There are none so blind as them that will not see. – English proverb
Judging by the comments, some of my readers still aren’t convinced that “liberal” and “conservative” have become mere insults for political imbeciles to hurl at each other, nonsense words with about as much meaning as “poopyhead” or “cooties”. In my column of June 13th I pointed out that most neofeminist rhetoric is not that of a “leftist” political philosophy as it’s usually labeled, but rather that of an anti-sex fundamentalist religion; well, today I’d like to show you the other side of that equation: a writer from a so-called “conservative” think-tank reverently quoting Andrea Dworkin as though she were William F. Buckley in support of the “theory” that…don’t laugh, now…porn causes terrorism:
…pornography now appears frequently in the possession of violent terrorists and their supporters, including Osama bin Laden. Regarding “smut” found on captured media, in 2010, a Department of Defense al-Qaeda analyst was quoted in The Atlantic: “We have terabytes of this stuff.” Terabytes. That’s a lot of “smut.” I wonder whether the pornography of today—now ubiquitous and increasingly grotesque—is one of the influences warping the mentality of those who aspire to or who actually go on to engage in ever more grotesque public violence. Would those terabytes of pornography and such more aptly be dubbed “terrorbytes”? Why, after all, would an al-Qaeda affiliate, as reported in 2009 from interrogations in Mauritania, select pornography to target new recruits? We need to know…
…In a powerful 1993 article, Andrea Dworkin maintains that it was no coincidence that the former Yugoslavia was home to both a free-flow of pornography, which was remarkably fluid and unbounded by the standards of that pre-internet time, and then absolutely horrific violence. She suggests that the wide circulation of pornography functioned as instruction in “a way of being: dehumanization of women; bigotry and aggression harnessed to destroying the body of the enemy; invasion as a male right.” In the former Yugoslavia, “the pornography,” Dworkin argues, “was war propaganda that trained an army of rapists who waited for permission to advance. An atavistic nationalism provided the trigger and defined the targets.” Ideas, ideologies, and –isms do matter, but they do not exist in isolation. Consider an ideology like a seed and the disposition of the mind like soil. The particular nature of the seed determines what may become of it. Yet at the same time, the elements of the soil are part and parcel of shaping the manner in which the particular seed grows. A seed in toxic soil can grow into a terrible distortion of the plant it is meant to become. What happens when a radical ideology adheres in a pornography-saturated mind?
I believe our country needs to invest in research that questions whether it makes a difference when the minds that advocate for extremist ideologies are minds warped by pornography use. Perhaps the twisting of the mind that results from pornography has an impact—an exceptionally dark, dangerous impact—on how radicalized individuals act out the concepts of their ideology. Dworkin raised this specter in 1993, but since then, our general public attitude to the presence of pornography in violent conflict seems virtually unchanged. Just as in 1993, our tendency today is to dismiss it as simply an indicator that “boys will be boys”…[the seizure of many accused terrorists’ personal effects] presents…an opportunity to bring research to bear on whether or not there is a nexus of influence with pornography and the grotesqueness of some modern conflict-violence. We may need to invest in understanding the impact of pornography on those who use it, particularly on those who also become obsessed with extremist ideologies. So, I wonder, is anyone in the U.S. government tracking and surveying the presence and types of pornography on these media? If we have access to the libraries of the personal pornography preferences of those who support and engage in terrorist violence, we may have a window into the dark corners of their minds. What lurks there? It may be to our own peril that we would ignore this information before us. In seeking to understand terrorists, studying their ideas alone is not enough. We need to study and understand their minds—and in this day and age, this includes, in perhaps more cases than we are aware of, minds shaped by pornography.
As far as I can tell the author, Jennifer S. Bryson, is serious; she has several advanced degrees and has written a raft of articles, plus a Bible coloring book for children (I am not making this up). So she knows full well who Dworkin is; she just doesn’t care because their ideology is essentially the same: suppress and control human beings, especially men, and especially especially forms of sex favored by men. Both Bryson and Dworkin are (were) willfully blind to male sexuality; they do not understand it because they don’t want to. It’s much easier just to judge others than to admit that one’s own way of looking at the world isn’t the only one, especially if one is a religious fanatic.
