Porn

[EmpireBiscuit]

Looking for some sense to be talked into me...(and you all seem like a pretty honest bunch!)

I discovered on Saturday night that dh sometimes watches porn online when alone in the house. He says he doesn't do it often.

Now, I think I'm maybe overreacting but I feel disgusted. He knows I have strong feelings against strip clubs etc and I am at a loss to how he thought this wouldn't bother me.

I am massively insecure and can't get the thought of him pleasuring himself looking at prettier, thinner woman and comparing us. We are still talking etc but I feel odd about him seeing me naked, or even touching (let alone being intimate). I feel sad thinking about it all.

What do you all think? Huge over reaction or would you have similar feelings?

Thanks!

By the way, all posts by justasmallglass is my wifes profile - didn't get round to logging on to 2010Dad,

For those who are of the "porn isn't hurting anyone" brigade, may I suggest you head over to this site and have a read of the survivors stories. The level of rape and drug abuse in the industry alone is cause for concern. Are you really happy with you and/or your DP's supporting an industry, where a large number of "performers" were sexually abused as children, then lead into an industry where they're sexually exploited?

I know I'm not

why blow things out of proportion and start going on about the sex industry? All the bloke wanted to do was have a quick tug and get on with his day. I really think this is another example of a little insecurity causing silly arguments.

Some of you might also want to read this.

Link is work-safe and should not be distressing, there's nothing graphic in it.

i dont know much about the porn industry, but is it not presumptuous to assume that all of the women are forced to do it? I read an article rencently about laurence fishburnes daughter who chose to be become a porn star because she enjoyed it.
I think this may be where some of the problems lie, with other women presuming that the women in the porn industry couldnt possibly enjoy what they do, when infact, they do.
NOW before you all dive in to condem me, i am by no means suggesting that all the women involved are there by their own free will, just that some of them are.

Yes, the children of Hollywood Movie Stars have completely normal upbringings too

I think actually the key issue with the OP's situation is: how much are you prepared to allow your partner to disagree with you? If, for instance, you were a militant vegan and your partner, despite listening respectfully to your arguments about the immorality of eating animal products, said that he intended to eat meat occaisionally and but would not do it in your presence, would you feel justified in telling him that if you ever found him eating so much as a bite of organically-reared lamb you would divorce him?
I chose that example deliberately as meat-eating, like making or watching porn, is not in itself illegal and is something that a lot of people like to do.

That analogy would only only hold up Solid if in the past 20 years, the majority of meat consumers bought their food over the internet, where there were no safeguards about animal welfare and no guarantees about the provenance of the product. The OP said that the stuff her partner watches is "online" - just like most porn users in 2011.

It's also extremely disingenuous to say that porn of itself is not illegal, when actually plenty of crimes against the person occur and horrible internal injuries are sustained by mostly female performers. Crime doesn't just become a crime, when someone reports it.

peterpan said that some of the women involved sre there willingly. Good for them. That means the others aren't. How many unwilling rape victims is too many, then? 50%? 20%? 1%? 1 woman? Is it really worth the risk so some inadequate git can have a wank? Really?

WindsorTides, the analogy is not unreasonable given that the vast majority of people who buy meat buy the cheapest stuff in the supermarket despite quite a lot of stuff in the papers pointing out the cruelty and the health risks associated with cheap meat.
And while I am not denying that some porn performers often have to suffer terrible working conditions, this is simply not true of all porn and all porn performers.

solidgoldbrass thanks for the link to the MS blog post :)

Skewed analogy again Solid. The food industry is regulated whereas the internet porn industry is not. It would be illegal for an unlicensed trader to sell meat on the internet - or more analagous to porn sites, give some away for free in order to draw the customers in, knowing that a fair proportion will end up paying for "premium meat", for sale elsewhere on the website.

The sale of food and the welfare of animals are both more heavily regulated in society, than the sale of human sexuality.

The main point here is that Empire had no knowledge of her husbands porn use, prior to, or at any point during their marriage, that's a very big deal indeed, anything that has the potential to to "take away" from the marriage, whether it be secretive porn use, gambling, drinking, drug use etc. is a very big deal.
The bottom line is that she didn't know and that is wrong and very distressing.

Having a high sex drive has nothing to do with porn use, plenty of men manage just fine without it - some people are obviously unable to seperate porn use from masturbation, they are not one and the same, men don't need porn to masturbate, although some are clearly conditioned to believe that they do..

Lets set a few ground rules:

1. Hiding/lying to your spouse is bad.
2. Getting gratification from exploited/coerced women is bad.
3. No-one should enjoy women being forced to go through cruel, degrading and/or harmful treatment.

I think no-one would argue against, e.g., making your own home sex tapes with your willing OH. That's because it's consensual, doesn't involve force, and doesn't involve lying to your partner. I think it we could find an 'ethical' source of porn which was guaranteed to involve only willing, uncoerced people; did not involve them being degraded and hurt; and if you watched it with the knowledge & consent of your partner, I think that would be OK. The issue I see is that this type of porn (to my knowledge) does not exist.

