The hypocrisy of porn
Matthew Melnyk
Issue date: 1/29/08 Section: Opinion
Sex is the most searched for word on the Internet. That may not surprise you, but the fact that women are as likely as men to be searching it might. Women make up a third of all visitors to pornography Web sites. Though this is still far less than men, they are a major economic factor nonetheless.
People often decry the pornography industry as exploitative, and there are often concerns raised about children and contact with this industry. What people rarely realize is that our own repressiveness is what allows for the industry to be that way it is.
We live in a society that has an identity crisis. In the public sphere people are expected to live by some abstract and impossible moral standard. This expectation comes with certain assumptions about their sexuality that are usually fairly repressive. We aren't comfortable imagining other people as sexual beings, nor are we comfortable with others thinking of us that way. Despite this tension it seems undeniable that the cliché "sex sells" is fairly accurate.
Products of all kinds are sold to us using sexual imagery. Every major form of entertainment emphasizes sexuality, regardless of its relevance to the medium. Businesses do this because it works. As the popularity of pornography shows, people are interested in sex.
Our public denial of this creates the conditions where salacious advertising is both pervasive and effective. It is also why people are driven to seek out sexual entertainment and are willing to pay billions of dollars for it.
I think that before we stand on our soapboxes and denounce the adult entertainment industry for all of its problems we need to take some responsibility.
First, we need to be honest about how we may have directly contributed to it. Secondly, as well as realize that by being sexually repressive we are creating a demand for pornography that rivals or surpasses almost every other form of entertainment.
People often decry the pornography industry as exploitative, and there are often concerns raised about children and contact with this industry. What people rarely realize is that our own repressiveness is what allows for the industry to be that way it is.
We live in a society that has an identity crisis. In the public sphere people are expected to live by some abstract and impossible moral standard. This expectation comes with certain assumptions about their sexuality that are usually fairly repressive. We aren't comfortable imagining other people as sexual beings, nor are we comfortable with others thinking of us that way. Despite this tension it seems undeniable that the cliché "sex sells" is fairly accurate.
Products of all kinds are sold to us using sexual imagery. Every major form of entertainment emphasizes sexuality, regardless of its relevance to the medium. Businesses do this because it works. As the popularity of pornography shows, people are interested in sex.
Our public denial of this creates the conditions where salacious advertising is both pervasive and effective. It is also why people are driven to seek out sexual entertainment and are willing to pay billions of dollars for it.
I think that before we stand on our soapboxes and denounce the adult entertainment industry for all of its problems we need to take some responsibility.
First, we need to be honest about how we may have directly contributed to it. Secondly, as well as realize that by being sexually repressive we are creating a demand for pornography that rivals or surpasses almost every other form of entertainment.
Viewing Comments 1 - 4 of 4
tom
posted 1/30/08 @ 4:08 AM EST
b4 any thinks that they should protest against the porn industry think do u watch porn do you like porn if so don't protest just because your wife or neighbor thinks it is wrong i believe in freedom and for most freedom of speech if we all protest porn because the are church says to do so then the people do not run this country the church does
this amounts to a the good willed Christians and catholics being just like the taliBAN porn is something u do in private not what you share with the world but as such nobody wants to stand up for their freedom of speech when it comes to porn
if u believe in the right to bare arms would you go to a gun protest in utah but some poeple are geting bullied into protesting porn
ya i know that i will get some flamers who believe porn is bad or even evil aka sin but these same poeple are the ones doing the bullying most likely this amounts taliBAN like tactics and you know it let people believe what they want it is a free world lets keep i
j
posted 2/01/08 @ 7:29 AM EST
Nice comment Tom - next time use some punctuation so we can stand reading your post.
Trevorkian
posted 2/06/08 @ 7:40 AM EST
It's rather funny that one of the worlds largest industries is probably the least respected and most denounced. Perhaps only the arms industry has a poorer standing. (Continued…)
SEX
posted 4/02/09 @ 2:47 AM EST
Porn will always have a word to say as it is based on a human basic instinct: sex. Porn probably developed so far because the human imaginations and of course the society changed with time. (Continued…)
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