Porn - It's not black and white...

Listened to an interesting podcast today with Dan Savage who was tearing apart an article entitled "is porn immoral? It doesn't matter, it's a public health crisis"  which makes a lot of claims that are not backed up by science. Dan also ridicules the Mormon funded "Porn Kills Love" campaign and cited this article in the atlantic which lists some interesting studies that have been done about porn usage and it's impacts on crime etc.

Quickly loosing all respect for Mainstream hip hop...

Yet another article about how porn, and also the sexually explicit nature of the culture including music videos is giving boys and young men a warped idea of what sex and sexuality are. EEk. Tough time to be a young person in this world. I have been working a lot in the high school the last few weeks and have been impressed, perturbed, surprised and awed but the spectrum of youth and where they are at as they try to navigate this wild west media landscape.  The article makes mention of a recent Lil' Wayne and Drake video, watching it kinda made my blood boil. I've poster the lyrics below. For a song like this to be called "Love Me" it's no wonder young men are confused. When I look at the content here it seems to me that the men making this music men have no concept of what Love is, and are the last people who young people should be learning about it from in my humble opinion.

Here are the Lyrics:

Lil’ Wayne and Kanye lyrics to “Love me”

[Pre-Hook: Future]
I'm on that good kush and alcohol
I got some down bitches I can call
I don't know what I would do without y'all
I'ma ball til the day I fall

[Hook: Drake]
Yeah, long as my bitches love me (yeah, yeah)
I can give a f**k 'bout no hater
Long as my bitches love me
I can give a f**k 'bout no niggas
Long as these bitches love me

[Verse 1: Lil Wayne]
Uh, pussy ass nigga stop hatin'
Lil Tunechi got that fire and these hoes love me like Satan, man
F**k with me and get bodied
And all she eat is dick, she's on a strict diet, that's my baby
With no makeup she a ten
And she the best with that head
Even better then Karrine
She don't want money
She want the time that we could spend
She said "Cause I really need somebody
So tell me you're that somebody"
Girl, I fuck who I want and fuck who I don't
Got that A1 credit, that's that filet mignon
She said "I never want to make you mad
I just want to make you proud"
I said "Baby just make me cum
Then don't make a sound"

[Pre-Hook: Future]
I'm on that good kush and alcohol
I got some down bitches I can call
I don't know what I would do without y'all
I'ma ball til the day I fall

[Hook: Drake]
Yeah, long as my bitches love me (yeah, yeah)
I can give a fuck 'bout no hater
Long as my bitches love me
I can give a fuck 'bout no niggas
Long as these bitches love me

[Verse 2: Lil Wayne]
Real nigga fuck these haters
These hoes got pussies like craters
Can't treat these hoes like ladies, maaaan!
Pussy, money, weed, codeine
She said my dick feel like morphine
I hope my name taste like sardines to these niggas
She wake up, eat this dick
Call that breakfast in bed, $69.96
I feel her heartbeat, I chest to chest with this bitch
Now turn around, face down, I'm arrestin' this bitch
All my bitches love me and I love all my bitches
But it's like as soon as I cum, I come to my senses
And I would say these hoes names
But then I would be snitching
And these haters try to knock me
But they can't knock me off the hinges
Lil Tunechi!

[Pre-Hook: Future]
I'm on that good kush and alcohol
I got some down bitches I can call
I don't know what I would do without y'all
I'ma ball til the day I fall

[Hook: Drake]
Yeah, long as my bitches love me (yeah, yeah)
I can give a fuck 'bout no hater
Long as my bitches love me
I can give a fuck 'bout no niggas
Long as these bitches love me

[Bridge: Lil Wayne]
I lost a few good bitches
Met some more bad bitches
And I be schooling them niggas
Pose for your class picture
Now kiss my ass if you hating
I'm getting ass or I'm skating
I lost a few good bitches
Met some more bad bitches
And I be schooling them niggas
Pose for your class picture
Now kiss my ass if you hating
I'm getting ass or I'm skating
Bitch

[Pre-Hook: Future]
I'm on that good kush and alcohol
I got some down bitches I can call
I don't know what I would do without y'all
I'ma ball til the day I fall

[Hook: Drake]
Yeah, long as my bitches love me (yeah, yeah)
I can give a fuck 'bout no hater
Long as my bitches love me
I can give a fuck 'bout no niggas
Long as these bitches love me

Frightening stories on the effects of boys growing up in "pornland"

Yikes! A friend just sent me a link to this article with stories from girls, mostly from Australia - poor them - in my experience Australian men can be sexist to begin with, but it seems that perhaps things have gotten even worse in the Aussie male department since I lived in Whistler which was crawling with them. At any rate it paints a pretty bleak  picture of the sexual landscape of young women. http://www.collectiveshout.org/growing_up_in_pornland_girls_have_had_it_with_porn_conditioned_boys

Is Porn Addictive?

Here is a great video by my favourite sex positive vlogger. This is a tricky subject and I think she does a great job tackling this question. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EBSG98qzaPc

Is there such a thing as Feminist Porn?

I have been teaching lately and trying to weave in more info about the potential impacts of watching porn as I have been learning about how there are people, according to an English study, approximately 1 in 4 young men in Britain who can't maintain an erection without porn after growing up with it. I heard that on a CBC Ideas podcast called porn generation, which I would encourage others interested in this to take a listen to. Another stat I heard recently was that 1 in three women watches porn (or at least those are the ones who will admit it). So I wondered what is the feminist stance on pornography? Is all porn bad? Where can a person go to find "good" porn and as Lacie Green points out in this video, how much is too much? Studies claim that "moderate use" of porn does not seem to have negative or lasting impacts on the brain, but how much is moderate? Once a week? Once a month? Once a day? Once a year??? There is so much research yet to be done, and fortunately there is a new porn Journal which aims to study some of these questions and more and in the mean time, I am pleased to have stumbled across the feminist porn awards which give a good run down of porn that may have some value, or at the very least be less full of the shocking de-humanizing and mysoginist images that are the mainstay of free, cheap internet porn like red tube porn hub. I was pleased to see when scrolling through their list of award winners, films by Dr. Carol Queen, who writes the sex advice column for Bust Magazine which I quite like. So anyways, lots of questions about the future of our brains, the future of porn, and the beginning of a quest to find porn that might just be able to be educational, and not just a degrading shame fest that leaves us feeling not much better that a scrunched up ball of kleenex by the end. I also really loved the movie Don Jon as it deals with these themes in a really clever way.

Porn Sex V.S. Real Sex, the Differences explained with food

A great video that helps us get real about some of what we see, versus the reality, with great british narration. Good facts too. I showed this to some grade 10 girls this week and one said it may have ruined Nutella for her...so be warned.

Icebergs of Filth...

A friend just showed me this video, which I thought was a great conversation starter about pornography. I don't know that I think that all porn is always bad for all people, but I agree with pretty much everything that Russel has to say about this and am interested in what others think about this too. He also manages to do it in such a candid, funny and honest way and I appreciate him being honest about his own experience as a man and how he feels he has been shaped by his own porn consumption and the ubiquity of soft core porn in mainstream media (on billboards, in magazines, on the internet, an even in movies like 50 shades of Grey). He also quotes some research that has demonstrated the impacts this has started to have, especially on adolescents.