Math Magazine and 'good' porn.

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While I can see what she is trying to do, is the concept of 'nice'/'good' porn still not skirting around the same ballpark as all the hideous, damaging degrading stuff? It's still effectively saying porn is okay. Or would you say this is closer to erotic writing, I.e no real people involved? Is it just the wide end of a very nasty wedge? Genuinely not sure how I feel about this.

Huff post article about Math magazine

Thanks Matilda always interesting. I think you are right there is a moral element to this discussion and I really, really dislike passing moral judgments as you correctly identity. Fundamentally I think porn can/could be/is a personal matter of sexual choice (assuming the porn is ethically produced). Others take a different moral view and I respect that.

I also think morality changes. You see nothing wrong with teenagers wanting sex, well thirty years ago lots of people did. Moral opinion has moved dramatically. It has moved on gay sex and from the young people I know is moving radically in relation to porn.

I really like your "mutually respectful situations" and admire it as an ideal. However, I work with teenagers, mainly boys, mainly inner city. They do not live in this world. Suggesting they stop using porn would reduce any credibility I have to zero. You only get to tell them NO about a few things. I save my NOs for FMG, no means no and women's right to choose.

We joke at work that we don't change them they change us. Innit.

"We joke at work that we don't change them they change us..." Do you get paid to be changed by these pron addicted boys?

maybe you could use some sort of arguments like:
boys addicted to porn can really struggle to have real sexual relationships with real women.
Because real women are used in these films, real women like your sisters, girls friends, relatives etc, they are harmed and you are taking part in the industry that harms them
One day you may be a dad, to a daughter, do you want the men who meet her to treat her as the women in these films are treated??

porn not pron!

Ohhh I just reread that, I don't tell them no to no means no, I tell them no means no like I reaaaalllly mean it. Hope that makes sense.

Matilda this I could imagine saying "if you feel you cannot live without porn, then you are not the sort of person I wish to be in a relationship with". I just have a real problem with people speaking in confrontational statements " I will not tolerate this". It's cos if I spoke like that at work I would get thumped.

I got the "no means no" message, don't worry! (We all make howlers typing from time to time).

They sound like the sort of teens my mum spent a lifetime teaching - when my mum and I talked about things (drugs use for instance) she would often say "but you're coming at this from the angle of teaching nice middle class university kids who have a motive to grow out of this sort of behaviour, because they have a future in front of them, I'm teaching the sort of kids who, once a dealer gets their hands on them, will just spiral downwards." So I can see that you are dealing with a very challenging reality, and as you say, the priority is getting across messages about consent in real life... But do you never worry (because they won't be watching nice ethically sourced porn with careful preambles about consent and documentary footage of the actors doing their post scene debrief on their phones - I'd guess they'll be watching some of the stuff that makes my stomach churn) that the sort of porn they're watching undoes some of the messages you're fighting so hard to get across?

The kids might well respect you bitof even if they did not agree or did not do what you said!

I think it could be about personal integrity. You could make it clear how harmful things are without trying to 'lecture' them.

Plus I think (naively maybe) that one day these boys might ask you ethical stuff. You seem to resent any kind of 'moral' objections to things. How will you respond if any of these boys do find a moral angle and ask you.

Anyway, I think much as we may say other children have different starts to life, different realities, do we expect less for them? We may talk to them differently. But must we (society) lower our expectations?

Just curious, do you work with the girls too. Do you hear how porn watching has affected their boyfriends?

Not picking on you bit of you do need to answer if you do not wish to.

I meant 're girls, how porn has affected their boyfriends and how their boyfriends have affected them.

Italian - I do a really difficult emotionally stressful job with real elements of personal physical risk involved in it and yes I get paid, and yes we joke. I'm sorry if you feel I am not doing my job properly.

Do you really honestly think we haven't tried those arguments?
Do you really honestly believe it's that easy?
Do you really honestly think we wouldn't do this if it had any chance of working?
Do you really honestly think we make life more difficult when we could just say that?

I struggle with issues I can not begin (legally) to discuss. I am hoping MN can give me some perspective because it's easy to get lost in their world. Which is why I have personal and professional issues with porn which I am exploring at the moment. And before anyone says anything I do not promote porn with my young perople.

I am trying to be realistic "just say no" is so far from my reality to be laughable.

Sorry last post a bit of a rant.

As a general rule. We question the kids "what would you say to someone who said xxxxxxxxx?" (One of the reasons I am seeking opinions).
"If it was your sister then ....."
We avoid moral judgments as they just stop sharing and some dialogue is better thasn none. This has now filtered into all areas of my life.

I have this real issue in my head. If I do know sites I think are ethical I can hardly give them a photocopied handout. Blurgh, yuck, yuck, yuck.

I do work with girls and as Buffy would say they are well and truly buying into the patriarchy. The girls often are harder on other women than the boys. They admire porn stars "big tits all that money!"

So back to my argument - they use porn so can we improve their reality. Although I am fully aware non of them buy organic food.

P.s loads of the kids are lovely and sweet and very, very vulnerable.

