Panama Red

A QUICKIE March 29, 2006

Just a quickie: I find it very interesting that many other nations other than the U.S. are very laid back concerning sex and sexuality. This can be seen in many instances, but one specific one is the commercial at the end of Lecture # 22. This Asian commercial is highly sexual and would never be allowed to be shown on TV in the U.S.

INTERACTIVE? March 29, 2006

My definition of interaction is two living creatures touching or talking with each other.  With this being said, I don't believe that interactive pornography is interactive at all.  In one example of interactive porn, a person at one computer controls what another person's sex toy does to that person and vice versa.  In my opinion, this is not interactive.  The only way for pornography to be interactive is for two people to be engaging in pornography together.  In the type of situation described above, the people are controlling what each does to the other, but there is no live touching or talking.  This is just me.  I don't think that this type of porn should be called interactive porn.  I don't consider IMing people interacting with people.  Though I am in a way talking to them, for me to be fully interacting with them, we would need to be face to face.

XXX CHURCH (.)(.) March 27, 2006

After watching Lecture # 21, I figured I would browse around on
the XXXChurch.com website and see what it is really all about. 
I found this website very interesting, though I do not religiously or
morally agree with what they have to say.  It seems to be a very
useful site, if used for what it is meant to be used for.  It is
meant to be looked at by people who are addicted to porn, or
struggling with porn, who look at the church for help.  There
are many facts on the website concerning porn and they make it
apparent that there are many resources out
there for people who need help with porn.  

Linked to the XXXChurch website I found an article in TIME
magazine concerning pornography classes in colleges and
universities.  This article talks about various
universities' pornography classes.  It shows the different ways
teachers are going about teaching these "new age" classes. 
This article goes on to  mention UB's Cyber
Porn class, and our very own, Dr. Halavais.  I thought
people would be interested to see what TIME
magazine had to say about our class and our school.  In the
article, it is seen that there are many different ideologies
concerning the teaching of pornography in classes.  It is a new
hot topic that we should all definitely look for
more in the news.

Family Guy March 26, 2006

In response to Softer Than A Porn's Blog concerning, It
Seems Today That All You See Is Violence In Movies and Sex on TV,:
I agree with this person.  I agree that we cannot use porn as an
excuse for rape.  Now, many rapists may view porn, but as the
blogger mentions this is because rapists
have a common trait that make them want to view porn, porn doesn't
make the rapist a rapist!  In other words, guns are not the root
of all murders, murders are going to happen whether or not guns
exist, guns just make it an easier task (similar case, but not
identical to our porn case).  

 I also agree with the blogger that maybe if porn was more
mainstream in our society and less taboo,
than maybe thoughts concerning women in our society as a whole would
start to change.  This is seen, as exemplified in Lecture # 21,
in nations such as Japan.  Maybe if we, as a society, stop
associating such a "bad" connotation with pornography,
maybe less sexual crimes will be committed.  It works in other
places, why not in the U.S.?

Evil Doers and Porn? March 25, 2006

Does anyone know if there is a link between viewing hardcore porn (i.e. child porn, bestiality, sadomasochism, etc.) and crime?  Because it seems to me that many serial killers and other evil people out there are involved with “hardcore” porn in some way.  Many serial killers have a sexual ritual that they perform on their victims.  Is this observation of mine valid?

Measuring Sexual Arousal in the Brain March 25, 2006

Just as a follow up to something Dr. Halavais mentioned…  Going along with the idea of measuring sexual arousal in men and women, there are new studies going on in this field.  As mentioned, the ridgoscan is a device used to measure a male’s sexual arousal during a day, but it is much harder to measure a female’s sexual arousal.  They are now doing brain scans to measure people’s sexual arousal.  When a person is sexually aroused, certain chemicals are released in the brain, and this can be seen on a brain scan.  This fairly new technology is going to be very useful in the study of sexual arousal.  By using brain scans, we can see what types of things turn people on and what types of things turn people off.  Obviously people are different, and something that turns me on might not turn you on, but putting that aside, this is going to be a monumental breakthrough in this field of science.

Pornography as a Scapegoat March 23, 2006

Here is an interesting article that talks about the ills of pornography.   This article is an interview with a rock n roll star.  He talks about how his addiction to porn has changed his life and how he had coped with this addiction and his personal life at the same time.  He says that if we keep “feeding” our young generation porn, then we are going to have a generation that is “not good at anything”.  I totally disagree with Kirk Franklin.  I don’t believe that Pornography is as big as a problem as he makes it out to be.  It seems to me that Mr. Franklin had a problem with porn, and now he is going public with this problem in order to promote his new tour.  I’m sorry, I just can’t see viewing porn as an addicting problem, but I guess I am very different from many people out there.  Unlike Frankiln, I smoke cigarettes, and this is a problem for me.  If his addiction to porn is anything like my addiction to cigarettes, then I feel really bad for him.  I can’t see viewing porn as a physical addiction.  One might become mentally addicted to porn, but I see no way to become physically addicted to porn.  In short, I think that Mr. Franklin is making a big deal out of nothing, and he is bringing down the porn industry,as a publicity stunt.

AVS:A Money Making Scheme March 22, 2006

I find the court ruling talked about by professor Halavais in lecture # 19 unfair. I agree with the man’s defense that he wasn’t producing child porn, he was just allowing people to have access to it. I don’t think it was fair that he got sentenced to 15 years in prison for every child porn Internet sight that he allowed people to view. This man did not produce the child porn, he just performed a service that verified that the people were over a certain age, and once their age was verified, they got access to many pornographic websites, child porn sites being some of them. I feel that the U.S. government took advantage of these 2 American citizens, since they couldn’t go after the creators of the child pornography sites because these sites were stationed overseas.

I was also amazed that these people from the AVS could make so much money just verifying ages. They made about 20 million dollars a year. I had no clue running an AVS was so profitable. The AVS was more profitable than most of, if not all of the sites they licensed for. How hard is it to start an AVS? Obviously it isn’t that easy, or everyone would do it. Does anyone out there know what it takes to start an AVS and keep it running?

KIDDIE PORN STING ONLINE March 15, 2006

Here is an interesting link concerning child pornography.  Here, a chat room that streamed actual child molestation was shut down, and over 20 people were charged with criminal charges.  It is disgusting to think about that the youngest victim was under 18 months old!  What kind of crazy, demented people can get turned on by babies?

Crack Kills and So Does Porn! NOT! March 13, 2006

I cannot believe that some pornography experts compare porn to crack.  I am not an expert in the field of Pornography, yet, but I can 99% surely say that crack is a bigger epidemic than porn.  I would even go as far as to say that porn is not an epidemic!  With everything in this world comes pros and cons.  Porn has been around for a very long time, since the beginning.  The first people on this world engaged in sexual conduct to procreate (a form of porn).  As with everything else, there are going to be people that are obsessed with sex and pornography, and need to engage in or view porn in order to get through the day.  But this goes on with tennis as well.  Should we abolish tennis because a percentage of the people who play it are obsessed with it and need to play it everyday?  How about people who are addicted to eating and/or cigarettes?  These are 2 legal things that kill millions every year.  I am pretty sure that porn doesn’t kill anyone (except the rare occasion of HIV/AIDS in producing it).  It is my opinion that the people who are against porn because it is addicting to some need to do something better with their lives.  It seems to me that these people are probably morally opposed to porn, and they are just looking for ways to defame porn.  Porn does cause problems, but many other things cause many more problems that porn, so let’s focus on those things first and then we can tackle porn if it is still an issue.