Photo: JJ and Special K
Note: This photo is the opposite of what I am talking about here…
I’ve been wondering about the value of porn lately, especially after finding out about RedTube.com, which I am not going to link to here, because it is so very, very NSFW, and I don’t want to be responsible for any headlines in someone’s local paper.
Anyway, I was looking at that site, which is like a porno YouTube, and I realized that I could create my very own adult site just by typing in a fetish and then embedding the videos that come up with their convenient embedding code. There are thousands of videos on there, and they are all completely free to look at. Some of them are 20 minutes long. No, I did not look at ALL of them. And no, I will not be creating my own adult site. Just in case you’re wondering.
So porn is free to look at and free to share. What does this mean for the people making the porn sites? Less money? I would think so. Who would pay for “new pics” and video when this is available?
What does it mean for the actors in the videos? I’m quite sure they get paid little to nothing. Which leads me to the question of WHY THE HELL WOULD ANYONE IN THEIR RIGHT MIND put their nibbles and bits (and their face) on the internet for everyone to see? I mean, talk about a career killer. Also, personally, I would really hate to be in the local grocery store and find out that people were talking about how I style my pubic hair. People think that the Internet is totally anonymous, but it doesn’t always turn out that way, does it?
I think we can agree that porn itself has become devalued. By my logic, this means that participating in porn devalues people more than it did before. At least before, you could rationalize that people did it for the money. If someone is doing it for free, they are either doing it for the kicks (and those are some mighty risky thrills there) or they don’t care who sees them doing what with who. This bugs me. Don’t the thrill seekers realize that this is a little more high stakes than the Mile High Club?
Of course, if the person’s face is not showing, it is not as risky. If you look at who’s face shows, it is more often than not the woman’s. Why is this? What does it say about the respect that woman has for herself?
Of course, the really big issue I have with this new era of online porn is that it is so darn accessible. I wish online communities would police themselves better. Even requiring a credit card charge of one cent would keep out lots of underage folks.
Photo: Paulo Fehlauer
I have a story that I am ashamed to tell.
My computer is located in the family room, and my nine year old is always supervised on it. He is only allowed to go to specific sites that have been preapproved. Anyway, one morning, he woke me up and asked if he could play on the computer. I mumbled “yes” and turned over and went back to sleep for an hour.
The next week, I realized that the Google search bar had been used to search for “naked girls”. My son was eight at the time. Believe me, naked girls aren’t what they used to be. I was appalled, and I wanted to hit myself upside the head for letting him on it for even a moment unsupervised. I hadn’t thought that at age eight, I needed to worry about my son being curious about these things. Even worse, it turns out that a friend of his had told him how to find the pictures.
Net nanny software is not a cure-all, and it is fantasy to think that most children are supervised on the computer. They aren’t. I can say that my child won’t be unsupervised again, but that’s not the point. What do we do about kid’s ideas about sex becoming warped at such a young age? Personally, I want the government out of my computer, but it certainly doesn’t seem like self-policing on the part of parents or Internet porn sites is taking place. So what to do? It’s a problem I don’t see going away.
I hate that some of my students, who have problems seeing the beauty that the future could hold for them, may be the people in free porn videos someday.
I dunno. This one has me stumped.
A new group of internet celebrities is about to be born, I guess? I wonder if these things would go viral and people start monetizing?
Kelvin Kao’s last blog post..Rhinocerhorse: The Story of The Last Unicorn
To be honest, pr0n has always been one of those issues I’ve been torn about. I think consenting adults should have the right to do what they please in the confines of their private space - even if that means they’re exchanging sexual services or filming porn.
What gets me are the negative effects on women and the unrealistic sexual perspectives people get from pr0n. Throw in there the high right of substance abuse amongst female actors and it gets even worse.
But the era of the internet has introduced the distribution problem. It’s far easier to get your hands on pr0n, and a lot of it, than when we were kids. It wasn’t that hard to get it then, but distribution was limited - little Johnny had to give up his folded pic, you know. It’s not like he can keep his and tell you where to get it, for free.
For every rule or system the gov’t puts in place, someone will figure out how to slide around it. And my real suspicion is that the reason the pr0n sites don’t use credit card verification is that men (mostly) want to look without having the paper trail back to them. “Honey, why do we have a lot of .01 charges on our credit card statement to Busty Friends”
Which is just a long winded way to say I’m stuck, too. If we weren’t so sexually oppressed, this wouldn’t be that big of an issue - the rest of the world doesn’t have near the fetish and problem as we do.
