7 ms·

> Texas cannot enforce a provision requiring porn websites to "display health warnings about the effects of the consumption of pornography." Well at least some

> Texas cannot enforce a provision requiring porn websites to "display health warnings about the effects of the consumption of pornography." Well at least some common sense prevailed, there is zero reason to have a notice like that. Like I kinda get on paper how you could come to the conclusion of needing to do something like this (the ID part), I mean generally (unless you look a certain age) you do have to show your ID to buy porn or any related places... But it just feels unnecessary and reeks of data collection that could be used for bad reasons. I know I started looking at porn at... middle school timeframe. Maybe freshman of high school but pretty sure middle school. So 13/14 years old time frame. I am just fine. I am not saying that kids should have free access to it, but we need to remove this stigma.

Workaccount2 3y ago
[flagged]
- SuperNinKenDo 3y ago
  You really believe the negative effect has been nothing? I totally oppose this law, but I think claiming that widespread access to internet pornography has had no ill effect at all is denying your own lying eyes.
  - Workaccount2 3y ago
    You're free to list these effects. Obviously the "sex crazed delusional woman abusers" theory didn't play out, ironically domestic abuse fell off cliff as internet porn became widespread. Not saying they are necessarily related, but the prude hot heads of the early 00's were _completely_ wrong. https://ovc.ojp.gov/sites/g/files/xyckuh226/files/ncvrw2018/info_flyers/fact_sheets/2018NCVRW_IPV_508_QC.pdf https://ovc.ojp.gov/sites/g/files/xyckuh226/files/ncvrw2018/...
    - caeril 3y ago
      Yes, and sexual assault also declined along with porn proliferation: https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/all-about-sex/201601/evidence-mounts-more-porn-less-sexual-assault https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/all-about-sex/201601... But this isn't a popular thing to raise because it contradicts the insane zero-evidence misandrist talking point we've had shouted for decades that rape is about "male power" or "controlling women". Turns out it's actually about "being horny with criminal intent".
- nerdjon 3y ago
  100%, it is one of those things that I think feeds into itself. At a young age you may have been told to repress certain desires, or that anything outside of sex to procreation was bad (I mean self pleasure is still seen as a negative even though it is very important to learning about yourself) and then you grow up get and when you have the power to do something about this you are filled with anger and so much self hatred that you push for laws like this. Edit: I just realized I misread your first sentence. But I still stand by this.
- RajT88 3y ago
  > I have a theory that the people who fall over themselves pushing "modesty" laws are ones who really just want to add a layer of "performing forbidden acts" to their own sexual perversions. Maybe some. I have another theory that people pushing "modesty" laws want to enforce their values on a world that doesn't share those values.
- reader5000 3y ago
  Theres all sorts of statistics about the increasing amount of men that are virgins into their 20s and beyond, declining marriage rates, declining birth rates, "inceldom" etc. etc. Its certainly plausible that at least for some subset of people becoming porn addicts when they enter puberty is disrupting their ability to form relationships as an adult. Having said that its not really clear censorship is the answer. Probably over time phenotypes overly sensitive to porn addiction will just go extinct.
- jorvi 3y ago
  > and the negative effects seem to be....nothing. One of my colleagues has a 14-year old daughter, and she has TikTok. It’s not uncommon for girls of her age to post stuff like “the right place for a hand during kissing”, and it’ll be a (subtle) reference to the throat. There’s nothing wrong with consuming porn at that age per sè, but without good parental / sex ed guidance it shapes kids their concept of what “normal” sex is before they are given the chance to figure that out on their own.
  - twiclo 3y ago
    This is the argument that always bother me. It boils down to "Parents just need to parent heir kids." Look at the impossible task of raising a child who's brain isn't impacted by our pornified society today. Why do we think parents are on their own when it comes to keeping their kids from porn but are more than happy to help them keep their kids from cigarettes/alcohol?
    - jorvi 3y ago
      > Why do we think parents are on their own when it comes to keeping their kids from porn but are more than happy to help them keep their kids from cigarettes/alcohol? Because those are physical goods that require a point of sale. Porn is available at a click’s notice, for free. You’ll never stop access to that, kids are much more clever than people give them credit for. So the logical step is to teach them how to manage that in a healthy way. Like, you can lock down all home PCs, filter your router, apply parental controls to their mobile phone, and they’ll just have their buddies send them obfuscated porn, or sneakernet it to them.
