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.

Rita: I think the main point you seem to be in denail about is what constitutes hard core and 'ordinary' porn. I think this is a really serious problem for us all because so many people want to believe, like you do, that double anal, gang bangs and so on are at the extremes that most 'normal' people don't watch. As soon as you accept that your idea of 'extreme' is actually the norm, you will have to see it differently. Read about Beachcomber's google experiment or try it yourself if you can stomach it.

That is the core message, it's wrong to buy women, and it's wrong for women to sell their bodies.

I will do the google experiment later and see what I come up with. Perhaps it's true that I'm unaware of what constitutes the majority of porn is so extreme. Maybe I'm too optimistic about men.

Given that I suspect most men watch porn at some point (huge assumption on my part) I can't believe most of them are watching the extreme stuff that's been quoted

I don't think the point for feminists is that it is, 'wrong' for women to sell their bodies.

The point is that it is harmful for women to sell their bodies, and in the vast majority of cases, the women who find themselves in the position of doing it, are damaged and vulnerable people. Anyone who knows how high the rates of histories of sexual violence, rape and childhood abuse, are in women in porn, cannot argue otherwise surely.

If men would stop dehumanizing women and buying them/paying to abuse them/making money from abuses them/paying to watch them be abused/jacking off to them being abused, we wouldn't have a problem, would we?

Tab - would I mind if my daughters went into the porn industry?
Yes I probably would mind - but if that's what they wanted to do and were entering it consensually then it really would be up to them wouldn't it. ( dd1 was considering becoming a fashion model, that industry isn't entirely risk free ) - and wrt hardcore porn being some sort of revenge for feminism ( I know it wasn't you who said it ) I'm sorry but that's incorrect - anyone who knows anything about the Romans will confirm that!
Pornography wasn't invented in the 60's - it's been around since the beginning of time ( Victorian porn often depicts women being tied up etc ) so to suggest it's revenge for feminism shows a lack of historical knowledge. You could argue that feminism has made porn more acceptable and mainstream as women have a lot more freedom of choice and aren't as inhibited about sex - Y'know - if you wanted to be nonsubjective.

er... no, I'm not confusing pornography with women's sexuality.

What I was trying to say Herbeggs and Beachcomber is that if you say to a man - "pornography is bad - just imagine if it was your sister being filmed in those degrading situations" the men in question will agree with you, but the majority will agree with you for the wrong reasons.

They won't agree with you because they would want to protect their sisters from being abused and degraded (at least this wouldn't be their primary concern). They would agree with you because they wouldn't want the shame of having a sister that social mores would label a slut and a whore. (Social mores of course largely being defined by men). Men are primarily concerned with their own status - having a sister who does porn would lower their status, which is why they'd object to it.

You wouldn't have succeeded in humanizing the victim with the "imagine it was your sister" argument, is what I was trying to say.

OK, because men don't see their sisters as human. Fair enough MrIC.

Dittany, they do see their sisters as human. That's the reason the argument doesn't work.

Premise 1: (Most) Men see their sisters/mothers/girlfriends/wives as human.

Premise 2: (Most) Men see women who do porn as meat.

So (most) men don't want their sisters (mothers etc) to do porn because then they would have to view their sisters as meat too. The idea of taking the other view and seeing the women in porn as human simply wouldn't occur to most.

I prefer your argument ("imagine if it was you") as well.

That's true, I hadn't thought about it like that.

Carmina it isn't a co-incidence that victorian porn co-incides with an enormous advance in women's rights - the married women's property act was being lobbied for and then was won in 1870, the age of consent was raised to 13 and then 16 due to the work of Josephine Butler, it became easier for women to get custody of their children in divorce, violence became recognised as grounds for divorce and of course, women's suffrage was being discussed.

Victorian pornography was a bit of backlash going on, while at the same time they were elevating women as this angel of the house notion. Also, come off it, they didn't show women sucking shit-covered penises, now did they? But I suppose they mgiht have done if women had got the vote earlier.