There is, of course, a true link between porn and terrorism, though it isn’t a causative one; the total sex segregation of Muslim society, combined with a shortage of available girls due to polygamy and arranged marriages and a sharp divide between “haves” and “have-nots”, means that there are an awful lot of sexually frustrated young men with no jobs, no prospects and severely impaired judgment who have little hope of ever having sex this side of Paradise (where they are taught they will receive 72 virgins of their very own). Is it honestly that surprising to Bryson and her cronies that these men love porn? I’d say it was a sign of serious psychological maladjustment if, given their circumstances, they didn’t collect “terrorbytes” (gag) of the stuff. Terrorists also have cell phones, TVs, books, cars, food and all sorts of other stuff but nobody’s trying to pretend there’s a causative relationship there because (all together now) sex is somehow different. It reminds me of the way that religious fanatics and cops of the ‘80s made a big deal if teen suicides owned Ozzy Osbourne records or Dungeons and Dragons books…ignoring, of course, all the teen suicides who had sports paraphernalia or other kinds of books and records.
I’m going to let her demand for an increased surveillance state speak for itself, but I must point out that our country already has “invest[ed] in research that questions whether…minds [are] warped by pornography use,” twice in fact; neither Lyndon Johnson’s Presidential Commission (funded shortly after he left office in 1969) nor Ronald Reagan’s Meese Commission (organized in 1985) could find any evidence that porn “warps minds” or indeed has any harmful social or psychological effects whatsoever, though the latter report concluded with a statement roughly equivalent to “despite the lack of evidence, we say it’s harmful anyway”. As porn has become more widely available the rates of abortion, divorce, domestic violence, forcible rape, teen pregnancy and sex crimes against children have all markedly decreased, and some studies seem to indicate that the increased availability of porn is at least partly responsible for the decrease in rape. Of course, fanatics (whether “Democrat”, “Republican”, “Christian”, “feminist” or whatever they choose to call themselves) aren’t interested in studies, except for bogus ones which can be made to “demonstrate” whatever they already believe.
One Year Ago Today
“Recognition” explores the awkward situations which can arise when escort and client discover they already know each other.
Mental midgets … the lot of them!
Hey look – men are “pervs” … I told my daughter this after she dumped her last boyfriend for watching porn on the internet. I liked the dude actually. I told her she would be a very old woman by the time she found a man who wasn’t a perv.
During my time in the Navy … I lost several Sailors … I had to go through their personal belongings to ship them back to their parents. Anything embarrassing, I wouldn’t ship to the parents – and there was always a stash of porn, and these were all good Sailors that I miss.
I once had a Sailor who’s locker got “alerted” on by dogs during a drug sniff. I had to go and observe two female Navy Police (MAA’s) go through the locker. My God – the only thing that Sailor had in his locker was PORN … and not just “porn-porn” – this was some highly “extreme” stuff – nothing illegal, mind you – but bizarre! The two women (who were in their early 20’s) … just pulled out magazine after magazine while giggling … “We see this all the time!” I was hugely embarrassed to sit there.
Knew a guy who had a truck that I called “Porno Truck” and he’d go eat his sandwich at lunch in that trunk and peruse his porn mags – there were hundreds in that truck.
My point? Well … haha … it’s not just the terrorists who are watching Porn – the guys hunting them are watching it too!
And it’s been going on for years… I have several books on the US Civil War… one of them had a short section on how some wives used to send their husbands lockets with nude pictures of themselves so they would remember them.
The book included one of the more “tasteful” photos (from the side).
Found a book on it:
The Story Soldiers Wouldn’t Tell: Sex in the Civil War
Having read a translation of the Qu’rahn into English (stipulation; accuracy uncertain) it went like this :
Masturbation, pornography, sexual thoughts, promiscuity, sex outside lawful marriage, homosexual activity *and even nocturnal emissions* are sinful; Punished by damnation and hellfire.
The only permitted male outlet : *sex between a husband and wife*.
And the “seventy two virgins you get for being a martyr (suicide bomber)”.
Is it any *wonder* they found porn? or that horny young men are persuaded to the cause by the offer of wives if they join ISIS with another 72 cute young women after you kill yourself?
