50% of Evangelical Christian men addicted to internet porn ---

[Morgana LaFey]

that just boggles my mind:

Survey finds evangelicals' addiction to Internet porn on the rise
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x1222693

[mrreowwr_kittty]

1. I'm unsurprised by this, to say the least

This is why the porn enthusiasts on the left fear feminist criticism far more than they fear the religious nuts, though they try their damnedest to equate us with them. Evangelicals will never rid the world of porn and prostitution because their men avail themselves of it as much as, or more than, any other group. They just want to drive it underground and shame the people who work in it. Notice how they blame technology and modern immorality and not the men who choose to use porn. Right wing pundits will blame women for stepping out of our "natural" role of policing male sexual behavior to exercise our own sexual freedom. Wait for it. It's never their fault, is it?

Larry Flynt and (the late) Jerry Falwell are pretty much the same fucking asshole, IMHO. Both saw women as disposable chattel, though they expressed it differently.

Feminist examinations of how porn exploits and damages real people, wreaks havoc on relationships, and reinforces the dominance/submission paradigm intrinsic to patriarchy are threatening because they cause people to think, rather than react. And we can't have that now, can we? There's too much money to be made by commodifying sexuality.

[ismnotwasm]

5. What you said

It's not a so-called "moral" issue.

Here is a interview with Catherine Mackinnan by Stuart Jeffries about her book "Are Women Human?" Dude can't QUITE make the cut, he sound fascinated in spite of himself, but you can tell he's doing some mental squirming by the way he writes (He doesn't really try to hide it). He does pretty good though all things considered. She is a formidable woman to say the least, I admire her a lot.
From the interview;


"Pornographers have even more control of the public space than they did before. And popular culture is increasingly adapting itself to the fact that more and more people are pornography consumers. So everything in culture has to change to respond to that or it won't succeed - it's the way capitalism works."
Snip---
MacKinnon's book ends with a wonderful rhetorical essay called Women's September 11. It points out that roughly the same number of women are murdered by men in the US each year as were killed in the Twin Towers (between 2,800 and 3,000). But those killings provoked no parallel war on terror.

So what does MacKinnon think should be done? She writes that violence against women "qualifies as a casus belli and a form of terrorism every bit as much as the events of September 11 do". Is she serious that violence against women should be treated as a war? "I think only because it's men doing it against women that it isn't seen as a war." I feel another twinge of vertigo.

It only occurs to me when I'm back on the ground that the war on terror may not be a good blueprint - it having been, you know, demonstrably counterproductive. Just before the interview ended, she said to me: "I have to say I have some sympathy for governments trying to address something as hard as terrorism, having attempted to address something as hard as violence against women for a long time." It would be good if MacKinnon had more success in her war than Bush and Blair have had in theirs."
http://www.guardian.co.uk/gender/story/0,,1751983,00.html

[lizerdbits]

2. They didn't really give any details

How many surveyed or how they defined addicted. To evangelicals looking at porn deliberately twice a month might be considered addicted considering how much they hate sex.

If true it's not really a surprise in a group that demonizes, represses, and deems human sexuality filthy. It fits with their view of women anyway.

[ThomCat]

3. Why would anybody be surprised by this?

The highly regimented gender roles and "moral" norms restrict the avenues that are open for exploring sexuality, so they're going to reach for whatever they can get.

The evengelicals make porn far more illicit, which just makes it something everybody just HAS to see. The suppression makes it more attractive to many people.

It has to be hidden, and they don't talk about owning or watching it, so there are no moderating influences.

They express many of the same views of women that are portrayed in porn. Or maybe it's the other way around; porn portrays women the way their customers expect. Either way, there's clearly a market feedback loop here. They're feeding off of each other.

I would expect evangelican men to be major purchasers of porn. How could they not be?

[femrap]

4. These evangelical boys

probably distort their desire of porn as something that God wants them to do....I wonder how many of them are looking at gay porn?

[Morgana LaFey]

6. Wow, Some really great responses --

(like what should I have expected but really great responses, right?)