Playboy isn’t so bad

This blog got me thinking about Playboy.  This is usually a different kind of thinking, but this time it’s sticking up for the adult men’s magazine.  People always complain about how beautiful women are portrayed in today’s society.  How Playboy only uses gorgeous women and sets the tone for how we view ourselves and lives.  Well I for one believe that this is crap.  It doesn’t put me down, but it raises me up.  I don’t look at the women and think that I can’t get them.  It makes me want to try harder and be more successful.  Plus, what Playboy magazine reader wants to see unattractive women.  I understand in what this blogger is talking when they are saying that Playboy should show the average Joe being successful and getting these women, but come one.  Is your self-confidence and morale that low?  Do you look at Playboy and cry while complaining about how ugly or broke you are?  That’s ridiculous because you can do anything and be anything that you want to be.  And yes, you can even be with the person you want to be with, no matter how attractive they are.  I know I did and she is great.  Until that happens to this fellow blogger, I think they should stop looking at the Playboy pictures and stick to “just reading the articles!”

Kellogg’s Cornflakes, They’re Grrrrrrrrrrr …wait Masturbation?

            Whenever I think of Kellogg’s, cereal comes to mind.  That was until the most recent lecture in which I came to know Kellogg’s as Dr. John Harvey Kellogg.  Dr. John was an accomplished surgeon who believed that bowel movement was the most important thing to keep healthy for the human body.  In fact, he basically believes that you could become “God-like” if you keep your bowels extremely healthy.  Dr. Kellogg had some strict rules to follow in order to achieve this…no sex or masturbation.

           

What?  No sex? No masturbation?  How could you live without them your whole life?  Well, Dr. Kellogg believed that you could no get diseases if you refrained from having sex or masturbating.  He also preached that if you masturbated you will become stupid and even blind.  Kellogg said that enjoyment got in the way of your bowel movements and that since sex is enjoying, it would cause you to damage your bowels.  Also, when women get distracted, its from thinking of sexual things and leads them to wanting sex.  Both men and women need to be deterred from the act of sex and Dr. Kellogg had the perfect plan to help.  He said "A remedy [for masturbation] which is almost always successful in small boys is circumcision…The operation should be performed by a surgeon without administering an anesthetic, as the brief pain attending the operation will have a salutary effect upon the mind…In females, the author has found the application of pure carbolic acid to the clitoris an excellent means of allaying the abnormal excitement. “Sounds like a good plan that only takes scissors and acid, not to bad right?  Dr. Kellogg kept on saying that this isn’t all from his religious views but purely scientific.  Since he was such an extraordinary surgeon, you would think he would have realized that pouring acid onto a woman’s clitoris isn’t exactly the best thing to do.  Both the acid and the snips would result in less of an interest in pleasuring yourself and thus help you to achieve perfect bowel health.

Well since Dr. Kellogg isn’t around anymore, I guess we can’t laugh at his stupid ideas.  The only successful idea that came out of this sexually deprived individual was the circumcising of our male society.  When have you ever heard of anybody, nowadays, going on their honeymoon and not having sex?  Let alone, not having sex but doing work.  This guy, to me, is a complete nut.  It has been proven many times that masturbating is healthy for you.  More and more people now say that in fact masturbation isn’t even sinful and is encouraged to maintain health. I guess we can’t blame Dr. Kellogg for not knowing any better since today’s technology far exceeds what they had back in the late 1800’s early 1900’s.  However, to me, this guy just needed to have sex and maybe he would have felt a little differently. 

The most read blog, on my behalf, is Amy Richardson’s.  I was actually reading some of the entries even before a comment to mine came from Amy.  I feel her entries are well written, interesting.  Some of the entries have even got me to re-think some of my own thoughts both for and against them.  All in all, it’s an excellent blog with great entries to read.

Another good blog is Caroline’s COM497 Blog.  The entries in this blog are both interesting and thorough.  I find the ideas portrayed here are a bit different then mine, thus causing me to be even more interested for alternative views.

A third blog that I enjoy is Ellie’s Thoughts.   These entries are well thought out and are well written.  The blogger’s ideas are very much interpreted in an easy manner and are easy to follow.  Just a good writer who knows how to get the point across.     

Excuse or Permission?

This week’s lecture once again talked about the consequences of porn.  One of the people mentioned was Diane Russell.  She is well known for her studies of violence towards women in the United States and has received many awards for it.  She has been praised and criticized for many of her thoughts including her idea that many men are willing to rape women.

