Anti-porn piece in my local paper

[JakeyRolling]

I could sing!

Naturally men on Twitter are telling the female writer that she's got it all wrong.

www.thecourier.co.uk/fp/opinion/3236615/lindsay-bruce-porn-house-of-commons/

@JakeyRolling

Naturally men on Twitter are telling the female writer that she's got it all wrong.

From the article: "Writing in the Times Educational Supplement in 2012, teacher Chloe Combi said teenage boys in her class no longer realised pubic hair was a thing, since their reference point was pornography where the models are shaved and waxed to within an inch of their lives."

Anybody who has looked at pornography knows that pubic hair is common. If you don't believe me look for yourself, or if you don't want to look for yourself then read what Sara Pascoe has to say about it in her book Sex Power Money.

It' just simply untrue that teenage boys have never seen pubic hair. Obviously people are contradicting the author of this article. It is factually false. What is the matter with some people that they won't listen to reality because they think that means a man telling a woman "she's got it all wrong".

Who is it that you are trying to convince? You're not going to convince men or teenage boys. You're not going to convince half of women. You don't need to convince suburban bourgeois.

I'm not getting your point @hhh333hhh . That part of the article is quoting from 2012, ten years ago. Maybe the fashion for pubelessness has changed in those 10 years, I don't know.

Regardless, you seem to be very focussed on pubes in porn, and nothing else. There was quite a lot of ground covered in that article, but all you seem to care about is - pubic hair. Is that really all you got from this article?

She said the teenage boys in her class, so a handful of boys out of billions, she didn’t say every male, anywhere, ever. She can also only report what they’ve said around/to her, not the reality of everything they’ve ever seen.

@WhereYouLeftIt
Regardless, you seem to be very focussed on pubes in porn, and nothing else.

When people stop telling lies then I will stop correcting them. If there is a myth that is obviously untrue then it has to be exposed as such. Have you heard the saying "If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it". Sometimes attributed to Hitler and sometimes to Goebbels. Certain types of people have decided that they are going to believe it and they are going to keep saying it.

I am happy to discuss research into pornography and prostitution and I have done on other threads in Mumsnet.

@JakeyRolling
She said the teenage boys in her class, so a handful of boys out of billions, she didn’t say every male, anywhere, ever. She can also only report what they’ve said around/to her, not the reality of everything they’ve ever seen.

You think there are teenage boys who look at porn and have never seen pubic hair? It's not just sites like PornHub. I haven't looked at OnlyFans but I have looked at Chaturbate and lots of the women on there have pubic hair.

Then let me repeat -

"I'm not getting your point @hhh333hhh . That part of the article is quoting from 2012, ten years ago. Maybe the fashion for pubelessness has changed in those 10 years, I don't know."

You focused on one small point, dismissed it as untrue, and generalised that out to dismissing the entire article. It's a technique I've observed before, and it actually leads me to dismiss anything said by the dismisser.

The thrust of the article was that the ubiquity of porn is creating problems. If you're so willing to "discuss research into pornography and prostitution" then address it, instead of picking on one small detail and trying to drag attention away from what the entire article is talking about.

👏👏👏WhereYouLeftIt, very astute and beautifully put.

@WhereYouLeftIt
The thrust of the article was that the ubiquity of porn is creating problems. If you're so willing to "discuss research into pornography and prostitution" then address it, instead of picking on one small detail and trying to drag attention away from what the entire article is talking about.

The article doesn't show research that the ubiquity of porn is creating problems. It shows research that pornography is viewed in the House of Commons. It shows research that some children have seen pornography, not that all children have seen it by seven or eight. It shows that human trafficking takes many forms and pornography isn't an exception - it would be very strange if it was.

But it doesn't show research that porn is creating problems. That's why people like Lindsay Bruce are keen on myths such as teenage girls and young women feel compelled to shave their pubic hair because 'the models are shaved and waxed to within an inch of their lives'.

If there are teenage girls and young women who feel compelled to shave their pubic hair do you not think think this could be because people like Lindsay Bruce are so keen to tell everyone that teenage boys think that pubic hair is gross because they never see it? So it's actually Lindsay Bruce who are responsible for this, although I don't think she actually cares about this any more than she actually cares about human trafficking in all of it's many forms in Britain today.

Porn might be ubiquitous but that doesn't mean that everyone has seen it. Lots of people especially women haven't. Maybe they should. It would get rid of the myth of the absence of pubic hair but also when they see the variety of people in porn, men women, young old, fat thin, they might realise you don't have to be young and thin to be attractive.

You're very keen for porn to be unfettered, @hhh333hhh. Thank you for showing me who you are, I shall believe you the first time.

That part of the article is quoting from 2012, ten years ago. Maybe the fashion for pubelessness has changed in those 10 years, I don't know.

That being the case, it's a pretty weird thing to put in. I think a lot of the article is just random quotes/'facts' for filler.

It' just simply untrue that teenage boys have never seen pubic hair. Obviously people are contradicting the author of this article. It is factually false. What is the matter with some people that they won't listen to reality because they think that means a man telling a woman "she's got it all wrong".

I could only find one bloke disagreeing with the author of this article. His complaint wasn't about the hair it was that the article felt 'preachy' (presumably the 'joking about this is terrible' bit) and gave the fale impression that the MP's porn involved trafficked women. He did indeed come across as a mansplaining dick.

Like access to abortion I am against telling consenting adults what the can or can't do to their body. I believe in bodily autonomy and that includes making porn.

I agree with the general sentiment of the article, and it's nice to see it being discussed in public. The article itself is a little mediocre I think.

That being the case, it's a pretty weird thing to put in. I think a lot of the article is just random quotes/'facts' for filler.

It's an opinion piece - it says so at the top of the page.

It's an opinion piece - it says so at the top of the page.

Not sure what your point is there?Obviously it's an option piece but opinion pieces can be well written.

The author can reference whatever that want to back up their opinion, is the point

@donquixotedelamancha
I could only find one bloke disagreeing with the author of this article. His complaint wasn't about the hair it was that the article felt 'preachy' (presumably the 'joking about this is terrible' bit) and gave the fale impression that the MP's porn involved trafficked women. He did indeed come across as a mansplaining dick.

It doesn't matter that someone is perceived to be preachy or a man is perceived to be mansplaining, what matters is whether what someone is saying is true or false.

It isn't true that trafficking means coercion. A woman who is trafficked into the British sex industry is not necessarily coerced. The experts in trafficking tell us that the majority are not coerced. Neither is it true that most women in Britain in the sex industry are trafficked. Most trafficked people are men, and most trafficked women are not part of the sex industry.