Sex in the Media essay
This is an essay for World History sophomore year. It explains why pornography is bad and why it should be avoided. I'm directing people to this essay so I don't have to explain it myself. I think pornography is definitely a negative thing, but as for sex in the media.... eh. I don't know. My essay speaks out against sex in the media, so make up your own mind. It's really long so you might just want to skip to the part about porn. Have fun. lol.
In the U.S. teenage pregnancies rates are rising and teens are having sex earlier without protection. A big contribution to this problem is engrained deeply in our culture. Today, sex in the media is damaging the values, health, and relationships of many men, women, and adolescents across the country. The most explicit form of this sex in the media, pornography, degrades women, softens men’s attitudes toward crimes like rape, and causes problems in their relationships. However, porn is not the only problem. On television adolescents are supplied with references and images of teenagers their age having sex with little or no mention of protection. Teenagers internalize this information and acts similarly.
At first glance pornography does not seem to be harmful. Some men even boast of its positive effects. However, porn is by no means “good for you”. Professor of communications Jennings Bryant and professor of psychology Dolf Zillmann have both done numerous research on the subject and they state, “No rigorous research demonstrations can be reported and beneficial effects of pornography consumption remain a matter of contention and conjecture.” (Paul, 73) In fact pornography can be quite harmful. In 1994 a report was done that showed that 70% of studies on porn found negative effects. (Paul, 80) Pornography teaches men to think of women as sexual objects and portrays them in an offensive and degrading fashion. Many Americans agree with this statement. According to a poll done in 2004 half of Americans think porn is demeaning to women. 51% of people think that pornography increases men’s expectations of how women should look and 48% think it increases their expectations of how women should behave. (Paul, 92) It’s no secret how badly porn portrays women. After watching large amounts of porn this view tends to increase. An experiment conducted by Zillmann and Bryant found that after people were exposed to a large amount of pornography they were much less likely to want daughters than those who had not. (Paul, 80) Porn is not only offensive to women, but it actually changes the way men think about them. Zillmann and Bryant found that after men viewed a heavy amount of porn they were much more likely to support a shorter sentence for a rapist than those who had not. They were also much less likely to support women’s rights and were three times less likely to be for the expansion of women’s rights. (Paul, 89) In a 2002 study at Texas Christian University they divided the people into three groups in which they were showed high, average, and low amounts of porn. The more pornography they watched the more they described women sexually and stereotypically. They were also more likely to approve of traditional female jobs and value women subordinate to men. (Paul, 92)
Pornography becomes harmful to men as well. As men who watch porn grow older they start to seek more and more hardcore porn. In one study men shown porn 90 minutes a day, five days a week showed less arousal and interest as time went on. (Paul, 83) Eventually, real sex does not compare to the hardcore images they are watching. They become dissatisfied and develop problems with their sex life. In 2004 a poll by Elle-MSNBC.com found that 1 in 10 men were bored with their sex routine, 17% said porn made sex less arousing, and 1 in 10 said porn made them more critical of their partner’s body. (Paul, 91) This reminds me of a quote by William Shakespeare; “Beauty is all very well at first sight; but whoever looks at it when it has been in the house three days?” That quote is very true. These men are used to their wives beauty and do not value it as much. To them the women in porn are new and exciting. This quote also explains why men seek more and more hardcore porn. They become used to what they once used to think was “beautiful” and need a new image. You can see how women feel like they’re competing with the women in porn and sadly they’ll never win. Some of the people interviewed for the book Pornified actually began to have trouble differentiating between fantasy and reality. One man’s addiction to porn led him to seek child porn. He began propositioning fifteen-year-olds. He left his own children alone, but molested their babysitters. (Paul, 238) Another porn addict’s family was horrified to find pictures of the man in his stepdaughter’s underwear on the family computer. (Paul, 237)
Sex in the media doesn’t have to be as explicit as porn to have negative effects. Many teens are influenced by sex on TV, even at prime time. Kunkel et al. studied scenes involving sexual behavior and found that one in ten involved a teen. (Gunter, 86) Teens who watch TV containing sexual content are more likely to think such behavior is normal and lose their virginity at a younger age. One study that shows this found that college students that watched lots of soap operas estimated higher percentages of people who are divorced or have illegitimate children than light viewers. This study also showed that pregnant teens were twice as likely to think relationships shown on TV are realistic than non pregnant teens. (Gunter, 85) Another study showed that 35% of boys that viewed a heavy amount of TV were not virgins while only 12% of boys that viewed a moderate amount of TV were not virgins. (Gunter, 89) This was also shown in a study of girls aged fifteen and sixteen, found that most of them who were sexually active listed shows with sexual content as their favorites. These links were strongest when the girls had low self-esteem, watched TV apart from their parents, and had parents with a permissive attitude about sex. The