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Original poster

The effect of porn on teenage boys and young men

414 replies

DeviTheGaelet · 15/01/2017 18:12

Did anyone else hear the section on R5 about porn addiction the other day? They spoke to a doctor who is looking into the defects of porn on men. A study in Italy found 40% of young men were having erectile issued, of those 60% were psychologically caused ( I think those were the stats).
The doctor suggested that watching porn during adolescence is training men to be aroused by purely visual stimuli and the visual stimuli are not realistic. As a result they are not being wired to find the smells and touch of actual sex arousing. As a result they are having election issues.
He described porn as "stunt sex" and said it was creating a generation of men who's sexual relationships were with their hand and a screen rather than another person.
I found it really interesting. We talk a lot on here about the harm porn causes women and girls but I've not heard so much about the impact on boys.
I think this should be discussed in PSHE in schools. Maybe this will be the personal impact many men need to see how harmful porn can be.

OP posts:
venusinscorpio · 18/01/2017 22:04

Remember that Maria Miller is a fan of the same kind of rhetoric transactivists use, and that they and their allies are often also pro porn and prostitution.

Beachcomber · 18/01/2017 22:08

DeviTheGaelet, there will always be people who will try to frame objections to pornography as anti-freedom, anti-agency, anti-choice, anti-sex, anti-fun, etc.

Such people bluster on about "sex positivity" as though parents being concerned about their children being exposed to hard-core porn is somehow "sex negativity". I mean really, do they really think that it's positive for kids to watch videos of adults who may or may not be consenting engaging in hard-core porn sex acts? Do they really think that jacking off to videos called stuff like "Barely legal teen slut gets trashed" is "sex positive"? Or that an X rated video entitled "Ebony whore drinks cum" is making a positive statement about female sexuality and women of colour?

Who do these people think we are? Do they really think that we are stupid enough and inhumane enough to not recognise blatant rapey racism and sexism when we see it? They may think that teen porn and racist misogynistic porn and everything in between are somehow the price we all need to pay in the name of what they call freedom, but I have never yet seen one of them able to argue how that that actually works in real life.

Let's ask MephistophelesApprentice what is "sex positive" about specifics. It's so incredibly easy to post vacuous bluster about sex positivity/censorship/the world ending if porn is regulated/doom and gloom if X rated material isn't easily available to anyone all the time. But there is no actual concrete argument there.

I will bet you my mortgage that if you put "porn" into your search engine and click on the first result, there will be nothing "sex positive" about it. I just did. I clicked on the first result and I landed on a video called "Brutal slapping deep throat" in less than a second. I don't need to watch the video to tell that if this is "sex positivity" I want nothing to do with it (image of a young conventionally attractive woman on her knees choking on a penis, her eyes are bulging and someone is pulling her hair).

In times past children weren't exposed to porn in the way they are now. I'm old enough to remember a world with no mobile phones, no internet, no DVDs and even no video recorders. If you wanted to look at porn you had to go to an XXX cinema or buy a magazine in an "adult" shop - both were illegal for under 18s.

Now, anything goes. And there is something wrong with you if you don't embrace that. That is, according to the pornhounds.

DeleteOrDecay · 18/01/2017 22:39

image of a young conventionally attractive woman on her knees choking on a penis, her eyes are bulging and someone is pulling her hair

Ugh, there is absolutely nothing positive about thatSad porn is a truly horrific and degrading industry, how can anyone defend it? It's bloody terrifying that children can access this material with just a few taps on their device, that their ideas of what sex and relationships are being shaped by such extreme images. At the very least there needs to be some sort of procedure in place to prevent this filmed abuse material getting into the hands of impressionable children and teenagers. Utterly perverse.

LassWiTheDelicateAir · 18/01/2017 22:59

Roll back the sexual revolution - the old morality won in the end. Welcome back slut shaming, the derision of the 'fallen' women - who of course can just fuck off with their sex positivity and abandonment of gender roles. Hail once more the gatekeepers of 'correct' sexuality, and down with all those who dare step outside the box. Censorship! Suppression! Shame! Shame! Shame!

Oh what nonsense. The puritans , prudes, narrow minded and those crying shame, the gate keepers of sexuality are the pornographers. Sex has to be dirty, sleazy, shameful etc for porn to work.

The people who really deride women for being dirty sluts, are, believe it or not, the men who term women dirty sluts in the porn videos they make. Videos called things like 'Dirty Sluts'.

There is nothing 'sex positive' about a man jacking off to a video of a 'dirty teen slag'. Really, there isn't

Precisely.

PoochSmooch · 19/01/2017 09:34

Wonderful, wonderful posts, beachcomber. Total mic drop.

PinkIsRad · 19/01/2017 09:49

Do you also support the ban of cigarettes and alcohol or excessively fatty or sugary food and drinks?

anon232 · 19/01/2017 10:22

Do you also support the ban of cigarettes and alcohol or excessively fatty or sugary food and drinks?

