QuakerInfo.com Forum

[Ellwood]

I would like to know if there are any articles dealing with this subject which seems to be overtaking the world. Even the tv commercials are filled with sex selling things. Shouldn't we take a stand against this!'
Ellwood

[Harold]

I agree that there needs to be a lot done. Sex and sexuality are everywhere these days. As a person who does not watch much television, when I do happen to turn one on I am sometimes taken aback at all the deliberate clotheslessness! The same types of things are all over magazine covers and billboards and the Internet...sex is so pervasive in our culture that often we don't even realise how bad it's gotten.

[Shay]

I don't know that porn and the objectification of women on TV are really the same thing. While I agree that the porn industry is hurtful to some, (And someone has told me there is a Quaker porn actress) I think that the issue of seeing women's bodies used as selling points is a deeper manifestation of our society's ingrained sexism rather than an appeal to the baser senses...

That being said, here is an article you might find interesting:
http://www.quaker.org.uk/more/qviews/qviews7.html

Like so many Friends docoments, it provides no easy answers, and the ultimate decision on what you must do lies with you.

[GKK]

I agree with Shay.

I don't like porn, as I see most of it as objectifying women and men in a most hideous way.

But somewhere around here I've got this lesbian 'porn' magazine that's really quite lovely. Lesbian as in, 'made by lesbians for lesbians' not what's normally meant by 'lesbian porn,' which is made for men and has absolutely zip to do with how the people in the pictures feel.

Anyway, this magazine, it's obvious that the women in the pictures are real women, with scars and ordinary size and shape breasts, and some of them are fat, and so on. And it's also obvious that the photographers love them. Heh. It's even got a little feature with photos of this naked couple in playful poses, and accompanying text about how they met and how their relationship is good, and how they've in love and have been together for seven years or so.

It's a very sexy magazine, but the difference between it and what we normally think of as 'porn' is like night and day.

But it's really hard to make laws or rules about stuff like that. Here's a loving magazine with a full page blow-up photograph of somebody's vagina, and here's another magazine with the same, but it's hateful selfish and has no respect for the owner of that vagina. How can you regulate that distinction?

[Frank]

Actually, it's fairly easy to make laws about stuff like this. The difficulty comes when those who make the laws decline to stop with laws regulating public depictions of sex and move on to regulate other forms of free expression, including speech and faith. Then continue, perhaps, to try to forceably reshape society into the form favored by a specific creed. It is, as used to be said, a slippery slope.

I'm old enough, and old-fashioned enough, to agree with Harold that "somehing needs to be done." I do believe, however, that doing something begins at home rather than, say, in Congress.

I have great admiration for my anabaptist neighbors and friends who, making a sharp distinction between the kingdom of God and the "world," generally believe that there is no way to influence the course of the world other than by example. Physical expressions of this include banning the electronic media and selective use of the print media paired with careful education of children in the religious community's approach to matters of faith and morality. It doesn't always work, since beyond a certain point the course of a child's life rests in God's hands, but it is remarkably effective within those communities.

Could I give up my computer? Well, it would be very difficult. But the story holds that an old-order Amish gentleman once, when asked if were possible to join his church, said "yes," but it is very difficult because of language issues (learning both high German for worship and the local dialect for everyday conversation) and cultural issues (willing to live without electricity and subject yourself unwaveringly to the authority of the community?). That does not mean, he reportedly added, that you can't throw the television out the door.

[Harold]

Frank, I totally agree and identify with every single word of that response, especially the admiration for the Anabaptists and the way they structure their communities and live their lives, so "structured" yet so free in Christ, away from most of the ills (including porn and sexaholism) of the modern world.

I am learning High German (aber mein Deutsch ist zurzeit sehr schlect) and want to eventually learn at least some variety of Mennonite German. In addition, I am rather plain and try to live in Christian Simplicity. I believe Christ calls us to live simply and communally, to share burdens as well as our joys with fellow Christians, much like most Mennonite communities do. The one thing that keeps me from joining an Old(er) Order Mennonite congregation is the water baptism and communion. The giving up of electricity and modern conviences/curses don't sit badly with me as much as the water baptism issue. In this regard I am firmly Quaker in thought.

[Shay]

Frank- I guess I can see that, but I do think there needs to be some agitation for better standards. For example, recently in this whole kerfluffle over the Grand Theft Auto game and someone lambasting people for being against the game, I wrote:

[Harold]

Well, I don't necessarily want to learn Hochdeutsch, but I'm required to study a non-English language in college and Hochdeutsch is the closest common language to Mennonite German, which I eventually plan to learn, God willing. Besides, so many books written about or by Mennonites and Anabaptists (the Protestant Reformation, too) are/were written in various forms of German.

[GKK]

[Memphis_Blues]

I disagree with advertising portraying women as sexual objects.
Pornography supports this view but it is very widespread and has become socially accepted.
Sex in advertising has increased of late, even non sexual products are using this method.

The music industry has become quite disgraceful over the years, instead of artists selling on pure talent they expose themselfs purely for profit. Rap music is often men bragging of how rich they are and how many women they get, there video clips expose women as sexual objects.

I get concerened for the new generations being raised in this light, women are already discriminated against and thought of as nothing but home makers and child bearers, let alone sex objects.
I myself, get the impression i am not worth much to society and if i was born a male i might recieve more respect.

Unfortunatley the situation is often out of our control, advertising will not censor itself merely because people dont agree with what they are seeing.
I'm glad Quakers believe in complete equality, as this is an issue i am quite passionate about.

[james]

I have a pretty unconventional set of views on pornography, probably unquakerly. In addition, they are fairly tentative views--I've spent many years reflecting on them, but I'm sure there are things I am missing.

