Porn

[Bubbles01]

Am I being unreasonable for getting upset that my husband keeps looking at porn?

Pebbles luckily in my local tesco and one stop, lads mags are still on top shelf, just above the car mags, then lower is the bik mags, on the other side is 'mens health' and then at eye level...get this....womens housekeeping! and at the very bottom the kids mags. Why is it that men can have mags of girls with thier boobs out (even on thier car mags) yet the only eyeful we get on a front cover of a half naked man is mens health - aimed at men! All womens mags promote 'real life' 'what beauty is'

Still there is this thing about how women should look good for thier man, learn how to please them, (while yes trying to build thier self esteem)and find out good housekeeping/gardening tips while the men get to stare at 'us' women whenever they want.

dittany, I have tried to look it up and I am wrong. Steinem didn't write a book about it, but has admitted that she worked for the CIA. The book I am thinking of explains how many artists etc. were in the pay of the CIA, including unexpected people like Steinem, Timothy Leary etc. But I can't remember its title.

Chellesgirl ....are you me??????? you sound like me LOL...thats exactly what I have been ranting about openly for years......we see womens bits everywhere yet we arent allowed to see a mans body on display which is equally as beautiful....let me tell you a story and keep it as brief as possible but when I was 18 and going around pubs I was sick and tired of pictures of womens boobs all over the doors and windows promoting "mens evenings" when a stripper would be there thursday eve or topless barmaids night.....so I wrote a letter to my local newspaper stating I was sick of it as a young female seeing this on entering pubs and if they felt they had to promote such things then put pictures up of men so it is EQUAL....thats all I want is Equlaismn....well I made the front page it was so funny and now Im in a book about our town in 1989 for speaking out for what i belived in and felt so strongly about!!!!! pretty much sums me up...Iv always been the same and I was bought up in a normal house with loving parents,I just had strong feelings about things!!!!!

oh I must add to all the porn female followers on this thread im not a nerd or prune or feminist or whatever you want to judge me as I just want women to be looked upon as humans not parts to play with which is what the porn industry do....think it was you dittany that put a link to the report I read which was reported by a man and read women are portrayed as 3 holes and two hands and he was sticking up for women but sadly thats what was his conclusion was how men in the industry and porn watchers see us as...3 holes and 2 hands to play with and results in women being damaged mentally and physically.It was a very good read Dittany so thanks for that but so graphic and degrading but an eye opener.We are human and deserve respect.....not all men watch porn and not all men are horrible there are some absolutely gorgeous loving men out there its just a shame the bad few spoil it for all the others and sadly we end up with tainted ideas of men which we need to remind ourselves they all arnt the same as I have a wonderful man by my side as do many others .

LOL @ pebbles...no im ME...but we could be long lost twins!!!!!!! hahaha

great minds think alike hey!

I just dont see how were ever gonna get equlism in this world...unless we as women decide to use weapons of mass distruction to combat the world...I really have no idea, alot of men will always think that way, they will teach thier sons that way...and the process goes on. I just hope it gets lesser and lesser as time goes on.

yes dittany that article was very interesting to read...my first response after reading it was...right who is he and where is he from as I want to contact him....LOL

no I haven't read her.
Here is something about it

"In May 1975, Redstockings, a radical feminist group, raised the question of whether Steinem had continuing ties with the Central Intelligence Agency(CIA). Though she admitted work for a CIA-financed foundation in the late 1950s and early 1960s, Steinem denied any further involvement. "

from
www.absoluteastronomy.com/topics/Gloria_Steinem

Betty Friedan also implied that Steinem undermined her. But I don't know how much credibility Friedan has, I am not as knowlegeable about feminist politics as you are.

What is interesting in the last few posts, imo, is the equation of prude, nerd and feminist, tool of the CIA ('the Man' if ever that entity existed) and feminist.

BTW, was it Margaret Thatcher who said there was no such thing as society? The idea that we are not our brother's or our sister's keeper has been around for a while if so. I see rampant pornography as the ultimate expression of capitalism run amok. Absinthe has expressed the notion that porn users are a 'market'. The contribution of Hugh Hefner (boo, hiss) to the rebranding of pornography cannot be underestimated.

