The Porn Myth

At a benefit the other night, I saw Andrea Dworkin, the anti-porn activist most famous in the eighties for her conviction that opening the floodgates of pornography would lead men to see real women in sexually debased ways. If we did not limit pornography, she argued—before Internet technology made that prospect a technical impossibility—most men would come to objectify women as they objectified porn stars, and treat them accordingly. In a kind of domino theory, she predicted, rape and other kinds of sexual mayhem would surely follow.


The feminist warrior looked gentle and almost frail. The world she had, Cassandra-like, warned us about so passionately was truly here: Porn is, as David Amsden says, the “wallpaper” of our lives now. So was she right or wrong?

Not Tonight, Honey. I'm Logging On.: Internet porn is everywhere; even "nice" guys are hooked. So where does that leave their girlfriends? By David Amsden (October 20, 2003)

The New Position on Casual Sex: The rise of Internet dating has brought a sexual openness (not to mention one-night stands) to the younger generation not seen since the seventies heyday of Maxwell's Plum. But can there be too much of a good thing? By Vanessa Grigoriadis (January 13, 2003)

She was right about the warning, wrong about the outcome. As she foretold, pornography did breach the dike that separated a marginal, adult, private pursuit from the mainstream public arena. The whole world, post-Internet, did become pornographized. Young men and women are indeed being taught what sex is, how it looks, what its etiquette and expectations are, by pornographic training—and this is having a huge effect on how they interact.

But the effect is not making men into raving beasts. On the contrary: The onslaught of porn is responsible for deadening male libido in relation to real women, and leading men to see fewer and fewer women as “porn-worthy.” Far from having to fend off porn-crazed young men, young women are worrying that as mere flesh and blood, they can scarcely get, let alone hold, their attention.



Here is what young women tell me on college campuses when the subject comes up: They can’t compete, and they know it. For how can a real woman—with pores and her own breasts and even sexual needs of her own (let alone with speech that goes beyond “More, more, you big stud!”)—possibly compete with a cybervision of perfection, downloadable and extinguishable at will, who comes, so to speak, utterly submissive and tailored to the consumer’s least specification?

For most of human history, erotic images have been reflections of, or celebrations of, or substitutes for, real naked women. For the first time in human history, the images’ power and allure have supplanted that of real naked women. Today, real naked women are just bad porn.

For two decades, I have watched young women experience the continual “mission creep” of how pornography—and now Internet pornography—has lowered their sense of their own sexual value and their actual sexual value. When I came of age in the seventies, it was still pretty cool to be able to offer a young man the actual presence of a naked, willing young woman. There were more young men who wanted to be with naked women than there were naked women on the market. If there was nothing actively alarming about you, you could get a pretty enthusiastic response by just showing up. Your boyfriend may have seen Playboy, but hey, you could move, you were warm, you were real. Thirty years ago, simple lovemaking was considered erotic in the pornography that entered mainstream consciousness: When Behind the Green Door first opened, clumsy, earnest, missionary-position intercourse was still considered to be a huge turn-on.

Well, I am 40, and mine is the last female generation to experience that sense of sexual confidence and security in what we had to offer. Our younger sisters had to compete with video porn in the eighties and nineties, when intercourse was not hot enough. Now you have to offer—or flirtatiously suggest—the lesbian scene, the ejaculate-in-the-face scene. Being naked is not enough; you have to be buff, be tan with no tan lines, have the surgically hoisted breasts and the Brazilian bikini wax—just like porn stars. (In my gym, the 40-year-old women have adult pubic hair; the twentysomethings have all been trimmed and styled.) Pornography is addictive; the baseline gets ratcheted up. By the new millennium, a vagina—which, by the way, used to have a pretty high “exchange value,” as Marxist economists would say—wasn’t enough; it barely registered on the thrill scale. All mainstream porn—and certainly the Internet—made routine use of all available female orifices.

Introducing... Smack-'em-Upside-The-Head Copy... The Latest, Greatest Way to Close A Ton of Sales Under Certain Circumstances

The following post is for Mature Audiences only. That means if you are under 18, bookmark this item and come back when you get old enough.

