how much porn is too much?

[blueletter]

Disclaimer - I am not condoning any behaviours at all here and due to some personal details I have name changed.

Catching up with the news and saw the glee star has committed suicide. This isn't really about him or his crimes but an article detailing he had amassed 50,000 images has certainly got me thinking. He certainly had a massive porn addiction issue.

I know of a couple of men with huge porn collections. We're talking 100s of videos. all legal as far as I am aware. They brought it up in a conversation about porn. How they 'love it' and 'cant get enough of it' how its 'their right to have a good one'.

I know of a man who was close to me ( a friends dad no longer contact for obvious reasons) but was recently charged with possession of child porn and subsequently put on the sex offenders register for life. He also had a huge collection of legal porn in VHS, DVD, harddrives filled with videos even written erotica and boxes of magazines. He had been a hoarder of porn for decades. Downloading in huge quantities.

I see all these articles on convicted sex offenders often stating thousands of images and/or videos have been found both illegal and legal.

I've read studies into the correlation between porn consumption and sex crimes.

I've read the studies that say there isn't a correlation at all.

But all I'm seeing is men charged with horrific sex crimes with a mountain of porn behind them. I must admit, over the last year my view on porn has changed from 'it needs to be better regulated' to 'burn it all' in part because a man I once knew is now a sex offender and his child has done everything they can to defend their fathers crimes because 'its only porn' 'it was anime' 'i like BDSM and thats not harmful' 'women are paid well for this!'

So is it really as damaging as I feel it is? I cant help but feel the addictive nature of it is being ignored. everything else as addictive is illegal or tightly controlled.

any thoughts?

The Glee actor was arrested for possessing images of child abuse, not porn. Did he have an issue with porn alongside the paedophilia?

There is no such thing as child porn. It is film footage of children being raped and sexually abused. The men who choose to watch it are accessories to those crimes, because without their choosing to watch it, there would be no market for those abominations.

Pornography involving adults is different because it is possible they could have been fully informed, fully consenting participants (possible, but also highly likely they were not - so then it becomes a case of how much of a risk of rape is okay for you to orgasm - are you okay with one rape per hundred porn clips? One every ten? One in five?)

child abuse you're right. Just read so many articles talking about 'child porn' its stuck

www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2017/oct/04/glee-actor-mark-salling-child-abuse-images-prison For clarity this is what he was charged with.

That's what I am wondering, to me he clearly had some addiction to amass such a number. You don't just wake up and download 50k sexual abuse images in 8-9 months. He was a vile individual for doing so and rightly punished.

His case has triggered my questioning if there is a link between porn and sex crimes because a lot of the sex crimes cases I have read over the years all state porn was involved to some degree. Usually extreme BDSM stuff, fake rape etc.

Theres a whole thing for 'barely legal' porn. Women dressed to look like minors acting like them, sickening to think its perfectly legal to create.

I'm not making myself as clear as I hoped it seems.

I just checked, and it was Robin Morgan who said (way back in 1974) "Pornography is the theory, and rape is the practice."

I find it unbelievable that men could consume hundreds of hours of film footage of women being violently raped and abused, and not be affected psychologically by it, and not have that leak into their real-life dealings with women. So yes, I think the consumption of violent pornography does have an effect.

Someone posted a link to this article "it's not sex that's being sold, it's abuse" yesterday, and I think it's very much to the point.

I don't think I'd use the language of addiction though. Men watch violent porn because they choose to, because they like being turned on by images of violence. They're not made to by some force that's stronger than they are. They choose to, and they could choose not to. They just don't want to choose not to.

Usually violent sex offenders have a massive port collection, but you can't prove cause and effect.

But it's not just sex offenders, it's the culture (see the BMJ article linked to in the article I mentioned) which sees it as normal to pressure women into sex acts they find painful. Read about women getting back on the dating scene after a break, and how much has changed since, say, the 1990s. Choking during sex, hair pulling, ejaculating in women's faces - all seen as part of "normal sex", to be done to women without actually asking first whether they like it. That's not coming out of nowhere, that's learned behaviour. And porn is the instruction manual.

hairy I agree sex isn't being sold.

I think thats the point I'm trying to get to. Its naive to assume all that all porn usage wouldn't cause damage. I don't think there is any 'good porn' because you cannot control the end user and how the porn itself is being consumed eg through compilation videos of just one particular act missing out the 'story/scene setting' and the influx of amateur porn often is coercion/rape/assault that anyone viewing it would be damaged by it.

To watch porn compulsively certainly screams addiction to me. Hoarding huge quantities you cant possible view it all also suggests addiction or compulsion. In my friends fathers case my friend worked out he had about 70,000hrs of pornography. There is no way that was all viewed.

