Math Magazine and 'good' porn.

[MrsToddsShortcut]

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

Fab post, Buffy.

Bitofacow, is one of your posts missing from this thread, one from last night, something about crashing in? It seems to have vanished. Is it possible for posts to be deleted without showing a deletion message? I was going to reply and had left a tab open, but when I refreshed it, the post had gone...very odd.

Not sure if one of BitOf's posts from last night is missing. There's the one where she's taking the piss out of Sillage and then the next one where she's saying she's drunk and then defending porn again, neither have crashing in in them so???

My apologies, the post I'm thinking of was on a different thread. As you were.

Thanks for taking the time to do that concisely and elegantly, Buffy.

Xenophile I'm sorry if you are upset by my comments to Sillage but I took this to be an attack on me. "You might be the very worst debater I've ever encountered on Mumsnet. I can't tell if you really think what you write is sensible or if your one-handed typing isn't intended to be sensible in the first place." I was a little drunk so I replied when I would usually be more restrained. I apologise for any offence.

Buffy that's really, really interesting and you make some excellent points. I don't think our positions are miles apart. As you say "Really I think the most that can be claimed from 'feminist' porn is that consumers are probably not doing any extra harm by making or consuming it". As we stand at the moment that is exactly my assessment. We agree

We live in a society where mainstream porn is ubiquitous and harmful - I think we agree on this.

You correctly identify the chicken and egg situation in relation to porn and how porn reinforces patriarchal ideas. We agree on this

This is where we disagree. I think if more feminists produce porn we can help to change the narrative. I don't know about using porn to educate I was merely pointing out they are trialling this in the Netherlands. Why can't porn become, as you say, an emancipatory political act if it is controlled by women? If women are presented as clearly controlling what is happening to them could that (chicken and egg) feed into wider society?

You say " porn isn't neutral " (we agree), most mainstream porn is harmful. Can we make porn that isn't neutral in a positive way? It isn't porn in and of itself that is causing harm it is how it is produced and used.

I am an optimist, I can't stand the idea that there is nothing we can do apart from stand and watch from the sidelines saying how terrible it all is. Which brings me back to my original point - if women (who want to) become critical consumers of porn, it and society can be changed positively.

Now before you all tell me how naive I am, I know. However, the morally superior (not being sarcastic) alternative of disaproving appears to stand no chance of working. Leaving porn to the misogyists will only continue the downward spiral.

Feminist porn - Morally ambiguous but more practical?

I make no claim to be perfect or indeed right I am struggling to do the best I can in the society I live in.

I'm not upset, I was merely stating the facts about your interaction with another poster.

Why can't porn become, as you say, an emancipatory political act if it is controlled by women?

Because a bad thing doesn't stop being bad just because a woman does it.

Exploitation does not become "an emancipatory political act" just because a woman is doing it.

Someone mentioned cigarettes way back. Cigarettes do not cease to be carcinogenic if the factory is owned by a woman. Cigarette advertising would be no less unacceptable if the Marlboro man were the Marlboro woman.

Men are the main consumers of porn. Misogynist men more than reasonable men too. Any action women take as consumers is like spitting in the wind. Might as well try to clean up the Rio boating lake by tipping in bottles of Waitrose spring water.....

Men are the main consumers "While 76% of men have watched porn online compared with just 36% of women" - I know this doesn't show regular usage, I offer it as a starting point.

www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2014/sep/28/british-sex-survey-2014-nation-lost-sexual-swagger

But 36% is a reasonable size. Also, women massively under report porn usage. In fact women under report and men exaggerate on almost all sexual surveys. Women are ashamed of using porn, and having sex, and how many partners they have, and how much sex they have etc.

I know people don't like comparisons to other industries but all types of ethical consumerism was rare thirty years ago organic, fair trade etc and they are much more popular now. Just because it is a long way to go should we not even start?

