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

[Judy1234]

Continuing the previous thread - people's sexuality varies hugely and what some people think is disgusting is good fun for others. It's impossible to generalise and say XYZ practice is wrong or repugnant and I agree with the posts at the end of the other thread that porn often just reflects what people do. Obviously you pick where your own interests lie and are glad human beings are diverse.

Elizabetth how do you know?? Have you ever been a male escort?? Or have you read one or two interviews on a website and decided that is enough evidence?

Was it not you who did not want to talk to me anymore?

At the moment, I am engaging with MT but, yes,
your op is the subject - this is your thread after all.

And it would be nice to get an answer -
still no sign of that gang rape is there?

Victorian Squalor, you've kept mentioning education all the way through this. What sort of an education do you think pornography gives people, particuarly the mainstream heterosexual porn which I have generally been referring to throughout the threads?

Some single women my age (40s) do pay for male escorts. I never have but it's done. Also I do know (not in the biblical sense of course) some young student men who are good looking and go on the books of those agencies. However it's silly to suggest it is equally the case, male and female. Women find it easier to sell their bodies. It's why female models earn much more than male models. Women arguably look better than men actually. We are seeing some improvements if that's the world - hen nights to male strippers etc and more media/ads which show men being exploited and that evening out is a good thing. it's happening.

Women commercially exploit their bodies everytime they try to look good in a meeting or a bar. I am sure many men do as well. I don't see why the exchange of raw cash makes it any the worse. At least it's honest.

I explained how the Bang Bus represents a gang rape scenario. Your inability to grasp that isn't really my problem. A woman trapped in the back of a van being pressured to undertake sexual acts is in a rape situation. Many women would be too terrorised to say no.

If these people were already educated then porn would be seen as a fantasy, a film of sex that was not a reality, and those who may be otherwise considering 'copying' the films would know that that was only able to be done if the partner was a willing participant.

So you're basically saying without this fantastic "education" (that doesn't exist at the moment) men may try to copy what they see on unwilling women, because porn won't show them the difference in fact it will show them the opposite.

You're also admitting that men do get ideas from watching porn that they wouldn't have otherwise.

How many people here know a woman who has paid for sex from an escort?

One in ten UK men have used a prostitute.

A very important issue (see Matthew Parris' good article in today's Times about Thought Crime) is that even if we disagree with other people's views we should be defending their right to express them and that includes their sexuality. In other words the liberty argument is so important ideally we'd be prepared to die to defend the rights of those with whom we don't agree to peddle their views as it were. That has always been a key thing about the UK, that people can come here and express views. Yet so many recent Labour Government laws have tried to make us all clones of each other and criminalise anyone who is different.

I'd have defended Linda Lovelace's right to sue the porngraphers who used the crime against her to make millions of dollars.

"The difference as far as i see is in society's acceptance of the male in this role and not the female, or have i missed something?" - exactly Zeb. And it is within this context that porn operates so whether Jenny BigTits is absolutely delighted and paid a fortune to participate in a porn movie is rather irrelevant.

DaddyJ, Elizabetth hasn't compromised her credibility by not reviewing all that you put before her - that's simply ludicrous. The debate is wider than just DaddyJ's links to porn.

"Well then what you are describing isn't sexual Zebbidee and thus has nothing to do with this discussion which is about commerical exploitation of women's bodies.

When people use the term "escort" they usually mean someone who is paid to have sex (whether male or female). There virtually no market for men to be paid for sex by women, men's clients are almost always other men."

My god, that is so not true! What planet are you living on? The market these days is massive, in fact there was a documentary on channel 4 a few months ago about this very subject.

An escort is someone who 'escorts' another person somewhere, that's generally what they/I do/did. You can have sex with the client if you want but that is up to you (and them), you don't have to, it's not prostitution. You aren't paid to have sex.

If a client sees you as a sex object then that is their view, some don't, some do. C'est la vie.

As for Bang Bus, not my thing personally, but they are all actors and it is set up. So how is it gang rape or illegal in anyway? You haven't actually explained this Eliz, all you've said is that gang rape is a bad thing, fine I agree... Bang Bus IN YOUR EYES represents that, it doesn't in reality because all parties are consenting... let's move on...

Xenia, I have just put that article down in absolute disgust. It reflects a privileged portion of society who can choose not to engage in the seedy side of life but feel able to espouse about how it should be from their well-padded armchairs. Parris is a prat. His comments about child porn are appalling.

