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!

I used to have sex when I didn't fancy it when undergoing fertility treatment

It was bloody awful,and Iam gladI never have to do it again

D-day once fell when I was half dead from flu. Yes,reader, we did

Never again

This has been said

"The porn available freely on the internet isn't consensual. Lack of consent = rape."

Is there any evidence that this is true? The writer didn't say "some", they said "the porn". If this were true this would radically change my perception of porn. I don't think it is though

Bennifer, the inherent problem is that some of it is, and some of it isn't

And when you watch it, you have no way of knowing

So, when you consume this stuff, you are condoning the fact that some of what you are watching may be rape on film

Doesn't sit comfortably does it ?

No, but to draw a parallel, literally last week I was in a Bangladesh and saw the appalling situation in a clothing factor with child labour. I know this parallel is drawn commonly, but there's a clear parallel. However, I choose not to go around naked. I know a lot of the bigger porn studios claim to be self-policing. Is that good enough?

I would really like to see the research done on the porn industry to see what the statistics are. I know there are some absolutely horrible stories, and I've seen the Hardcore film that has been linked here.

AF ... It is consensual. It may not be your or my version of consensual, but the vast majority of porn you see on the web is not a series of filmed rapes. And the appalling scenes that involve supposed rape, or the molestation of strangers, are set up. They are not real.

Rape is diminished when the word is applied in this way.

I hate it when people say "Real rape/abuse is minimised when the word is applied to these [less important] situations".

Murder is a crime. So is shoplifting. You can't say that it isn't a crime to shoplift, because some people commit murder, and it takes away from the seriousness of "real" crime (ie murder) by referring to other things as "crime" as well. You have a word with a definition, anything under that definition is that word.

And WTF version of consensual do you think it is then? Surely there is only one verson of consensual. ie, with full and informed consent.

Having sex for money with someone you don't actually desire is consensual if what you want is the money and you are free to refuse this particular fellow performer, this particular act. Sex in these circumstances may not appeal to you but it isn't rape. Even if you are doing it because you want the money to buy drugs, it's not rape.
This isn't to say that rape does not sometimes occur - if an inexperienced performer is threatened with violence or bullied into doing stuff that wasn't in the original agreement, that's rape.

I agree with that, but what percentage of porn performers "want" rather than "need" the money AND are completely free and not too intimidated to refuse anything? Aside from the "ethical" producers, which are few, are they not?

Oh I knew that silly old myth "men are visual, women are not" would come up.

There is absolutely no evidence for that at all. It is not true. Why do people think teenage girls put posters of JLS on their walls?

That myth was invented by hideously ugly unattractive men who suffered a bloody bad case of wishful thinking.

Women weren't allowed to be visual. They were told they had to marry htis hideous old man and the hideous old man told himself his 14 year old bride wasn't visual.

Bullshit bullshit bullshit. And people are still repeating that bollocks.

" I personally have enormous faith in men and women's core decency and genuinely believe that if more people actually found out what really happens in the making of porn, they would rethink their use of it."

I hope you're right. However, lots of people would rationalise their use of it by choosing to believe when told the truth, that that only applies to a tiny percentage of the porn industry, that people who are telling them the truth have an axe to grind, that it's not as bad as all that etc... we see this all the time when people are told the truth about porn. They don't want to believe it, so they carry on blithely disbelieving.

But I hope they don't represent the majority, because I too cling on to a (hopefully not misguided) belief in the core decency of men and women.

BertieBotts ... What SGB said. I would never consent to have sex in return for payment, therefore it does not fit in with my conception of the consensual sex I would want to engage in. But since the people in the films have given consent, it is not rape, by any definition.

And, also as SGB says, I have no doubt there are occasions when that consent is meaningless because it is coerced (making it rape). Moreover, there is undoubtedly exploitation at work, but to say the porn industry routinely peddles rape ? as others have done (one poster said all sex in porn is rape) ? is wrong, and diminishes the experience of all those (including those in the porn industry who have been coerced into sex on film) who have been raped.

I am not a defender of the porn industry. As I said earlier in the thread, I would be happier if it could all be banished. But arguments based on exaggeration and hyperbole achieve nothing.

Hmm. But what if I said that I would never consent to a threesome, does that mean that I have a different meaning of the word consent to someone who does like threesomes, and engages in them quite consensually and happily? I don't think that it does. Different people can consent to different things, and even change what they do or don't consent to at different times or in different situations, without the word "consent" changing its meaning, which is that the person is happy, or at least okay with, whatever they are consenting to, and that they are not being coerced into doing so. I don't consider payment to be coercion, if it is chosen freely and if it is not the only real or perceived option for money that that person has. (Essentially I think we are agreeing here and it's just a semantics thing.)

I think the area where we disagree is that you don't seem prepared to accept the notion that most sex in porn is rape, whereas I do believe this. Not all, of course, but most, yes, probably. :(

Bertiebotts

The problem with viewing it being the only "perceived option for money" as being the same as rape is that you could decide whatever arbitrary cutoff point for that you want. How much money is a decent buffer against starvation? Enough to eat today? Or enough to live on the average wage in this country and save for a pension? Or somewhere in between? How much economic necessity is healthy in a capitalist society like ours? Should the minimum wage be 50 grand a year so everyone can live a middle class lifestyle without having to do jobs they don't want? And what if it were and some women still became porn actresses?

The fact is that pretty much everybody has to work for money. Pretty much everybody has limits and restrictions on the jobs they're able to get. Pretty much everybody at some time at least goes to work when they'd rather not. I completely take on board what you're saying as applicable to production of porn say in third world countries, using women who are literally facing starvation, homelessness etc. otherwise. Maybe in some extreme cases in the UK and America too, but it just doesn't seem to be the case, from anything I've read by anyone knowledgeable about the industry (including those arguing against it), that all or even the majority of performers are coming to it from that angle.

I suspect there are a wide variety of points on the continuum of "choice vs necessity" among performers in porn, as in most jobs. There certainly appears to be some who do it with full knowledge of what they're doing and with the ability to do something else if they preferred. By all means argue against the industry, but don't claim, as you appear to be claiming, a right to proclaim what choices all women "would" make if they were free of all vestiges of patriarchy. There are many different women and some of them will make choices you find distasteful. Trying to rationalise all these as "rape" just because you don't like them is silly.

That's not what I'm talking about, I think that was quite obvious. I mean the kind of situation when someone thinks they have no other option, whether they actually do or not. Maybe they think there's no other job they can do. It's difficult to hold down a job if you're addicted to drugs or homeless. Why are you talking about starvation and pensions? It's nothing to do with the amount of money. It's to do with options, or lack of them.