Is porn good for us?

[polynices]

Here's an article from the online science journal, 'The Scientist', presenting evidence that porn may have a positive influence on society:

http://www.the-scientist.com/article/display/57169/;jsessionid=7EEED0282E60DF619A1E569C6E164FC5

- polynices

 

[LaRocha]

When I was a twelve-year-old porn meant sneaking a look at a naked lady in someone's dad's playboy. Some dads had tapes, but that wasn't really possible to get a peek at because moms looked in to see what we were up to too much.

Now you're sort of behind the curve if you're a twelve-year-old boy and haven't seen some of the most graphic hardcore perpetuated and streamed on demand, virtually untraceable if you know how to clear your history. I coached little league baseball for a couple years, these kids talk about porn and masturbation and have next to no filter around adults that aren't their parents.

Porn is a healthy adult experience if it doesn't run someone's life. Porn just isn't a good experience for your child. Most people don't bother with the Internet filters, and if we had enough time to sneak detailed looks at playboys there's plenty of time to stream that three minute clip of some chick going ATM and vomiting.

 

[PoppingTom]

Now you're sort of behind the curve if you're a twelve-year-old boy and haven't seen some of the most graphic hardcore perpetuated and streamed on demand, virtually untraceable if you know how to clear your history. I coached little league baseball for a couple years, these kids talk about porn and masturbation and have next to no filter around adults that aren't their parents.

Well, the alternative to this is sex education. We got that in our school. I only see the problem that all the porn sets a kind of sexual pressure to the kids. But sometimes I think, this pressure was always there.

 

[xssve]

It's the pressure that leads to rape and coercion - if masturbation is de-legitimized as it often is, coitus is enshrined by default, becoming the only legitimate avenue for gratifying those hormonal urges that in adolescence especially, are almost painfully strong.

Porn which is essentially and symbolically masturbatory, it why it has encountered so much opposition, due to the prevalence of numerous 18th century belief systems ranging from religious prohibitions against Onanism, itself bolstered by Neo-Aristotillian humor theory, which also spawned more secular theories the emerged from the physiological reform movement, that masturbation weakens the body and the mind (which it does, it's called relaxing), which translated into the whole worship of anal retentiveness, the "Type A" personality in modern parlance, the "Protestant work ethic", bolstered in secular thought by Freud's theory of diverted cathexes - i.e., sexual energy can be channeled into other pursuits, code mostly for economic activity - i.e., if you deny people sexual gratification, they'll work harder, persue economic goals with the the same lustful enthusiasm that would otherwise end up "wasted" in actual sex.

On the other side, the more working class the anti-masturbatory ethic itself centers on the sexual domination of women and homophobia, which also found it's way into the physiological reform movement in form of the high value placed on "restraint" and "self control", where in the working class and sporting culture, it becomes symbolic of masculinity itself and masturbation is associated with emasculation.

All in all, coming from so many sides, it's no wonder it spawns so many phobias, and leads to such a state of psychological derangement that it makes rape seems more socially acceptable than masturbation.

Under the Christian hegemony, this sort of psychosis could be channeled into socially acceptable forms, i.e., marriage, even a shotgun wedding is still a wedding.

Anyway, it's fascinating stuff, a lot of politics involved, particularly from the traditional conservative standpoint that finds female sexuality particularly threatening, being the primary promulgators of the the practice of demeaning women on that basis, a practice with has to be justified, although its practical purpose is to draw a line with the women in their lives cross at their peril.

There are probably numerous other contributing factors, performance anxiety, the male fondness for hard, fast, sharp release, i.e., the simple mechanics of the thing - I don't if women know how many guys struggle with self doubt - they bitch about being objectified as sexual objects, but seldom hesitate to complain about a guy with a hair trigger, or a small dick - neurotic performance anxiety can lead to real performance issues - and we do call it "performance".

If you take female pleasure out of the equation, it probably takes a lot of the pressure off - the old boy system isn't based on sexual prowess, after all, it's based on political power, in which sex is just a perquisite.

