… to really not understand how so many women participate in porn?

[TwoBrownSugars]

I recently watched the Thyberg movie Pleasure. I liked parts of it. It showed a somewhat young and vulnerable girl, there were elements of friendship, some competitiveness, etc. But it did make me wonder who are all these women, they are real people, and think that they all have a story.

I just can’t imagine doing something like that, even when I was young and stupid. I also cannot imagine any of my friends doing it.

I’d assume that for some it’s a mixture of coercion, trafficking and drugs?

Money? But I’d assume there is very little for the participants?

Money, a sense of adventure, pushing ones own boundaries, curiousity, sheer enjoyment of sex/ kink, not sharing society's views of sexual morality....
I suspect the list is as long as the women involved (and yes, I speak from experience).
And also that the overlap of women with disabilities and women who do porn is significant.

I can't imagine ever wanting to be an academic, but I don't assume my preferences are universal.

You are adamant you wouldn't get into porn because you have a low view of it. Some people just don't think the same?

The comedian Sophie Willan was an escort before breaking into stand up comedy. Her tv series Almas Not Normal is autobigraphical and covers why she went into it. Answer? Money.

• Money
• Naivity
• Some people just don't see having sex on camera as a big deal and just see it as a business. Just another form of acting
• Enjoying the attention
• Being pushed into it by a partner/pimp
• A way to finance drugs and alcohol addiction
• Poor parenting or victims of child abuse: lack self-esteem and healthy boundaries
• I think some people must genuinely enjoy it, maybe they are exhibitionists. I think the type of people who are swingers, have a lot of casual sex and so on probably think if I am going to have sex with lots of strangers for fun why not make money out of it too...

I think just like prostitutions there must be many different reasons why women and men get into this.

Personally I am really not a fan of porn and I think it has done incredible harm to how we view sex and relationships but I can accept that some people freely choose it as a career.

Reading with intrigue

Jon Robson has written about this a lot. Yes there are well publicised exceptions but vast majority have been sexually abused as children.

There are different types of porn, also, and so different people will have different motivations. We have several friends who do amateur porn. One couple are particularly successful and have a PornHub account which makes them about £40k year through their subscriptions and premiums - not a fortune but decent money considering they also have day jobs, only post a handful of videos a month, and are basically just filming themselves having sex with each other and the occasional friend, and finding it sexy and a turn on as much as anything.

Apart from that sort of porn, where enjoyment is going to play a key factor, I’m not convinced many people - men or women - go into commercial porn because they love sex and it’s a good way to get some: as anyone who has ever tried to recreate a commercial porn scene at home will know, the angles and position the actors manoeuvre themselves into are purely what looks good for the camera and shows the best view, they’re rarely pleasurable or ones it’s easy to orgasm in. I think there, it’s almost purely about the money.

And exactly the same as cleaning offices or driving a lorry.

Most of us work through economic necessity, it’s not really unusual.

If you actually want an insight and not just to be judgmental without providing a solution, here you go. Of everyone I met in the sex industry (who had consented to be there, ie not pimped/trafficked, we can talk about the wider implications of consent in that industry another time...), I could broadly draw 3 types:

a) people who were very money-oriented and able to detach, not fussed about sex but very good-looking/perfect bodied

b) people who were sexually abused either as children or young people and developed hypersexual behaviours that later became a coping mechanism, often with drug/alcohol abuse as a side effect

c) practical women with a lack of squeamishness (lots of former nurses/care home assistants) who are usually separated mothers with firm boundaries working firmly in the middle of the sex industry (not high or low end)

I never did porn, but a family friend did and she was definitely category b. Before someone calls me a psycho for categorising things this way, I am aware it's not normal. If I was normal, I wouldn't have worked in the sex industry. Ta-ra

Do you have any actual data to back up this assertion? You’re not the fiat person on the thread to make this claim but the fact that none of the others seemed able to produce anything at all seems rather telling. It seems more likely to be that they pulled the fact out of thin air.

@MrsTerryPratchett , you’ve had a fair few hours now to get your hands on some data, have you found anything yet?