conclusion of this study was that TV shows can encourage children to pay less attention to the risks of sex when they have no counterexamples. (Gunter, 97) It was also found that teens that watch a heavy amount of television with sexual content were more likely not to be virgins than those who viewed little. (Gunter, 97) These ideas were reflected in yet another study where nonvirgins in all the different groups except for black males were more likely to choose programs with sexual content. It may seem that adolescents would choose sexual programming as a result of not being a virgin, but another experiment showed that after teenagers lost their virginity they were no more likely to seek programs with sexual content. (Gunter, 98) It was also discovered that MTV and soap operas were linked to more sexually permissive attitudes (Gunter, 99) and teens who liked MTV tended to be more sexually experienced. (Gunter, 104) MTV has a bad reputation for its graphic music videos. After Janet Jackson’s “wardrobe malfunction” MTV agreed to show its sexually graphic videos only at night. Unfortunately, this agreement lasted less than a month. (Reavill, 66) MTV is just one example of the media’s obsession with sex. Howard Stern for example was kicked off of public radio for his explicit description of anal sex. (Reavill, 12) Worse than this offensive broadcast are the porn industries’ attempts to make money off unsuspecting people. Many porn websites use the commonly misspelled addresses of popular sites. People who misspell a website like goravegirl.com as ravegirl.com find themselves smack in the middle of a porn website with the sexually explicit images staring them in face. The example above is a popular site for the preteen and teenage girls. Sadly, trapping children into a porn website is common on the internet. These industries make money off of how many people view the pages of their site. To them it doesn’t matter who sees the porn, they are only a number that adds to their cash. (Reavill, 75)
Not only is sex in the media encouraging teenagers to be sexually active, it is providing them with very little information about safe sex. In 1988 Lowry and Towels studied sexual incidents on prime time TV. Of these 722 incidents only 14 mentioned protection from pregnancy, 18 mentioned disease prevention, and 13 discussed AIDS. (Gunter, 91) In a similar study Kunkel et al. found that only 9% of sex scenes mentioned risks or consequences of sex. (Gunter, 92) Finally, in 1987 the Planned Parenthood Federation of America found that less than a tenth of 1% of sexual incidents mentioned sexual diseases, sex education, or abortion. (Gunter, 91) The information or lack of, the media supplies encourages teenagers to have sex and rarely tells them of the risks involved. As a result teens end up having unsafe sex more often. An example of this is a study done that showed that researched people and who they thought of who were responsible sexually. People who identified people from the media or their peers as good role models were more likely to be more sexually permissive, have higher rates of intercourse, have more partners, and be less likely to uses contraceptives. (Gunter, 88)
The media provides a twisted view of sex and life. Sex in the media can affect people’s values as well as their behavior. The images in the media can make men more critical of women’s bodies and women more critical of their own bodies. A study done by Tan in 1979 found that after girls ages 16-18 viewed a heavy dose of commercials emphasizing female beauty they were more likely to believe beauty is an important attribute than the control group. After viewing commercials emphasizing sexual qualities of women they were more likely to rank sex appeal as important characteristic to be liked by men. (Gunter, 84) Shockingly, a study of male college students found that after viewing just one episode of Charlie’s Angels they were harsher in their evaluation of the beauty of potential dates. (Gunter, 84) Another experiment with male college students discovered that they found their girlfriends less sexually attractive after viewing centerfolds from Playboy and Penthouse. (Gunter, 84) Besides changing a person’s view of beauty sex in the media can influence other values. A study showed that after people viewed programming with pre, extra, and nonmarital sex they rated these actions as less bad than people who viewed nonsexual programming. The effects of the sexual programming were weaker when the person had a family with strong values and good communication and were active and selective viewers. (Gunter, 100)
Obviously, the sex in the media has become a problem for our country. Erasmus once said “Prevention is better than cure.” The best solution would to just remove sex in the media. That would easily rid our country of the detrimental effects it has on people. Unfortunately, sex has been deeply engrained into our culture and it is hard to remove or separate. However, there are still actions that can be taken to prevent its detrimental effects. I wish I could say that the solution is just to rid the media of all sex including porn, but that is unrealistic. Pornography for one is a huge market and the industries would not go down without a fight. The truth is people use porn. Even if we were able to successfully remove it people would still use it in secret. Also the industries would have a point. I agree with Voltaire when he said,
“I do not agree with what you have to say, but I'll defend to the death your right to say it”
They do have the right to free speech and any law that ignores that right could never be passed. These are the problems we run into from taking away just porn. We could let people have their pornography and just take away all sex in the media that is public, but then we run into similar problems. As is often said, sex sells. There’s a huge demand for shows with sexual content. Removing all of it would be too restrictive. It would change the plots of shows dramatically. As William Shakespeare once said it would become “Art made tongue-tied by authority.”