- twiclo 3y ago
  You see no negative effects because your brain grew up on porn just like everyone else you interact with. If everyone is sick then it's going to look normal. To really see the effects of porn you need to ask what could porn affect? Possibly someone's understanding of sexual ethics? Could it push their sexual interests into more and more extreme positions? The generation before has better mental health, less divorce, higher birthrates, etc. Now virtually everything is seen through a sexual lens. There's a growing problem of women damaging their anuses https://www.theguardian.com/society/2022/aug/11/rise-in-popularity-of-anal-sex-has-led-to-health-problems-for-women https://www.theguardian.com/society/2022/aug/11/rise-in-popu... Here's an article talking about a teen girl's attempt to imitate porn: >A 16-year-old girl’s bowel was so badly injured during group anal sex that she needs to use a colostomy bag for the rest of her life. https://nypost.com/2019/01/16/teen-suffers-life-changing-injury-trying-to-imitate-porn/ https://nypost.com/2019/01/16/teen-suffers-life-changing-inj...
  - SketchySeaBeast 3y ago
    You're making a lot of claims there without proving causes and ignoring a whole swath of socioeconomic factors in favour of your bugbear, but just to disprove one, divorce rates have been on a downward trend since online pornography became really ubiquitous. So it turns out porn saves marriages! https://www.bgsu.edu/ncfmr/resources/data/family-profiles/loo-divorce-rate-US-geographic-variation-2022-fp-23-24.html https://www.bgsu.edu/ncfmr/resources/data/family-profiles/lo...
  - nerdjon 3y ago
    Both of those issues sound less like problems with the porn itself but there being so much stigma around it that we can't openly talk about what is real and what isn't. (Or "Normal", for lack of a better term here. Basically what doesn't require training to do) We have these discussions around R rated movies, Violent Video Games, and many other things. But if we could actually discuss porn and sex as naturally as we talk about these other things than people would actually properly understand what they are seeing. But we don't, and that is a societal problem.
  - rokkitmensch 3y ago
    Anecdata.
sillysaurusx 3y ago
If anything, the stigma is growing, not fading. I’m not sure why. People who grow it tend to say that there’s new evidence porn will cause mental problems. Or relationship problems. Both claims seem suspect, but I don’t doubt that some people react badly to it. Unfortunately the era of "viewer discretion advised" seems to be closing. Today it’s punish the broadcaster if viewers have an issue. I do think there need to be tighter restrictions on the industry exploiting people, though. That seems to be a consistent fact: many people have claimed the industry is exploitative, and that there are few if any protections against it.
- nerdjon 3y ago
  Yeah sadly it does seem to be growing, I have been noticing that in many areas of the US a stigma around sex is getting worse and worse. Sex is natural and fun and we should be able to talk about it. I am thankful that within my group of friends we can openly talk about it. > I do think there need to be tighter restrictions on the industry exploiting people, though. That seems to be a consistent fact: many people have claimed the industry is exploitative, and that there are few if any protections against it. I for sure agree with that. There are problem with the industry, particularly how woman are treated.
- salawat 3y ago
  >Today it’s punish the broadcaster if viewers have an issue. Always has been. MO of the U.S. regulatory State has always been "go after the platform". It's why "freedom of the press" is about more than newspapers and reporters. Even if no one seems to argue on those grounds.
yau8edq12i 3y ago
Your anecdote isn't data. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Effects_of_pornography_on_young_people https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Effects_of_pornography_on_youn... I'm not saying that it's black and white, but I hope we can rise above the level of discourse of "I watched porn when young and turned out just fine". It's about as interesting as e.g., "I started smoking when I was 16 and turned out just fine" or "my parents beat me as a kid and I turned out just fine". First of all, what you might consider "just fine" is perhaps, well, not fine. Second, it's one single data point; well, not even a data point, but rather a hot take.
- nerdjon 3y ago
  The problem with a lot of these studies is they are also done in a society that highly stigmatizes sexuality and porn. Many of these things can also be mitigated by an ability to have open conversations about feelings about what they see. Same with playing violent video games, watching R rated movies, or whatever.
  - yau8edq12i 3y ago
    Maybe I should have added, I also hope we can rise above the level of discourse where a single though is viewed as enough to dismiss a bunch of studies.
    - nerdjon 3y ago