Nice food for thought post, Michelle.
Charlie Gilkey | Productive Flourishing’s last blog post..What Makes an Act Courageous?
Why are we to do, that seems to be the perpetual question in America. Its a muddy line, I think. We can say how porn has devalued overtime, but our society allowed it to do so. We can’t point the finger there. I’m with Charles on this one - if we weren’t all a gaggle of prudes then we might be able to have a healthy porn industry and it wouldn’t scar our children if they came across it at age 8. Who knows!
Also - I have to say I definitely don’t want any porn charges on my credit card! I’m not married and I’m a woman. But for some reason it just seems seedy.
Which takes us back to square one, doesn’t it?
Good Post!
Evolving’s last blog post..Desk Time
@ Kelvin: I just don’t see how people can really monetize it well at this point since the market is so oversaturated.
@Charlie: You are so right about how easy it is to get. I remember my friend and I finding a page from a magazine when I was 11 or 12. We were just fascinated. But, that was it. There was no looking at zillions of sex acts and getting what would turn out to be a pretty unrealistic idea about sex. Women aren’t the only ones who suffer from the unrealistic perceptions, though. If I were a guy, after seeing this stuff, I’d probably feel inadequate, physically speaking!
@Evolving: Yeah, I can see the credit card problem. Especially in this day of so little privacy. So how do you define a healthy porn industry? Like it was 30 years ago? Personally, I long for the days when Penthouse was probably the most explicit thing your child would see.
I couldn’t agree more. The problem is just like you said, it is too accessible. This continues to plague parents everywhere. Access to porn is just the beginning, what about the predators that are hunting areas like Myspace and Facebook. I won’t get on my soapbox here but I think that the proliferation of porn in our society is a symptom of a bigger problem.
BigPappa’s last blog post..“What I Found In My Email” Mondays. Vol.2 - Issue 19
I tend to think that porn is only a taboo or controversial subject if you make it that.
If you try to raise kids in an open way - to think of sex and sexuality as a part of a normal existence, they won’t have the hangups that so many generations have had.
Jonathan’s last blog post..A Beginning of Sorts
I agree and am also annoyed that porn sites aren’t policed more. Some people will say that the website owners aren’t breaking any law where they are from by making websites like this regardless if little Johnny is from the same state/country or not.
But if you try and solicit a person for sex and the servers used by your ISP are across state lines, you are a felon automatically.
Why not have a law that requires people making adult related websites accessible only in that region if laws allow it in the first place? That way any young person that goes to Google won’t be able to access it.
Did you ever type in “pluto” without safesearch “on” at google? It doesn’t matter if you want to find nudes or not, it’s isn’t that hard.
Who knows, that’s my ramble, but I agree that it’s out of control.
Sukosaki’s last blog post..Do Classified Ads Work for Affiliate Marketing?
Wow. It’s porn. Why do you care so much about people having sex? And why do you assume everyone is as uptight as you about sex and pubic hair? Has it ever occurred to you that confidence in one’s sexuality is not a problem? Or that maybe if your eight year old had grown up seeing normal naked people instead of crazy repressed people he wouldn’t be googling for naked girls like they’re some kind of exotic animal?
Tara’s last blog post..John Nomads is on You Tube
@Tara: Sounds like I hit a nerve.
@Big Pappa: When I go to the library, I see my students on MySpace. There don’t seem to be many filters! It’s definitely a concern.
@Jonathon: I don’t worry about it until it starts becoming something that dehumanizes people. I don’t want kiddos seeing people tied up and beaten, yanno?
@Sukosaki: I haven’t tried Pluto, but I once typed in “granny squares” for a crochet project I was doing, and Whoa! You make a good point. There are things being policed that don’t need to be, and vice versa.
Sounds like you don’t have answers.
Tara’s last blog post..John Nomads is on You Tube
@Tara: Oh, I definitely don’t have answers. I wish I did. And if I did, I doubt they’d be ones you’d want to hear. We’re coming from different perspectives on this one.
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I supervise my child while on the computer too. You can do like you do, which is install software or you can try blocking out certain sites with specific words or exact domain names. I haven’t done it yet, but if you have a network set up, I know my routers interface browser can be configured to do this
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