Posts tagged sexuality

“Disney films, and to a lesser extent other animated films, have become the staple of movie fare for children, an institution we bring them up in and use to teach values. One only need to look as far as books such as The Family New Media Guide and The Movie Mom’s Guide to Family Movies to see the recommendation of Disney films for value lessons. The former title even goes on to point out that “Disney has almost become synonymous with wholesome family entertainment.” (p. 59) Neither of these books address the depictions of sexuality and gender role modeling that are an ever present subtext in Disney films.”

“Women are constantly depicted in sexually suggestive ways. Many of the human characters of animated films have suggestive mannerisms, dress or both. Aurora is flirtatious and coy. Pocahontas wears a low-cut dress with plenty of cleavage while Ariel wears nothing but a bikini top. Megara sashays her hips and her dress clings to her body like a second skin and Jasmine’s two-piece outfits are of the harem girl style rather than what real Arabic women wear. Chel dresses differently from every other woman in her tribe. And then there is Esmeralda, whose dance in The Hunchback of Notre Dame is a striptease in all but actually taking off her clothes. Esmeralda’s pole-twirling is straight out of that style. And these suggestive mannerisms are not just limited to the adult women. The little girl in The Jungle Bookis pre-teen, but has already mastered the coy mannerisms of suggestive sexuality to lure Mowgli back to the human village.  Male characters are never shown in this manner.”

http://animation.memory-motel.net/sexuality_american.html

As children, not only do you watch these movies, you see them over and over and over again.  As children your brain is developing, you’re learning about the world, what it’s like, how you fit in, what your position in society is etc.  More than likely children trust their parents completely, and so when they sit them in front of a movie, I don’t doubt that the child’s brain automatically assumes that everything they are seeing is an accurate depiction of the world. 

As far as the argument about knowing that magic etc. doesn’t exist and giving children credit… children can’t combat something they don’t even know is happening, or if they have never seen any alternative. 

prettyyoungtext:

Screw that. I put together a sheet of my own from various other sources to distribute to my classmates tomorrow. I would have liked to include a lot more information, but printing stuff costs money (specifically, my limited funds). With some careful formatting and double-sided printing, the text will fit onto one sheet of paper. I copy/pasted this from Word, so the format and bullet-points may look wonky, but you’re welcome to copy/paste/print this for your own means. Here we go:

What’s wrong with suggesting that women take precautions to prevent being raped?

 

It’s wrong because it puts the onus on women not to get themselves raped, rather than on men not to do the raping; in short, it blames the victim. (Finally Feminism 101)

A lot has been said about how to prevent rape. Women should learn self-defense. Women should lock themselves in their houses after dark. Women shouldn’t have long hair and women shouldn’t wear short skirts. Women shouldn’t leave drinks unattended. Hell, they shouldn’t dare to get drunk at all. Instead of that bullshit, how about:

If a woman is drunk, don’t rape her.

If a woman is walking alone at night, don’t rape her.

If a woman is drugged and unconscious, don’t rape her.

If a woman is wearing a short skirt, don’t rape her.

If a woman is jogging in a park at 5 am, don’t rape her.

If a woman looks like your ex-girlfriend you’re still hung up on, don’t rape her.

If a woman is asleep in her bed, don’t rape her.

If a woman is asleep in your bed, don’t rape her.

If a woman is doing her laundry, don’t rape her.

If a woman is in a coma, don’t rape her.

If a woman changes her mind in the middle of or about a particular activity, don’t rape her.

If a woman has repeatedly refused a certain activity, don’t rape her.

If a woman is not yet a woman, but a child, don’t rape her.

If your girlfriend or wife is not in the mood, don’t rape her.

If your step-daughter is watching TV, don’t rape her.

If you break into a house and find a woman there, don’t rape her.

If your friend thinks it’s okay to rape someone, tell him it’s not, and that he’s not your friend.

If your “friend” tells you he raped someone, report him to the police.

If your frat-brother or another guy at the party tells you there’s an unconscious woman upstairs and it’s your turn, don’t rape her, call the police and tell the guy he’s a rapist.

Tell your sons, god-sons, nephews, grandsons, sons of friends it’s not okay to rape someone.

Don’t tell your women friends how to be safe and avoid rape.

Don’t imply that she could have avoided it if she’d only done/not done x.

Don’t imply that it’s in any way her fault.

Don’t let silence imply agreement when someone tells you he “got some” with the drunk girl.