      I am not dismissing the studies, but we have to look at the studies through the society that they were done in. To ask, is the study saying that there is an inherent problem with porn in an isolated bubble or is the problem with porn in the way our society is setup. That is a very important question and drastically changes the conversation and the action items.
- stickfigure 3y ago
  The tone of your comment implies that the wikipedia article supports the "porn bad" narrative, but the article does not support that at all. I'm not sure why you linked it.
raffraffraff 3y ago
Hmm. Plenty of people end up with porn addiction and lots of men who watch extreme porn can't get it up for plain old vanilla sex. And be honest, most porn isn't vanilla, and is horribly misogynistic and frequently violent. And men trying to normalise "porn-style" sex isn't doing women any favours. The whole industry is ... just extremely unpleasant. Aside from porn, if I had kids under 14 I'd straight up ban them from accessing hyper-addictive / damaging social media. Anyways, you're fine. That's great. Lots of people aren't. On a personal level, I like the idea of moderating my appetites and controlling my consumption. Mastering temptation is key to a healthy and happy life, including not killing yourself with alcohol, drugs or food. I see sex as "just another appetite" that can be satisfied in a number of ways, some healthy, some not. Besides all of the above, I don't think it's possible to forcibly remove stigmas. Stigmas don't work that way.
- nerdjon 3y ago
  We can acknowledge that there are problems with the porn industry, and I agree there very much are, without stigmatizing the entire industry and the people that consume it. Not being excited about "vanilla sex" really isn't a problem, sex should be fun and regardless of the reason you should be able to explore it. Even if that is the only sex you enjoy, that's fine. If that is the case, porn is just the thing that helped you find out you enjoyed a certain kink but you could have found that out another way. We should not be putting rules (or expectations) on what type of sex people should be having. Porn can be a healthy part of someone's sexuality. As far as forcibly removing stigma, obviously no. But we can analyze there that stigma comes from and push against it when it doesn't make sense.
lo_zamoyski 3y ago
A porn user claiming he's fine carries about as much weight and authority as a drug addict claiming he's fine. You've been watching since your early teens, and presumably wanking. It's all you've known for practically your entire post-pubescent life. Porn is very damaging, and habituates destructive habits, disordered views of human beings, disorders the appetites, and impacts cognition and perception of reality (which used to be called "mental blindness" in the classic texts). It creates a fantasy harem in the mind, an escape into delusion, and cripples one's ability to relate to members of the opposite sex in a healthy manner. Never mind the destructiveness of wanking itself. No one has the right to make, distribute, or watch pornography. The idea that it even could be a right is absurd, as no one has the right to what is unethical. And it isn't free speech. It is obscenity, and obfuscation of this fact is tiresome. If banning the production and distribution of this filth outright is too difficult to achieve politically, then burdensome regulation is a good Plan B. I would prefer targeting the industry, personally, rather than individuals, but perhaps there are reasons why that, too, is too difficult to achieve politically in the current climate. Recall that Alan Dershowitz pulled off a nice piece of legalistic sophistry when he defended porn as "free speech". Perhaps that's the notion that needs to be roundly defeated first, before we can crush the industry as a whole. But it is worth mentioning that restrictions on pornography use are not new. Israel effectively requires citizens to register to be able to view it. That's quite a light touch, but obviously goes beyond what we see in the West. The law has an instructive dimension, and banning porn and stigmatizing it can help nudge most people away from such bad habits, and signal that it is not good, serious, and shameful. Consider that porn is also weaponized, and has a history as an instrument of psyops, both domestically and against foreign enemies. (In a military context, and since we mention Israel, recall how Palestinian airwaves were flooded with pornography when the IDF captured a Palestinian TV station in Ramallah some years ago. You think the Israelis were trying to "liberate" the Palestinians by doing that? If porn was a nothingburger, you think it would have been used in that manner? The US has employed similar tactics.)
- nerdjon 3y ago
  > Never mind the destructiveness of wanking itself. I could maybe, maybe! buy that porn has some negative problems. But if you seriously think that self pleasure has any negative problems it invalidates everything you are trying to say that I don't even feel like taking the time to respond to the rest. Self pleasure is an incredibly important part of discovering yourself, study after study has proven that. Everything else you said is just the usual puritanical views and I am not going to hold Isreal up to a beacon of what societal views on sex should be.

