Porn and neural pathways

[Peregrino]

Howdy y'all!

 

I've been mad busy the past three months, and so haven't posted here *precisely* because I find this site so engaging! In fact, I need to respond in detail to all the impassioned comments from the "Feminization of the Western Male" thread I started in May, and then had to ditch in a most bipolar fashion.

 

For now, I'd just like to ask if anyone can point me to some studies of the way pornography might affect neural pathways. I'm not looking for any moralizing arguments (which is the gist behind some of the "scientific" studies put out by conservative Christian groups-- like the one this group proposes ), just rigorous study with as little bias as possible. I wouldn't mind hearing findings related to TCM or even more metaphysical speculations, although that's not primarily what I'm looking for.

 

Although it's based more on personal experience than scientific study, I thought Geoff Thompson's article on "The Pornographic Wasp" was sound and convincing (http://www.geoffthompson.com/detailArticles.asp?id=59). He doesn't moralize so much as cast behaviors in light of whether they ultimately contribute to or detract from human potential. I also seem to recall that in a podcast on this subject he talked about the way that repeated jacking up (no pun intended!) of the sympathetic nervous system through activities like viewing porn will take quite a toll on the immune system.

 

Thanks in advance!

 

Cheers,

Peregrino

[Spectrum]

Your brain can't tell the difference if an image is real or not. The internal experience is the same.

 

Four Arguments for the Elimination of Television

Neil Postman: The Dissapearance of Childhood

Marshall McCluhan: Understanding Media

 

Furthermore you woudn't even have any of the things floating around that are attached to internal sensations unless you had been educated via certain paths of knowledge that modern people consider "real" information... though lacking in wisdom or true body knowledge.

[90_1494798740]

Howdy y'all!

 

I've been mad busy the past three months, and so haven't posted here *precisely* because I find this site so engaging! In fact, I need to respond in detail to all the impassioned comments from the "Feminization of the Western Male" thread I started in May, and then had to ditch in a most bipolar fashion.

 

For now, I'd just like to ask if anyone can point me to some studies of the way pornography might affect neural pathways. I'm not looking for any moralizing arguments (which is the gist behind some of the "scientific" studies put out by conservative Christian groups-- like the one this group proposes ), just rigorous study with as little bias as possible. I wouldn't mind hearing findings related to TCM or even more metaphysical speculations, although that's not primarily what I'm looking for.

 

Although it's based more on personal experience than scientific study, I thought Geoff Thompson's article on "The Pornographic Wasp" was sound and convincing (http://www.geoffthompson.com/detailArticles.asp?id=59). He doesn't moralize so much as cast behaviors in light of whether they ultimately contribute to or detract from human potential. I also seem to recall that in a podcast on this subject he talked about the way that repeated jacking up (no pun intended!) of the sympathetic nervous system through activities like viewing porn will take quite a toll on the immune system.

 

Thanks in advance!

 

Cheers,

Peregrino

 

A good start might be Reuniting. I found the articles about the Over-Sexed Society and Three Myths about Porn quite interesting.

Edited September 9, 2007 by Guest

[Peregrino]

Thanks to both of you. I'm already familiar with Neil Postman and appreciate his work (though I don't always agree with him), and the Reuniting site looks to have just the perspective I was looking for.

 

As an enthusiast of academic film studies, I don't hold that the moving image is inherently, 100% baneful, and even television, while certainly potentially addictive and often completely mindless, is not without its good qualities (e.g. documentaries, BBC news, the occasional well-written comedy or drama). I think some sort of visual stimulation can be a good thing when balanced out with enlightened sensory deprivation (e.g. meditation, flotation tanks, etc.)

 

I'm not sure how strongly I can defend porn, though, even if there seem to be hard-wired tendencies in the male brain towards visual pleasure . . . and then there is the subject of porn produced by women and for women. Still, the benefits of porn are probably fewer than those that come from using cannabis (while porn might re-ignite a flagging libido or bring some new ideas into one's sex life with a partner, it certainly doesn't enhance creativity the way THC can), while still being as potentially addictive. I'd love to see a study comparing the neural functions of long-time pot smokers and long-time porn users!

[karen]

Hi Peregrino,

 

I think what you said about the nervous system is key. The central nervous system and autonomic nervous system form a primordial polarity.

 

When we're stimulating the CNS, a whole cascade of functions results which are quite different than when the ANS is being activated. Anything that activates the CNS without also connecting with the deeper ANS function, is going to be one-sided and imbalanced.

 

There's a completely non-judgmental, scientific way (not mainstream science, but science in the true sense of the word ) of understanding that as an imbalance in which the person can't tap the fullness of their life energy.

