Banning Pornography

This is another old piece I dug up, in relation to my last post regarding the Hayden Kho scandals. If I'm not mistaken, I wrote it as a favor for Ktle who needed an "editorial" to publish on her English class newspaper project.

Pornography is but a form of temptation. Like every other form of temptation, pornography in itself is not a bad thing. However, this does not mean that it should be condoned. While that in itself is not bad, its effects are. As is stated in Encarta?s definition of pornography, it is ?films, magazines, writings, photographs, or other materials that are sexually explicit and intended to arouse sexual excitement in their audience.?

Sexual arousal begets sexual gratification. This is where the bad things start. This is the point where crimes of passion are committed: adultery, rape, sexual harassment, incest. These crimes are what alarmed the authorities and triggered the banning of the said materials.

Banning pornography is a noble idea, however, not a very practical one. First of all, sex is a part of human nature. Even if pornography no longer abounds, fact would remain that humans are sexual beings by nature. They would keep finding ways to satisfy their sexual needs, whether directly through intercourse or partially through pornography. For as long as humans have sexual drive, sex crimes would never cease.

Another thing that makes the banning of pornography not practical is the media. Nowadays in this modern world, there are myriad ways of passing along information. There?s the Internet, TV, cellphones, mobile players and other such media that could easily transmit all sorts of data from one to another. Such gadgets are vulnerable to the clutches of pornography. How many cellphones today don?t have at least one sexually explicit content media content? How many exhibitionists flaunt their wares through the Internet via webcams? These may seem like small things, often overlooked as individual perversions, but these are also forms of pornography. So even if the authorities somehow manage to eliminate porn videos and magazines, technology still provides ways for pornography to flourish.

Banning or condoning pornography has minimal effect in its power over people. Pornography is here to stay. That is one fact that everyone must deal with. While its effects spare no one, it is still up to the individual if he or she will act upon it. And that is what should worry the authorities, not the pornography.

new discovery, blogging, Hayden Kho and hypocrisy

Well. I just forgot what I was about to type when I say that there is now an option for manually setting the date and time of your blog entry. Kinda long overdue if you ask me, since this was initially the reason why I blogged in Blogger and not here in Multiply--I just made the switch out of necessity when some glitch prevented me from posting there.

So anywho. What was I supposed to write again? Hell, I can't remember. Talk about memory gap. Oh well.

Times like this, I miss my old functioning brain. Was just reading some of Patrisha's works earlier and I kinda feel envious that she could write all those good stuff while I could hardly hold a coherent thought these days. Really gotta flex some mental muscles if I don't wanna go senile at the age of thirty. Horrible thought, that is. And thirty is just when you're supposed to start the prime years of your life. Gah.

Just remembered what I was thinking before I got distracted by the time-date thing, thank God. Katrina Halili and Hayden Kho. Seriously. It's all everyone was talking about practically all day today. And the whole week, for that matter. The whole thing has everyone in a fever pitch.

Practically every female co-worker thinks Hayden is a maniac, what with the supposed(?) 41-episode sex videos that came out. I don't. I'm a feminist, yes, but I know enough about guys to realize that that many sex partners or sexual encounters for a healthy, good-looking and popular guy is nothing out out of the normal. The only thing that skews the whole picture is that fact that they were captured on video and broadcast for the whole world to see.

Privacy is a very different thing from hypocrisy. Sex is nothing new and everyone sooner or later takes part of it, so why condemn those who do it captured on video? Why condemn them for taking pleasure in doing the act? Just because the female in the video enjoys it and they don't doesn't give them the right to condemn her and label her a slut. Hypocrisy sucks.