Also, we would run into the problem of free speech. These are the complications of removing sex in the media completely. It’s a good idea in theory, but would never work. However, there are other solutions to this problem. As Horace once said, “Divide each difficulty into as many parts as is feasible and necessary to resolve it.” Sex in the media is a major difficulty and the best way to solve this problem is to look at each part of it.
One of these parts is the problem of unsuspecting children and adults finding themselves trapped into a porn website from an accidental misspelling. A solution to this problem could be to require that any pornographic website has a web address that ends in .xxx, for example www.porn.xxx. This would eliminate the problem of misspelling a popular website because it’s very unlikely someone would accidentally hit .xxx instead of .com or .org. This would also make porn websites much easier to block and it would prevent the use of pornography in the home.
One of the biggest problems sex in the media creates is that it encourages teenagers to have unsafe sex. A way to help prevent this would be to require any television program that shows or alludes to a sex scene to mention protection or the risks involved. This could be as simple as showing a condom in a clear view or have one of the characters voice a concern about pregnancy. There are many different ways the requirement could be fulfilled. Such a requirement would be beneficial to teens because it would remind them of the real dangers involved. This sort of message would often be repeated and teenagers would be more aware and would be more likely to use protection.
Another problem sex in the media causes is that it influences the teenagers’ values and encourages them to have sex. However, according to the studies mentioned previously, the link between the media and teenagers’ values and decisions is strongest when there are no counterexamples present. A good way to solve this problem would be create more counterexamples. A quote by Confucius explains this well:
By three methods we may learn wisdom: First, by reflection, which is noblest; Second, by imitation, which is easiest; and third by experience, which is the bitterest.
-Confucius
Currently teenagers are learning their “wisdom” by imitation, the easiest method. They’re copying what they learn about sex from media. Unfortunately, this leads to them learning true wisdom in the bitterest way, by experience. Teenagers eventually learn that unsafe sex is dangerous after realizing they’re pregnant or after being diagnosed with a sexually transmitted disease. The best and noblest way to learn wisdom is by reflection. If we provide teenagers with counterexamples to the media’s encouragements of unsafe sex then they can think about the risks and learn wisdom by their own reflection. One way this could be accomplished is by having Public Service Announcements that encourage parents to talk to their kids about sex and the effects that the media can have on them. If parents talked to their kids more about sex then teenagers wouldn’t be as likely to seek guidance from the media. Teens can learn the effects of media in health class. This way teenagers could be more aware of the influence the media has over their lives and wouldn’t assume that sex in the media is accurately portrayed. Finally, doctors, teachers, and religious leaders should be informed of how media can affect youths so they can educate others. Luckily, some action is already taking place to solve the problem of sex in the media. The Bush administration is pushing to make companies involved in films, TV shows, and soft-core cable porn tone down the sexual content. A proposal is going through Congress to require that films must certify that the people who perform actual or simulated sex acts are 18 or older. (Woellert, An All-Out Assault…)
When we were first assigned this project the paper told us that during our research we should judge the material and not automatically think that because they are the writer they must know everything. This is my evaluation of the books I read. The book, Smut, was a huge disappointment. The author obviously was very upset about how sexualized our culture had become. He used to work in the porn industry and was shocked to see our similar our media had become to the industry. Basically, the book consisted of him ranting and raving about how awful it was. On one hand, he did give a lot of good examples about sex in the media. He informed me of events I had been unaware of, such as how the porn industry mouse trapped people unto its websites. What I found the most frustrating on this book was that he gave very few facts. He gave numerous examples of how the media had gone too far, but only twice in the book did he ever mention why that was so bad. These two facts were that a poll found that 60% of parents feel uncomfortable about the amount of sex in the media (Reavill, 57) and that the American Academy of Pediatrics said that kids who watch sexually explicit material tend to have sex earlier. (Reavill, 159-160) As you can see by my citation these two facts were not even close together in the book. At some points I think Reavill’s opinion dominated the book like when he started ranting about the speaking class (actors, reporters, people on TV) and saying that it is their fault that we are subjected to this material. In some aspects I think he did have a point. He did mention that musicians put up a big fight to not have their lyrics labeled as explicit. I do agree with him in that respect because the musicians should have been more cooperative. In general the book would have been much better written if he had given more facts to support his stance against sex in the media and ranted less.