Not to mention these are the assholes that often practice female genital mutilation (code for : cut off her clitoris. revolting, sadistic and brutal) to control feminine sexuality.
This is the sort of thing that *does* bring out my inner alpha male neanderthal, because it abuses and manipulates and maims and kills *their own young men and women*, never mind inducing them into whatever conflict they see fit to espouse.
Fanaticism is to be *abhorred* wheresoever it ocurrs, in whatever form.
Of course, thats as fanatical as the rest. Oh dear 🙁 😀
since the most porn productions are in america,is this also the reason for war?they are talking about bin ladden and that bitch talks about yugoslavia,both bin ladden and milosevich did terrible things,but bush and clinton are no better than them,they are war criminals as well.we have many yugoslavian immigrants in greece now,they share stories of suffering and fear with us and although young at the time i do remember the war,the pictures of dead kids on tv still burn on my mind,the same in iraq,but they talk about the warped views of terrorists and the evil dehumanisers of yugoslavia.the ”humanitarian” governments of america that caused the slaughter of millions did this also because of porn?i always thought it was because of oil and other financial interests that have to do with weapons etc.and the reason that they dont give a fuck about people dying and suffering is that the only value that imperialism and capitalism recognise is money.but no, apparently, its because of porn.and the reasons that terrorists decide to kill innocent people,is not about hate that generates from bigoted views and violence,its because of porn.good to know,that means that if we get rid of porn studios,we can also ger rid of armies,we arent gonna need them, since there wont be any war and terrorism anymore!
OMG! I never knew what Andrea Dworkin looked like before this article. No wonder she’s so anti-sex and anti-men; she couldn’t get laid if there were male prostitutes to be hired. *shudder* (yes, I realize I’m being immature)
I’ll be immature right along with you. I wouldn’t do her with my ex’s equipment – and that’s saying something.
I have to wash my eyes out with bleach now….*shudder* No wonder she’s anti sex, anyway. I don’t think a woman would do her either.
This article reminds me of them “finding” Osama bin Laden and then “finding” his porn stash and viagra.
And my take on that is that if it’s true, then it would make Bin Laden a typical American male.
Yeah that was my point in my post above. Now – don’t get me wrong, I have seen the “terrorbytes” of extremist pron … some of it is some pretty wild, bizarre stuff that wouldn’t interest a lot of American males … but music is music and … pron is pron … and tastes vary according to culture for both.
There’s also a recent story about terrorists getting caught on infra-red video having relations with donkey’s and other animals. Apparently this is a common occurence. That’s not something our guys commonly do … we tend to opt more often for a “liason” with Rosey Palm and her five sisters.
One would think that opportunistic bestiality would be more common in rural areas where there are a lot of large domestic animals, and since a lot of terrorists are from such areas that isn’t exactly surprising.
Yeah … I suppose you are right. Some pretty strange things. I used to know a guy who used to SIT on his right hand until it went numb so that, when he “took care” of himself … it felt like another person’s hand on him!
Crazy stuff man. I’d almost try that – but why? You’d have to be “greased lightning” to get anything out of that in the few seconds it took for circulation to return to your hand! LOL.
The movie Passion Flower Hotel (aka Boarding School and maybe a half dozen other names) begins with a high school girl numbing her hand while staring at a poster of Marlon Brando. This is a delightfully silly movie in which the girls become prostitutes, not because they want the money (they’ve got plenty of that already), but because they want the status.
Which tells you right there that it isn’t an American film.
Nobody would remember this thing if it hadn’t starred Nastassja Kinski. It isn’t available on its own, but it turns out you can get it as part of a package deal. The DVD is called “Hollywood Hotties.” It includes this movie and two others I never heard of in my live: Kill Cruise and Choices, starring Elizabeth Hurley and Demi Moore, respectively (which I assume is why anybody still remembers them).
Added to Netflix. 😉
I think it’s really sickening that these “intellectuals” are more interested in their own personal hobby horse than a in-depth analysis of the issue, whether it be the fall of Yugoslavia or the death of a mentally ill D&D player.
