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| (File photo.) |
Dusty Miller
Southern
states and the Bible Belt watch more gay porn on average.
“It began with a simple question. Proceeding from the assumption that less sex
in a marriage turns straight couples to online porn, does the same hold true
for gay married couples?”
(There would also be the question of single folks in
repressive social contexts. The study also notes the difficulty in
distinguishing between lesbian searches and male searchers. Males report a high
interest in voyeurism and lesbian acts.)
“Pornhub and Buzzfeed sought
the answers and got some surprising results.”
“Looking at gay porn viewers by state, we see an
interesting phenomenon. Why, would you look at that!
The highest numbers are,
by and large, in southern states. Hmmmm. But all of those states hold that
same-sex marriage is illegal, right? There wouldn’t be just a tinge of
hypocrisy at play here, would there? You bet your stars & bars there is.
Every single southern state has a percentage of gay porn viewers higher than
the average for states with legal same-sex marriage.”
***
Who’s
doing what?
Speaking of the Bible Belt, we might be a bit
surprised by who’s actually making and uploading amateur porn videos onto the
internet.
“Amateur porn website Homegrown Video (NSFW
link) cataloged all video submissions they received over a six-month period.
They found that almost one-third of homemade sex tapes submitted between July
and December 2013 were created not in sexually liberal coastal cities, as one
might imagine, but in the Bible Belt. Furthermore, 56.9 percent of videos were
submitted by women.”
(This is one of those I LOVE MY JOB DAYS.)
“These results are consistent with a recent PornHub study, which found that the
religiosity of an area had little impact on how much porn its residents watch.
Furthermore, residents of cities with higher churchgoing rates spent 47 seconds
longer per PornHub visit than their peers in less religious cities.”
Personally, I have no conclusions. I may have more
questions, but no conclusions.
***
So.
Just how much porn is there on the internet?
That’s a very good question, and we can thank the
BBC for answering it.
“Many things in porn are exaggerated,
including the statistics regularly quoted to show how much pornography is on
the web.”
“The need to get a good sense of its size and reach
has sharpened as British politicians, pundits and the media debate what
influence pornography is having on children, teenagers and their understanding
of what sex is all about.”
“A lot of different statistics were quoted in those
debates. However, few stand up to scrutiny.”
“One figure that cropped up again and again is that
37% of the internet is made up of pornographic material.
Many of those people
who quoted the figure took it from a press
release put out in June 2010 by net filtering
firm Optenet.”
Ah, but.
“However, that same year the largest study ever done
into human sexuality published a very different figure for how many of the
web's most popular sites were devoted to porn. The academics behind the
research based their results on analysis of the million most frequented sites
in the world. Most people now turn to the web to see pornography Their
estimate? Just 4% of those websites were porn.”
***
Can
watching porn help your relationship?
“Can porn really enhance married life?”
“The predominant stereotypes regarding pornographyrevolve
around men who can't get enough of it, and women who can't stand it.
Traditional thinking dictates that porn-loving men should be hiding in dark
corners, terribly ashamed of whatever weakness causes them to want to look at
pictures of naked ladies. Women, on the other hand, should never touch porn
themselves (no, romance novels aren't porn, they're romantic) and
should feel degraded by the very idea of appearing in some. They should also be
totally jealous if their own love interest admits to looking at porn because it
means he prefers porn to real women.”
“Of course, the more sex-positive people
among us know that today there is a wide variety of pornography out there
catering to all kinds of different styles and to both women and men.
Pornographic art, film and literature have made it into the mainstream. Heck,
we'd probably enjoy pornographic dramas and sitcoms on TV if only they existed.”
A friend woke up in the middle of the night and saw
her husband masturbating.
As she told me, “I wondered why the hell he would
ever want to do that when I was right there.”
(There is a time to bite one’s tongue and just nod
sagely, and say nothing.)
“The important thing, according to the research, is
that we're open and honest about what we like, what we do, and what we want to
do.”
***
Sexual
activity grows brain cells.
“Forget mindfulness meditation, computerized
working-memory training, and learning a musical instrument; all methods
recently shown by scientists to increase intelligence. There could be an easier
answer. It turns out that sex might actually make you smarter.”
“Researchers in Maryland and South Korea recently
found that sexual activity in mice and rats improves mental performance and
increases neurogenesis (the production of new neurons) in the hippocampus,
where long-term memories are formed.”
Middle-aged
rats.
“In April, a team from the University of
Maryland reported that
middle-aged rats permitted to engage in sex showed signs of improved cognitive
function and hippocampal function. In November, a group from Konkuk University
in Seoulconcluded that
sexual activity counteracts the memory-robbing effects of chronic stress in
mice. “Sexual interaction could be helpful,” they wrote, “for buffering adult
hippocampal neurogenesis and recognition memory function against the
suppressive actions of chronic stress.”
Texans
say watching porn causes brain damage.
“So growing brain cells through sex does appear to
have some basis in scientific fact. But there’s some debate over whether fake
sex—pornography—could be harmful. Neuroscientists from the University of Texas
recently argued that
excessive porn viewing, like other addictions, can result in permanent
“anatomical and pathological” changes to the brain. That view, however, was
quickly challenged in a rebuttal from
researchers at the University of California, Los Angeles, who said that the
Texans ‘offered little, if any, convincing evidence to support their
perspectives. Instead, excessive liberties and misleading interpretations of
neuroscience research are used to assert that excessive pornography consumption
causes brain damage.’"
***
Here’s one that I always find interesting.
Does
the use or availability of pornography increase the rate of violence against
women?
“The consumption of pornography can be directly
linked to violence against women.”
According
to Liberal Conspiracy, the answer is no.
“Research reported last
week in The Scientific American claimed that
using porn can actually reduce levels of violence against women and girls.”
I suppose it depends on whom you ask and what their
interest is. There’s also the question of objectivity when an issue already
generates strong and opposing opinions. How in the hell you are ever going to
get an objective result with everyone peddling an agenda and such small study
samples is beyond this writer.
I suppose the truth will never be known, and even if
it was, those with an opposing interest would never accept it anyway.
Anyhow, that’s it for today.
Love and kisses.
Bye!!!
END
