Different attitudes towards porn between different age groups

In S01E05 of “Fresh Off the Boat,” all the boys in Eddie’s middle school are attracted to sleepovers that offer “porno content,” which are just dirty magazines from their older brothers. Although they do not even understand what most of the content means, they think it is “cool.” Eddie shows the sexual harassment video he accidentally finds to his friends during his sleepover, and suddenly everyone in school thinks they have seen porn and starts imitating the video. Clearly none of these teenage boys know anything about sex, but they just naturally think the ability to get a girl or even just get porno movies is cool. It is interesting that teenagers who have zero sexual experience are the ones who are the most passionate about sex. They try really hard to look for sexually explicit content, and take whatever they see as the reality. As a result of their curiousness, teenagers tend to be the group who are highly affected by porn. According to the research of Peter and Valkenburg, the more sexually explicit Internet material exposure adolescents have, the less satisfied towards sex they will be (183), and this effect is especially strong for adolescents who do not have much sexual experience (184). However, as previously stated, they are the ones who are particularly interested in sexually explicit content as well. Therefore, they watch more, they believe more, and they get disappointed more.

It is funny that despite how cool teenagers think porn is, when they grow up as adults, most of them tend to rather think watching porn is a shame, or at least something they do not want to talk about. In this episode of “How I Met Your Mother,” Ted finds out a guy who has the exact same name as him starring in porno movies. His reactions to people who watch porn are quite interesting:

By saying “why is my doctor watching porn,” and later in the episode (which is not shown in this clip) saying to another person who jokes about his name being the same with a porn star:”Haha very funny, Wendy. Now we know you watch porn,” Ted implies the disdain of people who watch porn. Although he himself watches the porno movie started by “him” – Ted Mosby, he immediately judge someone else who watches it. It is strange that almost everyone has experience watching porn, but it almost feel shameful to admit that. My personal guess is, as adults we have more knowledge about sex and understand it is a private thing. So anything related to sex – including porn – becomes personal and therefore is hard to say out loud. That might be the reason why teenagers who barely know anything about sex tend to openly discuss the dirty magazines they see at school, but adults who have seen a lot of porno movies will never admit that unless they have to. I have no idea what this means other than indicating that adults are more experienced and more mature, but this might just be one of those things that you grow out of – the older you are, the more things you have to hide, the more you value privacy.

Peter, J. & Valkenburg, P. M. (2009). Adolescents' exposure to sexually explicit Internet material and sexual satisfaction: A longitudinal study. Human Communication Research, 35(2), 171-194. doi:10.1111/j.1468-2958.2009.01343.x

2 Girls 1 Cup 1 Jail Sentence?

"2 Girls 1 Cup"--most people have seen it, and almost everyone has heard of it. Why has one of the most offensive and exteme examples of porn in the industry become a household name...and why are people going to jail? "2 Girls 1 Cup" originated as a one-minute trailer for the Brazilian "scat fetsish" porn film Hungry B****s. The scatophilic film (sexual pleasure from defacation) features two girls exchanging feces and vomit between their mouths while kissing. This is one of the most popular "shock videos" of all time, which is exactly why it became popular-because of its unbelievably offensive and disturbing content. Videos of people watching "2 Girls 1 Cup" for the first time were found all over YouTube following its viral wave in 2007 and 2008. 

It became cool to see how long one could last watching this video--an activity George Clooney compared to a "rodeo." Because a video of this kind became so widely watched throughout the U.S, it is important to think about its impact. Studies have proven that increased sexually explicit content exposure can lead to lower personal sexual satisfaction (Peter). If people that view extreme and fetishistic porn such as "2 Girls 1 Cup" as normal and mainstream, will they begin to think that this behavior is normal as well? My answer is no. "2 Girls 1 Cup" became popular because it is VILE and shocking--the vast majority of viewers probably find this revulsive and unlike their own sexual encounters. 

Here's my next question: should videos like "2 Girls 1 Cup" be illegal to produce? My answer is again no.

Ira Isaacs is a porn producer that made films similar to "2 Girls 1 Cup" that feature scat porn. This earned him four years of jail time because it violated existing obscenity laws set forth by George W. Bush's "Obscenity Prosecution Task Force" that was created in 2005. The OPTF, which has a conservative religious base,  says that this type of content is illegal and punishable by law. There is no evidence that suggests that the women in the film were forced against their will to create this movie--so if people find sexual gratification from this, then why is it illegal to produce these movies? As long as no outside parties are harmed (such as animals, dead bodies, etc.), then these women should be allowed to engage in the defacating activities, and Isaacs should be allowed to film it. Just because there are a small, small minority of people that enjoy consuming this media does not make it wrong. Is it disgusting to watch? Of course. But so is watching people eat pig brains on Fear Factor, which is arguably more morally wrong than scat porn. As long as no other parties are harmed and no one is forced against his/her will....poop all you want, as long as I don't have to watch. 