I am not repeating slander and I don't care about her because I think she is on the wrong track. It is something that I heard about years ago when the book came out. It is something you weren't aware of, and I mentioned a fact that may help you think outside the box. Look into Friedan more, maybe she has some good insights that help understand what goes on.

Have given my half-baked thoughts from my first paragraph there a little further effort -- I think it's a slippery slope that we set foot on when we start answering accusations of being a prude, etc. The problem there lies in the tacit acceptance that denial or defence signifies of anyone else's right to slap a label (from slag to frigid and everything in between) on a woman who does not conform to some sort of stereotype.

ok I am a liar, I am wrong, you are right as usual. Carry on, as you were.

Dittany...THANK YOU SO MUCH for the link above to the "OBJECT" site....wow its what I belive in and then if you click get involved on the left it will highlight a link to become a facebook member....well what a read Iv had on there ,go to disscussions and its disscussions like this one....and may I add to all the women who say All Men watch porn well there are men on there who hate the stuff....its great...fantastic...I urge many of you on here who aggree porn should be stopped and we stop the normalisation of porn industries through lads mags and stuff to get on there......thanks so much Dittany!!!!

Wow, this thread has totally wandered off course and turned into a battle of the internet links. We're all entitled to opinions based on the facts available...but there have been some distinctly bullying tactics on this thread. Dittany I agree with you in many respects, but I think you need to tone down your posting style as I would imagine you majorly put people off through being a little patronising and very aggressive.

I don't like do watching it, my opinion is that happy mentally healthy women would ever do porn movies,especially the degrading stuff like gang bangs etc. I just feel sorry for them tbh, I think it's exploitative.

if only feminism was not a dirty word. We have so many battles still to fight..

chellesgirl interesting and depresssing all in one!

so is the general trend of this thread that the OP is being unreasonable or not? Is the OP still reading this thread or has even she given up trying to plough through all the arguments to find a helpful if slightly judgy opinion about her original question?

I found this thread fascinating, Iliveon, as several other people have said. Not sure why you are finding fault with it.

The OP will have discovered that lots of people have very strong views against porn that would make them say OP should absolutely not have to put up with a DH who looks at it, and that there are other women who not only don't mind it but actively enjoy it themselves.
I'm sure she would have discovered this within a page or two.
If we want to keep discussing the issue after that, that's our prerogative.

Have read some of this but I find it quite disturbing.

End adult user of porn - don't have much to say but I've seen this American woman on tv quite a bit - huge star in the 80s has since retrained as a pyshologist dealing with actors coming out the porn industry - she herself did say how do you have a normal relationship with with a man when you've slept with monkeys that day - that says it all to me.

That's what worries me. Lots of people go to Amsterdam and think what an enlightened place it is with all the prositutes on show for the world and their children and then you hear about women who are forced to work there sleep under captivity and under the threat of a gun.

There is a very very nasty side to the stuff that people watch.

I was so not going to look at this thread...
Same old unhelpful polarisation, same old subjective definitions of 'porn' with the same old majority using the word 'porn' to mean 'sexually explicit stuff I don't like, separate from sexually explicit stuff I do like'.
I've spent most of my adult working life in and around the sex industry basically getting it in the neck from both sides - the misogynist or unthinking mostly male position being ' oh well that (exploratory, mutual, even political sexually explicit material) won't sell', and the anti-'porn' position being, no woman would do that voluntarily, women don't like sex, having sex demeans women, shut up and say your prayers.
IME the bad stuff in porn comes from the bad stuff in society, the idea that women aren't human, that sex is something women are supposed to control men's access to and that having sexdebases a woman - a big chunk of the messed-ipness of teenagers is that on the one hand they have access to explicit but fuckwitted lowest-common-denominator porn, on the other hand they have the deranged abstinence movment and it always seems to come down to this heteronormative one or the other model.