straight pornography is male gay in sensibility

Dittany: people have sex for lots of reasons other than desire - to please a partner, to prove a point, to gain advancement of some kind, out of sympathy for another's loneliness, out of curiosity, out of boredom... and sometimes for money without being coerced into it. This isn't a bad thing.
MillyR: a lot of the people who publish 'studies' of porn are not what you might call independent experts.
In fact, a lot of them are fairly nuts.

And I have encountered more than one anti-porn campaigner whose alleged 'academic qualifications' have been a bit, er, exaggerated.

And this woman puts on sexually explicit shows, is she a dehumanized degraded victim in your opinions?

Having said all that, teh most important thing is to learn to be happy by yourself. I lived alone for quite a few years in my 20s and I loved it. If you are happy in yourself, and happy with your life, it's much harder for some nobber to come along and suck you in.

Swinging isn't a porn thing though is it, it's a lifestyle, or a hobby, sort of thing, surely. A real life thing.

Anyway, hello Bertie There are actually loads of decent men around - the trick is finding them. I have seen some of your other threads and I think that as people get older they (ideally) learn the lessons of their past - so you know that men who watch a lot of porn are arseholes - and you know what sort of behaviour a coercive man shows - so all you need to do is avoid these sorts of men like the plague in future! I didn't meet my DH until I was nearly 30 and had loads of boyfriends before that - there are a lot of twats out there - but learning to spot the twats is important - as then you can spot a good one much more easily IYSWIM. Also if all teh blokes you know watch a lot of porn - and are twats - then try to find your way to different men - they're not all the same, and it's not a hopeless task.

I think the mention of BDSM, anal sex and swinging pretty much make the point. These are so obviously just stereotypes of porn culture, and male sexuality and indeed female sexuality, is so much wider and more varied than these porn cliches.

SGB, I have heard before the argument that anti-porn campaigners refer to the more extreme stuff, and yet every academic paper on pornography has a long explanation of its methodology and evidence that it is referring to the most commonly viewed and purchased pornography.

So I'm not sure why you does not believe this. Do you believe people looking at the sex industry are less subject to peer review than other people published in the social sciences? Do you think that their academic qualifications are somehow less plausible? Do you think that your personal experience of what constitutes pornography is somehow more accurate than empirical studies of what constitutes the most popular pornography?

As for this claim that women need to be protected from men's sexual desire, I'm not sure where you're getting that from. I think it would help if you provided some examples of what you mean.

But what constitutes free will? On the trans thread I made an argument about the various environmnental factors that would have led me to have plastic surgery. It would have been 'free will'. Or would it?

Are you saying these women would be volunteers? If they love it so much why would they need to be paid? Some of our work in life is pleasurable, we don't all work for the cash, but is sex an area that should be commodified? What does that teach our children? I believe adults should look towards youth culture for cues on how to have a good sex life, not expect youth to listen to what adults can 'teach' them. COntraception must be taught, of course, and fairly early on, but anything else you 'show' or 'teach' is just stifling.
A good analogy: reading the book then watching the film. the film can never compete with what your imagination can produce, and I think the same goes for sex.

Sakura: but having sex with someone you are 'not intimate with' is no big deal to some people (and not the same as having sex with someone you hate or fear). The women who appear in ethical porn are the ones definitely doing it out of their own free will, to make a point (though the money doesn't hurt of course). This is where the antiporn argument always comes unstuck, that it is seen as unacceptable to have sex on camera, for money, even when the woman is doing so in order to make what she (and the other peope involved in the film) intend to be something beautiful, arousing, challenging, political, etc.
Dittanhy I have never seen you ever express a view of male sexuality which isn't negative. ANy kind of sexual expression (whether that's porn, BDSM, anal sex or swinging) is always, in your opinion, something that men force women to do and that women hate, despite plenty of women saying that they like group sex or anal sex or spanking or bondage and indeed have introduced their male partners to it with the men on the recieving end.

Bertie, you may; nOt all men are into porn. But it is interesting you say that your abusive ex was obsessed with porn. Definitely a correlation there.

But SGB, as you can tell from my posts, this feminist doesn't
"concentrate on utter distaste for men and male sexual desire, which is always portrayed as something horrible that women need to resist and be protected from."

In fact you are the first person I've read on MN who's come out with the idea that women must be protected somehow from sex. That sounds like something a man would say TBH.I'm not a right-wing Christian male who thinks girls should be virgins until they marry

I think women are sexual and lusty by nature so I'm honestly confused as to why you're using that argument.

I've just argued upthread that I originally thought soft porn and other female friendly porn would be okay, until I realised what would be required for that to come about. At least one woman will have to have sex with someone she's not intimate with.

I've had boyfriends who were into porn, and I've watched porn with them. I've stayed in pigalle in France, lived for 3 months in Amsterdam. I saw lots of men on men sex shows in Thailand. BUt in my experience men who love porn aren't that great in bed. ANd women's sexual pleasure is an important topic to feminists.