Peter, J. & Valkenburg, P. M. (2009). Adolescents' exposure to sexually explicit Internet material and sexual satisfaction: A longitudinal study. Human Communication Research, 35(2), 171-194.

PSAs for the Elderly

This past week, Julia asked the question, and I am paraphrasing here, whether older generations of people should make steps to improve their media literacy. It got me thinking, in a broader sense, how often do we even think about how the media may affect those who aren't teenagers, people who might be much older than teens even? When I think about it, the most obvious demographic for any sort of persuasive intervention campaign is that of teens and adolescents. I mean, this obviously makes sense. There are, of course, clear developmental disparities between the average adult and the average teenager, but sometimes I wonder if we aren't giving enough credence to the potential of looking towards older generations with these messages. I've probably seen at least a dozen anti-texting and driving ads targeted towards people like me, for instance, but I can't think of a worse perpetrator of this than my own father. Alternatively, while I'm prone to watch any mass media news report with a grain of salt, my mother is absorbed by it wholly.

For one organization, it seems, informing this sort of 'untapped' populace on a subject you wouldn't typically associate with one that needs public intervention, has been a guiding factor in their PSAs. The topic; the old and familiar subject of safe sex and STDs. The popular; the elderly. Maybe old, but not so familiar.

The organization, called "SaferSex4Seniors" (safersex4seniors.org), had a slight moment of fame earlier this year when their video PSA, uploaded on Vimeo, went viral. The video in question depicts fully clothed senior citizens pantomiming some pretty, well, I guess I would call it 'acrobatic' sex positions. After a few clips of these, the overall intention of the ad displays in text on the screen. The PSA lets us know that STD have risen over 70% for senior citizens, and that there is only one way to have safe sex, and that is with a condom.





It's a good message. Obviously, a high rise in STDs is no laughing matter, and, in recent memory, I haven't seen a PSA of this nature that has ever addressed the elderly. Also, as the ad seems to point out, this is definitely a demographic that does need to be interpellated in a conversation about safe sex. While I think ads like this are beneficial and positive, I do have a few caveats about the campaign.

In an article by researchers Joyce and Harwood, studies indicated that while pro-social media message about the dangers of sex can have effect, the message was most effective when the participants felt that the originators of the message were perceived as closely identifying with them (2014). This means, that for message to have some of its most persuasive effects, it's best for the intended audience to feel a sense of similarity with the producer of the message. In all honesty, I think the SaferSex4Seniors is most likely not going to be perceived as similar by senior citizens watching the video. Maybe it's the music choice, which was mostly likely selected for a comic effect. I think, more importantly, the biggest problem is that this message is heavily dependent on being produced and spread through the internet.

Arguably, most senior citizens are probably not that active on the internet. So, why then, is this PSA so reliant on the internet to inform the elderly? The video doesn't give a lot of information on safe sex with the exception of the 'use a condom' at the end, and viewers are mostly encouraged to visit their website for more indepth information. Wouldn't it be better then, for this message to be utilized in a different method? Maybe through personal one on one meetings or pamphlets.

There is an obvious need to address the problems of which teens are in danger. But, after teens grow up, why does the need to tell them of the dangers in the outside world disappear? People are still in danger regardless of age, so while the SaferSex4Senior campaign may not be perfect, it should be seen as a catalyst.

Reference

Joyce, N. & Harwood, J. (2014). Context and identification in persuasive mass communication. Journal of Media Psychology, 26(1), 50-57 

Women & Porn

Buzzfeed, the media website that popularized the "listicle" format of online reporting, tackled the relatively taboo subject of women who watch porn in another one of those nifty little lists. According to Buzzfeed (via PornHub), "Lesbian and Gay (male) porn" are the two most popular categories for women, the most popular content other than lesbian is "Solo Male," most of the things women search for fall under the category of BDSM, videos featuring group sex are more popular among women than men, and Kim Kardashian is favored over James Deen for women viewing porn.