 

The CNS activity is outer directed; the ANS activity is inner directed. With CNS alone, you can get satisfaction, but not deep fulfillment, because you're not intimately connected with the other - whether it's a partner or an idea that you're interacting with. The pulsating rhythm of life that Reich called orgone is activated through the ANS. We can't go directly to CNS without passing Go, but we often try to because working with the ANS is more challenging on many levels.

 

Two good sources of research from a western perspective would be Karezza by Alice Bunker Stockham, and Wilhelm Reich's work. Not specifically about porn, but about the CNS/ANS polarity, which I think helps to explain the problem.

 

-Karen

[Peregrino]

Hi Karen,

 

This makes a lot of sense to me. Thanks for reminding me that I need to read more Reich!

 

Not to muddy the waters too much, but I do remember reading an article about a survey of women whose male sex partners used porn with some findings that really complicated the issue for me. A large number said that they found their boyfriends overly obsessed with sex, often becoming emotionally isolated, while at the same time frequently _less_ sexually available than the women wanted them to be (because these guys would "spend" themselves watching porn, and then be unwilling/unable to have partnered sex afterwards). HOWEVER, a some of these same women also stated that the sex was better with the men who watched porn than sex with men who didn't use it. I wonder what could be behind that--perhaps the porn users, while still having an unbalanced approach to sexuality, still brought a certain dynamism and unashamed desire to the encounters, while some of the "sensitive" porn-abstainers might have had certain imbalances in the other direction--e.g. a lack of zest rooted in the politically correct shame of being male and having male desires?

 

Best,

Peregrino

[sean]

This isn't scientific or even academic but I'd like to throw my two cents in on this problem from a broader conceptual level.

 

I think asking how does porn effect the brain is similar to asking how do action movies effect the brain? How does modern art effect the brain? How does junk food effect the brain? How does rock and roll music effect the brain? Not necessarily hopeless questions, but perhaps ill defined starts.

 

Porn is such an enormous genre (I've been told ). You might have something like fisting scatological bloodletting rape fantasy on one end (actually god knows what at one end!). And on the other we might put erotica which is at least an attempt to create real art via explicit sexual imagery.

 

In the erotica direction I've seen some rather genuine, even poignant sexual moments captured between two people. This leads me to have trouble seeing how explicit imagery itself is categorically good or bad to the brain.

 

So the first monkey wrench in a study is going to be trying to define the "vibrational quality" of porn we are doing studies with. Now a modern neuroscientist is not going to listen to the concept of "vibrational quality" (even though we all know that is a valid statement that makes perfect experiential sense). Anyway, setting that aside I think the vibrational qualities of a particular porn, like the vibrational qualities of any meme, boil down to the intention that went into creating it; the quality of consciousness possessed by the creator and all participants.

 

Second monkey wrench is the developmental lines of the viewer.

 

The general status of aesthetic development in our culture is uniquely bad in my opinion. There is an atypically massive gap between the completely naive and the highly refined, whereas the stratification between levels of, say, reading comprehension skills, is much more gradient. I think the lack of aesthetic development is confounded by an almost complete lack of study done on how to teach it (compared with say, mathematics) and by a near universal (and flawed) insistence that art appreciation is 100% subjective. Personally I believe it's a a faculty that can be developed like any skill. (See A Summary Of The Housen Aesthetic Response Theory for example).

 

Then aesthetics are just one line of development in the viewer. There is also moral development of the person. Have they found their own internal moral compass, or are they still subjugating to an internal parental voice of authority? Were they raised to think porn is sinful and internalized guilt and shame around viewing it? I believe one of those researches suggests that guilt/shame + sexual arousal is a recipe for addiction, no?

 

Does the person meditate? Have they ever moved sexual energy beyond their genitalia? On and on.

 

My point, tongue in cheek, is that it's likely that the average random person whose response to porn is being counted in a study is the same average random person that goes to church out of a guilty sense of duty every Sunday, thinks Adam Sandler movies are films, ejaculates every time they are aroused and has never meditated.

 

How would someone at Stage I, in Housen's stages of aesthetic development, view a hardcore porn clip vs. someone at Stage III or IV or V? How about someone who meditates four hours a day vs. someone who has never meditated? A fundamentalist Christian vs. a tantric Yogi? On and on.

 

Frankly, I have never really understood the compulsion for porn or the idea that it's addictive. Never purchased a porn in my life that I can recall. Working in web design, I do take on clients in the adult industry at times. So I have some firsthand experience with the people and they run the whole range as might be expected.

 

One thing I've been curious about for a long time, I have to admit --- what would postconventional, heart-centered, high art, enlightened porn look like? Is that even possible? What would a Stanley Kubrick do if he ended up in the porn genre? I don't think we'll know the answers for awhile. Our culture is uncomfortable with open discussion of sexuality and carte blanche ostracizes almost anything that meets this criteria, high vibration or not. So if you are an actress with talent or a gifted filmmaker and on the fence about participating in a film that could be considered erotica/porn and potentially ruin your career, it's likely you would decide against it. Unless you already felt socially ostracized, lacking in talent, victimized by the community, "I could never become a real director anyway", etc. This and the fact that the porn industry is so well funded -- well there you have a recipe for a vicious circle of attracting least common denominator participants.