Workaccount2 3y ago

[flagged]

SuperNinKenDo 3y ago
You really believe the negative effect has been nothing? I totally oppose this law, but I think claiming that widespread access to internet pornography has had no ill effect at all is denying your own lying eyes.
- Workaccount2 3y ago
  You're free to list these effects. Obviously the "sex crazed delusional woman abusers" theory didn't play out, ironically domestic abuse fell off cliff as internet porn became widespread. Not saying they are necessarily related, but the prude hot heads of the early 00's were _completely_ wrong. https://ovc.ojp.gov/sites/g/files/xyckuh226/files/ncvrw2018/info_flyers/fact_sheets/2018NCVRW_IPV_508_QC.pdf https://ovc.ojp.gov/sites/g/files/xyckuh226/files/ncvrw2018/...
  - caeril 3y ago
    Yes, and sexual assault also declined along with porn proliferation: https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/all-about-sex/201601/evidence-mounts-more-porn-less-sexual-assault https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/all-about-sex/201601... But this isn't a popular thing to raise because it contradicts the insane zero-evidence misandrist talking point we've had shouted for decades that rape is about "male power" or "controlling women". Turns out it's actually about "being horny with criminal intent".
nerdjon 3y ago
100%, it is one of those things that I think feeds into itself. At a young age you may have been told to repress certain desires, or that anything outside of sex to procreation was bad (I mean self pleasure is still seen as a negative even though it is very important to learning about yourself) and then you grow up get and when you have the power to do something about this you are filled with anger and so much self hatred that you push for laws like this. Edit: I just realized I misread your first sentence. But I still stand by this.
RajT88 3y ago
> I have a theory that the people who fall over themselves pushing "modesty" laws are ones who really just want to add a layer of "performing forbidden acts" to their own sexual perversions. Maybe some. I have another theory that people pushing "modesty" laws want to enforce their values on a world that doesn't share those values.
reader5000 3y ago
Theres all sorts of statistics about the increasing amount of men that are virgins into their 20s and beyond, declining marriage rates, declining birth rates, "inceldom" etc. etc. Its certainly plausible that at least for some subset of people becoming porn addicts when they enter puberty is disrupting their ability to form relationships as an adult. Having said that its not really clear censorship is the answer. Probably over time phenotypes overly sensitive to porn addiction will just go extinct.
jorvi 3y ago
> and the negative effects seem to be....nothing. One of my colleagues has a 14-year old daughter, and she has TikTok. It’s not uncommon for girls of her age to post stuff like “the right place for a hand during kissing”, and it’ll be a (subtle) reference to the throat. There’s nothing wrong with consuming porn at that age per sè, but without good parental / sex ed guidance it shapes kids their concept of what “normal” sex is before they are given the chance to figure that out on their own.
- twiclo 3y ago
  This is the argument that always bother me. It boils down to "Parents just need to parent heir kids." Look at the impossible task of raising a child who's brain isn't impacted by our pornified society today. Why do we think parents are on their own when it comes to keeping their kids from porn but are more than happy to help them keep their kids from cigarettes/alcohol?
  - jorvi 3y ago
    > Why do we think parents are on their own when it comes to keeping their kids from porn but are more than happy to help them keep their kids from cigarettes/alcohol? Because those are physical goods that require a point of sale. Porn is available at a click’s notice, for free. You’ll never stop access to that, kids are much more clever than people give them credit for. So the logical step is to teach them how to manage that in a healthy way. Like, you can lock down all home PCs, filter your router, apply parental controls to their mobile phone, and they’ll just have their buddies send them obfuscated porn, or sneakernet it to them.
twiclo 3y ago
You see no negative effects because your brain grew up on porn just like everyone else you interact with. If everyone is sick then it's going to look normal. To really see the effects of porn you need to ask what could porn affect? Possibly someone's understanding of sexual ethics? Could it push their sexual interests into more and more extreme positions? The generation before has better mental health, less divorce, higher birthrates, etc. Now virtually everything is seen through a sexual lens. There's a growing problem of women damaging their anuses https://www.theguardian.com/society/2022/aug/11/rise-in-popularity-of-anal-sex-has-led-to-health-problems-for-women https://www.theguardian.com/society/2022/aug/11/rise-in-popu... Here's an article talking about a teen girl's attempt to imitate porn: >A 16-year-old girl’s bowel was so badly injured during group anal sex that she needs to use a colostomy bag for the rest of her life. https://nypost.com/2019/01/16/teen-suffers-life-changing-injury-trying-to-imitate-porn/ https://nypost.com/2019/01/16/teen-suffers-life-changing-inj...
- SketchySeaBeast 3y ago
  You're making a lot of claims there without proving causes and ignoring a whole swath of socioeconomic factors in favour of your bugbear, but just to disprove one, divorce rates have been on a downward trend since online pornography became really ubiquitous. So it turns out porn saves marriages! https://www.bgsu.edu/ncfmr/resources/data/family-profiles/loo-divorce-rate-US-geographic-variation-2022-fp-23-24.html https://www.bgsu.edu/ncfmr/resources/data/family-profiles/lo...
- nerdjon 3y ago
  Both of those issues sound less like problems with the porn itself but there being so much stigma around it that we can't openly talk about what is real and what isn't. (Or "Normal", for lack of a better term here. Basically what doesn't require training to do) We have these discussions around R rated movies, Violent Video Games, and many other things. But if we could actually discuss porn and sex as naturally as we talk about these other things than people would actually properly understand what they are seeing. But we don't, and that is a societal problem.
- rokkitmensch 3y ago
  Anecdata.