This is why I am using the language I am. I don't think we can say its not addictive given some of the research into dopamine responses watching it but its also not an excuse for illegal behaviour and not addictive in everyone. I don't think thats something well get a definitive answer on for a while. I'm certainly not using the language I am as a get out of jail free card. Every man chooses when he starts watching porn.

Thats a good article. I have bookmarked for further use. Thanks! hairy

Following to replt later

that is like saying theres no safe level of alcohol to drink or violence to see. Its a symptom not a cause. Ive known two men whove had porn addictions in my life. Both are okay now as far as I know. The reasons behind it were depression and isolation. Its the same as any addiction. One of the guys was someone I dated (after he had gotten help for his addiction) It sounded very much like it was about his childhood and incredible shyness and being moved halfway across the country and finding it hard to connect with other people. Porn was an easy way to immediately feel good.

Many things can be addictive to people. Porn is pretty tightly controlled already. I dont think the issue is availablity of porn to be honest I think it is how these young men are growing up.

porn is very easily available. Anyone with phone and the web can find the most extreme forms of porn for free. Its not highly controlled. We have restrictions of the kind pro companies can make in the UK - rules are stricter - but not elsewhere.

Its not tightly controlled. Far from it. Esp with the influx of amateur porn that has none of the safeguarding in place. No one to check the ages of the people in the film. Who knows if the girl is a young looking 25 yo or an older looking 16 yo? its amateur. Its homemade. There are no checks.

Was it Jeffrey Dahmer who said in his last televised interview that he'd never met a sex offender who wasn't obsessed with porn? He wasn't wrong. Even if you were to put aside feminist objections to porn (which we shouldn't) there's a clear associated between consumption of "abnormal" amounts of porn with very troubling attitudes towards women and sex. I think porn probably has that impact in even small doses, but multiply it by thousands of hours spent watching it and the effect is much, much stronger. We could go round in circles arguing chicken and the egg in terms of whether it's the porn causing the attitudes or those particular men having those attitudes that caused them to acquire so much porn (I'm inclined to think it's a feedback loop that reinforces itself), acquisition of huge amounts of porn is a red flag and should be treated as such.

Given that, this troubles me. They brought it up in a conversation about porn. How they 'love it' and 'cant get enough of it' how its 'their right to have a good one'.

Do you feel safe around these men, OP? I wouldn't. They're telling you something about themselves, and I think you should believe them.

And yeah, in the event that I became single again I'd be wary of dating new guys precisely because I know what porn has done to their ideas of what sex should be like. It's not making them all serial killers, but it is making a lot of them sexually abusive and unpleasant to be intimate with.

windchime
Porn was an easy way to immediately feel good.

But why? It wouldn't make me feel good. Or at least, you could probably come up with something that would work but it would be very different to what these men are watching...

As you say, it's how they're growing up. Why they think abusing women is a turn on.

Windchime - you might want to read that article that Hairy posted. It's a really excellent read and really highlights the increasing levels of violence and exploitation in today's porn

There are hundreds of posts here from women whose husbands and partners have increasing consumption of porn and are no longer able to perform in bed. Hundreds where women are being asked/coerced into doing things they don't feel comfortable with as a result of porn. And hundreds where women have been raped by men they're in relationships with.

It's not victimless. There is no acceptable level of porn. Too often society uses the excuse of loneliness or unhappiness to condone absolutely horrific levels of abuse by men (see family annihilators, trans women committing sexual crimes). Your argument is part of a continuum minimising violence against women.

I'm with Jiggly, to be honest. I'm sure everyone will have encountered porn by a certain age, but I wouldn't be comfortable in a relationship where it features at all. To me it says that the "owner" doesn't care whether the people involved may have been coerced.

As far as amassing huge collections go, I'm always wary of people with large amounts of either porn or violent, gory materials in any media. I believe that the things we expose ourselves to can rattle around our brains and mess up our personalities in the same way that junk food can mess up our bodies.

Any porn at all is too much.

Do you feel safe around these men, OP? I wouldn't. nope. I don't.

One man was a long time friend and he was a submissive into BDSM. After many long chats I decided his 'kinks' were extreme to the point of self harm. We are no longer in contact because of some of these views. sadly his 'kinks' are the norm in the BDSM scene.

I'm always wary of people with large amounts of either porn or violent, gory materials in any media I am too. I love horror films but lately horror mostly seems to be about getting the cliched busty blonde murdered in the most graphic way. Female deaths are always more bloody than their male co stars. I guess this is why films such are Saw are listed as torture porn not horror.

WhoWants2Know I have had 3 relationships where porn featured for them.

The first he refused to let me even watch what he had bought. He was embarrassed and ashamed of it. This fed through into sex. So much shame.

