Thaddeus Howze insists that our Puritanical zeal has created a society that is obsessed with sex while still shaming people about it.
–
As much as our society wants to complain about pornography and its affect on the minds of its members, there is no one to blame but our social mores and screwed up psychological delusions for the very existence of the so-called scourge of pornography.
The simple fact is pornography exists because society has demonized sex and taken power from women for millennia. The Puritanical zeal with which many Western cultures make sex something to be avoided rather than embraced as a natural part of the process of living beings is the major disconnect around sex.
Some of Western civilization has a crazed resistance to teaching our children, in a healthy manner, about the nature of sexual relationships and the inevitability of sex in those societies. They refuse to teach sex in schools, the biology of it, the necessity of protection, the nature of and psychological consequences of attraction, mythologize relationships and due to delusional programs such as abstinence-only sex education, fail to teach the consequences of unprotected sex at the ages when our children become sexual active, whether we like it or not.
Western society has also turned physical attractiveness, sensuality and sex into a commodity, something that can be bought and sold and used to buy and sell goods through advertising. Yet in the same breath, we have everyone hungering for any sexual experience they can find because marketing moguls understand the value of using sexual imagery to sell products.
We have criminalized sexual relations between consenting adults, whether that be for money, LGBT or in kink-related social groups, there are still states where laws prevent such relationships. (To be clear, I am not condoning sexual slavery or sex with minors.) Sex between consenting adults should have no legal constraints as long as there is no coercion involved.
Pornography, the display of sexual images, people engaging in sex, in all of its real and imagined possibilities is simply one more means of making money from the manufactured anxieties, repressed needs, fears and lusts of a society inundated with unrequited sexuality.
|
The West, (but I can include most societies in general) have cognitive dissonance around the double standards of sex. It’s good for men to have as many sexual “conquests” as possible while every woman should remain “virgin” and untainted for as long as possible. Who exactly are those men conquering?
Pornography, the display of sexual images, people engaging in sex, in all of its real and imagined possibilities is simply one more means of making money from the manufactured anxieties, repressed needs, fears and lusts of a society inundated with unrequited sexuality.
Pornography could also be considered as the disenfranchisement of women’s sexuality in comparison to men’s relative freedom to negatively express themselves sexually whether overtly or covertly in regards to women in society.
If the goal was to rid ourselves of pornography, we need a healthier attitude, in almost all cultures, toward women.
As long as women are unable to earn as much money as men, have as much power in society as men, able to raise families without discrimination, be able to choose how they want to, whether they want to, relate to men in sexual relationships there will be discontinuities in sexual representations of women and by proxy of men in media. As long as we promote rape-culture, pornography will exist.
Even when women feel empowered by the sexual freedom of such an industry, pornography is still a symptom of a society yearning to be more free sexually than it is.
♦◊♦
Should pornography exist?
Probably not. If we were more enlightened about sexual interactions, if people were better informed, if our children were more sexual aware of their changing bodies and given proper, useful information, free of religious manipulations and incorrect mythology promoted by other inexperienced youth, this might correct the imbalances which lead to prostitution, exploitation of women, rape and the continued existence and growth of the pornographic industry.
If we were truly enlightened and understood the nature of media and how it affects the minds of society’s members we would realize sexual stimulation without approved social releases creates a need that can be exploited by unscrupulous individuals; some pornography is surely of that caliber.
Pornography’s existence is part of the nature of the uneven power relationships between men and women, the social delusions of religious control over the bodies and minds of society which create the need for pornography in the first place.
Pornography is a symptom of a greater societal problem. One that isn’t being addressed and isn’t likely to be in the near future. There is simply too much money in it. In society, profit matters more than people, psychology, well-being, cultural significance or even humanity.
And that is the shame of pornography. It exists because someone gets paid to maintain the environment in which it thrives.
—-
Photo: Flickr Markos Cosimi Cannata
I completely agreed with this article until the center point became pornography. If we’re talking about something distinct from erotica, well it’s a very open debate on what constitutes what. It sounds like on the one hand you’re vilifying pornography, associating it with the oppression of women and the degradation of human sexual expression. On the other hand, if I’m reading this correctly the problem with porn is that there aren’t more ‘approved social releases’, thus creating the seedy backdrop of the porn industry. If it was truly in the public domain, it wouldn’t be as bad. There’s tension between… Read more »
I think I can safely say the Puritans were hung up over sex and much of that mindset still permeates this country three hundred years after their arrival here. The more extreme hangups of the Victorian Age only added to the psychological baggage coming into the last century. There are still plenty of ancient cultures that were open minded about sex and sexual expression but in our modern age, as you have noted, this has changed and not for the better. It would appear rape-culture is not something unique to America as we are seeing rape and abuse used as… Read more »
Technically, this isn’t about “Western civilization” but about some modern-day varieties of Western culture, mostly 200 years old. Look at “Western” societies 1000 years ago or 500 years ago and you’ll see societies that were pretty blunt and matter-of-fact about sex. They had hang-ups about sex, but they were probably healthier than most 21st century Americans. It’s a whole lot harder to be repressed about sex when you grow up on a farm, raising farm animals, in a large family all living in a one-room house wihout any privacy. Pre-modern peasants are generally straightforward about sex. Don’t put this on… Read more »