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.

For the 'I demand evidence that abuse is harmful' crowd.

Another depressing read I'm afraid.

www.shelleylubben.com/sites/default/files/pornstarsspeakout.pdf

Spiderslegs did you find this thread because you were googling porn by any chance?

Good lord - any behaviour is harmful.

If we behave in a way that hurts us.

If we behave favourably - we will be pleased.

Is it that hard??

How profound

Spiderslegs, you are talking in riddles and not contributing to the discussion in any useful way.

Yep Beach - spend all my evenings googling porn - 'tis my Daily Mail dead miscreant glory.

They deserve it don'tcha know

Aach Eggy & Beach you are wimmin in the extreme

& the rest of the world??

inane

buzz off, fly

they have a rota, I expect

I noticed no-one commented, so I thought I'd post from the Porn Report, posted by some Australian Academics

Here's something from one of the links

"From this study I learned that many of our common sense assumptions about pornography are based on ignorance and prejudice rather than facts. A few points stick out.

There?s bad porn and good porn. Bad porn involves anything, at any point in the production, that is non-consensual. Good porn is consensual. But beyond that, there are no simple yardsticks for making value judgements. We found out from our analysis of best selling videos that good porn can have lots of complicated storyline to get you to the sex, or nothing except sex, sex, sex; no characters, or complex characters; straight sex or kinky sex; no music at all, or through scored soundtracks. This is because different audiences like to see different things, and so there are many different types of mainstream pornography. Two important strands are fantasy pornography and girl-and-boy-next-door-pornography. They are both very popular, but they are very different.

Fantasy pornography is what people think of when they think of Playboy ? unrealistically attractive men and women, with stereotypically beautiful bodies, the women with lots of make up and the men with big muscles, in expensive videos that have proper storylines and characters.

By contrast, girl-and-boy-next-door pornography features people who look like amateurs ? they have normal bodies, they aren?t very well groomed, and there are often no plots but just many scenes of people having sex in suburban rooms. So whenever somebody makes a general comment about porn (eg, it?s full of stereotyped beautiful bodies), they aren?t describing the real range of popular mainstream pornography.

I was also amazed from our survey of consumers of pornography by just how important it was to them that they want to see people who appear to be genuinely enjoying themselves in the videos. There?s so much talk about the violence and aggression in pornography that you?d imagine this is all porn consumers want to see. And that?s not true. It?s not political correctness that means porn consumers can?t see rapes ? the truth is that it just doesn?t turn them on. The viewers get turned on by porn actors who look like they?re turned on by what they?re doing. It?s common sense when you think about it ? but whenever you hear people talking about porn and its consumers, they never seem to get this simple point.

And in terms of production, it was a bit of a revelation when our research revealed a strong motivation for people making porn was that they are exhibitionists who were turned on by having sex in front of people. Again, hearing that, it?s one of those moments where you say ?Duh!?. Of course it makes perfect sense. It?s just amazing that nobody?s pointed it out before.

[http://www.thepornreportbook.com/]

Some other thoughts

"Probably the first thing I?ve learned is how difficult it remains to talk about the existence, let alone the widespread consumption of pornography unless you start from a position of complete condemnation. Early on in the research we all did a bit of media about the project and I was struck by how black and white the debate often gets. Pornography is so often wrapped up as if it all belonged in the same box.

The second thing I?ve learnt from this project is that pornography and porn consumers are now almost as diverse as sexual attitudes and behaviours in the real world. There is definitely misogynist porn but there is equally lots of sexually explicit material that shows real people with real bodies enjoying themselves having sex and a lot of that material is exchanged for free by amateurs these days. The pornography that gets most of the attention in the media is not representative of what many people enjoy."

You need to put two round your link

Like this http://www.thepornreportbook.com/

Could be why no-one commented, often people don't follow links that aren't working on a fast moving thread.

www.thepornreportbook.com/

Ok, the book looks interesting, and appears to present a balanced objective view of porn

Then again it might be because it is not very good.

The knuckle heads who wrote this aren't aware that porn has an addictive quality - a quality that has a chemical mechanism. Poor show for some porn experts writing a book.

www.thepornreportbook.com/index.php?pageID=7#q1

& they are??

Because reading 700 posts would be tiresome in the extreme....

You claim they're knuckle heads because they present statistical evidence that the number of people addicted to porn is small. Shouldn't you attack the statistics or the argument rather than the people?

I'm off to bed, but it would seem that this is the kind of balanced non-polemical work that is required in this debate

I agree that lurkers and occasional posters benefit from these threads.

