70s_guy

No they don't. It is merely the result of habituation for those many that have been sucked down into the American culture we now exist in.

Pornography is all about self sexual stimulation and with many that necessarily is to the point of orgasm. Thus an epidemic of those addicted to getting off frequently in all manner of secret behind closed doors unnatural disgusting ways. Something that has been growing and growing since the sexual revolution of the late 60s. Likewise today we have access to all manner of tasty but unhealthy to eat foods that has been growing and growing so today we have an epidemic of unfit, overweight, blubbery fat, couch potatoes. And all manner of drugs are available as never before especially to those that seek illegal drugs, thus we continue to have an epidemic of people imbibing alchohol and all manner of drugs. In each case these are pleasantly sensual behaviors that those with weak self control tend to get into trouble. Just like Pavlov's dog listening each time to the bell that preceeded food, the way a brain works, habituation of visual imagery to pleasant sensations changes behavior to the point the visual like the auditory bell initiates the learned behavior. Thus some fat person that regularly passes the potato chip isle in the supermarket, will get that urge to grab a big bag of chips even though they know they shouldn't. And the person that knows they ought not buy that 6-pack of beer...again, will of course buy a case of 16 ounce cans because it is so easy and their will is weak. And likewise all the Al Bundy's of the world that have gotten off secretly for many years from pornographic magazines and movies will of course use the even more stimulating possibilities of the Internet to whack off even more. Again not at all natural but rather habituated.

So if we took two mechanics, one from my youth in a far more sexually restrictive culture and one today where just about anything goes, I'd bet the blue collar mechanic from my youth would be far less likely to look at an atractive women walking into their shop sexually like that than those today. My point is that it is not that males would act so were it not that our American USA culture has so utterly descended into the gutter that they have embraced and become so habituated. There are still men today primarily God fearing Christians, that do not automatically size up attractive women, but that is far less than in yesterdays world. -dave

jesushlincoln

You make it sound as though masturbation is somehow harmful. Never mind the fact that every reputable study done on the subject has found that there are numerous health benefits to masturbation, such as less likelihood for prostate cancer in men.

Also, you essentially say that getting turned on by viewing porn is comparable to Pavlov's dogs, which is really isn't. I'm sure that if you found someone who had never seen porn or even a naked body (besides their own, presumably) in their lifetime, they'd still respond to it the same way. Everyone I know discovered porn on their own, independently, without being led into it or similarly "trained" to look at it. Additionally, pornography has been around for hundreds of years, and Playboy, one of the most famous softcore porn publications known, came into being in the 1950s, one of the most repressed time periods in modern history. Really, people were just as dirty-minded then, there was just a whitewashed image of clean ol' Leave It To Beaver-style suburban bliss covering it up.

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70s_guy

Phychologists as a whole tend to be far more liberal and especially sexually liberal than the general population, so some have a vested interest in bringing the rest of us into their disgusting practices. There are of course praticing Christian physchologists too, and if one sought their opinions, the results would differ. With social controversies there are always studies from biased sources eager to promote one side or the other. For instance sizeable American phychological orgainizations have long promoted homsexuality despite the fact it is an abomination to many in society.

All sensual pleasurable activities can be habituated including sex so there is little reason to pursue arguing that somehow looking at pornography is different. Pedophiles for instance are mostly the result of their own secret activities by their own weak freedom of choice of getting off to images of children. They were not born like that but rather habituated themselves to enjoying such. Likewise the teenager male with little self control that incestuously imagines sex with relatives instead of considering how disgustingly a taboo that ought to be, will increasingly develop a sexual mental condition about persons they whack off to. Same thing with the innately heterosexual person that explores the taboos of homosexual fantasies. Such is likely to habituate that person to such a taboo so they genuinely develop those tendencies even if they feel guilt and don't really want to outside their secret little world. Our brains are simply rather plastic and what we choose to fill it with becomes self fullfillingly what we become.

