www.alternet.org/media/148142/should_we_worry_whether_porn_has_hijacked_our_sexuality/?page=entire
"A new book by scholar Gail Dines asserts that society's overconsumption of pornography and the ridiculous extremes of today's mainstream pornography have greatly undermined our ability to have meaningful sexual partnerships. In Pornland: How Porn Has Hijacked our Sexuality, Dines traces the history of the porn industry from Playboy and Penthouse, to today's brutal fare that resembles nothing less than the videotaped sexual assault of women.
As an example, Dines quotes from the introductory text on a typical porn Web site:
'Do you know what we say to things like romance and foreplay? We say fuck off! This is not another site with half-erect weenies trying to impress bold sluts. We take gorgeous young bitches and do what every man would REALLY like to do. We make them gag till their makeup starts running, and then they get all other holes sore -- vaginal, anal, double penetrations, anything brutal involving a cock and an orifice. And then we give them the sticky bath.'
This is not the extreme end of a complex porn continuum -- it is typical of today's mainstream porn freely available online, often to boys as young as 11. Not only does Dines go to great lengths to research the depth of porn's standard fare, but she also details how the porn industry is consumed with profits, and the effect this has on its male viewers. Says Dines, "The pornographers did a kind of stealth attack on our culture, hijacking our sexuality and then selling it back to us, often in forms that look very little like sex but a lot like cruelty.""
There is more at the link, and in the book.
The weird thing about it is that internet porn has basically raped our society. In the past there were books like Lady Chatterley's Lover, and subsequently pornographic magazines, but all of these things were easily regulated and subject to boundaries, society had the power to reject things it didn't like.
If you wanted hardcore porn, you'd need to go to a licensed sex shop - and most people wouldn't do that. And even there, the videos, while explicit, had boundaries and rules, because they were all rated and subject to censorship by the BBFC.
But suddenly in the last decade or so, we've got snuff movies, child pornography, bestiality, etc., just a few clicks away. By comparison the 'triple penetration' or whatever on the mainstream porn sites are perceived as unexceptional/unobjectionable. And as a result many of the previous restrictions on sex shop porn have been abandoned too. How did we end up with this?
There have been complaints about 'lads' mags' in newsagents, but they don't begin to compare with what's online - and accessed by most men:
"Researchers were conducting a study comparing the views of men in their 20s who had never been exposed to pornography with regular users.
But their project stumbled at the first hurdle when they failed to find a single man who had not been seen it. "
90% of children aged 8-16 have seen pornography on the internet. It's ubiquitous and almost unavoidable.