Porn - I use it and feel bad - help convince me porn is wrong

[GuiltyPornUser]

Firstly, sorry if this is the wrong place to post this, although I thought it may be the most appropriate. I'm a married man, and I use porn fairly regularly. It's not something I feel has a massive negative effect on my life, but I feel bad about it. I'm not someone who specially goes out of my way to buy porn, (I've never paid for it), but with the internet, it's only ever a few clicks away.

I want to be convinced that it's wrong. I recently read Andrea Dworkin's book on pornography, but it hasn't stopped me. I appreciate that a lot of stuff on the web is very brutal and degrading to women, but a lot of the stuff is less obviously so.

My DW wouldn't be happy with me using porn, and I want to stop. I want to be convinced that it's wrong, and how I go about stopping using porn, when it's so easy to find on the internet.

There may be some here who think porn is acceptable and I'm just suffering from some almost religious guilt.

I'd really welcome some advice here, because my DW could find out one day and I want to stop.

Also, if you can bear to actually watch any of this offensive material - you will see that the women don't always manage to hide their distress. One can see then gagging, their eyes bulging, them trying to get their breath, grimacing, and sometimes making noises of being in pain. Sometimes they look afraid, sometimes they look drugged.

It is obvious to anyone with a brain and a sense of empathy that these women are having a rough time of it and are being badly treated.

So the people who like this shit either - don't notice the distress of another human being, don't care about the distress or get a kick from it.

Chilling.

Ok BC - this is really starting to piss me off.

you sound completely obsessed with pornography ( you seem to view it far more than I do and I admitted to using it! ) I know your opinion will never change where this issue is concerned ( so it's difficult to debate it with you ) but I'd just like to tell you again.

Pornography is fantasy - and the vast majority of users know that. They see it as harmless and normal - it does not spill over into every other aspect of your life.

Not all women in the porn industry are being abused - most are there because they want to be and consider themselves as actresses ( some of them are in other areas of the entertainment industry not porn related )

Some people do the things you see in porn as part of their everyday sex lives - it might be filthy and disgusting to you but to others it's totally normal and exceptable.

Carmina why are you getting personal with me?

Your use of the word 'obsessed' and insinuation that I watch a lot of porn, whilst claiming to be against it, is just nasty and low.

Are you making personal attacks in an effort to get me to shut up (common silencing tactic)?

This is the feminist section of MN, which is why I am discussing porn from a feminist perspective.

You said;

"Some people do the things you see in porn as part of their everyday sex lives - it might be filthy and disgusting to you but to others it's totally normal and exceptable."

What you don't seem to understand is that I don't give a hooey what people get up to in their personal sex lives as long as all participants are happy with the proceedings and nobody is being coerced. I don't think certain sex acts are disgusting or offensive as long as all concerned are enjoying their intimacy.

The idea that feminists are against porn because they are prudes who are anti-sex is often trotted out in discussions about porn. So much so that this notion often appears in FAQ on porn awareness websites;

"Aren?t the people who object to pornography really just afraid of sex?

Feminists who have committed their lives to the anti-pornography movement have been among the most articulate spokespeople for a progressive view of sexuality. These are the people who have done the most to help society move toward a more healthy view of sexuality. To accuse them of being ?anti-sex? is an attempt to distract attention from pornography?s sexist and racist images of sex that are fundamentally unhealthy for individuals and our culture."

stoppornculture.org/faq/#3

Also saying porn is just fantasy is stupid and delusional.

I mainly post on the Relationships board and the laughable equation that to be anti-porn is to be anti-sex is frequently made. It is perfectly possible to be pro-sex and anti-porn, but I've found that this makes pro-porn posters uncomfortable.

However I think it's a moot point that watching porn doesn't have any effect on private sexual behaviour, because yet again every day on the Relationships board it's obvious that porn consumption clearly does have an enormous effect on the sex that people are having and what is deemed acceptable by female partners especially.