I say that not because we're talking about a lot of money -- don't be too surprised if in the near future we hear about the first under-18 billionaire -- but because we're talking about foul language.


Now don't get me wrong. You could find language 10 times fouler on TV just about any night, or in a wide variety of PG-rated movies.

But in copy, the world is a little more conservative.

Uh... make that was a little more conservative.

My both-guns-blazing mentoring client, copywriter Vin Montello, recently wrote a sales letter with some pretty sassy language in it. The old rules of copy said, "don't cuss."

Vin thought that approach for this product and to this market - young people (20s - gen y) who have had it up to here with bogus claims about Internet marketing... and can be sold by straight, even crude, talk that acknowledges their frustration and offers a hard-core, no-punches-pulled alternative.

Before I give you the sales numbers on this letter (which pencils out at somewhere between half a million and three-quarters of a million dollars in four days), let me show you the first few paragraphs. The letter is no longer online, for an interesting reason I'll cover very soon. I got Vin to send me the code and I put up an image of the first version on my site. To see it, click here.

The first version of this letter went to a house list. "1000 sales in 90 minutes," Vin writes in an email. "Somewhere between 4000 and 5000 in 4 days."

The product was $77. There was an upsell for $67 additional, and more than 50% of buyers opted for the upsell.

Now, here's the kicker...

The blue-nose censor in this drama turns out to be my old friend Clickbank. (I say "old friend" because I've made enough from Clickbank to buy a small house... though not in San Francisco!)

What happened was when Clickbank saw words like "bullsh*t" and phrases like "make Google your b*tch," they wagged their corporate finger and said, "no, no, no."

Something about this letter didn't pass their standards. So Vin's client dutifully made the required alterations and got the letter approved. It is still making handsome heaps of money today.

You can see the revised, "cleaned up" version at www.projectblackmask.com

A question to think about: Will this work for your market? Probably not. But I think the important point is that while the essence of human nature changes very little over time, rules and assumptions about what works in copy are changing all the time. Keep your eyes open and your ear to the ground.

The City of Cagayan de Oro

Like places and cities elsewhere and somewhere around the world, Cagayan de Oro City, is an unknown urban center.
The city is a port capital in one of the Philippines premier cities in the Southern Philippine Island of Mindanao.
It has a population of over 700,000 people and the trading hub of its upland surrounding cities and province of Mindanao's landlocked agricultural district of Bukidnon, home of the world's famous Del Monte products.
There are many commercial landmarks in neighboring areas in Cagayan de Oro City which have not been given exposure by traders of imperial and multi-national companies in Manila.
Probably, this is done in order to dupe international financial institution into believing that all sources of world class products in the Philippines come from Manila. Bull!
Aside from Del Monte, the world's acclaimed Nestle' has their production line based in Cagayan de Oro City, too.
Again, people around the world are unaware that Nestle chocolates, cream milk and flakes are made and produced in Cagayan de Oro City.
The internationally acclaimed "corn oil" products are basically manufactured in Cagayan de Oro City, too.
The city is the capital of Misamis Oriental, a province in North Mindanao whose name was Christened by the early Spanish colonizers in the Philippines.
By the way, Cagayan de Oro is a Spanish term which means "river of gold." It got its name from Spanish colonizers who originally settled in the marshlands of the city backed in the 1800s' where gold nuggets and large deposits of alluvial gold are extracted from a naturally rich, crystal clear river that cut across the urban capital toward the famous Macajalar Bay, one of the country's deepest port harbors.
Its story of a warlord chieftain who shouted invectives to a tribal nemesis after her daughter was abducted and married to were historical deception created by residents in their bid to justify the name of their place. That's their way of selling the city to an unwary tourist. I personally did not agree, much less, adhered to this kind of tourism marketing.
Anyway, there are a lot of things Cagayan de Oro could offer to any meticulous visitor coming from the world's remotest capital in Africa to the world's cosmopolitan center of New York City in the United States of America.
The city offers state-of-the-art communication and accommodation facilities. It has two major company provider of broadband products. It's cabled television networks cover more than a hundred Channels, practically staring at every nook and cranny of the Earth.
There are hotels an inn in the city that could compete or much better than any internationally acclaimed hotels around the world. The price? Less than $100!
Next time you ever come to the Philippines, come and see Cagayan de Oro City. It's an hour travel by plane from Manila international airport. Its one way airfare ticket is only about $40 or less.
One could also take a passenger vessel with the same amount of fare but it would take 24-hour travel by sea before reaching the seaport of Cagayan de Oro City. ###