Although I didn’t like the way Smut was written I did enjoy Pornified. That book was wonderfully written. The book was very easy to read. Pamela Paul not only included plenty of facts to back up her statements, but she also included the stories of many of the people she interviewed. At the beginning of the book she mentioned that many people had stories similar to these people and as the book went on it was shocking to realize how much pornography affected these people. Not only did the book provide numerous facts and keep my interest it also impressed me how much research she did on the topic. In the book Pamela provided many studies and polls on pornography and some of her own she had conducted. I greatly admire Pamela for the work she put into that book and how well it was written.
Another book I read was Media Sex: What are the issues?. This book was helpful for my project because it was loaded with information. I found myself highlighting most of the book. Although, this book gushed information it would have been better if the author talked more instead of listing study after study. Reading all those studies became tedious after a while unlike Pamela’s book which varied in content.
I did not find anything in the two history books I read that was relevant to the subject although they were both interesting to read about. One was called Sex with Kings and it was about kings and their mistresses. This was also very well written. Part of this book had a big effect on me. At one point the author, Eleanor Herman, talks about the mistresses the king chose. You’d think that a king who could choose any lady in the land would choose someone beautiful. Surprisingly, beauty wasn’t the most important attribute to being a king’s mistress. Some of the mistresses the king chose for beauty didn’t last very long at all because they turned out to be dimwitted or have some other personality flaw. Many of the longest lasting mistresses weren’t beautiful. Madame de Pompadour for example lost her looks and gave up fighting her frigidity after five years of being the king’s mistress. Despite this she was still the king’s favorite. Madame de Pompadour supported the king, kept him entertained, and never complained. I thought this was a valuable lesson. We are always told it’s the beauty on the inside that matters, but it was very reassuring to see how this proved true in history. The only way this book could have been improved would be if there were notes in the back to help you keep track of who was who. There were many people involved in this book and I often mixed them up especially the kings who had recurring names like Louis, Napoleon, and George. Other than that I thoroughly enjoyed this book. It even made me laugh out loud at times.
The last book I read was Joan of Arc In Her Own Words. This book consisted solely of the writings and words of Joan of Arc. It was a short book and quite interesting. As I read the book I could tell what a determined person she was and how strongly she believed in the angels she saw. The only way this book could be improved would be if some background information was provided about Joan of Arc in the beginning. It was confusing at times because I didn’t know what was going on or who she was talking to. Other than that it was a good book.
It should be obvious that sex in the media is a growing problem that needs to be stopped. The media is giving the message that unsafe sex is ok and teens are listening. It is influencing our beliefs and changing the way we think about the world. Pornography is destroying relationships, degrading women, and causing men to blur the lines between fantasy and reality. We have to take action or men, women, and children will continue to experience the detrimental effects of sex in the media. Horace was wise when he said, “He who has begun has half done. Dare to be wise; begin.”
