The Political Problem of Pornography

FriedCFour

PunishedCFour
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Those are completely different to everyone who isn't in your world. Saying a country is a X-nation, where X is a religion or a ethnicity or nationality, means that it's for people who are X (and maybe not for people who aren't X), and that X has not just political influence, but laws to support that.
I think that’s goofy and that’s not what anyone means when they say that, certainly not as Trump has when he says we are a Christian nation.


America is an American nation
Clearly not because the whole world can come here and there’s laws to support that and no infrastructure to Americanize them, so America isn’t an American nation either now that multiculturalism and mass immigration is embraced. So by your logic no, we aren’t an American nation, or being American just means literally fuck all.


In contrast, Israel is a Jewish nation, because it says so in its founding documents, and many of its laws are based off of religion and to the benefit of people who are Jewish.
It’s mostly based off race. It’s far easier to immigrate to Israel as an atheist Jew who can prove Jewish ethnicity than as a convert, for example. More like how we were up until 1965.


Germany was barely even a thing
Tell that to the Romans lol.

There was nearly no unity before that, and no one thought of themselves as German but instead as Bavarian, or Bohemian (if they cared where they lived at all). The German empire did a lot to change that by taking those influences and supporting nationalism to try to forge a national unity.
That’s just simply untrue. Decades prior to the North German Confederation and the subsequent German Empire you had the revolutions of 1848 which themselves were based off of Pan German nationalistic sentiment brewing decades prior to that. You had the question of lesser and greater Germany even, whether to form around Prussia or around Austria. So no, it was not purely the creation of Prussia. Instead Prussia seized on the sentiments and the beliefs and identity of the people of Germany and formed the nation, which could have been based on Austria-Hungary instead as it was debated and seen as one of the possible options, which is a big part of why Prussia went to war with them, to assert dominance as the leading state.
There was nearly no unity before that, and no one thought of themselves as German but instead as Bavarian,
Not true. See above.


Sure, the values existed before, but they weren't American values.
Sure they were. Why wouldn’t they be?
 
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FriedCFour

PunishedCFour
Founder
It isn't unhealthy.

You sure about that? I’d also say it’s obviously just unhealthy for society too, which is kinda clear as well. There aren’t any positives to pornography really. It’s a very powerful tool in the list of modern bread and circuses given it hits one of the strongest drives in animals and allows you to artificially satisfy said drive and thus allows people to be more satisfied with conditions that they would otherwise find intolerable. It’s certainly a component of why we have tolerated the stripping of a lot of the obviously important liberties of the American people that our ancestors would not have tolerated.

 

Abhorsen

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I think that’s goofy and that’s not what anyone means when they say that, certainly not as Trump has when he says we are a Christian nation.
... That's what it means though. And citing Trump is stupid here, he says stupid stuff all the time, mostly unintentionally. America is not a Christian nation anymore than it is an White Anglo-Saxon nation, despite America having many Christian values and White Anglo-Saxon values.

For more evidence:
That’s just simply untrue. Decades prior to the North German Confederation and the subsequent German Empire you had the revolutions of 1848 which themselves were based off of Pan German nationalistic sentiment brewing decades prior to that. You had the question of lesser and greater Germany even, whether to form around Prussia or around Austria. So no, it was not purely the creation of Prussia. Instead Prussia seized on the sentiments and the beliefs and identity of the people of Germany and formed the nation, which could have been based on Austria-Hungary instead as it was debated and seen as one of the possible options, which is a big part of why Prussia went to war with them, to assert dominance as the leading state.
Nationalism was a creation of the 1800s. Prior to that, there was no Germany, and while the idea of Germany was sitting around in people's minds, it didn't really exist as a well defined principle, as you admit, as you point out that if austria had won, they would have been the culture Germany would have identified with. German Culture emerged out of Prussia after Prussia won and pushed pan-germanism hard, and defined what Germanism meant.
Sure they were. Why wouldn’t they be?
... Cause America didn't exist yet, and wasn't thought of as a distinct unit at the time, and many such values didn't last to become American values, even though they were held by a few states. Many values stayed local, or didn't spread. One of these values that mostly died was the former Massachusetts value of Theocracy. Another value that wasn't kept was loyalty to the King.
 
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FriedCFour

PunishedCFour
Founder
... That's what it means though. And citing Trump is stupid here, he says stupid stuff all the time, mostly unintentionally. America is not a Christian nation anymore than it is an White Anglo-Saxon nation, despite America having many Christian values and White Anglo-Saxon values.

