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.

'Why aren't pro-people required to produce rigorous research to support their argument that porn is harmless.'

Exactly!
I was thinking about this the other day. If someone introduces a new drug or foodstuff they have to jump through all kinds of hoops to prove it is harmless. Porn is quite druggy but it is fine to experiment on the public and their kids....

The big question that is completely unanswered is

"Are women in porn videos abused?"
"If so, how many?"

This thread (or any related thread) does not answer this question. Some posters argue a priori that porn is "torturing women", and it's not clear at all from this thread that this is the case. At least in the pro-porn side, the videos are technically legal, so it's up to the anti-porn campaigners to provide evidence, not just anecdotes from a handful of ex-performers.

I've not made my mind up, but shouting "abuse" and "torture" isn't an argument

Hope you don't mind me popping in here as well. So utterly exhausted by the fact that people want peer research, references and "more vigorous debate"

If i found out that a company produced goods that were unethical and packaged up products that involved exploiting people I would avoid it.

Not one pro porn person on the other thead has put foward any evidence that porn isn't either harmful to women or the (mainly) men who are using it.

x posted with 21:13,

crikey pro porn rhetoric in here as well.

There's another related question "does porn lead to sexual violence", and the settled evidence seems to be that it doesn't and may even reduce it.

papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=913013

It may well be Prosperina, I just know it comes up in first position today when I do the google 'porn' experiment. Pornhub is equally hideous and is the site I and others talked about earlier than has the '18 and abused' advert down the bottom.

If you think the question "Are women in porn videos abused?" is unanswered you are completely nuts.

No, just because you think so, doesn't make it so - I've seen the felicity video, and she was without doubt abused - however this thread has not answered that question for the porn industry as a whole

Dittany

One woman abused is too many, end of. But to use an analogy, if a married woman is battered by her husband, do we ban marriage?

No it is not completely unanswered, Dimes isn't an ex-performer. Her boos is serious. There have been plenty of references given in this thread. Read them and use your critical mind to assess them. I haven't argued that porn a priori tortures women but it's clear to me that enough of what I have seen and read about does and I don't want to support an industry in which this happens.

book

As for anal gape, that sounds pretty horrific to my naive ears, but that's not the point of asking whether these women are abused - it certainly sounds fairly violent and abusive. I'm not defending porn, but how representative is that? How many women in porn are doing anal gapes? Are they consenting to it? None of that is answered.

You just said 'One woman abused is too many, end of'.
Did you not mean it then?

Prosperina if you do a search for porn on the net you will see how "popular" anal sex is.

Go and find out then. We are are not your researchers. We've given you plenty of leads.

Anal sex might well be very popular, how popular is anal rape? That's what is not being answered.

I would think it's very popular due to the fact that many women don't put anal down as their first choice. I mean, would you?

If most porn features anal it will more than likley be the case for two reasons

men like it, most women don't esp

Porn is conditioning men to desire something that they can only have access to through porn.

that is how the bisiness makes it's money.

well Prosperina, to answer your question about consent for the acts resulting in anal gape as if it is a serious and sane question: porn actors have to tick a checklist saying what acts they are prepared to do. AFAIK 'being actually permanently physically harmed' isn't on the list and if it was I doubt very much they would have ticked it.

if you watched the Felicity video you will have noticed Hardcore's line, 'We're not happy till you're not happy', indicating that going beyond what performers have consented to is his way of working. Hardcore is not a marginal extreme porn producer that hardly anyone watches.

Can we please for the love of all that is worthy stop this 'but I want evidence' bullshit.

Open you eyes, use your brain. Read about the histories of sexual abuse and drug addiction in the women in porn. Read about their suicides, drug overdoses, sexually transmitted diseases and anal tears and prolapses.

It is perfectly obvious to anyone with a brain that the internet being flooded with hate speech against women and girls is not a good thing for society.

It is perfectly obvious that jacking off to films of women and girls who have been gang raped appearing in 'gang bang' films is fucking sick.

It is perfectly obvious that films of women being called whores and being made to gag on penises and all the rest of it, is not a good influence on young people who are developing the sexual identity.

Jesus wept, I thought this was the feminist section not the 'head in the sand and I'll have an academic discussion whilst denying a reality that is as plain as my denial section.'

I despair of women today - what the hell are they playing at in their refusal to face reality. I know it's not nice and I know it's upsetting to look at. It's a whole damn more upsetting for the women (many of them with a history of abuse) who have to do it though.