What are your views on porn?

[EclecticShock]

Walked in on dp last night pleasuring himself and watching porn. I was a little taken aback as since I've known him, he has never alluded to the fact he watches porn while masturbating. To be honest, I haven't really thought about it too much before. His body, his mind etc. I always thought he probably masturabated but guess it became real last night. He was open about it. I've tried to not make a big deal out of it until I decide how I feel about it. Don't get me wrong I masturbate and read eroticism so no real difference there. I do it when he's not here though, he doesn't have that luxury as I'm generally always here so he waited until I went to bed. Fair enough.

I guess I'm now really intrigued to know what exactly he was watching as I didn't realise he was that into visual stuff, thought he was more of a thoughts person. Anyway, he wants to discuss it with me because he thinks I'm upset. I'm not upset as such just a bit shocked I suppose. God knows why, when my personal beliefs are that it's normal.

Our sex life is good. No worries there. My question is should I ask him in depth questions about it or should I just leave it as something that is private to him, that I don't really need to know? I think I might be quite judgemental if it's something I'm not into... Opinions please.

I'm also very nosy...

Pointing out that women who are being paid to be sexually abused by men, have to pretend to enjoy it otherwise they won't get paid and won't get booked again, is patronising?

Really?

TBH I think anyone who states about a woman acting in a porn film, or a prostituted woman pretending to enjoy being used as a wank-sock, that she seemed to be enjoying it and therefore they're going to assume that she enjoyed it, deserves to be patronised. It's absolutely fair enough if you are a naieve 14 year old, to assume that people being paid to look as if they're enjoying something, are in fact, enjoying something, but for christ's sake if you're an adult, if you don't employ a wee bit of critical thinking sometimes, someone is going to point out the bleedin' obvious and then you can call them patronising for doing so if you want.

This doesn't mean that every single porn actress or prostituted woman everywhere is hating it every second of the time; just it seems a denial of common sense, to accept that because they look as if they're enjoying it, that must mean that they are enjoying it. How old are we, people? I'm gobsmacked that anyone should think that's reasonable.

Ach, eclectic, I think you're on your way to a second honeymoon, some passionate re-connection and a happy ending. It's probably quite easy to separate sexually in this day and age, so perhaps you both need to re-commit to each other, chuck the porn (but stick to the self-help books, there's a world of difference there) and look into each others' eyes again.

I think relationships do go in stages and phases, and perhaps you are just moving on to the next one. Good luck .

No one mentioned the word "pretend" but you, Basil. No one here said it was okay for women in the sex industry to pretend to enjoy sex. It is simply not true that all women in the sex industry are being coerced, forced or sexually abused. Some women actively pursue this as a career, for joy, not because of a past sexual abuse. Not all porn is degrading to women. And what about the men?

That's why you're patronising. Not because we don't understand that some women pretend to like sex to keep in work. You're seeing the extreme side of porn and nothing else.

So how do you know which porn does not contain abused/forced women??

Even if there was a small chance (very unlikely) that women have been forced/raped etc, would you still think its ok to wank and orgasm using images of these women??

Unfortunately its not the extreme side of porn....

No I'm not and I see your point. I am just pointing out that not all women are forced. TBH the kind of porn DH and I would watch is home video type stuff between two people. I wouldn't be turned on by gang bangs, fisting and all that jazz. I would be repulsed if DH watched it too, but he is equally disgusted by that stuff.

Oh and to answer your first question, I don't. But the kind of porn I watch is less likely to contain that kind of thing than the kind I described above.

I'm not saying all porn is filled with mutually consenting adults in fields of buttercups and daisies. I know that's not the reality, not by any stretch. But there are women who are 100% of sound mind and consenting to being filmed.

Some women choose pornography or prostitution, and some do not but are in it anyway. Statistics suggest that those who do not choose far outnumber those who do. So why can't we speak about those who are forced?

It's pretty weak to use the statement 'not all women are forced' as any kind of justification for the industry. If it was 'no women are forced' then that would be quite a different thing.

So all porn is wrong, even though not everyone is abused.

Is all marriage wrong then, because some women (and men) are abused?

I didn't use the word wrong.

Is the practice of two people joining for life because they love each other bad? No. Is marriage as an institution bad? Yes. It is. Some couples manage to have the marriage that they want - some couples divorce in a way that is good for them. Lots of others find marriage (particularly when children come along) constrictive and difficult.

It takes a lot of talking and guts for a couple to have the marriage that they are truly happy with when maternity leave, tax affairs, healthcare, working, income, house buying, parenting, etc, are so gendered and difficult to negotiate. Ideally we'd find a new way of doing things.

And everything I've ever read suggests that MOST porn performers are coerced in some way. They are the vast majority - the small quantity of ethical porn produced can't dent that.

It's not enough to say 'most aren't abused' (which is the case with marriage).

You didn't. I apologise.

Anyway, OP, good luck in negotiating this.

