https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/pornography-and-the-truth-about-the-pelicot-case/
‘Educate your sons,’ say the marchers’ placards. To me it feels like watching hounds suddenly, inexplicably swerve away from the scent and set off in entirely the wrong direction. What happened to Gisèle has zip all to do with a lack of education. Some of the men on trial are graduates; others are in their twenties, and sex education has been compulsory in France for two decades. Why would M. Miguad think it would improve matters if the word ‘consent’ was to appear in French rape law? I don’t expect there’s ever been a set of rapists in history with a better understanding of the need for consent – or ‘enthusiastic, informed consent’ as my niece’s university has it.
What the protestors don’t seem to grasp is that it’s precisely because these men understood the importance of consent that it carried such erotic appeal to proceed without it. The lack of consent is the point. And it’s not patriarchy that’s to blame, but pornography. It’s porn which leads a human down into the sludgy gutters of his own psyche – and if the feminists of France really wanted to stand with Gisèle, they’d educate their sons to abstain. Not just from the obviously illegal stuff, but from all of it.
Sean Thomas explained it all extremely well in a piece he wrote two decades ago in The Spectator’s Boris Johnson era (unsurprisingly). I hadn’t been long at The Spectator back then, and porn was just beginning to burrow its way into the internet. The piece caused a stir in the office, and I still think it’s to the credit of both Boris and his deputy, Stuart Reid, that they ran it.
Sean had become curious about online porn and he’d followed his curiosity, clicking away from site to site until he found a taboo that hit the spot – after which he lost control. And when he finally kicked the habit, he wrote about it. Sean’s conclusion was this: ‘Most male sexuality is designed by evolution to be an unscratchable itch; a desperate, unsatisfiable urge. It is like hunger: just as you aren’t meant to wake up one day and say, “Oh, I’ve had 6,000 meals, I think I’ll stop eating now”, so men aren’t meant to wake up one day and think, “Oh, I’ve ogled 500 girls, I think I’ll stop staring at them now.” A further problem with this is that when a man starts to explore his more deviant sexual fantasies, he can find himself in an addictive spiral, pursuing ever stranger forms of sex.’
2003 article: https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/self-abuse/
The crisis point came just before last Christmas. I was missing so much sleep by staying up so late that my health started to suffer. One day I caught tonsillitis, which, because I was so run down, turned into a quinsy (a nasty suppurative form). Eventually, I went to the doctor, who sent me straight on to A&E. As I lay in the ward recuperating a few days later, the bitter truth sank in. This is it, Sean, I thought. You’ve really done it this time. You’ve actually wanked yourself into hospital. It was a road-to-Damascus moment. I resolved to find out what was happening to me, to find out if I was alone in my fate.
My first port of call was my friends. Were they suffering the same experience? It quickly turned out that many of my friends were having Net-porn-addiction problems similar or identical to mine. One friend confessed that he had cancelled his Web connection because he was so worried. Another said that he had nearly lost his wife through his constant surfing. Still another told me that had gone on to broadband – was mainlining the stuff –and was spending every hour of every weekend streaming porn videos online.
@Flick Seriously, just drag them into the street and shoot the swine.
Accurate description of the establishment media in general
- replies
- 0
- announces
- 1
- likes
- 1
I imagine we'll never find out because it's assumed that if its male, it's normal, and deep down inside, they enjoy it like that.
@Lady_Penelope AIUI, evolutionarily, it’s so that they can cover as many females as possible when they go into simultaneous oestrous during the breeding season.