Campus Crusade talks power of porn
There is a fable of a man’s visit to a remote tribalcommunity. Upon arrival, he noticed members of the community whohad either missing hands or feet.
With further inspection, he realized almost every member of thistribe had been maimed in some way. He approached a tribal leader toask about this problem. The leader informed him that a large numberof alligators nearby would regularly come and prey on thepeople.
“For your people’s sake, why don’t you dosomething about this terrible problem?” the visitor asked.The leader simply responded, “In our culture, it is notpolite to talk about alligators.”
Clearly, there are dangers for a society that is unwilling toaddress threatening issues simply because the topic is considereduncomfortable. What are the “alligators” of our society— problems we accept, yet refuse to address, for fear ofbeing inappropriate or misunderstood?
Pornography is one of those important issues that few people arewilling to discuss. Is pornography a private harmless form ofentertainment, or a destructive power no longer avoidable in oursociety? Willingly or not, we are continually being exposed to it,right here at SMU. Whether it is a poster on a dorm room wall or aspam email, porn is all around us. Defined, pornography is anymaterial depicting eroticism, with the intent to cause sexualexcitement. With this definition in mind, how prevalent is porn?Exactly. It’s everywhere.
Consider this:
• Most “non-pornographic” magazines have coversthat are more provocative than many of the 1950s’ Playboycenterfolds. In other words we see more graphic images today inadvertisements and magazine covers like Victoria’s Secret andMaxim respectively, than most people seeking out pornography 50years ago did.
• A $10 billion industry, pornography is no longer asideshow to mainstream society. Compare this to the $600 millionBroadway theater industry.
• “The 4 billion that Americans spend on videopornography is larger than the annual revenue accrued by either theNFL, the NBA or Major League Baseball. But that’s literallynot the half of it: the porn business is estimated to total between$10 billion and $14 billion annually in the United States,”Reported the New York Times in a May 20, 2001 article.”People pay more money for pornography than they do on movietickets, more than they do on all the performing artscombined.”
Is this addiction or something else? Most people reading thiscolumn know the prevalence of soft-core pornography, but wonder”so what?” Is it really that powerful or even harmful?As any red-blooded male can attest, sexually charged images areextremely powerful. Show me a man who is not aroused by a poster ofAli Landry in a bikini, and I’ll show you a man whodoesn’t have a pulse. What are we to make of this almostinstinctive response? According to Dr. Victor Cline, those whoimmerse themselves in pornography progress through stages. First,the person becomes enticed.
Dr. Cline says, “as men get into it, it grabs them. Itgets a hold on them, in a sense analogous to heroin ormorphine.”
Are you asking yourself “What was I thinking paying fivebucks for that girly magazine?”
Dr. Steve Arterburn states, “After looking at an image,men receive a chemical high when a hormone called epinephrine isreleased into the blood stream, which locks into the man’smemory whatever stimuli is present at the time of the emotionalexcitement. A guy dead-set on purchasing Hustler at a localconvenience store is sexually stimulated long before he walks intothe store. This stimulation began in his thought process, whichtriggered his nervous system, which secreted epinephrine into theblood stream.”
The danger lies in the fact that in this “high”state, no one knows the depth a person will go or the risk theywill take to satisfy these desires.
Porn isn’t just an issue for red-blooded males. More andmore women are looking at pornography, but that is not how amajority of them are affected. Porn shapes women’sperceptions about themselves, about what makes them attractive tomen. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out theharm that can cause.
What can we do in response? Rather than avoiding dialogue onthis uncomfortable issue, we need to educate ourselves. We need totalk about the powerful presence pornography has in our society. Weneed to gain knowledge to help process the sexual images bombardingus at all angles. One step in this process is a presentationcalled, “The Power of Porn.” The event is not aboutbashing porn but spurring our thinking so that we can decide forourselves.
“The Power of Porn” will provide insight throughmulti-media, as well as real stories from people whose lives havebeen affected. Decide for yourselves at 7 p.m. on Oct. 1 in theHughes-Trigg Theater.
Let’s deal with this alligator, good or bad. At the veryleast we won’t be guilty, like the fabled tribe, of nottalking about it.
Campus Crusade talks power of porn