Anyway, when porn enters the picture, it mediates some of these fears - men are portrayed as fearless, women, grateful, and in a very practical sense, these roles enhance the "performance" itself by easing the self doubt - the women are invited to enjoy themselves as objects of desire, males are invited to indulge fearlessly in the object of their desire - for others, it erases the boundaries between masculine and feminine entirely, i.e., the female as aggressor, the male as the object of desire, or female, or shemale, or Boi, or whatever the hell flips your switch - it's all good - there's something for everybody, no guilt, no regret, no complicated emotional issues, jealousy, fear, or inadequacy - unless those things enhance the experience.

And, in that sense, although porn is performance, by definition, it actually operates by mediating the performance frame/aspect of sex, and re-framing it as experience, where it belongs in the most basic, socio-biological sense.

The performance frame is largely political, the experience frame is by nature, apolitical and that itself is cathartic, given all the hoops you have to normally jump through just to get to the sex, and often continue to reverberate long after the deed is done.

 

[LaRocha]

The gonzo, amateur, reality porn kind of thing is mainstream now. Most porn actresses aren't performers such as a sasha grey or belladonna. Most women who enter the world of porn are merely letting themselves be filmed having sex for money. The difference between a prostitute and an average porn actress is almost negligible. Prostitution should be legal, but we're talking about porn.

The performance of sex has the potential to be empowering, but performance is really out the window with most of what comes out of porn world now. Sex education will never get into showing adolescents what sex looks like. Having no actual performance in a movie blurs the line between reality and fiction. 'This is how men treat women', instead of 'these two are really into some crazy circus-type shit here.'

 

[3113]

Bravo, Xssve! What a terrific essay. Have you thought of polishing it up and putting it in essays? I especially like your point about porn as masturbation and the connection between the two--erase masturbation under the assumption that if you do so people will channel that energy into things you want them channeled into (religious passion included)--hence porn has to go as it's a form of masturbation. I certainly agree.

it erases the boundaries between masculine and feminine entirely, i.e., the female as aggressor, the male as the object of desire, or female, or shemale, or Boi, or whatever the hell flips your switch - it's all good - there's something for everybody, no guilt, no regret, no complicated emotional issues, jealousy, fear, or inadequacy - unless those things enhance the experience.

And, in that sense, although porn is performance, by definition, it actually operates by mediating the performance frame/aspect of sex, and re-framing it as experience, where it belongs in the most basic, socio-biological sense.

This, of course, is the other reason that porn usually is seen as threatening and has to go. If those in power work hard to create a social norm--and they often do so simply because we humans like things neat and tidy--or maybe we're just lazy and want one-size to fit all--then porn upsets that apple cart. It makes people start to wonder why they must do it missionary style and only missionary style.

Make porn shameful and/or nothing serious, and you defuse that bomb. People might wonder why they have to do it missionary, but they wouldn't dare admit the dirty secret of who gave them that idea. It's much easier to discredit viewpoints that come from what you can mock or label as bad for society.

 

[jimmyjoyce]

Silly error. Sorry.

 

[polynices]

xssve, - can I just add my hurrahs to 3113's? It's a dense and passionately argued piece - and a challenge to the dominant ideology at a very deep level. Thank you for posting it.

- polynices

 

[Verdad]

Just to be contrary and not disappoint Xssve (), I would like to question whether Xssve's post really questions the dominant ideology. For that, we kind of have to agree what it is.

So long as we accept as a given that people are being taught to do it only missionary, that masturbation is frowned upon, that sex is supposed to serve only for procreation, it seems inevitable to conclude that porn liberates people, shatters normativity, and sneers bravely in the face of hegemony. Are the premises actually true, though?

Let's look at the experts first. I can't think of a mental health professional in the last fifty years at least who's anything but supportive of masturbation. At the very worst, it's not considered harmful, and more often it's a highly recommended practice, kind of like flossing your teeth. The more regularly you do it, the better your health, and conversely, suppression might lead to horrible things. Other expressions of sexuality are likewise encouraged, with the emphasis on yes, do it, if at all feasible without causing harm.