I support restrictions of access to such things, public campaigns to raise awareness of their dangers and prohibitions on their advertising.

I'm not sure anyone on here is saying it is possible to completely eradicate internet porn in the world as it is - just that it should be state regulated and inaccessible to children.

Just as fags are now in blank packages with a picture of a diseased lung on them, locked away behind the counter and only available to people who can prove their age, so it should be for porn.

anon232 · 19/01/2017 10:22

And yes, super post Beach.

DeleteOrDecay · 19/01/2017 12:11

Exactly anon, I can't see why anyone would have a problem with that?

Querty232 · 19/01/2017 12:27

They have a problem with it because they're self-entitled males who think they can do as they please. It's a kind of sociopathy.

PinkIsRad · 19/01/2017 16:15

I'm not sure anyone on here is saying it is possible to completely eradicate internet porn

Dodging the issue. People on here are saying exactly that. They want all men to immediately stop watching porn which as a consequence would lead to the eradication of internet porn. Hence why:

I support restrictions of access to such things

is meaningless to my very specific question if you support a ban on those things. You btw not being you in particular anon232, but a general one, the other posters who do actually talk so that no more porn exists.

BertrandRussell · 19/01/2017 16:54

I find it fascinating that men are, generally, just not prepared to say" OK, some women in porn are being exploited, I can't tell which, so I'll just stop using it"

It's not as if it's necessary to life or anything...........

KindDogsTail · 19/01/2017 16:56

. Qwerty232 Tuesday
"For make no mistake, porn damages boys. Good boys. One minute they're out in the sun playing football, forming healthy relationships with girls - and then they stumble into Wanktube and are having their heads messed up with God knows what nastiness. They're on the cusp of adolescence so they're naturally aroused, but they also feel fear and shame and confusion. All that innocence they felt is gone. And then they come back and feel more shame and fear, and the cycle continues until they're hooked."

I so completely agree.

tartansnowman · 19/01/2017 16:59

Which people, PinkisRad?

KindDogsTail · 19/01/2017 17:01

Lasswiththe
The puritans , prudes, narrow minded and those crying shame, the gate keepers of sexuality are the pornographers. Sex has to be dirty, sleazy, shameful etc for porn to work.

Absolutely true. You have put this so well.

PinkIsRad · 19/01/2017 19:15

Honestly, I don't remember the names of the (multiple) posts now. But I am sure you are one of them. Or just two posts above you is actually an example.

BertrandRussell · 19/01/2017 19:52

"Dodging the issue. People on here are saying exactly that. They want all men to immediately stop watching porn which as a consequence would lead to the eradication of internet porn"

Well, it's worth a try. Can't do any harm, can it? Why not give it a go?

tartansnowman · 19/01/2017 19:56

PinkisRad, two posts above me is Bertrand, who I think just arrived on the thread?

I view pornography (in the sense of porn meaning filmed sex and nudity, not the feminist sense of acts of sexualised violence and abuse) so I am pretty sure I'm not arguing for it to be banned.

BertrandRussell · 19/01/2017 20:00

"I view pornography (in the sense of porn meaning filmed sex and nudity, not the feminist sense of acts of sexualised violence and abuse) so I am pretty sure I'm not arguing for it to be banned."

Are you saying that they are two different things, or just different perceptions of the same thing?

tartansnowman · 19/01/2017 20:04

Beachcomber made a distinction between porn and erotica earlier.

Both are frequently called porn by people in general.

BertrandRussell · 19/01/2017 20:08

Isn't erotica just porn with a degree?

tartansnowman · 19/01/2017 20:10

Not in the distinction Beachcomber was making.

jcne · 19/01/2017 20:46

Perhaps this will be what finally leads to the extinction of our species

Original poster
DeviTheGaelet · 19/01/2017 20:58

Do you also support the ban of cigarettes and alcohol or excessively fatty or sugary food and drinks?
I am with anon. We restrict tobacco sales to children. We tax tobacco and now sugar to reduce consumption and I expect this to extend to further foods in future.
Why are we going to the extreme of ban it all/ban none of it?
I would like to see access restricted so it's harder for children to see things, probably through enforcing payment.
I'd like to see the really violent/degrading stuff banned in the same way as child abuse videos are.

OP posts:
HerOtherHalf · 20/01/2017 09:43

I'd like to see the really violent/degrading stuff banned in the same way as child abuse videos are

From what I've seen and heard discussed, the really violent/degrading stuff is commonplace. Maybe I'm a prude and my idea of what is degrading or violent is too conservative but I don't think so. I look at it not just from the POV of the potential impact on the victims actresses but also on the audience, and it's not just children who are impressionable. Basically, I don't want to live in a world where things like bukake, fisting, anal or assault by penis are considered normal and run of the mill activities. Why? Because I don't want my children, grandchildren, nieces and nephews and their offspring to be coerced, or coerce someone else, into doing things I believe to be emotionally and/or physically damaging because it's been normalized for them through porn.