Porn. How do you honestly feel about it?

[Biggem]

I mean we all know men are going to look whether we like it or not.
But, I want (need) to know how other women feel about it, and I'm to scared to ask my friends incase I turn out to be the only one who has issues with it.

Any porn is fine, or is it when they start going on the live things (internet, not the shows in amsterdam) that it would bother you? Or aslong as ur still getting it u don't care it's only when they'd rather watch it than come and bump uglies with u!)

lovesadirtylie Not cod psychology. It's from reading what various porn stars have said. But then I guess you'll dismiss them because they are not psychologists. I'll put some quotes here anyway:

"When you suffer from childhood sexual abuse or were severely abused as a child, you usually repress those memories. You are unable to say, 'I am doing this because I was abused as a child and this is all I know how to do. This is all I know how to feel.' I think a lot of the women are in denial and they don't realize what post-traumatic stress disorder is. You either totally go a whole different direction and turn your life around and get as far away from that abuse as you can ? or you re-live the experience, and a lot of these women are re-living what they know how to feel."

• ex-porn performer Carol Smith, in Not For Sale

" Howard (Stern) asked me if I'd ever been molested or abused. It was the one question I wasn't prepared for." 'No', I told Howard, in answer to his question. I lied like a rug. I wasn't ready to tell anybody about any of this (being gang raped, beaten and left for dead), and I certainly wasn't ready to deal with Howard's reaction. I didn¹t want anyone to think that I was in the business because I was a victim." (Pgs. 391 and 395)

• Jenna Jameson, in "How to Make Love Like a Porn Star"

" Step One: Teenager becomes a model. Reason ­ Like all teenagers, she thinks she's special.

Step Two: Teenager starts dating a tattoo artist and biker. Reason ­ He's older, badder, and allegedly wiser.

Step Three: Teenager becomes a stripper. Reason ­ Work, money, and approval of boyfriend.

Step Four: Teenager starts modeling nude. Reason It's just like real modeling, except with the stripping added in.

Step Five: Teenager starts acting in soft-core all-female adult movies. Reason ­ Revenge.

-Jameson, page 126

"Well, I grew up in a small town in Ohio , and when I was 10 years old, I was raped by a high school boy that was about 16. And from there, my mother had an older boyfriend that molested me, so my entire childhood was really shaped by these really traumatic sexual experiences, which ultimately led me to the streets of Hollywood and to porn."

-Traci Lords, in a Fox News interview

"(Traci Lords) makes abundantly clear how easily the internal struggles of any sweet, curious young girl can be manipulated. The product of a broken home with a brutal father and a weary mother, the one-time Nora Kuzma is raped at age 10 but her 16-year-old crush: 'How could I deny it?' she writes of her resulting self-image. 'I was a whore.'"

-From a review of Traci Lords¹ book Underneath it All

" Half the women I knew outside porn had been sexually abused as little girls, so it only stood to reason that the statistics might apply in porn as well. One study of the general population claims it is two out of three. The puzzling refrain I'd begun hearing from porn outsiders: "There are plenty of people with histories of sexual abuse who didn't grow up to be porn stars." That's missing the point: The ones who did become sex workers were abused. All of them, that's my guess."

-From Ian Gittler, A Diary of Six Years in the Life of a Porn Star. Rolling Stone October 14, 1999

I'm not keen on the bulk of anti=porn campaigning - if it isn't coming from a massively anti-feminist standpoint anyway (sex is bad and women dislike it and if they engage in it they are sluts) it's desperately hetermonogamy-obsessed, forever setting up 'porn' as a polar opposite of 'loving relationships' as though that's your only two options.

Sparks, porn perpetrates rape myths. Women are dirty little sluts who can't get enough of it.They might be reluctant at first but they love it eventually once they've been pounded a bit. It reduces women to a series of holes, and most mainstream porn is about degrading women in some way or another.

You can't claim that objectification has 'nothing to do with porn'. Being exposed to the messages that porn perpetrates fundamentally affects how men view and interact with women, and how women end up viewing themselves and their worth. I suggest you watch this too.