Lest it look like I'm criticizing this stance, I'm not—I pretty much hold it myself—but we are establishing what the dominant ideology of the time says, and so we have to begin by stating it.

Moving on to the rest of our culture and the messages we get through osmosis, I was never taught one is supposed to do it only missionary, nor can I quite imagine it being true of anyone under say, 40 at most, either. If anything, the idea I got very early on was that a sexy, desirable, smart, liberated woman—the kind everyone wants to be—does everything, including hang from a chandelier if necessary. Admittedly, she'd better keep her performing prowess to one or a small number of partners (this is where the old norms conspire with the new), but apart from that, uninhibited sexuality is one of the highest virtues she could possibly possess.

For both sexes, that is the mainstream idea of health, desirability, status, and enlightened attitude toward life. While there are and always will be fundies with their own, uh, idiosyncratic takes on things, it's the mainstream that interests us if we're talking of dominant ideology, and for the mainstream, sex, sex, sex, and sex is the imperative.

As a contemporary continental philosopher Zizek likes to say, the modern superego commands: "Enjoy!" The anxiety most people feel isn't that they're having or wanting too much sex—it's rather that someone, somewhere might be having it more or better, and that they're not enjoying themselves quite as much as they're supposed to. Just like with everything else—am I pretty enough? successful enough? pleasantly smelling enough? cool enough?—sex too is employed to create an insecurity only so a 'cure' for it could be sold.

To finally bring it back to porn, I don't really know if it's good or bad for us. Time will tell, I suppose, and the studies trying to establish either effect don't impress me much, for it's damn near impossible to 'prove' these things to a scientific standard. What I'm pretty sure about, though, is that it's pretty outdated to keep celebrating porn as a symbol of victory over a (partly mythologized) dark past. Right now, it's rather a part of the establishment itself. Instead of making of it an idol in its own right, I'd rather say it's just one of those things we do these days, and poke fun at it as such.

 

[Huckleman2000]

Verdad, I suspect you're not from the US.

Regardless, the opinions of therapists and health professionals, however enlightened, do not constitute the "mainstream" societal attitudes towards male masturbation, and male sexuality in general. It wasn't that long ago that Jocelyn Elders, President Clinton's nominee for Surgeon General, was forced to resign over her comments that were supportive of masturbation.

Moreover, while female masturbation has reached the point where there are late-night home-shopping shows touting the various benefits of vibes of many shapes and sizes on so-called "women's channels", men are stuck with "Girls Gone Wild" video infomercials.

And, while I won't argue against your Cosmo-esque apparition of sexy women swinging from chandeliers, that's not sex as it is experienced by most men. For all the sex-saturation in the media, it paints an image that men cannot live up to any more than women can. Hairy bodies? Nope. Sagging gut? Nope. Able to impale a swinging vagina with your rock-hard penis and granite glutes? Nothing less for a Cosmo girl.

 

[xssve]

Let's look at the experts first. I can't think of a mental health professional in the last fifty years at least who's anything but supportive of masturbation. At the very worst, it's not considered harmful, and more often it's a highly recommended practice, kind of like flossing your teeth. The more regularly you do it, the better your health, and conversely, suppression might lead to horrible things. Other expressions of sexuality are likewise encouraged, with the emphasis on yes, do it, if at all feasible without causing harm.

You know, I wasn't taught these things either, so imagine my shock when here, Forty years after the sexual revolution I'm getting harassed over it - you live in Great Britain, I can't say what goes on over there, although I know they recently passed some anti-pornography legislation, but over here we have a group called the "conservatives" for whom this is a big hot button issue - they blame every ill in society on "liberal" values, ranging from unions to the feminist movement, and it includes porn - it's package deal, pro porn is axiomatically pro-choice commie, and never mind that that's itself a mind boggling contradiction in terms.

They only see things in terms of Right and Left, Good and Evil - and guess which side porn is on? And they're big fantasy is a final conflict where they defeat evil forever and ever, amen.