The second was brief he was obsessed that the very moment I realised how bad it was is we were DTD and he was staring at his own penis pouting rather than looking at me. It was how his penis felt, what it was doing. I was just there to use. I cant even describe how that made me feel but I didn't date for nearly 7 years after that.

3rd he was obsessed with anal. Absolutely obsessed with it. I asked why. 'all the girls love it'

Blueletter

I think your experiences are probably pretty common.

My exh and I separated 5+ years ago. Since then I dated a man who couldn't perform and wasn't interested in piv at all. He used a lot of porn. Another had funny ideas about what women should look like.

Another man felt that it was appropriate to set out his expectations of my personal grooming/naked appearance on the first date (v porny). I've also experienced the 'feeling like a bit part actor' in my sexual relationship. I have also experienced the man pouting at his own penis as he watched what it was doing; how it was moving. He was essentially the real time audience for the porn he was starring in.

Interestingly, my current boyfriend has no interest in porn. He is autistic and feels that sex is something that is for 'people who love each other'. He's not lying. And I can tell...

Sex with him is like sex with men I dated 20 years ago, who weren't using porn, or were occasional users. Everything about it feels different. He does sex differently. He engages differently. It's porn free sex and I'd forgotten what it was like!

He was essentially the real time audience for the porn he was starring in

this, so this. Its a pretty crappy feeling to feel like a doll and yes that man was phobic about pubic hair.

So many men are like this. Even dipping into dating sites you can get a feel of the heavy porn users just through their use of language.

It does worry me how porn is seeping into every day things and the impact its having. My biggest concern though is porn use just doesnt seem to be taken seriously enough esp in the case of sexualised crimes.

I sometimes wonder if porn has got violent to the extreme it has because of women's equal rights in the real world. For men who haven't enjoyed seeing women become more powerful in the real world, seeing women being degraded and hurt in pornography must be an enjoyable fantasy to escape to.

On the other hand, maybe it's just in some men's psyches to want to conquer the enemy and humiliate them and porn was only ever going to get more and more extreme because so many men are now having to go to ever more extremes to feed their addiction and find that sexual hit. So to answer part of the OP, yes I think there is an addictive aspect to this and I would love it to be better controlled but I have no idea how in practice that will happen, with the internet being what it is and when men are a majority in powerful positions in our society and as a whole they don't show any serious signs of wanting it controlled at all. Strange that. To give him his due, David Cameron did speak out about it, and I suspect the influence of Samantha Cameron there, but I don't know whether any initiatives are being implemented right now.

Addiction or not though, I think through porn men tell us every day how they feel about us and all the things they would like to do to us. And it's frightening.

blindyeo I think one good step would be allowing men to admit they have a porn addiction problem, that its treatable and its not something to be ashamed of.

I know toxic masculinity pushes porn as a holy grail and any man who says hes not into it is less of a man so any man admitting he has a problem would be seen as pathetic. I think changing that would be easier and have a bigger impact than ban but we certainly need to restrict porn.

I would LOVE it if porn producers had agreed to the www .[insertsitename]. XXX addresses for all porn sites so It was easier for an individual to block access within their homes. They claimed it was violation of free speech and lobbied against etc etc.

As to the extreme violence in porn. I am not so sure if its to do with equal rights (we still don't have true equality or liberation but thats another debate!) There are men who hate women and probably would without porn access. Then you have the some MRA groups who abandon porn use because they can see the effects on their life (and the conspiracy theory they think its keeping them docile) . so... because of equality. I cant be certain.

I did find this ted talk about porn interesting and the accompanying site www.yourbrainonporn.com. They talk about the novelty factor of porn and how this could explain the need for more extreme types of porn. I'm not fully convinced. off to do more research!

I sometimes wonder if porn has got violent to the extreme it has because of women's equal rights in the real world. For men who haven't enjoyed seeing women become more powerful in the real world, seeing women being degraded and hurt in pornography must be an enjoyable fantasy to escape to.

This is exactly what I think is happening. And not just with porn.

It seems to me that with every advancement women make, there is a new obstacle created by men.

Gain financial independence so we don't need to rely on men for money and gone is the li'l lady at home waiting adoringly for her man.

They'll show us where our real worth lies! And we are given increasingly impossible, restrictive beauty ideals to maintain or they're all over the internet saying vile things about us.

We reject these? And they'll show us where our real worth really lies and so expectations of appearance/sex become increasingly influenced by porn to the point where young women are seeking to mutilate themselves to be attractive to men.

We move to reject these and they have no where else to go so what do they do? Attempt to remove us from existence by reducing being a woman to nothing more than an idea in a man's head and, if he wants to, he can be one of us too whilst still sporting a beard and wearing his cock...

Honestly, what is it about women that men are so afraid of?