I think our deep shame and social hangups about sex do incomparably more harm to people than pornography, prostitution, teen sex, and most of the other offenses to our innocence that we tend to rant about. Some think we got over this in the 60s, but we didn't, not even close. America is probably the most sexually hung-up nation in the developed world. To this day, there is perhaps no greater hypocrisy in our society than our arbitrary and contradictory attitudes about sex.

Fundamentally, sex is good, great, amazing, better for you than broccoli, and we almost never acknowledge that openly and unashamedly. We intone about sex being the highest expression of love, which I suppose is true, but it doesn't really capture the nature of the beast (and it is a beast). Sex makes you feel so intensely good it nearly blows out your eyeballs, it's sweaty, slippery, animalistic fun that makes your mind go away like no other human activity. And on top of that it's free and healthy aerobic exercise. How often does that come out in "the talk" that people have with their kids?

Sex can have significant consequences, of course. The first is, the woman can get pregnant if the couple doesn't practice careful birth control. The second is sexually transmitted diseases. Both of these are dealt with far more effectively if you pull shame out the picture altogether and talk about it.

I also don't really get the talk about the objectification of women, though I do think it is of immense importance that women are empowered to make their own decisions about sexuality and all other aspects of their lives. The fact is, the central "object" in the vast majority of pornography is male, not female. Also, if men and women are honest with each other, one of the things they most desire in the act of sex is to be objectified, to be the sole object of intense, mindless desire. Desire for the body, for purposes of pure physical pleasure. My wife and I talk all the time, and explore each others' minds and spirits, the "whole person," as the phrase goes. In sex we're actively working to escape that, to transcend that, to become animals.

I don't pretend that prostitution and pornography don't do any harm. But our social reaction is immensely overwrought, and unacknowledged shame is the reason. Once we grow beyond that shame, and encourage women as well as men to know and follow what they want sexually, with loving consideration for their partner, the harm will be greatly lessened.

[beverly]

James,
My own experience would seriously speak against almost everthing you have said (obviously I cannot speak to any personal experience between you and your wife). Pornography, by its nature, breeds more pornography, more exploitation. It is an abuse cycle much like domestic violence or alchoholism. It has wrecked much destruction in many families I know.
respectfuly,
beverly

[james]

Well, Beverly, I think you're in good company. Almost no one says things like I have said, at least not publicly.

Just so we're clear what we're talking about, by pornography I mean nothing more or less than "explicit depictions of people having sex." And I would hold that the destruction you speak of is caused more by the attitudes of people toward the subject than the depictions themselves.

[Jenny]

I'm with you on this, James.

[walkinlight]

I must begin agreeing with James by stating that statistically, a startling majority of the women starring in pornographic movies were sexually abused by someone in their childhood, often family members. Tracy Lords is a prime example of such unfortunate circumstance, having been sexually abused by her father as a young child, and becoming a porn star (illegally) at the young age of 16. The directors of such movies, usually men, make money off of a woman's psychological illness and/or complete lack of self-confidence.

Many women who experienced sexual abuse as children confuse sexual attention with a man's genuine interest in a woman, in her feelings, her beliefs, her dreams, etc., as adults. True, they "star" in porn movies by their own free will, and are paid handsomely for their efforts, but dig a little deeper and you find some truly sad and unfortunate situations. I admit, in my younger years I used to enjoy watching porn once and a while, until I learned of the statistics (I wish I had them readily available, because they are shocking) and now I couldn't watch porn even if I had the desire to for the simple fact that seeing it makes me depressed (for the woman). Some of my non-Quaker male friends jokingly accuse me of overthinking the whole affair, but I respond that they don't think about it enough!

With that said, I would like to address another issue that is and is not related to the porn issue. American society is obsessed with violence, which is oddly acceptable to popular American culture, while human sexuality is seen as something shameful and dirty. While in Germany I noticed two predominant things immediately: they drink beer almost everywhere and they show nudity (not to be confused with pornography) on closed-circuit TV, on the non-cable lower channels and on commercials. Germans appear to be at complete ease seeing the nude human form (which was created by God, I remind you) and their statistics of rape and other forms of sexual violence are surprisingly low, in comparison to the staggeringly high statistics in America (and our parallel fear of our own bodies and sexuality). I believe this is a modern product of an old Victorian school of thought in Christianity (the name of which slips my mind, my philosophy class was long ago) that taught that the body must be denied, even mortified, in order to build the soul. Men would starve themselves, whip themselves, deny themselves the basic staples of life in order to attain the lofty heights of piety. The body was thought of as dirty, sinful. Nowadays we know that in order to nourish the mind and soul the body must be nourished as well.

It is proven that when something is repressed in the human psyche it does not go away as some would hope, it grows stronger. Repress the natural urge for sex and it becomes sexual addiction. I'm not saying we should all go out and engage in unrestrained sexual activity either. God has given us a remarkable and beautiful channel into which we may channel this urge: marriage. But just seeing a naked human body doesn't have to have anything to do with sexual intercourse. What about classical art? What about the statue of David or of Venus? I don't hear about anyone trying to ban those. Nay, beloved Friends, David is an artistic product of high culture, yet a photograph of the gentle sloping curves of a woman's body, taken by a skilled photographer is *ghasp!* pornography! David and Venus are just as naked as the photograph. But one thing you will not see on German TV is violence. Germans don't like seeing it, they don't like their children seeing it. My nephews here in the States watch Power Rangers, a show with zero plot and 100% violence. No wonder American children grow up so confused, from an early age they're taught to hate their bodies and the natural biological processes God has given us, and that violence is an acceptable form of problem resolution. No wonder America is the world's largest safe-haven for militarism and sexual violence. We have it all wrong!