Reagan convened the Meese commission, who concluded porn caused all forms of madness and mayhem, in spite of all the testimony and evidence to the contrary, the recent Bush Justice Department spent more time prosecuting pornographers than they did building cases against terrorists (whining all the while of course, that they were even required to build cases at all by the terrorist symp liberals when it's so much more convenient to just torture a confession out of them) - in short it's huge issue, particularly with their core voter bloc, Christian evangelicals - Libertarians are back to being a fringe group. I really don't know if you even have these people over there, but they're all over the place here, and there's a buttload of money coming from somewhere keeping them stirred up.

Again, it might seem like a tempest in a teapot from where you sit, but here it's open season on anybody who isn't "in the fold", particularly in the smaller towns, where it's harder to avoid persecution - it's not exactly theocratic fascism - yet - but it's not for lack of trying. I know of people who have been fired due to suspicions about their sexuality, and those were just clerks - if you're a teacher or a public official, there's a sword hanging over your head, and you don't even have to be gay, they only have to suspect it and figure out some other way to get rid of you - they're that fucking paranoid.

We got the FCC fining Janet Jackson's titties, a threat against the whole media industry, they even threw some geek in prison for collecting Hentai - that's getting pretty deep into thought crime territory when you can be imprisoned for an offense against a cartoon character.

And it goes even deeper than that - we incarcerate 1 in 138 people in this country, and they've spent years and millions of dollars building prisons and privatizing them in order to profit from incarcerated individuals, and a falling crime rate would be disastrous for certain people, whether they give a shit about porn, sexual orientation, or not.

The only way to fight that is with facts, because they got superstitions to spare, and they can just make it up as they go along.

Is porn superficial? Absolutely, it's why most of the people in here are into literary side of it, when the film side of it is about quantity over quality, but that's a whole different discussion.

You can criticize all you like, I do appreciate your insight, but I just need to ask you: is it the tool of devil or no?

Because that's what the discussion over here is about, believe it or not, and we gotta get past that to even have a rational dialogue on what, if any, the difference between "good" and "bad" porn might be.

 

[xssve]

Here, read this, this is my hometown - google it, it made more than local headlines.

We also boast the highest incidence of hate crimes in the state - you go to Albuquerque, and you can do anything you want, but they act like they never heard of the constitution up here half the time.

 

[Huckleman2000]

Another article

Here's another article,

And of course, there’s plenty of dumb, generic, Maxim-magazine type sex writing from men; in some senses it’s silly to complain about sex writing as female-dominated, given how much of the dumb crap there is. But it does seem as if sex writing — serious, intellectual sex writing, at any rate — is one of those rare fields that’s largely taken up by women, and in which women are both more visible and more generally respected.

And thinking about this question is making me think about the suspectability of male sexuality.

I think that when women write about sex, we’re assumed, in some ways, to be dispassionate observers. Of course we get targeted as sluts and whores and whatnot. But we’re also seen as bringing a fresh perspective to the subject, and a cooler eye, and a more thoughtful point of view.

When men write about sex, on the other hand, they’re assumed to be drooling horndogs.

Of course men have sex on the brain, this assumption goes. They’re men. They think with their dicks. That’s what men do. Who cares what they think about sex? We all know what they think about sex. What men think about sex is that they want it.

The very fact that sex is seen as a primarily male experience makes male sex writers, paradoxically, seem less serious. Our society sees sex as being about maleness: male desires, male insecurities, male satisfaction. Our culture is sexually obsessed with women, of course; but it’s sexually obsessed with women as — and I’m turning into a ’70s lesbian feminist as I write this — the objects of desire, rather than the subjects of it. Sex is seen as a male topic. But therefore, we all too often assume that we know what men think about sex, and how they feel about it. Male sexual desire is assumed to be simple: an animal urge to put a dick in a wet hole. With, occasionally, some variations in the way of orientation and paraphilias. And I think this makes it harder for male sex writers to be taken seriously. Anything they have to say on the subject is likely to be seen as suspect.

