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!)

Bennifer I resent the implication there that I forced my partner to lie. I was open with him from the start and asked whether porn was his thing, without telling him how I felt first, to get to know what he liked etc. to know if I needed to make room for it. I didn't barge on in there and say "I hate porn therefore you must". That's why I feel so betrayed by it all.

I don't know..maybe part of it is the "thrill" of secrecy?

As in why some men prefer to hide it, as opposed to being open about it.

I would suspect a lot of men aren't open about it, because (rightly or wrongly) it has a stigma attached to it.

I think it's actually inadequate men liking to feel as if they have "one over" on their partner , I do wonder if they sit there thinking "silly bitch, she actually believes me, how great am I "?

For the people who don't mind porn / their partner's use of it, do you actually know what porn they like? What if it was "barely legal" , "drunk and abused" or gangbang/bukkake type stuff, can you honestly say it wouldn't change your opinion of your partner? if I thought my DH found any of that shit appealing I would be horrified and lose all respect for him, fortunately I know he finds it grim and nasty.

Malf it certainly makes me feel that way: like a fool!

Bennifer it does definitely have stigma attached to it. I think women suffer from stigma too - in that if you have a problem with porn and dislike it, you're a "prude" and "inhibited".

I agree Malificence it is the act of an inadequate man.

As I've already stated it depends on which kind of porn..there are many kinds. I trust my previous partner didn't like the sort of porn you describe as you trust that your partner finds it grim and nasty :)

Never be 100% definate about anything or anybody.

I can accept that some men may take a moral stance over the porn industry and the way it treats people but i refuse to believe there is a heterosexual male in existence that wouldn't find the naked female form in a sexual embrace pleasurable in some way.

Therefore i'd say all those saying their partners don't like porn are talking shit. Which of course at a basic level they are.

I do also think that blaming porn for particular men's vile or just crass behaviour is something of a cop-out. But it's easy to point the finger at a stigmatized, minority industry rather than look at the whole cultural mass of the patriarchy, with the insistence that women are men's property, have no agency, desire love rather than sex, are inherently monogamous in opposition to men's inherent promiscuity, etc, etc. And for some women, it's far too painful and scary to accept that you married a shit, either because he was a good liar or because you had absorbed too deeply the message that you are nothing without heteromonogamy and that it's worth putting up with glaring flaws in a man's behaviour rather than be rendered single. Easier to pin the blame on Evil Pornography, you'd get more support for that than you would if you said your H kept bringing home Kim&Thingy books about housework and dropping hints about how real women scrub the skirting boards, and then thumping you if you didn't dry the dishes properly...

But then if you define yourself through not being heteronormative, it's probably equally as difficult to look at porn as being largely an expression of the cultural mass of the patriarchy and as being increasingly a visual demonstration of women as men's property with no desire for love but existing only as a receptacle for men's desire, no matter how painful or even dangerous. It's just as possible to absorb the message that rejecting heteronormalacy means embracing porn even if that demands you ignore any measured arguments against it, instead painting a caricature of the kind of woman you imagine rejects porn and is troubled by it's emergence within her relationship.

SGB your attitude to porn just baffles me.

Can't you see it?

Forget the rest of society/misogyny - just look at the porn industry in isolation. I don't believe that you are ignorant of how it works.

You know that for many women, being against porn is political - it is not moralistic and it is not about remaining blinkered to other shit that goes on in patriarchy.

Me and DP believe it is one of the most damaging things to relationships that there has every been. Ignoring all the cruelty to women involved in the industry!

Beachcomber: http://blog.cannold.com/2011/10/before-you-buy-in-to-porn-wars.html here is the sort of place my attitude comes from. Fundamentally, the anti-porn arguments that insist that porn is this monolithic all powerful thing expressing nothing but hatred and violence and that everyone who views it interprets in in exactly the same way (despite the fact that the anti-porners identify themselves as The Only Ones Who See A Different Message) are all based on opinion rather than fact. I know porn performers, porn consumers and porn producers who are neither woman-hating monsters nor deranged drug-addled victims.
I do not dispute and never have disputed the fact that there are terrible working conditions and damaged people within the porn industry. But the answer to these problems is not to stigmatize the whole industry even further, it's to encourage better working conditions, performer safety and consent and celebrate the good stuff. Making sexually explicit entertainment is not a dreadful thing to do. Nor is enjoying sexually explicit entertainment.

I agree with what SGB says about working conditions and find it quite odd that this very logical point isn't identified by 'anti-porn' advocates since it seems like the most practical, workable, logical way of actually addressing what are agreed to be the 'ills' of porn.

Thanks for the link SGB - I'm familiar with Ronald Weitzer's take on prostitution, which is similar to what he says of pornography.