           

            After listening to this lecture, specifically about Dr. Russell and her theories, I was a little bit upset.  Dr. Russell’s belief that men are willing to rape women is very alarming and would shock anybody, if the theory had been backed up with evidence.  I understand that this may be tough to provide facts about, but how can somebody make such an outlandish statement?  This statement would be tied into half of the United States population and affect all of its citizens.  She believes that the more porn that is viewed, the more rapes will occur.  This is somewhat backed up by the numbers in New York City.  However, with the statistics of rape in NYC declining, the theory turns into more of a myth.  One of her reasons is derived from a Goodchild and Zellman study.  There study involved asking high school males questions about forcible sex with women.  The results showed that the senior high school males said it’s ok to force a woman to have sex with them if the woman gets the guy excited.  They also said its ok if the women decide to change her mind, at the last moment, before they were going to have sex.  These results also upset me in that when you’re in high school, you sometimes answer questions in a less mature manner just to sound tough or funny.  This is not a funny manner by any means, but I’m just saying that these results could be misleading. 

           

Getting back to Dr. Russell, she also believes that all men don’t rape women because they are afraid of getting caught and in trouble.  Now, she is saying that it’s genetically put into our brain and we don’t do it because of possible punishment?  Come on now, so all men are rapists at heart?  This is a little bit out of control.  She has said that violent porn makes men violent and less sensitive towards women.  At least this is a statement that can be studied and surveyed.  However, this hasn’t been proven at all.  The porn industry hasn’t even been studied all that long, so many theories are just that, theories.  Dr. Russell doesn’t have anything in concrete, only ideas.  I just feel offended in her saying that since I’m a male, that I most likely have these same thoughts and ideas in my mind.  Well I can definitely say that I never have nor will I.  Also, I will never accept the fact or believe that it’s ok for some reason to forcibly make a woman have sex with me.

           

             All in all, Dr. Russell has made some ideas come about, that have got many people thinking.  Should she be correct, well then we have a large scaled problem in our society today.  However, I believe that it has been taken a little too far and widespread with the accusing of most men in our society.

The Scumbag, Pervert Reedy Family

Child porn has been a much talked about subject in our lectures.  Hopefully, every other person who has viewed the lectures agrees with me in saying that this is the worst crime out there today.  Not just making and filming it, but viewing this as well.  How could anybody associated with this sick industry feel anything but shame for what they have done just to make money.  This could screw up a child for the rest of his life, just for some scumbag to make money or some other pervert to view.  They should all be in jail for their actions and brought to justice.

           

A child porn case that we learned about was the case of Thomas and Janice Reedy.  They started an adult verification service called Landslide Productions, which would allow people to gain access to porn.  They claimed that all they did was verify if a person was an adult.  Once a client was proven to be an adult, they had access to the viewing of porn websites throughout the world.   When the United States Postal Service started to investigate, they came across sites of child pornography.  The couple immediately said that they don’t produce the child porn and are just the middleman who only verifies if the person is an adult or not.  This was proven to be a lie as the inspectors found a banner on the Reedy’s website advertising child porn.  Thomas Reedy even went as far as saying that none of the viewable child porn was from the U.S. so he shouldn’t be held accountable since he isn’t a police officer for the world.  Thomas always said he shouldn’t be in any trouble since he didn’t shoot or produce the film, that he only gave access to it.  Luckily, the trial came and nobody bought this guy’s bull crap of a story. 

Thomas was convicted on 89 counts of sexual exploitation and was given 15yrs for every image of child porn found with his company.  It was later reduced to 15 years for each website, totally 80 years of imprisonment without parole.  His wife, Janice, received 10 years without parole for doing the bookkeeping for this sick company.

           

This investigation was brought about by a large scale police operation called Operation ORE and Operation Avalanche.  When they investigated deeper into Reedy’s company, they found a list of clients who used his services for this sick crime.  There were about 350,000 paying customers who had access to the child porn sites.  Luckily, ORE has the names of these individuals and can use it to help with future investigations.

           

This is a worldwide crime that needs to be stopped.  Apparently, there are a lot of sick people out there who enjoy this crime and aren’t even deterred by hearing of the strict prison terms given out.  For the hundreds of thousands of images of child porn, there are hundreds of thousands of children being abused.  That number alone makes me very upset and alarmed.  Any form of association with this crime, should be punishable for aiding and abiding in something that can’t even be considered human.  All should be charged to the fullest and be punished the harshest.  

Egg Donors Making Serious Cash

            I was reading the USA Today newspaper when I came across this article on egg donors.  It caught my attention and I figured this was worthy of a spring break blog.  We’ve spent most of our class lectures on topics involving how the porn industry operates, but haven’t really talked about reproduction or the ways in which sex can casue it. Everything has been oriented around how they make money, the technology evolving in the industry and the treatment of the women in porn.  That’s why I found this article to be intriguing, in that it involves women in our generation that are in college and in need of money.