 

[cloudy]

Here, read this, this is my hometown - google it, it made more than local headlines.

We also boast the highest incidence of hate crimes in the state - you go to Albuquerque, and you can do anything you want, but they act like they never heard of the constitution up here half the time.

Best comment on that issue ever: "I don't want sex coming into my kid's life--straight, gay, whatever. If we can't talk about God, why can we talk about sex? Where is our value system?"

I spit my drink out, I swear.

Scary, though, that people's minds work that way. Wait...there are people here that think that "logically."

Never mind.

 

[xssve]

Yeah, we had a city council election the other day, with two choices of Republicans. The rightyest one won by 26 votes, after a local talks show host accused the more centrist one of voting for Obama and not owning guns (she's a former FBI Agent), leading people to believe she was actually a democrat.

It's a fucking circus around here.

 

[mynameisben]

Nobody can really answer the question, "Is porn good for us?" because nobody knows what the question means. What is porn? The U.S. Supreme Court may give a precise legal definition of porn, but that doesn't mean anyone is going to believe it. As it is with beauty, porn is in the mind of the beholder.

And what does "good for us" mean, anyway? And who is "us?" What's good for the goose is good for the gander, so I've been told. I never could make heads or tails of that old maxim either. If former President Bill Clinton can be counted a credible expert on porn, then we cannot even be sure what the meaning of "is" is.

Perhaps it's a typo. Maybe the question should have read, "Is porn god for us?" If that is the case, then I think all of us Literotica pervs will readily agree the answer is Yes.

 

[Verdad]

Regardless, the opinions of therapists and health professionals, however enlightened, do not constitute the "mainstream" societal attitudes towards male masturbation, and male sexuality in general. It wasn't that long ago that Jocelyn Elders, President Clinton's nominee for Surgeon General, was forced to resign over her comments that were supportive of masturbation.

Good point, but the Elders controversy, as I recall, was about actively promoting masturbation to teens as an alternative to riskier sexual behaviors. I guess the fine line in question here is about promoting as opposed to merely condoning, and well, it was a bit of an unfortunate statement and easily twisted out of shape.

There is a difference between answering the question of "Should I…?" with "Yes, of course, it's only natural," and actually institutionally urging someone to do it. The latter does sound kind of questionable. As for how it works in practice, as far as I know, foster parents in the US, for example, are taught to be encouraging if the question arises, as well as to provide sex ed materials.

Mind you, I totally agree there's lots of hysteria surrounding the issue of teen sexuality and that's certainly worth ridiculing too, but it looks to me more like a part of the same picture (obsession with sex plus hypocrisy about it) than something to which porn mania provides an antithesis. The two kind of fuel each other; the pretense outrage, however thin, makes the 'forbidden' candy fly off the shelves that much faster. Meanwhile, we all know what's really cool, and the teens do too.

And, while I won't argue against your Cosmo-esque apparition of sexy women swinging from chandeliers, that's not sex as it is experienced by most men. For all the sex-saturation in the media, it paints an image that men cannot live up to any more than women can. Hairy bodies? Nope. Sagging gut? Nope. Able to impale a swinging vagina with your rock-hard penis and granite glutes? Nothing less for a Cosmo girl.

Oh, I totally agree with you! I told it from a woman's POV because it's my POV, but when I talk of porn as a vehicle of ideology, I totally don't mean to suggest men are spared it. In fact, the oddest part of Xssve's post to me was where he said that porn reframes sex as experience rather than performance. To my mind, it's just the other way round. The focus on the visual, on how sex looks rather than how it feels, inevitably frames it precisely as performance, and men are certainly haunted by it too.

I do believe there's a certain asymmetry—if for no other reason, then because porn mostly caters to a male customer, thus helping establish his wants as the ideal—but my knee-jerk against expectations applies to both sexes. I fully appreciate you too get a million messages about hanging from the chandelier if you want to be a good lover, or that you too must enjoy whatever is fashionable to enjoy lest you be called repressed, selfish, a jerk, and what not. I could take the feminist angle and focus on the a-symmetries, but I'm more fascinated at the moment with the Zeitgeist boat in which we're all together.

