Math Magazine and 'good' porn.

whatnow123 you response is entirely understandable but please don't stop thinking about the issue because some porn ( most of it?) does involve coercion and people like you are part of the solution.

You see people apparently enjoying themselves, this may well be an act, but it isn't what you see and enjoy. And then you are told you are looking at the pain on women's faces and enjoying it and you think "not me, I don't watch/enjoy that". You are alienated by the anti porn argument.

You see porn stars claiming they enjoy their job. And you are told they aren't really they are doing it because they 'think' they like it but really they don't. Most people believe that despite societal influences most people retain some free will and are capable of making choices so you are further alienated by this argument.

You know why you think you enjoy porn but you are told that is not why you really like it. What?

You are told you enjoy watching women being attacked and abused. You do not watch this. So you stop listening to the argument.

You are told you are an addict because you make an argument for watching porn. So you might simply refuse to engage.

"I have told you this" won't work with you and it won't work with many people.

There are massive issues within the porn industry, but you can check the sites you use. You can do research to make sure the producers class themselves as ethical. You can purchase wisely. You can be aware this is a manufactured product and real life is not like that. Small incremental steps purchase by purchase can influence the industry.

Having considered this issue, in this society it is difficult to argue porn can be feminist but it can be ethical. Yes I know most of it isn't, you don't need to list and describe, we know and agree. However, there are sites trying to change the narrative.

Most young people watch porn. Fact. No matter how right you are simply telling people they are wrong does not work. Although it might make you feel morally righteous.

Do we alienate young people or keep the conversation alive?

Thanks Buffy. I'll have a look. I have to admit that I thought Gail Dines work was more on the effect of porn rather than on the industry itself but I might be mis-remembering that.

Whilst we are on the subject of research. What research is there into abuse in the porn industry? I've been looking and found anecdotal stuff. Is there any research out there?

You believe that all pornography is inherently harmful.
That's your opinion. I don't believe it's inherently harmful. Your claim that it is doesn't make it true.

I don't deny that some pornography is harmful and shows abuse. I'm not claiming to watch that.

We will have to agree to disagree.

You may tell me that the woman is suffering. That's not what I see. That's not what I watch.

I have told you this.

You making excuses for it, and denying it doesn't make it not true.

However, thanks, it's interesting to watch the cognitive process whereby a person can know something is inherently harmful and yet still give themselves an excuse to do it happens. It's one of the psychological causes of all addictions, porn seems to be no different.

Where? When? What methodology?

The same question I asked myself. Seemed to me like a case of lies, damn lies and statistics, reports that said over 40% of women watch porn and other reports that said males were more than 500% more likely to watch porn than females.... which taken together would mean more than 200% plus of men watch porn. I just put up figures in the middle of the ranges between reports that seemed to have vested interests in pushing particular agendas that were either pro or anti porn. Overall I would say porn use in younger women in increasing but I think its probably reached saturation point for males.

Certainly young girls are exposed to porn without having to seek it, as a matter of course just growing up. My youngest daughter was exposed to internet porn when she was 11 and my eldest at 13, each by their respective girlfriends of the time. That was almost a decade ago and it would be even more common now.

and I have seen estimates both higher and lower) of the numbers of people who watch porn would be 30-35% of women and 70-85% of men

Where? When? What methodology?

I don't watch porn. Never been asked for statistical purposes if I do.

Grimble - Who are porn fans or porn watchers? What are there attributes. Can someone enjoy porn and be a nurse, a carer work, a charity worker a Doctor. I think it's sweeping to suggest that they lack compassion.

Gawd knows - I've never been able to work out the mindset of people who watch porn. I'm sure they work in every job, career or profession in the world. Just because they are good people in one sphere doesn't mean they can't be mindless shits in another.

It's utterly baffling, just as it is utterly baffling to me that nurses and doctors (since you mention them) can be smokers when they know from their profession that a half of all smokers are killed by the habit i.e. they know what they are doing is a 50% chance of slow suicide but they still do it because the laws of medicine don't apply to them. Cognitive dissonance I guess.

Porn watchers probably show a similar cognitive dissonance. Common sense and intelligence would probable indicate it is a profession involving in many cases coercion, desperation and some pretty nasty individuals putting money making above all, but somehow manage to not let it cross their radar?

