Pornography and Its Impact on Women and Society

As the amount and severity of sexually explicit materials grows in our society questions of these materials hurting people have risen. It is said that men get explicit ideas from certain types of music, movies, and pornography. As a result of these explicit ideas, men force women into what they want them to do and to degrade them. The idea that men use force in their relations due to pornographic substances is preposterous. "Men who use force in their relations with women have done so for centuries before the camera [was invented]" (Pally 24). It is obvious that men have abused women before pornography but people still say that some of abuse against women is a result of pornography. Pornography has many positive aspects some are commonly overlooked. In the debate over the issue of pornography and its negative characteristics, rarely does anyone hear the benefits that society has from pornography. Pornography has been seen to help relationships and create more stable and long lasting marriages (Christensen 311). People have preset beliefs about pornography without ever looking at the facts. The belief that pornography is evil in itself is simply wrong (Christensen 309). Although sometimes thought otherwise, pornography is not harmful to women and has many positive effects, such as helping relationships and creating more stable and longer lasting marriages.
Pornography has been around ever since people began to mold clay into human shapes (Cothran, 15). Eventually people began to paint pictures of women in the nude as a form of art. This was also initially seen as crude and as an early form of pornography. Eventually with the invention of the printing press, pornography could easily be given out among the masses, which brought about controversy. In the 1700's an English editor Thomas Bowdler, removed passages from Shakespeare because he thought they were obscene (Cothran,15). Continuing the pornographic evolution was the VCR. The high