women in porn are always, in the words of the average internet site, ‘hot and ready’, eager to please...

...Men, say psychologists, also feel threatened by the ‘emotional power’ they perceive women wielding over them...they are at the same time painfully aware that their only salvation from isolation comes in being sexually acceptable to women. This sense of neediness can provoke intense anger that, all too often, finds expression in porn...

...The porn industry, of course, dismisses such talk, yet occasionally comes a glimmer of authenticity. Bill Margold, left, one of the industry's longest-serving film performers, was interviewed in 1991 by psychoanalyst Robert Stoller for his book Porn: Myths For The Twentieth Century. Margold admitted: ‘My whole reason for being in this industry is to satisfy the desire of the men in the world who basically don't care much for women and want to see the men in my industry getting even with the women they couldn't have when they were growing up. So we come on a woman's face or brutalise her sexually: we're getting even for lost dreams.'...

...As well as ‘eroticising male supremacy’, in the words of anti-porn campaigner John Stoltenberg, pornography also attempts to assuage other male fears, in particular that of erection failure. Pornography answers men's fetishistic need for visual proof of phallic potency...

...Pornography, in other words, is a lie. It peddles falsehoods about men, women and relationships. It seduces vulnerable, lonely men with the promise of intimacy, and delivers only a transitory fix. Increasingly, though, men are starting to be open about the effect of pornography. David McLeod, a marketing executive, explains the cycle: ‘I'm drawn to porn when I'm lonely, particularly when I'm single and sexually frustrated. But I can easily get disgusted with myself. After watching a video two or three times, I'll throw it away and vow never to watch another again. But my resolve never lasts very long.’

Like many men, McLeod is torn. Quick to claim that porn has ‘no harmful effects’, he is also happy to acknowledge the contradictory fact that it is ‘deadening’.

Extended exposure to pornography can have a whole raft of effects.
By the time Nick Samuels had reached his mid-20s, it was altering his view of what he wanted from a sexual relationship. ‘I used to watch porn with one of my girlfriends, and I started to want to try things I'd seen in the films.’ Married for 15 years, he admits he has carried the same sexual expectations into the marital bedroom. ‘There's been real friction over this: my wife simply isn't that kind of person. And it's only now, after all these years, that I'm beginning to move on from it. Porn is like alcoholism: it clings to you like a leech.’

...Even when in a loving sexual relationship, men who have used porn say that, all too often, they see their partner through a kind of ‘pornographic filter’. This effect is summed up by US sociologist Harry Brod, in LynneSegal's essay Sweet Sorrows, Painful Pleasures: ‘There have been too many times when I have guiltily resorted to impersonal fantasy because the genuine love I felt for a woman wasn't enough to convert feelings into performance. And in those sorry, secret moments, I have resented deeply my lifelong indoctrination into (pornography).’...

...Running through all pornography use, according to David Morgan, is the desire for control...

...The user of pornography is also psychologically on the run.
Welldon says: ‘people who use pornography feel dead inside, and they are trying to avoid being aware of that pain. There is a sense of liberation, which is temporary: that's why pornography is so repetitive - you have to go back again and again.’...

...For John-Paul Day, an Edinburgh architect, the experience of being a small boy with a dying mother drove him to seek solace in masturbation. He says he has been ‘addicted’ to pornography his entire adult life. He has attended meetings of Sex Addicts Anonymous for 12 years...

...Like drugs and drink, pornography - as Day has realised - is an addictive substance. Porn actor Kelly Cooke says this applies on either side of the camera: ‘It got to the point where I considered having sex the way most people consider getting a hamburger. But when you try to give it up, you realise how addictive it is, both for consumers and performers. It's a class A drug, and it's hell coming off it.’

The cycle of addiction leads one way: towards ever harder material...

Morgan believes ‘all pornography ends up with S&M’.
The myth about porn, as a witness told the 1983 Minneapolis city council public hearings on it, is that ‘it frees the libido and gives men an outlet for sexual expression. This is truly a myth. I have found pornography not only does not liberate men, but on the contrary is a source of bondage. Men masturbate to pornography only to become addicted to the fantasy.'..."

Read the whole article here: http://www.malehealth.co.uk/userpage1.cfm?item_id=2302

Other articles on the sibject of porn "addiction":

http://www.wired.com/science/discoveries/news/2004/11/65772

http://men.webmd.com/guide/is-pornography-addictive

Well, I looked up some stuff for you.

"Mary Anne Layden, co-director of the Sexual Trauma and Psychopathology Program at the University of Pennsylvania's Center for Cognitive Therapy, called porn the 'most concerning thing to psychological health that I know of existing today.'

'The internet is a perfect drug delivery system because you are anonymous, aroused and have role models for these behaviors,' Layden said. 'To have drug pumped into your house 24/7, free, and children know how to use it better than grown-ups know how to use it -- it's a perfect delivery system if we want to have a whole generation of young addicts who will never have the drug out of their mind.'

Pornography addicts have a more difficult time recovering from their addiction than cocaine addicts, since coke users can get the drug out of their system, but pornographic images stay in the brain forever, Layden said.'"

This woman's opinion is rather extreme, but to an extent I agree with her, based on things that I've seen.

I didn't say that porn addiction is worse than alcoholism. I compared it to nicotine addiction. I admit, my assertion was based on purely subjective personal opinion. I have known several people who have overcome a nicotine addiction with no lasting physical or psychological affects. On the other hand, I have known people who have tried to beat a porn habit and either failed or are still tempted, even years later. A very good friend of mine married a guy who lied to her about his porn habit. She found out about it and went through some serious trauma. He bawled like a baby when she told him that she was emotionally incapable of having sex with him unless he quit the habit. He tried and failed to quit and the marriage ended. I know no less that three other guys who quit using pornography for personal reasons. Two of them, years later, expressed to me how difficult it was to quit. At times it felt impossible. And they are both still tempted. I have another friend who is manic depressive and he says that he can't get over his emotional dependency on porn, though he has been trying for years. One guy I talked to compared porn addiction to "chasing the dragon," a phrase that is used in reference to heroine. Another guy said that porn images still haunt him.

I admit that experts can't agree on whether or not porn is "addictive." Most of them agree, on the other hand, that it is a compulsion, habit-forming, and that the effects are lasting.

Skeeve, you said that my "pizza consumption (or at least some people's) does hurt people besides you... America is dying at continually younger ages of early onset heart disease, diabetes, etc., largely thanks to unhealthy diets. I guarantee you that fatty foods are not only physically responsible for more deaths in America than porn but also lead to more psychological problems in the people who develop negative body image thanks to that bad nutrition."

I started writing a response, but then I realized that it isn't worth my time to try and explain why your porn vs. pizza comparison is bogus.

Alcohol, cigarettes, and fatty foods are very, very different from porn. Cigarettes aren't as addictive as porn. 8-year-old don't often access alcohol from their computer chairs and become addicted for the remainder of their lives. Fatty food manufacturers aren't emotionally scarred and degraded. The only comparable example that you gave is drugs, and the illegal drug industry is almost as bad as porn. It is destructive to both creator and consumer.

Nothing good comes from fatty foods? I LOVE fatty foods! I can eat fatty foods without becoming addicted. My pizza consumption doesn't hurt anyone but me. The same cannot be said of porn.

And porn is not a self-existing principle. Perhaps "create" wasn't the right word to use. Porn users encourage, promote, and expand the porn industry. They don't create it.