As I said earlier, I have no idea if it's all 'good' or 'bad' in the end—these things are better judged from a temporal distance—but I keep squirming whenever the present state of affairs is lauded as the best or the only way to be. The paradox is what captures me: here we all are, with porn coming up our ears, all totally agreeing that it's great, yet at the same time saying, yessir, I'm totally different!

When de Sade advocated spilling your seed anywhere but where it's 'supposed' to go—in your hand, in someone's butt, anywhere at all that doesn't lead to procreation—he was being truly outrageous (apart from being misogynistic and more than a little nuts, but that's a different story), mocking mercilessly the accepted dogmas of his time. He truly did threaten the establishment. Two centuries later, we dutifully spend our money on porn and sex toys, and I just can't say with a straight face that we're doing the same. To say that would feel to me precisely like being a good little wheel, so I'd rather inject some irreverence and laugh at our symptoms, not those of the past. I hope that makes sense.

 

[Verdad]

You can criticize all you like, I do appreciate your insight, but I just need to ask you: is it the tool of devil or no?

Only so far as capitalism is a tool of the devil too.

On a more serious note, you know I likewise appreciate your points and your insight. Just can't have you go unchallenged cuz that would make your points the only ideology available here.

 

[xssve]

It is interesting data, and not just from a standpoint of defending my god given right to look at those glorious naked ladies who enjoy allowing me the privilege, but it's also data about rape there appears to be some correlation here, and I saw an earlier study that indicated that even child porn did not appear to correlate with molestation - I think the fantasy aspect of porn is underrated, and people even here write about a lot of stuff they probably would never do, as well as readers who are not any more likely to do those things than they were before they read them- in short, I suspect that the average Scouries reader is probably no more likely to engage in incestuous sex with their mother than the average Scouries non-reader, but that for some, the fantasy itself has some cathartic effect.

I do think it bears watching, it might prove to be a transient effect, a generation that has grown up with porn might respond to it differently than a generation that hasn't, etc. and I seriously doubt that this is the last data we'll see on the subject.

But, like it or not, porn is here, at least for now, and I think it behooves us to keep an objective eye on it, an attempt to understand it as a cultural phenomena, pro or con.

 

[xssve]

Best comment on that issue ever: "I don't want sex coming into my kid's life--straight, gay, whatever. If we can't talk about God, why can we talk about sex? Where is our value system?"

I spit my drink out, I swear.

Scary, though, that people's minds work that way. Wait...there are people here that think that "logically."

Never mind.

You should love this one: Farmington man wants White History Month (psst... it's called... "history")

But that's not the good part: here's the Topix discussion. This is about, this is about the general level of conversation I'm accustomed to, you'd love it.

 

[polynices]

Verdad says: "... I have no idea if it's all 'good' or 'bad' in the end—these things are better judged from a temporal distance ..."

And xssve: "... I do think it bears watching, it might prove to be a transient effect, a generation that has grown up with porn might respond to it differently than a generation that hasn't, etc. and I seriously doubt that this is the last data we'll see on the subject.

But, like it or not, porn is here, at least for now, and I think it behooves us to keep an objective eye on it, an attempt to understand it as a cultural phenomena, pro or con."

Both reflect my own position. The evidence in the article I linked to, correlating the availability of porn with decreases in sex crime, is encouraging, even if it's open to question, but it doesn't give a complete picture. I think we're all involved in a kind of social-sexual experiment, and we don't - and can't - know what the eventual outcome will be.

Verdad also says: "... capitalism is a tool of the devil too."

For me, this is the central stumbling block with porn. Ideally, pornography would be a generous celebration of sexuality - but, of course, the fact that most of it is produced in a commercial context means that the celebratory element, as well as the apparent generosity, is decidedly suspect. Pornographic smiles are mostly fake, as are the orgasms - and even in those rare cases when the orgasmic joy on display happens to be real, we, the viewers, can't really trust it. There are always doubts: "I'm allowing myself to be conned as I watch this" and, more importantly, perhaps: "She's only doing it for the money, or because her pimp told her to."