It amazed me recently when a series of threads revealed a complete failure to acknowledge the difference between fellatio and throat-fucking/hair-pulling, with female posters insisting that they enjoyed having their hair painfully yanked, or having to gag and wipe the tears from their eyes during oral sex.

Or the posters who couldn't even countenance the idea that male masturbation was possible without porn.

Far more private sexuality has been influenced by the porn culture than porn apologists will ever admit or acknowledge. Younger posters especially have never known sex to be any different, because they grew up in the lads mag culture and have literally never had sex with someone who doesn't use porn.

Carmina, you post quite a lot on the feminist section expressing your low opinion of feminists don't you? You posted some unpleasant stuff on the 'resisting femininity' thread too IIRC.

Funny way to go about things really - nobody is making you join in feminist discussions.

I wonder if there are posters who go to the camping section and tell them they are putting their tents up wrong or go to spirituality and poke fun at the values expressed there? Must ask sometime.

I find it insulting when anyone describes my habits as 'chilling' - or that because I'm an occasional porn user I'm either too thick to notice what's really going on, or I don't care because I like getting off on watching women being abused. You can't possible know what's really happening in every porn film ever made - so sweeping statements are ridiculous and add nothing to your argument.

I smoke sometimes because I like it
I drink sometimes because I like it
I watch porn sometimes because I like it

Maybe I should stop enjoying myself

Carmina's getting personal with you because your very powerful argument made her feel uncomfortable Beachcomber.

Carmina the things that happen to the women in the films in porn are not fantasy they're real. They really are gagging on penises and being anally raped. That's real.

And even if it were fantasy, are you really happy that so many men have fantasies of humiliating and torturing women? Do you really not see anything wrong with that? Where do you think those fantasises come from? From a place of deep respect and love for women, d'you think?

One of the most disturbing things about the fact that the distress of these women sometimes shows, is that the film directors could easily choose to edit that distress out and only show the censored version - the smiles and the fuck me harders. Teh very fact that they leave that distress in, shows that they calculate that many of their viewers, will jack off harder when they see the woman trying not to cry or showing her despair. How can anyone be comfortable with the idea that bringing yourself to orgasm by watching other human beings being tortured, is OK? It's fucking sick.

And WWIFN is absolutely right - there's a whole generation out there who are having their sexuality and therefore their relationships, hijacked by the porn industry. We've got to acknowledge the problem - I'm not happy to hand over my children's sexuality to an industry rooted in vicious hatred of half the human race, I really can't understand why any other parents would be. But that's what you're doing, if you think the widespread use of porn is nothing to be concerned about.

Again, ask any man who wanks to what he has deluded himself is consensual porn - would he want his sister/girlfriend/mother/cousin to be in porn. I guarantee you he will say no. Men know this stuff is wrong, they just don't care. They don't care because society tells them it is fine to not care about these women - they aren't real women anyway. They are sex objects, they are the sex class.

hang on a sec! Sorry beachcomber, I know you aren't the only person to have made this argument, but isn't the whole "would you want your sister to do porn?" argument a bit dodgy and kind of accepting the misogynists' premises about what is sexually acceptable behaviour for women?

As you say most, if not all, men would say "no, I wouldn't want my sister to do porn", but then ask them why and most would probably say "because I don't want my sister to be a slut" (or other choice misogynistic word). Some wouldn't - they'd say "because I don't want my sister to be abused and treated like meat" - but a lot wouldn't. As you say "society tells them it is fine not to care about these women" - they don't want their sister to be a slut because then that then reflects back onto them. Surely we should be challenging that and saying:

a) the women in porn are women and human beings - we should care about them.

b) why is a women who has sex with lost of men a "slut" while a man who does the same is a "stud"? why should a woman be ashamed of, or made to feel ashamed of this behaviour? why the double-standard?

I agree that men should be made to see that porn is wrong (or, even better, they should work it out for themselves) but I'm just not sure that the "imagine if it was you girlfriend/sister/mum" argument is the best one to use (sure it's the easiest) as it just ends up reinforcing negative stereotypes of sexually active women.

