to be surprised at how many Mumsnetters are fine with pornography?

[Elizabetth]

Particularly as porn has become so much more mainstream in the past few years, I'd have thought that people would be concerned about premature sexualisation of children. Also I'm surprised that so many women are fine with it given that the humiliation and degradation of women is the central theme of pornography. You only have to look at the titles to realise that.

The only reason women don't pay for sex is because there's enough men out there willing to do it for free.
However Men pay because there isn't enough women. That to me seems to be women power.

Porn is the one industry where women are looked after more than men! They get paid more.

Also to get into the mainstream porn you must be CLEAN of drugs.

BeautifulBoysGalore, porn isn't sex. Sex is something people do together because they enjoy it. Pornography is women being paid to be penetrated and used and pretend to enjoy it. The fact that people then enjoy watching this says something disturbing about our society.

As for what the opposite of misogyny is - I don't know. There isn't a comparable multi-billion pound industry where mens bodies are used and degraded for the pleasure of women. One in two UK women don't think it's OK to force a man into sex against his will. Men aren't raped and attacked by women at the same rate as women are raped and attacked by men. Men aren't routinely discriminated against at work so they only earn 70-odd per cent of what women do. Women don't hog all the top jobs in almost every industry and workplace.

It's a funny thing to talk about man-hating when all that is going on. Particularly when the man-hating charge appears to be being directed at objections to expressions of men's misogyny.

Right well I'm getting pretty bored of this now so I'm off to bed. However I shall leave my opinion before I go...

Personally I enjoy watching porn. I don't find what I watch to be degrading though I am sure there is plenty of porn out there that is degrading. I don't like to be a hypocrite and I only watch porn that shows stuff I'd do myself. I don't think all men are into porn and I don't think people who watch porn are pervs. I think people nowadays are more open about sex and that's a good thing. I think it's good for society that we can talk about sex, be accepting of differing sexual orientation and of sexual preferences. I think the majority of people like to enjoy sex and by that I mean so that both parties are happy and enjoying it.

What bothers me is that it's so obviously fake, badly acted and NOT really enjoyed by the woman in the way she is pretending. It looks ridiculous and yet men either don't care about that or don't notice. It depresses me that they can be so shallow as to fall for it.

I still don't understand why there's this confusion between porn and sex.

Surely people don't really believe that porn actresses are enjoying what is being done to them. Stick a smile on a woman's face and apparently that's enough to ignore everything else that is happening to her.

"BeautifulBoysGalore, porn isn't sex. Sex is something people do together because they enjoy it. Pornography is women being paid to be penetrated and used and pretend to enjoy it. The fact that people then enjoy watching this says something disturbing about our society."

Quoting the Metro newspaper sometime in the last two weeks (I think last Wed/Thurs?) there is a website where people post their own videos, typically themselves and partner having sex at home; and posted because some people enjoy the idea of people watching them have sex. They are having sex with their partners and just like the idea of it being on the WWW.

So no, not ALL porn is about porn, some is about sex.

it's all coming back to me now..the smoke, the beer, those itchy student union seats.

And am delighted to discover that the blood still rises, my dears, in a lonely old lady's brain, when this subject rears its ..head.

Night night, off to put my sticker on my chart.

might revisit tomorrow tho..

Actually a lot of what I watch is real couples.

You know what they say about the exception proving the rule ELF?

There is a multi-billion pound industry where women who are not enjoying it but are either paid to pretend or forced to pretend that they love it.

oh dear, im not blaming feminism for porn. im a feminist. i think woman are equal to men.

i just think that, if we dont like something, something which is born of powerful human instincts, then arent we better to get involved and change it, than to try to stamp it out? it would never work. we could never stamp out porn, but just think what we could achieve if we took it over... anybody with me there??

i am deeply interested in porn made by real woman for real women. and im pretty sure it would be powerful stuff. if there were more of that, wouldnt there then be less of the crap stuff?

it isnt all about powerplay... is it? maybe it largely is. but i think that the fact that (generalisation men put so much effort into trying to seem more powerful that woman is actually a good indicator that they feel less so. (and i think prob always have done).

why does everything have to be a war? for some reason, i think that the logical conclusion of following all these lines of thought is , worst case, the kinds of misogynistic societies which exist today, where entire populations of women are treated as possesions and kept beaten down so as to control the all powerful sexuality they contain. why must men and be women be divided so?

E - If you watch porn you can physically see the orgasm!!! Therefore they are enjoying what is happening!