Don’t perpetuate a culture that tells you that you have no control over or responsibility for your actions. You can, too, help yourself. (Men Can Stop Rape)

In case you aren’t sure how to avoid raping, here are a few questions you may want to ask yourself:

©       How do you define consent? Have you ever talked about consent with your partner(s) or friends?

©       Do you think it is the other person’s responsibility to say something if they aren’t into what you’re doing? How might someone express that what is happening is not OK? Do you think it is possible to misinterpret silence for consent? Do you think silence is consent?

©       Do you check in as things progress or do you assume the original consent means everything is OK? If someone consents to one thing, do you assume everything else is OK or do you ask before taking things to a different level? Do you think consent can be withdrawn after it’s been given?

©       Do you pursue someone sexually even after they have said they just want to be friends? Do you assume that if someone is affectionate they are probably sexually interested in you? Are you clear about your own intentions?

©       Have you ever tried to talk someone into doing something they showed hesitancy about?

©       If someone is promiscuous, do you think it’s less important to get consent?

©       Do you ever try to get yourself into situations that give you an excuse for touching someone you think would say no if you asked? (i.e., Dancing, getting drunk around them, falling asleep next to them.)

©       Do you ever feel obligated to have sex? Do you ever feel obligated to initiate sex? Do you ever try and make bargains? (i.e., “If you let me______, I’ll do ______for you?”)

©       Do you feel like being in a relationship with someone means that they have an obligation to have sex with you? What if they want to abstain from sex? Do you whine or threaten if you’re not having the amount of sex or kind of sex that you want?

©       Do you think it’s OK to initiate something sexual with someone who’s sleeping? What if the person is your partner?

©       Have you been sexual with people when you were drunk or when they were drunk? Do you seek consent the same way when you are drunk as when you’re sober?

©       Do you initiate conversations about safe sex and birth control applicably? Do you think saying something as vague as “I’ve been tested recently” is enough?

©       Do you think if a person has a body that can get pregnant, it’s up to that person to provide birth control? Do you complain or refuse safe sex or the type of birth control your partner wants to use because it reduces your pleasure?

©       Do you think only men abuse? Do you think that in a relationship between people of the same gender, only the one who is more “manly” abuses?

 

You may want to keep in mind that rapists are often not strangers.

©       73% of sexual assaults were perpetrated by a non-stranger.

©       38% of rapists are a friend or acquaintance.

©       28% are an intimate.

©       7% are a relative.

Rapists are rarely hiding in the bushes. More than 50% of all rape/sexual assault incidents were reported by victims to have occurred within 1 mile of their home or at their home.

©       4 in 10 take place at the victim’s home.

©       2 in 10 take place at the home of a friend, neighbor, or relative.

©       1 in 12 takes place in a parking garage.

©       The average age of a rapist is 31 years old.

©       52% are white.

©       22% of imprisoned rapists report that they are married.

©       In 1 in 3 sexual assaults, the perpetrator was intoxicated — 30% with alcohol, 4% with drugs.

©       In 2001, 11% of rapes involved the use of a weapon.

©       84% of victims reported the use of physical force only.

Rapists rarely serve time in jail for their crimes. 60% of rapes/sexual assaults are not reported to the police, according to a statistical average of the past 5 years. Those rapists, of course, never spend a day in prison. Factoring in unreported rapes, only about 6% of rapists ever serve a day in jail. (Rape Abuse & Incest National Network)

It’s a long article so I took out what I thought was most important.

http://www.alternet.org/sex/146957/is_porn_bad_for_you/

Psychotherapy Networker / By Wendy Maltz

Is Porn Bad for You?

Since the advent of the internet, millions of Americans have started visiting porn sites daily. Is there a hidden cost to this newfound access?

May 23, 2010  |  

The revolution in accessibility has led to record consumption. According to statistics on the Internet Filter Review site, 40 million Americans visit Internet porn sites at least once a month. Some porn users visit sites for only a few minutes at a time. Others, like Scott, visit porn sites daily, spending more than 15 hours per week. One-third of all downloads each month and one-quarter of all online searches each day are for porn. And, according to a 2008 Nielsen Online survey, a record-breaking 25 percent of employees in the United States are accessing porn at work, despite the risks involved.

