Continuing the study of pornography and its ill effects on society, and all our lives.

Reader Discretion Advised.

The topic being what it is, some content may be disturbing and offensive to readers.

(And once more, while this isn’t meant to be comprehensive analysis, it is a big post with lots of links, so feel free to return at another time to take in the rest of it — if you’re so inclined!)

Part 1 examined the origins of Hugh Hefner’s Playboy.

The first openly pornographic magazine, Playboy (and its many imitators) has won the culture wars.

Yet the ultimate puppet-masters continue their aggressive campaign to insinuate these distorted sexual values into every aspect of our lives, to wit: mainstreaming of homosexual activity, promoting the damaging falsehood of “transgenderism,” “normalizing” those 500 so-called “genders” (note the switch in terms from ‘sex’ to ‘gender’ in the 1990s), etc..

However—should we not look back and scrutinize, too, what is it exactly that Playboy and company were pushing in their pages?

And what have been the effects on society and social institutions left in their wake?

DEFINITION OF TERMS

FIRST, a definition:

WordReference Random House Unabridged Dictionary of American English © 2022

por•nog•ra•phy (pôr nog′rə fē), n.

obscene writings, drawings, photographs, or the like, esp. those having little or no artistic merit.

Greek pornográph(os) writing about harlots (porno-, combining form of pórnē harlot + -graphos -graph) + -y3
1840–50;

[ SOURCE. ]

Pornography (dictionary definitions above) has been ubiquitous in our environment for a few decades now: in advertising, media, business, cinema—even in the way ordinary people present themselves to the public. Several generations have now grown up in a world filled with images that just some decades back would have been deemed unacceptable in polite or decent society.

Does anyone still take the measure of the “decency” or “obscenity” of anything anymore?

Have you seen what they’re teaching in grade schools now? Story1 Story2 Story3 Story4 Story5 (You’re just a ‘bigot’ per Salon) Story6 (California)

And, of course, with the internet, accessibility to porn has exploded for everyone of any age, anywhere, and much of it free. Some estimate the industry’s monetary value runs into the tens (maybe hundreds?) of billions of dollars.

Yet early on, Hugh Hefner, founder-publisher of Playboy magazine, claimed with a straight face, and on non-existent authority that loosening the restrictions on sexual imagery and anything-goes sexual activity was a “moral good” since such behavior was “normal” for average Americans. Of course, his “normative facts” referred to the now-discredited, pseudoscientific “sexual behavior reports” of Alfred Kinsey from the mid-20th century.

He also stressed—again, with no evidentiary proof—that the “sexual repression” by Judeo-Christian religions was the root cause of all the psychological stress, “sexual deviancy” (yes, he did use the word in the Buckley video), and sexual crimes that existed, and that many of these moral rules are “not good for people.” He advised tossing out these strict sexual mores to make for a “truly monogamous” society. (Yes, he actually said that absurd statement.)

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SO, SHALL WE TAKE A GOOD LOOK AT WHAT PLAYBOY WAS ACTUALLY PUSHING WAY BACK THEN?

Teresa's Impromptu Scribblings

Playboy and Porn, Part 2: Playboy's Real…

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