 

 

Best,

Sean

[Peregrino]

[karen]

Hi Karen,

 

This makes a lot of sense to me. Thanks for reminding me that I need to read more Reich!

 

Not to muddy the waters too much, but I do remember reading an article about a survey of women whose male sex partners used porn with some findings that really complicated the issue for me. A large number said that they found their boyfriends overly obsessed with sex, often becoming emotionally isolated, while at the same time frequently _less_ sexually available than the women wanted them to be (because these guys would "spend" themselves watching porn, and then be unwilling/unable to have partnered sex afterwards). HOWEVER, a some of these same women also stated that the sex was better with the men who watched porn than sex with men who didn't use it. I wonder what could be behind that--perhaps the porn users, while still having an unbalanced approach to sexuality, still brought a certain dynamism and unashamed desire to the encounters, while some of the "sensitive" porn-abstainers might have had certain imbalances in the other direction--e.g. a lack of zest rooted in the politically correct shame of being male and having male desires?

 

Best,

Peregrino

 

Hi Peregrino,

 

Interesting that you use the word "dynamism," because that's what Reich is about. But the popular meaning of that has been reduced down to a very one-dimensional impulse. Most people no matter how sexually active, have lost connection with the true "dynamis" of their being, which Reich called the Genital Character.

 

But this has to be understood within a context - the polar nature of our being. We have the upper, cosmic pole, and the lower, earth pole. The earth pole is where this dynamic function comes from, and in order to be healthy we need to be grounded there.

 

The trap that many people fall into is activating that lower pole but then getting stuck there, in a materialistic mindset. It's easy to get trapped in matter on one's way down to the root of our being, which is why many people think they can just avoid all that and go straight up to the cosmic pole where everything is light! But without the grounding in the lower pole, it's like half the person is missing, and the experience can't be fulfilling.

 

So, the person who has made it down to the lower pole to activate the dynamis, is the genital character type. That process is a kind of descent, which prepares us for the ascent, up to "full orgastic potency." Theoretically, genital primacy happens at puberty, but many adults even though they can function sexually, haven't actually fully arrived there.

 

The Genital Character type has gone through the developmental process successfully, whereby the individuality (true self) has mastered each stage of development. When this *doesn't* take place completely, then there are excess energies which haven't been transformed into consciousness.

 

That excess energy is neurosis - people are doing a lot of excess, frenzied neurotic activity because they're not fully grounded in that lower pole of their being. Then you see the various developmental blocks at the various stages - ocular, oral, anal, phallic. Character armoring develops in the spaces where the true individuality hasn't taken up its rightful place in the person's consciousness. Nature abhors a vaccuum, so neurotic activity fills in.

 

So the neurotic person can behave in various unhealthy ways. The polarity you describe between overindulgence and inhibition - those behaviors can both be driven by the same principle - the neurotic armoring that is preventing the person from making contact with that lower pole of their being.

 

In other words, a person who isn't grounded in their being could behave politically correct or politically incorrect - there isn't really a fundamental difference. It's not a matter of simply trying to balance that out, as many people try to do. So "better" sex if it's still on that same continuum, isn't ever going to be fulfilling.. it might be more *satisfying* on that continuum but is ultimately going to be frustrated.

 

It's like trying to use a type of fuel that we're not designed to take. We can improve the quality of that fuel (organic soy comes to mind , but still if it's the wrong fuel source, we're not going to get the efficiency until we switch over to a whole different fuel source.

 

And that's about switching from *attraction* which is based in the CNS and comes from the false ego, to *resonance* which is based in the ANS and connected to the higher self.

 

Hope that helps a bit - you might like to read Reich's Character Analysis

 

-Karen

[karen]

This isn't scientific or even academic but I'd like to throw my two cents in on this problem from a broader conceptual level.

 

I think asking how does porn effect the brain is similar to asking how do action movies effect the brain? How does modern art effect the brain? How does junk food effect the brain? How does rock and roll music effect the brain? Not necessarily hopeless questions, but perhaps ill defined starts.

 

I think you were right on, asking questions about the consciousness of the observer. Modern science wants to take the observer out of the equation, to not mess up the study , so we're looking at seemingly "objective" effects of things, in a vaccuum. Doesn't make sense. It's a matter of the person's consciousness, what they bring to bear on the experience.

 

I'd say that someone who is healthy is not going to be attracted to a Twinkie.

 

Re. action movies, I used to not be able to watch them, because I was too "sensitive" (meaning neurotic). As I get healthier, I can watch them and "participate" the experience. Being able to participate something is a function of resonance. When you're resonant with a person or idea or experience, it's like a sexual experience where the two come together but you don't lose your individuality in the other. You become one but also two.