No MrIC, it is pointing out that the women in porn movies aren't a different type of woman to women like their sisters, mothers, daughters.

They're the same as us. We are encouraged to believe that they are a different species from us (they're so drugged up they don't feel anything, they're brains have been damaged by their upbringing so they don't feel things the way we would, they're just not as clever and sensitive and well, human as us).

It's got nothign to do with censoring what women should be allowed to do in bed. It's got everything to do with humanising the women who are abused in porn films.

sorry their brains
am typing quickly...

Carmine: go and watch the chan 4 documentary on porn then come back and tell us the abuse is all fantasy (as though this isn't a weird proposition in itself) and it doesn't really hurt women who choose to do it. Then come back and talk to us about how you just want to enjoy yourself.

I'm with beachcomber on this: if you want to abuse feminists, you should go somewhere else. I suspect, however, given your opinion on porn, that you simply cannot resist an opportunity to abuse women.

I hate porn and apart from the reasons on this thread a big part of this is because I was abused as a child. This gave me a distorted view on sex and porn and back when I was still trying to comprehend what had happend I almost became one of thoose women because I saw it as taking back the power over sex. Luckily I recieved counselling and have a much healthier attitude to sex and would never do that now.

I would have freely chosen to sell my body as some probably do but that thinking comes from the sheer damage abuse did to me and how it warped my thinking. Why dont women from good childhoods dont choose this? because IME you need your mind to be warped by a pretty bad past before selling your body seems ok. The people claiming it is fine have no desire to sell thier body I notice, probably because most of your childhood wasnt degrading and abuseive to the point that a porn film seems like you are getting respect because people are paying you for the privalage of abusing you instead of you being given nothing, and because in my warped mind I thought I had choose this when I hadnt my first abuser was the one who forced me to believe I would always be abused and my only option was to sell it so I could lie to myself and survive.

I would have walked in there freely too had I not been stopped but I would have had no more choice than someone who is forced on drugs and eventually becomes a addict.

crawling: so about what happended to you, but thank you so much for giving us the kind of personal perspective that really gets to the heart of why this industry is so evil.

Crawling, I just wish that more people were aware of the dynamics of why women go into the sex industry. It is fucking heartbreaking that men are allowed to destroy so many women and then blame those women for their destruction.

Only a very sick, woman-hating society would allow this and denigrate the people who speak out against it.

I'm so glad you have come through it and wrested back some control and self-respect.

I think Crawling's post illustrates just how "consensual" pornography is.
Thanks for making the point. I'm glad to hear you are happier with yourself now.

J60 - I can't believe what you've just said to me - I'm a woman myself and the mother of two beautiful, highly intelligent successful daughters. To imply that because I use pornography occasionally I'm into abusing feminists and women in general is ( apart from being untrue ) totally over the top and unnecessary. you have really upset me. Thanks a lot.

Carminaburana, can you answer the question that is coming up in all these debates: Would you be happy to stare in such a film? Or for you're daughters to? And what would you do if you opened a video and there was one of you're daughters participating?

Dittany,

I would rather suspect, purely on the basis of anecdotal evidence, and from people like the AtomicBum in this thread that you're wrong when you say "watching the abuse of women gets them off", and its their "degradation that excites the viewers".

Still, we don't know unless we survey loads of men who watch porn, so we'll have to leave it there.

Beachcomber

I actually sat through a seminar at Oxford University once where a professor from the US conducted an analyisis of the titles on sites, it was a little strange to say the least. I might have to look again at what his conclusions were.

I don't suggest it's all happy smiling girls

dittany,

What do you say to the likes of atomicbum who said he thought it looked consensual, but didn't think too much about it?

Mr IC, what HerBEggs said;

"It's got nothing to do with censoring what women should be allowed to do in bed. It's got everything to do with humanising the women who are abused in porn films."

The point of the observation is that men who consume porn dehumanise and objectify the women in porn. Asking them how they would feel about women they know and care about and treat as human, is to make that point.

The point is not to say 'porn is bad because the women in it are sluts' but porn is bad because they women are dehumanized'.