The Greatest Conqueror

After the election fever subsided, emotion remains high especially to losers. There are some leaders and supporters particularly those who may have contributed little amount of “hard earned” money who gnashed their teeth while blaming others for bad fate.
But, one should understand that an election is a gambling – a gambling of big time gamblers.
An informer said that a group of known businessmen in the locality met almost every night in some nook and cranny in the city to play card game. Some, the informer said, easily losses P200,000 to P500,000 a night!
I just wonder where the hell these people get their money to gamble. Unless, you were the sole winner of the recent P126 million lotto draw, losing P500,000 is something.
But, spending a P 500,000 on elections is peanuts! I heard that a local candidate had almost P 100 million in election chest but lost it somehow. He never grumbled but just wondered what happened.
I remember a local candidate some 10 years ago who spent P 5 million on elections day but still lost in the electoral fight. He was perplexed how he lost with the money he let go on elections day.
Now, I heard that some financiers of local candidates are up against the heads of some trusted people who dealt with a group to ensure their candidate wins.
While there is no tested formula in winning an elections, both parties agreed to spend some “operation money” on condition that both should work together to attain their goals.
Notwithstanding, the candidate lost. An assessment of the situation boiled down to neither one accepting fault that leads to their defeat.
Now, they’re trying to recover money spent saying it was hard earned. Of course, there is no argument that that “election money” was hard earned.
Yet, to deny what has been agreed or dealt with is unfair. And, to accuse anyone of profiting from an operation money is absurd.
How could one recover an election fund purportedly spent on a covert operation? It should be noted that even the government could fail after spending millions of pesos on some covert missions.
Thus, gunning after a person’s neck for failure to recover an election fund considered “spent” is relatively unfair and unjust.
How many candidates lost a lot of fortune every elections day? How many candidates spent money to win the trust of unknown supporters but still lost?
But, we never heard of one among the many a candidate running amuck by killing suspected supporters in a bid to recover “hard earned” money?
It is understandable ‘though that when one losses in any game, much more, in an electoral exercise emotions are high.
More often than not, losing in an election sometimes drives one to blame innocent people suspected of stashing away “hard earned money.”
But despite all these humdrums and mental agony, there is always a time to retrospect. Thus, when one is humbled to accept defeat, one displays the spirit of the greatest conqueror of them all. We, believed these people are the real winners in the mid-term elections this year.[]

