Active discussions

Please or to access all these features

Talk
Feminism: Sex and gender discussions

Feminism: chat

Original poster

Pornography is turning sex into an extreme sport - Hadley Freeman

108 replies

IwantToRetire · 03/08/2025 17:27

All of this discourse is a desperate avoidance of an obvious truth, fussing over the deckchairs long after the iceberg has destroyed the ship. Because the simple but apparently unsayable fact is this: pornography is bad. No, not just for kids. For everyone. And it has eaten the world.

From an article in the Times https://www.thetimes.com/comment/columnists/article/pornography-sex-extreme-sport-bonnie-blue-gnb60xlsf

Can be read in full here https://archive.is/byS6O

Pornography is turning sex into an extreme sport

As my return to dating shows, it’s not just children who are being damaged

https://www.thetimes.com/comment/columnists/article/pornography-sex-extreme-sport-bonnie-blue-gnb60xlsf

OP posts:
moto748e · 03/08/2025 19:24

Rightsraptor · 03/08/2025 18:20

Is it just me, but when I click on the archive link it has me proving about 20 times that I'm not a robot: 'Click on all the squares with a bus', 'click on all the squares with a motorbike', 'click on all the squares with a crosswalk' (btw what is that - a pedestrian crossing?)

I seriously think someone is bored somewhere and playing games with me. I get fed up and click away. Shame, as I'd like to read the article.

It's not just you. I get that sometimes. It's a minor inconvenience, but no biggie.

OutsideLookingOut · 03/08/2025 19:10

I've been thinking this for years. I will never let a man guilt me into doing an act I do not want too. I really wish more women were 4B.

fabricstash · 03/08/2025 18:28

Great article

Original poster
IwantToRetire · 03/08/2025 18:26

Rightsraptor · 03/08/2025 18:20

Is it just me, but when I click on the archive link it has me proving about 20 times that I'm not a robot: 'Click on all the squares with a bus', 'click on all the squares with a motorbike', 'click on all the squares with a crosswalk' (btw what is that - a pedestrian crossing?)

I seriously think someone is bored somewhere and playing games with me. I get fed up and click away. Shame, as I'd like to read the article.

As said on other threads just copy the link and paste it in.

Although not heard of your problem. Hmm

OP posts:
Rightsraptor · 03/08/2025 18:20

Is it just me, but when I click on the archive link it has me proving about 20 times that I'm not a robot: 'Click on all the squares with a bus', 'click on all the squares with a motorbike', 'click on all the squares with a crosswalk' (btw what is that - a pedestrian crossing?)

I seriously think someone is bored somewhere and playing games with me. I get fed up and click away. Shame, as I'd like to read the article.

Imnobody4 · 03/08/2025 18:17

Surprisingly Martin Amis said something similar years ago.

What Amis identified in his essay on the porn industry applies to the entire sexual revolution. In an era of boundless choice, violence and darkness once restrained by morality have been released. Market forces heed only our own carnal gods. Amis admits this with startling candor. “As I sampled some extreme productions on the VCR in my hotel room, I kept worrying about something,” he wrote. “I kept worrying that I’d like it. Porno services the ‘polymorphous perverse’: the near-infinite chaos of human desire. If you harbour perversity, then sooner or later porno will identify it.” Here again, Amis proved prophetic. Every human heart harbors perversity; pornography draws it out, nurtures it, and causes it to metastasize. Since the publication of that essay, pornography has successfully mainstreamed sadism in the sexual context—even among high school students.

SidewaysOtter · 03/08/2025 18:04

Too many believe criticising pornography is illiberal, and worse, judgmental.

Quite. Pornography is too often seen as sexually progressive, liberal and "allowing people to express and be themselves".

What other issue does that remind me of? 🤔

Currentquandry · 03/08/2025 17:42

I admire Hadley for writing this and agree. It’s not just the ubiquity of modern pornography that’s the issue, it’s that it disregards the idea that women should have pleasure in sex entirely. It treats women as objects to hurt and humiliate rather than a human being to be respected and considered in a pleasurable activity for both parties. Girls are being told to think that being choked is normal. That they must agree to anal sex. That their pleasure is irrelevant. It’s a disturbing and distressing distillation of all the rampant misogyny we are dealing with.