Although it is true that pornography has always been available to those that wanted it, the difference is in ease of access to getting it. If it is only available at some restrictive adult bookstore in large cities like decades ago, the likelyhood that those with weak self control would make the considerable effort to obtain such is far less than if such material is available like today at any corner store, video outlet, in the US mail, or now on one's secret home computer. Same parallels with fat people with little self control today being surrounded by markets selling all manner of food they have little will to resist versus having to drive 10 miles into town every couple weeks to buy food in the one market around.

Generally through history there have always been atheists or those who did not believe in moral gods, or those that didn't believe enough in their gods to not indulge in sexual fantasies and secret personal sex. For those atheists one might proclaim, "what does it matter?" I'll grant that it probably doesn't if one accepts we are just pleasure seeking creatures here today and dead tomorrow in a godless universe. However any church going Christian, Jew, or Muslem that really believes in their god and hopes for eternal life, knows that practicing hedonistic sexual practices that grate against the written laws of their god will not open the door to that gift. A choice as old as the ages. -dave

CaptainCourtesy

There are so many inaccuracies and 'opinion presented as fact' in this post, I hardly know where to begin. You deny peer reviewed research surrounding masturbation and homosexuality that obliterates your position, because...it obliterates your position. You claim that a teenager who fantasizes about incest will develop a sexual mental condition. You claim that one who is homosexual also has a sexual mental condition. You claim that atheists are just hedonists and are immoral. All of these claims are your own opinions, nothing more, and have no basis in fact. But I'll give you a chance. Chose ONE and post a link to some evidence about your claim. We'll see how it stands up to evidence I can produce.

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mixedmedia

I am a woman and I admit to fantasizing about having sex with men I encounter almost everywhere. Well, maybe not fantasize, but I will have flashes of imagination where I picture having sex with them. Men of all ages and races. At work, the grocery store, on the street, at the gym, everywhere. I never act on these impulses and I almost never watch porn. It's just how I roll.

jesushlincoln

Truth is not a democracy, and science is not about subjective opinion. No scientists of any sort get together behind closed doors and decide what they think should be scientifically valid, but rather, they examine all the evidence with the assumption that the hypothesis being tested is wrong, and if the evidence says otherwise, a theory is created, destroyed, or redacted. Psychologists took a look at homosexuality in the 60's and 70's, with the new hypothesis that it was normal behavior, not a mental disease. After testing this hypothesis against the data, with the assumption that it was incorrect, it was instead vindicated, and homosexuality was removed from the DSM in 1973.

Whenever the results don't come out to be what they want or expect, people accuse scientists of being somehow biased, of course never citing any reason for this beyond some implied "liberal conspiracy" or something. However, unfortunately, we sometimes discover things we don't like in science, much like Alice tumbling down the rabbit hole.

I see you present no evidence here, which makes sense, given how horribly wrong everything you just said is. Pedophilia is a mental disorder, and is classified as such because it causes disruption and harm both to the pedophile and to his victims. However, nothing of the sort happens with teenagers having high sex drives; in fact, there is a purely biochemical basis to this. Humans aren't born with some snow-white intrinsic morality; in fact, the opposite is true. We're born with nothing but absolute basic primal urges and universal selfishness, and then develop altruism later on. Also, it's merely a fact that not everyone is "innately heterosexual." Every test done has found physical differences in the minds of homosexuals, not to mention that homosexuality is documented in more than 400 species of animals.

The argument against homosexuality falls apart under any circumstances anyway. Even if it were unnatural, so is the car you drive, the fast food you eat, the clothes you wear, and just about every other thing about modern life. If their action does not hurt anybody, then why should it be illegal? It's not like all of suburban America is waking up to find gays screwing on their lawn or their breakfast table. The worst case scenario is that you might see a gay couple kiss in public or something, in which case you can use the amazing superpower of looking away and ignoring it. You might say "What about the children?!" but until Li'l Timmy's eyes catch on fire and he grows horns and a pointy tail from seeing that somewhere, there doesn't seem to be any clear and present danger. In the case that it is natural (which it is), then there's no reason to bother arguing against it. You might as well say we should illegalize all sex and force everyone to use artificial insemination.