In discussion on Thursday, I was surprised by how many people talked about having viewed porn after not raising their hand when Julia asked about viewing porn. I feel like a lot of it had to do with the fact the most people had watched (at least for the first time) on accident. Having never watched porn, I almost felt like I was in the minority. Then again, as Jochen Peter and Patti Valkenburg mentioned in their article, "sexual experience seems to be a stronger requirement for a masculine identity than for a feminine identity as, for instance," so maybe women just don't feel the need to own up to taking control of their personal sexual satisfaction.

Between the general unwillingness among women to admit that they consume any amount of porn and the information in the Buzzfeed article about what type of porn women are watching, it seems that the embarrassment may stem from the fact that, while attractive lesbians (who also happen to sleep with men) are hot, women who are actually lesbians are often considered manly or unattractive. This makes admitting to watching and enjoying that lesbian porn or Kim Kardashian porn is not exactly an attractive thing to admit to.

Another article, this one by Time, claims that "Fifty Shades of Grey Gets Women into Porn, Research Says." A researcher at the University of Waterloo found that consumption of sexually explicit material increased for women who read Fifty Shades of Grey. "I find it's motivating women. It is exposing them to a genre of material that they either didn't know existed or they didn't know that they liked." So perhaps women admitting that they are into porn or indulge in it every now is in the near future. Consider how many of your friends openly talked about seeing Fifty Shades this past Valentine's Day.

References

Broderick, R. (n.d.). 14 Things You Might Not Know About How Women Watch Porn. Retrieved April 4, 2015.

Peter, J., & Valkenburg, P. (n.d.). Adolescents’ Exposure to Sexually Explicit Internet Material and Sexual Satisfaction: A Longitudinal Study. Human Communication Research, 171-194.

Toppa, S. (2015, February 13). Fifty Shades of Grey Gets Women Into Porn, Research Says. Retrieved April 4, 2015, from http://time.com/3708659/fifty-shades-of-grey-women-porn/

Sensationalized Sex

As I was looking for a topic to write this blog post on, I stumbled across an interesting article in Men's Health. It was talking about the effects of Porn on the brain, told from the perspective of a sex researcher and writer. She had many interesting points throughout the article, one being that are brains are constantly rewiring, and that can lead to pornography having almost the same effect on the brain as drugs: they are both pleasurable and cause a rapid increase in dopamine in the brain. It also talks about how men's neurological responses to pornography are much stronger than for women because it "suits men's sexual interests much more" (Men's Health, 2012). This is because "the erotic depictions imitate the casual sex men crave, but without the threat of disease of unwanted pregnancy" (Men's Health, 2012).

I got about halfway through the article when I started noticing the ads for other Men's Health articles on the side panel. Here is a taste of some of them:

                       

I realized that a lot of these articles are geared towards men. I know it is Men's Health magazine, but I started to think about how casual sex is sensationalized for men more prevalently than it is for women. How does this affect real-world sexual relationships and not just one-sided relationships in front of a screen? It was proven that "men who were exposed to Playboy-type centerfolds found their partners less sexually attractive and rated themselves as less in love with them" (Peter & Valkenburg, 2009). In addition, "men who had watched a sexually explicit video featuring beautiful women were less satisfied with their (female) partners’ bodies" (Peter & Valkenburg, 2009). Sensationalized sex in the media leads to an unrealistic expectation for sex and sexual partners appearances in real life.

I decided to talk to some of my friends and do some digging about if they think porn affects women the same way that it does men. After talking to a couple people and reading some articles, I came to a few consensuses. One, women are taught by society to compare themselves to other women. By watching porn, the people I talked to said that it actually would lower their self-esteem because they would be comparing themselves to a hyper-sexualized woman, and how are they supposed to compare to that in the bedroom? Another thing I noticed while reading the articles was that most women are aroused more inside the mind then by visually watching something, which is why books like Fifty Shades of Grey are so popular. In cases like this, the visual is left to what the reader wants to picture, and they have insight to what the main character was thinking. Overall, I generalized that for women, it's more about the relationship than about the sex. Pornography is focused on sex without the relationship.

Although all of these things may not apply to ALL men, or ALL women, it is interesting to think about the sensationalized sex in the media, since it is everywhere, and how that affects both men and women similarly and differently. 

References:

Is Porn Harmful? (2012, October 16). Retrieved April 2, 2015, from http://www.menshealth.com/sex-women/porn-debate?fullpage=true

Peter, J. & Valkenburg, P. M. (2009). Adolescents' exposure to sexually explicit Internet material and sexual satisfaction: A longitudinal study. Human Communication Research, 35(2), 171-194.

