To ask how you actually vet for men who don’t watch porn?

[SharpMintBeaker]

I’m not here to argue whether porn is okay, I’ve already decided it’s a dealbreaker for me. What I’m trying to figure out is: how do you tell if someone genuinely doesn’t watch it? Men online always say “I don’t watch it anymore” or “only occasionally” but how do you know it’s not just performative?

Has anyone actually dated (or married) a man who’s never been into it? Or gave it up without being guilted into it? If so, how did you know it was real?

Did the porn make them blind?

Hmm...well if you read books like The Other Victorians or The Erotomaniac about the Victorian sexual underworld, you find a lot of evidence for a thriving underground Victorian market in written sexual stimuli. Some very unpleasant and misogynistic.

There were also a lot of brothels and exploitation of servants. Many men doing all these things were outwardly upstanding.

I'm sorry you went through that. As the survey I linked shows, clearly a lot of Christian men do have this addiction...

Also, ' stag films' (ie. Early porn films) have been around since the early years of the 1900s. Usually filmed using women already in the sex trade,,and then watched secretly by male groups on stag nights. 🙄

If these films had been available the way porn is today, who knows how many men would have watched them?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stag_film

It’s not an activity confined to any particular group of men. The thing that has changed is availability and hardcore material (wow sounds old fashioned). Basically you had to be a really over motivated bloke back in the day to find hardcore pornography because it was illegal and because you had to find a shop or buy it down the pub then men got a rep as the dirty Mac brigade. Now it’s in your pocket if you want! You can’t tell from looking alone who is the modern day dirty Mac.

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I don't know of any man who doesn't ever watch porn, and I've lived in 4 countries and been in the world for over 4 decades. Mumsnet is the only place where I've heard of this. (I'm sure some men don't, but it feels almost as unusual as a person who never masturbates)

On the 'what men did before porn' question: ofc men can wank etc without porn. But given the option, many women believe that many, maybe most, men will choose to watch. It doesn't mean they can't masturbate without.

I'd like to hope not,, but surveys showing 76% of men have watched at least once aren't very cheerful!

This is really disturbing.

I listened to that and then saw on BBC news about people using Grok AI to create pornographic images of women without their consent. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c98p1r4e6m8o

Now I feel really depressed about the society we are living in.

There was porn in ancient times.

Someone should invent an app that can detect which men have watched porn and how often and how recently.

Hahahahahhahhaaha this title is peak MN user.

I suppose the question is, was that also commodified violence?

Porn ban?? I think you've misunderstood what happened. I still watch it. I don't need a VPN. I didn't need to do anything really other than log in with a Google email and tick that I was over 18. Genuinely took 15 seconds.
It really isn't harder to use it. I know of some 17 year olds that had no issues getting access and thought the whole thing was a joke (part of a wider sporting team... I don't hang out with 17 year olds!)

Ofc erotic material- sorry, to clarify I meant filmed sex.

I do think it's problematic to lump paintings, photos, written erotica, etc together with filmed porn. I agree that those can be problematic too but filmed sex, esp as a job, is inherently much more likely to involve exploitation of real people.

A lot of porn on the Internet is not violent though. Most performers are not trafficked apparently, either, though imo consent is often dubious due to need for money, blacklisting pressure etc. But imo a lot of people on this thread are presenting an exaggerated picture which is not necessary. The real picture is bad enough & exaggerating does not help.

Gloria Steinem's essay Erotica vs Pornography is excellent. Imo she eludes the binary of the so-called sex wars, pointing out that amateur videos etc might be made ethically but as soon as money is involved and sex becomes a job the risk of exploitation becomes much higher.

She also notes that pornography originates from the Greek 'porne' (harlot). These women were generally slaves or at least dubiously consenting, so the word originated as 'writing about female slaves'. Thus she proposes erotica to differentiate ethically made stuff (though that is arguably something the viewer can never be very sure of).

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/15546128.2020.1831676

https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s13178-022-00720-z

These studies asking men if they've watched in the last year get high poll results.

I would consider non-consensual and coerced sexual acts to be violence, wouldn't you?

I spoke to my husband about this because he is one of those "good men" who you really wouldnt think would hurt his partner or lie or anything. His ex wife was against porn and at the beginning of their relationship he, of course, lied about it and then it didn't really come up often but he knew she would be unhappy if she found out. He thinks she would have sworn blind he didn't use it.

Why don't I judge him? Because I lied about it in a past relationship too. It was really the only thing I lied about. And I felt exactly the same way about as he did. It was none of my exes business what I do with my own body or how I get my kicks.

People lie about it. You can decide to believe them but you will have no way of knowing. Same as everything else. People have secrets. You can never know for sure.

I genuinely don’t see why it’s anyone else’s business. If it’s not impacting on my sex life then I really don’t care. I am not required to take the weight of the world’s problems on my shoulders. My husband is a good man, respectful, kind, an excellent dad. That’s really all I care about.

Sorry, I should clarify. To the performer, coercion is ofc violence. What I meant was that a lot of porn appears to depict consensual, non violent sex. Obviously this isn't an excuse for watching since someone may well be being coerced behind the scenes. But a lot of posts on this thread seem to imply that most men who watch porn are watching obviously violent or non consensual porn, and that is probably not the case

Gen Z men are different because a lot of them grew up with porn and got turned onto violent content via addiction or fixation at an impressionable age. This is obvs not an excuse either.

Exactly this. Unless it is impacting you then it’s none of your business. You cannot police the thoughts or actions of anyone, it is controlling behaviour imo.

Yep. So realistically the true figure is probably closer to 80%.

Plenty of Christian men watch porn for sure.