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.

simply shown that it's shit for all porn pawns, so to speak.
Aaaanyways. off to bed. my stickers lost its stick now dammit.

"They still don't earn very much, considering what they have to do for it, so I'm not really seeing what you're getting at." How much do they earn Elizabeth? Ex colleague would get £300-400 for a couple of hours work. Her DP would get £100-200 for the same. That was pretty standard from what they said. Along with job satisfaction........

"Well the men aren't being penetrated for hours at a time or having to wrap their gobs around penises for more hours on end so it's probably less taxing on their bodies." Probably? I think you'll find they can get just as sore. Where are you getting your ideas on this from?

""Most porn films are not shot in one take. The man is required to keep up his performance for extended periods and there is also the aspect of ejaculating on cue. I think the arguments against porn in some quarters are over-simplified and lacking in perspective. "

In what way. You haven't described anything there that undermines the anti-porn argument." I also followed it with "I think the arguments for porn in some quarters are over-simplified and lacking perspective"

I dont understand why you'd overlook that unless you were trying to pick an argument.

Worry not. It's all done by computer-graphics these days. A friend of mine is an editor currently working in this field.

Will ask her to put the MN logo "UCM, is that you?" on someone's arse, if it helps.

Bed-time for me too.

Rather than all these claims and counterclaims, it's probably better to hear from a woman who was in the industry. How anybody can support this being done to women is inconceivable to me. I guess we'll hear the usual bollox though about how someone has a friend or a neighbour who is a porn performer who says it's nothing like this -

link

"Shelley: "I hear you left porn. What's going on?"

Jersey: "I'm just tired of the industry. The way that they treat as though we are just a piece of meat. That we don't have a mind and our body is everybody's and we have no soul."

Shelley: "Did something happen that made you say, 'That's it! I'm done.'"

Jersey: "Someone I thought was my friend chose money over me and tried to get my fiance to leave me by offering him double pay. I've completely had it. I can't deal with it anymore... I want everything in my relationship to be only me and him."

Shelley: "You told me some pretty scary things about the porn industry."

Jersey: "Guys punching you in the face. You have semen... Twenty or thirty guys all over your face, in your eyes. You get ripped. Your insides can come out of you. It's never ending. Your viewed as an object not as a human with a spirit. People don't care. People do drugs because they can't deal with the way they're being treated."

Shelley: "What percentage of porn people use drugs?"

Jersey: "Seventy five percent and rising. Have to numb themselves... There are specific doctors in this industry if you go in for a common cold, they'll give you vicodin, viagra, anything you want because all they care about is money. You are a number. You're bruised. You have black eyes. You're ripped. You're torn. You have your insides coming out of you. It's not pretty and foofoo on set. You get hurt."

"The main thing going around now is crystal meth, cocaine and heroin. ...You have to numb yourself to go on set. The more you work, the more you have to numb yourself. The more you become addicted, the more your personal life is nothing but drugs... Your whole life becomes nothing but porn."

"I was a drinker. I drank a lot. Vodka was my drug. Vodka was my numbing toy. Before sets, after sets, and if it was a set where people didn't care, they'd have it there waiting."

Shelley: "Do pornographers provide drugs?"

Jersey: "Some of them do. Some of them do it in front of you. I used to have a problem with cocaine that I overcame. It's hard when they're putting it in front of you and saying, 'Do this.'"

Shelley: "Talk about some of the degradation the women have to go through."

Jersey: "You may see a 45-minute set that took us 13 hours. ...We're ripped, we're tired, we're sored, we're bleeding, we're cut up, we have dried semen all over our faces from numerous guys and we can't wash it off because they want to take pictures. You have this stuff all over you and they're telling you, 'Hold it!'"

"You can say anything you want [stop or pain etc] and they don't listen. There's the ultimate thing where you squeeze their leg to ease up and most of them don't care. They have another scene to go to. It's all about the money. They've forgotten who they are and they don't care who they're hurting."

"I'm on the road right now heading to a different life. I'm going to try to make it as a normal person because I'm done."

"You have no soul in the porn industry.""

""I think the arguments for porn in some quarters are over-simplified and lacking perspective"

I dont understand why you'd overlook that unless you were trying to pick an argument."

How funny. I was ignoring the argument you were trying to pick with that statement.