Message withdrawn

or elf, ONE of them enjoys the idea of people watching them having sex. Remember reader's wives. Never looked that genuinely happy, did they?

there is another argument btw that says that men who watch other men having sex are aroused by the homoerotic element of that exchange..

but now really off to bed.

So E, what about women that will have sex with there partner only to get nice things (i've done it, got to make my 3rd child thanks to a very good BJ! lol)

Or women that only have sex with husband/partner to make a baby?

Or women that have sex just to stop the man from moaning he isn't getting enough?

All in the name of happily married. Not all sex is making love because both people are there, wanting and enjoying it (again not including rape)

Women can be very guilty for using sex as a weapon

I do blame parts of feminism, women wanting all equality with men and that includes being equal in sex but we arent the same as men, and sex isn't as important to alot of women.

id pay a man for sex. yeah for sure. and get them to do everything i wanted and look like they enjoy it. i would pay for that. is that perverted?

and yes, i know sex isnt porn and porn isnt sex. i know that outside of porn, there is a world of sex. but porn exists because people are sexual beings with sexual urges. you cannot separate the two so cleanly, it is simply not that simple.

If you do not like it, do not buy it.
If you do not like semi naked women in magazines, do not buy them.
If you do not agree with Billie Piper in that show, do not watch it.

As I said before, REVENUE is key for companies. Stop buying and watching and things could slowly change.

If that does not move fast enough for you, PROTEST it, LOBBY it.

Sitting for an entire evening on mumsnet singing from the same song sheet will not make the blindest bit of difference - has anybody (in case I missed it) said to you tonight "bloody hell, I never realised, I am going to stop watching porn ever again"?

Normabutty and Elf - if that was all that the porn industry were about then I wouldn't have any objections to it either. Sadly it isn't, it is growing ever more violent and sadistic, and there is a whole generation growing up now becoming desensitized to it and considering it normal.

I agree that there are underlying tones of prudishness that are as scary as the wear-nothing-in-the-middle-of-winter types.

I think it is important to distinguish and accept that sexuality and sensuality and the appreciation of the male and female forms is a good thing for society, but anything that steps over the mark of consensual, legal, or degrading needs to be kept very much in check.

I think we would all be better off for accepting our own sexuality, even celebrating it. (Obviously within the boundaries of our own characters and personalities). There is no real reason that watching 2 consenting adults enjoying each others bodies should be wrong.

To feel conscious of our bodies to the degree of wanting to keep covered up all the time, or to not want to enjoy our own bodies is a sad thing. I think we need to be careful when we indicate that porn etc is wrong, that we arent instilling Victorian values back in society that makes sex taboo.

BBG - didn't mean you with the feminism point, was responding to another post. I'm sure you are a very good and strident feminist.

I love sex and don't pretend to enjoy it with my dp, can't imagine that changing because there is a camera there!

Being paid to have sex with fit young men... you're right, it must be awful

pornography is sex - its paid for sex - its imaginary eutopian sex with perfect men and women. Its sexual entertainment. if i wanted candles dodgy music and lovehearts i would watch hallmark. but i dont i want to watch fucking for entertainment purposes.

if you argument is the subjugation of women in society this is a wider question - but again i dont think that women as a group are subjugated as much as i think that greed and money rule our capitalist society. You make it sound like there is some secret handshake betweek men to actively keep women down. Whilst i dont doubt that this happens in some quarters - perhaps the city - by and large the people who are subjugated in a capitalist society are poor people - matters not race or ability or gender.

sex makes money - money equals power. the only way we could ever e sure that women actually like their highly paid fucking jobs is if we could guarentee that it was their choice of career over something else - as highly paid.

onebatmother - IIRC the article was about the fact that WOMEN are posting.

Readers wives - erm, no, dont remember? Enlighten me?

sorry can't seem to leave - my observation of an actual real-life porn set was that women were, very definitely, "paid to be penetrated and used and pretend to enjoy it." As in, honey, can we do that again, and just lick that cum into your mouth a bit more eagerly?

surely not so naive as to think that the majority are For REAL??

They haven't said it tonight but they've said it to me at other times ELF.

I think it helps for women who don't like porn to hear other women saying the same thing. I know I always wanted to hear it said instead of the constant crummy droning defences of porn that never seem to go away.

Anybody would think you want me to shut up. Surely not.

This isn't getting anywhere, its just the same conversations over and over again.

The Pro-porn people are quite happy to accept that not all porn is good, yet the anti-porn don't seem to listen when we explain there is some good in the industry.

I don't actually know what to say anymore.