I am frustrated with these repeated demands for "academic research" - and when links to respected research and authors are given, it still doesn't seem to be enough.

Frustrated too by the claims that the practices in porn are "legal" so they are okay. They are not bloody legal - they just aren't reported as crimes . What is frequently depicted are violent assaults against the person and rape, especially. Something doesn't become legal because it's not reported as a crime FFS.

The evidence of the harm done to the women in the industry is overwhelming.

The thing that gets me every time on these threads is that for those in denial, or pro-porn, people's lived testimony and experience is subjugated and dismissed. For Christ's sake, look on the relationships board and see how many women's lives are being ruined by porn use, online sexchat sites and the progression of that; infidelity/prostitute use.

What more evidence do these posters in denial need?

I said I'd go bed, but I feel I need to reiterate something, but say it differently. I'm going to use an analogy with the immigration debate (I'm not trying to draw a parallel with different sides)

Person 1: Immigration is bad, it causes crime, look at this story from the Daily Mail
Person 2: But how representative is that?
Person 1: Here's another story from the Daily Mail.
Person 2: Where's the empirical evidence?
Person 1: Look, here's another story from the Daily Mail, why are you ignoring their stories?
Person 2: I want to see the widespread evidence. How many immigrants are there? How much crime do they commit?
Person 1: You're in denial!

Isn't it clear that as horrendous as the stories from Shelley Lubben and Felicity sound, and they do sound horrible, they're not substitutes for widespread, detailed, empirical research, so we can understand porn and its effects?

Maybe the Onion will provide some levity

The Onion

Prosper, you will not get empirical evidence in this situation

So much of what happens in porn is hidden, and denied by both its promoters and its participants

Denial is rife ^^

The agenda of financial gain is very strong

The shame felt and the damage done to participants will temper their responses in many cases. For every Shelley Lubben there are thousands of women (and men) who will never talk freely of the things they have endured and the way it has affected them

For those women who grew up with abuse, they may think it is all they deserve, so their boundaries were eroded from very early life.

You cannot objectively quantify that

To attempt to do so is futile, IMO

Subjective evidence is the strongest measure we have where there is often no black and white contrast and everybody's experiences and influences are so different.

To dismiss subjective evidence in this arena is at best misguided and at worst the cruellest way to deny a person's right to be heard

To dismiss personal testimonies of women and men who have been damaged by the sex industry is lacking in empathy and simple human feeling. I dread to think about what that says about people who do that, propsperina

Prosperina

Yes the Onion provides levity

Eggy, you win either way.....

How is your head, stewie ?

Well I wonder if we are going to have a sane conversation today?

Just noticed this gem from Prosperina's link;

"And in terms of production, it was a bit of a revelation when our research revealed a strong motivation for people making porn was that they are exhibitionists who were turned on by having sex in front of people. Again, hearing that, it?s one of those moments where you say ?Duh!?. Of course it makes perfect sense. It?s just amazing that nobody?s pointed it out before."

Firstly I would like to ask why this book/blog is written as though it is for the hard of thinking? The language is ridiculously simplistic, and the concepts discussed are examined at a very first degree level with no subtlety or hint that human behaviour and psychology is anything other than, like, really simple.

The above quote is just RIDICULOUS. Where did the authors get this piece of bullshit from? Yeah some of the amateur webcam crowd are exhibitionists, but many of the professionals clearly state that they did porn for much deeper and sadder reasons. (Which have been discussed already on this thread and have been linked to in testimonies and books.)

Women who have left porn often say that whilst they were doing porn they lied about their situation as a form of protection. Most of them said they are exhibitionists who loved sex. If I can read this information on the internet, repeated many times, why did the knuckleheads who wrote the above piece of simplistic nonsense manage to miss it after three years of study for crying out loud?

Also notice on this page www.thepornreportbook.com/index.php?pageID=2 how our simple and not very intellectually curious authors set up 4 stoopid and simplistic strawmen and then...........drum roll.............go on to 'debunk' them.

Worra a load of crap. So what figures? Do these folks have an agenda or are they just really unobservant and not very good at investigating?

Maybe the book itself is just fabby - haven't read it obviously, I'm just going on the info they present on their promotional website. They do say the book is about Austrailia, perhaps they should have investigated porn where it's really at?

www.shelleylubben.com/porn-industry

"Chatsworth, California produces 85% of the world?s adult content. All of the top female talent agencies are located in or with in the Chatsworth local radius. Female performers are flown or fly to Chatsworth to work in the adult industry. All of the world?s top male talents live or travel to Chatsworth California for work. Almost every major and minor adult DVD Company is in the local Chatsworth radius."