I've got nothing against the idea of watching consenting adults have pleasureable, non-abusive sex as a turn-on - but that isn't what 99.999% the porn industry is. SGB, I'd refute your idea that 'Porn is a reflection of society, not the instigator of attitudes.' Yes, those attitudes might exist elsewhere, but it's all part of a feedback loop and porn distorts and magnifies - because it is fundamentally financially incentivised to be more extreme and to push boundaries further and further.

SGB - Gail Dines does say that her critics often accuse her of not liking sex and of being prudish. I think you can certainly enjoy sex and still have a problem with porn. It's about respect and I don't see a lot of respect for women in the porn industry. If someone didn't respect me then I would not want to have sex with them.

I am pretty anti-porn but I am certainly not anti-sex or anti-feminist and I don't think that Gail Dines comes across that way either. I just want to bring my daughter up in a world that has respect for women, that does not objectify them or put pressure on them to look a certain way, to act a certain way or commit certain sexual acts in order not to be labelled as a freak or a prude.

Many many young women feel pressurised into having sex too young because of the expectations of men and the fear of being labelled as 'different'. How is that liberating for women at all? I don't think women have ever been as constrained as they are today. Just look at the huge numbers of young girls with eating disorders, obsessed with how they look because they are constantly being told by the media that they should attain to this or that and even when you are pregnant or have just given birth, the pressure remains to lose the baby weight, to look gorgeous. For women, it all about how we look, how we dress and it has nothing to do with our arguments or our voice.

Just look at the harrassment female bloggers are getting for daring to have a voice - many of the threats are sexual threats. This society has never been so misogynistic.

I'm not anti-porn but it exists and i rarely watch it on Pornhub. Possibly 3 or 4 times this year. It is boring for the most part.
Lots of women enjoy watching porn. Depends on which type i guess.

I like that word "heteronormative" I'm gonna fit that into a conversation at some point then watch their faces as they try to figure it out. That's gonna be my trump card! Word of the week in fact. Cheers Brandy mate!

Again, the objectification of women doesn't come from porn. The division of women into whores or madonnas is ancient, the messages that women exist to be looked at predates porn, the insistence that women's bodies are imperfect and must be modified in painful, time-consuming ways didn't start with porn.
And Sir Cliff: 'society has never been more misogynistic' OH FFS! Abortion is legal, so is divorce, women can earn and own money, they can have children outside of wedlock without being shunted into the workhouse or expected to kill themselves, they can hold down jobs and go out unescorted and not only vote but be elected to public office.
I am not denying that misogyny exists, but there was no Golden Age Before Internet Porn when women were free of the patriarchy.

from a purely personal point of view i dont like porn because i dont like men i know as well as men i dont know asking me if i have breast implants and can they have a feel. i also dont like men inplying that because i have big breast that i must want sex with them. this does seem to have frequently.

no i dont dress like a porn star, i wear clothes from the supermarket and allways buy them a size too big so it does not emphasis the wrong thing. i do not wish to be further degraded and humiliated by always having to dress as a baglady just to keep away these sorts of coments.

i would prefer to be treated as a person by men not as a piece of meat.

A review of Gail Dines' book, which also provides a summary of serious academic research about porn:
blog.cannold.com/2011/10/before-you-buy-in-to-porn-wars.html

That bore out my existing impression of Dines as someone who looks for evidence to fit her opinions. More serious (and less partial) research is needed about porn IMO. I think there could be a point about increasingly violent / extreme content in mainstream porn... but there hasn't been any recent research on this from someone who didn't have a serious axe to grind.
I have also read this year - as written by people in the porn industry - that there's an increasing trend back towards women with pubic hair in porn films. That's the sort of thing that porn-is-bad feminists don't tend to pick up on.

"Objectification" is an intrinsic part of sexual attraction. I know I do it to men sometimes.

And I'm not sure that it's porn (something taking place within a sexual context) that is largely responsible for women not being taken seriously in some other areas of life.

Something that is needed is more education for teenagers about differences between porn and real life, and about the health and psychological impact, but this would seem to be tricky because magazines, schools etc probably aren't allowed to discuss the sort of material that many teenagers are, in reality, exposed to.