Great post, Maggie, I’ve been following your blog for a while. Speaking of Andrea Dworkins, there’s a great quote from wikipedia about her which sums up exactly what you said:
“Many on the social right liked Andrea Dworkin. Like Dworkin, their essential impulse when they see human beings living freely is to try and control or stop them — for their own good. Like Dworkin, they are horrified by male sexuality, and see men as such as a problem to be tamed. Like Dworkin, they believe in the power of the state to censor and coerce sexual freedoms. Like Dworkin, they view the enormous new freedom that women and gay people have acquired since the 1960s as a terrible development for human culture.”
Thanks, Dude! I hope you comment often!
The more and more both sides (misogynistic, male whiners and their equally misogynistic, whiny female counterparts) talk, the more and more they blend into the same people, even as they can’t stand each other. If only we could gather all of these nutters onto one island and sink it to the bottom of the ocean….
I’m a first time reader and commentator today. I’m sorry for the length, but I believe this pertinent. I’m an U.S. Army Veteran of eight years who recently got an honorable discharge after having tours in Korea, Iraq and Afghanistan. I can tell you I always thought it moronic for American forces to have rules against pornography on one’s own personal computer while deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan. At the very least, it should have been de facto more ignored than it was, and for the most part it was ignored unless they hada a reason to look at your PC. What many of these idiots never realized is that porn keeps American Men both civilian and military safer to be around than the Taliban for women. Actually, if porn were effectively banned, most American men would be worse than the Taliban in my opinion considering that there is no family or hierarchy of older men to restrain the younger men through social dominance and respect as much here in the USA. Nor is there a guiding Religion and enforced religous rules to live by nor one set of standards to live by. Getting Married is also more of a fool’s errand for American men today because of the laws and the way they are enforced against men. Draconian prostitution laws and severe enforcement and punishment of prostitution also leaves men with no sexual outlet other than porn. These feminasties, religous nutter conservatives and other women might actually want to be under the Taliban if they effectively banned it for 10 years or more as I believe American men would become intollerable without porn.In short, if men can not get sex through happy stable long term relationships which is virtually always done through marriage, sport sex by seducing women, or through safe clean reasonably priced prostitution, then men at the very least need to get it through the least desirable and worst of the four options which is porn. On average men want sex through long term fufilling relationships(usually marriage), then sport sex, then prostitution, then porn last. If men can’t get their sexual needs satiated through porn, men start becoming dangerous to be around. These fools have no idea that most pornography (kiddie and beastility porn are exceptions to this principle because they’re sick unacceptable porn) are safety valves for society and civilization despite it being immoral. Even as a Catholic, I’m wary against laws which are against prostitution and pornography because prostitution and pornography although moral evils prevent greater evils such as inordinate lust, rape, murder etc. St.Thomas Aquinas and St. Augustine of Hippo, Doctors of the Catholic Church,agreed with me about prostitution.
Welcome to the blog, Doc! I’ve written about this very subject before on September 24th, November 26th and January 13th and
It always astounds me the way that people want to blame everything on porn. There is actually a fundamentalist group that has a stand built just off of the property of a local sex toy shop here in Indiana. Their site is http://war-line.com/help.html and they believe that sex toys and pornography lead to rape. I find it laughable.
As a hormonally active (ie not dead yet) married male, whose wife hasn’t remotely been sexual or interested for 15 years now (not her fault; endometriosis, total hysterectomy, ovarian cysts, 80% ovarian tissue removed, sexual impulse zero) my perspective here is … unusual, I suspect.
My sexual relief comes from masturbation, sex toys and porn (me being, as is most common for males, sexually stimulated by the sight of a woman I find attractive; a naked attractive woman is more stimulating still; a naked attractive woman who is engaged in sexual behaviour … phew, I need a cold shower).
But these things, while they diminish the urge, don’t relieve it as much as sex with my wife does (or did).
So there’s a “satiation gap” between my stopgap for relieving my sexual urge, and what I really really want, and can’t have.
I think that, while I do masturbate a lot, I’ve got strong self control about seeking extra-relationship gratification, assisted by the emotional bond with my wife.
The snag is that eventually I’ll be *compelled* to stray by prolonged sexual unrequitedness; or just the mischance to meet a lady where mutual desire develops; or just a horny hooker?
