Professor Catharine Lumby has spent the last three years studying pornography, and is one of the co-authors of The Porn Report, the most comprehensive examination of pornography and its consumers in Australia. Her findings are not what you might expect. Here, she's addressing the Sydney Institute- The Sydney Institute
Bio
Catharine Lumby
Professor Catharine Lumby is the Director of the Journalism and Media Research Centre at The University of NSW. She is the author of six books and numerous journal articles.
Professor Lumby is a well-known public commentator who has worked as a news reporter, feature writer and columnist for The Sydney Morning Herald and The Bulletin magazine. She sits on the Education and Welfare Committee and the Research Committee of the National Rugby League, advising them on gender issues. She is also a member of the Advertising Standards Board.
Depiction of erotic behaviour intended to cause sexual excitement. The word originally signified any work of art or literature depicting the life of prostitutes. Though pornography is clearly ancient in origin, its early history is obscure because it was customarily not thought worthy of transmission or preservation. Nevertheless, in the artwork of many historic societies, including ancient India, ancient Greece, and Rome, erotic imagery was commonplace and often appeared in religious contexts. The Art of Love, by Ovid, is a treatise on seduction and sensual arousal. The invention of printing led to the production of ambitious works of pornographic writing intended to entertain as well as to arouse. In 18th-century Europe, pornography became a vehicle for social and political protest through its depiction of the misdeeds of royalty and other aristocrats, as well as those of clerics, a traditional target. The development of photography and motion pictures in the 19th and 20th centuries contributed greatly to the proliferation of pornography, as did the advent of the Internet in the late 20th century. During the 20th century, restrictions on pornography were relaxed throughout much of Europe and North America, though regulations remained strict in Asia, the Middle East, and Africa. Child pornography is almost universally prohibited.
Well said, Soylent, although slightly too passionately.
I simply find Viktor's assertion, study or no study, such a long bow to draw. I'm not even going to consider it or the Witherspoon Institute study without a summary of the argument, which is strangely lacking.
The next thing I expect to hear is that we were all brain-damaged until clothes were invented because we saw each other naked, or that cave paintings or the Venus of Willendorf made our ancestors brain-damaged. Simply laughable.
Give me a 50-word summary of the argument that pornography has "adverse effects to [sic] the brain", or admit defeat.
Agree with rawhouser. Research by psychologists on the effect of long term pornography (even short term) show many adverse effects to the brain, in the neuroplasticity. Sometimes irreversible damage. Let alone the social problems caused by pornography such as marriage breakdowns.
You're entitled to your own opinion, but you are not entitled to your own facts. This religious twaddle has no bearing on reality; it is just bronze age superstition that you are bending over backwards in order to justify. This is no different than the moral panics and campaigning against masturbation of yesteryear; which included many of the same tactics of outright fabrication and scaremongering but with additional cruelty like male chastity belts with barbs and circumsition without anaesthesia of teenagers caught masturbating one too many times.
The Witherspoon institute has strong ties to roman catholic traditionalists. Gee, how did I know religion was involved in this inanity before even looking up who or what the whitherspoon institute was?
If you want to see really ****ed up family ties, look no further than the to the deeply religious. The repression of sexuality. The genocidal, narcissistic, sadistic god of the bible that children are told to adulate endlessly lest they be tortured forever.
The best defintion of pornography I have ever heard that pornography is something that you get bored at looking at (reading) after you have masturbated to it.
Can you imagine a man saying he has a female partner and two female children, so he's got lot's of vagina's around him and he doesn't need any more? the beauty of most feminism is how it ignores it's own sexual "right" to speak of penis and testosterone as if its trivial and laughable but if you say vagina...there seams to be major silence, anger or outrage.
On the kids in mine issues? I would have preferred to work construction with my father as a kid rather than go to school because running a company, creating buildings, and doing management from the gate is the easiest way to map a persons neurons for leadership success, rather than teaching me in a hands off way my brain literally rejected for 20 years.
Man she's wacked with the too many penis comments stacking up...you didn't see little penis of her sons in your mind did you? I don't want people to think of little vagina's for my future daughters. Feminist Hypocrisy...
Regulating porn for the young? hmm...it sounds good. hard to argue it. but I dont use a cancer machine....I mean a cell phone. Keep government out of the sex life.
On a better note, does anyone read body language accurately besides me? You just got to love it when a woman picks and scratches her self followed by the palm on the throat...and you gotta love the first man asking questions while hiding behind the file of papers, sheepishly asking questions HEY! when I look up little pussies all I want to see are miniature exotic lynxes.
Keeping children sexually safe is to keep the parents sense of power and sexual expression healthy. Ever see one person get verbalized by there boss and then just take it out on the person standing next to them only moments later? The evil, or the wrong doing is from within each person...its like social dumping poop on one person and then they just dump it out on the next person that they can get away with it too. Sometimes it's children...and some of that will be sexual...and just to keep everyone sober, female on female rape is at a 30% level currently. Yes, lesbians hitting and sexually raping there significant other due to "teasing" and "expectation" not fulfilled...women are not respecting no means no.
Oh, I had a cheating ex who loved doing porn...it was here way of acting out and "being bad" thankfully for her...I was her "victim" and stayed friends with her for a while until I learned she likes to be cruel to others...porn was her opportunity to be a "tough chick" and hat me and her father...ewh!
Cathrine is a really cool speaker, fun and thoughtful. I am pleasantly surprised by her general sincerity and non-criminalization aspect she took. I value her opinions and look forward to more of her curious and informed ideas and researches. No one yet commented on how hot she is~ nor her racy librarian look, so I will just leave that out and say she really where's the color blue well and her glasses are intelligently donned business profession... that is despite her innate aptitude for modeling and sensual energy.
Agree with rawhouser. Research by psychologists on the effect of long term pornography (even short term) show many adverse effects to the brain, in the neuroplasticity. Sometimes irreversible damage. Let alone the social problems caused by pornography such as marriage breakdowns.
It assumes that knowledge of pornography's effects can be gained in some positivist survey methodology. It cannot. This study lacks face validity. For example, does this study square with the evidence confronted by counseling psychologists? Also, there is definitely a demand bias in this survey methodology. In other words, respondents have personal incentives to under-report certain behaviors and beliefs and over-report other beliefs and behaviors. It is clear that she had prior beliefs, which her study confirmed.