Mail Article - Porn’s obsession with young girls

[RandomGel]

Apologies if a thread already exists on this article published in the Mail a few days ago.

Tanith Carey author of ‘Girls Uninterrupted’ has written an interesting and equally worrying article in the Mail on Monday. Again, I note it is falling to traditionally right wing papers to raise awareness and publish articles on issues that are specifically facing women.

Carey writes passionately how her own daughter is harassed as soon as she leaves the house. How this is partially due to the expansion of the porn culture and the long term implications for young girls and women. In fact these implications are already with us as seen by the court cases around ‘rough sex’.

The journalist has written a really powerful article calling for women to mobilise, to take action and call for legislation to protect girls.

“We need legislation to prevent porn sites attracting views by showing young girls being raped, abused and harassed.

If we stand by and say nothing, the ones who pay the price are our daughters — in too many ways to count....”

www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8589713/Why-porns-obsession-younger-girls-putting-daughters-danger.html

It's worrying how mainstream it has become to watch porn which is so degrading to women. There are plenty of women who watch it too. Many of my peers do and just don't question the morality of it or look at it from a feminist perspective because it's just there easily available on places like porn hub and it's something everyone does. Pornhub itself has done a very clever job of its marketing and normalising it's brand. I just don't think they see the performers as real people. Only when I raise the issues with them do they realise how problematic it is.

I don't have a problem with all porn in theory after all it is just consenting adults having sex on camera and the idea of policing peoples sexuality makes me uncomfortable. However in reality it is often really degrading to women, really rough/violent, there is some stuff which are so shady when it comes to consent and it is extremely problematic the way it fetishises really young women. It's warping the minds of young boys who have access to this stuff far too young. I also dread to think some of the conditions some of the performers (especially the women) work under and some of these girls get caught up in it at such a young age and then it's out there forever they can erase it.

I do also wonder if it feeds into our own sexuality and starts to influence what people find erotic (being submissive to a dominant male for example). So you think that is what you're into, but is it really!? Or is that what you've been conditioned to think.

Interestingly many of my friends who watch it don't have children. I do think having them can make you see the world through very different eyes with regard to this. It's deeply concerning that kids are able to access this stuff online so easily.

Carey writes passionately how her own daughter is harassed as soon as she leaves the house. How this is partially due to the expansion of the porn culture and the long term implications for young girls and women. In fact these implications are already with us as seen by the court cases around ‘rough sex’.

Teenage girls being harassed is hardly a modern problem.

@EarlofEggMcMuffin

I agree somewhat Goose that women have lots of social influence, but I do think it is less than that of men.

And we are siloed off into "women's areas" so we can have influence over breastfeeding or period poverty...but not so much over "male issues", which is where I see porn lying.

The reality is it's a capitalist free market and sex sells.

What was one of the biggest selling books and film franchise of the last decade? 50 Shades. Essentially a violent porn novel with the lead female character abused by a man. And it was women who were buying it and wetting themselves over it. What message does that send?

...and sex sells
Not really, it is sexism that sells. And porn is not really about sex and making love, it is about making hate and dominance, raising men to become sadists and women to become masochists.

Women who watch porn or tolerate it's use by their partners are enabling abuse of other women, including their daughters.

I agree the industry is rotten but how many here complaining about female abuse in porn bought or read that 50 shades monstrosity? A lot of women also watch violent porn.

The sad thing is women buy into the misogyny just as much as men.

Yes I agree many women but into it just as much as men. I think it has just become so normalised (especially for younger generations) that both men and women don't stop to question what it is they're actually watching. It's just another thing that it consumed mindlessly.

I read an interesting article about a porn actor who has now had several allegations made by his 'co-stars' basically along the lines of that the scenes they consented to did not happen, once they were 'on set' as it were they were drugged and the scenes became brutal and degrading. Horrifying stuff. They consented to sex, not violent rape. There were comments under the article saying it's about time porn had it's own MeToo movement and i hope it does.
There are voices that need to be heard and these women are somebodies daughter/ sister etc.

I appreciate that some men can only empathise with women they actually know, but I really hate the "she's someone's daughter/wife/mother". It implies she he's no value as a human being in her own right. She shouldn't be mistreated because it's wrong, not because it might upset her Dad.

@HoneysuckIejasmine

I 100% agree with you. But if it helps get into their thick misogynist heads that women are just like their Mums and daughters im happy to use this phrase to certain men. I appreciate everyone in this thread does not come under that category.

Oh yes, I did realise that it wasn't your opinion

I was reading an article the other day about a country (I believe middle East area but can't remember) where they talked about how women are not know by their own names, but as "X daughter" or "Y sister", and it's considered shameful and disrespectful to say "my name is Z" because it's not honouring your make family member.

Will try to find it... Not sure I'll manage it though.

Surprisingly easy to find.

www.google.com/amp/s/mobile.reuters.com/article/amp/idUSKBN1AC3F7

Sorry for the detail though!

*derail.

What was one of the biggest selling books and film franchise of the last decade? 50 Shades. Essentially a violent porn novel with the lead female character abused by a man. And it was women who were buying it and wetting themselves over it. What message does that send?

Women in general tend to go for written porn rather than visual - they want the narrative. A lot of the romance genre is basically porn though of course there aren't the problems of actresses and such. When I was working at a library there were women who checked out stacks of them every week, and its one of the few parts of the publishing industry that makes money pretty regularly.

It also has the same problem with readers constantly needing something new and a little more kinky to get the same kick - so you get things like weird trends for sex with monsters or dinosaurs or whatever in the stories. Or vampires or werewolves. Lots of scope for kink there. (50 Shades after all is Twilight fan fiction.)

While you don't at all get the industry related problems of filmed pornography, it's not like the women reading this stuff are going to object to the basic concept of getting off to pornographic depictions of sex, even weird sex.