Yeah, you know, Ancient Greece only lasted for thousands of years and made advances it took modern society until the Renaissance to re-create. Ancient Rome only lasted thousands of years and took over nearly all the known world and gave us the foundation for today's society. Clearly their contributions meant nothing, and they were deftly smitten by the Abrahamic God. Never mind the fact that Abrahamic religions all started in one little place in the Middle East and were tightly tied to the local culture there until the Cult of Jesus spread to the Romans with good ol' Constantine's famous cop-out at the end of his otherwise 100% pagan life. I characterize it as such because there is no objective reason to believe in Christianity at all, let alone as a basis for our laws.

In conclusion, your entire argument seems to bank on the assumption that sex is somehow intrinsically bad and/or immoral, no doubt because you clearly have a vested religious interest. Blue laws, vice laws, morality laws, obscenity laws; all bank on the assumption that sex is somehow the worst thing in the universe even though it's directly responsible for man's evolution (yes, evolution) into the most intelligent creature on the face of the earth. So please, I challenge you, state an objective reason why sex is bad. Provide some evidence. Put your ideas up to the rigorous scrutinies of modern science. It's already made them crash and burn a hundred times before, and won't waste a picosecond doing so again.

rivrrat

Since a couple of other women have answered, I'll go ahead and chime in.

I don't imagine men naked; pretty much never. I do, however, imagine what it might be like to have a sexual encounter with some of them, at least the beginning of it. I imagine how they might kiss, and whether or not they're dominant enough in the bedroom to really turn me on. The things I imagine, however, are things that don't require him to be nude at all... thus I don't imagine him so.

However, I do on occasion imagine certain women naked. Women, IMO, have beautiful, sensual bodies that are very pleasing to look at. I don't feel the same about men's bodies. I just don't think a naked man is all that more attractive than a clothed one. It's his actions, personality, etc, that make him attractive to me.

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70s_guy

CC, playing the deny deny deny cards again and then baiting me to stupidly engage you in a debate over this study or expert source or that? Lets go down the road of vectoring off into endless controversies even experts don't always agree on. You and others as usual then play your little web forum debating game of sounding so incredulous and dismayed throwing out extreme negative characterizations left and right as though that bears on the matter. A debater can often tell when they hit a chord that rings with truth against an opposition because it often provokes strong emotional levels of counter responses.

What we can state is that both the pro and con positions over matters of sexuality have long been subjects of considerable dispute. The liberal views versus the conservative views. The religious views versus the atheists views. The sexually liberated views versus the sexually traditional. One liberal psychologist versus another conservative psychologist. There are whole books written about the subject by those with a far better understanding of the issues involved to support or attack each side than I have any interest in engaging in to any depth. Any characterization of psychologists agreeing universally on these matters would be a stretch. One could state the majority do reflect what you suggest. However it is also true that a minority with more conservative religious values do not. And an ordinary person reading the thread with a conservative attitude will likely consider my input reasonable enough and simply stated that they will ignore whatever the rest of you blabber on about.

And jl, it is obvious you are a real Christian religious hater and have likely engaged in attacking its moral attitudes much of your life. You want to whack off during your lifetime and not feel guilty fine, more power to you. I hope to be saved and live forever. Its a different moral attitude and I can agree to disagree. Again nothing we might argue here will change your position, my position, nor any of the many millions on both sides of the arguments. If you post a thread over in the Religion and Philosophy forum, I might engage you if a subject is narrowly well posed and I have something to add. However I am not one to wander far from the intended subject of threads so will let this lie quietly. -dave

americanwoman

I agree with all of this, except I do watch porn.

It's kinda funny after reading through this, I did try and visualize some guys naked but it's more like I wonder what they're packing under them pants. For females you mostly get the idea of how big her breasts are or her body type but for a guy the most important part is hidden until they reveal it to you, so in that sense I find men more mysterious and it makes the fantasy better. Because if you could see their real size immediatly, it wouldn't make most of those fantasies believable

WI Crippler

Now hold on a minute here. In other threads we have women claiming orgasm through penetration is highley unlikely and an urban myth, and then we have women here saying that a mans size is part of the fantasy? Which one is it?

Granted I do much more for my wife than just stab her in the axe wound, but I always figured every woman is different and I just found what seems to work for her. I like to play around a bit........

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