Conference quark::mennotes

    re:.0
    
    It's all one big load of new age psychobabble.
    
    Erotica has been around since man learned how to create art and it's
    always featured the women (and men) who were considered attractive for
    their time.

    Re .0
    
    Yes.  I believe that it distorted my perceptions of myself and others
    to the extent that my misperceptions came within hours of destroying a
    rich marriage of more than two decades' duration.
    
    -dick

>I believe that it distorted my perceptions of myself and others
>    to the extent that my misperceptions came within hours of destroying a
>    rich marriage of more than two decades' duration.

 How was such a disaster averted?

    Sorry, Doctah, not in this notesfile.

 I figured as much.

    I too watched the program.

    I was struck by how one-sided the input these young men had had in the
    area of females and relationships.

    One talked about the need to communicate more. One mentioned that he
    took the magazine "FORUM" to be the truth. I felt badly for them that
    they would receive such a distorted view.

    I certainly had a more balanced view of life so that I was able to
    regard this type of material for what it is (in regards to woman and
    relationships).

    My wife commented on the ages these guys mentioned they were first
    exposed.... one said 2 or 3rd grade, I believe. I was never exposed to
    such material until at least 7th grade (memory is a little fuzzy). 

    Perhaps the age of introduction had something to do with it, lack of a
    role model, or lack of communication from another male. I would have
    wanted to know more about their upbringing and home situation, to
    better understand how they formed their views.

    I was encouraged that they *did* something about their situation and
    are offering education to others.

    My 2 cents,

    JR

    
    My understanding is that males are much more visually oriented
    sexually than women are (by COMPARISON) I did not say that women
    were not at all visually oriented.  Porn plays into the males 
    'need' for visual sexual stimulation.  Where they is a market there
    is a supply.  Why isn't womens porn more in demand than it is?  I
    surmise that its because women don't care as much for it.  Less
    demand = less supply.
    
    Nature has designed males to inseminate females to procreate humankind.
    The male 'has' to have an orgasm during normal sex for the woman to
    become pregnant.  Nature wants results.... more babies.  Therefore
    I surmise that males are designed to be turned on relatively easily
    by visual stimulation.  Females must insure food and a stable place
    for the babies to grow which means she need EMOTIONAL stability with
    her mate to keep him around helping supply food.
    
    So whats this have to do with porn? Porn plays into the 'need' for
    males to be turned on visually.
    
    I think that whether the porn is harmful to a young teen depends on
    what he has learned from other sources..(hopefully his parents)
    regarding 'appropriate' sexual stimulation and the meaning of sex
    in a relationship.  All to often thanks to movies and porn sex and
    VIOLENCE wind up linked together in his fantasies.  We are seeing 
    the results of that in the papers daily.
    
    Jeff
    

    I saw the 20/20 program and I wished they'd fire that woman reporter,
    Lynn Sheir sp? Every week she's got her feminist agenda to fill which
    usually consist of  stories about male female relationships in which
    the male is made to look evil. Why didn't she interview women who read 
    romance novels too ? If males get screwed up sexual ideas about women 
    from porn, then  women get screwed up ideas about men from reading soft 
    porn too.  Her reporting is one sided. She portrayed the male as a villain 
    for feeling sexually attracted towards naked women. Also, she had on that 
    feminist lawyer, telling us how men feel, which was distorted, and how its 
    wrong for men to feel the way she tells us we feel. To me the group of 
    males that they interviewed look and sounded like they were gay and had 
    problems with being heterosexuals. Lynn Sheir even stated that she had a 
    hard time finding a group of males involved in this type of study. Well, 
    no wonder !

    Jim

    Jim I don't think we watched the same program.
    
    She *did* speak to women, several of whom noted that they too
    recieved wrong information from porn about how to behave (around
    men) and felt they had to try and match the unrealistic images in 
    porn in order to attract men.  It would have been interesting to
    see if any of those women had views of men based on what one might
    find in a romance novel, but that doesn't negate what those women
    had to say about their own experiences with pornography (which was
    what the program was about).
    
    And there was nothing at all in the entire program that made men
    look evil (where do you get this stuff??). On the contrary, I thought 
    it was refreshing in that it was the men who decided something was 
    wrong with their relationships with women and decided to try and find 
    out what the problem might be.  They are the ones who decided early 
    exposure to pornography distorted their views of women, and it was
    never even implied that the problem was something inherently wrong
    with men or with being male.  The whole emphasis at the end was on
    what could be done to improve relationships without casting the blame 
    upon *either* sex.
    
