Besides the intro blog this will be my very first blog ever. During this course I will more than likely seem very contradictory when expressing my opinions through blogging. This is not because I cannot decide which side to take on pornography concerning different issues, it is because I look at both sides of the argument that I may be viewing and decide, which is more interesting to write about rather than which one I favor or agree with.
After reading the first chapter in the text I realized how much pornography and sex alone are part of our everyday lives whether we consciously know it or not. The article by Jonathan Coopersmith shows how society has changed as a result of pornography. VCRs became so popular as a result of porn for it helped to deter the costs of production of adult videos as well as the cost for viewing them. Now lovers of porn could watch it in the privacy of their own home and not in some skuzzy, shady theatre that no matter how many times the floors were mopped will never appear to be clean. VRCs gave rise to DVDs, which are a necessity to our everyday lives in the present time. So one could say that we have DVD players partially as a result to the popularity of porn.
One cannot doubt that pornography is one of the most popular pastimes of the present day American. Whether Americans are willing to admit this is another story. Coppersmith states that on the first day of the Penthouse website there were 802,000 hits and that the revenue for online pornography in 1998 was $750 million to $1 billion. These two statistics alone can say how popular pornography has been. What gets me is that so many people put a social stigma on porn. Humans were put on this earth to reproduce and the only natural way of this occurring is sex. Of course many people would like to keep sex inside closed doors and only share it with the person they are engaging in sex with, but humans have primal instincts for sex. Sex hormones are ranging and seeping throughout the body from the time of puberty to who knows when? Every person at least one time in their life has had some kind of sexual fantasy and pornography is just one of those fantasies brought to life.
It makes me angry when people say that porn is degrading to women and that it takes away from the integrity and meaning of sex. Sex is sex and there is no way around it. Sex is defined by each individual like many things in life and people are entitled to their opinions, but it makes no sense to point fingers and say that porn is degrading. It is part of our society that will not seem to be going away anytime soon. It is just another one of those things in our country like high gas prices, George Bush, and taxes that do not always settle right in our stomachs. There is no way to beat these things so why not just live with it and stop trying to fight it. Porn is something that Americans like so we should just accept it and move on.
January 25, 2006 at 4:25 am
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