thr funniest part of therapy to me is when you first come in and you’re exchanging niceties and they say “hello! how are you” and you say “im fine how are you :)” and then 30 seconds later they put on their therapist voice and say “so how are you doing?” and you go well lisa. believe it or not im doing Bad
the concept of “porn addiction” seems to me a hell of a lot more like a social contagion than any of the things that are commonly described as social contagions. porn use is one of those things that’s generally only a problem when u think of it as a problem, so i suspect widespread acceptance of porn addiction as a real social ill is causing a lot of ppl to pathologize their own unremarkable porn consumption. a real self-fulfilling prophecy.
hmm actually in light of the shit i’ve been reading today it turns out this wasn’t anywhere near cynical enough. the ppl most loudly proclaiming the dangers of pornography addiction are high-control churches and these closely-tied peddlers of various anti-addiction snake oils. making ppl feel ashamed of their sexuality is a marketing tactic.
It turns out that you can commission a lot of studies run on dodgy methodology and deliberately narrow sample sizes that conclude porn is a devouring brain parasite when you have megachurch money, but there isn’t that much funding available for well-constructed, large scale, replicable systematic studies of human sexuality.
I’ve tried before to look into the science of “porn addiction” and it is functionally impossible to get accurate information about it if you don’t have a JSTOR account and academic research training. There are SO MANY right wing grifters, religious quasi-cults and “wellness” companies that use anxiety about porn and sexuality as the hook for recruiting, it has completely poisoned the fucking well of publicly available information.
Okay so Victorian erotica is literally the most heinous, morally bankrupt, horrific shit I’ve ever read - but I’ve read a fair bit, partly from historical interest but also because a while back I helped a friend with a university project she was doing about censorship and pornography in 19th century England.
Anyway I need to share with you all the most hilarious line that has ever been written, circa 1887:
I just. I just… i have discovered something. And I have laughed too much. I have laughed every time I have tried to explain it to someone. I cannot get through this.
Look. Okay.
There are two things you need to know, here.
First: There’s a style of Greek pottery that was popular during the Hellenic period, for which most of the surviving examples are from southern Italy. We call them ‘fish plates’ because, well, they’re plates, and they’re decorated with fish (and other marine life).
Like this one, currently in the Met:
ALT
Or this one, currently in the Cleveland Museum of Art:
ALT
They’re very cool. We’re not 100% sure what they were for, because most of the surviving ones were found as grave goods, but that’s a different post.
The second thing you need to know is that when we (Classics/archaeology/whatever as a discipline) have a collection of artefacts, like vases, sculptures, paintings, etc. and we do not know the name of the artist, but we’re pretty sure one artist made X, Y and Z artefacts, we come up with a name for that artist. There are a whole bunch of things that could be the source for the name, e.g. where we found most of their work (The Dipylon Master) or the potter with whom they worked (the Amasis Painter), a favourite theme (The Athena Painter), the Museum that ended up with the most famous thing they did (The Berlin Painter) or a notable aspect of their style. Like, say, The Eyebrow Painter.
Guess what kind of pottery the Eyebrow Painter made?
TWIGGY & WOODY ALLEN My Generation (2017) dir. David Batty
“His first question was: ‘Who’s your favourite philosopher?’ My heart sank. I wanted to run off and burst into tears. I didn’t know any philosophers. And he probably knew I didn’t. When I said so, he replied, 'Oh come on, everyone has a favourite philosopher.’ It was such a cruel thing to do to a young girl.”
“I was desperate and trying not to cry but I turned the tables on him and asked him to come up with some names - but he couldn’t think of any either! Then he said to me, 'I suppose you’ve read Dickens,’ thinking I hadn’t. So I said, 'Yeah, I read him at school.’ In the end he said, 'Oh, I can’t interview her,’ and left the stage."
one thing to miss about porn on tumblr is how ridiculous people acted like. there was this one catfish on here who would steal other people’s dick pics and pretend they were all him. he’d post circumcised one day and uncut the next like… sir.