    /Greg
    
    P.S. You thought all the guys were gay?  You must not get out much...
    

    RE: .8
    
    Agreed....it was a load of crap. 
    
    Marc H.

    We are bombarded by all types of media images about the way that men
    and women relate to each other, through both commercials, and through
    the relationships depicted in T.V. shows, which are not particularly
    realistic, either. Not to mention popular songs! I don't think that
    pornograpy is any more of an influence in the way that men regard women
    than these other media outlets.
    
    Should we discuss, say, the realism of the soap opera?
    
    

I missed the 20/20 show, but I'd have to agree with the earlier reply which
said that the age at which we are first exposed to pornography is most
important.  It seems likely that a 2nd grader who got a hold of a Playboy, or
Playgirl or Penthouse or something would hide it from mom and dad.  So he/she  
gets the double-whammy:  1) exposure to someone's erotic fantasy without 
explanation from an adult that it really is just a fantasy, and 2) a feeling
that sexual feelings are something to be ashamed of, and hidden in a box 
under the bed.  Too bad, really.

As I recall, I think I saw my first Playboy when I was in Junior High.  I don't
think I suffered any longterm detrimental affects on my image of women.  But
I also didn't get many negative messages about sex from my parents.

 
Jon

    re:.12
    
    I don't think so ... my own personal experience is that a second
    grader wouldn't be interested in a magazine like Playboy.  Most boys
    don't get interested in girls until the 6th or 7th grade.

  <<< Note 25.13 by HDLITE::ZARLENGA "Michael Zarlenga, Alpha P/PEG" >>>

 >   I don't think so ... my own personal experience is that a second
 >   grader wouldn't be interested in a magazine like Playboy.  Most boys
 >   don't get interested in girls until the 6th or 7th grade.
    
    I agree, but didn't an earlier reply say that one of the "interviewees"
    on the 20/20 program claimed to be influenced by porn at around the 2nd
    grade?  I should have made my allusion more clear.
    
    I was terrified of girls when I was a 2nd grader!!!   ;^)
    
    
    Jon

    
    wonders what careful coaching will accomplish.
    
    did 20/20 pay for the interview, even expenses?
    

    
    just a thought: if mapplethorpe had worked for hef, would
    that make looking at playboy less of a sin?

    re:.14
    
    I don't know about the earlier replies ... I parachuted right into .12
    and started replying without reading any of the previous notes.
    
    I think Holtski (.15) mighta hit the nail on the head re: coaching.
    
    Either that or I was an unusual 2nd grader, old, because back then, girls
    were totally disgusting, yukky, and needed to be avoided at all costs.

>    just a thought: if mapplethorpe had worked for hef, would
>    that make looking at playboy less of a sin?

 Behehehaha!

    Re .18: Well, I bet he'd have put more  interesting-looking _guys_ into
    the pictures!
    
    -b

    Re .13
    
    "Most boys..."  How many have you consulted, Michael?  Among the kids I
    knew, second or third grade was pretty much the norm for lots of early
    experimentation, starting with playing post office and doctor and
    progressing, in one case I wormed out of my next door neighbor, to an
    attempt at actual intercourse when the boy and girl were eight and
    seven repectively.  They couldn't find the right orifice.
    
    -dick

I remember an incident when I was 7 or 8; there was a girl named Gail, about
my age, who lived a couple of houses down and with whom I would play from
time to time.  One day she decided to form a club, like many kids do, and
of course she had to have an initiation ceremony.  Hers was to have me walk
into the bathroom at her house, close the door, sit down on the toilet seat
and look at the back of the door without laughing.  On the door, Gail's
father (I assume!) had tacked up a number of Playboy centerfolds.

Though nowadays I have to wonder about Gail's family life, at the time I
didn't find the pictures amusing nor exciting.  I wondered what the big
deal was.

As a teenager, I would occasionally look through issues of Playboy, and I
subscribed for a number of years through my mid 20's, but I recall a number
of times when I thought the pictured women were not what I would consider
attractive.  In my late teens, I also went to see one or two X-rated films,
but found them mechanical and boring.

I think I can say with near certainty that the images of pulchritude which
abounded during my youth did NOT set my expectations for women.  But then
I also didn't adopt the common attitude of the time that women were objects
to be obtained and abused, which probably accounted in part for my difficulty 
in finding women who could be interested in me, during my college years.