Works Cited
Gunter, Barrie. Media Sex: What Are the Issues?. New Jersey: Lawrence Erlbaum
Associates Publishers, 2002
Herman, Eleanor. Sex With Kings. New York: HarperCollins, 2004
Joan of Arc in Her Own Words. New York: BOOKS & Co., 1996
Paul, Pamela. Pornified. New York: Henry Holt and Company, 2005
Reavill, Gil. Smut. New York: Penguin Group, 2005
Woellert, Lorraine. “An All-Out Assault On Sexual Content.” Business Week. 21
November 2005:118 [Online] EBSCO Publishing, 7 May 2006
In the U.S. teenage pregnancies rates are rising and teens are having sex earlier without protection. A big contribution to this problem is engrained deeply in our culture. Today, sex in the media is damaging the values, health, and relationships of many men, women, and adolescents across the country. The most explicit form of this sex in the media, pornography, degrades women, softens men’s attitudes toward crimes like rape, and causes problems in their relationships. However, porn is not the only problem. On television adolescents are supplied with references and images of teenagers their age having sex with little or no mention of protection. Teenagers internalize this information and acts similarly.
At first glance pornography does not seem to be harmful. Some men even boast of its positive effects. However, porn is by no means “good for you”. Professor of communications Jennings Bryant and professor of psychology Dolf Zillmann have both done numerous research on the subject and they state, “No rigorous research demonstrations can be reported and beneficial effects of pornography consumption remain a matter of contention and conjecture.” (Paul, 73) In fact pornography can be quite harmful. In 1994 a report was done that showed that 70% of studies on porn found negative effects. (Paul, 80) Pornography teaches men to think of women as sexual objects and portrays them in an offensive and degrading fashion. Many Americans agree with this statement. According to a poll done in 2004 half of Americans think porn is demeaning to women. 51% of people think that pornography increases men’s expectations of how women should look and 48% think it increases their expectations of how women should behave. (Paul, 92) It’s no secret how badly porn portrays women. After watching large amounts of porn this view tends to increase. An experiment conducted by Zillmann and Bryant found that after people were exposed to a large amount of pornography they were much less likely to want daughters than those who had not. (Paul, 80) Porn is not only offensive to women, but it actually changes the way men think about them. Zillmann and Bryant found that after men viewed a heavy amount of porn they were much more likely to support a shorter sentence for a rapist than those who had not. They were also much less likely to support women’s rights and were three times less likely to be for the expansion of women’s rights. (Paul, 89) In a 2002 study at Texas Christian University they divided the people into three groups in which they were showed high, average, and low amounts of porn. The more pornography they watched the more they described women sexually and stereotypically. They were also more likely to approve of traditional female jobs and value women subordinate to men. (Paul, 92)
Pornography becomes harmful to men as well. As men who watch porn grow older they start to seek more and more hardcore porn. In one study men shown porn 90 minutes a day, five days a week showed less arousal and interest as time went on. (Paul, 83) Eventually, real sex does not compare to the hardcore images they are watching. They become dissatisfied and develop problems with their sex life. In 2004 a poll by Elle-MSNBC.com found that 1 in 10 men were bored with their sex routine, 17% said porn made sex less arousing, and 1 in 10 said porn made them more critical of their partner’s body. (Paul, 91) This reminds me of a quote by William Shakespeare; “Beauty is all very well at first sight; but whoever looks at it when it has been in the house three days?” That quote is very true. These men are used to their wives beauty and do not value it as much. To them the women in porn are new and exciting. This quote also explains why men seek more and more hardcore porn. They become used to what they once used to think was “beautiful” and need a new image. You can see how women feel like they’re competing with the women in porn and sadly they’ll never win. Some of the people interviewed for the book Pornified actually began to have trouble differentiating between fantasy and reality. One man’s addiction to porn led him to seek child porn. He began propositioning fifteen-year-olds. He left his own children alone, but molested their babysitters. (Paul, 238) Another porn addict’s family was horrified to find pictures of the man in his stepdaughter’s underwear on the family computer. (Paul, 237)
Sex in the media doesn’t have to be as explicit as porn to have negative effects. Many teens are influenced by sex on TV, even at prime time. Kunkel et al. studied scenes involving sexual behavior and found that one in ten involved a teen. (Gunter, 86) Teens who watch TV containing sexual content are more likely to think such behavior is normal and lose their virginity at a younger age. One study that shows this found that college students that watched lots of soap operas estimated higher percentages of people who are divorced or have illegitimate children than light viewers. This study also showed that pregnant teens were twice as likely to think relationships shown on TV are realistic than non pregnant teens. (Gunter, 85) Another study showed that 35% of boys that viewed a heavy amount of TV were not virgins while only 12% of boys that viewed a moderate amount of TV were not virgins. (Gunter, 89) This was also shown in a study of girls aged fifteen and sixteen, found that most of them who were sexually active listed shows with sexual content as their favorites. These links were strongest when the girls had low self-esteem, watched TV apart from their parents, and had parents with a permissive attitude about sex. The