Porn in Popular Culture: Just Like BDSM or Not So Much?

Our class discussion about porn and the possible effects that it could have brought up a point that we did not really develop in class: the pervasiveness of the use of the word "porn" in popular culture. I was intrigued by the point when it was brought up and I think its important to examine how the use of the word porn outside the context of sexually explicit material might function.

When it comes to popular culture on Instagram and Pinterest and Facebook, I feel as though I see the word porn plastered across hashtags and descriptions constantly. Things like #foodporn and #wordporn are used all of the time and it would seem like the word "porn" can be attached to anything that is appealing, whether that be food or words or even a picture of a sunset. Instagram accounts like the one to the right play on sexually explicit words even- "FEMME_FOODIE" rings a bell with "Femme Fatale."

In searching for some visual representations of the use of the word porn within hashtags and in the popular discourse, I came across a very interesting image that gives a definition for porn. The first definition that Merriam-Webster's dictionary gives when you search the word "porn" is "movies, pictures, magazines, etc. that show or describe naked people or sex in a very open and direct way in order to cause sexual excitement."

But, porn takes on a new definition when one actually takes the time to read through the extended definition of the word. The extended definition looks something like this:

This is where it gets interesting: "emphasizing the sensuous or sensational aspects of a nonsexual subject and stimulating a compulsive interest in their audience." This definition is described as 'informal' and makes room for the word to be attached to things that are clearly nonsexual, like food or poetry. This extended definition brought to mind our class discussion about BDSM and how that kind of sexually explicit material is made part of popular culture. Margot Weiss argues in her article "Mainstreaming Kink: The Politics of BDSM Representation in U. S. Popular Media" that popular images of of BDSM promote acceptance of sexual minorities only through acceptance via normalization and understanding via pathologizing (Weiss, 2006, p. 103). Might this kind of understanding of BDSM apply to the use of the word porn in popular culture? When porn is taken outside of the context of sexually explicit and sexually arousing material, I would argue that the word becomes accepted in popular usage through normalization. When the word "porn" is attached to a juicy hamburger or a beautifully written verse of poetry, the word "porn" becomes much more approachable because it becomes inherently desexualized. 

Take the YouTube account TheFoodPornChannel for example. This is what they call the "The FoodPorn Channel Intro" video:

      

This video is a perfect example of how the word porn is taken out of its sexual context and attached to something new that popular culture has latched onto. This video of a guy devouring a massive burger is not sexually appealing- it instead is purely sensationalized. The question then becomes how the popular use and association of this word is working to affect the understanding of porn in a sexual context. If the word porn is commonly associated with food and the like, that might logically lead to a more pathologized understanding of sexually explicit porn. 

Media literacy might come into play here to combat the negative effects of normalizing the use of the word porn. Pinkleton et. al found in their 2012 study "The Role of Media Literacy in Shaping Adolescents' Understanding of and Responses to Sexual Portrayals in Mass Media" that teens who participated in media literacy training better understood that media influence teens' decision making about sex and were more likely to report that sexual depictions in the media are unrealistic and glamorized (p. 460). However, maybe the results that the study found need to be extended to understand how media literacy training might make way for understanding different ways of expressing sexuality. Media literacy, in teaching how sex in popular media is influential, might have the potential to explain how expressions of sexuality like porn in the popular discourse are not necessarily accurate either. Porn has come to have multiple definitions through the intervention of popular culture and I think that those multiple definitions need to be understood to avoid making sexually explicit porn and its use isolated from understanding it as a potentially healthy expression of sexuality and a safe way for adolescents especially to experience sex when they have little experience. 

As the word porn attaches itself to Instagram pictures and Twitter hashtags, it is plausible to understand porn in popular culture as having the same normalizing and pathologizing effect of BDSM in the mainstream. As the word is used outside of its context in sexually explicit material, the word is detached from a form of sexual expression and that sexual expression might eventually become completely unapproachable. If media literacy programs were to address this type of word usage and combat the understanding of porn only as a hashtag, a healthy discussion about the use of porn might result. 

References

Pinkleton, B.E., Austin, E. W., Chen, Y.-C. A. A., & Cohen, M. (2012). The role of media literacy in shaping adolescents' understanding of and responses to sexual portrayals in mass media. Journal of Health Communication, 17(4), 460-476. 

Weiss, M. (2006). Mainstreaming kink: The politics of BDSM representation in U. S. popular media. Journal of Homosexuality, 50(2/3), 103-132.