Philippines: Looking towards 2010

After the mid-term elections for Senators and local officials this year, the Philippines is now looking at the Presidential elections in 2010.
In spite of the controversies hounding the national and local polls (most of these controversies focused on "adding and shaving off" votes) politicians are already preparing for the Presidential elections three years from now.
The excitement of the upcoming Presidential polls is definitely on the shoulders of the political opposition. Senators identified with the opposition captured eight of the 12 Senatorial seats. Two administration candidates were also elected while two others were independent candidates.
Topping the Senatorial slot is Loren Legarda, a defeated vice presidential candidate, in the 2004 Presidential polls.
Legarda is followed by Chiz Escudero, a young opposition lawyer who chair the minority bloc in Congress prior to his election as Senator.
Senator Panfilo Lacson, a former Estrada police general and avid anti-Arroyo who ran for re-election, landed third place. Another second-term Senator Manny Villar, who ran as Independent candidate, settled fourth place.
Amid bickering and prognostic assessment of would-be-Senators, one candidate made it to the top 12 by sheer guts and people's support. Imprisoned Navy man Antonio Trillanes, accused of rebellion for an attempted coup against the Arroyo administration in the failed Oakwood Mutiny in 2003, is occupying the 11th Senatorial seat.
Trillanes ran for Senator under the Genuine Opposition ticket while being imprisoned in a maximum security detention cell in Fort B0nifacio.
Another military leader turned politician who also ran for Senator while a case for rebellion is also being heard against him is former Senator Gregorio Honasan. Honasan, another Independent candidate, landed in the 10th place.
There are humors that Honasan is actually an administration candidate who reportedly signed a "secret deal" with the Arroyo administration in exchanged for his temporary freedom and subsequently, ran for the Senate.
Anyway, whether the opposition controls the Senate, the Arroyo administration is not intimidated. Knowing that the administration remains in control of the Lower House, majority of the administration candidates were elected to Congress in the May 14 elections this year, the Senate cannot just pass a legislative measure unless it first passes in Congress.
There is a possibility that the rubber stamp Congress is going to move anew for Charter Change. With the administration still in control of the majority of the Lower House, the plan for the shift from Presidential to Parliamentary is likely to resurrect.
Notwithstanding, an opposition Senate remains a headache of the Arroyo administration. Any move to shift the present Presidential government to a Parliamentary system will definitely meet stiff resistance from the Senate.
As usual, the Senate is not akin to changing the present Presidential form of government to Parliamentary system since most of the opposition senators are now gearing toward the presidential elections in 2010.
There are a lot of potential presidents among the newly elected Senators. These Senators are humored to run for President in 2010.
Among them are Loren Legarda, Manny Villar and Panfilo Lacson, all of the opposition, as against an administration beat, the incumbent Vice President Noli de Castro. Some materials for the Vice Presidency includes Escudero, Roxas and Aquino.
This early, some leaders of would-be-Presidential candidates have already started mapping political plans for another grueling elections three years ahead.###

Elections in the Philippines

Every elections,politician anywhere and elsewhere around the world run for an elective post with a resolve to win.
Politician, however, know that winning in an election is a different thing than running in an elective post.
For one,in countries like the United States where an election is held regularly, it is the right of every citizen to run for an elective post.
Yet, while the right of an individual to run in an elective post is protected and revered in all democratic institutions, winning in an election is reserve only for those who deserve it.
On the other hand,in some countries "masquerading as democratic and free," running and winning in an election is an exercise of power, greed and avarice.
A classic example of how a democratic election is trampled, mocked and taken with disrespect is the election in the Philippines.
It is an irony that the Philippines, purportedly a democratic and the only Christian country in Southeast Asia, has an altered definition of an election.
In the Philippines, a regular election is held every three years for local government units while the Presidential election is held every six years.
No doubt,an election in the Philippines is merrier than Christmas! As a Christian country, the Philippines celebrate Christmas every 25th of December with pomposity and exaggeration.
During Christmas, firecrackers and pyrotechnics explode in all corners of the Philippine island. Every Filipino wears their sweetest smile of happiness
Like Christmas, election season in the Philippines also saw candidates hiring top actors and actresses to draw crowds during political rallies in their bid to catch public attention.
Like Christmas, firecrackers also explode in the Philippines during election period.
However, these firecrackers are not ordinary firecrackers since they go out of the barrel of guns killing political nemesis and avid supporters.
Election related killings in the Philippines is internationally known that, at one time, the United States expressed alarmed of its escalation.
Aside from "election related" violence, elections in the Philippines is synonym to vote buying and massive electoral fraud.
Even President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo was implicated in an alleged widespread electoral fraud to ensure her election to the Presidency in the 2004 Presidential elections.
Political analysts consented that the political instability in the Philippines could be related to accusations that Arroyo "cheated" to assure her of the Presidency.
Massive vote-buying is also rampant in the Philippines. Politicians usually allocate a minimum of 20.00 Philippine peso for every voter in rural areas in the Philippines.
In the Philippines urban centers, the price of every voter may range from 300.00 Philippine peso to 500.00 Php or more.
No doubt, a corrupt but moneyed politician in the Philippines have great chances of winning compared to the brightest but penniless candidate.
Indeed, in a country where more than 80 per cent of its 80 million people lived in abject poverty, unscrupulous politicians normally succeed using their money, guns and goons to win votes from desperate electorates.
Thus, it is not unusual in the Philippines for undeserving public officials to be elected into office and subsequently rule over a mob of paid electorates.###

Hidden Treasure: Internet nightmares

Hidden Treasure: Internet nightmares