As you yourself said everything else other than getting their dubious pleasure is background noise. So yes, I think there is an innate lack of compassion - a dehumanising of the participants that allows porn watchers to blank out their better feelings in that particular area of their lives.

Anyway, I've got nothing really useful to add because I find them incomprehensible. So we agree to disagree.

oneflew brilliant post. I think sometimes we feminists make our arguments a bit too academic, they are not just for the academically minded, but for all women.

flora great quotes, very interesting. I'm shocked by those statistics. When put like that, I can understand the perspective that women have internalised and eroticism violence and domination. It's like the sex version of Stockholm syndrome.

Oneflew I found your post very interesting too. I think I was very lucky that my first sexual relationship was with a lovely guy who just wanted to do whatever I wanted to do. We were together a gew years so kind of learnt together. But I definitely have been on the wrong end of "slut shaming" in what I see as the original sense of the word - being called a slut by someone I had a ONS with for example.
Now with widespread and socially acceptable porn in the mix too it's such a minefield and I worry about how to guide my preteen daughter through it. I don't want her to be made to feel guilty for wanting sex. But I also don't want her to be pushed into things she doesn't want to do

Sorry, TMI waffly stream of consciousness!

Grimble - Who are porn fans or porn watchers? What are there attributes. Can someone enjoy porn and be a nurse, a carer work, a charity worker a Doctor. I think it's sweeping to suggest that they lack compassion.

Xenophile - I don't know, because that's not what I'm watching. You may tell me that the woman is suffering. That's not what I see. That's not what I watch.

MatildaOfTuscany re "Actually I do object to being called a "prude" in this context, because in this context it becomes a political issue." That's an excellent point. What I meant was I am not simply offended by the 'title' but if anything further is extrapolated from that then yes, I would disagree. It's a wrong. Especially if my views are disregarded for that reason it's the opposite side but the same coin as the views of 'sluts' don't count.

bitof I have said I think it is weird to enjoy watching porn but not said 'you' are weird' - I really hope that has come across I don't want to label anyone. I am trying not to make this at all personal and have no desire to pick on anyone at all.

I can't think of a better word for 'weird', but I will try to me it is 'incomprehensible' to enjoy watching women being abused or violated, persuaded to have sex against their will or either for real or pretending to be penetrated in ways that are degrading or humiliating.

Because to me, to some degree, all porn does that, it is in the nature of porn, as it is in the nature of prostitution to de-humanise people (mainly women, but men too), those who 'sell' sex, and those who 'buy' it. These are my views but I am talking about actions and not specifically about people individually.

Many people do all kinds of things I may not approve of or agree with but I try to see the people as themselves and not just a collection of their actions, if that makes sense.

Lass, re "...someone mentioned being uncomfortable with the idea that the men she sees around here everyday are porn users." That was me.

bitof re "2Bitofacow Fri 09-Sep-16 09:47:06
Italian "No one, absolutely no one, has said anything of the sort." That is why I used the word inference."

Well I really hope I have not implied anything personally unpleasant, that was not my intent.

That knowledge is, or at least it should be, a game changer.

One would like to think so Xenophile. But I don't think the ability to see beyond what they want to see, or a sense of compassion, are the strongest attributes of porn fans.

But now you know. You know that the women being filmed are suffering.

You no longer have the ability to say you don't know that.

From this point on, any porn you watch, you're watching despite knowing this, and any enjoyment you get out of it, you now know will be enjoyment got from the suffering of a woman/women.

That knowledge is, or at least it should be, a game changer.

One - Whilst men clearly watch more pornography than women. Stats show that the amount of women, especially under 35, watching porn alone, is significant. 1/6 according to some surveys.

I don't believe it's as simple as them enjoying other women getting raped and degraded. I don't believe the general viewer of porn thinks like that man or woman.

Be it real or not the casual porn viewer doesn't see someone in pain. They see a person enjoying themselves. That's what I see when I watch it.

I know this is essentially shallow thinking compared with the erudite debate by Buffy and others on this board, but I have always viewed pornography as having four components: exhibitionism, voyeurism, moneymaking and (often) desperation.