conclusion of this study was that TV shows can encourage children to pay less attention to the risks of sex when they have no counterexamples. (Gunter, 97) It was also found that teens that watch a heavy amount of television with sexual content were more likely not to be virgins than those who viewed little. (Gunter, 97) These ideas were reflected in yet another study where nonvirgins in all the different groups except for black males were more likely to choose programs with sexual content. It may seem that adolescents would choose sexual programming as a result of not being a virgin, but another experiment showed that after teenagers lost their virginity they were no more likely to seek programs with sexual content. (Gunter, 98) It was also discovered that MTV and soap operas were linked to more sexually permissive attitudes (Gunter, 99) and teens who liked MTV tended to be more sexually experienced. (Gunter, 104) MTV has a bad reputation for its graphic music videos. After Janet Jackson’s “wardrobe malfunction” MTV agreed to show its sexually graphic videos only at night. Unfortunately, this agreement lasted less than a month. (Reavill, 66) MTV is just one example of the media’s obsession with sex. Howard Stern for example was kicked off of public radio for his explicit description of anal sex. (Reavill, 12) Worse than this offensive broadcast are the porn industries’ attempts to make money off unsuspecting people. Many porn websites use the commonly misspelled addresses of popular sites. People who misspell a website like goravegirl.com as ravegirl.com find themselves smack in the middle of a porn website with the sexually explicit images staring them in face. The example above is a popular site for the preteen and teenage girls. Sadly, trapping children into a porn website is common on the internet. These industries make money off of how many people view the pages of their site. To them it doesn’t matter who sees the porn, they are only a number that adds to their cash. (Reavill, 75)
Not only is sex in the media encouraging teenagers to be sexually active, it is providing them with very little information about safe sex. In 1988 Lowry and Towels studied sexual incidents on prime time TV. Of these 722 incidents only 14 mentioned protection from pregnancy, 18 mentioned disease prevention, and 13 discussed AIDS. (Gunter, 91) In a similar study Kunkel et al. found that only 9% of sex scenes mentioned risks or consequences of sex. (Gunter, 92) Finally, in 1987 the Planned Parenthood Federation of America found that less than a tenth of 1% of sexual incidents mentioned sexual diseases, sex education, or abortion. (Gunter, 91) The information or lack of, the media supplies encourages teenagers to have sex and rarely tells them of the risks involved. As a result teens end up having unsafe sex more often. An example of this is a study done that showed that researched people and who they thought of who were responsible sexually. People who identified people from the media or their peers as good role models were more likely to be more sexually permissive, have higher rates of intercourse, have more partners, and be less likely to uses contraceptives. (Gunter, 88)
The media provides a twisted view of sex and life. Sex in the media can affect people’s values as well as their behavior. The images in the media can make men more critical of women’s bodies and women more critical of their own bodies. A study done by Tan in 1979 found that after girls ages 16-18 viewed a heavy dose of commercials emphasizing female beauty they were more likely to believe beauty is an important attribute than the control group. After viewing commercials emphasizing sexual qualities of women they were more likely to rank sex appeal as important characteristic to be liked by men. (Gunter, 84) Shockingly, a study of male college students found that after viewing just one episode of Charlie’s Angels they were harsher in their evaluation of the beauty of potential dates. (Gunter, 84) Another experiment with male college students discovered that they found their girlfriends less sexually attractive after viewing centerfolds from Playboy and Penthouse. (Gunter, 84) Besides changing a person’s view of beauty sex in the media can influence other values. A study showed that after people viewed programming with pre, extra, and nonmarital sex they rated these actions as less bad than people who viewed nonsexual programming. The effects of the sexual programming were weaker when the person had a family with strong values and good communication and were active and selective viewers. (Gunter, 100)
Obviously, the sex in the media has become a problem for our country. Erasmus once said “Prevention is better than cure.” The best solution would to just remove sex in the media. That would easily rid our country of the detrimental effects it has on people. Unfortunately, sex has been deeply engrained into our culture and it is hard to remove or separate. However, there are still actions that can be taken to prevent its detrimental effects. I wish I could say that the solution is just to rid the media of all sex including porn, but that is unrealistic. Pornography for one is a huge market and the industries would not go down without a fight. The truth is people use porn. Even if we were able to successfully remove it people would still use it in secret. Also the industries would have a point. I agree with Voltaire when he said,
“I do not agree with what you have to say, but I'll defend to the death your right to say it”
They do have the right to free speech and any law that ignores that right could never be passed. These are the problems we run into from taking away just porn. We could let people have their pornography and just take away all sex in the media that is public, but then we run into similar problems. As is often said, sex sells. There’s a huge demand for shows with sexual content. Removing all of it would be too restrictive. It would change the plots of shows dramatically. As William Shakespeare once said it would become “Art made tongue-tied by authority.”