I'm off to bed but in the meantime perhaps you can let us know which bits of the anti-porn argument you think are oversimplified particularly with reference to the Jersey Jaxin interview. As for lacking in perspective, I won't be taking the perspective that it's OK to sexually exploit women's bodies any time soon. Been there, done that, realised how morally bankrupt a perspective it actually was in the end.

Night night.

Well, as I've said before - there are definitely aspects of the porn industry that are foul and awful.

I dont doubt this persons account of it at all.

Nor do I disbelieve things I have been told. But I suspect that the people I know were in an entirely different end of the industry that thrived on 'couples' entertainment. It's not all bad.

I think perhaps this is the point that people think you have been missing Elizabeth.

Maybe Jersey was just rubbish at it and looking for a way to make some money by writing/talking about it. After all, every other industry is plagued by those people.

Don't care about porn either way, as it were. Just not keen on being preached at in this unaccountable manner.

its very much not all being done by computer graphics these days btw

No you are okay. I'm not in for sarcastic point scoring. Just conveying my opinion on the subject, and this thread.

obm - I said it tongue in cheek.

Well yes Class Act. There are always people who suffer discrimination, bullying and all sorts of mistreatment in 'the workplace'.

From sweatshops to cash-in-hand cleaners, cockle pickers etc etc. That doesnt mean all textile factories, cleaning jobs or fishing industry is an awful type of place to work. It just means that the more vulnerable in each industry are always going to be exploited.

We should all be doing more to protect the vulnerable in our society, and more to expose those who abuse them.

The trouble with a big multi-participant discussion on porn is that not everyone is quite clear on what everyone is talking about when they use the word. SOme people use 'porn' to describe any depiction of any kind of sexual activity (including sex education material that shows actual naked flesh and/or written text with no pictures at all), some use it to indicate any kind of media that they dislike, and some claim to distinguish between 'porn' and 'erotica' without actually stating where they draw the line.
Certainly a culture where any depiction or discussion of sexual behaviour is regarded as forbidden is not one that does women (or children) any favours. Porn, like all media, is a reflection of society rather than a leading influence (FFS how can the most stigmatised kind of media there is be the most important influence?) Maybe the increase in depictions of humiliation in porn are more to do with the increase in tabloid cruelty and demonisation of anything seen as 'other', maybe it's reflecting the growing trend in inflicting humiliation on people in the name of 'improving' them - think Trinny and Tranny and all those horrible 'reality' shows where people get bullied by some twat with a dodgy qualification and forced to admit that they are wrong and inadequate but the horrors inflicted on them are what they need and deserve.

I also note that someone earlier on the thread mentioned the wearing of diamonds, which is quite a good example of an industry with a taint of cruelty and exploitation (but not a total byword for exploitation: mining for diamonds can be a fair and legitimate source of income) - the clothing industry is an even better example. As many if not more people are exploited, injured, enslaved etc in the course of providing cheap clothing to the developed world: where did your socks come from? Who made your coat, your shirt, your kids' trainers? Yet are fashion students and people who run ethical clothing import businesses or knit and sew garments to sell as a cottage industry all as 'bad' as the corporations who do exploit?

Oh, and there are plenty of strong feminist arguments against the censorship of pornography. Go here for some of the main ones.

Sorry, Veni. I take your points totally, without question.

just the issues in pornography are horribly entangled re 'adult agreement' and 'choices'. No doubt in some arenas Jersey's account is acute.

interesting madamez. thanks.

This is such an interesting discussion. I have previously put a request in the media section to ask if any of you with a strong opinion about porn and its effect on relationships and family life (particularly if negative, as positive opinions are easier to find) would talk to me in more detail for a book I'm researching. I'm on [email protected] and undertake to respect your anonymity. Elizabethh, Mildmanneredjanitor, Jenkeywoo, Fruitduet, I'd love to hear from you or from anyone else who would like to continue the discussion.

positive views on porn from women are easier to find than negative ones? if that is true, it surprises me.

and anyway, just because i dont demonise the entire industry/genre/concept nor imagine it came from nowhere and is to blame for societal ills, rather than the other way round, does not mean i think it is all 'positive'.

and i suspect i am not alone.