Women don’t seem to understand male sex drive; it’s not the “passing twinge” that most ladies seem to experience; it’s an always on pulse, and the longer it goes on unsatiated, the more insistent it gets; eventually it goes thru hint-niggle-itch-drive-NOW-MYGODNOW-GETOUTTHEREANDFINDAMATE!!
It’s anything but logical, and the “keep your dick in your pants” idea gets tossed by Nature’s masculine imperative, which can override the strongest emotional bond by raw overwhelming force.
So ladies, when you weaponise sex by starving your guy (why would you do this if you care about him, anyway?) this is what you *could* be messing with, especially if he’s strongly sexually driven to start with.
And yet; every man is different in their base level of sexual impulse. Other guys may have a very different experience to me. And that’s the “dice roll”
when comparing one man to another.
Another counteracting force is emotional bonding; but if you don’t love him (and not wanting us sexually tells us exactly that, regardless of words/hugs) then your emotional bond *will* weaken. Take the hint.
But *you* have an edge : since we are predisposed to find you sexier than just your outward appearance (Sailor’s Love Goggles) you have an edge over every other woman on the radar. So use it, eh? You don’t have to be hot like Maggie to drive your guy wild, right back into your arms and your bed.
Bloody *use* us, that’s what we’re here for :)💓
Any one else of the opinion that Dworkin motivation for her crusade againt sex was that she was pissed that no one wanted to have sex with her?
Yep. See my comment above.
I’m going to have to disagree. I think her blimping out(*) was deliberate, because she wanted to be sexually unattractive.
(*) Big difference between somebody who needs to lose weight and somebody deliberately making the effort to de-sexy herself.
That makes sense. It’s on the opposite end of the scale (literally) from women who become anorexic for the same reasons. Or so I was told by one of my sorority sisters about her experience with it.
You’re probably correct, Sailor. I would have to say that her efforts were successful – I don’t even want to look at her, let alone imagine her having sex with anyone.
I read that she was gay and married her long-time gay male friend. I also read that she spent years denying that she equated all sex with rape. I’ve never read her books (not sure I care enough to start either), but I wonder if people who are uncomfortable with controversy and sexuality are deliberately misrepresenting her writing, much like they did with Camille Paglia.
To the original point, I wonder if she was so deeply traumatized by some event that she would fear/reject sex, or if she just felt that way from a unique quirk of personality. Either way, it is unfortunate that the cross individuals bear become the cross everyone must bear when the moralists get their way.
I’ve read enough of Dworkin’s poisonous filth to know that nobody’s misrepresenting it; her denial that she said all heterosexual sex is equivalent to rape is like the bullshit “rape supporter” criteria promoted by “Eve’s Daughter”. If you claim that only sex which fits into certain criteria is rape, but then define those criteria so broadly that 99.999999999999999% of heterosexual interaction since we came down from the trees fits into them, you cannot legitimately claim that you don’t believe that all heterosexual intercourse is rape.
I’ll take your word for it. I successfully avoided having to take womens studies courses, so never had the displeasure of reading Dworkin, McKinnon, et al.
I guess she did us a favor by not only becoming a completely unattractive woman, but by so overstating her case that it couldn’t be taken too seriously.
And uh, wow. DVDs Daughter has a big ol screw loose. I have personally encountered some of the items on her list and found them to be varying degrees of offensive, but I don’t see how this relates to rape. What a strange little post she put up there – I’m surprised she admitted to ating men in her comments.
Unfortunately, given the enthusiasm for surveillance and the pending Protecting Children from Internet Pornographers Act, the answer to that is almost certainly yes. And no doubt they will use this as leverage when they suspect someone of a crime. “Give us the information or we’ll tell your wife you’re into the porn where the girls all dress up as radishes and throw salad dressing at each other.”
And Maggie, you said you weren’t going to post “wanking material”. But do you have to post picture of Andrew Dworkin which makes me never want to wank again for the rest of my life? 🙂
Thanks, Mike, I’m off to clean my monitor now…..diet Coke hurts like hell when snorted.
Yeah, but a coke nasal infusion really does clean the sinuses!
“Give us the information or we’ll tell your wife you’re into the porn where the girls all dress up as radishes and throw salad dressing at each other.”
ROFL…
…
…
Damn, I kind of want to see that now. ^_^;
Don’t know if one could wank to it, but it would definitely be entertaining to watch!