Oh, you are talking about that kind of teenager ... yeah, I can imagine that telling them how porn harms women won't help.

Though perhaps the girls won't be so envious of female porn stars anymore if you give them a list of exactly what damage those acts of violence do, physically. Pretty sure anal prolaps and incontinence are somewhere on the list. Not very glamorous.

Or give them a link to AO3 and hope they'll be exposed to some different ideas of what is erotic and what is not ... though I suppose they already equate sex with violence and won't even read anything vanilla.

I just have a real problem with people speaking in confrontational statements " I will not tolerate this". It's cos if I spoke like that at work I would get thumped.

Work is work, private life is private life. Confrontational statements have served me very well in deciding which kind of behaviour I tolerate in men and which I don't. Sure, they won't change, but in my experience, adult people hardly ever change, anyway,

You equate a zero tolerance politic on porn with abstinence only sex ed. These things are not equivalents. Porn inherently harms women. Sex does not (though it could be argued that PiV inherently harms all women who do not want to get pregnant at the moment), so safe sex is not a less unethical alternative to unsafe sex, it is ethically neutral.

Besides, I very much doubt that those boys you work with can be persuaded to watch violence-free porn wherein at least there is no violence against women visible any easier than they can be persuaded to stop porn use, period. They have already learnt to eroticise violence, and are probably more likely to turn to erotic literature with those elements than switch to porn where the violence is not visible on screen. The girls to whom I talked about their preference for rape-as-romance certainly weren't open to reading vanilla erotica, but probably also watched rape-porn.

Many of the kids my mum taught were absolutely lovely too - messed up by their home situation and poverty and lack of opportunity, but lovely.

And you have my admiration for doing a job like that. A friend of mine (who was tiny - about 5 foot and 7 stone) worked in a pupil referral unit - the physical courage it took to do her job (and yours too I'm guessing) was something I couldn't even come close to.

"I'm sorry if you feel I am not doing my job properly." bitof sorry that was below he belt, I apologise.

" I do not promote porn with my young perople." I never said (or thought for a moment) that you did. Honestly.

Bitof "We avoid moral judgments as they just stop sharing and some dialogue is better thasn none. This has now filtered into all areas of my life."

I am not sure exactly what your professional role is (nor do I expect you to say so on here) but I do hope you have support in your job to help you, especially if the work if filtering into your home life in a way you perceive as negative. I do genuinely mean that. My work influences my life a lot, but then I love my job and I love pretty much all aspects of it so I know that is very lucky.

And I will also say I am sorry if I am telling you how to do your job (which I am not even sure what it is), I should only really do what I came on here to do, express my views on porn. Exactly how things work out in your job are not something I can really understand so i will keep quiet! On this bit

You equate a zero tolerance politic on porn with abstinence only sex ed. These things are not equivalents

That should be a stickie really. This idea that if you are not cool with porn, you are some sort of religious zealot who only approves of sex within marriage.

I don't really get why avoiding moral judgements is so important unless again you are using morality in a very limited sense of the word.

What Lass said.

We make moral decisions every day, and yet it only seems to be a problem when morality infringes on someone's desire to harm women, be it in the production of porn or in the business of prostituting women. Then morality is rewritten as prudery and/or frigidity. It is amoral to perpetuate an industry where the vast majority of it is intrinsically harmful, not just to the women involved in its production, but also in perpetuating rape culture and harmful beliefs around women's and girls sexuality.

Thank you for writing that xenophile. It's one of those posts that made me go YES. Captured something that's been niggling me perfectly.

Thanks Italian I want to hear you views and I will be forwarding them to the people I work with. Using views expressed here will allow me get the kids to listen to them without expressing them as mine.

I will have to be careful with this bit so please allow me some leeway.

It is interesting discussing morality as some young people are very moral and religious (with a capital M, IYKWIM) and they condem porn. As a general rule I find some of their attitudes towards women significantly more challenging than they stereotypical porn obsssessed teenage boy.

My concern about rape culture is where it is firmly embedded in wider cultural issues.

Moral judgment very much depends where you are standing. Avoiding moral judgments is common practice in most counselling, mentoring, youth work.

Lass in terms of stickies - as I said previously you have to choose them carefully, if the list is too long people stop listening. Mine are:
No means no
FGM - in that it must be stopped
Women's right to choose

And female, in porn, is submissive, accepting, opening, passive recipient of this violently dominant form of male sexuality....

Except most 'common' commercial porn features female-superior position sex acts, not exclusively male-superior ones. You are using language that better describes a porn sub-set- 'submission' (light-weight BDSM).

Lass in terms of stickies - as I said previously you have to choose them carefully, if the list is too long people stop listening.

Not quite what I meant but I suppose it's convenient to the argument of the "pro -sex" brigade to pretend being opposed to porn and prostitution is the same as being anti-Semitism.

I suppose it's convenient to the argument of the "pro -sex" brigade to pretend being opposed to porn and prostitution is the same as being anti- sex. (Stupid phone)