It's kind of like capital punishment in my mind.
I'm not against the whole idea to be honest, in theory.
But in the unequal world we live in, it's never going to be alright because there's no way for it to work without the unequal aspects (that we can't escape) causing terrible problems.

Well quite, Buffy.

Organic/Fairtrade options haven't reduced the systemic problematic practices in the 'non-virtuous' versions of the industries. All they have done is raised awareness, which is arguably a good thing in that raised awareness of, say, the disgusting practices of sweat shop clothes production and factory farming, but they haven't actually changed those practices. They also haven't improved the lives of those animals in factory farms or women employed on slave wages in sweat shops. It could be easily argued that they merely provide a sop for the consciences of the people who can afford to spend the extra to buy them.

I dislike anal sex, but I have known women who enjoyed it... just not with me. Looking up stats it is less commonly portrayed in porn than oral sex. On that basis I am not convinced 'porn' led to an outbreak of young men wanting anal sex that some in feminism say it did. I am more inclined to think it was shaped by porn along with other aspects of young male sexual desire, like older and fatter women MILF/BBW. If anal sex were really being reinforced in society as 'a new standard' I would have expected it to exceed oral porn in quantity, as PIV porn exceeds both.

Good post from Buffy. I'm not sure if the Fair Trade analogy works all the way since it would in theory be possible for all products to be ethically sourced.

The objection to a Nestlé bar of chocolate or a Primark dress is not in itself to the concept of buying a bar of chocolate or a dress.

Can that apply to porn or prostitution ?

Is there an inherent an unshiftable objection to buying sexual services (whether passively watching or actively participating) I think there is- we get back to the " not like any other job " argument.

I know people don't like comparisons to other industries but all types of ethical consumerism was rare thirty years ago organic, fair trade etc and they are much more popular now. Just because it is a long way to go should we not even start?

As Lass already said, chocolate and clothes are not, in and of themselves, a bad thing. Not even problematic. Moreover, we need clothes. And chocolate is a food, so on some level, we can say that we need it, too.

No one needs porn. We could just stop consuming it, boycott those who are consuming it, etc. There is no dilemma about porn. It satisfies no needs that cannot be met otherwise. Therefore, I do not see any reason to produce less-violent, less-exploitative porn. Better not contribute to porn at all.

We need clothes, but we don't need fashion. We need food, but we don't need chocolate. These are added extras that go beyond necessity to enjoyable indulgence. I do think that there always have been erotic images and depictions of sex, in all cultures across all times. I don't think you can eliminate that, any more than you can eliminate our desire for unnecessary sugar and pretty things. And should you really want to? Life is about more than necessity. In that context, I think that porn that doesn't necessarily involve exploitation is desirable and should be possible. If we had an equal society, we would have equal porn (and people wouldn't have to suffer for our nice clothes). It is how we get there that I find more challenging.

I was pondering the other day about the disappearance of the distinction between "soft" and "hard" porn of my youth. Soft porn being boob shots and eroticism writing, hard being sex bids.
We have now moved to a situation where soft porn isn't even a thing and what we call porn was previously known as hardcore porn.
I don't think we should equate historic art and writing with hard porn. It's more equivalent to soft stuff. I have little issue with soft porn as it's fantasy and unlikely women are getting harmed making it.
Hard porn depicts the actual act and women acting like they enjoy violence which takes away that fantasy element

I do think that there always have been erotic images and depictions of sex, in all cultures across all times.

And I am quite sure that, prior to the invention of photography, no one filmed or photographed prostituted women. ("Pornography" is derived from the Ancient Greek word for prostitute, by the way)

I have nothing against erotic literature, or even drawings. Those are not inherently unethical.

Films, on the other hand ... even in a perfect world, having sex for a camera would not be enjoyable. It is just inherent to the medium. Actors tend to not feel very happy when playing the same scene for the tenth time, and that's okay because acting is work - but the same principles cannot be applied to sex.