For more evidence:
That’s not what it means. Nation and state are not synonymous. You can have a nation of people, and they can lack a state. For example, empires are very often composed of many nations of people, that’s basically what makes an empire, a state composed of many nations with one nation holding dominance over the others. For example, the break up of both the Soviet Union and the Russian Empire was many nations of people gaining states, such as the Finnish and Polish. Those nations of people existed under the empire both before and after. It’s why there is the phrase nation-state and it’s not redundant. A nation-state is a nation of people who have a sovereign state. So a nation can be dominantly Christian, ie a Christian nation, and that is not the same as a Christian state, which is a state with Christian institutions incorporated. Its a large part of why we are a European nation, as that was undoubtedly a part of our founding ideals and for now we still are the majority.
Nationalism was a creation of the 1800s. Prior to that, there was no Germany, and while the idea of Germany was sitting around in people's minds, it didn't really exist as a well defined principle, as you admit, as you point out that if austria had won, they would have been the culture Germany would have identified with. German Culture emerged out of Prussia after Prussia won and pushed pan-germanism hard, and defined what Germanism meant.
nationalism goes back to, at a minimum, the Iron Age. I don’t see how Romans wouldn’t be nationalists, for example. For a later one Alfred the Great and his creation of the separate ethnostates of Danelaw and England would also be an example of nationalism. And no, Austria was German. The question wasn’t so much cultural but instead strategic and more realpolitik. They were all German, they all had similar culture, they all had commonality, it’s why there was nationalistic sentiment in the first place. It took existing feeling and desire, it wasn’t a bunch of thinkers just coming up with this idea.
... Cause America didn't exist yet, and wasn't thought of as a distinct unit at the time, and many such values didn't last to become American values, even though they were held by a few states. Many values stayed local, or didn't spread. One of these values that mostly died was the former Massachusetts value of Theocracy. Another value that wasn't kept was loyalty to the King.
These things don’t just go from non existent to totally present. America as a nation is something that organically developed after two hundred or so years of being a colony and diverging culturally and ethnically from England. American values aren’t something that a group of men one day just wrote down. They are things that developed out of the people who came to America. The revolution just catalyzed the process and created more divergence more quickly and more nationalistic sentiment.
 
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ShieldWife

Marchioness
Regardless of whether or not you consider pre-columbian Native Americans to have civilization, the nation called The United States of America wasn’t created by Natuve Americans, it was created by white people. White people who were mostly British and mostly Christian and who were, by a reasonable definition of the term, white supremacists. Nations aren’t plots of land, they are peoples with a shared sense of identity and the USA was a WASP nation.

I’m not sure how significant that is in regards to discussing pornography though. I suspect that the Founding Fathers, for the most part, would disprove of the prevalence and of pornography as well as how extreme it often is in modern America. They would probably be even more upset, though, that black people are considered the legal equal (and in practice the superior) of white people or that women can vote.

How much should the opinion of the Founding Fathers matter with regards to determining some modern policy? It’s a tricky question and I’m not exactly sure what the answer should be. I can’t help but think that any appeal to the Founding Fathers is going to be highly selective in nature. For example, the sexual mores of the 18th century might be lauded while the white supremacy is not.

I think it would be a lot better to just examine issues on more objective criteria.

That said, I would agree that pornography can be harmful in a number of ways and that it’s not the same sort of free expression which the 1st Amendment was intended to protect, but I would not favor any national regulations against it. From a legalistic perspective, the ability to regulate such things falls to the states, so if Arkansas wants to make obscenity laws, they might be justified in doing so, but they can’t make Nevada comply with those.

More practically, the authoritarian left has so much power in our modern society that social conservatives would be foolish in the extreme to think that they would be allowed to regulate obscenity without giving the left a powerful tool for their own censorship. Most pornography is on the internet and do any of us want to give the government more power to regulate or investigate things on the internet? Do we want to give heavily biased federal prosecutors more weapons in their arsenal to go after dissidents? Not me.

I’m not even sure that porn can be effectively outlawed without some kind of draconian enforcement and is that really what we want? Especially when our enemies have all of the power? The way to combat the negative effects of pornography is to actually make moral choices ourselves instead of foolishly expecting a hostile establishment to enforce morals for us. This especially applies to parents who should actually try to pay attention to the media that their children consume.
 

Doomsought

Well-known member
Porn is no more harmful than any other mildly addictive activity that people can and do go overboard with, like social media, or posting on internet forums, for that matter. ;)
Also gambling and gatcha gaming.

And in all these cases, the best method for dealign with it is social pressure and intervention by family members.
 

