Addictive imagery on the Internet
Posted: Sun Feb 12, 2006 5:53 am
I wonder whether this might generate a discussion. Rather than suggest the topic and throw in my opinions later, I might as well start with my thoughts to set the ball rolling.
The Internet has sufficient graphic portrayals of sexual gratification to make it a hard place to navigate safely, whether you’re a child or an adult. That’s not going to go away. I suggest that child education is important. The viewer needs to understand her reaction to these graphics, in order to avoid falling to the lure of the imagery.
Mental, as opposed to hard-wired, imprinting of visual sexual stimuli takes place from puberty onward (http://www.unh.edu/ccrc/pdf/jvq/CV76.pdf seems to support this suggestion). While these mental changes are taking place, the nature of what are sexually alluring triggers is learned. This capacity to learn new triggers continues thereafter. In contrast to these learned responses, hard wired attractions are far more basic than the variety of imagery which ends up capturing the attention of the adult mind. These might go so far as the shape and colouration of the human mammary. Were that the extent of the imagery in question, the problem would be far more manageable and could arguably be considered trivial.
In the interest of becoming capable of depicting sexual behaviour as an image, suppliers have taken to redefining desirable mutual interaction itself. No longer is plain sexual intercourse sufficient, during which too little is visible for imagery to take advantage of the media. Ejaculation, for example, has now to be performed outside of the normal channel. “Come on her face†is the newly defined essence of enjoyment, in order for the camera to have an act to capture. The gynaecological invasion of shaved genitalia prior to this climax has taken the place of the Renaissance exploration of the female nude or the National Geographic field trip.
The response to imagery of this sort is a learned behaviour, not a pre-existing imprinted one. There are two pathways that lead to imprinting, one physical and one mental. Repeated physical or repeated mental stimulation while behaving in any manner at all will lead to an ingrained compulsion toward the repetitive recreation of the circumstance in which the stimulation occurred. If that is associated with viewing any imagery of any description, then that imagery becomes the trigger of the compulsion.
To define a specific subset of imagery as “pornographic†is to mistake the nature of compulsion. If we are to use the word in the context of compulsive attraction, then it is the response which is pornographic, not the imagery. To a person who has become conditioned to seeking sexual relief while watching female weather forecasters (or even one particularly pert weather forecaster) the imagery involved is definitively pornographic. This is a matter of context, not content. If sufficient viewers adopt the same icon for the same purpose, I suspect that weather forecasts would eventually move into the category of banned material for daytime broadcast. I take an extreme, of course, but I do it deliberately. The banning of intrinsically innocuous television broadcasting has already happened, in the case of pre-teen pop dance childrens programming, simply because of the abuse to which the material was put by sections of society.
I suggest that the material will not go away; that education is the route toward protection from its potential attraction; and that the age at which such protection needs to be provided, for it to become a shield, is pre-pubertal. Once pathways toward gratification have become established, beyond puberty, learning different modes of behaviour is a far more complex task which may well involve the superimposition of even more powerful compulsions over the now-existing behaviours. There is no simple eraser to be employed on the mind.
Perversion is the bending away from functionality. Pornography is perverted imagery to the extent that it is used, not to the extent to which it exists. Were the use to fade away, provisioners would lack the drive to produce. The Internet is flooded with imagery intended to capture the attention by latching onto compulsive behaviour. Education which dissociates the compulsion from the imagery is an effective counter to the pervasive presence of the material.
The Internet has sufficient graphic portrayals of sexual gratification to make it a hard place to navigate safely, whether you’re a child or an adult. That’s not going to go away. I suggest that child education is important. The viewer needs to understand her reaction to these graphics, in order to avoid falling to the lure of the imagery.
Mental, as opposed to hard-wired, imprinting of visual sexual stimuli takes place from puberty onward (http://www.unh.edu/ccrc/pdf/jvq/CV76.pdf seems to support this suggestion). While these mental changes are taking place, the nature of what are sexually alluring triggers is learned. This capacity to learn new triggers continues thereafter. In contrast to these learned responses, hard wired attractions are far more basic than the variety of imagery which ends up capturing the attention of the adult mind. These might go so far as the shape and colouration of the human mammary. Were that the extent of the imagery in question, the problem would be far more manageable and could arguably be considered trivial.
In the interest of becoming capable of depicting sexual behaviour as an image, suppliers have taken to redefining desirable mutual interaction itself. No longer is plain sexual intercourse sufficient, during which too little is visible for imagery to take advantage of the media. Ejaculation, for example, has now to be performed outside of the normal channel. “Come on her face†is the newly defined essence of enjoyment, in order for the camera to have an act to capture. The gynaecological invasion of shaved genitalia prior to this climax has taken the place of the Renaissance exploration of the female nude or the National Geographic field trip.
The response to imagery of this sort is a learned behaviour, not a pre-existing imprinted one. There are two pathways that lead to imprinting, one physical and one mental. Repeated physical or repeated mental stimulation while behaving in any manner at all will lead to an ingrained compulsion toward the repetitive recreation of the circumstance in which the stimulation occurred. If that is associated with viewing any imagery of any description, then that imagery becomes the trigger of the compulsion.
To define a specific subset of imagery as “pornographic†is to mistake the nature of compulsion. If we are to use the word in the context of compulsive attraction, then it is the response which is pornographic, not the imagery. To a person who has become conditioned to seeking sexual relief while watching female weather forecasters (or even one particularly pert weather forecaster) the imagery involved is definitively pornographic. This is a matter of context, not content. If sufficient viewers adopt the same icon for the same purpose, I suspect that weather forecasts would eventually move into the category of banned material for daytime broadcast. I take an extreme, of course, but I do it deliberately. The banning of intrinsically innocuous television broadcasting has already happened, in the case of pre-teen pop dance childrens programming, simply because of the abuse to which the material was put by sections of society.
I suggest that the material will not go away; that education is the route toward protection from its potential attraction; and that the age at which such protection needs to be provided, for it to become a shield, is pre-pubertal. Once pathways toward gratification have become established, beyond puberty, learning different modes of behaviour is a far more complex task which may well involve the superimposition of even more powerful compulsions over the now-existing behaviours. There is no simple eraser to be employed on the mind.
Perversion is the bending away from functionality. Pornography is perverted imagery to the extent that it is used, not to the extent to which it exists. Were the use to fade away, provisioners would lack the drive to produce. The Internet is flooded with imagery intended to capture the attention by latching onto compulsive behaviour. Education which dissociates the compulsion from the imagery is an effective counter to the pervasive presence of the material.
