Pornography
How has the anti-porn movement progressed?
- Catherine MacKinnon & Andrea Dworkin - Pornography is violence against women - Women are portrayed as objects for male pleasure - Women are coerced into porn - Stop porn culture: Gail Dines
How is middle ground achieved in the porn movement?
- Cindy Gallop: Make Love, Not Porn - Pro-sex, pro porn, pro knowing the difference - Argues that if porn is the primary form of sex education, that people need to know it isn't real sex - Started makelovenotporn.tv - Real people talk about sex (Vice)
What are the reported effects of SEM?
- Erectile dysfunction - Relationship problems - Relationship enhancement - Education - Erotica linked with less sexist attitudes and more liberal sexual attitudes - Violence against women/rape
What are the obscenity laws in Canada?
- Everyone commits an offense who.. (a) Makes prints, publishes, distributes, circulates, or has in possession for the purpose of publication, distribution or circulation any obscene written matter, picture, model, phonograph record (b) For the purposes of this Act, any publication a dominant characteristics of which is the undue exploitation of sex or sex and any one or more of the following subjects, namely crime, horror, cruelty and violence shall be deemed obscene - Community standard of tolerance test should be applied to determine if it is obscene
What stance do feminists take on porn?
- From "A Women's Right to Pornography" (McElroy, 1995) - Accusations against feminism and porn: corrupts the sanctity of the family - Both call traditional assumptions and assumptions about sexuality into question - Feminists split over sexuality: "off our backs" vs. "on our backs" books
What is pornography addiction?
- Highly debated concept - Very limited research to back up claims - Claims that causes erectile dysfunction - NoFap movement: abstain from porn and masturbation - Claims that it rewires the brain (but everything rewires the brain) - Releases too much dopamine - Claims that pornography is permanently altering adolescent brains
What are romance novels?
- Often contain sexual scenes - Sales of over 1.3 billion per year - Wendell and Tan: Beyond Heaving Bosoms: The Smart Bitches Guide to Romance Novels - Magic Hoo Hoo (can save the "bad boy") - The hero - Irresistible heroine/rape
What are the arguments against porn addiction?
- One size doesn't fit all - Masks the true cause of the problem and interferes with the treatment - No clear definition of addiction - Little evidence in support of addiction model - Diverse causes provide better explanatory power and better treatments
What is the end goal of erotica and porn?
- Sexual arousal - Men rate porn that degrades women as more acceptable than women do - Women report that women-centered films are more arousing - Both sexes like a bit of romance thrown in
What neuro studies have been done on animals?
- Sexual behaviour alters dopamine in rats - Adolescent rats are more sensitive to reward and punishment than adult rats - Rats who develop compulsive behaviour have altered dopamine reward systems - Enriched environments can mitigate the effects of cocaine in rats - We don't know how this translates to porn
Does porn cause rape?
- Some link between those who like porn (violent) and negative attitudes towards women (correlation problem) - Experimental links between violent porn and aggression towards women in some studies - People predisposed towards sexual assault show most negative effects of porn - No evidence that non-violent porn is related to violence against women or negative attitudes towards women - Some evidence that internet porn usage is related to decreased incidence of rape - Videos of non-sexual violence against women lead to more anti-women attitudes than violent porn - Consumption of violent porn is rare
What is pornography?
- Textual, visual and audial material that promotes or creates sexual arousal and presents sexuality on an unequal, unbalanced, violent or degrading manner - Any sexually explicit work deemed obscene according to legal criteria and therefore exempt from freedom of speech protections
What is erotica?
- Textual, visual and audial material that promotes or creates sexual arousal and shows enjoyment of sexuality in an equal, balanced matter - Sexual sharing vs. sexual using
What are the obscenity laws in the USA?
- The work depicts or describes, in a patently offensive way, sexual conduct specifically defined by the applicable state law - The work lacks serious literary, artistic, political or scientific value - Whether an average person, applying contemporary community standards, would find that work appeals to a prurient interest in sex
How did the Regina vs. Butler describe the illegal aspects of obscenity?
- Two categories of obscenity that have been made illegal: 1. Material that mixes sex with violence and or includes children 2. Material that involves sex and degradation
How has the pro-porn movement progressed?
- Women's sexuality and enjoyment of erotic material should not be silenced - Violet Blue: "Our Porn, Ourselves" - Sex positive and focused on the fact that women can make and enjoy pornographic material - Ignores the reality of the degradation that does occur in the mainstream porn industry
What are the most searched types of porn?
- Youth (13.5%) - Gay (4.7%) - MILFS (4.3%) - Breasts (4.0%) - Cheating wives (3.4%) - Vaginas (2.8%)
What neuro studies have been done on humans?
- fMRI studies show that brain responds similarly to still and video pornographic images - fMRI study found pleasurable stimuli activates similar reward structures in the brain - EEG study found desire predicted P300 spike, but self-identified hypersexuality did not
What occurred in the Little Sisters Bookstore legal case?
- An LGBT bookstore and art emporium - Took Customs Canada to court over censorship and seizure of their shipments - GLBT and kink porn is unfairly discriminated against