Porn is violence against women

[Grennie]

I have never been a supporter of porn, but it is only as I have read more feminist blogs and books that I have realised this is true, for the following reasons.

1. Porn always objectifies women
2. Most porn nowdays features men being violent to women as part of sex
3. Porn gives out the message that women enjoy all kinds of degrading sex acts
4. Porn teaches boys and girls unrealistic ideas of female sexuality

Thus porn has a negative impact on all women, whether you ever watch it or not.

I condemn the entire industry too Red because, like Pooglie says the vast majority is primarily based on male fantasy. The increasing availability and acceptance of porn along with the internet means that the current and future generations are being "educated" about sex this way. Men and women believing porn is about the enjoyment of the male.

I base this partly on personal experience; porn enthusiasts are selfish and pushy in bed. I spent years as a youngster being the dutiful 'cool girlfriend' and doing the porn 'performance' in bed. I'm of full of cringe and regret and I can't believe people defend this shit.

Those of you who watch porn or think we shouldn't condemn the industry, how do you justify the racism in it?

I can see that you have squared the misogyny (or don't see it), but how on earth are you able to justify the racism to yourselves?

Porn is full of racist stereotypes and language. Doesn't that bother you?

In this day and age, many people still don't really care about violence against women, but it is fairly unusual to come across people who will cheerfully go along with racism. Does the wanking close down the part of the brain that processes social injustice? Or does the racism not matter when it is mainly against women

The same way we deal with the racism in all mainstream entertaiment media - mentioning it, criticizing it, encouraging the production of material that isn't racist.

And that's what we do with porn as well: campaign for safe and fair working conditions, encourage and support the people making material with well-treated performers and diverse, interesting themes.

There is nothing wrong with sex as performance, sex as entertainment, watching others engage in sex, exploring different sexual activities. What we need is more, better made porn, not stigma and censorship.

Well, that plan doesn't seem to be working.

Porn has been getting steadily more hardcore and racism is rife.

The porn industry is rotten, it is also very big and very rich, and a few people making cuddly porn and campaigning for condom use (which is ignored) is not about to change it. It is naive beyond belief to suggest otherwise.

Porn (the vast majority of it) is not sex as entertainment, it is eroticized violence against women as entertainment.

Porn is becoming more violent, and violent porn is becoming more mainstream.

Yesterday I googled 'porn' - the top site was pornhub. On the first page of pornhub was a section "18 and abused" - featuring an actress who didn't, to me, look a day over 15.

Glamourising and fetishising the abuse of teenagers is 2 clicks away from a google search of the word 'porn'.

Porn is becoming more violent, and violent porn is becoming more mainstream.

This.

I am a male poster (middle aged) and I appear to quite unusual in that I have never watched a porn film.

I find violence and particularly sexual violence against women abhorrent and although I am sure not all porn films are like that I have no particular inclination to find out.

SGB, what percentage of "easily accessible for free" porn on the internet do you think represents your kind of porn ie everyone involved is happy and willing and well treated?

I don't disbelieve that it exists, I just think it's drowned out by lots of other stuff.

There is nothing wrong with sex as performance, sex as entertainment, watching others engage in sex, exploring different sexual activities.

SGB - I understand you believe that your opinion that there is nothing wrong with it is a fact. It could just be an opinion you know, like most of the posters on here - only just a different opinion.

My opinion is at least based on experience rather than on shitty, misquoted research and scaremongering.

I accept that SGB and you are entitled to your opinion. The point I was making is that your statement that there is nothing wrong with sex as entertainment etc. is only an opinion, not a fact i.e. you had no qualifier such as "I believe".

We must agree to differ.

My opinion is based on experience too. the experiences of people who've been damaged in the production, and in the consumption of it.

But if the pornography itself shapes desire and has the power to re-enforce and encourage sexist/racist ideologies then it can't be said that pornography is driven only by what men want. No man is immune to social processes, he is also the subject of the social/political processes that dominate our society. And this hatred of women is functionally useful to the reproduction of class relations and exploitation, the only beneficiaries of this system being those with the greatest social power and in a more obvious way those that make money making porn.

SGB are you claiming that your experience of the porn industry is that the vast majority of it is clean?

Have you spent a lot of time in California visiting sets?

Anyone of us who has the stomach for it can spend about 5 minutes on Google (as SinisterSal has done) and access thousands of hard-core violent abusive videos of women having body punishing sex. We can see thousands of teen abusive videos, we can see rape scenarios, we can see women being called sluts and bitches and cum loving whores. We can see women being choked, gagged, slapped, having their hair pulled and being held down, tied up and given electric shocks.

We are not fools. You are kidding yourself that your experience of jolly lovely porn with everybody having a fabby time having protected personally satisfying sex with respectful pleasant partners on clean comfortable sets with zero alcohol and drug use with great pay and contracts which respect employment law, is in anyway representative of the porn that the rest of us are talking about (the porn that is all over the internet getting millions of hits and sold in millions of copies all around the world).

Gail dines has been on over a 100 legal porn sets. What she witnessed was shocking. Read pornland

Ugh, i hate the idea of making the porn industry better etc.

Posted too soon.

We should get rid of it.

There is no need. Sex is not a need.
The more we support this idea the more women are fucked.

YES FUCKED

Whenever pornography is talked about here, it always comes to the topic of the worst kind of violent material, and of course if you're aware of that, you have to hate it. But I have to wonder if the statement "Most porn nowadays features men being violent to women as part of sex" isn't just an emotional response to knowing that violent porn exists, when in fact the milder types of pornography are almost ubiquitous, "the mainstreaming of porn" as it's been called. Maybe the milder forms of porn actually have more impact on the everyday world. For the example we all know, what about page 3 of the Sun? I would bet that the women shown there aren't being abused during production, and there's nothing sadistic depicted. But if those smiling women flash their boobs to any man who turns the first page on his way to work, could he be led to think that any woman is just as easily available, that you can have a sexual response to a woman without any kind of relationship--and maybe it's like drugs, you can start off with something that gives you small thrills, and perhaps it satisfies some people, but others will always want the next thrill beyond that. All the way up to the real nasties.

I don't know much about Gail Dines' work in detail. Does she just concentrate on the worst pornography, or does she have anything to say about the less extreme but pervasive sort?

The porn industry follows demand, and producers have been saying for years that the demand for violence and hardcore is increasing.

On a different note, that video sickened me. I still cannot get it out of my head. But my tastes are tame and I simply want two people enjoying themselves, not group or anal or violence or bondage.

I do believe in social conditioning, and more so now than ever. If we do not start to challenge women's image in the media, whether porn or pop, our children are not facing increasing pressure to be sexualised early.

Our children are.
Sorry. Dc have awoken and want breakfast.

I don't think we need to go to either extremes of the debate to realise a lot of harm can and does go on. Just because "milder" porn exists doesn't magically cancel out the harm the extreme stuff causes.

I am sure everyone agrees with the notion that compassion is the appropriate response to suffering.