 

It's the deeper meaning of what it is to "know" someone or something in the biblical sense . You go into the experience and come out enriched, not assaulted! If a person can't do this, they can feel buffeted by experiences and want to avoid certain kinds of input. Or they're just so heavily armorned that they can watch gory movies or porn without feeling very much, and get the CNS stimulation they crave.

 

A healthy person can enter into all kinds of experience where there is a resonance. Some types of action movies don't interest me because they're not tapping an esthetic quality that resonates. But others like Fight Club get to a truth of human experience, and there's always something resonant about that.

 

I also think that movies have become more relevant for us than they used to, because movement captures the human imagination in a certain way that books don't. Some think that we're just lazier, but I think movies feed something in our consciousness that needs feeding.

 

-Karen

[Ian]

 

 

It's the deeper meaning of what it is to "know" someone or something in the biblical sense . You go into the experience and come out enriched, not assaulted! If a person can't do this, they can feel buffeted by experiences and want to avoid certain kinds of input. Or they're just so heavily armorned that they can watch gory movies or porn without feeling very much, and get the CNS stimulation they crave.

 

 

-Karen

 

Interesting. My girlfriend recently told me that to "have carnal knowledge" of something used simply to mean that you could feel its nature, or divine nature, in your own body.

 

Obviously this would also apply to sex, but it's only in the last century that this came to be the primary meaning.

 

When I see someone get hurt, or even hear about it on the phone, my bones shudder. I don't like it. But I can watch violent things, up to a point, so long as I'm sure it's not real.

[karen]

Interesting. My girlfriend recently told me that to "have carnal knowledge" of something used simply to mean that you could feel its nature, or divine nature, in your own body.

 

Yes! The descent of the Logos, the journey we each have to make to embody the truth within us. We can't go up to spirit without that grounding. The new age movement has a lot of people trying to go directly to spirit and getting lost in the ether .

 

Did you see the movie Carnal Knowledge? (I saw it again recently - funny to see Jack Nicholson so young!) His character is frustrated because he can't get carnal knowledge no matter how much sex he has. He's armored, shut down, impotent in the real sense of the word. But his roommate who starts out so awkward and inhibited, ends up finding a real resonant relationship.

 

Obviously this would also apply to sex, but it's only in the last century that this came to be the primary meaning.

 

I see Reich as the primary one to bring out the true meaning of this "cosmic superimposition" as he calls it, especially in his book Cosmic Superimposition and Ether, God and Devil. Of course he's been largely marginalized by mainstream thought. Rudolf Steiner brought it out in terms of thinking - we have to have "carnal knowledge" of ideas in order to bring an idea to life within us, to make it real.

 

When I see someone get hurt, or even hear about it on the phone, my bones shudder. I don't like it. But I can watch violent things, up to a point, so long as I'm sure it's not real.

 

Yeah, I often get that fear reaction too, but understanding where it comes from and what it really is, helps. We're all familiar with the kind of codependent sympathy where you just vibe to everyone's frequency and take everything in. But there's a kind of compassion that comes from being connected to one's higher self (through the dynamic pole), where you can resonate with what's going on without putting up a wall of armoring to cut yourself off from the experience. But you don't take in the suffering of the other person.

 

Then the experience is quite real - I don't think I'd feel involved in a movie if there wasn't a sense of reality to it. Some movies are flat for me because they're simply "interesting" in a cerebral way but lack a living reality. What really moves us is Life .

 

I sometimes don't like to see sex in movies because the acting usually reminds me that they're just acting . And when a violent scene is tapping something deeply human, that draws me in. What I don't like is when a living reality is reduced down to a scene that excises out the living quality and just shows the superficial action - then it's ugly to me.

 

-Karen

[Pietro]

So the first monkey wrench in a study is going to be trying to define the "vibrational quality" of porn we are doing studies with. Now a modern neuroscientist is not going to listen to the concept of "vibrational quality" (even though we all know that is a valid statement that makes perfect experiential sense). Anyway, setting that aside I think the vibrational qualities of a particular porn, like the vibrational qualities of any meme, boil down to the intention that went into creating it; the quality of consciousness possessed by the creator and all participants.

 

Hi Sean, do you mind if for the record we change that we all know into nearly all of us know?

It makes me feel so excluded.

[Taoist81]

What would a Stanley Kubrick do if he ended up in the porn genre?

Ha! That just brought to mind a very weird scenario. A stereotypical female porn star, HAL and about 4 hours of silence interspersed with HAL saying "I can't do that"....Followed by a technicolor nightmare....

