The IEET is a 501(c)3 non-profit, tax-exempt organization registered in the State of Connecticut in the United States. Please give as you are able, and help support our work for a brighter future.
At TED2009, audience member Cindy Gallop gave a 4-minute presentation that became one of the event’s most talked about. Speaking from her personal experience, she argued that hardcore pornography had distorted the way a generation of young men think about sex. She talked about how she was fighting back with the launch of a website—http://makelovenotporn.com—to correct the myths being propagated.
It takes guts to write a piece such as this, most are not interested, or afaid to go into it. Have nothing to add, save for an anecdote related to how our foresight is tenuous: before 1964-'65, that which was erotica was buried and sublimated- though the late fifties (the era of Elvis the Pelvis) saw erotica v. crawling slowly towards the mainstream. In '65 our grammar school took us to see 'Those Magnificent Men In Their Flying Machines', which contained a v. brief scene of a woman posing outdoors for a nude painting.
After the film we youngsters said words to the effect that the future would increasingly provide more nudity and how it was a brave new world (not in so many words) of pleasure
-- "the big bright green pleasure machine" Simon and Garfunkel sang about a year or so later. The unspoken yet clear warning from adults in '66, '67, was that youth would become so intoxicated by the burgeoning Sirens of erotica that they would crash on the rocks of licentiousness. The Summer of Love had a widely viewed TV advert showing Bonnie, of Bonnie & Clyde, leaning naked out of a window- the window sill covering enough anatomy to keep it legal.
Then in '68, prudery flew out that window; previously, sexuality had been considered vaguely dirty or at least sinful-- all of a sudden it was the In Thing, rivaled only by marijuana and the old standby of alcoholic escapism.
However rather than youth being intoxicated by erotic Sirens, erotica morphed into porn and porn eventually became as commercialized as possible, to the point of Phone Sex, which is IMO more saltpeter than Spanish Fly. So our learned elders in '65 need not have worried so much, sexuality would turn out not to be so intoxicating-- it would become Big Business, tending to reduce to the lowest denominator in satisfying the precious marketplace of ideas and images.
Bonnie Parker morphed into Seka; Brave New World became more akin to Clockwork Orange.
IEET Blog |
email list |
newsletter |
The IEET is a 501(c)3 non-profit, tax-exempt organization registered in the State of Connecticut in the United States.
Contact: Executive Director, Dr. James J. Hughes,
Williams 119, Trinity College, 300 Summit St., Hartford CT
06106 USA
Email: director @ ieet.org phone:
860-297-2376
Listen/View
IEET Blog
It takes guts to write a piece such as this, most are not interested, or afaid to go into it. Have nothing to add, save for an anecdote related to how our foresight is tenuous: before 1964-'65, that which was erotica was buried and sublimated- though the late fifties (the era of Elvis the Pelvis) saw erotica v. crawling slowly towards the mainstream. In '65 our grammar school took us to see 'Those Magnificent Men In Their Flying Machines', which contained a v. brief scene of a woman posing outdoors for a nude painting.
After the film we youngsters said words to the effect that the future would increasingly provide more nudity and how it was a brave new world (not in so many words) of pleasure
-- "the big bright green pleasure machine" Simon and Garfunkel sang about a year or so later. The unspoken yet clear warning from adults in '66, '67, was that youth would become so intoxicated by the burgeoning Sirens of erotica that they would crash on the rocks of licentiousness. The Summer of Love had a widely viewed TV advert showing Bonnie, of Bonnie & Clyde, leaning naked out of a window- the window sill covering enough anatomy to keep it legal.
Then in '68, prudery flew out that window; previously, sexuality had been considered vaguely dirty or at least sinful-- all of a sudden it was the In Thing, rivaled only by marijuana and the old standby of alcoholic escapism.
However rather than youth being intoxicated by erotic Sirens, erotica morphed into porn and porn eventually became as commercialized as possible, to the point of Phone Sex, which is IMO more saltpeter than Spanish Fly. So our learned elders in '65 need not have worried so much, sexuality would turn out not to be so intoxicating-- it would become Big Business, tending to reduce to the lowest denominator in satisfying the precious marketplace of ideas and images.
Bonnie Parker morphed into Seka; Brave New World became more akin to Clockwork Orange.