I have nothing against erotic literature, or even drawings. Those are not inherently unethical.

I'm not clear how if we're truly anti-porn we can give a free pass to written porn. The obvious difference is that nobody is exploited in the production of written porn but so much of this thread has been about the effect of porn out in the world. It warps people's perceptions of sex, it shapes their attitudes towards sex and encourages the likelihood of boundary-pushing or outright coercion. It hasn't been mentioned on this thread but elsewhere on Mumsnet there is frequent mention of the actual physiological effect of porn on the brain, the 'yourbrainonporn' 'theory'.

Taking any of the above at face value we have to apply it to what is rather so- called 'erotic literature' don't we?

"Looking up stats it is less commonly portrayed in porn than oral sex."

Everything is less common in porn that blowjobs, which feature in 91% of porn.

www.academia.edu/14444093/Aggression_and_Sexual_Behavior_in_Best-Selling_Pornography_Videos_A_Content_Analysis_Update

The most frequent sexual act portrayed in the sample was female-to-male oral sex, appearing in 90.1% (n=274) of the scenes coded.

Vaginal intercourse was the second-most frequent sexual act, appearing in 86.2% (n=262) of the scenes.

Male-to-female oral sex was found to occur in 53.9% (n=164) of the scenes coded, less than anal sex which appeared in 55.9%
(n=356) of the scenes.

The ATM sequence occurred in 41.1% (n=125) of scenes.

Dadwashere, how many women have you known who enjoyed having a penis that was inside a rectum placed into their mouths? What does that tell you about "young male sexual desire"?

"...like older and fatter women MILF/BBW."

It sounds like you're saying that women in 2016 porn are older, fatter and more moms than before because "young male sexual desire" has expanded to magnanimously include women formerly understood as laughingly, embarrassingly unattractive.

It sounds like you prefer this self-aggrandizing pornsick male user fantasy of positive intentions over the feminist analysis that pornography in 2016 has gotten more cruel, more humiliating, and more dangerous with the surge in men's desires to see laughingly fat and ugly whores being forced to suck on shit-tipped dicks, and much worse.

Do you also think "Two Girls One Cup" is about the sincere sexual pleasures of men enjoying scat more than men enjoying how much they hate women?

TheGhost - I'm not truly anti porn, I would class my self as a liberal feminist.

Buffy "You might say well, feminist porn is better than nothing. But is it? Sometimes outright resistance is better than somewhat capitulation."

I like a boycott as much as the next liberal lefty, and I am more than happy to fight the good fight. Resistance? If i can achieve something I'm all in. BUT I think in society where four out of five male students (NUS survey) have watched porn I think we may have lost the battle before we begin. Internet porn is here it's a fact. My issue is how we deal with the real life situation.

The majority of young people, male and female, accept porn as a fact of life. To deny this or wish it away is ideologically pure but is not real.

What realistically do you hope to achieve, an outright ban? Censorship on that scale make my blood run cold. What realistically can we do to improve the way sex is seen by many?

I think realistically we work with a very imperfect system (yes I am aware of how awful mainstream porn is and condemn it utterly) because realistically banning porn is not going to happen.

As Whatthe says the challenge is in how we change the system.

What do you mean Buffy when you say that 'it depends how the harm operates'? Yes, I tried to make clear in my first post nobody can be actually raped in literature but that seems like the only difference and there have not been many people on this thread who have said that porn is fine as long as you can remove the issue of coercion. The weight of opinion has seemed to argue that porn as a medium is harmful.

So no, in erotic literature we can't witness women acting out enjoyment of painful/abusive practices but we can read about it in incredible detail. If I'm a teenage boy (I'm not) and my behaviour can be shaped by watching porn to the extent that I come to believe that all women enjoy anal sex then how is it different that instead of watching these things play out on screen I choose to plough through literotica's 20,000 plus sexual stories on non-consent and rape? What is that teaching me?