[Pietro]

One thing I've been curious about for a long time, I have to admit --- what would postconventional, heart-centered, high art, enlightened porn look like? Is that even possible? What would a Stanley Kubrick do if he ended up in the porn genre? I don't think we'll know the answers for awhile. Our culture is uncomfortable with open discussion of sexuality and carte blanche ostracizes almost anything that meets this criteria, high vibration or not. So if you are an actress with talent or a gifted filmmaker and on the fence about participating in a film that could be considered erotica/porn and potentially ruin your career, it's likely you would decide against it. Unless you already felt socially ostracized, lacking in talent, victimized by the community, "I could never become a real director anyway", etc. This and the fact that the porn industry is so well funded -- well there you have a recipe for a vicious circle of attracting least common denominator participants.

 

I can answer you on this, because I have seen them.

 

Three works of art:

Onces more with feelings: book by Victoria Coren , Charlie Skelton

La parpaia Topola: giullarata (jester piece) from Dario Fo

L'uomo che guarda: movie from Tinto Brass

 

Dario Fo (nobel Prize for litterature) explains in Il Mistero Buffo (The funny mystery), how pornography is totally devoided of any humor. (I actually disagree, but that's another story). He then has recovered some ancient pieces of jester theater that use to be played in the 11? 13? century in the north of italy and south of france. The language is a mixture of the slang of those valleys, but the physical movements are so clear that jesters could go from one valley to the other and everybody would understand them. Among those stories was the parpaia topola. parpaia means butterfly, and topola means mouse. It is an ancient story where the first character is it, the parpaia topola. The butterfly mouse (i.e. the pussy). And is also the story of the "stupid husband". A character that (Fo tells us) has been ubiquitous in the litterature from then on. But in this story there is actually a good ending. That (if I am good judge), comes from the heart. So much that it is not uncommon for people who see it to get their eyes wet, at the final scenes. It took me ages to find this particular piece, but finally I found it, and although the quality of the registration is not as good as we are used to, the greatness of Dario is such that you forget the white noise that accompanies the file. I am tempted to describe the whole story, but it would take me ages, and I cannot for now share the file. It needs to be changed, and adjusted, and it is in italian (that is not going to change, although I would love to know how to make subtitles), but it is wonderful.

 

The second is Tinto Brass in L'uomo che guarda (The Voyeur). Subtitle: le donne vogliono essere prese, non comprese (women want to be taken, not understood). Here you have a movie where sex, real sex is shown, it makes you aroused, but then the story takes you, and all that sexual energy is transformed into anger for the twist of the story. I remember leaving the cinema angry. Really angry (!) by all the sexual energy that has been transformed. We might discuss that anger is a heavy emotion, and we don't like to experience it. But there are no doubts that Tinto Brass knew his job. It is also a movie that now, with the knowledge of PU that I have I would consider a good movie to learn. Not to learn how to PU but to learn how some men have much more sex than others. The frustration that the viewer experiences is the frustartion of the AFC when he discovers how his own wife ... (but I should not spoil you the movie)

 

The third is a book. It is not as good as the other two. The other are written by masters in their field. Dario is I suspect the best jester not just that is around now, but probably that has been around in a long time. The book has been written by two journalists. A man and a woman. Two friends. They were given the task to review pornographic movies for a newspaper. The book is extremely funny, and I remember the line from the first page: "after seing hundreds of movies, while eating tea and biscuits, you end up being less interested in where the next dick is going into than in where the next biscuits is coming from". Eventually (by page 3) they realised how there was not one movie with substance, and they decided to make a porno movie themself. After all, in what other field can you make your first movie, and have it being the best movie of the whole category? Did they succeed? Well they made a movie, and the whole book is the story of the process of making the movie. It includes sexual descriptions of the story of the movie, and how they actually did it, and so on. How they decided the story (we wanted to put any perversion that any of us liked, but no perversion that were a no no for any of them. So no women masturbating with long nails, for she really did not like the idea, while he had no problem with it, I wonder why). Now I have never seen the movie, I have also read the book which is not a porno book, although it treats about porno, and being quite descriptive at times. But the story that is described is a short porn story, and I believe a piece of art too.

 

One line from it (as I remember it):

[male character name, I have forgotten] enters into the doctor office:

-doctor, I am ill

-no problem, take off your trousers, take off your underwear, lay on the bed, and don't forget the stirrups.

-but, you don't even ask me what do I have?

-oh, I am sorry, what's the matter, why are you ill?

-I have throat pain

-No problem, now take off your trousers, take off your underwear, lay on the bed, and don't forget the stirrups.

 

By the way, to become pornographers, Nina and Charlie went to interview various stars in the field. Among them Nina Hartley (article). I think if you want to find someone really good in doing porn you have to look at her.

 

But then what to say about Abby Winters. Abby is probably considered the best pornography taht is being done around. It is work of art. Her takes people who are often in love with each other, let them make love in front of the camera, and youhave those pictures and movies of real love. Something so hard to find, well in all sense.