Given that - sadly- the vast majority of women have had some sort of sexual abuse or experienced some sort of “me too” moment it would be surprising if the majority of women - in any job - hadn’t experienced sexual abuse. That is a very sad reality. Is the porn industry really alone in that aspect if you consider things that way?

A good friend of mine has shared content on Only Fans. No coercion, no abuse, no desperation - she enjoys the easy money (apparently far easier than overtime at her NHS job), and quite likes some of the clients she gets to interact with.

Money for the most part probably.
But people are all different and some people just have different boundaries and what they are happy with doing.
I think women in that industry are definitely vulnerable to coercion and abuse - but I don’t think it’s always the case. Some women genuinely don’t mind, so it’s worth the pay and some genuinely enjoy it.
It might not be for you, I’m sure it’s not for many people - but neither is being a mortician. Most people would be horrified to embalm a dead body, but some are very unphased by it. I think porn is on that similar niche wavelength. It appeals to a select few.

Most people who have learned to dissociate in the way you describe have significant trauma in their past that allowed them to develop that survival technique.

The staggering thing about porn for me, irrespective of any other arguments about it, is just how much of it there is. By now there must be millions of women who have been in a porn video of some sort.

Or, they’ve managed to escape or overcome the social conditioning girls and women are subjected to from early childhood which teaches them that sex must always be something very special that a woman gives only to a man who shows her he deserves it and represents romance and love?

Yes. I am one of those people. I don’t work in porn. I know people who have. In the past I’ve found it very easy to see sex and love as completely separate. But I wouldn’t say it’s necessarily my background that has done that to me. I mean it might be part of it but plenty of people around the world seem to also do that without having had the same trauma.

That is a very good point.

I'm not a porn user, but my interest was attracted by a discussion one night out with some friends (female). Was shown some videos by a couple, and ended up looking them up afterwards (they had a special "thing"). It was what i guess qualifies as couple porn? Same M/F all through the few videos.

They seemed a long term couple. Never saw much if any of their faces, would not know who they were. They seemed really nice, seemed to be having fun, i was certainly turned on watching it ... But how could they possibly make money from this? I watched it on free site. So no idea what they got from it?

I won't share the name exactly but they were a yummi kouple. Why they did this ... I've no idea!

It's not meant to be judgement from me, just a statement that I've no idea of their motivations, and what they hoped and wanted to get from it.

I have weird conversations with adult DD.
She likes (revels) in male attention as long as it's polite. Would never object in principle to being whistled at.

She's much more interested in sex than I ever was (my mother was also very into sex, used to despair of her children for being seemingly disinterested).

DD has very candid conversations with her friends about specifics of each others sex lives. As a result, I learn lots about these random people's sex lives. My mother was like this with her friends, too: very candid talk about sex.

People are just different.

Thanks for the responses. Some interesting perspectives. As I mentioned I mostly enjoyed the Pleasure movie, and found it very interesting, not what I’d expected. Overall it’s very downbeat.

My quickly posted initial comments were not meant to be critical, rather highlighting a lack of understanding on my part, triggered by that movie (which of course is only one point of view).

I’ve always had career and job options, so sex related worked is not something I’ve ever had to consider as an option.

Not a porn viewer, but it is interesting to consider how many people we’re speaking about? Is it a small number and it’s just the same people again and again and again in different recordings?

I assume for males it’s a easy option for sex? For women (not including the forced coercion drug stuff), I’m not so sure of the benefit apart from the money, as I’d assume all the orgasms are faked?

the economics of this stuff must have changed dramatically with the internet. If I could easily make a porn movie , but who’d want to watch it ? How do I make money? I guess that is what onlyfans and they type of thing Tries to address?

But why would you assume that people only work in the porn/sex industry because they have no other option?

There are plenty of jobs I would never want to do, but that doesn't mean I think that everybody who does do them is only there because they can't do anything else. I've had some bloody miserable jobs over the years, some well paid and some not and whilst I've never done porn or webcams or whatever, if I was in a similar situation now as I was then they would have been a definite contender if I thought anybody would want to watch it 🤣.

Yep, money !.. .