Not surprisingly, concerns about the effect of porn on individuals and relationships are also on the rise. According to a 2004 survey in Men’s Health, more than 70 percent of the men surveyed said they’ve looked at more porn since the advent of the Internet, and one in two expressed concern about their use of it. The American Academy of Matrimonial Lawyers and the British Nielsen NetRatings organization have identified it as a major cause of divorce and relationship difficulties. An MSNBC study in 2000 revealed that 70 percent of porn users keep their use secret and that from 8 to 15 percent of regular Internet porn users develop compulsive sexual behaviors that significantly impact their lives. In total, up to half of all regular pornography users report some type of negative consequence or concern about their use. No wonder sexual addiction experts, such as Patrick Carnes, have begun calling pornography addiction “our newest and most challenging mental health problem.”

Changes in how people access and use pornography have taken the therapeutic community by surprise. The explosion in porn use has happened so fast that many therapists have been caught unprepared; they may not yet comprehend the extent of the problems porn can cause, or how deeply its use can harm individuals and their intimate partners. Despite the increase in the number of people suffering from anxiety, depression, sexual problems, relationship distress, and other serious consequences of habitual porn use, few therapists feel comfortable and confident addressing porn-related concerns.

How We Feel about Porn

Pornography draws strong responses—from the public at large and within the therapeutic community. Many of us have such strong feelings about pornography that we automatically label, condemn, or reject anyone who sees it differently. If we’re critical of porn, we might judge people who like it as “excessively permissive,” “exploitive,” “addicted to sex,” or “misogynistic.” If we’re supportive of porn, we may see those who don’t share our view as “sexually uptight,” “religiously conservative,” “radically feminist,” or “against free speech.” Unlike other common mental health concerns, such as depression or substance abuse, we have no reasonably coherent and agreed upon clinical perspective for what constitutes a “porn problem” or how to approach it.

It was an exciting time of sexual awakening. Sexual pleasure became a recreational sport and “free love” a spiritual practice. I became involved in a back-to-nature movement that validated the natural beauty of the body. I soaked naked in hot tubs with friends, hiked bare-chested in coastal forests, and skinny-dipped in mountain streams. I volunteered at the Berkeley Women’s Health Collective, helping women perform their own pelvic exams and learn how to recognize common gynecological problems. I delighted in what seemed radically new ideas then—that it’s okay to learn about and regain control of our bodies, that nothing is ugly or disgusting about sex (and genitals), and that, like men, women have sexual feelings and needs.

During this period of expanding sexual awareness, hardcore pornography entered the mainstream marketplace. While capitalizing on the changes in social consciousness, this expansion in commercial pornography seemed to reinforce the new spirit of sexual openness, freedom, and acceptance. Penthouse magazine made Playboy look tame by brazenly revealing the pubic hair of its monthly pets. In 1975, when Playgirl magazine, featuring sexy pictures of men (many with blatant erections), appeared on the market, I wondered whether pornography might be headed in a direction of sexual equality.

Soft and hardcore movies started appearing in adult-only movie theaters in major cities across the country. For the first time, porn titles and stars were showcased on marquees, not hidden away in dark-alley cigar shops. Now the public had easy access to gay porn films (Boys in the Sand and Pink Narcissus), erotic cartoon movies (Fritz the Cat), and full-color features like Deep Throat, The Devil in Miss Jones, and Behind the Green Door. Adult movies emerged as a new and wildly popular form of entertainment. Though Larry, my live-in boyfriend (now my husband), and I were involved in social work, feminist causes, and men’s consciousness raising, we’d occasionally slip into a nearby Mitchell Brothers adult movie theater to watch a talked-about release. Any trepidation that these films were inconsistent with our social values was overridden by our curiosity about this exciting new pornography and our desire to feel we were becoming sexually liberated.

In tune with the times, I sometimes assumed that when one person in a relationship was into porn and the other wasn’t, the reluctant partner was likely “sexually uptight,” “withholding,” or “unadventurous.” Therapeutic strategies often focused on negotiating the type, use, purchase, and storage of the pornography, rarely on discouraging its use. I might, for instance, help a couple reach a decision that they would only use porn together and would choose movies that they both enjoyed.