 

Oh, and probably I should mention ...

 

I forgot.

 

Actually I just realised I did had a whole chapter of Once more with feelings, that has been given to me by Vicky, when they had a website.

 

The entire exterior world disappears. San Fernando, the clinic, the parrot: gone. There is nothing but Nina and Charlie. She spots him for an ingenue, sits him down in a corner of the foyer with a kindly air, and proceeds to deliver The Gospel According To St. Nina. It is as iconoclastic and moving as any sermon he has ever heard. Hartley picks up every piece of Charlie’s mental furniture, dumps half of it in a skip and puts the rest in a different corner of the room. And as he listens he realizes that of course the room should always have been arranged that way; he doesn’t know what the hell he was doing with that horrid old sofa in the first place. He never chose it - someone must have shoved it in when he wasn’t looking.

They sit, knee to knee, and Nina addresses Charlie in a reedy lisp which he would find stupendously annoying in anybody except the most profoundly sexual woman he has ever seen. Vicky is busy in the lab, gazing in admiration as the Florence Nightingale of porn takes blood from a stud’s fore-arm, but later she will be surprised to find Charlie in such a state of blissful wonder. Nina is impressively frank and sexual, sure, but she looks like Suzi Quattro in a pair of oversized glasses and talks like Violet Elizabeth Bott. She’s very likable, a great advocate for her trade, and she’s clearly a bit of a goer – but when she came tumbling in, all slaps and giggles, Vicky was not expecting to watch Charlie fall in love.

While Nina delivers her porn homily, Charlie barely says a word. He interrupts her only once – to ask if she minds him recording her speech, for later study. It’s turning out to be one hell of a sex lesson.

“No problem, honey”, purrs Nina, stroking a lock of hair from Charlie’s forehead. He trembles so much he can barely press the ‘record’ button.

“I have the benefit of having lived out physically, a great deal, my fantasies. I’m comfortable in any sober consensual situation. I can fly gay, straight, bi, pierced, tattoo, any gender, any age - it’s cool. People being consensually sexual in a supportive healthy environment - I’m so there! The stuff, Jesus, the things I’ve done, the people I’ve seen! Oh my God!

“But a fantasy’s not a reality. I can be turned on without having to act on it. I can enjoy the ‘We could’ without actually trying to make it happen. Because most people don’t play at my level. And this is fine: when I have casual sex I usually stick to people who are quirky like me, so they speak the same language. So today, for example, I went over to my girlfriend’s house, where I said hello to her husband, and he went off, and then her boyfriend came over and we all three of us made love. It was a planned thing, this guy knew we were going to do this - and my girlfriend’s assistant was there, and she ended up coming in and lending a hand - she didn’t herself get naked, and I didn’t actually have intercourse on this occasion, but it was very sexual, very casual, and at some point, with my girlfriend and her boyfriend in the marriage bed, the three of us naked, and the assistant not naked, all doing something to him, I said: ‘This is the world I want to live in.’

“Currently I’m editing the most recent movie that I shot. It’s Nina Hartley’s Guide to Couples Sexploration. Education is one of porn’s most under-utilised, under-recognised plus points. I’m a registered nurse by education, a stage performer by vocation, and a sexual revolutionary as a calling. I’m a feminist. And there is a way to combine explicit erotica with respect - depends on how you treat the material. My perspective is fundamentally respectful towards sexuality, and people’s bodies and feelings, as opposed to coming at it from the fear-based viewpoint or the judgement-based viewpoint which most people have about sex. The one thing that I have done in thirty years of sexual exploration is really ferret out my fear of sex and heal myself that way. And pornography is absolutely at the heart of that. The consuming of it as a fan, the making of it as a performer, the creating of it as a producer, and talking about it as an academic, has been fabulous for me.

“One of the unspoken realities about sex is that it is both an art and a skill, much like doctoring or playing the violin. There is the physiological, geographical knowledge of what things are where, how they work, how might one stimulate them in various ways, with various devices, for various purposes. The machinery of the body. And then there’s the feelings that you put into the various twiddles and touches and fiddles and strokings. And how the two of you can play together as a duet. But what our culture does is to use sex-negativity and sex-shame as a way of controlling people.

“People need non-judgmental information, so that when you’re fumbling in the dark you know what it is you’re doing. To learn how to be good lovers, we have to unlearn all or most of the negative conditioning we have received growing up. Which means that we have to face our pain, our alienation, our lack of body awareness, our fear, our loneliness, our inability to love ourselves, and all that stuff. I have had letters from happy couples, first-hand confirmation of how I’ve saved marriages. I have liberated people.

“There are plenty of non-explicit ways to teach all this, but if a picture is worth a thousand words, a moving picture is worth ten thousand words. There’s talking about a golf swing, and there’s watching a golf swing. There’s talking about the double-headed thing with the back and forth and the clip at the end… or there’s ‘Look at this!’

