not a very interesting post

Some sort of a private journal post.

In this week's sociology class, there was a rating of activities which were deemed inappropriate, by the students. I was't surprised when I saw "porn" listed as '5' out of a scale of '5'. Obviously, this rating was given by a girl. When asked to justify her views, she gave a typical goody-2-shoes answer which ran along this line : "Watching porn puts ideas in people's heads to want to rape women. Therefore, porn promotes rape."

From the tutor's pov, porn provides an outlet for sexual release by men, thereby lowering their pent up instincts and preventing rape.

It's somewhat of a grey area(in the Singapore context) of how many percent of men actually watch porn or masturbate on a regular basis. Survey statistics don't tie in with daily interactions amongst friends. The bottom line is - People are not truthful in the ways they portray their less-socially-accepted traits amongst friends.

Take a look at this excerpts :

"Roughly 36 percent, or 278,000, of the 783,000 active Internet users in Singapore visited adult Web sites in December." (assuming 50% of Internet users are men)
"Roughly two-thirds of the adult site visitors were men who, incidentally, tended to stay longer online. On average, they spent 71.5 minutes surfing the sites compared with 29.1 minutes for the women."
"And who were the main culprits? Students, who made up a third of all visitors, followed pretty evenly by general management staff, non-manual employees and professionals."
source : ZDNetAsia, (Michelle Tan), 2001


There is somewhat of a cycle which promotes even more play-acting. Let me put it purely in the context of pornography. A typical cycle goes like this - A guy truthfully or untruthfully proclaims he does not watch porn. This guy receives approving nods from many girls. Other guys see that this is something girls really like. Guys follow this portrayal trend in order to foster good images of pornography nondescript to his female social circle, so that he can increase his chances of finding a female partner who obviously must come from his social circle. Girls, on seeing that it is indeed heartening and "normal" for most guys to be this impression of "good" boys, demand even more of it, further escalating the cycle.

To clarify, the above point was a referral to watching porn specifically and not to other sexual connotations. Porn can range from softcore to hardcore. I would classify watching porn as a guy intentionally seeking visual material of women(clothed, semi-naked or naked) and masturbating to it. So a guy might say he doesn't watch porn because he feels it's wrong, but he might not be saying the whole story of him jerking off to a FHM magazine.

OF COURSE, there are men out there who really have a lower sexual drive and just don't watch porn. Well, congrats buddy, you're the man. I feel for you.

Society understands that humans have basic instincts which will drive them to selfish pursuits that are socially unacceptable because great harm will come to the collective group. We create socially acceptable standards to keep our desires under check. So ideally, we should hover somewhere between desire ignorance and desire addiction.

But here's where the irony can be seen. Porn (which is a multi-billion dollar industry, thus testifying to its demand) provides this very means of letting men release their sexual tension without causing harm to others. Yet, in part due to the cycle mentioned above, this girl in my sociology class had an upbringing which taught her that even porn is highly socially unacceptable.

Now, let's take a sample size of 1 million girls of similar upbringing, put in a island with 1 million guys, in the current world context.

Similarly, we take another sample of exactly the same ingredients on another island, except that the girls now find porn socially acceptable.

Which island do you think will render the higher rape statistics?

Now girls, it is imperative to understand this - If I were to give an analogy of what sex is to men as it is to girls typically, I would use the example of shoe shopping; Men still need to buy shoes for their activities, but women love to buy shoes at every given opportunity. We have to be objective in viewing such facts of life as it is. There is no point in trying to put yourself in the other person's shoes and thinking "no? I don't understand why this is so important to him/her. I don't see why it's such a big deal?" If we understood entirely the other side of the story, we would be half man, half woman.

Having said that, I do see where some girls are coming from when they cannot accept their boyfriends watching porn. You might feel that since he has you, why should he seek such forms of releasing his tensions? Or maybe you just don't like the idea of him jerking off to other women cuz you feel like he's cheating on you. All I can offer to comfort is that porn and girlfriends are 2 very different things. Women shouldn't degrade themselves by being confused with the comparison with porn. One is a tool, the other is his soul-mate. A feeble and weak excuse, yes, but I am a guy and I admit I appreciate but don't understand women's psyche.

But wait, I can hear some women shouting, "Did you just say one is a tool?!! See! Porn is objectifying women!" I beg to differ. We don't associate Heath Ledger with the Joker in real life. His acting is a tool to portray the bad character. However, we are not objectifying him but only his acting. Women who act in porn movies do so for the monetary benefits. Well maybe some do it for the glamour, that I wouldn't know. They wouldn't survive in the industry if they felt it was them in real life having sex with all the porn actors. I believe there a strong degree of detachment of their "selfs" from the porn role. Feeling pity and wrong-ness for them will serve to find the pity-er guilty of stereotypical judgement. To further argue the case, have you ever sneaked into an r21 movie or a dance club? While flashing the fake id or whatever props you choose to enhance your acting, you are merely detaching your real self from your body in order to reap the benefits of entering. I wouldn't call that objectifying you as you are. Well, so maybe we can consider it an objectifying of the body in pornography. Looking at a nude painting? Same thing. No cheating and adultery involved. (There's is a passage in christianity text somewhere about lusting after a woman is already commiting adultery, if I'm not wrong. Okay, I'm not going into religion. When the day for my judgement comes, if I were to meet God in the christian way, I suppose I would have some explaining to do then. As of now, my reasoning and justification pertains to worldly society only. But secretly inside, I really do wish that when we die, we all go to meet some universal God and he tells us that we have all been worshipping him in the wrong way because of prideful men who want things their way, and gathers us on a grassy patch to have some tea. Muslim, Catholic, Taoist, etc. All together happily as one finally.)

Another important lesson for girls to take away is : Don't call men bastards for having sexual inclinations so much more often than you would. It's like us calling you sluts for always visiting the shoe shop. It all boils down to biological makeup in the 2 sexes.

In any case, I have digressed from my original point of this post. I think I have been relatively open-minded among most of my friends. For example, if I am the central link in bringing 2 groups of people together to form a project group and there is a miscommunication, I will tell each side about their unhappiness with the other and explain that it's just a misunderstanding. I don't like to sweep things under the carpet and cook up a fantasy scenario suchthat both sides can continue working with smiles, but hate each other inside. This is just an example to illustrate my point. So back to the point. Recently, I got second-guessed by a friend and it got me quite irritated because I'm not the sort who deceives to get my hidden motives. If I had another motive which tied in with you reaching your objective, I will state it clearly. Most people who know me well know that trait of mine; that's why I get called "bastardy" in a friendly way very often cuz of my blatent upfrontness.

Of course, this personality trait of mine does not apply sometimes when I'm in a relationship with a girl. Sometimes, I stress the word "SOMETIMES", it is important to tei gong with your partner when it comes to smaller inconsequential things. To save it from escalating into something much bigger and ends with both saying "why did we even quarrel in the first place." Sadly, I've not learnt this skill masterfully yet and my bluntness often gets me into trouble.