In 'The Sublime Object of Ideology' (pages 28 - 29), Zizek, who Verdad mentioned earlier, says this:

"Peter Sloterdijk puts forward the thesis that ideology's dominant mode of functioning is cynical, which renders impossible - or, more precisely, vain - the classic critical-ideological procedure."

He goes on to say that the situation in modern capitalism inverts Marx's nineteenth century maxim: 'They do not know it, but they are doing it.' (Sie wissen das nicht, aber sie tun es.)

Nowadays, he says:

"The cynical subject [i.e. person] is quite aware of the distance between the ideological mask and the social reality. The formula, as proposed by Sloterdijk, would then be: 'they know very well what they are doing, but still, they are doing it.' "

 

[LaRocha]

Any art up for sale is commercial art, intention is irrelevant. Not that pornography is performance art, but it resembles performance art and it's not any more commercial than Cirque, definitely more entertaining.

The only arguments against porn are that it degrades the moral fiber of a community, prostitution isn't about the content, obscenity laws deal with what porn itself is. Each state and community defines what that means, that's why over 18 doesn't apply everywhere for the porn consumer in the United States. You might be in a community where it's actually illegal to purchase and/or view hardcore pornography on your computer. Stuff like that isn't really enforceable. Internet gambling is basically illegal everywhere in the US.

The Miller test for obscenity was developed in the 1973 case Miller v. California. It has three parts:

* Whether the average person, applying contemporary community standards, would find that the work, taken as a whole, appeals to the prurient interest,
* Whether the work depicts/describes, in a patently offensive way, sexual conduct or excretory functions specifically defined by applicable state law,
* Whether the work, taken as a whole, lacks serious literary, artistic, political or scientific value. (This is also known as the (S)LAPS test- [Serious] Literary, Artistic, Political, Scientific.)

Your community decides what's good for you. Most communities say that porn isn't necessarily bad for you, which means porn isn't a part of any type of counter-culture, does nothing to challenge dominant ideology. Not that porn re-enforces dominant ideology either.

 

[LaRocha]

You should love this one: Farmington man wants White History Month (psst... it's called... "history")

But that's not the good part: here's the Topix discussion. This is about, this is about the general level of conversation I'm accustomed to, you'd love it.

People prance around and claim that the Europeans committed genocide against the indians. Most of the indians were dead before the American government sanctioned genocides of the 19th Century. Most indians were already dead of disease by the 19th century, disease which came from the whites, spread unintentionally. Speaking of American Legends, there's no evidence that the Euros gave indians small pox infected blankets with the intention of killing indians. "The shirt of Nessus is upon me!"

 

[cloudy]

People prance around and claim that the Europeans committed genocide against the indians. Most of the indians were dead before the American government sanctioned genocides of the 19th Century. Most indians were already dead of disease by the 19th century, disease which came from the whites, spread unintentionally. Speaking of American Legends, there's no evidence that the Euros gave indians small pox infected blankets with the intention of killing indians. "The shirt of Nessus is upon me!"

For someone who "went to a better college than any of us," you sure don't know your history very well.

I can find evidence of intentionally spreading smallpox in about three seconds.

Aside from that, regardless of how many Natives (with a capital, darling) were dead before the sanctioned genocide, it still happened.

I suppose the Holocaust was made up, too, right?

 

[LaRocha]

For someone who "went to a better college than any of us," you sure don't know your history very well.

I can find evidence of intentionally spreading smallpox in about three seconds.

Aside from that, regardless of how many Natives (with a capital, darling) were dead before the sanctioned genocide, it still happened.

I suppose the Holocaust was made up, too, right?

You can't find evidence of that, that's why you didn't provide the information in your post. The evidence doesn't exist, I've searched for years.

http://***************/viewer?a=v&q...bLzfs7&sig=AHIEtbRgiK-LBh61kbvoAY8-GSd8DsNCYA