Howdy, Stranger!
It looks like you're new here. If you want to get involved, click one of these buttons!
Quick Links
Porn Isn't Normal.
RetroMonster
Member Posts: 288
The Washington Times editorializes about the "virulent cancer" that is destroying our economy. Toxic bank assets? Nope--Internet porn. (HT: The Agitator)
The Times supports Senator Chuck Grassley in calling for a "national conversation" about employees watching porn on their computers at work. Of course, we know what these "conversations" turn into when kicked off by politicians--witness the circus of Congressional hearings around the issue of Major League Baseball and steroids.
I've blogged about attempts to regulate the Internet before, because I think that keeping this "last frontier" safe from regulation is very importnat for the interests of the entrepreneurial community. So what about this claim that workplace internet porn is draining productivity and wasting wages?
Let's look at the only evidence the Times uses to back up this claim:
As ranking member of the Committee on Finance, Sen. Grassley has sent a letter to the National Science Foundation asking for more information on employees viewing pornography on company time. He cited the most recent NSF Semiannual Report that referred to a systemic problem in which government computers were being used to view sexually explicit material.
One employee spent 20 percent of his work time viewing pornography - a cost of $58,000 in compensation he received for work he was not doing. Sen. Grassley is calling for a complete account of the use of the NSF drive by its employees. This, he rightly says, is an essential component of his oversight responsibilities - especially since the NSF relies on public funds for scientific and engineering research. Certainly Americans do not want their tax dollars being used to pay employees for indulging their sexual fantasies.
That last sentence is certainly correct. But a problem with Internet porn in the government bureaucracy hardly means there is a national crisis at work. Wasting money happens in bureaucracies with or without Internet porn. For just one recent example, recall the story about the New York State Insurance Fund employee who has been paid as much as $93,803 to do literally nothing.
Are there any actual empirical studies out there about how much internet porn costs the private sector in productivity?
Comments
Coffee, tea, or porn? "I don't think so," say American Airline flight attendants.
Leaders of the Association of Professional Flight Attendants, which represents some 19,000 workers including American Airlines flight attendants, asked American Airline's management this week to consider adding filters to its in-flight Wi-Fi access to prevent passengers from viewing porn and other inappropriate Web sites while in-flight.
A union representative told Bloomberg News that attendants and passengers have raised "a lot of complaints" over the issue.
(Credit: American Airlines)
American Airlines is one of several airlines testing in-flight Internet access as a way to lure more passengers. American has been offering the service on a limited basis since August 20th on some flights between New York, Los Angeles, and San Francisco, and between New York and Miami. The cost of the service on cross-country flights is $12.95, and it's $9.95 on the New York to Miami route.
The current program is in a 3- to 6-month trial period, and the airline plans to review usage and feedback on the service at the end of that period, an American Airlines spokesman told Bloomberg.
The controversy has stirred up an ongoing debate about whether Internet access in public places should be restricted. Earlier this year, the Denver International Airport took a lot flack for blocking access on its free Wi-Fi network to Web sites that officials deemed offensive.
The argument was made by Denver airport officials that users must abide by their rules because they are providing the service for free. But that case is harder to make for in-flight passengers, who are paying for Internet access.
Given that people are packed onto planes literally elbow to elbow, it's often hard not to at least glance at the laptop screen of the person sitting next to you. But airlines have not banned people from reading pornographic magazines or watching their own DVDs on flights. And it's just as easy for someone to view a DVD of an adult video on a laptop or flip through Hustler as it is to surf porn Web sites.
The truth is that it hasn't been a major problem on flights thus far. In fact, American Airline's spokesman Tim Smith told Bloomberg that the "vast majority" of customers already use good judgment in what's appropriate to look at while flying versus what's not.
And he added, "Customers viewing inappropriate material on board a flight is not a new scenario for our crews, who have always managed this issue with great success."
What do you think? Should airlines filter Internet access at 20,000 feet? Or should they just stay out of the censoring debate?
"God's joke on marriage, Bill, is that while women go for romance, men go for porn. Now that the kinkiest stuff is available on the Internet, is it any wonder divorce rates are shooting up?"
BILL: When I got the above e-mail, I turned to Robert Weiss, director of the Sexual Recovery Institute in Los Angeles. "Forty million Americans watch porn a year," Rob told me, "making Internet porn the crack cocaine of sex addiction. If sugar or food is what women reach for, Internet porn is often the guy's choice, and it has reached epidemic portions."
DR. DAVE: Utne magazine reports, "At the 2003 meeting of the American Academy of Matrimonial Lawyers, some two-thirds of attending lawyers said the Internet played a significant role in divorces that year, pointing a finger at online pornography."