What an eye-opening thread. I guess I'm a bit late to the discussion so I hope you won't mind me jumping in. (I'm female BTW despite my name, I've been mistaken for a man on here before now!)

I'm in my twenties and I would guess that my generation is one of the first to have had access to this hardcore internet pornography at a young age - in fact I'm shocked in myself to read the description near the beginning of the thread that "hardcore" pornography means porn which is sexually explicit - shocked because, TBH, that's what I thought porn was, I didn't even realise there was any other kind, I always thought that hardcore related to the more "extreme" stuff like BDSM. It is so utterly normal among practically everyone I know that I never really considered page 3 etc to be "real" porn. I've never liked porn myself and have always felt uncomfortable with it but never really knew why until now - despite feeling uncomfortable, how could I have not noticed all the excellent points made on this thread so far?

I remember a conversation I had with an ex-boyfriend when we were both about 18 - he was telling me about a website called "la petite mort" (which is a French metaphor for orgasm), it doesn't seem to be around any more if indeed it existed at all, but apparently the whole website was pictures of women's faces as they experienced orgasm. He said "There is nothing more beautiful than a woman when she is in pain". (I don't know whether they were his words or from the website.) At the time I thought this was all artistic and insightful and deep - but it did make me wonder about the barriers between pain and pleasure and cruelty and (sex being an expression of) love. FWIW he wasn't coercive in bed and finished with me shortly afterwards because he said I was all over the place (which I was) and probably not a good idea to be in a relationship. Very soon afterwards I met XP (DS' dad) who was emotionally abusive, obsessed with porn and very coercive.

I find it really hard to imagine a world/generation where most men don't use porn, because in my experience with male friends, boyfriends, friends' boyfriends etc, almost every man I know of my age uses porn regularly and had seen internet porn for the first time during their teens (usually around 13-14) And TBH I find that utterly depressing, and have been aware of this from a young age but never really made the connection that it was porn before. I do know that some of them seek out less mainstream stuff because they find the mainstream porn boring or distasteful, but I can't think of one single man my age who I know does not use porn regularly or semi-regularly.

I'm actually quite upset now at the realisation that the likelihood is I will ever have a truly respectful sexual relationship with anybody.

Sakura: Because a lot of the feminist anti-porn argument seems to concentrate on utter distaste for men and male sexual desire, which is always portrayed as something horrible that women need to resist and be protected from.
ALso, the opponents of porn have generally seen very little of it, and that usually extreme examples of unpleasant stuff so it gets progressively more and more tedious to argue with them.

rephrase: the boys my friends and I messed around with

SGB, I asked you a couple of questions upthread that you didn't answer.

How do you think feminists condemming porn contributes to the notion that women aren't interested in sex?
I gave you the example of the mindblowing experiences I'd had as a (V) young teenager and I have to tell you, adults know shit about sex compared to young teenagers. IN fact everything society has tried to "teach" me about sex has actually detracted from the innate knowledge my body had about sex as a girl.
And the boys I (and my friends) messed around with hadn't been exposed to that much porn either because they were so young and there was no internet then.

As far as I can see, porn makes men shit in bed. Or if it doesn't, it doesn't help men please women because they 'unlearn' everything they knew about girls at 12 and begin to see women as these other creatures.

SO if men watching porn doesn't help women's sex life (and I can't see how it possibly could) then how do you expect feminists to give it the nod?

I don't consider DH to have had a sheltered life, but when I was going on about how we are going to cover the issue of porn with DS (12), DH didn't think there was any reason to think DS would choose to watch porn or have much exposure to it.

So that makes me think that choosing to watch porn is not part of the lives of every man; I think that is just a myth often put about by the partners of men who view pornography.

I am still going to have a conversation with DS about porn at some point, but I have been out with numerous boys as a teenager and lived in shared houses where most of the other people in the houses were men. They were political people and were opposed to porn.

I still thnk it's a mistake to treat porn as something separate to any other kind of media. Porn didn't start the culture of abuse, degradation and humiliation that is currently so popular in mainstream media, nor did the porn industry originate the idea that sex is dirty and harmful to women, and that women who claim to enjoy it are 'sluts' and not worthy of good treatment.
People don't 'need' porn in the way they need food, or air, or sleep, but a substantial percentage of people 'need' art, media, entertainment which covers those areas of life that particularly interest them, which is why my argument has always been that the answer to 'bad' (misogynistic etc) media is to produce 'better' media with socially positive values and high standards of welfare and safety - and pay - for those involved.

Er, I didn't say that most men use porn. Although I think the vast majority have probably seen some.

But I agree with your basic argument that porn involves viewing the actual abuse of women, although it may not occur to some viewers.

ISNT, I agree absolutely.

vesuvia I think that an interest in sex and bodies and stuff is quite natural for a teenager, whether a boy or a girl. I remember cutting pictures of people in their underwear out of magazines when I was a girl

the problem is that now this natural curiosity results in easy access to a wealth of hardcore images.