Mr IC Interesting point on why that sister/mother/female relative argument will and won't work - basically for it to work (as in provide a man with a lightbulb moment) - it assumes a certain level of empathy with a woman as a fellow human being. I have a sinking feeling I've been assuming too much. Dittany spot on as usual.

Oh god this feminism stuff is depressing. I am going to have to go on that thread I read about the simmering rage and start asking for help.

This thread is an education. A horrible education.

Can we have a Feminist Classics section please?

I have managed to live my whole adult life without being aware of some of the things on this thread . Aside from accidentally being subjected to porn when a porn film was put on the TV during a lock-in at a pub when I was 16, in 1980 ( we all looked very young, my friend and I were the only women/girls in there and the owner smirked at us when it came on-horrible). I have never seen any. I've read Andrea Dworkin,I've read articles about how porn has become more and more extreme,but I've never seen it, I have no idea what any of the terminology means. It is all so tragic , hearing just what is out there,one click away. And horrible to think that this could be what the boys my dds will date may have been using for their frame of reference. My daughters are six and three.Its a very depressing thought.

HerBEggs;

In all my years of porn use I have never come across some of the titles mentioned in this thread, I guess I'm just not looking for them. I'm not denying porn can be damaging to some people, any obsession can be damaging, someone who uses porn everyday and seeks out the worst stuff available is probably not of sane mind, but I still maintain that the vast majority of people are occasional porn users and are into the mainstream normal stuff. From what I've seem 'mainstream' consists mainly of heterosexual oral and anal sex. Now I don't know how far you stray from the feminist section, but I can assure you that plenty of M'netters are into both of those sexual practices, (I've lost count of the 'bum sex' threads I've seen on here) -

And We will have to agree to disagree on the revenge for feminism issue, I just don't believe it. Where do you think the word 'sadist' originated?
He had the the most bizarre of sexual fantasies ( most of them violent ) and was writing his filth 300 years ago - the sexual domination of other people is nothing new. And Y'know we all like to be in control and have power don't we - power is an aphrodisiac, Women love men in power and are easily seduced by it - how else do you explain John Prescott's extra marital affair?

De Sade was one man Carmina.

Who was recognised as a lunatic, not given money to pursue his sexual fantasies and disseminate them among the population as widely as possible.

"but I still maintain that the vast majority of people are occasional porn users and are into the mainstream normal stuff."

You have had it described what mainstream normal stuff is - google works by bringing up the sites with the most number of hits. So the most popular sites, with the most hits, are the ones which have been referred to, which have the disgusting abuse of women as an integral part of the porn. Why do you persist in insisting that most porn users are just into mainstream normal stuff as you describe it, when google has shown us all what mainstream normal stuff is? Do you think there's a search machine mistake going on?

Why do you cling to your denial?

My definition of mainstream includes the stuff you can access in any high street newsagents or view on Sky. If you take the porn industry as a whole -"eat my shit covered cock' wouldn't feature too often.

The Internet has a lot more on offer that's true - but most sites still contain fairly average sexual practices.

Yes but your definition of mainstream isn't the definition of mainstream. Most porn users have internet access. The circulation of porn mags is going down, precisely because the internet offers much easier, often free or very cheap access to porn. Gonzo porn, is the fastest growing sector.

You can define mainstream all you want, but if the majority of porn users are looking at stuff you wouldn't define as mainstream, the your terminology will be wrong, no?

I think this sort of denial is typical of a lot of Mumsnet posters, who would like to believe that men in general (and the men in their lives, certainly) only ever consume what they are fond of describing as "soft porn". With the advent of private browsing, password protected laptops, i phones and most of all, a head-in-the-sand approach of "what isn't known about, can't harm me" I don't think people have a clue about the type of porn their partners consume. It is absolutely right that what comes up in google searches is now "mainstream" because the vast majority of porn users access it via the internet, because it is free and undetectable.

Going back to my earlier post though, the relationships board holds all the clues to the type of porn men are consuming, because there is thread after thread about abusive and demeaning behaviour, outright sexism, sexual practices that cause pain and discomfort - not pleasure and not enough women who spot the link between all this and what their partners are viewing.

