Shakespeare Shows the Way

May be we could have avoided this, but since we have started to talk about this, i would like to make my own post about this porn topic.

First let me make this claim: I don't see porn. Once or twice when I had the chance to watch it, I became terribly uneasy. I couldn't sit and watch it. It is a psychology thing, i think. May be something is wrong with me... I am not normal that way.

And I place people who watch porn on the lower levels of my moral scale.

So I have put my prejudice on board.

If you ask me what I have got against porn, I am likely to get high and mighty and state that the viewing of porn puts you in a state of mind where you see all women as sex-objects. Their feelings are relegated to the background, and the him-her relationship is reduced to the level of being mere bodies.

But I can see how porn can act like a tranquiliser, if not as an aphrodisiac. People who are pained by their urges, could turn to porn and find vicarious satisfaction of their needs.

About the fears of civil society, that the viewing of porn is something evil, and would inspire us to commit vile deeds, I am not impressed. Some people would get worse, but most would not. Even religion makes fanatics and fundamentalists of some, but we don't go all the way and say all religions are bad.

Wrong comparison? May be.

But recently I read an article, which says porn is not likely to make maniacs of us. It is anecdotal, has no statistics, but it has a view point.I think it is good for that reason. The article is 'The Porn Myth', By Naomi Wolf.

The points she makes are these:

i. If you see more and more porn, you are likely to see fewer and fewer women as porn-worthy. It puts you off real women. Real naked women are just bad porn.

ii. Junk food makes you obese, right? The more junk you take, the more you need to take. If your appetite is stimulated by poor-quality material, you need more if you want to be filled up. Porn, instead of bringing together people, turns them away from one another. They are not able to face each other, erotically, without the disturbing, and subverting, images of porn. Men who view porn are less inspired to move by the company of real women.

iii. The reason why this happens is this, she says: Greater supply of the stimulant equals diminished capacity. Much like everything else which gives us pleasure, pornography works in the most basic of ways on the brain: It is Pavlovian. If sexual pleasure is associated in your mind with the touch and smell of your wife, that is what will turn you on. Bit if you associated that with a stream of images of your TV/PC, that is what will turn you all. Your pleasure might be enhanced by porn, but it dilutes your motivation to perform.


iv. The more it is a mystery, and a game between two people, the more it is likely to be meaningful and fulfilling, she says. Otherwise it becomes just an urge you want to get rid off, quickly, very quickly.

So, if any of you enjoy porn, my advice is, don't.

Instead, go and write poetry:- however bad, it is more likely to set you aflame.

After all, it is the poets who go after and get the beautiful girls, right, not the peeping toms.