            This article goes on to explain how there are advertisements going around the Berkeley, California region for egg donors.  These are aimed at college women who are smart and good looking.  The ads go as far as saying they want women that are “attractive, under the age of 29″ and have SAT scores above 1,300. (I’m sure this number has changed since the SAT exam is now out of a possible 2400pts)  Since women’s eggs are the healthiest from 18 to 30, this is why they have targeted that range.  When the donors are found, they start by taking shots to boost egg production.  Then 10 to 15 eggs are extracted and combined with sperm.  They are then placed inside the would-be mother’s womb to give birth.  All of this might seem unethical and just plain wrong but whenever the old might dollar comes into play, the story changes.

            The donors of eggs aren’t what they sound like.  Donors usually are associated with being volunteers and not getting paid.  However, in these recent California ads, women can receive anywhere from $5000 to $10,000.  After hearing that, I’d donate my eggs if I was a woman.  That’s some serious money that could sway somebody’s mind no matter what they believe in.  The college students targeted mostly do have student loans and see this as an opportunity to pay them off or at least get a head start on them.  Several Berkeley College students have done this and want to continue to make more money just pay off their large school debts. It’s estimated that 10,000 babies a year are born this way and about $38 million on the egg donors. 

            My question for them is what do they believe to be the right thing to do?  In a way, they are selling their children for money and don’t really know what is going to happen to them.  Is this ethical?   

Sex Sells Itself, Right?

I always thought that porn could just sell itself.  I mean, when ever I see some attractive naked woman, I’m going to look and be interested.  Sex sells, right?  With that said, you wouldn’t think there is a need to advertise pornography.  Well where there are ways to make money and sell, there are unique ways to advertise your porn product.  Sex does sell, but you can always sell more sex and make more money. 
 

            The porn industry has many big names but none bigger than perhaps Vivid.  It’s become a name to remember in the industry and is so powerful, that when ever you say the word in any context, it comes to mind.  It has a long reputation of producing quality films with such stars as Jenna Jameson and Briana Banks.  These two are some of the largest names in the porn industry.  Just by hearing their names, you think of a quality video that can be entertaining.  So what does this have to do with selling?  Well actually a lot!  When ever you put such a big name on a product, it automatically draws interest and attention. Advertising is a large part in the porn industry.  Having a popular name associated with quality, saves time and money in the fast pace industry.  Other companies riding out their own  company name include Playboy and its Playboy stores, Vivid and it’s Vivid condoms, and Hustler and its Hustler line of Lingerie.  When ever you hear these names, you tend to trust them easier and go with their product instead of another no name brand. 
 

            These companies still do go with other ways of getting your interest sparked.  They do it through your own email.  They send out spam to your email accounts in an attempt to get you to click and look at a brief example of what they want to offer.  The increasing amount of blogs also makes it easier to advertise.  Both of these techniques are cost efficient and can be sent out to many more people then through the regular mail.  However, the big time porn companies are against these methods.  They feel that since its, easier for a young child to view resulting in more legal action against them.  This also kind of serves as another “black eye” for the industry.  Another way to advertise is through the use of google. They know the success of this search engine and all strive to be apart of it.  It’s been proven that the higher up you are on a search, the more visitors your get to your site.  This all equals more money for the company.
 

Companies also offer “unique” products online.  Vivid has it’s own store to sell every kind of porn/sex products imaginable, that are even sometimes shown in their films.  They are now selling soiled underpants of women who have worked out.  Not exactly my cup of tea, but they do sell from Japan.  There are educational sites like how-to-do-girls.com which helps teach math.  It would spark an interest for any male that needs a little bit of help and motivation to study.  One of the most popular sites is naked news.  It features women slowly stripping while you get your daily dose of world news.  This is just a bit different from the CBS Evening News, huh?  Well as you can tell, there are endless amounts of ways to sell and make money in the porn industry.  I just can’t wait for what is to come in the future!!!    

Viewing Porn Causes You To Act It Out

When viewing this week’s lecture on have the viewing of pornographic material can be attributed to increased levels of crime, violence to women, addiction and have effects on relationships, I decided to do some investigating.  It wasn’t long till I came across this website some pretty sound facts and numbers. 
 

            The site gives facts about pornography’s relationship to rape, sexual violence, and child molestation.  The site says that “In a study of convicted child molesters, 77 percent of those who molested boys and 87 percent of those who molested girls admitted to the habitual use of pornography in the commission of their crimes.”  It also had a stat that 53% of the child molesters incited, “deliberately used the stimuli of pornography as they prepared to offend.”  These are pretty alarming statistics and can have a negative impact on the porn industry.  The lecture gave numbers about sexual content on the television including 64% of tv has sexual content, 1 in 7 programs depict actual intercourse, and there are about 4.4 scenes an hour involving sex.  Also, that 45% of 14 to 17 year olds have seen porn on the internet.  With this being so abundant in our society the next bit of information from protectkids.com, is even scarier. “Exposure to Pornography Frequently Results in Sexual Illnesses, Unplanned Pregnancies, and Sexual Addiction” and also “May Incite Children to Act Out Sexually against Other Children” along with how “Pornography Interferes with a Child’s Development and Identity.”  If all of this occurs with our children, why do we have so much readily available to view?  This is definitely a major problem in our society for our children.  Something needs to be done and at least more strictly regulated by our government.
 