Hmm, I'm afraid I always have a wry little smile when I read the words 'Oh FFS, it's just a bit of PORN, I even enjoy watching it with Dp/DH etc etc'

Waaaayy back in the day as an educated, middle class professional, I used to be very liberal about it too. Where's the harm? Just a bit of fucking, totally natural etc etc

Ten years down the line, I can safely say that my H's porn addiction has pushed me to the very edge of sanity. Make no mistake, hard core porn addiction will be the next 'big thing' in our society. Why? It's free, it caters for all tastes and it's HIGHLY addictive.

My H and I are now in a trial separation and I don't know if I will ever have him back. He is now though undergoing targeted sex therapy.

So whilst it's entirely possible to 'use' porn recreationally in say that way one might use pot; hard core pornography which ritually abuses and tortures women for a male heterosexual audience is like crack. My H is now opening up about his experiences but one thing really strikes me as profound is when he said - "it gets inside your head and you can't stop thinking about it".

I know from personal experience that once its in the head there is no room for anything else. The addict becomes a zombie, caught up in their own sick and twisted world. And in all likelihood they will need professional help to get out of it. This is because of the way the addict cycle works - many users can swear off it for months or years at a time. However, their thinking has become twisted and sooner or later they turn to it again. The cycling was THE worst aspect of the addiction for me. Oh, apart from the lying.

Be vary wary OP of any man who will sneak off for a wank in front of the PC when he can have the real deal. Because they do that as the PC gratifies them better than any live woman could.

My advice? Just be really careful here OP. If I was in your shoes, I would be trying to find out what the full nature and extent was.

"Sorry to disappoint those huffy types who have read cats-bum-mouth reports on the interwebs,"

I wouldn't be too quick Zara to assume that because a person may take the view that pornography is immoral that they are raving Mary Whitehouse clones.

BelieveinPink, Zara1984 asserted that the prostituted women she used to know, seemed to enjoy their work. This statement invites us to ignore the fact that women are forced to pretend they are enjoying their "work" when men are using them as wank-socks.

And you're calling me patronising for picking up on that and pointing out the bleedin' obvious.

Well, yes it could be described as patronising I suppose. What approach would not be patronising? To ignore it and let it stand and go along with the happy hooker myth?

The cats-bum mouth shit is just a silencing technique.

Anyone who is anti-porn, is so because they don't like sex and disapprove of other people enjoying themselves.

It's a way of shutting women up and making sure they don't express their discomfort about porn and the sex industry, for fear of being categorised as sex-hating prudes. So they're left with no choice but to go along with it.

Even the term "sex-positive" is a way of ensuring that anyone who disagrees with that handmaiden shit, is marginalised as Mary Whitehouse types.

It's a brilliant silencing technique but it doesn't work round here, which really gets people's goat, because they're used to women shutting the fuck up when they're slapped down with the catsbum Mary Whitehouse insult. In RL, it usually works. But this is Mumsnet.

How do you know those women are pretending? How do you know they are not there because they want to be? That porn stars are not there becase they want to be...

I'm not deliberately being argumentative, honestly, and I actually agree with many of the statements you've made. I enjoy having my eyes opened but I also know not everything is as you've described.

I'd also be interested to know if Zara meant that the ladies "seemed" to enjoy it, or if she knows they enjoyed it. Kind of hoping it was a slight error, because obviously we don't need it pointing out that some women can put on an act.

Excuse the typo. Check the post, Kelly, check the post.

PV: Your H was a mess before the porn, though. Every addict has something about them, some fault to their off-switch, that means they get addicted when plenty of other people can recreationally partake of the whatever without having problems.

And the reason I find a lot of the anti-porn activists to have a problem with sex is that their argument always ends up as 'Well I wouldn't like to do it therefore every woman doing it must be a victim and not know her own mind' coupled with an insistence that what Evil Men really want is to see filmed abuse. And that, even with safeguards in place and proper workers' rights for porn performers it would still be wrong because... well because.... well bwaaaaa, people shouldn't want to look at it!

Lurking on this thread but posts to applaud Basil.

"And the reason I find a lot of the anti-porn activists to have a problem with sex is that their argument always ends up as 'Well I wouldn't like to do it therefore every woman doing it must be a victim and not know her own mind' coupled with an insistence that what Evil Men really want is to see filmed abuse. And that, even with safeguards in place and proper workers' rights for porn performers it would still be wrong because... well because.... well bwaaaaa, people shouldn't want to look at it!"

Straw men are so boring.

SGB - I am not one of those people you have described - I do not have a problem with sex

And anyway, it seems to me that what the pro porn women are actually saying "I find the idea of being a porn star really exciting and I love role playing in my king sized bed with my loving and considerate lover. So because I like that, and because I like looking at porn, then all the women who work in the industry must be having just as lovely a time as I am in my aforementioned king sized bed, and if they aren't, I'm going to put my fingers fingers in my ears and yell insults at other women very loudly because I don't want to think about it. If I can convince myself that anyone who raises questions is an ugly, sex starved prude then I can carry on enjoying myself guilt free."