sillysaurusx 3y ago

If anything, the stigma is growing, not fading. I’m not sure why. People who grow it tend to say that there’s new evidence porn will cause mental problems. Or relationship problems. Both claims seem suspect, but I don’t doubt that some people react badly to it. Unfortunately the era of "viewer discretion advised" seems to be closing. Today it’s punish the broadcaster if viewers have an issue. I do think there need to be tighter restrictions on the industry exploiting people, though. That seems to be a consistent fact: many people have claimed the industry is exploitative, and that there are few if any protections against it.

nerdjon 3y ago
Yeah sadly it does seem to be growing, I have been noticing that in many areas of the US a stigma around sex is getting worse and worse. Sex is natural and fun and we should be able to talk about it. I am thankful that within my group of friends we can openly talk about it. > I do think there need to be tighter restrictions on the industry exploiting people, though. That seems to be a consistent fact: many people have claimed the industry is exploitative, and that there are few if any protections against it. I for sure agree with that. There are problem with the industry, particularly how woman are treated.
salawat 3y ago
>Today it’s punish the broadcaster if viewers have an issue. Always has been. MO of the U.S. regulatory State has always been "go after the platform". It's why "freedom of the press" is about more than newspapers and reporters. Even if no one seems to argue on those grounds.

yau8edq12i 3y ago

Your anecdote isn't data. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Effects_of_pornography_on_young_people https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Effects_of_pornography_on_youn... I'm not saying that it's black and white, but I hope we can rise above the level of discourse of "I watched porn when young and turned out just fine". It's about as interesting as e.g., "I started smoking when I was 16 and turned out just fine" or "my parents beat me as a kid and I turned out just fine". First of all, what you might consider "just fine" is perhaps, well, not fine. Second, it's one single data point; well, not even a data point, but rather a hot take.

nerdjon 3y ago
The problem with a lot of these studies is they are also done in a society that highly stigmatizes sexuality and porn. Many of these things can also be mitigated by an ability to have open conversations about feelings about what they see. Same with playing violent video games, watching R rated movies, or whatever.
- yau8edq12i 3y ago
  Maybe I should have added, I also hope we can rise above the level of discourse where a single though is viewed as enough to dismiss a bunch of studies.
  - nerdjon 3y ago
    I am not dismissing the studies, but we have to look at the studies through the society that they were done in. To ask, is the study saying that there is an inherent problem with porn in an isolated bubble or is the problem with porn in the way our society is setup. That is a very important question and drastically changes the conversation and the action items.
stickfigure 3y ago
The tone of your comment implies that the wikipedia article supports the "porn bad" narrative, but the article does not support that at all. I'm not sure why you linked it.

