Men's Group

I saw a documentary late at night on the history of censorship in the movies. When censorship came to be voluntarily enforced on Hollywood in the early 1930s, after they banned nudity, the censors began to take out things that were even mild. One common thing that they cut out of films, oddly enough, were feet.

Once you censor the explicit stuff, the innocent stuff becomes more enticing to people. I mean, if you ban things like intercourse, suddenly scenes of kisses become masturbatory material. Or, as it was in Hollywood in the 30s and 40s, smoking becomes a substitute. Thus, replacing STI's, most of which are curable, with heart disease and lung cancer.

It's like the kid who couldn't get Playboy and so wacked off to National Geographic, or even Time Magazine.

It might make a real difference. There's a reason why rapes and sexual assaults have dropped as porn has become more ubiquitous. (Which by the way, does drain the urgency out of banning pornography, along with making opponents look rather foolish on their claims.) You'd much rather have people who don't feel teased at the mere sight of ankles or adorned earlobes. It's much better if sexual arousal is associated with something overt rather than something subtle that can be triggered by accident. I'm not talking about "mixed signals" I'm talking about frustration building.