The Internet has allowed the porn industry to grow and move on. all things move on eventually; harps --> books -> radio -> TV ---> Internet. As technology progresses our world expands and we are subjected to more and more info and experiences / we have to work with the good and bad where that's concerned. Personally, I'd like to have all porn removed from shops/supermarkets and have the Internet policed more effectively removing the really sickening stuff. Porn will never be banned, so all we can do is protect the vulnerable. I don't want to be subjected to pornography every time I walk into a newsagents, however if I want to view legal porn in the privacy of my own bedroom, that's upto me.
Keep it private.

The only way many people can continue to watch porn is to live in denial about it: that's what's going on here. Carm: you can kid yourself all you like but every serious study suggests that what you call mainstream is a walk in the park compared with what most punters want to watch. Have you seen a. what Max Hardcore produces and b. how popular it is? Once you accept the truth of that, everything has to change. The only justification in the light of that is that you, as a consumer, have a right to it and choose to watch it despite the price that?s paid by other people. At least that?s honest. The related issue of course is that what you and others define as 'consent', the other powerful justification for porn ('she agreed to it'), is rarely as straight forward as you want to think. If you saw the documentary about Felicity you would have seen her at the beginning saying that she had not been forced to do any of the things she had done. If being tricked/cajoled/'encouraged'/threatened into going to see some of the disgusting pornographers her 'agent' (pimp) took her to is consent then you and I have a very different understanding of the English language. Was her experience typical? I don?t know, but I am terribly afraid that she was in fact ?luckier? than most women in that she had the protection of a film crew through some of her worst hours and she got out in the end.

What all this boils down to is the absolute determination of porn users to put their own wants before the basic human rights of the women in porn. Yes, it's no doubt true that some women do enjoy it, freely agree to it and/or prostitution, but this is a minority by any serious assessment; a small minority if you consider, for instance, how many women are trafficked into prostitution in this country. I'm afraid that the choice of some women to enter into these activities freely, and the choice of consumers to avail of them cannot and should not override the human rights of the majority who are involved through no choice at all, or through a choice that is so compromised that it is hardly a choice at all.

Completely agree Jenny.

If I want to view porn in the privacy of my own bedroom, that's up to me so long as it doesn't have any impact on anyone else.

The reality is, supporting this industry supports the systematic abuse of women and systematic message to women that at any time, we can cease to be human beings and jsut be fucks.

Our choices have an evil effect on others. We should remember that when we make our choices.

oh and the fact that our primary function is as fucks, impacts us in every other facet of our lives - in education, in the workplace, in our relationships with men and with each other. It is very very difficult for someone to take you seriously as a human being, even if they love you, like you, admire you in some ways, if you are part of a group which is ultimately there to be fucked.

If men had all the power and were so in control, why do so many of them have mental health issues? alcoholism/drug addiction/ suicide - all far too common amongst men (sadly) Sex is one part of our lives - it isn't the be all and end all of everything.

Oh, and some women like fucking other women . Plenty of porn on that subject.

"Moving on" suggests positive progress. I wouldn't view internet porn that can be accessed privately, positive at all. I deeply resent the fact that any child with the ability to search the internet can, with a few clicks of their mouse or phone, access the kind of material we're discussing on this thread. While I don't want to see porn in supermarkets either - and I also despise the fact that children can access offensive "trailers" on satellite TV, there are some controls about the sort of porn consumers can buy in a magazine or on satellite TV. There are no such controls on internet porn. It is the very fact that it is so easy to access privately, that makes it so dangerous.

The "keep it private" argument just doesn't work. I've often wondered whether some of the women supportive of their partners' right to use porn would react differently if their use was accurately depicted by piles of magazines or DVDs taking over the house. This wouldn't be kept "private" then and would force women to look at the bargains they are making. Currently, all the time they are reliant on their co-parent deleting internet history and cookies, so that their children can't stumble on what their partners are really looking at. And especially reliant on not being forced out of the delusion that their partners are "considerately" having the odd wank to happy images of consensual sex.

I agree that whether you use porn yourself, or are benign about a partner's use of it, it means living a life full of dubious bargains and intense denial.