Of course, many women buy into the images pressed upon them of what they
ought to look for in a man.  But in their case, it isn't a set of physical
attributes so much as how they should expect a man to abuse them. (They
don't  think of it as abuse, of course.)  And men are similarly being
trained to abuse women, (not that THEY think of it as abuse.)  

It's important that we try to break this pattern by teaching our children
that people, women and men, are human beings and not objects, property or
"masters".  If we can do that, the fads of what is physically attractive
will matter less.

					Steve

    Golly Wally! Girls really look like this? :) Speaking of porn, local TV
    station has been flapping its arms and doing its best to tell everyone
    what a sinful place Manchester N.H. is with its prostution running
    rapet it the streets. Wounder what kind of thoughts are going thru
    young men who have figured out what women look like's brains.:) 
    
    By day she was mild mannered Ms. Bo-daa-shish Taa-Taa. At night she
    prowled the streets looking for Mr. John. 0)

.20> "Most boys..."  How many have you consulted, Michael?  Among the kids I
    
    Geez, -dick, is today "let's be obstinate day" or something?
    
    I think the phrase "my own personal experience" (.13) covers that, no?

    RE .23
    
    Well, actually, Mike, no, I don't think "my own personal experience"
    doesn't cover it.  You say that you as a second grader weren't
    interested in a magazine like Playboy.  Then, in a grand leap of
    generalization with zero support, you say, and I quote, "Most boys
    don't get interested in girls until the 6th or 7th grade."
    
    Sorry, but if you can't learn to say what you mean you will have to
    expect people to misconstrue what you say.
    
    -dick

    You're making yourself look awfully pedestrian, -dick.

    re .12  .........most boys interested at
    
    I thought that ages 8 - 11 were called 'the latent years' by
    psychologists, which refers to the degree of sexual interest.
    
    Based on my own observations (I was once 8 years old myself and
    did speak to my peers upon occasion) I would have to agree with
    .12 that most boys aren't particularly interested in sex/girls
    until 6th grade (12 years old) or so.  Of course there are plenty
    of individual exceptions as prior noters have pointed out so clearly.
    
    However, I believe the word included the word most, not the word all.
    
    Have I done studies on this, or conducted a formal survey of the boys
    in my neighborhood?  Of course not.  But, like so many things one forms
    an impression and forms opinions after years of informal observations.
    
    Its amazing. Virtually whatever one says in notes there is SOMEONE who
    will refute it.
    
    Jeff

    Some boys are *very* aware of their changes in the 12-year-old
    range, of course.
    
    My Dad got a big kick out of it when he was driving on Kalakaua Ave.
    near the beach (Waikiki in Honolulu) when my son begged him to drive
    closer to the right side of the road so he could get a closer look
    at the young women in the bikinis.
    
    Ryan said, "Indulge me, Grandpa.  I'm in puberty."
    

There's an old line by Mort Sahl, or was it Lenny Bruce

	We are raising a generation of American men to believe that
	women have staples in their navels.

I first saw a copy of _Playboy_ in the 7th grade.  By that time, I had a lot
of information about men and women from friends, books, movies and TV, so 
_Playboy_ just became part of the mix.

I had also learned, years before, that books, movies and TV did not have
much to do with my life.  One feeling I remember strongly was at about age 8
or 9, reading the Bobbsey Twins (I bet they never imagined they would appear
in this topic) and being very frustrated that my life was so much more 
boring than theirs.  I realized that I could never be satisfied if I 
compared my experiences with theirs, so I stopped, mostly.  By the time I
saw _Playboy_, I had had a lot of practice separating life from fiction.

I suppose _Playboy_ and suchlike had some effect on my attitude towards
women and relationships, but it was not as simple or obvious as that
suggested in the base note.


Re: several previous

The Latency Period is part of the Freudian theory of childhood.  The ages
vary, but it is often assumed to start about 7 and end about 12.  Lots of
folks have pointed out that childhood is a lot more complex and variable
than the Freudian theory.

Personally, I never stopped being interested in girls, but I do remember 
being less interested between the ages of 9 and 14, than I was before and 
after.  I also remeber a lot of social pressure, from peers and adults, to
be less interested in girls (age 9) and more interested (age 14).  I think
that in my case, the latency period was socially imposed.