Introduction
Pornography has been a widely debated topic for years because of the unrealistic pressure and expectations that it puts on its viewers. An advice column written by Logan Hill, titled “My boyfriend’s porn makes me feel inadequate”, (2013) will be the focus of this critique. The advice given in this column is centered around the idea that porn should not make you jealous or any less self-confident because you are real and your partner would much rather be with you. The purpose of this paper is to support as well as refute the advice provided by Hill (2013) using course material and empirical research.
Textbook Support – Concept 1
The first concept that will be used to support the advice from the column will be romantic jealousy. “Romantic jealousy is a complex of thoughts, emotions, and actions that follows loss or threat to self-esteem and/or the existence or quality of the romantic relationship” (White, Martin, & Bartolic, 2013, p.303-304). The loss or threat is created by the perception of a real or potentially romantic attraction between one’s partner and a (perhaps imaginary) rival. This form of jealousy relates to the advice column since the person who received the advice is jealous of her boyfriend’s porn because it makes her feel self-conscious and less desirable. The concept of romantic jealousy coincides with the advice given because it explains how a rival generates the feeling of jealousy, this rival does not have to be a person, and it could be something as simple and as pornography.
This form of jealousy helps support the relationship advice because the advice from the columnist that was given to the woman explains how she should not compare herself to anyone else and that she is a real person who is able...
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.... In addition to this, relationships are complicated and sometimes very fragile. In order to maintain a healthy relationship it is important to communicate and express to your partner any problems that you are having and come to an agreed upon solution. Additional advice that could be given to the woman seeking advice could be to sit down with her boyfriend and actually have a mutual discussion about his use of pornography and explain to him that it is bothering her and she is having feelings of inadequacy. For example, she may be concerned that he would rather watch porn than be with her. If she clearly expressed how she was feeling, the hope would be that her boyfriend would most likely validate her feelings, comfort her and let her know that he would rather be with her. He might even agree to decrease or stop using pornography altogether through their discussion.
A review of the contemporary research on the negative effects of pornography is replete of scholarly and anecdotal evidence and opinion about the damages associated with viewing it. But the evidence is limited when it comes to criticism of mainstream media’s damages to certain groups, particularly young women with their romantic comedies.
Jealousy is an emotional state that erupts when a valued relationship is being threatened (Buss et al., 1992). Men and women both express jealousy tendencies when they feel their romantic relationships are being threatened. Many researchers have studied sex differences in romantic jealousy to investigate at what particular time do men and women feel the most distressed or jealous. For instance, Bus et al. (1992) and Harris and Christenfeld (1996), found that men feel more distressed when they think their romantic partner is engaging in sexual infidelity, whereas women feel more distressed when they think their romantic partner is emotionally attached to someone else. These findings may be very insightful and useful to many of us who experience jealousy episodes; but importantly, it will allow us to investigate the validity of the evolutionary theory that is used to explain most sex differences. In the following paragraphs, I will describe the evolutionary theory that explains sex differences in jealousy and four related empirical studies. Lastly, I will
In addition to bolstering my argument in favor of pornography, I will also demonstrate the strength the argument has in modern discourse by dispelling common myths in favor of the censorship of pornography, such as the increase in violence towards, the subjugation of, and objectification of women, and I will subsequently offer a substantial rebuttal.
explains to us that from now on you have to take on jealousy as well.
This paper was done by Paul J. Wright from Indiana University, Department of Telecommunications. Wright argues that although social scientific research on the effect of consumption of pornography among males may be highly debated, it might not have focused testing the feminist perspective that pornography aggravates sexual aggression against females. He posits that previous research might have addressed the use of pornography amongst males; however, they overlooked the permissive approach to sexual affairs (Wright, 2013).
Previous studies have been done on jealousy, but their methods relied on self-report of how participants thought they would feel if they found out their mate had been cheating on them or self-report methods of how participants felt in retrospect of having been cheated on. Khule’s method was different. Instead of relying on what someone thought they would have done, or trying to remember what they had already said and done, K...
Jealousy is an emotion that many would experience in their lifetime. The trigger for the emotion jealousy differs for everyone but no doubt that people would experience this emotion a handful of times in their life. Many if not most people would develop jealousy during their time in a relationship regardless of the length of the relationship. Some researchers like Attridge (2013) consider jealousy a positive behavior because of the fear of losing one’s partner could mean the transition of one love style to another with an increase in one of the components. There are different types of jealousy (Miller,
56% of divorce cases in the United States have reported the cause of divorce as one member of the couple having an unhealthy addiction for pornographic websites ("Pornography Statistics: Annual Report" 2014). The Merriam-Webster dictionary describes pornography as "movies, pictures, magazines, etc., that show or describe naked people or sex in a very open and direct way in order to cause sexual excitement." In a recent study of dating or married couples, 73% of males reported to using pornography at some level (ranging from low to high frequency use), while only 32% of females reported using pornography (Poulsen, Bubsy & Galovan, 2013 p. 73). Pornography has highly addictive qualities, which are often dismissed as "human nature," and is the leading cause of unhappiness leading to divorce in marriages. The ease of access to online pornography makes this worse because it is much more difficult to quit because of how easy it is to access it. If someone is addicted to drugs, they would need to find a supply if they were tempted to relapse. With an online pornography addiction, all someone needs is a computer to relapse into their pornography addiction. This form of addiction is not seen as an issue because of its dismissal as “human nature.” Online Pornography addiction negatively affects the addicted party's serious relationship or marriage, the addicted person's partner, and the addicted party themselves.
