Society feels so porn obsessed these days

I was listening to a West Wing podcast (of all thngs) the other day, and they were interviewing a man who's work was combatting sex-trafficking and he was vehemently opposed to the legalisation of prostitution. He said that while the women involved should not be criminalised, making it legal just gives a front to sex traffickers.

The legal above-board brothel would always have the legitimate store-front..all clean and regulated, but there would always be the more-expensive children next door hidden away. The legal part just becomes a store front.

I despair sometimes at where we're going. What was it Germaine said .
'Women will never realise how much some men hate them'

I think maybe there is a need for some new language or concepts to talk about it.

Anytime something as powerful as the sex drive is given what seems like total consequence free space, and no really coherent, inherent ethical constraints, you have a high chance that it will become out of control.

Right now, there are two main approaches - the health one, which appeals to self-preservation, but then it doesn't affect the majority, and also men don't talk about it so much among themselves for obvious reasons. Once they have a problem they are already going to struggle to give up porn.

Then there are ethical questions about things like consent. This can be more fruitful, but given that society only seems to think in terms of contracts, it means that a lot of people believe that porn is just a-ok if people consent, just like many other sexual activities including some rather sketch ones.

Unless people think that there is something more basic that's problematic, and have a pretty clear way to talk about it, they will struggle to articulate to themselves why it shouldn't be allowed. And because sex is so compelling to many people they will just go along with the idea that it's ok.

@Worldgonecrazy I'm not sure that will cut it. For example if we relate it to sugar and overeating - we can shout about diabetes as much as we want yet people continue to binge on sugar etc.

The reason I said that I fear we'll lose a generation is because I think it will only be when the current pro sex work 20 year olds reach their 30s will they realise how damaging all this is.

We need to keep shouting about erectile dysfunction. Men won’t talk about it and they may feel they are the only one affected. Women need to shout about it for them and then the men will do something because it affects them.

I hate that this is the only solution I can see because it means the women have to do all the work as usual, but men won’t.

I hate to think how many women are going to suffer because the man will blame the fact he can’t get an erection on the woman, rather than his porn habit.

Once men begin equating porn habit with loss of orgasm they will change. The problem is getting that message out there.

Sadly it still means male orgasm is prized above all else, and that is a problem I have no answer to.

How we turn the tide? The 'porn lock/passport' proposal that was going to be introduced, but was abandoned or postponed at short notice.

Thanks, coronaway. I disagree with your take on FDS, but like you don't want to derail this thread...

@Rocaille I don't want to derail the thread but it's an echo chamber of self-pity and hate. As a PP alluded to it reminds me of the vitriol that used to be posted on all those incel and red pill subs.

Going back to the OPs point - how do we turn the tide on this? It seems insurmountable at this stage and I fear we've lost a generation.

Almost all of my friends have boyfriends that watch/subscribe to porn accounts, with a good amount of them even chatting with the content creator. Half of them hate it but feel like they don't know any men who aren't like that and that if they say anything they're being 'jealous and possessive', and the other half think that there's nothing wrong with it and that the people who do have a problem with it are 'jealous and possessive'.

Hello OP. This paragraph, from your first post, was enough to convince me that we are experiencing another backlash, as we did in the 1990s with the so-called ‘new laddism’.

It’s different this time around, but comes from the same place. Those women getting a bit full of themselves and having too many things going their way? Time to put them in their place.

In the 1990s it was the vogue for every female celebrity under 35 to be encouraged to pose in her knickers for one of the ‘lad’ magazines. We weren’t supposed to object to this, of course, or find it uncomfortable that our boyfriends read this stuff, because that made us miserable, bitter, envious spoilsports. I’m 49, so I was in my twenties when this was happening.

The men who started those magazines were unhappy about men’s roles having changed in the 1980s, and wanted to go back to a more traditional version of manhood that only existed in Carry On films and gangster movies. Those pesky women, spoiling their fun!

The world moved on and all those magazines closed, but it was only a matter of time before the same thing happened again. Those women have got a bit full of themselves again, what with Me Too and Time’s Up. Enter Only Fans.

Your friends need to wake up and find better boyfriends who respect the women in their lives.

I left Reddit when they closed down Gender Critical but unless FDS has changed in the last year, I wouldn't describe it as toxic. It encourages women to understand their self worth and set boundaries whilst maintaining financial independence.

The mainstreaming of this stuff - OnlyFans etc. in particular - is also a product of the idea of Sexual ('erotic') Capital. An idea that flickered briefly in the late 60s, it has come back with a vengeance in NeoLiberal societies where the collective politics of the Left have atomised into Identity stuff, analytical Feminism eroded by choosy choicy stuff, and a general shift towards the cult of individualism.

Sexual Capital is often promoted as benefiting women more than men... but clearly doesn't on any healthy score. And the idea that women can 'parlay' this type of Capital into...Well, the various better kinds, prompts the question 'why can't women have the better kinds of Capital to start with?'

Temp023

Justa47
@H2OConnoisseur

I agree is not very nice or classy.
But it’s also freedom.

I would keep my distance.

“What part of any of this is making women free?“

Neither men nor women.

The men are being completely lead by their noses. Their brains hijacked and addicted.
They have no control of their lives or reactions. They are anything but free.

At risk of derailing op's thread, I'm curious to know why you think that coronaway...?

@Rocaille FDS is incredibly toxic.

I'm highly critical of porn culture but that isn't the way to go imo. I'm amazed that sub hasn't been shut down tbh.

Ah OP, no advice but we are pretty much the same age, we can be friends if you're in the north west? I have found as I've gotten older I dont have many friends and also the proportion/number of male friends in particular has markedly declined! I only have two single male friends - one who has known me since I was born and the other a friend from sixth form who went on to the same uni as me - and the other few male friends I have I'm friends with both people in the couple and we will often do things in couples with DH too. I don't think that's a coincidence, I feel as I get older I generally dislike men more...(I know, I know, NAMALT and all that...).

Female Dating Strategy on reddit is a place where young women gather to critique porn culture, the mainstreaming of kink and other lib-fem notions of empowerment. There's a lot of humour too, and you don't need to be single or looking to date to join in.

It used to be about helping people look their best and making women feel confident. Now it’s all about who’s the hottest and sexiest.

Even something as stupid and mumlike as knitting is getting in on this. I've been picking up a bunch of knitting books at used bookstores to expand my skills. A couple of them, (one even called 'Hot Knits') had the the whole 'Cosmo' thing going on with the models- wearing unbuttoned sweaters with nothing on under and such. Who did they think they were appealing to with that? All I can think is "God, that must itch like crazy" and "Who would wear that like that?" One of the books has a inset about encouraging men to knit. Maybe the half-naked models in frumpy knit coats is one way of achieving this?

Imagine*

Your*

Did you post in the relationship forum a while back with this? If it's you, you've come to the right place.

You're so called decent friends sound incredibly gross, immature and a bit misogynistic really.Can you honestly imagining them having respect for women if they're like this? I wonder what their mothers would think of their sons behaving this way in a Whatsapp group with women in it. Disgusting.

It's all said under the banner of feminism and women's empowerment as well which I find really irksome.

A feminist who centres men is like a vegan who lives on meat. It’s nonsense. ‘Third-wave feminism’, as they call it, is simply not feminism. I don’t know why they use the word.

I read the following somewhere (could have been Cambridge Rad Fems)...

Porn is the marketing department for sex trafficking.

Well ,wouldn't you know- if it wasn't Phipps peddling this claptrap it would be Sally Hines.