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.

The tone of your posts are not really very 'guilty' are they?

About the racism/BNP parallel.

Racism is the problem of the racist not of the BME communities. I dont therefore think would be helpful for them all to sit together and work it out.

This seems a very odd thread.

Ok, here goes.

I have used porn in the past, and I do not hate women or view them as subhuman. I am a woman.
Reading the threads in this section has been helpful, I have been able to come to clear conclusions as to why porn is exploitative and wrong, as a result will never watch it again.

Why do the feminists in this section have no interest in helping a man to come to those same conclusions?

The feminist topic could be so helpful and achieve much more if the regulars were less aggressive.

MoreCrack I think it's because we (women) are perpetually being held accountable/responsible for helping others to avoid abusing us...

e.g. women don't walk alone at night/get too drunk - you might get raped.

instead of Men - don't rape women

so this request for help is reminiscent of that. Women - I use porn which exploits, degrades and abuses you. Help me to stop.

It's not aggressive, it's a refusal to be held accountable or responsible for stopping the behaviour. If it comes across as aggressive, that's a lot to do with the fact that women as a gender are supposed to be helpful aren't we?

GuiltyPornUser, I'm going to give you about another 30 seconds of my time. You said this;

"I am serious about this, however you make the comment "if you think of women as human beings you cannot consume porn". This is clearly false, as I, and I imagine, many millions more are co-opted into the porn culture, but in our real life dealings with women don't view them as subhuman."

This is exactly why I said 'it isn't our job to help you find your humanity/educate you'. You are not co-opted into the porn culture - you make an adult and inhumane decision to wank to images of humans being sexually abused - own it.

The women in porn are real women. They are part of your real life dealings with women. You, by consuming porn, are actively involved in the rape and abuse of real life women - you are masturbating to it for crying out loud.

Read Jensen. You are not a feminist if you practice misogyny. Consuming porn is misogynistic.

Get off MN and take responsibility for your own education. As has been said here; would you think it was ok to ask a bunch a black people to explain to you being a white supremacist is wrong?

I think dittany & Beachcomber in particular would benefit from reading this:

Women addicted to porn

The really interesting thing about his article is how similar the testimony of these women is to what you hear from male users of porn. Are these women misogynists? Can they not be feminists?

They feel guilty because they know it's bad to objectify women but that doesn't stop them from doing it. Most men who use porn are in the same position.

There are 1000's of women happily employed in the porn industry - women who are not being raped or abused ( abuse does happen but to what percentage of women i don't know? - does anyone ? ) some women are earning pretty decent money ( women certainly get paid more than men in the porn industry ) plus I've heard there are feminists are out there making porn films. So you can't have a one view fits all approach - what about male homosexual porn? Is that exploiting men? Lesbian porn? - it's a wide issue.

Helping someone form an educated opinion does not mean you are responsible for their choices.
Is change not what we want here?
And if the OP was a woman would she have been dismissed as quickly?

OK dittany this is addressed to you personally - read the link. Then tell us what you think

David consuming porn is misogynistic be it done by a woman or by a man.

Thank you but I'm not sure I have 'benefited' much from reading your article. I have read a great deal about porn and reflected for the last 20 years of my life as an adult woman living in a sexually violent patriarchy.

What would 'benefit' me, as a woman and human being, is for men to stop their violence against women. Porn is violence against women.

What would also 'benefit' me, is for men to refrain from patronising me from their perspective of male privilege about an issue which concerns the oppression and abuse of my sex.

"Women do it too" is for those who are on level minus 10 of feminist analysis. I thought you had things better figured out than that David.

I don't get most of this thread. I posted a link to a site where the OP can read exactly what he is asking us to provide. Why should women do that work for him when it is already available to him, written by men who have been where he is and have seen a different way to be? That is exactly the way AA works.

So, what's the problem? Why are women getting a hard time? And MCTH, if you could read the threads on here and stop using porn, why is it different for the OP?

MoreCrack - The Op was given links and reading suggestions. Is that not educational enough for you?

If he wants to change, he will go away and do some reading, perhaps think about this thread or have a browse around the rest of the topic and start to think about how what he now knows will change his behaviour and ultimately ACT to change his behaviour.

He will also be thinking about WHY he got the response he got on this thread and perhaps think more deeply about why women feel this strongly about porn. I really hope he does because until then his notion of him being a 'decent' man is deeply flawed.

What he won't do is keep posting, asking, but why oh why are women considered to be human 'enough' not to be degraded or abused in this way? Only a real considered empathy for women as humans is going to allow him to make that link and change - if you wouldn't want your daughter, sister, mum, niece abused or degraded in that way even if they were being paid for it (somehow exchange of money seems to trump decency for even the most 'decent' of men) then you start to make the connection and hopefully porn viewed from that perspective just isn't so appealing.

Well the way I see it, you can help and/or educate people, or you can tell them they're ignorant bastards and let them get on with it.

I don't mean re porn in particular, I just mean in general.

I don't think anyone is being asked to be kind particularly, and especially it is not the case that we are not supposed to mind. You can mind a LOT, and offer plain speaking advice without being kind. Just helpful.

He got his information right at the start of the thread. He could have gone and absorbed that instead he turned on those who were offended by his posting here and then had the gall to claim he was a feminist.
I'm still learning but even I can see how bad it is.
It's like asking a child to explain to a paedophile what they are doing is wrong.

The porn industry ( 99% of it anyway ) is completely legal and involves consenting adults - male and female. 99% of 'porn users' are normal people with healthy relationships who just like 10 minutes of escapism now and then.

See Caz10, I used to think like that too.

I now realise that you cannot do it for other people and they should not expect you to.

More importantly, the fact that they think it is alright to ask you, as a member of the group being damaged by an activity, to do the work for them, means that you cannot help them. (They don't understand,yet, that all of the people in your group are human.)

We are doing the OP a much better favour by explaining that he needs to do the work himself. We are also being true to ourselves.

It isn't difficult to see why porn is wrong. What is difficult (for some people) is for them to act on the fact that they know porn is wrong. I can't do that for anyone else, they need to do it themselves.

Basically the OP is asking feminist women to help him keep his dick in his pants rather than masturbate to women being abused. Excuse me if I pass.

I know our reaction probably looks harsh and not very helpful but, christ, only in the patriarchy would the oppressed be blamed for not helping the oppressor to stop some of his oppressing ways.