Monthly Archives: April 2011

New York Public Library for reading, learning and…watching porn

New York Public Library for reading, learning and…watching porn

Shakespeare’s plays, Einstein’s theories — and porn queen Jenna Jameson’s steamy online sexcapades. New Yorkers can take their pick at the city’s public libraries, thanks to a policy that gives adults the most uncensored access to extreme, hard-core Internet smut this side of the old Times Square. The electronic smut falls under the heading of free speech and the protection of the First Amendment, library officials say. “Customers can watch whatever they want on the computer,” said Brooklyn Public Library spokeswoman Malika Granville, describing the anything-goes philosophy that’s the rule at the city’s 200-plus branches… Read the entire article in the New York Post here.

DOTXXX domain names go live

“The first .xxx web addresses have gone live on the internet, almost 11 years after the extension was first proposed. On Friday (15TH), the porn-only address was added to the domain name system’s root servers – through a convoluted process that involves box-ticking from domain overseer ICANN, the US Department of Commerce, and VeriSign – and the first .xxx domain names started working around midnight. Right now, surfers can visit websites such as porn.xxx and sex.xxx, both of which are – for now – place-holders with safe-for-work generic content… The .xxx domain has been subject to intense controversy over the last decade. Most recently, ICANN was forced for the first time in its history to overrule the advice of national governments, some of which...

BBC-commissioned survey on young people’s porn use

Between the 18th-21th March a sample of 1057 British adults aged 18-24 were interviewed online by TNS Omnibus for BBC Radio 1 Newsbeat. The survey was conducted with staff at the Tavistock and Portman NHS Trust, a leading trust in mental health care. The survey found that almost 8 out of 10 men said they look at internet porn. Bearing this in mind, the stats relating to men’s use of porn published in the news and online by the BBC are results for ALL MEN surveyed- including those who say they do not look at porn. Is average porn use that useful to know if it includes those who deny porn use? Maybe. But questions about whether they are worried about the amount of...

Unexpected Effects of Pornography Use

I first got interested in the psychology of pornography a year or so ago when I read a book called “The Brain that changes itself”, by Norman Doidge. In one of the chapters he discusses a client who he worked with who was having problems with online pornography. The book is excellent, and well worth a read, but it was this chapter that really got me thinking. My story of how I came to battle with my porn use is unusual, but probably not isolated. I really didn’t use pornography at all until I was about 28 and even then, at such a low level as to be almost negligible. I was briefly exposed to it as a sixteen year old, but just simply...

News: Investigation of HIV in porn industry hurt by ‘limited cooperation’

Read the entire article in the Los Angeles Times Health officials say two male porn actors were HIV-positive when they had sex with Derrick Burts, an adult film performer whose HIV diagnosis in October caused several large production companies to suspend filming. The report indicated that adult film companies were stymieing the public health investigation into the HIV infection. “Limited cooperation from many adult film industry companies restricted this contact investigation. Rarely did industry legal counsel give information for investigation,” the report said. The report… illustrates how public health officials have been unable to conduct an extensive, thorough investigation quickly… Making the investigation difficult is the refusal of adult film companies to cooperate and the prolific use of pseudonyms by performers, which can make...

Anorexic women targeted by ‘super-skinny’ porn websites

Anorexic women targeted by ‘super-skinny’ porn websites

Last week the Guardian exposed a horrific example of how the porn industry keeps its ‘edge’ in the market. Well recorded in the porn industry is the continuous movement towards more and more hard-core, violent and degrading content. As time goes on what counts as mainstream porn becomes normalized in the quest for more shocking material making yesterday’s extreme, today’s mainstream. It is indicative of the capitalist model that traders in the market attempt to out-do each other to the next new and exciting product. This operates the same way in pornography. ‘Super-skinny’ porn sites are another example of this. Blatantly exploiting people who are unwell in order to feed an appetite for porn that is not only more shocking but that also strongly plays...

My Journey through Porn Addiction, Part II: ‘Don’t Shoot the Messenger’

In Part I of this series I related my descent, over a number of years, into a full-blown porn addiction. My futile attempts at reversing this descent, I imagine, are common to many porn addicts. First came the denial that I was actually an addict; second came the belief that I could stop through a simple act of will. Third was a study of the available porn addiction therapies. Many of these are based on the timeworn 12-step Alcoholics Anonymous process. Central to the 12-step process is the belief that the addict has a lifelong sickness which can never be cured; whatever triggers the addiction must therefore be avoided. In the case of porn this means sheltering the addict from sexual images of any...

Pink Cross Foundation welcomes Hustler fine

Shelley Lubben, President of the Pink Cross Foundation, welcomes the news of Hustler being fined for not giving actors condoms. Ex porn stars from Pink Cross Foundation, a non-profit dedicated to offering porn stars a way out, are satisfied that something is finally being done to stop the illegal and unsafe work practices of porn companies. “They took our complaints seriously and enforced the laws,” says Shelley Lubben, former porn star and President of Pink Cross Foundation. Complaints were made in August, 2009, by ex porn stars that joined with AIDS Healthcare Foundation as part of its ongoing campaign to require the use of condoms in porn films. “I was a porn star living the glamorous life. Drug overdoses, herpes, suicide attempts and abuse...

No Flowers: Saying goodbye to the Daily Sport and Sunday Sport

No Flowers: Saying goodbye to the Daily Sport and Sunday Sport

Last weekend saw the end of the Daily Sport and Sunday Sport ‘newspapers’ . Both titles ceased publication after their parent company, Sport Media Group, folded on Friday the 1st of April. After completing a six-month ‘content analysis’ of the Daily Sport in 2009/10 I am truly happy that this relentlessly misogynistic, sexist and degrading excuse for a paper shan’t blight the UK’s newstands again. The ‘newspaper’ investing heavily in the attitude that women and girls are some kind of sexual object, which gains its worth and value in the size and shape of its bodily parts -the size, at least, of the chest, waist and hips of the model are routinely printed next to their name, much like the measurements of furniture in...

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