straight pornography is male gay in sensibility

SGB, why did you say spontaneity is a key ingredient for women's sexual pleasure .
I said it was a special ingredient that is eliminated in porn by default of what porn is.

Dittany: Dworkin is overbombing there (as usual). See here.
Or here.

And no one is disagreeing that the abuse perpetrated in the making of some pornography is wrong. People are disagreeing that the entire industry (and the entire concept of making explicit entertainment media) should be condemned because of the wrong done by some of the people involved in it. IN other industries where there is exploitation and abuse (clothing, food) people who care seek out ethical alternatives and do their best to boycott stuff produced by exploiters: that seems the best way forward for porn as well.
But as this discussion is getting utterly circular, I'm going to skip the rest of it.

Dittany: You have attacked swingers clubs as being 'all about male desire (ie women shouldn't like them of go to them ever)' and every time a woman says she likes anal sex/dressing up/sex in public/looking at porn, you're there to tell here that she doesn't really, that she's pandering to men, that she's dehumanized. I have never heard you say one positive word about any kind of male sexual behaviour - not just WRT porn, but anything a man might ask his DP to do, or appear to want. Are men acceptable if they perform cunnilingus? Is kissing mandatory? Is it OK for them to read an erotic story? Or is it Valeri Solanas all the way as far as you;re concerned?

im thinking two things
one is-im wondering how many women are actually ok with porn as im thinking that a percentage of the women that say theyre ok with it-aint.
reason being-they might be doing things to be just keeping their partner happy or are frightened of being called "boring"or "fridgid"!

the other thing is-im thinking that a lot of people have got desentisised-
reason being-i often chat to people on the internet-i chat because i like chatting to people and thats the only reason-im not into picking people up on the internet.
the amount of people that have asked me to set my cam up and whip my clothes off and do things is unreal[and yes i have told them to off]its like its a ok normal thing[to them]and im wondering where peoples heads are sometime.

Milly: Actually I do know a bit about the methodology of some social science studies, and they are often pretty dodgy (quite apart from the fact that sometimes people conducting any kind of scientific study have either suspect motives or are being sponsored to find a particuar result).

Dittany: I have never at any point denied that therei is exploitation and abuse within the porn industry, or that this is a bad thing which should be stopped.
However, anti-porn campaigners seem unable to accept that some people want to make interesting, female-positive, sexually explicit visual material with willing performers and just fall back on wah wah wah, you can't possibly have sex in public or be paid for it, sex is about 'relationships' (never mind the damage the Relationship Industry does to women's wellbeing, peddling the line that romance is everything and inarticulate violent fuckups are 'psassionate' and desirable), with no good answer as to why those who want to do it, shouldn't do it.

I am certainly not claiming to have any academic expertise in pornography. Nor am I claiming to be more able to assess academic claims for or against any causal links between pornography and male violence in wider society.

My point was simply that academic researchers have put forward very clear explanations as to how they have devised methodologies that select the most commonly used pornography. This is a very basic academic skill; devising a sampling strategy is easy to do and easy for other people to understand and assess the validity of.

SGB, you seem to be claiming that your personal perspective on what constitutes popular pornography is more accurate than the sampling strategies employed in studies. Your links pointing out that someone, somewhere is a bit crazy doesn't really address this point. I do think it is essential in the feminist discussion of pornography that we know what it is that we are discussing.

I think there are a lot of issues to do with pornography where we are all going to fall back on personal experiences and perceptions, because the impact pornification of popular culture haven't been that thoroughly studied. That isn't to say there aren't good studies, but a lot more work needs to be done. This is partly because pornification is something that is happening to the young generation right now, and we haven't found out all of the personal, psychological consequences yet. I think the fact that we can discuss this in a partially speculative way means that we don't all have to be polarised in our opinions or absolutely certain of the validity of every point we put forward.

But in terms of what mainstream pornography actually is, we do know the answer to that.

Oh, and 'spontaneity' as the key ingredient for women's sexual pleasure: Not necessarily. Plenty of people enjoy scheduling sex (it's something heteromonogamous couples are often encouraged to do to 'put the spark back' and many say it works) - the anticipation becomes part of the pleasure.

Sakura: many people enjoy painting, writing, and playing music, indeed passionately love doing these things to the extent that they make their living out of doing them. Only a very few people think this is in any way 'wrong', that professional performers of things that other people do as a hobby or for personal pleasure, should be paid for what they do. So I don't see why it's so wrong to have sex for money (when one is not being coerced to do so and hates every minute of it).
As to BDSM, anal, etc, these are things that some people enjoy and others don't. It's not wrong to enjoy them - or to refuse them - each to their own.

Basically, I don't agree with you that the way to prevent the abuse of some people within the porn industry is to shut the industry down, I think unionisation of performers, legislation to protect their health and safety, an end to the stigmatization of the industry and encouragement of those who wnat ot make 'ethical' material is a better solution.

WRT to who is and is not an academic (I am not singling out or slating MillyR who AFIAK has made no particular claims for herself) - sthat could cover anyone from a tenured professer of social sciences to someone in the first week of an OU course - what is true is that all the social sciences are imprecise disciplines and what is 'proven' one week is disproved the next. ANti porn campaigners have been selectively quoting discredited studies for years without really undesrtanding them.

And as far as I've read, Milly is an academic, so I think she probably knows what she's talking about regarding studies.

YOu're still avoiding the question. The people on this thread have asked you why you think by condemning porn creates a myth that women don't enjoy sex. It's the first time I've heard the argument that women don't enjoy sex. So could you explain what you mean, please?

I assert the opposite: that the porn industry and its rape fantasies is what contributes to the notion that women don't enjoy sex and have to be coerced into it. Men want to see women being coerced into sex; that is what the industry is interested in. Have you fallen for this myth that women must be coerced into sex too

And why are you scrabbling around to find people on t'internet who have a different POV to the ones we're putting accross here?

SGB, I think your preoccupation with BDSM, swinging and anal porn tells me that your imagination is severely limited. You're coming across as though you think that's the 'ultimate' in sex, as though nothing could be better. YOu sound like you think the people on this thread haven't given anal, swinging and BDSM a go, and enjoyed it.

BY repeatedly giving the same tired, normative mundane cliches about what sex is, you don't prove your knowledge, you just show that your notions of sex have been severely constrained by society, perhaps by porn.

The point isn't that some women enjoy it, although I argue that if they enjoyed it that much they'd be doing it for free; tHe point is that some women don't, in fact some are raped, bruised and battered. And until that problem is sorted out I think we need to clamp down on the entire industry.
Let's get some perspective here.

What if they women who enjoy acting in porn it change their mind at the last minute, or halfway through, for example, and think 'Nah, fuck it, I can't be bothered today'. The camera crew, the selected partner(s) are all there at the ready. I argue that there'd be more than a little pressure to go through with it. Are you saying the women select their partners? If so, could you give evidence of this, because as far as I understand it they are casted. Not every woman finds the same man sexually appealing.

And in all of this, aren't you missing that special ingredient that really causes fireworks for women: spontaneity,