@HoneysuckIejasmine

Funnily enough i read a similar article! Basically it was saying how a women quotes for say a news piece would be quoted as "the daughter of Muhamed so and so" , same as in Britain women used to and sometimes still do, sign off as Mrs John Smith

s.telegraph.co.uk/graphics/projects/koran-carla-power/index.html

(Im a bugger for derailing too but it is all part of the bigger picture i suppose!)

What was one of the biggest selling books and film franchise of the last decade? 50 Shades. Essentially a violent porn novel with the lead female character abused by a man. And it was women who were buying it and wetting themselves over it. What message does that send?

No actual woman was harmed in the writing of that tripe. Porn videos on the other hand involve real women being degraded. 75% of female porn performers are trafficked into the industry, average time to burnout (or whatever it is called) is three months now. 95% of porn on the internet today involves humiliating, degrading, harming and terrorising women. And teaching men who watch this that women exist only to service their needs. This is now having a measurable effect on relationships in the 18 to 25 age range in terms of how females partners are treated by their male partner.

A badly written rip off of a vampire teen romance does not compare. On any level. No societal effect of that magnitude has ever been observed as a consequence of women reading erotica. And the genre is hundreds of years old.

And as someone who once analysed romance novels, I'll also add that 50 Shades is derivative in more ways than one. Bodice rippers for instance were all the rage in the 80ies. (Male lead typically kidnaps female lead and rapes or coerces her, she then spends the rest of the book finding out he's not the monster she thinks he is and falls in love with him. Often reforming him in the process. Sound familiar?)

Again, there's a difference - rape fantasies are not uncommon in women but very few women want to act them out in real life. Act. Not actually be raped.

If the fundamental differences between the porn industry and bodice rippers are the problems of the porn industry, what you get is people looking to find ethical porn, even if it's at te level of watching people's home movies and such.

The fact that lots of women have rape fantasies isn't really something that's all that meaningful in itself, IMO, but as far as indulging them through books or whatever - if we really think that watching sexual violence affects how people think and feel about it, or sex more generally, it would seem likely that reading about it as a regular thing also affects people.

The journalist has written a really powerful article calling for women to mobilise, to take action and call for legislation to protect girls.

^.
Pointless if men don't join us. Adult men. You know, ones with jobs and mortgages and homes and families and some iota of moral responsibility. But they don't. Why? WHY? Why don't these men care more about their daughters?

No actual woman was harmed in the writing of that tripe. Porn videos on the other hand involve real women being degraded.
Yep.
I never understand how people can equate a novel (work of fiction) or film (acting, no risk) with porn (real sex, often violent, with all the inherent risks of pregnancy, STDs, injury)
It baffles me. If they were that similar, we could just ban porn and have acted films. It's much safer for all involved.

novel, game, anime...
all these things affect woman, and the way people think of woman.

imo, 50 shade of gray(?) actually gave awakening "woman actually have sm fantasy."

@managedmis Men will join us. Eventually. But it will fall to women to mobilise and really push back. We would never have had the vote if we had to rely on men to begin the fight for enfranchisement.
Exhausting though - it seems there are so many battles to fight. And we have young men and women insisting we have equality now; no idea.

Pointless if men don't join us. Adult men. You know, ones with jobs and mortgages and homes and families and some iota of moral responsibility. But they don't. Why? WHY? Why don't these men care more about their daughters?
Because they've watch that shit themselves and don't like the cognitive dissonance between thinking they are a decent bloke and thinking they could've wanked over abuse of girls.
Much easier to pretend everyone loves it and it's all fine.

Why? WHY? Why don't these men care more about their daughters?

Because they are selfish, entitled bastards and they prioritise their boners above anything else. They showed us many times who they are, just believe them.

Women should push back much harder, because men will not change, they are like children pushing boundaries, one falls, there is another to be challenged.

A woman said she is fine with her partner using porn, but live chat is where she draws the line. Guess what, in a while, live chats will be totaly normal, as long they don't meet IRL, and so on and on..... until men will be allowed to have a house full of sex slaves (robots or real ones) like back in "good old times" and his wife feeling totally fine with that, even more, oh so empowered.

Now when Claire goes out, I find myself urging her to take more clothes to cover up with, as if she needs a suit of armour.

Claire responds that she should feel free to wear what she wants: I don’t think I should be forced to dress differently.

These men should know they are not entitled to look at me like they own me.

And she is so right

I don't think this is really helpfull. How many boys with their ass cheeks out do you see in the street? Women and girls should contribute their share to end rapey porn culture. Stop treating yourself like a sex object, stop buying into pop and fashion industry BS, stop celebrating idiots like Miley Cyrus, Cardi B, Beyonce.., they should be mocked.

I don't think this is really helpfull. How many boys with their ass cheeks out do you see in the street? Women and girls should contribute their share to end rapey porn culture
Stop that. It's a bum. It's not inherently erotic, men need to stop feeling like the sight of certain bits of women or girls entitles them to be pervy.
The problem with thinking that how women dress contributes to how they are treated, is that it leads to "modesty" dressing. The more bits are covered, the more a flash of those bits is seen as titillation, so they need to be covered more.
It's a vicious circle ending in Victorian style head to toe covering, or burkas, so women can be sure they haven't encouraged men.

Far far better to deal with mens attitudes so they don't automatically equate clothing choices with a woman being up for it.

Especially when the "woman" in question is in fact a child exploring and playing at what it means to be a woman.

My 12 year old DD went out in a knee length skirt and belly top (quite a long one) the other week and got cat called by some 30 year olds, and told what a gorgeous body she had. Rather than making her think her body is the problem, those men should be made to feel ashamed of themselves for their paedophilic attitudes (DD cannot be mistaken in any way for an adult)