BILL: Who would know better than someone in the sex trade if porn is essentially a male addiction? So I spoke to Tracy Quan, author of "Diary of a Manhattan Call Girl."
"When I was a kid," she told me, "I looked at X-rated stuff whenever I could. Even if we are not turned on by it, we wonder what the guys are looking at. Don't forget - porn is also a window into male secret fantasies."
Dave, women have sex fantasies too. Why are they not as turned on by porn?
DR. DAVE: Let's start with what I tell my graduate class on human sexuality: "Individual differences are the norm to sexual behavior" - a quote I actually lifted from Dr. Ruth Westheimer's textbook.
BILL: I hope you have something better for our readers than an 80-year-old talk show guru's observation that some women are interested, yes; other women no.
DR. DAVE: Not what I was saying at all. Just this week, researchers at the University of Texas found that women who have higher levels of a certain estrogen hormone are likely to look for sex outside their marriages. Women with this "Marilyn Monroe hormone" are more likely to be unfaithful ...
BILL: And more interested in porn, too?
DR. DAVE: We know that men masturbate more and have more orgasms than women. Porn, by its very definition, is designed to stimulate fantasy and create sexual excitement. That's why it so strongly appeals to men.
BILL: One thing that goes wrong between the sexes is that male sexuality starts in the eye and immediately rushes to the testosterone with the speed of light, completely by-passing the heart and the brain. Ideally in real life, the process goes on to the bedroom, with love itself entering somewhere along the way. But with porn, emotions never progress past that first stage.
You can’t quite put your finger on it, but your relationship feels troubled. In fact, things have become increasingly stressful and you’re constantly fielding unresolved relationship problems… but you don’t know why.You are starting to feel confused and distressed.
Could it be that your partner has a pornography problem?
What constitutes a porn addiction or compulsion is a hotly contested issue, which is why its symptoms are rarely discussed.
This lack of discourse has come at a hefty price. Many people who have been victimized by their partner’s porn problem wish that they had “seen the signs.” They wish they had known what indicates an active habit and an actual problem. They wish they had been able to solve the puzzle before their lives fell apart. And they probably could have. So now we are going to discuss the warning signs.
Many people are completely in the dark that their partner likes porn, much less has a serious relationship with it. Ignorant as to any issue, they trust their lover unconditionally. They assume their partner understands that using porn, at least beyond a magazine like Playboy, is the equivalent of having an actual affair. This ignorance, combined with the great lengths to which a porn enthusiast will go to hide erotica, can leave a partner in the dark for months or even years.
The question of pornography—and its intrusion into mainstream American culture— has been front and center this week.
There was country music singer Sara Evans withdrawing from ABC’s “Dancing with the Stars” because of her failing marriage; she alleges that her husband has a pornography problem (an accusation he denies, saying they watched “adult films” together as a couple).
On CNN, Glen Beck featured the problem of pornography in a series “Porn: American’s Addiction,” and the self-described “religious, family values conservative” made this admission:
“It takes every ounce of willpower I have as a guy not to give into the constant stream of porn that you come into contact with every single day! It is a struggle for me. And I don`t know if it is for you. You`ve got it mastered. I don`t. Porn is a very powerful, seductive and, as you will see, a very lucrative business.”
There are signs that the “mainstreaming of pornography,” a trend documented in Pamela Paul’s Pornified: How Pornography is Transforming Our Lives, Our Relationships and Our Families is gathering momentum. More proof? Look no further than a recent Forbes.com piece on “Mad. Ave goes (Soft) Porn” or the recent (much e-mailed) New York Times article on the sexualization of the Halloween costumes women and girls are wearing (outfits described as more suitable for strip clubs than for trick-or-treating…)
Porn attracts—some observers estimate that it accounts for some 25% of Web searches—and it sells, witness the multi-billion dollar industry revolving around it. (Because of its subject matter, this brief essay will most likely reach many more Web readers than anything I might offer on literature, politics, journalism, sports or more mundane topics.)
The porn problem is attracting the attention of both social conservatives and feminists. One disturbing cover story in New York magazine by Naomi Wolf, “The Porn Myth,” (with a sub headline: “In the end, porn doesn’t whet men’s appetites—it turns them off the real thing”) particularly caught my eye. Wolf, a 21st century “Sex in the City” feminist, has a simple argument to make: “The onslaught of porn is responsible for deadening male libido in relation to real women, and leading men to see fewer and fewer women as ‘porn-worthy.’”