2 points:

1. I think that the description of the BangBros site on Wikipedia is enough for me to think it is woman-hating porn without me having to look at it. It is the concept that is woman-hating to me, the thought that a woman from low socio-economic status could be picked up, driven round in a van and then persuaded to have sex for money and then dumped without the money is just awful.

I can imagine (empathise) with being hungry/poor and being persuaded to do something for money. The thought that I would then have sold my body and then pushed out of a van with no money seems pretty hateful to me. Especially when the men go on to make a load of money from it - there's something about men wanking off not just to the sex but to the humiliation of the woman not getting money that seems hateful to me

1. Porn has plenty of women being coerced/exploited/pimped/raped/forced on to drugs - (I have no doubt for the sake of the views of others on here that there are some who 'choose' who do it). However because you can't really know what you're getting in mainstream (unless you just pass round videos of your mates doing it) ie. a fully responsible , non-coerced individual then why watch it ??

Why if there's even a small chance you're watching a 14 year old or someone being raped or someone being drugged or coerced - just why ??

Sex is important to me - just not enough to accidentally be getting off on the abuse of someone else to it.

And because of that I avoid it

"And it is within this context that porn operates so whether Jenny BigTits is absolutely delighted and paid a fortune to participate in a porn movie is rather irrelevant."

Not sure I entirely agree but do see your point. It's actually males that have difficulty in accepting a female's role isn't it? And in the same way a female has difficulty in accepting the male role?

Anyway, am off to watch some porn have some lunch...

and I definitely do not believe in censorship or 'banning' anything

I'm liberal me - would rather persuade others - and protect the vulnerable (used to hand out condoms in the dead of night to prostitutes when I was a women's officer at university). Fairly dangerous when I look back at it now.

This discussion is moving on so rapidly I've just noticed that you're saying the Bangbros thing is staged - even if it were the consumer wouldn't necessarily know that so the point about them wanking over humiliation may still be true.

No, Elizabetth, I'm just playing Devil's Advocate, you believe men do what they see on porn movies, of course, being men they have absolutely no imagination of their own, or any idea of what they should/shouldn't do to a woman as she is just an object so educate them.

You can't stop people watching porn, you cant stop people acting in porn, you can educate people against the dangers of the darker side of every industry.

I'm not pretending that there are not any women who are not forced into or co-erced into doing things they feel uncomfortable with, but I am saying they don't do it just because of men, and that if they were better educated they would be able to say NO when they wanted to.

Matthew Parris was defending Chris Langham downloading child pornogrphy. Good grief, he called it a thought crime.

E - I'm really not in denial. I have said several times on this thread that where the making of pornography has involved criminal behaviour this should be stamped on like any other criminal behaviour.

I can't in all honesty say that I feel guilty for watching Deep Throat 15 years ago. Obviously I did not go to the cinema with the intention of seeing a woman raped. (The attraction was in seeing a ludicrous male fantasy from 20 years earlier that had become a cultural icon).

Obviously I believe that rape and sexual coercion are wrong just as other serious and violent crimes are wrong. I don't think banning pornography would help.

Decent regulation of the industry, and better sex education are my best ideas so far. I have asked what measures you would like to see taken. Please can I ask you again, as I have truly no idea what you actually want.

I don't think you were playing devil's advocate VS. If you thought porn was OK you wouldn't be calling for this education in the first place to counteract its effects.

The point of course is that education doensn't just happen in a designated setting, we are learning all the time. Porn teaches men how to hurt and degrade women and treat them as sexual objects. It reinforces the idea that women are there to sexually serve men (look at Zebbidee wanting his partners to have their pubic hair shaved, I wonder if he does the same to himself, probably not).

kittock, good post, I agree, especially wrt education, Sweden ahs such education, and Elizabetth bought up the way pornography is in sweden on the last thread, it is because of the education.

"This discussion is moving on so rapidly I've just noticed that you're saying the Bangbros thing is staged - even if it were the consumer wouldn't necessarily know that so the point about them wanking over humiliation may still be true."

Yes that is true... personally, I would expect it to be staged as they need a license in the US to film this... It's also too well produced (in a cheap porn context).

I'm not asking you to feel guilty Kittock. I thought you might feel bad or disturbed about it or empathy for Linda Lovelace. Maybe even angry at the pornographers for doing that to her and for duping the audience.

Watching someone's rape for entertainment (even if you weren't aware that's what it was at the time) is surely a terrible thing.