Put your seat belts on dear readers, getting ready to harpoon the porn industry, the Christian right, and a few labeling misconceptions.
This all started with the buzz about a new documentary that Rishida Jones has produced trying to get some traction on a critique and discussion on the porn industry by addressing one segment. To tell you the truth I cannot tell if this is real buzz or are they trying to manufacture a buzz because the articles I saw seem to be coming from similar sources. I did read a couple and of course the commentaries by the various readers. Yes I succumbed to temptation (sub text joke implied) and added a comment to one of the stories.
And then I kept thinking about all the morass from the various posts. The posts were all over the board from people trying to justify pornography as something between consenting adults to both pro and con statements on the purity lifestyle of the Christian Right.
And then, straight from the 1960’s, the idea of sexual liberation.
And quite frankly the whole range of posts proves to me we are clueless when it comes to what are healthy relationships, healthy discussions of sex, and what is a compass for a value system.
It just eats me up when you hear people start talking about the porn industry being about what is acceptable among consenting adults. Two consenting adults can point guns at each other and blow their brains out. Does this make it right because they both consent? And this is just one of the surface issues. Consent implies a mutual agreement is taking place.
And healthy consent means that both parties have a good understanding of what they are doing. If 18 and 19 year old girls are chasing some pie in the sky dream that they are going to be famous because of quickie porn movies then do they really have a good understanding of what they are doing? And this is the most promising reason some people are giving as to why young girls pursue an interaction in the porn industry. The porn industry is trying to sell acceptability by glamorizing what they do. To whom though? One of course is the customer, but how do they sell seedy sex to young girls as a way to the Promised Land. I am not sure how, but obviously they are successful at it.
First though we treat 18 as the age of majority for legal purposes or what young people and I included at the time call being an adult. Most 18 to 24 year olds are far from mature adulthood. Some yes, but most no. So how do they know what is best for them? I will discuss a start to overcoming this problem in a moment.
And to tag onto this problem is this misconception about sexual liberation. Yes it all started with the idea that we can all have sex. People said monogamy was passé, it was unhealthy to not experience a variety of sexual adventures with a variety of people. That it didn’t matter about whether you loved someone or not, if it feels good, do it.
We now have a very liberal view point that allows for the culture of pornography to grow into acceptable mainstream culture. There is a soft porn industry being fed to the kids (and being accepted by society) through racy videos, movies, lyrics in songs, and self-made you tube videos. People feel comfortable expressing and living their sexual fantasies.
And before you think I am a prude, let’s discuss what is healthy sexual relations. We have forgotten that sex is good. It can be really good. And it takes knowledge and understanding of sex to make it beneficial to both individuals participating together. We, as humans, are physical beings. The feeling of touch can be beneficial. And if you are truly attached to someone this feeling can be intensified with the proper understanding of each other and each other’s needs and desires. This also takes knowledge. You have to spend time learning about each other. Exploration of who the other person is will increase both person’s pleasure and enjoyment. This doesn’t happen when you sleep with a different person each time. It is not sexually liberating when what you are truly doing is using another person to only satisfy a selfish need or to try and gain another person’s approval.
Sexual liberation comes when you and the person you share your life with completely understand each other. If this sounds old fashion to you, ask yourself this, when was the last time you felt good about a sexual encounter. And I am not talking about a thirty second rush of pleasure, but truly felt good about the situation. Yeah, go ahead and say they all do or something. Now get up from the computer and go look at yourself in the mirror straight in the eyes and ask the above question. This is not about being accepted or looked at as unknowing. It is what is right for you. This is not old fashioned, this is a necessity.
So this brings us to the flip side of the conversation. That you must be pure or you go to hell. There is a reliance by some groups that requires a complete servitude to ignorance. Even though their belief is a 180 degree difference in behavior it is still just as dangerous. You cannot live life in ignorance. And this includes understanding what is good sex. You can choose to wait until you are married to have sex. I am not one to argue with someone waiting. You cannot go into a marriage blind. This includes all aspects of the marriage from determining what are your values together to finances to sex.
