The effect of porn on teenage boys and young men

[DeviTheGaelet]

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.

Come on Mephistopheles, I need a laugh. Mansplain the evolution of women's sexual freedom to us, why don't you.

No, pornography is an expression of female sexuality in a performative, transactional format. No woman should be compelled to adopt said format, but no moral argument can be made for constraining her rights to self expression.

Should porn be restricted to adults? At this time in our social evolution, sure. Should there be stringent oversight to ensure consent? Hell, I think that individual sexual acts should have such oversight - Big Brother in the bedroom, bring it on. Should education clarify the unreality of porn? Apparently it is necessary, so yes. But forcing your own archaic sexual mores on others is unacceptable and that is what you are suggesting.

I don't identify as a man anymore. But I can Attackcoptersplain if that would help.

MephistophelesApprentice but isn't the main argument here that there is not stringent oversight to ensure consent?

You actually think pornhub is making most of its money from amateur videos?

No, but but Pornhub is not making any videos.

And I am very interested in understanding.

"No, pornography is an expression of female sexuality in a performative, transactional format."

Oh right. You don't know what porn is. Or you're taking the piss. One or the other.

but no moral argument can be made for constraining her rights to self expression.

Yes it can. There are, and have to be, limits on all forms of self-expression.

This is otherwise known as civilisation.

Pornography also violates the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women.

www.un.org/womenwatch/daw/cedaw/text/econvention.htm#article1

Pornography is a form of discrimination against girls and women and it promotes discrimination against girls and women. And it thereby impedes girls and women achieving equality and equality of dignity and rights (Article 1 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights).

All the stuff is there to take a stand against pornography. There are international treaties, human rights declarations and UN commissions that have already done the heavy lifting. It justs needs to be applied.

BetrandRussell is correct that men should just stop consuming porn. They should stop producing it, distributing it and selling it too. They should stop because pornography is harmful and hateful and the harm and hate are gendered.

Meph your liberatarian, pro-capitalist morality of free choice rules is such bullshit. What you are effectively saying is that any values judgments concerning the porn industry suggest a repressive Victorianism. That's rubbish.

Are you saying a Syrian refugee being urinated on for entertainment takes place in a complex of morally neutral transactions?

Some of the people on this thread are a little obtuse, to put it nicely. I get that you don't agree for whatever reasons, but that you can't even get your head around the argument that porn is a breach of women's human rights?

Oh right. You don't know what porn is. Or you're taking the piss. One or the other.

Your definitions do not become factual by the intensity of your solipsism.

Yes it can. There are, and have to be, limits on all forms of self-expression.

The somewhat important clause there is "where there is evidence of harm to others". No doubt you can produce all sorts of evidence to support your position. I can produce all sorts of studies to support mine. But my greatest possible piece of evidence is the unending centuries of female oppression that was defined by, at it's core, the suppression and control of female sexuality. We can see what suppression of female sexual freedom looks like. We're barely aware of what free female sexuality looks like. It very likely looks nothing like porn, but we'll never know if people continue to modify patriarchal moral limitations and call it 'protecting women'. After all, isn't that what the patriarchs used to claim?

But isn't the main argument here that there is not stringent oversight to ensure consent?

I very much agree with you that ensuring legitimate consent lies at the core of this discussion, as it does with so much regarding gender interaction. I think the problem is that the question of where consent comes from - whether from an individuals genuine choice, or from social pressure - is still so fantastically murky both on a social and individual level that the best that can be expected is the aggressive, legalistic framework that presently exists.

Porn is a breach of men's rights too. Men and boys are abused too. And women make porn too. I'm not saying it is not predominantly patriarchal and male-dominated in nature, but it does transcend that now.

We need to be very clear: ALL porn, whoever it features and whoever it is made by, is wrong.

The 'Feminist Porn Awards' deserves nothing but derision.

Of course female sexual freedom is going to look nothing like the majority of male oriented, misogynistic porn. Anal sex, facials, double penetration and deep throating until women gag. Tedious in the extreme.

But thanks for the good laugh. You don't disappoint.

Honest question: qwerty232 Would you ban an exhibitionist putting herself online for her own sense of sexual fulfilment?

Ok, here we go with the libertarian and neo-liberal framing of objections to pornography as being moralistic and anti-freedom (remember I said that would happen upthread).

Perhaps we need to clarify what pornography is. I'm working within a feminist analysis which I think is well expressed by Diana Russell when she says:

I define pornography as material that combines sex and/or the exposure of genitals with abuse or degradation in a manner that appears to endorse, condone or encourage such behavior. I conceptualize pornography as both a form of hate speech and as discrimination against women.

In contrast to erotica about which she says:

I define erotica as sexually suggestive or arousing material that is free of sexism, racism, and homophobia, and respectful of all human beings and animals portrayed.

Pornhounds and misogynists like to promote the idea that pornography is simply "sexxay films and pictures" that exist in a socio-political and cultural vacuum and that objections to it are simply pearl clutching, moralistic, prudishness and anti-sex.

Thanks MephistophelesApprentice for proving my point so well in your posts.

venusinscorpio

I'm glad we've found each other mutually amusing. Watching someone defend the enforcement of their own anachronistic sexual taboos as a form of modernism is like seeing someone dance burlesque with a completely deadpan expression.

Venus are you saying female produced porn has legitimacy and male produced porn does not? Sorry, that's nonsense. I wouldn't want my step-daughter accessing a porn site made by a 'feminist' any less tthan any other porn site.

And there is no reason at all why female sexual freedom cannot have exploitative characteristics. Women are not all lovely and gentle you know.

The problem is the whole post-60's ideology of sexual freedom. Lots of good things came from the sexual revolution: legitimate rights for women and homosexuals. But it also promoted a disregard for moral norms and the notion that 'if it feels good, do it'. Consumer-capitalism co-opted it and now we have this horrid sexual supermarket today.

Moral injunctions should be placed on people's sexual behaviour for the sake of society. An alliance of right-wing libertarians and liberal left have done enormous damage with their promotion of sexual liberationists ideology.

Oooh julie

You are lovely...

Reported obvs

Beachcomber

Your definitions do not become factual by the intensity of your solipsism.

I define erotica as sexually suggestive or arousing material that is free of sexism, racism, and homophobia, and respectful of all human beings and animals portrayed.

Sorry Beach that's rubbish. I don't want children to be able to access 'erotica' either. There is female produced 'erotica' that features BDSM and other violent, degrading themes. The distinction between porn and erotica is so unclear as to be meaningless.

Erotica is still people making money out of people's bodies. Dress it up however you like, but that is what it is.

Justifying porn as 'erotica' is no different from men justifying porn as 'amateur'.

The problem here is liberalism and moral relativism pure and simple. With a lot of misogyny and racism thrown into the stew.

I don't have any anachronistic sexual taboos thanks. I'm not talking about what people want to get up to with each other in private. I'm talking about the structured oppression and discrimination of women as a class by perpetuating our role as merely objects for men's gratification in various ways, not least by normalising the mores of the exploitative, misogynistic commercial porn industry as a tool of patriarchy which keeps women in this role. See the difference?

Did I say that qwerty? Don't misrepresent what I say to further your own argument.