Pornography2 Essay Research Paper PornographyIn the late

Pornography(2) Essay, Research Paper

PornographyIn the late Seventies, America became shocked and outraged by the rape,mutilation, and murder of over a dozen young, beautiful girls. The man who committedthese murders, Ted Bundy, was later apprehended and executed. During his detention invarious penitentiaries, he was mentally probed and prodded by psychologist andpsychoanalysts hoping to discover the root of his violent actions and sexual frustrations.Many theories arose in attempts to explain the motivational factors behind his murderousescapades. However, the strongest and most feasible of these theories came not from thepsychologists, but from the man himself, as a teenager, my buddies and I would allsneak around and watch porn. As I grew older, I became more and more interested andinvolved in it, (pornography) became and obsession. I got so involved in it, I wanted toincorporate (porn) into my life, but I couldn t behave like that and maintain the success Ihad worked so hard for. I generated an alter-ego to fulfill by fantasies under-cover.Pornography was a means of unlocking the evil I had buried inside myself (Leidholdt47). Is it possible that pornography is acting as the key to unlocking the evil in moreunstable minds.According to Edward Donnerstein, a leading researcher in the pornography field, the relationship between sexually violent images in the media and subsequentaggression and . . . callous attitudes towards women is mush stronger statistically than therelationship between smoking and cancer (Itzin 22). After considering the increase inrape and molestation, sexual harassment, and other sex crimes over the last few decades,and also the corresponding increase of business in the pornography industry, the linkbetween violence and pornography needs considerable study and examination. Once theevidence you will encounter in this paper is evaluated and quantified, it will be hard notto come away with the realization that habitual use of pornographic material promotesunrealistic and unattainable desires in men that can lead to violent behavior towardwomen. In order to properly discuss pornography, and be able to link it to violence, wemust first come to a basic and agreeable understanding of what the word pornographymeans. The term pornography originates from two Greek words, porn, which meansharlot, and graphein, which means to write (Webster s 286). My belief is that thedescribe, in literature, the sexual escapades of women of pornography has grown toinclude any and all obscene literature and pictures. At the present date, the term isbasically a blanket which covers all types of material such as explicit literature,photography, films, and video tapes with varying degrees of sexual content. Now that pornography has been defined in a fashion mirroring its content, it isnow possible to touch upon the more complex ways a community, as a society, views ordefines it. Some have said it is impossible for a group of individuals to form a concreteopinion as to what pornography means. A U.S. Supreme Court judge is quoted as saying, I can t define pornography, but I know it when I see it (Itzin 20). This statement canbe heard at community meetings in every state, city, and county across the nation.Community standards are hazy due to the fact that when asked what pornography is tothem, most individuals cannot express or explain in words what pornography is, thereforecreating confusion among themselves. Communities are left somewhat helpless in this matter since the federal courtspassed legislation to keep pornography available to adults. The courts assess that to banor censor the material would be infringing on the public s First Amendment Right (Carol28). Maureen O Brien quotes critics of a congressionally terminated bill, the 3pornography Victim s Compensation Act, as saying That if it had passed, it would havehad severely chilling effects on the First Amendment, allowing victims of sexual crimesto file suit against producers and distributors of any work that was proven to have had caused the attack, such as graphic material in books, magazines, videos, films, andrecords (Carol 7). People in a community debating over pornography often havedifferent views as to whether or not it should even be made available period, and somecould even argue this point against the types of women used in pornography: A forgreater variety of female types are shown as desirable in pornography than mainstreamfilms and network television have ever recognized: fat women, flat women, hairywomen, aggressive women, older women, you name it (Carol 25). If we could alldecide on just exactly what pornography is and what is acceptable, there wouldn t be somuch debate over the issue of censoring it. The bounds of community standards have been stretched by mainstreamingmovies, opening the way even further for the legalization of more explicit fare (Jenish53). In most contemporary communities explicit sex that is without violent ofdehumanizing acts is acceptable in American society today. These community standards have not been around very long. When movies werefirst brought out, they were heavily restricted and not protected by the First Amendment,because films then were liked upon only as diversionary entertainment and business.Even though sexual images were highly monitored, the movie industry was hit so hardduring the Great Depression that film-makers found themselves smeaking in as muchsexual content as possible, ev