Does anyone else find tv sex and/or porn repulsive?

[Wildviolet]

Is it just me which fast forwards or mutes and looks away for tv sex scenes?

This being so, obviously porn is not my thing either.

I long for the days when sex, if an essential part of the plot, was just implied without all the heaving and pumping.

I don’t find it in the least sexy, more cringe worthy.

Why else? I assume that’s why sex scenes exist—because some people are turned on by them and enjoy watching them. For people that don’t enjoy them, there is always a warning that the show contains it, so they can avoid if not interested/grossed out/offended.
As long as there has been an intimacy coordinator and the actors are all consenting, I don’t see a problem.

But does anyone enjoy getting turned on in presence of anyone else (barring a partner, and even then, not just in any circumstance)? The addition of sex scenes to everything means it severely limits the content that can be watched socially. Why does the majority of content now have to be consumed on your own because of the shoehorned cringy scenes?

I have very fond memories of time spent watching things as a family. It’s now become so much more difficult for me to do so with my own children.

Not repulsed by it, just not particularly interested in watching so forward to the next scene.

No, of course not. Just pick a show that doesn’t have sex in it and watch that?
If there are sex scenes in there, then by definition it is not a family show, and you will be able to tell that from the warning info, so can avoid it.

With your kids, obviously not. But I've seen plenty of people do watchalongs to stuff like Bridgerton, Heated Rivalry, The Summer I Turned Pretty etc, where part of it was talking about how hot various scenes are, live reacting, gasping/giggling/swooning etc. Obviously nobody's organising mutual masturbation parties (or maybe they are and good for them) but it's not that much of a leap mentally, surely? It's only in the ballpark of concepts like building sites having the topless calendars or going en masse to swoon at a soaking wet Mr Darcy on film or going to a club and having a flirt and a grind on someone (do people still do that?) or, I don't know, going to scream at Elvis's hip shaking live. There are lots of cases where people actively go and engage in 'this is of interest to me in a sexual or sexualised way' activities as a group.

My kids are teenagers. There’s a lot of good content that would be suitable except for the sex scenes.

Seeing a few seconds of Mr Darcy in a wet shirt or seeing Elvis fully clothed on stage is in no way comparable to watching explicit sex scenes! I could do the former with my teens no problem, but I’m not doing the latter even with other adults! And by the sounds of it neither are most people on this thread.

Theres a place for more adult content/behaviour, as I understand there are some who enjoy it. What I object to is that sex scenes becoming mainstream means the majority of content is now adult. Saying “pick a show that doesn’t have sex in it” is not ans easy as it sounds these days.

Yes, and the vast majority of the readership of very sexually explicit fiction also consists of women. And the vast majority of readers and writers of explicit fanfic are women. As are most creators of explicit fan-art, which is a lot more explicit than anything you’d ever see in Bridgerton or any other TV drama. Women were also the biggest audience for the ‘erotic thriller’ movie genre in the 80s and 90s.

Plenty of women absolutely do enjoy sexual content in all its forms (including porn). I don’t think Mumsnet is at all representative of the female population as a whole when it comes to matters of sex and sexuality.

Sex scenes in a drama like Bridgerton or Rivals or White Lotus are not really there to appeal to men, and if they didn’t do well with female audiences, they wouldn’t put them in. Generally speaking, attractive actors getting it on actually does play well to a sizeable chunk of the female population- as do scenes of men wearing very few clothes. There’s a reason Henry Cavill took so many baths in The Witcher, and it wasn’t to appeal to male gaming nerds.

It’s absolutely fine for people not to like them, but hey, not everything has to be to everyone’s taste and not everything has to be family viewing.

It’s not the same thing at all? What bizarre comparisons. Watching sex scenes is like going to a club? Or Elvis dancing? 👀

“Obviously it's fine if you don't like this kind of content - clearly, from this thread, lots of people don't! But it's not being forced upon women and it's reductive and incorrect to say it is.”

How is it reductive? It sort of is being forced upon you when it’s in at least 80% of all adult programming.

Plenty of women absolutely do enjoy sexual content in all its forms (including porn). I don’t think Mumsnet is at all representative of the female population as a whole when it comes to matters of sex and sexuality.

There are a lot of people on MN who have older children. I think when you get to the age that the actors are young enough to be your child then sex scenes stop being sexy and start taking you out of the story and thinking about what it's like for the actors. It's perfectly possible to have sex scenes that don't show a lot, The Good Wife was on CBS initially so had strict rules about what it could show nudity wise and yet had very steamy sex scenes. In fact I suspect the popularity of 'sex against the wall' in TV sex is probably because it allows the actors to wear more clothes and better maintain their modesty while still suggesting overwhelming passion.

Something I noticed recently whilst re-watching the film single white female was how female masturbation is always used in films as a sign of a woman being unhinged. The implication in this film was that Jennifer Leigh's character was a psychopath so of course she masturbates and the "good girl" played by Bridget Fonda was of course, disgusted by it.

Since I noticed this, I noticed it in other films too- whenever a woman is portrayed as being a psycho they often throw in a masturbation scene as if a woman having sexual feelings is always a harbinger of some kind of evil or unhinged behaviour. It's really denigrating to imply that women who enjoy sexual pleasure must be batshit crazy. Men masturbate all the time and noone assumes they must be psychopaths because of it!

That's because women aren't supposed to actually enjoy sex. We're supposed to withhold it, gatekeep it, tolerate it, submit to it, but never to actually enjoy it.

Masturbation is just another signpost that a woman is womaning incorrectly - ergo, mentally unstable.

Yes, spot on.

Have you got a source to back up your claim that 80% of all TV shows aimed at adults contain explicit sex scenes?

Since I noticed this, I noticed it in other films too- whenever a woman is portrayed as being a psycho they often throw in a masturbation scene as if a woman having sexual feelings is always a harbinger of some kind of evil or unhinged behaviour. It's really denigrating to imply that women who enjoy sexual pleasure must be batshit crazy. Men masturbate all the time and noone assumes they must be psychopaths because of it!

I agree that women masturbating is used like this in films.

However, on the rare occasions when a man masturbates in a film, it usually is to indicate that there’s something a bit wrong with them. It’s very much the ‘sad lonely weirdo’ and/or ‘sexually deviant serial killer’ characters who have a wank. Or it’s used for a cheap laugh in gross-out comedies.

Hollywood is just really bloody weird about masturbation in general, which is depressing in this day and age.

I didn't say it was the same thing, I said it was in the same ballpark as the concept of doing those things - i.e. a thing where there's a clear and accepted element of sexual interest that people do in public/around other people. Grinding on a person at a club is related to sexual interest. Girls losing their shit at Elvis dancing was about them fancying him. The interest in the sex scenes in e.g. Bridgerton are at least in part about the fact that there's sexual interest/arousal in it. I don't see especially why it's any weirder to do the former around other people and not the latter.

I'd love a source for that 80%, for a start. And because it is reductive: it narrows things down to 'women are being forced to watch sexual content' which a) implies women don't want to do that and b) that they've got no agency. It reduces the idea of women to sex-averse beings with no sway over media programming, which is plainly not true. Plenty of women like sex scenes and sexual content, and a massive amount of media is designed to appeal to women and is marketed accordingly.

Absolutely this.