Also, we would run into the problem of free speech. These are the complications of removing sex in the media completely. It’s a good idea in theory, but would never work. However, there are other solutions to this problem. As Horace once said, “Divide each difficulty into as many parts as is feasible and necessary to resolve it.” Sex in the media is a major difficulty and the best way to solve this problem is to look at each part of it.
One of these parts is the problem of unsuspecting children and adults finding themselves trapped into a porn website from an accidental misspelling. A solution to this problem could be to require that any pornographic website has a web address that ends in .xxx, for example www.porn.xxx. This would eliminate the problem of misspelling a popular website because it’s very unlikely someone would accidentally hit .xxx instead of .com or .org. This would also make porn websites much easier to block and it would prevent the use of pornography in the home.
One of the biggest problems sex in the media creates is that it encourages teenagers to have unsafe sex. A way to help prevent this would be to require any television program that shows or alludes to a sex scene to mention protection or the risks involved. This could be as simple as showing a condom in a clear view or have one of the characters voice a concern about pregnancy. There are many different ways the requirement could be fulfilled. Such a requirement would be beneficial to teens because it would remind them of the real dangers involved. This sort of message would often be repeated and teenagers would be more aware and would be more likely to use protection.
Another problem sex in the media causes is that it influences the teenagers’ values and encourages them to have sex. However, according to the studies mentioned previously, the link between the media and teenagers’ values and decisions is strongest when there are no counterexamples present. A good way to solve this problem would be create more counterexamples. A quote by Confucius explains this well:
By three methods we may learn wisdom: First, by reflection, which is noblest; Second, by imitation, which is easiest; and third by experience, which is the bitterest.
-Confucius
Currently teenagers are learning their “wisdom” by imitation, the easiest method. They’re copying what they learn about sex from media. Unfortunately, this leads to them learning true wisdom in the bitterest way, by experience. Teenagers eventually learn that unsafe sex is dangerous after realizing they’re pregnant or after being diagnosed with a sexually transmitted disease. The best and noblest way to learn wisdom is by reflection. If we provide teenagers with counterexamples to the media’s encouragements of unsafe sex then they can think about the risks and learn wisdom by their own reflection. One way this could be accomplished is by having Public Service Announcements that encourage parents to talk to their kids about sex and the effects that the media can have on them. If parents talked to their kids more about sex then teenagers wouldn’t be as likely to seek guidance from the media. Teens can learn the effects of media in health class. This way teenagers could be more aware of the influence the media has over their lives and wouldn’t assume that sex in the media is accurately portrayed. Finally, doctors, teachers, and religious leaders should be informed of how media can affect youths so they can educate others. Luckily, some action is already taking place to solve the problem of sex in the media. The Bush administration is pushing to make companies involved in films, TV shows, and soft-core cable porn tone down the sexual content. A proposal is going through Congress to require that films must certify that the people who perform actual or simulated sex acts are 18 or older. (Woellert, An All-Out Assault…)
When we were first assigned this project the paper told us that during our research we should judge the material and not automatically think that because they are the writer they must know everything. This is my evaluation of the books I read. The book, Smut, was a huge disappointment. The author obviously was very upset about how sexualized our culture had become. He used to work in the porn industry and was shocked to see our similar our media had become to the industry. Basically, the book consisted of him ranting and raving about how awful it was. On one hand, he did give a lot of good examples about sex in the media. He informed me of events I had been unaware of, such as how the porn industry mouse trapped people unto its websites. What I found the most frustrating on this book was that he gave very few facts. He gave numerous examples of how the media had gone too far, but only twice in the book did he ever mention why that was so bad. These two facts were that a poll found that 60% of parents feel uncomfortable about the amount of sex in the media (Reavill, 57) and that the American Academy of Pediatrics said that kids who watch sexually explicit material tend to have sex earlier. (Reavill, 159-160) As you can see by my citation these two facts were not even close together in the book. At some points I think Reavill’s opinion dominated the book like when he started ranting about the speaking class (actors, reporters, people on TV) and saying that it is their fault that we are subjected to this material. In some aspects I think he did have a point. He did mention that musicians put up a big fight to not have their lyrics labeled as explicit. I do agree with him in that respect because the musicians should have been more cooperative. In general the book would have been much better written if he had given more facts to support his stance against sex in the media and ranted less.