To me it is the ultimate in appealing to the lowest common denominator in humans - a reminder that we are, essentially, still primitive and animalistic despite our veneer of civilisation.

I believe that in eras (or decades) when sex is seen, as it is now to many, as essentially divorced from real internal feelings, as casual and no more meaningful than taking a dump or having a cup of coffee, pornography will flourish openly (helped enormously now by the internet and anonymity).

In times when sex is connected more to love, caring, affection, commitment etc. pornography seems to have less of a grip. Yes, it will there but more secretive, less right-on. I accept though that the internet has probably destroyed any connection between love and sex for ever - sadly.

So, call me a prude. I don't care if that really is the opposite to sitting in front of a computer enjoying synthetic, meaningless sex performed for purveyors to make money, for exhibitionism or to earn a desperate income by (possibly) vulnerable or damaged individuals.

Ah well, thank you both - and apologies for the essay!

Yes, Flora I think socialisation is a lot more pernicious than most people realise. My sexuality now is nothing like the sexuality I'd been tricked into in my teens - I was very fortunate to have a relationship with a wonderful woman who introduced me to feminism and took the time to help me relearn sex. I can't imagine that many other people have the luck that I had.

I agree with Buffy, it's not naive. Leidholtd says something along the lines that people could be socialised to eroticise banging their head on a wall. OneFlew I think yours is a very common experience but you have found a way through and many other people have not.

I'd hazard a guess that I'm a similar age to whatnow as I also grew up with porn becoming available in my mid teens and being seen as pretty much normal. The difference is that I'm a woman and whilst I definitely enjoyed porn and found it arousing when I was younger, as I've got older I've realised how damaging it has been / was to my sexuality.

My first relationships could be considered borderline abusive and I was definitely nudged into acts that I didn't enjoy and I think that was largely driven by a need to act out porn scenes. I have always had a high sex drive so I wanted to experiment, but I never achieved orgasm through sex acts with a partner. More worryingly, I didn't question this - having sex was all about pleasing a man, being seen as hot, sexy and desirable was the end goal for me, not mutual pleasure and so I avoided being "demanding".

It wasn't until I started a same sex relationship in my 20s that I actually started to think about what I wanted from sex and realised how much of a toxic influence porn had had on me and how much the template of porn sex had been imposed over my sex life without me realising there was another option. It's been a sort of deprogramming to get to a point where sex is instinctive now, rather than formulaic and it makes me angry that other girls are growing up being conned into the same mind set that I'd had.

I've learnt a lot more about the porn industry as a whole since then too and it really disturbs me to think that in my teens I was watching abuse and didn't have the critical thinking skills to question it. I've made the conscious decision to avoid porn now - I'd probably still find it arousing, but the sexual pull is not strong enough to overcome the revulsion I feel at the possibility that I'm watching a woman being raped.

This probably all sounds rather naïve against the backdrop of the academic arguments here, but I just wanted to explain my view and say that I think I'd have benefited from hearing someone object to porn when I was younger. I think someone planting a seed of doubt in my mind, challenging the status quo, would have been invaluable.

Yes it's a sad indictment that women being raped and degraded is considered "background noise".

Realistically people who watch porn don't look that deeply in to it. They like it, it makes them feel good and everything else is background noise

I don't disbelieve you when you say this, but it does make me incredibly sad.

That people can watch scenes that any normal person knows are going to be painful. Where you can see the pain etched on the faces of the women and those images can still leave them with a sense of fulfillment is pretty shocking. That people can watch scenes of a woman in pain, knowing that there will have been take after take after take of that pain and still enjoy it.

I don't think it says anything positive about society that that can and does happen.

That's not "kink-shaming" or whichever neologism anyone wishes to bandy about to make the people explaining this feel bad, that is simply knowing how filming works, understanding facial expressions and being pretty disgusted that people can put all human feeling aside as background noise.

It's a bitter indictment of society that it is becoming more, not less socially acceptable for harming women to be mainstream. Normalising violence, especially sexual violence toward women surely isn't the way we want society to go, and yet the normalisation of filmed sexual violence to women will inevitably do that. Thinly veiled suggestions that women who don't like porn are prudes just makes the argument for it weaker.

Realistically people who watch porn don't look that deeply in to it. They like it, it makes them feel good and everything else is background noise