People always talk about this mythological non-bad porn but never seem to be able to come up with any actual examples. I googled "couples porn" and the first site I got came up with these titles -

01 ) Sexy Homewives ( 876 clicks
02 ) Amateurs Video Home ( 165 clicks
03 ) Show Me Your Wife ( 138 clicks
04 ) Cuckold Wives Vids. ( 117 clicks
05 ) My Fucking Wife ( 84 clicks
06 ) Free Homemade Sex ( 57 clicks
07 ) Hot Home Movies ( 33 clicks
08 ) Real Couples Movies ( 24 clicks
09 ) Wife Nights ( 24 clicks
10 ) Amateur Milf Videos ( 18 clicks
11 ) The Shared Wife ( 18 clicks
12 ) Amateur Album ( 18 clicks
13 ) Video And Home ( 15 clicks
14 ) Free Voyeur Videos ( 12 clicks
15 ) My First Amateur ( 12 clicks
16 ) Senior Amateur Clips ( 12 clicks
17 ) Wife Sex Expo ( 9 clicks

Sorry for the crudity but this is what people who are defending porn are supporting. It's still fetishisation and objectification, with this time the cheap thrill coming from the idea that the woman is supposedly owned by a man who he "shares" (as if she is an object) with other men. What a turn-on, eh?

And you know unless you know these people there is no way of telling whether you are watching real couples, johns and prostitutes, trafficked women being used in porn, or just your average porn performers pretending that they are an item. Or maybe they are just women who've been duped by their partners who promised never to show it to anyone else, as happened to Pamela Anderson, Pamela Hilton and quite a few lesser known celebs. Whatever else it is it's a marketing tool.

The other point is that so-called nice porn isn't what is being consumed in general. "Couples porn" not what the OP's husband on the other thread had left in the DVD for her 2 year old to find. It's not what twelve year old boys are looking at when they work out how to break the security on the home PC. It's not what twenty-something guys are drooling over when they use their mobile phones to watch porn at work.

If you want to know what porn consumers' priorities are google "couples porn" and you'll get 2,800,000 hits; google "anal gang bang" and that number rises to 4,630,000.

"MILF porn" gets 5,840,000 google hits.

And if you google it, read the blurb underneath. It'll make you sick.

I have better things to do than sitting there typing anal gang bang into google

AGREE kerry-pretty fecking simple really

Ooooh, Natasha Walter is an MNer!

agree kerrymum

Elizabetth, are you ever going to come up with an argument that really makes sense as to why the men in these films are not being exploited and degraded???
You say time and time again about these poor women, but never the men.

As I have said previously I KNOW A GIRL WHO HAS BEEN IN PORN, SHE LOVED IT, AND SHE WASN'T ABUSED.

So that in itself is enough to prove to me that not all porn actresses are being forced into it.

Of course some of them get into it for the wrong reasons, and feel degraded, but people end up in all kinds of jobs that make them feel worthless, my Dp hates the job he is doing now, feels degraded and worthless by his managers and is only in it because he needs the money, he is in advertising sales ffs!

Also have you ever been to a lapdancing club?? A male one?? I went to one on a friends hen night, it was women downstairs dancing for the men, and men upstairs dancing for women. The men watching women were not allowed to touch, I saw someone get thrown out for calling one of the dancers a 'slag' (we had to wait downstairs for a while until upstairs opened) However when we went upstairs, and the men danced for us and the other women there, they were mauled, and had no protection, they had to put up with it, and from the ones I spoke to they didnt earn much money at all, because women didnt pay for the dances, just came in and made a fool of themselves, whereas downstairs the girls were getting money shoved in their thongs.

I totally agree that some pornstars are forced into the job and feel absolutely disgusted with themselves for doing it, but some of them aren't, surely if you feel so strongly about degradation of porn you should make it your mission to make sure all actors and actresses undergo a rigorous recruitment process, including some form of psyhcological assessment so that the women and men that are in it as a result of abuse or twisted ideals are not entering into the profession

I believe that if you were to just accept not all of the people in porn are being abused, and that men are as used as women then you could actually start to make a difference to peoples opinions but until you can accept that, you will just be billed as someone who hates men and porn.

Also WRT me not wanting watch my gay son in a porn movie, I wouldn't want to watch him have sex, full stop, no matter who it was with. I also wouldn't want to watch him work if he was a heart surgeon, or a vet, or a boxer. As far as not wanting him to do it for a job, there are hundreds of jobs I wouldn't want him to do, which I won't say on ehre because no doubt some of the people on MN or their partners actually do those jobs.