Porn - I use it and feel bad - help convince me porn is wrong

I speak only for myself............yes.

A yes or no answer would do - do you want all pornography banned?

I think I would find it easier to have a discussion with a man who defended porn use and abuse than discuss with these pro porn women.

I'm not sure that any amount of "proof" will implant the nessasary empathy they lack. In my experience men will acccept reasonable arguement, some stats and actually when confronted with the facts show some empathy.

What the hell is going wrong when woman show a severely callous attitude towards the documented suffering of other women.

What's your main objective here - (because after 600+ posts I'm still not sure) do you want all pornography banned?

Oh yes I agree, a lot of people haven't got that empathy function to begin with. But with porn, some people who usually seem perfectly able to empathise with other people, suddenly become completely unable to perceive the sheer horror of the way some woemn in porn re treated.

It really is as if they are such a different species from other human beings, that they can just shrug and say "well it's their choice" as if that has any fucking relevance. Leaving aside the whole discussion tht could be had about choice, where is the curiosity about why a sentient human being would make tht choice? Where is the honesty about the amount of damage an individual must have suffered, to make such a choice?

The convenient laissez faire liberalism which once said that it's every Englishman's right to sleep in the street if he wants to and therefore the idea of building houses for the poor is a nanny state nonsense, has been co-opted for porn hasn't it? That refusal to examine the circumstances in which human beings make choices. That refusal to imagine yourself in their shoes. Which of course, is what porn encourages, because as the viewer, you are always in the position of the one who is doing to the suffering woman, you are never in the position of the suffering woman who is being done to. You are never invited to identify with her. I suppose that's what makes all these porn users able to take their identification with abuse perpetrators, out of the arena of watchign porn and into the arena of public debate. It must help their distancing mechanism to ahve it re-inforced by that angle of viewing over and over again.

I dunno, HB, I do believe in some people their empathy gene is completely absent (especially where their own selfish "needs" are concerned)

It is actually amazing how many people are willing to suspend their otherwise fully functioning empathy faculty, when it comes to porn.

Prosperina, your dismissal of the pattern of anecdotal evidence gathered by people like Shelley Lubben is chilling.

We've had a few scientist types on this thread demanding studies that show that women being physically and verbally abused on film is abuse. I'm shocked to the core by such an attitude and actually find it quite frightening. We already discussed this weird unempathetic head in the sand attitude on this thread. Thread is long however so I'm just going to repeat what I said earlier.

"Porn harms women because it sends out a clear message that society has no problem with women being treated as a sub human sex class by men.

Society condoning porn sends out the message loud and clear that it is fine to rape women and children and verbally and physically abuse them.

Porn makes a mockery of the concept of consent and sends out the message that it is fine to do so.

Carmina I'm not 'offended' by porn, I'm fucking revolted by it (I mean this in the 'revolution' sense of the word although the 'disgusted' sense works too).

'Prove beyond reasonable doubt' - get a grip woman. Would you ask someone to prove that films of black people being called niggers and being physically abused by white people 'caused harm' or would you think it was pretty fucking obvious?

Yeah, let's prove that dressing women up as under-age school girls and filming them being gang raped and choked on penises is harmful. What a waste of time when one could just engage one's brain and see the harm."

Hey stewie, you're welcome. How you feeling today?

Well I wonder if we are going to have a sane conversation today?

Just noticed this gem from Prosperina's link;

"And in terms of production, it was a bit of a revelation when our research revealed a strong motivation for people making porn was that they are exhibitionists who were turned on by having sex in front of people. Again, hearing that, it?s one of those moments where you say ?Duh!?. Of course it makes perfect sense. It?s just amazing that nobody?s pointed it out before."

Firstly I would like to ask why this book/blog is written as though it is for the hard of thinking? The language is ridiculously simplistic, and the concepts discussed are examined at a very first degree level with no subtlety or hint that human behaviour and psychology is anything other than, like, really simple.

The above quote is just RIDICULOUS. Where did the authors get this piece of bullshit from? Yeah some of the amateur webcam crowd are exhibitionists, but many of the professionals clearly state that they did porn for much deeper and sadder reasons. (Which have been discussed already on this thread and have been linked to in testimonies and books.)

Women who have left porn often say that whilst they were doing porn they lied about their situation as a form of protection. Most of them said they are exhibitionists who loved sex. If I can read this information on the internet, repeated many times, why did the knuckleheads who wrote the above piece of simplistic nonsense manage to miss it after three years of study for crying out loud?

