Do you want to subscribe?
Subscribe today.
Cancel Subscribe
When you open this pub again using this browser, you'll be returned to this page. When you move to the next page the bookmark will be moved to that page (if you move back the bookmark will remain on the furthest page to which you've read). By touching the bookmark you can set the bookmark to whichever page you are on.
More bookmark features coming soon.
You must login to publish and add your own notes. Eventually you will be able to see others contributions if they make them public.
More notes features coming soon.
Read the complete Chris Hedges column on Truthdig.org here.
In his latest column Chris Hedges takes aim at a topic that is too little covered in the mainstream, pornography. He says "We are blinded by self-destructive fantasy. An array of amusements and spectacles, including TV “reality” shows, huge sporting events, social media, porn (which earns at least twice what Hollywood movies generate), alluring luxury products, drugs, alcohol and magic Jesus, offers enticing exit doors from reality." Add to this the computer gaming market which, like porn, earns much more than Hollywood movies these days, and we see an all pervasive distracting and isolating world. By the numbers we now spend essentially all day, more than 12 hours, looking at screens (see the Open iPub article here).
The author of Pornland Gail Dines who has studied the industry sees a deep seated horror that is getting worse by the day.
Gail Dines, reports Hedges, says “The porn industry has hijacked the sexuality of an entire culture and is laying waste to a whole generation of boys,” she warned. “And when you lay waste to a generation of boys, you lay waste to a generation of girls.”
“When you fight porn you fight global capitalism,” she said. “The venture capitalists, the banks, the credit card companies are all in this feeding chain. This is why you never see anti-porn stories. The media is implicated. It is financially in bed with these companies. Porn is part of this. Porn tells us we have nothing left as human beings—boundaries, integrity, desire, creativity and authenticity. Women are reduced to three orifices and two hands. Porn is woven into the corporate destruction of intimacy and connectedness, and this includes connectedness to the earth. If we were a society where we were whole, connected human beings in real communities, then we would not be able to look at porn. We would not be able to watch another human being tortured."
“If you are going to give a tiny percent of the world the vast majority of the goodies, you better make sure you have a good ideological system in place that legitimizes why everyone else is suffering economically,” she said. “This is what porn does. Porn tells you that material inequality between women and men is not the result of an economic system. It is biologically based. And women, being whores and bitches and only good for sex, don’t deserve full equality. Porn is the ideological mouthpiece that legitimizes our material system of inequality. Porn is to patriarchy what the media is to capitalism.”
Hedges notes the result has been an explosive growth in the rate of sex-related crimes.
The article summarizes with a quote from Dines “Pornography has socialized a generation of men into watching sexual torture,” Dines said. “You are not born with that capacity. You have to be trained into it. Just like you train soldiers to kill. If you are going to carry out violence against a group you have to dehumanize them. It is an old method. Jews become kikes. Blacks become niggers. Women become cunts. And no one turns women into cunts better than porn.”
With 12 hours of screen time and growing, we ignore these addictions sold to us as a means of anesthetizing us against reality and the will to fight back, the will to leave a real authentic good life in community with our brothers and sisters around the world.
Photo credit:
00mrx1new" by Mr. X - http://www.dangerbabecentral.com/xpage/miscart/mrx1new.jpg. Licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons.
Please read our Terms of Service which you agree to by using our services.
Please read our Terms of Service which you agree to by using our services.
Please read our Terms of Service which you agree to by using our services.