The sale of food and the welfare of animals are both more heavily regulated in society, than the sale of human sexuality

Yup

Meat for human consumption very obviously has a higher value in our society than young women's physical and emotional health

Maybe in does exist in small pockets, MrMan. SGB would know that.

Call me a cynical old boot though, but I think what some men actually like about porn is it's very nastiness (involving the stuff you listed). They don't mind nor care that young women are being hurt mentally and physically. They see the women in porn as somehow different to other women. They have utterly horrible madonna/whore mindsets.

Whilst that type of men push for more and more hardcore viewing, what used to be "mainstream" becomes more and more replaced by nasty stuff. If there is market for it (and obviously there is) then women will continue to get used and abused in pursuit of the mighty male orgasm. It's quite, quite sickening really.

Like Mal said, for most normal, blokes, porn is not essential for them to orgasm. It's an added "extra" that can become a compulsion, requiring more and more "forbidden" images to get the same effect (a few seconds of intense feeling that you could achieve in other ways that don't harm women). Very scary.

Yes I agree that lots of male porn users, are getting off from seeing women tortured. That's the whole point of it. If you google porn without the filters, what comes up on the first page, is lots of stuff about sluts being humiliated. That is what porn consumers like (most porn now is accessed via the web). They have a mindset that women are "sluts", not human beings, and they enjoy watching these women being tortured so much, that they jack off to it until they bring themselves to orgasm. That's how much they hate women.

Any man who habitually watches this stuff, is going to imbibe that hatred sooner or later.

Cue the less than credible posts about how it means nothing, it's just a wank.

It does exist MrM, Petra Joy porn is marketed as just the kind of porn you speak of, it's pretty much the ethical best of pornography - of course that could be clever marketing but it does seem non-abusive and non-coersive to my inexperienced eyes.
I don't believe that all explicit sexual material is bad, just the utter misogynistic shit that is out there on the internet at the click of a mouse, requiring no moral compass or questioning.
It just drives me mad when people, mostly men, are so sure that all men use porn, they think that they know better and will not accept that plenty of women know their husbands far better than they do.
Not all men use porn, that is an absolute fact, mine doesn't, not because of any great or noble ethical reasons, he just doesn't like it, it's that simple .

Man ... porn is debilitating to society, those young people who learn about sex from it are likely to have a horribly distorted view of sexuality, and it's not going anywhere. It's another of the marvellous things the internet has changed irrevocably. I would be happier if it could somehow be banished. All that said, yes, I sometimes look at it, which I never did before it was the click of a button away.

As to the specific issue of Those Who Appear In It Are Mistreated. Often, I'm sure they are. But those who bring that up should be very careful about the purity of their own consumer choices. I trust none of you shop at Primark, or by Nike sportswear. Or to give an example that fits the template perfectly, a job that ...
a) Is often taken by those who are vulnerable, addicted and lacking any other way to make money - where "choosing" to take the job is a relative concept
b) Involves sustained and co ordinated physical and mental abuse and humiliation
c) That puts its practitioners and substantial risk of illness, injury or death
d) That leaves those who stay with it more or less broken, with little prospect of anything else afterwards, unless they are one of the very fortunate few who has saved their paydays
e) That is almost entirely populated by one sex

Sounds like porn. But as those who have watched Deadliest Catch know, it's crab fishing.

Well, a few men like the nasty stuff. Most people who like porn would rather watch stuff that features other people enjoying sex.
And this stuff about regular porn watchers needing nastier and nastier stuff each time is a load of old bollocks. Most people find the stuff that suits them (be that a particular physical type, or group sex, or particular clothing or whatever) and stick with it.
So why, I hear you bleat, is there so much nasty porn about? Well, predominantly because a lot of the producers of the nasty stuff don't like porn and don't understand it. They've got the attitude to sexually explicit entertainment that Simon Cowell has to music - produce it as cheaply as possible, never mind quality control, all the punters are morons who will buy any old shit. So one or two unpleasant individuals who do hate women make unpleasant films, and someone starts the myth that this is what the punters really want, and so the money-chasing, indifferent producers churn out more of the same and the people making more interesting, subversive, sensual, thoughtful or fun stuff get crowded out.

If you want ethical porn, try Petra Joy or Anna Span. You could also check out FilmErotica or Relish for films that feature participants who appear a) to quite like each other and b) to enjoy sex.

SGB, most porn is accessed via the internet now.

google brings you up the most popular searches.

So I suspect it's more than some men, I suspect it's the majority of porn users on the internet (ie the majority of porn users).

If most porn users wanted good, ethical porn, it would come up on page 1 of the google search wouldn't it?

LOL, I slightly blinked when the ad for Love Honey just came up