Before considering Wolf’s viewpoint, some definitions are in order. She is talking about pornography post-Larry Flynt—that is to say, the hard-core variety, not the Hugh Hefner “girl-next-door” Playboy pin-ups of yesteryear. Wolf notes the pornification of the mainstream, citing the predictions of Andrea Dworkin, the anti-porn feminist activist:
“… pornography did breach the dike that separated a marginal, adult, private pursuit from the mainstream public arena. The whole world, post-Internet, did become pornographized. Young men and women are indeed being taught what sex is, how it looks, what its etiquette and expectations are, by pornographic training—and this is having a huge effect on how they interact.”
But, Wolf argues, Dworkin’s fear that men “would come to objectify women as they objectified porn stars, and treat them accordingly” and resort to “rape and other kinds of sexual mayhem” has not materialized. Instead, Wolf writes: “Far from having to fend off porn-crazed young men, young women are worrying that as mere flesh and blood, they can scarcely get, let alone hold, their attention.” Wolf offers a grim view of the psychic impact of porn on the young:
“The young women who talk to me on campuses about the effect of pornography on their intimate lives speak of feeling that they can never measure up, that they can never ask for what they want; and that if they do not offer what porn offers, they cannot expect to hold a guy. The young men talk about what it is like to grow up learning about sex from porn, and how it is not helpful to them in trying to figure out how to be with a real woman.”
“Mostly, when I ask about loneliness, a deep, sad silence descends on audiences of young men and young women alike. They know they are lonely together, even when conjoined, and that this imagery is a big part of that loneliness. What they don’t know is how to get out, how to find each other again erotically, face-to-face.”
This concern—that pornography can damage in many different ways—isn’t limited to the young. A growing anti-porn movement in the fundamentalist Christian churches targets men, including pastors, who have been drawn to pornography.
As a First Amendment advocate I can’t support those who wish to criminalize or ban pornography (just try defining it, and you’ll see the first problem with suppression). But I also think that the libertarian position on porn ignores the costs to society and to individuals. There are some legal responses that make sense: Laws that target child pornographers for their abuse of those photographed or filmed, for example, focus on illegal actions and not on expression.
You don’t have to be a social conservative (like Beck), or a feminist (like Wolf), or religious, to recognize something has gone very wrong. When growing numbers of men prefer fantasy to reality, to interact with cyberporn females instead of real women, there’s a sad distortion occuring of one of our most elemental of drives.
What to do? The first step is to recognize that there is a problem, that the incursion of “raunch culture” into the mainstream has negative effects. There is nothing cute about pornified Halloween costumes; pole-dancing contests for college women aren’t “sexy” but sordid.
Pamela Paul has it right when she argues that we should stigmatize porn, that it should be made socially unacceptable. Her approach—”censure, not censor”—preserves free expression while making it clear that rejecting pornography—voluntarily—or keeping it in adults-only spaces, says something about what we value as a society.
I removed my post sorry I took the spam bait.
How come you separated your post into four different ones? Are you seriously that concerned about getting stars?
Your argument is like a two legged dog with an eating disorder...weak and unbalanced.
LOL I thought it was some kind of obsessive compulsive thing .. almost made me not respond. But porn topic .. of course I couldn;t resist lol
I told my gf about my porn within the first few weeks of dating and that she or any other woman would go before it did and she was OK with that. Just got done backing up my collection to a 1TB external drive. I really like porn, especially not having to pay for it.
Hope you got your things together. Hope you are quite prepared to die. Looks like we're in for nasty weather. ... There's a bad moon on the rise.
This new guy happens to be a 13 year old kid. I wouldn't be too quick to share your slumber party secrets.
Edit: I'll remove the quote then as well since it was your post.
So your a girl. Don't worry about it, my mom does it too. Your still cool, just don't watch porn and we'll be fine. Your the coolest user online
So your a girl. Don't worry about it, my mom does it too. Your still cool, just don't watch porn and we'll be fine. Your the coolest user online
Ummm...OK.
Look kid, your not old enough to buy porn so you really should not have an opinion on it yet... wait a few years grow up a bit and let you develop your opinion natually. You certainly do not have the right to request or demand that anyone else not watch it, it is their life their perogative and it is not your place to deem yourself king turd on poo hill. Live and let live. you aren;t even the boss of yourself yet, so you obviously cannot be the boss of anyone else.
So your a girl. Don't worry about it, my mom does it too. Your still cool, just don't watch porn and we'll be fine. Your the coolest user online
Look kid, your not old enough to buy porn so you really should not have an opinion on it yet... wait a few years grow up a bit and let you develop your opinion natually. You certainly do not have the right to request or demand that anyone else not watch it, it is their life their perogative and it is not your place to deem yourself king turd on poo hill. Live and let live. you aren;t even the boss of yourself yet, so you obviously cannot be the boss of anyone else.
