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No porn virgins at all? Did he try talking to some religious guys? Not to say that all religiosos are porn-free, but it's more likely.
Also, was that REALLY the best photo the Gazette could come up with? Lame.
I wouldn't be at all surprised if a study of 2000 men resulted in the same outcome, but, I'm sorry, a sample of 20 makes this a study not worth mentioning in passing, let alone blogging about.
Yeah, this PROVES it!
Porn is Harmless!
Not necessarily disputing this, but how can the study conclude this without verifying the type of women these men choose as life partners? Everyone wants to claim to be less shallow than they actually are.
Jus' curious...
God I hate libs. Fuck all of you. I can't wait for civil war.
Spam has meant the first group is much larger than the second group.
@3 All evidence suggests the the religious guys are the biggest consumers of porn.
Furthermore, without a control group (which is the whole joke...there isn't one!), there's just no way to validate the results.
How much did this joker get paid to ask 20 dudes if they have ever looked at porn? I could do a better survey asking people on Facebook.
@2, even before 1980, people found faded old magazines in their uncle's garages.
Which, yes, is anecdotal, but considering a good dozen of those guys are the kind of people who would be deeply horrified a hundred times in the course of the average Savage LoveCast(tm), I think it's pretty representative.
Uh, what?
@22: I didn't say being religious *necessarily* meant you didn't consume porn. I said it was probably more likely, since these would be people who have bought into a system that condemns it.
Get this: Christians are more likely to go to church than atheists. Same thing.
"a good dozen"
Yeah, that's only eight fewer than twenty. How do you admit it's anecdotal and then call it representative? People! Consult a dictionary.
Anyway, if this conclusion is true (which, as I stated for the record, I believe it is), then there should be no problem doing the same study again but with the proper procedures and controls.
Sometimes you hear about them - almost always conservative Christians - talking about how they would watch porn all night, going until 6am.
Now I dunno about you, but that's NOT normal. When I watch porn, I only watch it for 10-30 minutes for a reason - because I jerk off. And when you're not horny, pornography is boring, so I stop watching. Who in the hell watches porn for hours without jerking off?
That is, I think at least a fair amount of people for whom porn is "harmful" have other problems in the first place. Like being sexually repressed conservative Christians.
Well, I don't know about *you*, but I don't really talk to anyone who chats to me about their porn addictions. When I read advice columns that publish questions about porn addictions (from Dan or my local paper), none of the letter writers I can recall make a point of mentioning their religious affiliation. I'd be interested in some kind of (well-grounded) study though, if you can offer it.
Jeebus. I don't even really care about this whole porn/religion thing in the first place; it was an offhand remark and not at all intended as some kind of endorsement of Christians as morally superior or virtuous or whatever.
But now I'm kind of terrified how many people confuse science with personal experience. "I know some people." "I have friends." "I was under the impression." You know who you sound like? Porn-addicted Christians.
The only reason it's in the news is because it has a very forwardable headline attached.
Something being anecdotal doesn't mean it's not representative of a wider truth; it just means it's not *necessarily* representative.
That doesn't make my anecdotal commentary scientific, nor am I claiming it to be. Science is about the testing of hypothesis, and while personal experience doesn't substitute for that, personal experience *does* provide a good starting point of questions to ask or hypothesis to try.
I'd like to see a more scientific study on this as well, but I'm not sure how you'd do one that's *much* better. (For example, how do you differentiate between theoretical men who don't watch porn and men who do watch porn but lie about it? It's scientifically doable, but probably not within the bounds of any study you can get past an ethics committee.) The social sciences are squishy that way.
You can reject the conclusions, but it seems you've rejected reading comprehension as well.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rumspringa
they've probably watched a whole lot of porn during that time. Just saying.
Don't be so hard on the Amish. They have their problems, but their communities offer a lot more elbow room and choice to their adolescents than do a lot of evangelical groups in, say, the bible belt.
I'd say it's about even. Yes, the Amish give 16 year olds the ability to sow their wild oats, but if the kids don't go back to the community, they're on their own... at 16. That would be enough to keep most kids from striking out on their own. Besides, the Amish heap just as much hellfire and damnation on their kids as evangelicals do.
I wonder if they could do a study with infrequent users vs. frequent users? That might be a more realistic way to approach this.
Re: trimmed bush, I've never known a straight guy who insisted on it, but I've known women who won't go down on a guy unless he trims. An aversion to flossing with pubic hair, I guess.
So you claim that the conclusion is drawn from the fact that all men watch porn. OK, then, suppose that by some infinitesimal (but non-zero) chance, the 20 men that the researcher selects happen to all be bestialists and/or pedophiles. What would the conclusions be from these 20 people? I would wager something like "people who watch porn live societally unacceptable and in fact illegal lives, and should be locked up at the first possible opportunity".
Now, you would (rightfully) dismiss this study based upon insufficient sample size and a poor methodology for the selection of targets. Unfortunately, we have to do the same based upon only 20 individuals modeled above. There is no mention of any scientific selection of these 20 (ie, the pool should be a sampling of the population at whole), and even if they were carefully selected 20 is not enough to be able to make the kind of conclusive conclusions that the researcher does! The control group also goes a long way towards establishing whether any trends that are discovered are a result of being in that specific group or just something prevalent in a population as a whole.
Personally, I agree with the conclusions drawn, and in fact I would take it one step further and say that there are benefits to porn in a male population (men at home jerking off are not likely to be out committing sexually aggressive acts against women). However, my agreement and your agreement and everyone else's agreement does not make this a scientifically validated conclusion...it needs to be more rigorously tested.
#39/JunieGirl: "I've had the exact OPPOSITE reaction--most of the guys I've been with tolerate the lack of pubic hair in porn, but they prefer women with full bush or only lightly trimmed. I've only had one partner who wanted slick-as-a-whistle trimming."
Women who don't like porn tend to feel that porn creates specific desires in men. That may be true in some cases but I think it's much more common for men to be attracted to porn that reflects their existing desires.
And you could say the same thing about porn itself. Women who don't like porn tend to feel that porn creates "sex-crazed" men. Again, that may be true in some cases but I think most men are "sex-crazed" (relative to women) to begin with and it's for that reason that they turn to porn. In contrast, women are "romance-crazed" which is why they flock to romance novels and chick flicks instead of porn.