“I’ve been in this business over twenty years and as a Berkeley feminist, having come of age in the Seventies, I knew that the mere fact of being a happy, well-adjusted, enthusiastic, aware woman on screen was revolutionary. I was explicitly having a good time, I really was having a good time. I wasn’t forced, I wasn’t drunk, I was able to fully admit: ‘This is what I want to do’. It was important just to show a woman having all kinds of wild sex and having orgasms and not ending up dead, alone, in jail, in hospital, abandoned, losing her kid, losing her husband, all the things that Hollywood does to a woman like that. In my movies - and I say this to all people who call themselves feminists - no matter how cheesy the movie, no matter how much you’re titillated by it, grossed-out, intrigued, shocked, it is revolutionary because my character has sex, she has pleasure, and she lives to do it again. Now, that’s a great potent fantasy.

“Anything that I can do to help a woman become more comfortable with her sexual power, her sexual desire, her sexual nature, is a good thing. And it’s good for a man to see a woman who’s having a truly good time, and who welcomes his orgasm, who doesn’t think he’s a pig jerk for wanting to jack off. And because I, on camera, never denigrated the guy watching, I was able to subtly - and quite frankly widely - influence a whole generation of young men to enjoy seeing a woman get off, instead of being threatened by their girlfriends’ healthy sexuality. What I hear most of all in my fan letters is: ‘You seem to like what you’re doing; you’re always having such a great time’ – so I know that the portrayal of feeling is very important to the people watching. Sometimes I have to fake it - but do they really break people’s arms in Hollywood movies? No.

“Contrary to what some feminists said in the Seventies, men want their partners to enjoy themselves. There is a feminist argument which says that your desire for me harms me, that your desire for me comes from a place of evil and hurt towards the female - which I have found to be hogwash. It’s not true. I have fucked hundreds of men, both professionally and privately, and I can say, with very few exceptions, no man wanted me to have anything but the best time I could possibly have. And since, in our culture, women run the sex game, the man will do whatever it takes to keep her naked and in a good mood.”

 

Nina squeezes Charlie’s upper thigh. He whispers, “Do you think there is such a thing as being TOO in touch with your sexuality?”

Nina coos, “Nooooo. There’s no such thing as being too in touch with any part of yourself. You have to have the maturity to learn when it is inappropriate to express what.”

Nina looks up as Vicky returns from the lab. “Now, am I going to grab her breasts? No, I don’t know her”. She grabs Vicky’s breasts.

Vicky laughs. Nina turns back to Charlie: “Anyway, I’ve found that just by being direct and fun about it, and with no shame, you can say: here’s what I want to do; I love hand jobs; want one?”

Charlie chuckles nervously. He thinks he might be dreaming. He doesn’t reply.

 

“Whatever... When a woman says ‘I want this’, you don’t have to go along with it. If you don’t, that’s fine - it’s not personal dude, we’re just not on the same playing field. We’re not on the same level. But when you wake up and admit ‘I have desires, and I can live them out, safely and wisely’ you can have the life that you’ve imagined. You can live it - you just have to believe that you deserve it. Or don’t live it - but be unabashed by your sexual fantasies. Your fantasies and your behaviour don’t have to match.

“All our laws, and all the teachings about sexuality that pervade our culture - even though I’m not a Christian person, I still know about Christian hang-ups - are based on beliefs about sex that were based on the Bible which is very sexually negative. So there is a belief that sex is bad and dangerous, but your body’s not going to lie to you, it can’t lie to you, and when your body’s talking to you, listen to it. When something is feeling really good, and part of your brain says ‘This is lying, this is bullshit, this is wrong’ – no! When it feels good, that is the real thing! Our bodies are hard-wired to be okay with sex, we’re hard-wired to be pleasure-seeking people. You can seek pleasure in drugs and alcohol - senseless, mindless pleasure - or you can seek conscious and aware pleasure. Real pleasure.

“One of the things the body does, all by itself, is feel good when you touch it. Either God made our body - God made it and saw that it was good - or we evolved it. God doesn’t make mistakes, apparently, and something as highly evolved as our sexual response cannot be an evolutionary ‘Oops’. There is a reason why we like things the way that we do.

“Understand that I’ve had lots of sexual experiences that weren’t all pleasurable, but they were all illuminating. All enlightening, helpful. It helps with self-awareness, even if you’re only thinking, ‘Oh wow, I thought I could do this but I guess I can’t’. It’s important to learn about your body, think about it, play around with it. My message is this: learn to dance in front of the mirror naked until you like what you see. It’s free therapy. It might take years, but you will love the sense of comfort and security and confidence that it gives you, to like yourself and enjoy being in this skin. ’Cos this is it - it’s the only body we have. And this is how we experience the world. Now, am I going to be enemies with my earthly vessel, or am I going to be friends with it? Because after we die… I don’t think there’s anything after this. Someone called the idea of life after death ‘a spiritual felony’ because it robs us of now. We experience life now, now, here - and to become integrated with your vessel is of the utmost importance. You’ve got to do it, you’ve got to face your demons, I have to face my demons. We’ve all got to face our demons.