As defined by MacKinnon, pornography does indeed cause harm to the women. In her argument, MacKinnon successfully demonstrates how pornography displays male supremacy over women, and how women are mere sex-objects. For the purpose of this paper I will further elaborate on MacKinnon’s argument of pornography depicting women as simply sexual objects and also displaying women as being sub-human to men, almost slave-like. Lastly, I will discuss how pornography lacks literary, artistic, political, and scientific value.
Today, pornography has different targeted audiences based on various categories of pornography. There are pornographies made that are targeted toward women in which are slow and focused more on the people’s language rather than solely genitally focused. Most pornographies, however, are made specifically for men. These videos contain a large focus on the genitals, the men are portrayed as dominant, and the women please the men taking any measures necessary. According to a study, pornography that was intended for men and women aroused the men who were being studied. Women on the other hand, activated negative affects after watching the pornography intended for men and positive after watching the pornography intended for women (Mosher, 1994). In general, men are the main target of pornographies and women as well as feminists believe that pornography should not characterize women as objects. Also when making this study, it was difficult to find pornography that was made by women, majority of the videos are made by men and produced for
Lloyd Duhaime, Barrister, Solicitor, Attorney and Lawyer, defined Pornography as “sexual acts or sexual representations that are calculated to stimulate sexual feelings, independent of the presence of another loved one or chosen human being.” These sexual feelings and stimulations could result in some mental and emotional issues. Let’s start by looking at the mental issues that pornography leads to. As explained and proved in the ”Family North Carolina Magazine- Winter-2010” pornography viewing among teenagers creates a disorientation in their developmental phase, where they start learning about sexuality and gaining moral values. These teenagers get the wrong meaning of sexuality which have some negative effects on them in the future such as the fear of getting married or unfaithfulness to their partner. This study has also proved that pornography lower the level of self-esteem among adolescents. Also, according to Robert A. Baron, pornography has an effect on mental health among adult, and being highly exposed to pornography creates a ...
Jealousy can sometimes be an inevitable feeling to have towards other people in relationships or even in friendships, and that feeling can negatively affect the bonds with these certain people. One of the main themes in Shakespeare’s Othello, was how friendships and marriages can be ruined all because of one person’s jealousy, which can ring true in real life.
Pornography and feminism have had quite an odd relationship. Feminist writers such as Gloria Steinem have denounced the sex industry while it has continued to expand exponentially. Due to technological advances such as the internet and cell phones, pornography is easier to access then ever before. Some publications even estimate that gross annual sales for pornographic videos would exceed four billion dollars (Rich 2011: 1). With this much money being invested into an industry that operates in a capitalistic society, it would be ignorant to hope that it would cease to exist. The truth is that pornography is not going anywhere. The issue that feminists from many different strains are debating is if porn is detrimental to women. And if so, how truly immoral is it? In this paper there will be an examination of how the two different radical-feminist theories have dealt with pornography while also discussing why the issue of pornography can be seen as such a confusing topic for feminists as a whole.
A common trend in the entertainment industry today is the objectification of women in society. Sexualizing women are seen in media such as; movies, advertisement, television show and music video, where their main focus is providing the audience with an image of women as sexual objects rather than a human. This is detrimental to society since the media is producing social stereotypes for both genders, which can further result in corrupted social habits. Objectification in media are more focused on females than male, these false images of women leave individuals with the wrong idea of the opposite sex. As media continuously use sexual contents regarding women, the audience starts underestimating women. Specifically movies, it allows media to shape the culture’s idea of romance, sex and what seems
...e a parallel correlation from offline jealousy behaviors. Groothof, Dijkstra, and Barelds (2009) suggest that “as for offline acts of infidelity, men compared to women are more upset by a mates sexual infidelity over the Internet, whereas women, more than men, are more upset by a mate’s emotional infidelity over the Internet” (p.1126). Research also suggests that besides socio-cultural and evolutionary jealousy based on gender differentiation; further research should focus on individual’s cognitive social perspective pertaining to jealousy emotion. Harris (2002) suggest that “individuals clearly vary in their susceptibility to feelings of jealousy…the degree of jealousy will be determined by the appraisals people make regarding the seriousness of a threat” (p.11). With that said, further research on sexual jealousy triggers should be further investigated.