I did have occasional misgivings, however, about advocating pornography in treatment. As a product, it was usually poorly made and portrayed sex in unrealistic, inaccurate, unsafe, and impersonal ways. For example, even though surveys show that monogamous partners are actually the most satisfied with their sex lives, porn kept featuring extramarital sex, multiple partners, and impulsive sex between strangers as more exciting. It often portrayed women as mere objects and playthings for male sexual enjoyment. It gave little or no consideration to hygiene and protection from pregnancy and disease. It promoted a callous attitude toward sexual exploitation, coercion, and aggression. Recommending pornography to clients began to make me feel, for lack of a better analogy, somewhat like a pimp, introducing clients to a “sleazy” worldview of sex. But I silenced my concerns, reminding myself that an open-minded sex therapist could regard pornography as simply a “tool of the trade.”

A Cousin of Sexual Abuse

As time progressed, I became increasingly uncomfortable with pornography. On the few occasions when Larry and I saw pornography together, we now found it disturbing and distracting to the soul-stirring physical love we regularly enjoyed. The dialogue in porn didn’t make us blush, but the interactions seemed increasingly humiliating and violent, with behaviors such as a man ejaculating on a woman’s face becoming more common. Rather than inspire, pornography appeared to compromise one’s private erotic imagination and values, blurring boundaries between fantasy and reality and lowering standards for sexual interaction. I didn’t like how porn images would linger in my mind long after we’d turned off a rented videotape, taking my attention away from Larry and fixing it onto images of the porn actors and activities I’d just seen on screen.

At the same time I was experiencing personal concerns, many of my clients began complaining about pornography. They appreciated well-made, instructional, sexual-enrichment books and videos and sexy romantic novels, but their contact with pornography often left them feeling “dirty,” sad, disgusted, or angry. They told me they were turned off by its lack of human caring, its racism, and especially the way it depicted women and children as targets for sexual exploitation.

In the mid-1980s, when I began specializing in treating survivors of sexual abuse, I became increasingly aware of the role that porn had in abuse. One client said that when he was a teenager, a 50-year-old next-door-neighbor man had “groomed” him into oral sex by showing him a stash of pornographic magazines. Women told me their perpetrators—often fathers, grandfathers, brothers, and boyfriends—used pornography as a template for the specific type of sexual behavior they coerced them to perform. Some clients recalled being forced by their perpetrator to pose for pornographic pictures during their experiences of abuse.

Added to my pile of concerns about porn, the realization that porn could be used as weapon against vulnerable children and women was the last straw. The clearer I became about conditions necessary for experiencing healthy sexuality—consent, equality, respect, trust, safety—the more doubt I had about advocating pornography as a sexual-enhancement product. How can I support something that portrays sex as a commodity, people as objects, and violence, humiliation, and recklessness as exciting? What am I doing encouraging people to condition their arousal to self-centered, sensually blunted, loveless sex? Do I really want to be advocating a product that’s associated with causing sexual harm and relationship problems?

My primary concern about porn wasn’t that it was sexually graphic, explicit, or hot: it was that porn conveyed harmful ideas about sex and could lead to hurtful and ultimately unrewarding sexual behaviors. During the 1990s, I switched from recommending porn to suggesting scenes in popular movies, such as the scene in Mississippi Masala in which Denzel Washington makes love to a woman while singing “Happy Birthday” to her. This scene, and others that emphasized mutual caring and readiness, showed highly erotic kissing and full-body, skin-to-skin contact, and celebrated sex as part of a larger relationship, were much more consistent with what I thought could arouse clients without causing them harm. In addition, frustrated with the lack of materials honoring love-based sexuality, I compiled two anthologies of erotic love poetry to recommend to clients and others for inspiration: Passionate Hearts and Intimate Kisses feature classic and contemporary poems in which “heart connection” is at the core of sexual experience.

A Possessive Mistress

I may have thought I was done with porn, but it wasn’t done with me! In the late 1990s, people began calling my office seeking help for problems they felt had been caused by porn use. One after another, the requests came in, often several per week. Some pleas for help came from porn users themselves, worried about their own dependencies and the possible repercussions—for example, losing interest in their partner, experiencing a compulsive need for sex, and getting into risky and hurtful sexual practices. But many calls came from the intimate partners of porn users, and these callers, primarily women, were in obvious emotional distress. Engagements had been broken, weddings and plans to have children had been called off, and otherwise successful, long-term marriages were teetering on the brink of divorce.