Also notice on this page www.thepornreportbook.com/index.php?pageID=2 how our simple and not very intellectually curious authors set up 4 stoopid and simplistic strawmen and then...........drum roll.............go on to 'debunk' them.

Worra a load of crap. So what figures? Do these folks have an agenda or are they just really unobservant and not very good at investigating?

Maybe the book itself is just fabby - haven't read it obviously, I'm just going on the info they present on their promotional website. They do say the book is about Austrailia, perhaps they should have investigated porn where it's really at?

www.shelleylubben.com/porn-industry

"Chatsworth, California produces 85% of the world?s adult content. All of the top female talent agencies are located in or with in the Chatsworth local radius. Female performers are flown or fly to Chatsworth to work in the adult industry. All of the world?s top male talents live or travel to Chatsworth California for work. Almost every major and minor adult DVD Company is in the local Chatsworth radius."

How is your head, stewie ?

Prosperina

Yes the Onion provides levity

Eggy, you win either way.....

Prosper, you will not get empirical evidence in this situation

So much of what happens in porn is hidden, and denied by both its promoters and its participants

Denial is rife ^^

The agenda of financial gain is very strong

The shame felt and the damage done to participants will temper their responses in many cases. For every Shelley Lubben there are thousands of women (and men) who will never talk freely of the things they have endured and the way it has affected them

For those women who grew up with abuse, they may think it is all they deserve, so their boundaries were eroded from very early life.

You cannot objectively quantify that

To attempt to do so is futile, IMO

Subjective evidence is the strongest measure we have where there is often no black and white contrast and everybody's experiences and influences are so different.

To dismiss subjective evidence in this arena is at best misguided and at worst the cruellest way to deny a person's right to be heard

To dismiss personal testimonies of women and men who have been damaged by the sex industry is lacking in empathy and simple human feeling. I dread to think about what that says about people who do that, propsperina

Maybe the Onion will provide some levity

The Onion

I said I'd go bed, but I feel I need to reiterate something, but say it differently. I'm going to use an analogy with the immigration debate (I'm not trying to draw a parallel with different sides)

Person 1: Immigration is bad, it causes crime, look at this story from the Daily Mail
Person 2: But how representative is that?
Person 1: Here's another story from the Daily Mail.
Person 2: Where's the empirical evidence?
Person 1: Look, here's another story from the Daily Mail, why are you ignoring their stories?
Person 2: I want to see the widespread evidence. How many immigrants are there? How much crime do they commit?
Person 1: You're in denial!

Isn't it clear that as horrendous as the stories from Shelley Lubben and Felicity sound, and they do sound horrible, they're not substitutes for widespread, detailed, empirical research, so we can understand porn and its effects?

I agree that lurkers and occasional posters benefit from these threads.

I am frustrated with these repeated demands for "academic research" - and when links to respected research and authors are given, it still doesn't seem to be enough.

Frustrated too by the claims that the practices in porn are "legal" so they are okay. They are not bloody legal - they just aren't reported as crimes . What is frequently depicted are violent assaults against the person and rape, especially. Something doesn't become legal because it's not reported as a crime FFS.

The evidence of the harm done to the women in the industry is overwhelming.

The thing that gets me every time on these threads is that for those in denial, or pro-porn, people's lived testimony and experience is subjugated and dismissed. For Christ's sake, look on the relationships board and see how many women's lives are being ruined by porn use, online sexchat sites and the progression of that; infidelity/prostitute use.

What more evidence do these posters in denial need?

You claim they're knuckle heads because they present statistical evidence that the number of people addicted to porn is small. Shouldn't you attack the statistics or the argument rather than the people?

I'm off to bed, but it would seem that this is the kind of balanced non-polemical work that is required in this debate

& they are??

Because reading 700 posts would be tiresome in the extreme....

Then again it might be because it is not very good.

The knuckle heads who wrote this aren't aware that porn has an addictive quality - a quality that has a chemical mechanism. Poor show for some porn experts writing a book.

www.thepornreportbook.com/index.php?pageID=7#q1

www.thepornreportbook.com/

Ok, the book looks interesting, and appears to present a balanced objective view of porn

You need to put two round your link

Like this http://www.thepornreportbook.com/

Could be why no-one commented, often people don't follow links that aren't working on a fast moving thread.