Shane wrote:

...I wouldn't say that pornography distorts anyone's mind, any more than violent movies (etc.) do, either. But if you're fed a steady diet of the stuff, with no corrective factor from other material (a healthy sexual partnership, a fondness for great literature, psychotherapy...), I think it might have some bearing on how you view reality, relationships, etc...

I think there's some confusion here. Reality in 2001 includes rather large measures of pornography.

I'm guessing when you say 'if you're fed a steady diet of the stuff' that you're referring to people whose main means of sexual expression lies in, shall we say, encounters with the printed page (or whatever medium), rather than with human beings? You might like to give a thought to the alternatives for people temporarily or permanently lacking a 'healthy sexual partnership'. (And what's healthy, anyway?)

& Neil wrote:

It happens in every community, throughout the whole of society, every minute of every day. Reality is constructed for us from birth. We are 'fed a steady diet' of something we like to think of as 'reality' throughout our lives, whether it's nude art or billboard posters for jeans.

I'm not 100% sure what you're getting at here, Neil. It's not all that difficult to avoid the kind of conditioning that I think you might be talking about, ie advertising? -- at least not in rural UK.

It seems to me that the only thing people are involuntarily fed is ignorance. My original point was that censorship is a far greater evil than pornography (in my opinion).

I'd also say that protection from ideas can lead to consequences that are the reverse of those you might expect, on the rebound principle. (I won't bore you all with the personal anecdotes...)

Tavia