I don't get the fuss over a 24-hour porn channel in South Africa. For the fundamentalists, this is yet another sign of the 'end times'. For the alarmists, this is yet another death-blow to marriages. For the rest of us, this is... boring.
We already live in a society with strip clubs and adult stores all around, and Playboy magazines on almost every magazine rack. We live in a society where there are condoms at high schools, lingerie adverts in my Edgars Club magazine, pointless nudity in movies, the Big Brother shower scenes, prostitutes on the street corners, and even the Miss South Africa contestants parading around in bikinis.
Causing a fuss about a channel which the majority of us cannot access is like closing the barn door after the horse has bolted. How many people really have Top TV, and how many of those people are going to go to the effort to actually buy a special decoder when whatever they want is available for free from Google or at a low price from their corner video store?
I do NOT buy the argument that watching pornography leads to violence in men, rape or unfaithfulness in marriage. It's a bit like saying 'Women who wear skimpy skirts deserve to get raped' or 'Women should not dress inappropriately because they might tempt the men into cheating on their wives'.
The responsibility for rape, for adultery or for chronic masturbation lies strictly with the man who is viewing the material. Nobody would force me to google something, and nobody would force me to pick up a magazine... I would have to choose to. As it is, I choose not to, but I'm not going to sneer at anybody who does.
How about this for a fresh viewpoint: if you want to save marriages, ban all women from eating chocolate and fatty foods. If men were more attracted to their sexy wives, maybe they wouldn't need porn.
That argument is about as stupid as blaming the break-up of marriages or rape on pornography. In my opinion, 90% of the desirability from pornography comes from its taboo status. If we got deluged in hardcore porn every time we switched on the TV instead of adverts for beer and perfumes, maybe the whole matter would fade into the background and people would quietly find something else to obsess over.'
In conclusion: there's plenty of porn already, so one difficult-to-access channel isn't such big news. Alternatively, porn isn't the problem: it's the deeper reason of why men are watching it. I'd rather men watch porn, get it out of their system and move on with their lives than spend their entire life feeling as if they're struggling against some dark 'sin of the flesh' implanted in them by the devil... which is worse ultimately?
If you think your man isn't faithful enough, it could be worse. He could be a rabbit.
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