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.

cestlavie - challenging questions, must dash to school!
phew.

I worry that if we ban porn then it'll just go underground again. It'll be less "safe" and I mean in the way of illness as well as people getting raped and filmed.

I don't think all porn is bad but i know there is some bloody horrid stuff out there, we have to find a way of stopping that while allowing everyone who enjoys it (including the actors/resses) to carry on with what they are doing.

I wonder whether only allowing female directors may calm it down abit.?

ONebatmother@ in how many industries do you get the impression that the majority of employees are people in charge of their own destinies?

Kittock, my persoanl opinion on "where to draw the line" is that the regulations should allow porn stars to choose exactly what they're willing to do and what they're not. Obviously the more 'extreme' stuff would get a higher wage and if someone should choose to do that for the money it is their choice. It's not a case of drawing the line at how hard or soft the porn is, it's about regulating the industry to protect the people who work in it. Obviously anything illiegal shouldn't be allowed, but I would have thought that goes without saying.

OBM: How about a big box of non-exploitative porn

And I have to go now so I'll come back later and see how circular the debate has got once DS is in bed.

Do you know, when it comes to the question of what should be done, I don't have the first idea.

E - Porn with underage children is not right and never has been. I don't think anyone on here has said it is good.

"Barely legal" although is very young and made to look young they still have to be 18 and produce a birth certificate to prove it.

again I PERSONALLY don't find the thrill but everyone has a right to their own sexual "thrills" (for want of a better word)

indeedydoody Elizabeth.

I am of your vintage I think and had a very similar experience. When I later became a schoolgirl myself, the knowledge that my dad was wanking over girls who were probably only a year older than I was (and were actually pretending to be my age) certainly made me .. anxious, let's say.

i think in fact that the schoolgirl 'motif' has only very recently disappeared (last ten years) from the Sun etc.

cestlavie - is Socratic another word for boring?

but lucky the 'thrill' is the fantasy of having sex with a child!

Madamez - were you offering like they do on the scuttlebug thread etc.
like

Swedes2Turnip1: certainly looks like that doesn' it!

swedes !!! tho a bit Are you the forthright one at school who i was always secretly a bit scared of?

If thats the thrill then it's very worrying and should be looked into. If people are having a happy over the fact that they "could" have sex with a young girl, then maybe they should be put on the watch list. - As in it's in their head that the girl could be only 16.

However, if its a 20 year old lad having a go over what he thinks in his head is a 18 year old girl I don't see the harm. BUT again it's not for me, I prefer the older man.

Similarly - I don't understand the attraction in the Over 50 and over 60 (and lately over 80...shudder) magazines.

I wonder what the says about me. - genuine question

lucky agree, but think the fact that the mags are called barely legal announces that the whole point is that they're well, barely legal and the readership isn;'t going to be 18...

must go, interesting thread, but uncollected child crying at the shcool gates.

"E - Porn with underage children is not right and never has been. I don't think anyone on here has said it is good."

Nobody here has but we're talking about the connection between child abuse and pornography, where PolicyWonk rightly says the line has been blurred. You've obviously never looked at Hustler or Playboy, probably the two biggest porn brands out there, both of which were instrumental in bringing pornography into the mainstream. Hustler ran a comic strip called "Chester the Molester" and Playboy frequently had cartoons that made light of incest and child abuse.

Of course Larry Flynt, the owner of Hustler and darling of "free speech" luvvies everwhere, did molest his own daughter according to her.

OBM - Again if it's a genuine guy who knows hes looking at someone in his age group then I see no problem. BUT i worry if its a 30 year old guy looking at someone the same age as his daughter as sexually pleasing.

ALSO - just thought, is it wrong for an older man to have a younger wife? or vice versa.

E - that's one of the things that is bad about porn then if its true and needs to be looked into and if need be stopped.

Exactly how many bad things does it take for you to add them all up and realise that it's not individual "bad things" that are the problem but the whole edifice of pornography that needs to be dismantled LS?

Pornography is the commodification of people's (mainly women's bodies). Pornography turns women into sexual objects without reference to their humanity or feelings. It's why things like Chester the Molester can appear in a mainstream mag like Hustler because men's (it's nearly always men despite what we hear about the women involved) empathy has been turned off. Their orgasm and their entertainment is what counts.

Personally, I think the underage question is reflective of broader questions in society rather than pornography. It's always somewhat intriguing when something like The Sun, for example, has "Soap star in 16 year old schoolgirl sex shocker" on page 2 and "See Jade, 18, get her tits out" on page 3". Despite the clear legal limits, society more generally seems a bit confused as to where the lines get drawn.

It needs to be a lot more than just a couple. Porn allows alot of people to act things out which they wouldn't normally.

I want proof that ALL women are being forced into porn. I want proof that porn is making people sexually violent. I want proof that porn is doing all these and the many more that have been mentioned and I want proof that its the majority not the minority of porn that is doing these things.

At the moment, I'm hearing alot of ideas that ALL porn is bad and that people who enjoy both making and watching it must be involved in child porn, rape etc etc and before you ask me for quotes where you've said this I'm not sending it direct to you so therefore do not need to prove it.

It's the opinion I have.

cest lavie - exactly.

Should we be stopping eastenders from showing the clip they did the other night in which honey got hit? Or there's been a few where it's showed rape. (they are after all simulating it, just not with as much graphic detail as some porn does)

Naw LuckySalem. You've been given plenty of evidence about porn's harm to women in general and to the women who appear in it.

I'm waiting for the unexploitative pornography that you all claim exists. The couples market was supposed to do that but not from my research. Where is the porn that doesn't call women whres and slts, that doesn't describe itself as "Milf with big fat jgs enjoys getting a fat c* in between her legs and up..."?

Still waiting.

"I'm waiting for the unexploitative pornography that you all claim exists. The couples market was supposed to do that but not from my research. Where is the porn that doesn't call women whres and slts, that doesn't describe itself as "Milf with big fat j*gs enjoys getting a fat c in between her legs and up..."?"

Come off it Elizabetth, not all women find that exploitative.

You've got a pretty low bar set there norma.