I’ve actually posted that picture of Dworkin several times now, and after the last time I said I wouldn’t do it again. But when I posted the Bin Laden picture at “medium” size, it made the words line up in a way which really irritated the hell out of me so I had to shrink it down to thumbnail size. That looked really stupid, so I had to post a thumbnail Dworkin to supplement and balance it.
Sorry about that. 🙁
Heh. Just teasing; couldn’t resist another dig at Dworkin. I had to read her in college and she reads worse than she looks. I have to wonder, however, if the ugliness of so many of these radicals — of either gender — is an affectation or a result of their character showing through.
I think it’s their character. My mama taught me beauty may only be skin deep, but ugly goes clear to the bone. Dworkin certainly proves that.
What evidence there is suggests little link between porn and sexual violence. But I think you really have to examine the other content of the piece. As I understand it studies showed no link between violence and porn except for when the porn was both sexually explicit and violent and explicitly degrading to women. Which makes sense. It’s the violence and blatant sexism that make this pornography so bad, not the sex or porn-y parts.
I have to disagree about the idea of porn as an ‘outlet’ though. The human mind is not a pressure boiler in need of release. I can’t help but think that masturbating to media with certain themes would cause you to further fetishize those themes. Another reason why the terrorists have so much porn is that like 19th century US and Europe only women are expected to really be the gatekeepers of sex. The women wear Burkas and the men are comparatively free.
It seems a recent trend that social conservatives have put on a faux-feminist hat claiming the things they do are to protect women. For example: many Pro-life activists. want to “protect” women from abortion. Apparently they know what’s best for women regardless of the choice of individual women. They have a narrow vision of what’s best for women, and often ignore what actual women say, but we already knew that on this blog.
The vast majority of the porn found with terrorists is the same as the vast majority of the porn every other guy has: plain old everyday porn. And I call bullshit on the idea that violent BDSM porn is “bad”; though I myself do not like it, the idea that the addition of sex automatically makes a violent movie “bad” (after all, anti-porn crusaders aren’t out picketing Hollywood violence which is far worse) is the same old “sex is dirty” foolishness which has caused my profession to be criminalized. And you are free to disagree with the idea that men need a sexual outlet, but my considerable experience and extensive research says otherwise.
From what I’ve read about her, Andrea Dworkin was (she’s no longer alive) a sad, severely maladjusted woman whose particular madness happened to strike a spark with a large part of the “feminist” movement whose motivations were more hatred and resentment of men than anything to do with women’s actual equality.
Exactly. In her later years, even most feminists outside the anti-sex ghetto were distancing themselves from her.
Actually, I think hatred of men was a manifestation of a deeper hatred — of herself and her own femininity. I’ve observed, in my own gender, that men who love women are generally happy and comfortable with their own masculinity. Men who hate women are often the opposite — full of bravado and macho but fundamentally insecure and unhappy.
That is an interesting point, Mike. I hope you will elaborate on this! What do you think causes some women to hate themselves/femininity or some men to be fundamentally insecure & unhappy?
Hi Maggie,
Looking at the other posts and links on the public discourse site leads me to think that they are christian dominionists in effect if not confessed adherents.
While Dr. Bryson is highly educated and polylingual it is not her education I’m concerned about; it’s her philosophy.
I find it interesting that while opposing sharia hammer and tongs christian dominionists have no problem with imposing the xtian equivalent.
This is a bit like the Communist Internationalists decrying Mussolini as a traitor because he established Socialism with Italian characteristics. As if mass murder on the basis of economic class is somehow morally superior to mass murder on the basis of nationality or ethnicity.
I find reconstructionist xtians to be a less immediate threat than sharia muslims, but, if they have their way, to be a larger long term threat. The reason that mainstream christians today are not indulging in religious-based atrocities is because our culture has undergone the Enlightenment and modern sects have incorporated that into their doctrine or at least feel obliged to pay lip service to it. Compare the Lutherans and Catholics of the 16th and 17th centuries with their descendants today.
The reconstructionists and the dominionists seek to reverse the Enlightenment.
Their anti-sex agenda is just one of their over-all anti-liberty, anti-individual and
anti-reason mindset.