The reactions of intimate partners to what was happening was almost identical to that of clients I’d counseled whose partners had been having affairs. Women came to me shocked and traumatized when they’d learned about their partners’ relationships with porn. I remember one in particular who clutched her chest as she sobbed, “His betrayal feels like a knife has been thrust in my heart.” It didn’t matter that her husband’s “mistress” was on celluloid and pixels on a screen; he’d still betrayed her by channeling his sexual attention and energy away from her, onto someone else, and then lying about it! She felt angry, hurt, alone, powerless, and unable to compete with the perfect, airbrushed young bodies of the women featured in the videos she’d found her husband masturbating to. Her trust in and respect for him were gone, and she told me she felt as sexually abandoned, insulted, and betrayed as if he’d been with another woman. As with an affair, female partners often spoke of their partner’s porn use as absolutely incompatible with their ability to stay in the relationship.

Many of the male porn users in committed relationships were surprised by the intensity of their female partner’s reactions. They generally felt entitled to use porn and were ready with rationalizations for their “It’s safer than a real affair,” “All guys do it,” and “It’s nothing personal” were among the most common reasons they gave to try to get their partners to understand and accept their actions.

A Drug

Soon after the turn of the new millennium, a new client helped me see what else was at play that made quitting porn so difficult, even for people who wanted to do so. Sam, a shy young man whom I’d been seeing for a few weeks, told me, “Doing porn feels like an incredible rush of life blowing through my veins, and the good part is, I can always go back for more.” His description of his porn experience sounded eerily similar to the language used by the patients with drug and alcohol problems I’d worked with through the years. Over time, more of my clients experiencing the impact of porn in their lives began using words and phrases usually associated with hardcore drug addiction. They often referred to using porn as a “high” and a “rush.” They started needing a stronger product in higher doses to get the same effect, and when they decided to quit, they frequently complained of continual cravings, preoccupations, and sensations of “withdrawal.” “I tried going cold turkey’ with porn,” one man told me, “but the urges were stronger than when I quit cigarettes and cocaine.”

What we discovered in researching the book confirmed my feelings that porn use had many of the same properties as drug use. Addiction specialists and neuroscientists, such as Harvey Milkman, Peter Shizgal, Patrick Carnes, T. M. Grundner, and Helen Fisher, were finding that pornography did indeed have a druglike effect on the body and mind. Despite being ingested through the eyes and ears instead of the mouth or bloodstream, porn stimulates the reward and pleasure centers in the brain, instantly and dramatically, increasing the production of dopamine, a neurotransmitter associated with both sexual arousal and drug highs. In addition, using porn for sexual stimulation has been shown to increase production of other “feel-good” chemicals, such as adrenaline, endorphins, testosterone, and serotonin; with sexual climax, it releases powerful hormones related to falling in love and bonding, such as oxytocin and vasopressin.

Research shows that, like compulsive gambling and shopping, porn use can lead to a “process addiction,” in which a person becomes addicted to a set of behaviors (e.g. consuming porn) that, in turn, powerfully alter brain chemistry. The Internet and other electronic devices allow porn users to click through a never-ending stream of stimulating material as they look for just the right porn site, the sexual activity of interest, or the ultimate fantasy partner. Like a carefully calibrated slot machine, it rewards only intermittently, compelling the user to stay engaged and not give up. Users can end up looking at porn for longer and longer periods of time, often seeking riskier content to “hit the jackpot” of landing on an extremely stimulating image.

I never wanted to be out beating the drum against pornography. In the beginning of my career, if anyone had suggested I’d be here now, I’d have laughed at them. But from my own clients, my research, and my personal experience, I’ve come to the conclusion that pornography is moving from an individual and couples’ problem to a public health problem, capable of deeply harming the emotional, sexual, and relationship well-being of millions of men, women, and children.

I’m especially troubled by the way contact with porn appears to be harming young people’s mental and sexual health. Teens have been identified as one of the largest consumer groups of porn. A 2009 research study of one thousand 13- to 16-year-olds in the United Kingdom by CyberSentinel found that teens are spending an average of one hour and forty minutes a week (87 hours a year) looking at online porn. Studies in the United States report similar exposure rates, with a 2004 study by Columbia University finding that 45 percent of teens admit that they have friends who regularly view and download porn.

Wendy Maltz, L.C.S.W., D.S.T., is an internationally recognized psychotherapist, sex therapist, and author of numerous books on sexuality. The Porn Trap: The Essential Guide to Overcoming Problems Caused by Pornography (with Larry Maltz, HarperCollins, 2008) will be available in paperback in January 2010. Wendy and Larry Maltz offer professional training seminars on treating pornography problems. Contact: wendymaltz@healthysex.comThis e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it ; website: www.HealthySex.com.