FriedCFour

PunishedCFour
Founder
Porn is no more harmful than any other mildly addictive activity that people can and do go overboard with, like social media, or posting on internet forums, for that matter. ;)
Except unlike those pornography hits on what is clearly one of your strongest biological instincts as a supernormal stimuli. So no, not the same.
 

ShieldWife

Marchioness
Porn is no more harmful than any other mildly addictive activity that people can and do go overboard with, like social media, or posting on internet forums, for that matter. ;)
I’m not sure if I’d say that, especially as how pornography exists within our modern society. What effect is it having on our nation when the typical man’s first experience of sex is watching pornography at the age of 10? What effect is it having on our nation if the typical woman’s first experience of sex is at the age of 13 with a 16 year old boy whose first experience of sex is watching porn at 10? Of course the young ages at which kids are exposed to pornography isn’t entirely a result of pornography being legal, but also because parents aren’t doing their jobs and we have a highly sexual idea society, but the effects of pornography should be considered from the standpoint of all of the actual use of pornography, not just the ideal usage by well adjusted adults.

Also, there is a lot of weird stuff in pornography too. Not just naked boobies, which probably wouldn’t have a negative effect on a kid seeing them, but twisted stuff. The people who make pornography aren’t the most moral or well adjusted people in the world, they are usually pretty screwed up and often have an agenda. Are they the people we want teaching our society, especially our kids, about one of the most important types of human interaction? Yes, sex is one of the most important types of human interaction.

Back on the weirdness. Porn that any kid can find these days isn’t just naked pictures, often it’s really strange. Not just kinky stuff, but often perverse degenerate activities which might be illegal and/or harmful if done for real. There is probably some degree of escalation as well: the kids start watching porn and see naked girls, then go on to watching sex, then strart watching kinky fetish stuff, and move on to the really strange things. Not always, of course, but in a lot of cases I’m sure. I’m not trying to kink shame here, I’m talking about really bad stuff.

Once I was hanging out in the back of a gaming store and one of the guys who worked there was showing off this pornographic anime comic book to some of the regular gamers. Being curious, I looked at it and OMG, it was full of some sick twisted stuff, briefly described in the spoiler below:

I’m just describing a few things from this comic, but even so, I wanted it behind two spoilers, so be warned.
There were young girls, pre-pubescent by the looks of them, being raped, tortured, and killed by these horrific demon-like creatures. They are being mutilated in sexual ways and there was some scatological content as well.

I can’t imagine that sort of thing isn’t having a negative effect on the people viewing it for sexual gratification. I’m not sure how exactly a person comes to be into that sort of thing, perhaps the sort of escalation I mentioned earlier, but it does seem troubling.
 

Morphic Tide

Well-known member
I can’t imagine that sort of thing isn’t having a negative effect on the people viewing it for sexual gratification.
Reality/Fantasy filter. It's been a very commonly observable thing in every entertainment medium throughout history, with historic plays from the likes of Shakespear being filled with all sorts of things deemed fucky at the time. Greek comedies routinely had big-dick idiot jokes, where a ludicrously oversized member would get in the way of basic tasks.

Storytelling, including base titillation or shock, has a very stark separation from personal experiences, because there's a non-real medium in between. The appearance of guro and scat hentai is dramatically different from the appearance of the real thing, causing a possibility of failure of instinctual aversions, and preserving those aversions upon encountering the reality.

You're making a "Video games cause violence" argument, and the counter-argument is the same. It does not matter the particulars, the reality/fantasy filter is a far too robust aspect of psychology to take such claims seriously.
 

ShieldWife

Marchioness
Reality/Fantasy filter. It's been a very commonly observable thing in every entertainment medium throughout history, with historic plays from the likes of Shakespear being filled with all sorts of things deemed fucky at the time. Greek comedies routinely had big-dick idiot jokes, where a ludicrously oversized member would get in the way of basic tasks.

Storytelling, including base titillation or shock, has a very stark separation from personal experiences, because there's a non-real medium in between. The appearance of guro and scat hentai is dramatically different from the appearance of the real thing, causing a possibility of failure of instinctual aversions, and preserving those aversions upon encountering the reality.

You're making a "Video games cause violence" argument, and the counter-argument is the same. It does not matter the particulars, the reality/fantasy filter is a far too robust aspect of psychology to take such claims seriously.
I’m not necessarily making a positive claim, but I am discussing the possibility of negative side-effects from pornography. Certainly people do have the filter you discuss, and there is a clear distinction between fantasy violence and real violence. With the fantasy violence, there are no negative repercussions, not pain when you are hit, no risk of death, no police to come get you after the fight is over. Actual violence is a thing that most people would want to avoid when they can. Is sex though? Sex is something that we all want to have, it is fun to do. If we watch porn and see stuff that looks fun, will we want to do that stuff? It seems like that would be the case. Not not saying porn could make people into pedophiles or serial killers, but could watching pornography make people more interested in having anal sex, engaging in bondage, bisexuality, or preferring a certain shaving style? I’m almost certain that is the case. Those may not seem so important, it probably isn’t, but what could be a subtle yet powerful effect of rampant viewing of pornography could be a cheapening of sexuality or the creation of unusual expectations or the normalization of promiscuity.

