The Denver Post continued its report today on the mainstreaming of the adult entertainment industry. This time, the publication took a closer look at the idea of porn as a public-health hazard, something the newspaper said, has captured the imagination of many who oppose adult entertainment. The idea: Porn distorts sex into something grotesque and violent.
Pornographers and the genre's many fans, on the other hand, say porn is healthy and fun. Oppressive forces for too long bottled up everyone's natural urge to explore sexuality, including through the media. The times have shifted, they say, and it's for the better.
"I think it's understandable that it's becoming more and more mainstream in our society," Ken Boenish, president of New Frontier Media in Boulder, told the Denver Post. "It's kind of curious that in our society violence is so acceptable," but sex isn't.
The story reported that the success of corporations like New Frontier has contributed to the contention that "what used to be very kinky is now just a little kinky, and what used to be a little kinky is now incorporated into everyday life," said Elaine Leass, the publisher of the Oyster, a sex magazine that has been distributed in Colorado since 1976. Ads for escorts, erotic massages and other services fill its pages.
"Sex is so important in your life. People who pooh-pooh sex are kidding themselves," she said. "In everyday life, people can be so depressed if they aren't having a good sex life. So we get rid of depression. We want people to feel good."
The report went on to say that anti-porn activists have contended that there’s a physical addiction to porn and for young people who grow up in the porno-surround, ideas about the very nature of sex that are warped, stunted and toxic.
Nonsense, Paul Cambria, general counsel to the Adult Freedom Foundation, a porn industry trade organization, told the Denver Post.
"We have solid scientific data that you can become intoxicated with alcohol, and it impairs your physical and mental ability, the same with drugs, but we don't have that for adult entertainment," says "There are addicts for everything," he said. "Video game addicts, gambling addicts. All sorts of people out there. You don't outlaw underwear because there are people who have underwear fetishes."
"I know marriages that broke up over money," he continued. "Well, we don't ban money."
The widening spread of porn doesn't illustrate a metastasizing cancer, Cambria said. Instead, it speaks to a healthy adult desire that always has been there, but held back by powerful scolds.
Increased access to porn, he contended, has eroded stigmas about adult entertainment. People increasingly feel "less intimidated to express their honest feelings" about the genre, which has led to an ever-expanding embrace by mainstream culture of the industry's surging line of products.
It's a self-reinforcing loop, he said: More pornography and better access leads to greater acceptance, which leads to more porn and better access.
The report concluded by asserting that if Cambria's formula is correct, then expect porn's range to expand even more.