Although I didn’t like the way Smut was written I did enjoy Pornified. That book was wonderfully written. The book was very easy to read. Pamela Paul not only included plenty of facts to back up her statements, but she also included the stories of many of the people she interviewed. At the beginning of the book she mentioned that many people had stories similar to these people and as the book went on it was shocking to realize how much pornography affected these people. Not only did the book provide numerous facts and keep my interest it also impressed me how much research she did on the topic. In the book Pamela provided many studies and polls on pornography and some of her own she had conducted. I greatly admire Pamela for the work she put into that book and how well it was written.
Another book I read was Media Sex: What are the issues?. This book was helpful for my project because it was loaded with information. I found myself highlighting most of the book. Although, this book gushed information it would have been better if the author talked more instead of listing study after study. Reading all those studies became tedious after a while unlike Pamela’s book which varied in content.
I did not find anything in the two history books I read that was relevant to the subject although they were both interesting to read about. One was called Sex with Kings and it was about kings and their mistresses. This was also very well written. Part of this book had a big effect on me. At one point the author, Eleanor Herman, talks about the mistresses the king chose. You’d think that a king who could choose any lady in the land would choose someone beautiful. Surprisingly, beauty wasn’t the most important attribute to being a king’s mistress. Some of the mistresses the king chose for beauty didn’t last very long at all because they turned out to be dimwitted or have some other personality flaw. Many of the longest lasting mistresses weren’t beautiful. Madame de Pompadour for example lost her looks and gave up fighting her frigidity after five years of being the king’s mistress. Despite this she was still the king’s favorite. Madame de Pompadour supported the king, kept him entertained, and never complained. I thought this was a valuable lesson. We are always told it’s the beauty on the inside that matters, but it was very reassuring to see how this proved true in history. The only way this book could have been improved would be if there were notes in the back to help you keep track of who was who. There were many people involved in this book and I often mixed them up especially the kings who had recurring names like Louis, Napoleon, and George. Other than that I thoroughly enjoyed this book. It even made me laugh out loud at times.
The last book I read was Joan of Arc In Her Own Words. This book consisted solely of the writings and words of Joan of Arc. It was a short book and quite interesting. As I read the book I could tell what a determined person she was and how strongly she believed in the angels she saw. The only way this book could be improved would be if some background information was provided about Joan of Arc in the beginning. It was confusing at times because I didn’t know what was going on or who she was talking to. Other than that it was a good book.
It should be obvious that sex in the media is a growing problem that needs to be stopped. The media is giving the message that unsafe sex is ok and teens are listening. It is influencing our beliefs and changing the way we think about the world. Pornography is destroying relationships, degrading women, and causing men to blur the lines between fantasy and reality. We have to take action or men, women, and children will continue to experience the detrimental effects of sex in the media. Horace was wise when he said, “He who has begun has half done. Dare to be wise; begin.”
Works Cited
Gunter, Barrie. Media Sex: What Are the Issues?. New Jersey: Lawrence Erlbaum
Associates Publishers, 2002
Herman, Eleanor. Sex With Kings. New York: HarperCollins, 2004
Joan of Arc in Her Own Words. New York: BOOKS & Co., 1996
Paul, Pamela. Pornified. New York: Henry Holt and Company, 2005
Reavill, Gil. Smut. New York: Penguin Group, 2005
Woellert, Lorraine. “An All-Out Assault On Sexual Content.” Business Week. 21
November 2005:118 [Online] EBSCO Publishing, 7 May 2006