            This document is all about violence towards women depicted in pornography.  According to Marie Fortune “pornography is about violence, degradation and abuse in a sexual content…”  The document talks about the increase of strip clubs, availability of sexually films, phone sex, websites, cable programming and that the primary purchasers are between the ages of 12 to 17.  It talks about how porn isn’t necessarily the main cause of sexual violence but it lowers inhibition.  “88% of convicted rapists said they were regular users or pornography, with the majority admitting direct imitation of pornographic scenes in the commission of their sexual crimes.”
 

            With all of these numbers from two different sites, shouldn’t we look at ways to educate our society on porn?  We should, at the very least, educate on how to use and view porn safely and what to make of it.  An educational course, say like um… Cyberporn & Society, could go along way in helping our youth in the future.     

Growing Pains, without Tracey Gold

When ready blogs today, to me, this one was rather interesting on how growing up these days is very different. It’s even different from my generation to my younger brother’s, in respect to growing up and facing different things earlier. 

The first time I even saw a naked picture was when I was in 5^th grade and our class typed in the white house’s website with a “.com” at the end, instead of “.gov” , and a porn site used to come up.  However, younger generations have had computers since day one in their schools and have surely come up with the same problems or at least surfed around more for porn.  I’m not saying that porn is to blame for this, but with it being so abundant, it’s definitely contributing to the younger generations growing up with it at a younger age.  With that in mind, children are having sex at a younger age and it’s apparent more in society.  The way kids talk about sex, could be a direct correlation to what they are viewing when online.  When I was growing up, I had never seen graphic sex, let along some of the sites they have today depicting the humility of a woman.  The internet, with the advanced technologies brought about from the porn industry, has affected the children of today, but like what Ellie’s thought, pop culture has a greater impact on them.  Children seem to be more influential then ever before.  They see what women are portrayed as in rap videos, and think that’s how it should be done.  I feel that all parents could help by talking to their children about sex.  I work in law enforcement, and around Buffalo, there seem to be more juveniles arrested then ever before.  Each one thinks they are big and bad and are just acting like what they see everyday from guys like Fifty Cent.  With this a growing problem when they are at such a young age, only time will tell what’s to come of it when they are grown adults.  

Scariest trade of them all…The Sex Slave Trade

After watching the Frontline piece on “Sex slaves” many things came to mind, most were upsetting. How could this actually be around in today’s society?  How could there be such high numbers without others noticing?  What sick people actually make money off of this and actually are ok with what they are doing?

            All of this comes to my mind after viewing it.  The slavery starts off, in many cases, with somebody that knows a potential victim.  Often it is a person that knows of a woman who is down on her luck.  They tend to be in a situation where they need money and lack education to get job.  So once they see a job where they can make money, they go after it since their options are limited.  In the piece, a lady named Olga from Odessa, Ukraine, lures these women into a potential job in Turkey.  With the fall of the Soviet Union, many of its women are in need of a job since they are desperately poor.  This is a great spot for Olga to find slaves.  She is in connection with these sex traffickers and pimps in Turkey.  She tells the ladies that they’re going to meet some men who will be their new bosses in Turkey.  She is very friendly and appears to be helpful to each woman.  With the lack of strict custom laws in Turkey, these women can easily sneak in the country.  In fact, they often help Olga sneak them in by lying to the customs officials, in belief that they will obtain a good job with money.  When they are in Turkey, Olga talks to some men, is shown taking money, and tells the women to go with these unknown men. Then they are taken into sex slavery and forced to have sex for the benefit and profit of their owners.

Often, these women think they are going into a stripping business and aren’t all against the situation.  However, apparently 70% know what to expect out of this whole ordeal and know its prostitution.  That number just turns my stomach.  What women would actually want to go into prostitution to make money?  There have been over 100,000 women from Ukraine that went into the sex slavery since the fall of the Soviet Union.  It’s estimated there are 80,000 in Germany and even 25,000 in the U.S.  These women are often beaten daily and pleasure about 10 men everyday.  They try to obtain their freedom by working for their pimps/owners and paying them off.  However, many times the pimps just sell them to another pimp when they make their money back for the payment of the woman.  You might be thinking, well why don’t the police get involved?  They do, but since the women secretly entered the country, they often just deport the illegal immigrants back and hardily ever go after their pimps/owners.

So what can be done?  All in all, until every country makes aware of this problem and determines it to be harmful and wrong, there isn’t much expect watch yourself and know what you’re getting into.  I feel the government has to be more involved to protect everybody and carry out stronger laws regarding prostitution and sex slavery.