I was about to click away but then my brain started mentally poking me - how are you going to continue learning if you only ever encounter material that agrees with your point of view? Why don't you extend yourself a little bit outside of your comfort zone? So I bought the book and, with the wondrous speed of the kindle, I was reading it within minutes.
There were many times that I wished I hadn't bought the book, it was pretty harrowing reading and extremely explicit, but over all I am very glad I did. I had a naive idea of the sort of thing that is readily accessible over the internet. Recently a friend talked about having been with someone whilst they were burning some porn, I can't remember exactly how she described it, but it was obviously pretty horrific. My imagination, ordinarily very good, had not been able to imagine quite how horrific it might have been. I don't have that problem now.
Catching up on news from our old local newspaper a few months ago we came across this article which was mind boggling enough! An octopus and a snake? Really? Apparently so. Whilst obviously (perhaps not obviously, perhaps this is more common than I can imagine) this is a pretty horrendous idea, somehow it can be laughed off as the bizarre fantasies of a very strange kind of person - that would be me making a judgement, absolutely it is and I make no apology for it!
The child stuff though - absolutely not something to be laughed off, particularly as this is something that appears at least, to be becoming ever more common:
"A TEENAGE paedophile who was training to be a teaching assistant has been sent to prison for possessing images of extreme sexual violence towards young boys. A police investigation revealed Louie Hancock, 19, had more than 4,000 indecent images of boys as young as 18 months on his laptop. The images included 588 level five images, which are images that show sadism or bestiality."
A couple of weeks ago my teen daughters were shocked to read that the singer of a band that they like - Lostprophets - had been charged with child sex offences. Oh and look, animal porn features in this case too. What shocked them further though (let's face it, in recent months we've all become used to hearing about celebrities being charged with such offences) was the reaction of a number of *fan girls* who were defending the indefensible but also expressing delight that they *had a chance* with him on account of their young age!
Now that's just 3 cases here in the UK found without trying - this stuff is becoming a daily occurrence in the national and local media. There have probably always been people who were turned on by this type of material, but they would have had to go to very extreme lengths in order to access it in the days before the internet. Nowadays, it appears that it is pretty damn easy to get hold of. So what does this have to do with the person who uses porn of a more *arty* persuasion, or that is made by consenting adults?
It's all part of the same industry for one, and whilst there must be porn out there that is made by genuinely non coerced, consenting adults, I would wager that there is an ever increasing amount that is not. Children and animals cannot consent - that is fairly obvious I would hope, but there are also many people (mostly women) who find themselves in situations that they would never have genuinely freely chosen, and I am not talking just about those who are trafficked. The U.S. State Department has estimated that approximately 600,000 to 800,000 victims are trafficked annually across international borders worldwide and approximately half of these victims are younger than age 18 (U.S. Department of State, 2005, 2006, 2007). Additionally, the U.S. State Department has estimated that 80 percent of internationally trafficked victims are female and 70 percent are trafficked into the sex industry (U.S. Department of State, 2005).
To pretend that all sex workers are there through choice is frankly nothing short of bullshit, and anyone who wants to kid themselves that that is true is deluded, particularly when you consider that it is estimated that between 65% and 95% of those in prostitution were sexually assaulted as children, so have grown up with a warped idea of sex and relationships. { Farley M. and Kelly V., "Prostitution: A critical review of the medical and social sciences literature";Women and criminal justice; 2000. Farley et al., "Prostitution and Trafficking in nine countries", in Prostitution, Trafficking and Traumatic Stress; 2003.}
There is also a fallacy that people who work in the sex industry, and particularly those who make films, are well paid and "empowered". My cousin seemed to think that women get paid upwards of £10,000 per film "so if you're making 2 a week you're laughing". The top *stars* are making that kind of money, and more but the common or garden person, no where near that amount and honestly, is it worth the money when you are putting yourself at a very high risk of a catalogue of serious sexually transmitted diseases (gonorrhoea of the eye as a side serving, oh yes please, surely you're begging for a dose of that!)
I read an article the other day that said that people were better off getting paid more money making porn than being stuck in Macdonalds on a low wage. This kind of thinking astounds me. The average work life for a standard female porn *star* is 9 months to a year. Macdonalds may not offer much in the way of money or job satisfaction but I'd suggest it is a better prospect than risking anal prolapse, STDs and psychological damage as a daily part of your job!
All of this aside, my personal concern with all of this is the damage that is being done to both young men and women, psychologically and sexually. But I will write about that in another post. I've had enough of this topic for now, and I would sooner be spending time feeding the ducks with my children.