I suspect that when self-avowed conservatives quote Dworkin, it isn’t because they believe her to be a conservative herself, but because they believe her to be a liberal. Hey, she’s a feminist, right? They’re all libs, right?
So they quote her expecting that this will help carry their message to those who really are liberals. Nothing like quoting One Of Their Own, ya know?
Sort of like the way that Democrats, during the debt ceiling fight, started quoting Ronald Reagan and playing recordings of him. It wasn’t because these Democrats had suddenly decided that the Gipper was a lefty liberal, but because SURELY Republicans would have to agree with Saint Reagan!
It didn’t work. Well, at least Reagan really was a conservative. Dworkin wasn’t (though I’ve run into liberals who assume she was), nor was she a liberal (though plenty of conservatives assume she was).
Left and right, liberal and conservative, these can be useful if one avoids falling into a few simple traps, like the idea that one is either ALL LEFT or ALL RIGHT. Hardly anybody is. It isn’t even right to say that…
Meh, this is getting long. If anybody’s interested, I’ll continue. Since I have advanced degrees in Absolutely Nothing, you’ll just have to decide for yourself if I make sense. I certainly can’t back it up with any formally-recognized Expertise.
It all just boils down to politicians and preachers wanting everyone to live their lives from their particular script. No one seems to be able to do tolerance anymore, let alone pluralism.
“We found a high volume of porn in parts of the world with extreme violence!”
There and everywhere else. You’ll find a high volume of porn in every part of the world where it can be distributed with relative ease. In those very few places where it isn’t, you’ll find a high volume of recreational sex (paid or otherwise). I would expect there to be a high volume of porn anywhere there are a considerable number of barriers (cultural, social, religious, etc) between a man’s desire to have sex and a woman he can do so with.
On another note, every time I hear that “reward of 72 virgins” bit, I have the exact same thought (born largely of having popped the cherries of 3 different girlfriends in my younger days):
If I die and go to heaven, and there’s some angel there offering me 72 virgins as a reward for having lived a good life, I’m going to immediately raise my hand…
“Excuse me, is there any way I can exchange the 72 virgins for 2 or 3 grownups who know what the hell they’re doing?”
Been there, done that, was mostly unpleasant for all involved (never enjoyed an orgasm less in my life, nor can I see how anyone not a mysogynist that enjoys seeing a girl one presumably cares for in pain ever would.)
“There is, of course, a true link between porn and terrorism, though it isn’t a causative one; the total sex segregation of Muslim society, combined with a shortage of available girls due to polygamy and arranged marriages and a sharp divide between “haves” and “have-nots”, means that there are an awful lot of sexually frustrated young men with no jobs…”
Well, yes and no. Sorry, I’m studying political violence and terrorism for my MA, and have been living in Jerusalem for the last two years, so I always end up responding to these assumptions.
Jerusalem is home to both observant Muslims and Orthodox/Ultra-Orthodox Jews. The Jewish community has basically the same modesty standards as the Muslims community (with the exception of hair covering, which Jewish women aren’t supposed to do until marriage); has arranged marriages (no polygamy); and basically everyone is married by the ages of 21 or 22. I find both communities equally likely to gawk, cat-call, hiss, or otherwise call attention to my cleavage, knees, or *gasp* bare shoulders! As opposed to the secular communities here, who take no more notice of me than American men back home do. It’s simply a novelty in these communities to see a woman not draped in fabric. I don’t know what the porn accumulation rate is for the Jewish community, but they have the same internet access as everyone else, so…
You’re probably thinking, “Yeah, but the Jewish communities aren’t producing terrorists”: While the recent actions of extreme Jewish groups don’t add up to terrorism, they proved they were perfectly capable of it in the past. Did you know Tel Aviv’s first sex-toy shop was burned down by a Haredi group?
As to the economic background of Islamic terrorists, there’s a lot of debate on that. The founders and leaders of their organizations, along with many of their underlings, tend to be university educated and from decent families (decent here meaning ‘at least middle class’). There’s such a mix of educated men and desperate-to-do-anything men in these organizations, I don’t think anyone can conclude that the ratio tips one way or the other.
This concludes your terrorism interlude for the day; you may now return to your regularly scheduled topics, and thanks for letting me hijack (heh) your thread.