Exposure to Porn and PTSD in Girls and Women

Image by Alexas_Fotos from Pixabay

This post may be a bit of a hodgepodge. Bear with me.

The following are comments on a post at Feminist Current regarding PTSD in female adolescents caused by repeated exposure to online pornography. Comments from The Real Cie are my thoughts.
People with mental illness as a whole are being let down by the mental health system.
People with PTSD are being let down by the mental health system.
Women and girls are being let down by the mental health system.
The mental health system needs to be overhauled. However, in a society where people with disabilities are made pariahs and forced into poverty and health care is placed out of reach for many people, I don't foresee changes coming anytime soon.

Pet peeve time:
The word "womxxn" makes my eyes go crossed and my brain go stabby. There are no "womxxn". There are only women. Stop doing this!

Sarah aka Anemone • a day ago

minor correction: Bessel van der Kolk is male.

This is such an important subject. I spend way too much time online because I'm isolated 

due to disability and trauma, and I have to say it's actually helped me with some things, 

but it's never the same as healthy in-person relationships. Unfortunately most of us live in large

 cities where it's hard to connect with people. I think we are going to have to redesign cities so 

they are more people friendly, less car-friendly, both in terms of urban design and in terms of 

social structures, so people can connect with more people irl.

That might help with preventing online trauma, but unfortunately, that won't help with trauma

 in the family, which pushes some of us online. I watched a TED video recently (

Watch the video

by Nadine Burke Harris, who talked about ACE scores and how revolutionary it is to know that 

adverse childhood experiences contribute so much to physical health down the road, but when it 

comes to public response, crickets. People find trauma too hard to talk about. I lost my family 

because people find trauma too hard to talk about, so they'd rather push me out than deal with it. 

I guess that's where people who can deal with trauma need to step up.

therealcie  Sarah aka Anemone • 16 minutes ago

"I'm isolated due to disability and trauma."

Me too. People like us are very vulnerable, and I'm fully aware that no-one gives a flying shit.

Hella Dea • a day ago

You know the stages of grief charts.
I would really like one made for womxxn with ptsd.

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  therealcie  Hella Dea • 12 minutes ago
  

  
  

  Unless the PTSD is addressed and worked on, I don't know that there are stages for it other than "acute" and "always there fucking up your life forever." 
• Anyway, those are the two stages I've experienced with it, and addressing and working on it isn't as easy as it sounds when there are monetary and other barriers to finding a therapist. When it comes to therapists, I've had bad experiences and don't trust them damn crooked vultures. I've also found that there is a lot of sexism in therapy and often women's trauma is written off as "female hysteria."
• 
  
• Springheeledjim • a day ago
  " Studies increasingly show that the way young people consume social media, 24/7, is not only leading them to feel less socially connected, but also leading them to decreased mental wellness. "
  
  I'd agree with this.
  
  But as the father of a teenage girl who spends much of her life online, I don't necessarily think it's the sexualisation and pornification of the internet that is the biggest problem.
  
  Online bullying ( mentioned only in passing in this article ) is perhaps a bigger problem. And the feeling that everyone else is ' living their best life ' ( as the expression goes ) while you may be suffering from issues of self-esteem and/or worthlessness, or lack of direction... is perhaps a bigger problem still.
  
  I've already agreed on previous threads that young people have too much access to porn, and that it's warping their views on sexuality. I have no intention of revisiting that argument now. And I'm not saying that online porn is not a problem.
  
  But this article seems to be suggesting that it's the main reason why the internet is causing young teens mental health problems. And I don't think that's true.

therealcie  Springheeledjim • 23 minutes ago

Since you've made it clear that you enjoy porn and believe that full legalization of prostitution is a positive thing, I doubt you can possibly understand how porn can very negatively impact a young woman even if she is never drawn into it herself.

My father never treated me as a sex object (thankfully) but he had plenty of adult magazines around. I don't think the early Playboys had a negative impact. Early Playboy had art nudes as opposed to lurid pictures of young women fully spread-eagled and either leering at the camera or looking like a deer in the headlights.

My father's attitudes towards porn made me realize quite early on that all men, even good men like my father, see women as nothing but pieces of ass. It was upsetting, discouraging, and led me to realize that my father would side with creepy men over me, whom I became aware he saw as a second-class citizen. He may not have been aware of this himself, but he did see me and all women that way.