I hate porn, I think it's awful. I married a man who said he wasn't interested in porn...his internet history revealed his lies. I was so hurt and betrayed by it.

I don't like porn because it makes me feel ugly, insecure and when it comes to my DH, I find i hard to be intimate with him because I think he wants the porn women.

It's even harder (!) when you don't have sex much anyway.

WithJingleBellsOn

That's a really good review, although it does kind of confirm to an extent my view of the debate - there's very little actual evidence in the debate and a great deal of prejudice and supposition.

DoesNot - it wasn't the porn making your husband a liar and an inadequate husband - it was his behaviour making you feel ugly and undesirable too - he would still think that way without porn.

Porn normalises how these men feel about women though, the great big fat lie that they all tell themselves, that all men use porn., aided and abetted by those women who tell themselves that too, to avoid facing facts.

One thing that has shocked me over the years is the huge amount of venom which a lot of women have for those of us who know that our husbands aren't interested in porn, they have been so brainwashed into thinking all men use porn that they can't possibly believe there are men who don't - it must be too uncomfortable for them to face the truth, there is no other reasonable explanation, otherwise why the utter ridicule and insistence that a man must be lying and a woman must be deluded?

To be fair, there is quite a lot of venom towards people (particularly men) who use porn

I rather like good, genuine porn where the women are the "readers wives" types who seem to be having a lot of fun. I'm not so keen on the pneumatic shaven ladies and men with huge cocks because it seems to ridiculous it makes me laugh. If I was a bit thinner and a bit younger I'd quite like to be in a porn film actually.

Only towards the men who use porn secretly ( or not so secretly judging by a thread this morning) , with the full knowledge that their partner would be distressed and the disrespect that all entails.
A man who puts his own pleasure before his relationship and the trust and respect of his partner deserves a bit of venom imo.

I hate porn and the porn industry for the reasons outlined in forkful's link.

There is a trigger warning at the beginning of the slide show but I thought I would repeat on here that there are triggering images and words.

Also do NOT watch the link with any DCs about.

Surely the only humane response to this industry is abhorrence?

I'm always gob-smacked by women who fail to see how misogynistic, racist, degrading and violent most porn is nowadays. The themes of under-age girls and incest are pretty sick making too.

Malificence I appreciate you helping with that, it's a strange one for me, as I feel pressure that I should be fine with it, and I'm not - you have clarified it a bit for me there. And I hate the fact I was led to believe porn didn't interest him, it's like he's a different person to who I thought, you know? I personally find it comforting that there ARE men who aren't interested in porn, but it shook my faith in that (I've always believed it) when his lies were exposed. I have no venom for women whose partners don't like porn, it just makes me sad and a bit that mine lied and turns out he's just another "meat beater" ifyswim. Like I'm just not good enough and obviously they are (however ridiculous that it is).

Hear hear malf I can assure you, he got plenty of venom.

I like porn, sometimes as I've already stated. In my twenties it used to disgust me but i wasn't as openminded then as I am now. Porn for the most part isn't real men and real men having sex, it's totally unrealistic for the most part.

With regards to the dark side of the porn industry, that is something else i am ignorant about.

I will never have a body like a porn star without major surgery, aguy likes me or he doesn't. I have watched porn with a partner sometimes and yes not all men like porn, perhaps they got bored of it or for a myriad of reasons,

Each to their own, i say.

Isn't one answer then to be more accepting of pornography? I know that goes against the grain and I'm playing Devil's Advocate (and paraphrasing Caitlin Moran) to an extent

Given that a lot of men find it pleasurable to watch porn, if we were more open about it, that it was less secret, men wouldn't have to lie to their partners, more "ethical" stuff would be made and the world would be a better place.

I'm drawing a parallel with the war on drugs (by making it socially unacceptable), it draws it into the hands of the criminals, etc.

Beachcomber That's definitely something I find odd within porn - "barely legal teens" and "twins".

I do not understand how people don't make the paedo / incest connection. It BAFFLES me.

Real as in beer bellies, strech marks, eyebags......