raffraffraff 3y ago

Hmm. Plenty of people end up with porn addiction and lots of men who watch extreme porn can't get it up for plain old vanilla sex. And be honest, most porn isn't vanilla, and is horribly misogynistic and frequently violent. And men trying to normalise "porn-style" sex isn't doing women any favours. The whole industry is ... just extremely unpleasant. Aside from porn, if I had kids under 14 I'd straight up ban them from accessing hyper-addictive / damaging social media. Anyways, you're fine. That's great. Lots of people aren't. On a personal level, I like the idea of moderating my appetites and controlling my consumption. Mastering temptation is key to a healthy and happy life, including not killing yourself with alcohol, drugs or food. I see sex as "just another appetite" that can be satisfied in a number of ways, some healthy, some not. Besides all of the above, I don't think it's possible to forcibly remove stigmas. Stigmas don't work that way.

nerdjon 3y ago
We can acknowledge that there are problems with the porn industry, and I agree there very much are, without stigmatizing the entire industry and the people that consume it. Not being excited about "vanilla sex" really isn't a problem, sex should be fun and regardless of the reason you should be able to explore it. Even if that is the only sex you enjoy, that's fine. If that is the case, porn is just the thing that helped you find out you enjoyed a certain kink but you could have found that out another way. We should not be putting rules (or expectations) on what type of sex people should be having. Porn can be a healthy part of someone's sexuality. As far as forcibly removing stigma, obviously no. But we can analyze there that stigma comes from and push against it when it doesn't make sense.

lo_zamoyski 3y ago

A porn user claiming he's fine carries about as much weight and authority as a drug addict claiming he's fine. You've been watching since your early teens, and presumably wanking. It's all you've known for practically your entire post-pubescent life. Porn is very damaging, and habituates destructive habits, disordered views of human beings, disorders the appetites, and impacts cognition and perception of reality (which used to be called "mental blindness" in the classic texts). It creates a fantasy harem in the mind, an escape into delusion, and cripples one's ability to relate to members of the opposite sex in a healthy manner. Never mind the destructiveness of wanking itself. No one has the right to make, distribute, or watch pornography. The idea that it even could be a right is absurd, as no one has the right to what is unethical. And it isn't free speech. It is obscenity, and obfuscation of this fact is tiresome. If banning the production and distribution of this filth outright is too difficult to achieve politically, then burdensome regulation is a good Plan B. I would prefer targeting the industry, personally, rather than individuals, but perhaps there are reasons why that, too, is too difficult to achieve politically in the current climate. Recall that Alan Dershowitz pulled off a nice piece of legalistic sophistry when he defended porn as "free speech". Perhaps that's the notion that needs to be roundly defeated first, before we can crush the industry as a whole. But it is worth mentioning that restrictions on pornography use are not new. Israel effectively requires citizens to register to be able to view it. That's quite a light touch, but obviously goes beyond what we see in the West. The law has an instructive dimension, and banning porn and stigmatizing it can help nudge most people away from such bad habits, and signal that it is not good, serious, and shameful. Consider that porn is also weaponized, and has a history as an instrument of psyops, both domestically and against foreign enemies. (In a military context, and since we mention Israel, recall how Palestinian airwaves were flooded with pornography when the IDF captured a Palestinian TV station in Ramallah some years ago. You think the Israelis were trying to "liberate" the Palestinians by doing that? If porn was a nothingburger, you think it would have been used in that manner? The US has employed similar tactics.)

nerdjon 3y ago
> Never mind the destructiveness of wanking itself. I could maybe, maybe! buy that porn has some negative problems. But if you seriously think that self pleasure has any negative problems it invalidates everything you are trying to say that I don't even feel like taking the time to respond to the rest. Self pleasure is an incredibly important part of discovering yourself, study after study has proven that. Everything else you said is just the usual puritanical views and I am not going to hold Isreal up to a beacon of what societal views on sex should be.