“And so you learn to dance naked in front of that mirror. Don’t start naked: you might start off in a robe, until you get comfortable with it. But eventually you’re going to be dancing in front of a mirror and liking it, and having it be a turn on. It is a huge journey, very rewarding, and ultimately everyone’s got to do it. Literally or figuratively.”

 

Driving back into LA, Vicky warns Charlie: “If you are going to dance naked in front of the mirror, I’d appreciate it if you lock the bathroom door.”

“God, you’re such a prude”, mutters Charlie.

 

ok, good night.

Edited September 13, 2007 by Pietro

[dwai]

Howdy y'all!

 

I've been mad busy the past three months, and so haven't posted here *precisely* because I find this site so engaging! In fact, I need to respond in detail to all the impassioned comments from the "Feminization of the Western Male" thread I started in May, and then had to ditch in a most bipolar fashion.

 

For now, I'd just like to ask if anyone can point me to some studies of the way pornography might affect neural pathways. I'm not looking for any moralizing arguments (which is the gist behind some of the "scientific" studies put out by conservative Christian groups-- like the one this group proposes ), just rigorous study with as little bias as possible. I wouldn't mind hearing findings related to TCM or even more metaphysical speculations, although that's not primarily what I'm looking for.

 

Although it's based more on personal experience than scientific study, I thought Geoff Thompson's article on "The Pornographic Wasp" was sound and convincing (http://www.geoffthompson.com/detailArticles.asp?id=59). He doesn't moralize so much as cast behaviors in light of whether they ultimately contribute to or detract from human potential. I also seem to recall that in a podcast on this subject he talked about the way that repeated jacking up (no pun intended!) of the sympathetic nervous system through activities like viewing porn will take quite a toll on the immune system.

 

Thanks in advance!

 

Cheers,

Peregrino

 

Read this book on Neurobiology -- http://www.amazon.com/Brain-That-Changes-I...s/dp/067003830X

[xenolith]

For those for whom Enlightenment is not achieved, reflections of the neural pathways that were cultivated in Life await the Spirit of the cultivator after it. Neural pathways cultivated by porn are inconsistent with Enlightenment and ensure that it doesn't occur. Indeed, they ensure delivery of the Spirit of the cultivator to the Sidpa Bardo. And all that that entails. Advise training your mind otherwise. Almost any other path will serve your Spirit better. And there are MUCH better.

 

xeno

[Cameron]

I don't really have a moral positon about it but have stopped watching porn. Though I would say I have alot of toxic energy from decades of watching porn that will probably take years of cultivation to clean up(I am hoping to speed up the process now with kunlun).

 

Anyway...yeah..I am finding I appreciate and respect the beauty of woman I see and talk to every day much more now I stopped filling my mind with porn also.

 

namaste

Edited September 13, 2007 by Cameron

[lino]

I don't really have a moral positon about it but have stopped watching porn. Though I would say I have alot of toxic energy from decades of watching porn that will probably take years of cultivation to clean up(I am hoping to speed up the process now with kunlun).

 

Anyway...yeah..I am finding I appreciate and respect the beauty of woman I see and talk to every day much more now I stopped filling my mind with porn also.

 

namaste

 

If that's the case, I'll probably need to cultivate for the next few thousand years with something like Kunlun

[Cameron]

hehe...Ime not saying it is that way for everyone. Only you can say what the energy of porn does to you. I can only say for me as far as cultivation goes it is a huge detriment.

 

But it took me meeting an awakened woman teacher to actually feel all that.

 

Actually Smile/Max had talked about how the energy of porn messes up the transfomation of energy for like last few years also.

[Spectrum]

Sacred Art no need words. You miss the mark.

[Pietro]

Sacred Art no need words. You miss the mark.

sacred art no need gramar to

[witch]

I find most porn beautiful and meaningful. I am emotionally moved by it.

[Cameron]

 

 

Porn isn't going anywhere. Last I heard the porn industry is bigger than the movie industry. It's not really a controlling thing more like if your drawn to porn..well..watch it I guess.

 

But if your a guy and you get into cultivation and maybe you find watching porn everyday isn't helping so much..well..taking a break is just sort of like the thing to do... or not!

[witch]

No really, I'm serious! I see all that chi energy poured out. I mean, I know everybody is acting, but I put myself in those women's places and simply feel heart chakra stirrings and grateful affection.

 

Although I don't find porn all that erotic so I don't watch it very much. The thing that gives me the most orgasms is watching The Colbert Report.