I’m not arguing for porn to be outlawed, but I am saying that we should give serious consideration to the grand social experiment that our civilization is undertaking, which is easy to access cheap and extremely kinky/hard core porn that even kids watch.
 

Zachowon

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I’m not sure if I’d say that, especially as how pornography exists within our modern society. What effect is it having on our nation when the typical man’s first experience of sex is watching pornography at the age of 10? What effect is it having on our nation if the typical woman’s first experience of sex is at the age of 13 with a 16 year old boy whose first experience of sex is watching porn at 10? Of course the young ages at which kids are exposed to pornography isn’t entirely a result of pornography being legal, but also because parents aren’t doing their jobs and we have a highly sexual idea society, but the effects of pornography should be considered from the standpoint of all of the actual use of pornography, not just the ideal usage by well adjusted adults.

Also, there is a lot of weird stuff in pornography too. Not just naked boobies, which probably wouldn’t have a negative effect on a kid seeing them, but twisted stuff. The people who make pornography aren’t the most moral or well adjusted people in the world, they are usually pretty screwed up and often have an agenda. Are they the people we want teaching our society, especially our kids, about one of the most important types of human interaction? Yes, sex is one of the most important types of human interaction.

Back on the weirdness. Porn that any kid can find these days isn’t just naked pictures, often it’s really strange. Not just kinky stuff, but often perverse degenerate activities which might be illegal and/or harmful if done for real. There is probably some degree of escalation as well: the kids start watching porn and see naked girls, then go on to watching sex, then strart watching kinky fetish stuff, and move on to the really strange things. Not always, of course, but in a lot of cases I’m sure. I’m not trying to kink shame here, I’m talking about really bad stuff.

Once I was hanging out in the back of a gaming store and one of the guys who worked there was showing off this pornographic anime comic book to some of the regular gamers. Being curious, I looked at it and OMG, it was full of some sick twisted stuff, briefly described in the spoiler below:

I’m just describing a few things from this comic, but even so, I wanted it behind two spoilers, so be warned.
There were young girls, pre-pubescent by the looks of them, being raped, tortured, and killed by these horrific demon-like creatures. They are being mutilated in sexual ways and there was some scatological content as well.

I can’t imagine that sort of thing isn’t having a negative effect on the people viewing it for sexual gratification. I’m not sure how exactly a person comes to be into that sort of thing, perhaps the sort of escalation I mentioned earlier, but it does seem troubling.
Hentai is a...interesting wierd thing.
They go above and beyond on the creepy stuff....

Honestly, porn is not bad in moderation.
Excess is to bad.

And I don't know how people get addicted. Personally I have yet too get addicted tk anything really
 

Navarro

Well-known member
But none of those were German values. Those were prussian or bohemian or other HRE state values.

I mean, this whole argument - from both sides - is based on the rather silly idea that people can only subscribe to one identity at a time. You can be a Prussian and a German and a Christian simultaneously. Now what happened in the 1800s was that the concept of "German-ness" became a more powerful identity than "Prussian" or "Bavarian" or "subject of duke XYZ", but those other identities by and large didn't cease to exist.
 
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LindyAF

Well-known member
Even the negative effects of porn on the consumer aside (which is a serious issue and one I agree with @FriedCFour on), the industry has a history of being absolutely horrific. Like, most of the "mainstream" porn sites have literally hosted actual child porn and filming of actual rapes. If you consume pornography on anything owned by MindGeek, you are supporting people who literally profit off the sexual abuse of children.
 

Battlegrinder

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Even the negative effects of porn on the consumer aside (which is a serious issue and one I agree with @FriedCFour on), the industry has a history of being absolutely horrific. Like, most of the "mainstream" porn sites have literally hosted actual child porn and filming of actual rapes. If you consume pornography on anything owned by MindGeek, you are supporting people who literally profit off the sexual abuse of children.

The mainstream porn industry is horrible, but that's not why. Child porn shows up on pornhub for the reason it shows up on facebook and youtube, people are uploading content faster than the site can review and moderate it and inevitably something will slip through the cracks.
 

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