My father would always talk about women in terms of their physical appearance, not their accomplishments. Even as an adult, it was discouraging to me when he referred to Winona Ryder as "that plainest of plain Janes". Being quite a plain Jane myself, it cemented for me that my father saw women as things, not people.

I hope you will at least try to be a little careful of how you present your attitudes regarding women where your daughter is concerned. You may not realize it, but she is probably well aware that her father sees women as objects. You may be a good father in other regards, and I hope I am right in the belief that you do not sexually objectify your daughter. However, a man's attitude towards the objectification of women can have a lifelong impact on his female children. Your attitudes towards porn may be harming your daughter more than you realize.

Queer and Homosexual are Not Synonymous + The Problem With "Drag Kids"

This is a response to a new post by Meghan Murphy on Feminist Current about the troubling phenomenon of "Drag Kids."

The "queering" of vulnerable young people has gotten way out of hand.

Sadly, gay and queer are synonymous in most people's minds. Which means if you criticize any aspect of Queer Culture, you are labeled a homophobe.

There's certainly nothing wrong with being homosexual. There's nothing wrong with being a boy who prefers "feminine" things, although here we are getting into the question of gendering the way a person dresses and the activities and things that they like. However, being homosexual and expressing oneself in a way deemed by society as more consistent with the opposite sex are two different things.

As a gender critical feminist, I feel that the modern insistence on rigid gender norms is setting things way, way back, and it's doing more harm than good.

Just like beauty pageants for girls, these Drag Kid pageants expose vulnerable young people to predatory behavior by adults with a predilection for sexualizing minors.

~Sly Has Spoken~

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Children of the Sex Trade Documentary

Can we please stop pretending that prostitution is a "victimless crime" and "empowering to women?"
The Left has a real problem with wanting to appear "sexually liberated," to say that there is nothing wrong with "sex work" and that anyone who is critical of the sex industry is nothing but a big nasty old SWERF.
While it is true that there are some people who make and sell independent videos featuring themselves, possibly performing solo, possibly with partners, and these people are all consenting adults who are enjoying themselves and are not being coerced in any way, these individuals are in the minority. I am not talking about these people.
The majority of the "sex industry" is made up of trafficked persons who are not having a swinging old time making money having free-wheeling, happy-go-lucky sex. Many of these trafficked persons are children.
Stop defending the rights of punters/johns to buy sex without fear of repercussion. Studies have shown that "sex workers" in places that have legalized prostitution across the board are treated reprehensibly by buyers and not protected by law enforcement.
The Nordic Model is a better approach. It protects trafficked persons from being punished for prostitution while punishing those who purchase sex.
The "Happy Hooker" is a myth. The majority of people forced into "sex work" by economic circumstance or by other people are far from happy.

~Sly Has Spoken~

Image copyright juliahenze

purchased from 123rf.com

Marines Nude Photo Scandal and Apologizing for Predatory Men

Image source and reference article at The Daily Beast

What is wrong with these assholes? Men and service people should both be furious with them. They make the Marines look bad, and they make men look like creepy, immature, misogynistic predators.

There are some who use this as a "reason" why women shouldn't be allowed to serve in the Military, because, apparently, men are predators who don't know how to behave themselves in the presence of women. If I were a man, I would be very angry about this attitude.

Oddly enough, when working in mixed company, I do not and never have felt the need to jump the bones of every man I work with, and posting nude photos of them without their permission would never have occurred to me. It would have been fairly easy for me to obtain nude photos of men I'd worked with about 20 years ago, as I was working as an artist's model for part of my income.

So, in that instance, I sometimes posed with male models. Who were naked, and so was I. We didn't touch each other. We chatted with each other to pass the time. There was no "ZOMG, we have to have sex NOW!" attitude. 

Mature people can behave respectfully around persons of the opposite sex (or the same sex, if they are homosexual) and not try to get everybody in the sack. 

Insisting on treating other people like sex objects is NOT normal behavior. We should stop excusing such behavior by saying things like "boys will be boys." Most boys (and men) are not predators by nature. Let's quit apologizing for and defending those who behave in a predatory fashion.

~Sly Has Spoken~

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