I personally don't care for it....but hey...if it trips your trigger...pull it. Some guys and girls like the stuff, for me it really doesn't do anything for me...I may show my birthday suit...but to me it is just a job.
deviliscious removed this post on 3/03/09 because the OP gives me the creeps.
So your a girl. Don't worry about it, my mom does it too. Your still cool, just don't watch porn and we'll be fine. Your the coolest user online
Look kid, your not old enough to buy porn so you really should not have an opinion on it yet... wait a few years grow up a bit and let you develop your opinion natually. You certainly do not have the right to request or demand that anyone else not watch it, it is their life their perogative and it is not your place to deem yourself king turd on poo hill. Live and let live. you aren;t even the boss of yourself yet, so you obviously cannot be the boss of anyone else.
I personally don't care for it....but hey...if it trips your trigger...pull it. Some guys and girls like the stuff, for me it really doesn't do anything for me...I may show my birthday suit...but to me it is just a job.
LoL.
I want to commit scuicide before my dad comes to watch your show. He's gonna get in trouble with my ma though. He's gonna say "You should've been there. It was awesome" Like he always does.
So your a girl. Don't worry about it, my mom does it too. Your still cool, just don't watch porn and we'll be fine. Your the coolest user online
Look kid, your not old enough to buy porn so you really should not have an opinion on it yet... wait a few years grow up a bit and let you develop your opinion natually. You certainly do not have the right to request or demand that anyone else not watch it, it is their life their perogative and it is not your place to deem yourself king turd on poo hill. Live and let live. you aren;t even the boss of yourself yet, so you obviously cannot be the boss of anyone else.
I personally don't care for it....but hey...if it trips your trigger...pull it. Some guys and girls like the stuff, for me it really doesn't do anything for me...I may show my birthday suit...but to me it is just a job.
Not even your own "home movies?" lol home movies are the best
I am sorry Retro .. I just don;t think I can talk to you .. you are kinda creeping me out. I don;t usually block people but yea I think I should. Tried giving you the benefit of the doubt ... but the multiple posts, antiporn ma a stripper dad wants to watch thing ... um okay... kids these days ... not buyin it lol... I call BS,
So your a girl. Don't worry about it, my mom does it too. Your still cool, just don't watch porn and we'll be fine. Your the coolest user online
Look kid, your not old enough to buy porn so you really should not have an opinion on it yet... wait a few years grow up a bit and let you develop your opinion natually. You certainly do not have the right to request or demand that anyone else not watch it, it is their life their perogative and it is not your place to deem yourself king turd on poo hill. Live and let live. you aren;t even the boss of yourself yet, so you obviously cannot be the boss of anyone else.
I personally don't care for it....but hey...if it trips your trigger...pull it. Some guys and girls like the stuff, for me it really doesn't do anything for me...I may show my birthday suit...but to me it is just a job.
Not even your own "home movies?" lol home movies are the best
Nobody really. My dad just wants to see you dance.
Anyways yeah lets just say this never happend, LOL.
Anyway ima go 2 bed because it's almost midnight here but when I wake up I'll bump it.
cya.
-removed-
So your a girl. Don't worry about it, my mom does it too. Your still cool, just don't watch porn and we'll be fine. Your the coolest user online
Look kid, your not old enough to buy porn so you really should not have an opinion on it yet... wait a few years grow up a bit and let you develop your opinion natually. You certainly do not have the right to request or demand that anyone else not watch it, it is their life their perogative and it is not your place to deem yourself king turd on poo hill. Live and let live. you aren;t even the boss of yourself yet, so you obviously cannot be the boss of anyone else.
I personally don't care for it....but hey...if it trips your trigger...pull it. Some guys and girls like the stuff, for me it really doesn't do anything for me...I may show my birthday suit...but to me it is just a job.
Not even your own "home movies?" lol home movies are the best
LOL! no one .. I was just assuming you were "normal"
You know we all have those things! LMAO
OK...cool. LOL! OMG!
I think this thread just needs to vanish...what do you all think?
Not before I get a chance to see these movies you ladies are talking about
agreed. Though you may give him the benefit of the doubt I am getting serious bad vibes off this kid... That RARELY happens. I never /iggy anyone ever. I am removing many of my posts on it.
agreed. Though you may give him the benefit of the doubt I am getting serious bad vibes off this kid... That RARELY happens. I never /iggy anyone ever. I am removing many of my posts on it.
Awesome ideal.
agreed. Though you may give him the benefit of the doubt I am getting serious bad vibes off this kid... That RARELY happens. I never /iggy anyone ever. I am removing many of my posts on it.
Awesome ideal.
Hey Teala .. get the "quotes too!" lol Where is that mop and bucket when you need it?