And what also needs to be discussed is what the culture of pornography and the culture of purity have in common. And I am not saying that one will lead to the other, but both rely on ignorance and weak minded people to survive to thrive. Obviously in pornography someone has to be convinced that their behavior is okay. That it is a norm that is accepted by society. Whether they convince them self or someone sells them a bill of goods there is a false sense of behavioral acceptance by others. Unfortunately this is now being compounded by so many in society willing to exploit them self to achieve money or fame. The superficial is becoming the norm.
For the Christian right it is different. Usually people are raised into these particular beliefs. Outside influences are kept at bay or arguments are presented that anyone not believing their beliefs are out to destroy them. They teach an us against the enemy philosophy. What they do not do is teach. Moral fascism is not Christianity. Christianity in its most fundamental roots has the concept of respect for self and others. There is no enemy to destroy, there is an enemy to overcome. The true enemy in the teachings of Christ is not accepting and living God’s love. You have to overcome yourself and be a better person. Christ taught how we can be better. One of his greatest acts, was not to act. He showed the people that God judges, not them. When the people realized this, they left their accused sinner alone with Christ. Christ only directed the woman to sin no more. Christ did not shame her or banish her to unforgiving life or death.
Which leads to a second diametrical opposite. The path to a greater society is the same path that overcomes cultures that rely on ignorance and weak mindedness to continue. Or for this writing the culture of pornography and culture of purity. I do have to agree though and the reader can also choose to see this path that the Christian Right saying family is important is correct. It is very important that we learn to strengthen the bonds of family. Our society should encourage our youth to understand the importance of a familial group to become the foundation of shared values. When the Christian Right says we are losing our values and we need to support families they are correct in this regard.
A person truly internalizes a belief when they have come to realize what is the value of the belief through a growing and learning process. If you beat (metaphorically and/or physically) a value into a person, it will only last as long as the fear is there. Fear does not create an engrained understanding and appreciation of a value. The culture of purity relies on a belief system that says if you do not meet our standards you will be eternally punished. What happens when a person starts to question that belief?
A strong education and relationships built on respect can drive the growth of a society more than fear. It may take longer to get tasks done, but the growth of the culture and society far outweigh any misconceived concepts of unity under one belief system. Education is one driver in overcoming the problems faced by ignorance and weak willed people. And this is true education, built on a well-rounded foundation.
Take the misconception of what people say currently is a sexually liberated person. If you truly had a strong educational foundation you would realize that there is so much wrong with sharing multiple sexual partners randomly. Simple example: People will not drink out of a bottle or glass of someone who has a cold for fear of catching the cold. Yet a sexually liberated person will accept sharing someone’s bodily fluids who may have a damaging sexually transmitted disease. Why? There are many programs out there that discuss the dangers of doing this, but STDs are not going away.
The difference is the foundation of someone’s education. We took prayer out of school because our Constitution says there must be separation of Church and State. The same constitution though relies on an educated populace to keep it alive. This education system needs to have a value system inherent in it. So take away prayer, but why take away values.
The family should be the primary teacher of values. The problem is until we reach a perfect world not all families function well. The State cannot impose values upon a person because you end up with the State defining what are the values. The State can as part of its role though let society create tools for people to develop, determine, and evolve values that benefit the society as a whole. This would make an educational system responsible for presenting values to the students in a fashion that allows them to understand their importance, what is the historical values of the society, and which of these values going forward are best for the society. The next steps coming out of this process are that people have better appreciation for science, the arts, language, and can cognitively better choose the leaders that will make the next steps for future generations.
By letting the educational system be whittled down to the most basic of attributes, not letting people learn how to explore, to use the brain they were given allows cultures that thrive on ignorance to proliferate. This devolves a society and culture and you end with up very misguided people that are controlled by fear or manipulation of which neither actually benefits the individual. The individual is left to believe that their lives are nothing more than what the person controlling the environment says of their life. Education is just one piece of a strong foundation to a person’s life. There are others, but you have to start somewhere. Another stronger piece is the value system. You just need to have the education to realize what are true values versus a distorted reality defined by others. Once you take away the distorted realities, you are taking away the cultures of possession (pornography) and fear (purity). And this leads to a better understanding of who you are as a person and what you are truly here to do.
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