Comments on: Research confirms the ‘porn goggles’ effect

By: Josh Spurlock

Josh Spurlock — Wed, 08 Apr 2009 15:14:02 +0000

It’s amazing the subtle affects pornography can have on us.

By: Jason

Jason — Tue, 07 Apr 2009 16:53:45 +0000

I completely agree with you about the ‘porn turns men into rapists’ fallacy. And unfortunately, some studies do head down that road.

The Princeton University research quoted here certainly isn’t groundbreaking or revelatory, but it does touch on the ‘one-track mind’ experience encountered by guys struggling with porn.

In coming to terms with what often feels like a lonely and warped state of mind, such statements of common sense really can help. Clear perspective is such a valuable asset here; your pre-empting of the ‘potential rapist’ myth certainly helps and is appreciated.

By: anti

anti — Mon, 06 Apr 2009 22:56:43 +0000

Correction for first post:

“All figures show porn usage drives down rape figures.”

By: anti

anti — Mon, 06 Apr 2009 22:53:53 +0000

Here we have someone jumping to the “porn turns men into rapists” conclusion as I described above;

“I already knew most men want to have sex with attractive women. Good. The news that some “hostile” men (at least 2 out of 21 or 10%, according to this limited population sample) are incapable of analytically deducing that the beautiful, bikini babe thinks they are weird (thoughts), she’s scared (feelings), and she doesn’t want to be near them let alone have sex with them (intentions) is scary.”

By: anti

anti — Mon, 06 Apr 2009 22:51:18 +0000

Alot of this is only common sense, as porn encourages a more sexually fired-up mind.

The problem with research such as this, is that it often (intentionally) goes down the road well worn by gynocentric (or feminist) anti-porn; that porn will make men more likely to rape. This of course is a total fallacy. All figures show porn usage drives down porn figures.

Reports such as this seem to be edging in that direction anyway.

If you’ll forgive me for bringing up the “objectification” issue again, Jason. The CNN report talks about “objectifying women” and “seeing them as objects”.

I really think these words are unscientific and unobjective – coming from the 1970s’ feminist anti-porn discourse that they do.

Here we have scientific work on the subconscious lustful mind glossed over with feminist political polemic. Unfortunate.

“Future research could look at if women depersonalize men in certain situations.”

IF? How stupid does CNN think the general public are?

All humans have a sex-focused lustful side to their psychologies and motivations which does not see human-specific attributes such as personality and so on. Does CNN really think this one-track lustful mind is confined only to male-sexed humans?!

It wreaks of a rather perverted sort of Neo-Puritanism.

Even the word “de-personalise” is unscientific and again, largely a result of feminist discourse.

Hopefully someday we will realise with porn, attraction, sex etc. we are engaging different modes of our psyches in different degrees. Hopefully we will be able to drop the emotive language.