"Im a long gone daddy in the USA…"
Here is the reaction formation of the day. If you dont know it already a reaction formation is a defensive mechanism where anxiety producing emotions are controlled by producing the opposing tendency. Its kind of what we do when we do not want to "set ourselves up for failure" by expecting too much or if we reject something we want because we do not want to deal with being denied the possibility of having it. Two year olds and three year olds do it all the time. Teenagers too. Its what goes behind all that negativity that seems unprovoked and hostile for no reason.
So it seems with pornography consumption and political/religious reactions towards sex. Undue sexual repression is like a reaction formation towards the thing that causes anxiety. This includes satiation of sexual desire, how women are viewed, and the notion of same gender sex and same gender love. That there is a correlation here is clear.
Those states that do consume the most porn tend to be more conservative and religious than states with lower levels of consumption, the study finds.
"Some of the people who are most outraged turn out to be consumers of the very things they claimed to be outraged by," Edelman says.
If you are wondering if this might be related to the problems in the priesthood regarding vows of celibacy, it only makes sense. While this does not mean that there is a need to let sexuality proceed unfettered by social norms, it does mean that external repression can lead to more destructive patterns of behavior in human sexuality.
Related posts:
We all have the same human instincts, but some of us are more honest than others. Religion so often perpetuates hiding and lying to save face. Look at Ted Haggard. He feared being rejected and losing friendships and when what he did came out into the light, those exact fears came true. Many Christians are just plain hypocrites.
Agreed. My grandfather, who grew up surrounded by Bible-spouting fundamentalists, used to say that a man needs to hold on to his wallet when he's around those kind people, and women and girls need to hang on to their skirts. Sexist, but sound advice. All the reprobates I knew were so-called godly men.
Another thing: in the last 20 years or so, it seems that porn has become more mainstream (i.e. Jenna Jamison is a D-list celebrity, comedians joke about porn as if eveyone partook, I hear more and more people casually mention Xtube, meaning they've seen it). No longer affiliated with the kind of church that rails against porn consumption, I wonder if there's a sense anymore—especially among Gen X and Gen Y—-that porn is something to be ashamed of and something that needs to be repressed or hidden from view.
[...] was/is a lot of chit chat about the porno and those who, supposedly, buy A LOT of it. See the Slog, the Notes, The Dish, and on and on. All this a response to Ewen Callaway's Porn in the USA: [...]
While I certainly want to believe the study because I do think that conservative Christianity completely mistreats sexuality, Mollie over at http://www.getreligion.org/?p=8408 reminds us that studies that don't use good data don't always produce good results. Check out the article. While it doesn't say that the article isn't correct, it does call into question the conclusions drawn when the data is so…er…ambiguous.
I heard about the article from Tony over at http://www.queermessages.com
She also refers to a national review article as a counter factual to the article in question is in a peer-reviewd journal. She also frames it with an ad hominem of calling the author a reporter as if his data is somehow flawed based on his profession. Rhetoric without content. What the publication does tell us is that conservative states regress to slightly increased porn consumption. While it does not count transient purchases from truckers, etc. it does point to a given level of inconsistency in how states that vote against same gender love do far less to curb their own consumption of pornography. I am consistently unimpressed with Mollie over there as well. She places her own ideological rhetoric before facts and that is far from helpful given the purpose of Get Religion in the first place.
She also refers to a national review article as a counter factual to the article in question is in a peer-reviewd journal. She also frames it with an ad hominem of calling the author a reporter as if his data is somehow flawed based on his profession. Rhetoric without content. What the publication does tell us is that conservative states regress to slightly increased porn consumption. While it does not count transient purchases from truckers, etc. it does point to a given level of inconsistency in how states that vote against same gender love do far less to curb their own consumption of pornography. I am consistently unimpressed with Mollie over there as well. She places her own ideological rhetoric before facts and that is far from helpful given the purpose of Get Religion in the first place.