I find his arguments entirely unconvincing.

Beachcomber: I feel the same about Gail Dines. Plenty of opinion and anecdote, fuck-all proper data.

I don't understand this data thing.

5 minutes on the top sites that come up in google are all the data one needs.

You don't even have to watch the videos - the titles are dehumanizing and misogynistic enough.

The pornographers are perfectly transparent about the misogyny.

I agree with what SGB says about working conditions and find it quite odd that this very logical point isn't identified by 'anti-porn' advocates since it seems like the most practical, workable, logical way of actually addressing what are agreed to be the 'ills' of porn.

Absolutely. Some of the first art ever produced could be construed as pornographic, for example the prehistoric Venus figurines. It is unrealistic to believe that porn could be totally erased from human society.

On a personal level, it annoys and frustrates me that there isn't more porn where women are in non-submissive roles (but which isn't necessarily full-on femdom porn).
But I know strongly feminist women who also identify as sexually submissive, so I can't automatically view something as misogynistic just because of the woman's role in the scene.

Have not read the whole thread, OP, but I loathe and detest porn! Do not see the need for it in a happy and loving relationship; have made several comments on other threads, especially about bdsm.

Good luck!

But there has already been a lot done to try to regulate the conditions of the people in porn. What is in place does not suddenly transform the industry from being violent and misogynistic and attracting poor young vulnerable people. The health risks are also still present as are the drugs, alcohol, unwanted pregnancies and emotional fallout.

California is the only state in the US where it is legal to produce porn. This has been done in an effort to regulate the industry. It is well known that people still work when they have STD's despite the obligatory health screening. It is common for people to work with forged HIV test results. Almost all filming is done without condoms and women are still put through physically punishing and dangerous acts such as ATM, DP, bukakae, rough anal sex, rough throat sex, etc.

If you regulated porn production properly, in line with other normal working conditions, you would close the industry down. The porn industry cannot respect normal employment law and still function.

Shelley Lubben is active in this area - she is campaigning for standard employment law to be enforced in porn production.

Warning Link to a video from Shelly's website. It contains footage that could be triggering. Do not watch with DCs around.

www.shelleylubben.com/shelleys-videos

Freya, you don't see women being called whores, sluts, pussies, fuckholes, dirty bitches, barely legal, black booty, MILF, etc as misogynistic?

Do you not think rape myths are misogynistic?

Do you not think grooming young women is misogynistic?

Do you not think that coercing young women into doing acts they said they didn't want to do is misogynistic?

Do you not think that rape is misogynistic?

These are all integral to porn production.

And we haven't even started on trafficking, themes of abuse and degradation, scat porn, rape scenarios, incest scenarios, torture scenarios, under-age scenarios (yunno like films where an older teacher fucks a very young underdeveloped woman dressed up as a school girl), anal gaping and a whole bunch of other sick shit then is part and parcel of porn.

Nor have we examined 'amateur porn' which is often filmed and/or distributed without the knowledge of the woman.

I can understand that some people are upset by porn, but in my opinion, (this is just my opinion, no data), porn is generally fine.

Many men watch porn occasionally, they don't need it, they're turned off by the misogynistic violent stuff that many people (I believe falsely) describe as the mainstream. These men aren't inadequate, they don't hate women, and lead perfectly happy healthy lives.

There's very little evidence in the debate and I agree with the blog earlier that described the work of Dines as strong opinion dressed up as academic studies.

All you porn defenders, do me a favour - google porn and spend a half hour (if you can stomach it) looking at what passes for mainstream porn these days.

Engage your brain and not your genitals and look.

I just clicked on the second (I think, I'm not going back to check) result in google when I put porn into the search engine. At the bottom of the page there was an advert for a site called 'Abused Babysitters' - there were images of very young women in pigtails and glasses and children's clothing (sexed up of course) having their anuses gaped open and their mouths forcibly held open whilst a man comes on them. There was an image of a young women being held down on a toilet floor whilst an older man penetrated her from behind.

What is wrong with people that they cannot see how misogynistic and rapey this is?

Do people really need to do a double blind peer reviewed studies and back it up with mountains of epidemiology in order to be able to see sexism and racism and people being degraded and hurt?

I despair of folks nowadays. Are they really so desensitised to this shit that they cannot see it for what it is?

The porn merchants even tell you what is for crying out loud, by using helpful and accurate titles like 'Abused Babysitters'.

Has anybody got anything to say about forkful's link? Or mine?

The stone age "Venus" figurines can not be compared today's porn, which consist mainly of filmed abuse against real women. Whoever cannot see how abusive the commonly available mainstream porn is must be blind.
Those figurines are simply exagarated depictions of nude women, thought to represent fertility goddesses.