Discussions about porn

[Wandawomble]

Have noticed a few things and just want to put them up for thought.

Discussion of porn affecting women and girls often gets shouted down. Why do some women in particular get so protective over it?

Discussion of porn affecting women and girls gets hijacked by sex workers saying it’s their right to do it - I don’t disagree that people can do what they want with their bodies but why can we not talk about the effect that porn has on other women and girls? I think they are two separate issues. How do we talk about both in these kinds of discussions and separate the two issues in a coherent and respectful way?

Ideas and thoughts?

Women get defensive because it's something they feel is out of their control (all men do it) and they have to just accept as part of life/relationships/society now so they try to convince themselves it's 'normal'. Enjoying looking at naked people/people having sex is very normal, it's the level of violence/abuse/extremity in online porn which isn't but that's a difficult line to draw/defend when it's everywhere and so normalised.

I have the same issue with vanilla shaming. We can't control other peoples beliefs or behaviour. That means we can't force other people to discuss ideas or issues in the way we want, the only thing we can do is have the discussion ourselves, and carry on consciousness raising.

I try not to get dragged into pointless goady threads. I try to remind myself that the industry pays shills to shout over discussions online, that anyone (including paid trolls) can use a female profile, and stay patient. Keep posting for the lurkers.

Is it mainly online or in real life?
Online I'm often skeptical if people are actually women or men with an agenda.
I think there are a lot of women my age (40s) who say they are OK with porn because when we were growing up it was mainly top less magazines and fairly tame videos bought in sex shops. I think a lot of women aren't familiar with what's on e.g. pornhub and so they don't realise what they are supporting when they say they are ok with it.

Pornhub have a great PR machine so I don't believe a thing they say.
Other research shows women are far more likely to watch porn with partners than alone, at a much lower frequency than men. So how can you rule out that the "women" searches on pornhub aren't in fact couples?

Can you link tge study that says women watch more violent stuff? I've google the analytics reports but can't find any conclusions like that

Like a lot of things, I think there are a number of reasons.

There is absolutely a contingent of women who are regular or occasional porn watchers and tend to resent claims that they are enabling exploitation and are pervy. Just like men who watch porn.

Some women also see it as a sexual freedom issue. It's often vaguely expressed and not thought out clearly, but when it is what it comes down to is a concern that restricting women from participating in sex that is not mentally or physically healthy could have other ramifications beyond the pornography industry. For example, what if we as a majority of society decided that overall, casual sex with strangers was not mentally or physically healthy, was risky in a direct way for individuals, and was also socially destructive? Would it be ok then to restrict individual's sexual choices?

And I think maybe important to understanding this perspective is that they are nt just worried about being legally restricted. They worry about social custom, or judgement of others, on sexual activities people might choose. They want a society where parents would not teach their kids that sexual choices they might make could be bad choices. They see that as dangerous, more so than the problems that might come from all choices being ok.

I think it's completely wrongheaded, but there is a logic to it - it's difficult to draw a hard line between choosing to get money from having sex with a stranger, and some other things people choose to do sexually for any number of motivations. If there is a social element to the choice, that could impact all kinds of decisions, not just around porn or prostitution.

Hmm. That article says "Aquarter of straight porn searches by women are for videos featuring violence against their own sex. Five percent of searches by women are for content portraying nonconsensual sex"
The most popular searches by women are for lesbian porn and pussy licking. So they won't be included in that analysis.
Unfortunately I think it suits the porn industry to imply women like violent porn as much as/more than men. So they've twisted their analysis to reach that conclusion.

It's a longstanding known thing that in female sexual fantasy non-concentual sexual situation are among the most common sorts of fantasy.

Without hypothesising about why that is, it maybe fits in with why women who search for porn might be interested in that sort of thing? Women after all were the main readers of all those awful Twilight fan fiction books.

Straight from the horses mouth www.pornhub.com/insights/2019-year-in-review
37% of gay male porn is watched by women. Also won't be included in the analysis you linked.
The top search terms by women don't appear to be violence either.
Sorry, but i think its a total myth that women like degrading porn more than men. Its something pro porn posters here like to say but there's no evidence for it so I think some posters have an agenda

Though I kind of think that they are not the ones driving the increasing violence of online porn.

Anyway. We are proving OPs point that discussions about porn get derailed onto "women do it too"

@QuentinWinters

Hmm. That article says "Aquarter of straight porn searches by women are for videos featuring violence against their own sex. Five percent of searches by women are for content portraying nonconsensual sex" The most popular searches by women are for lesbian porn and pussy licking. So they won't be included in that analysis. Unfortunately I think it suits the porn industry to imply women like violent porn as much as/more than men. So they've twisted their analysis to reach that conclusion.

Came to say the same. The prevalence of violent porn on sites like pornhub is not explained by by women liking it. It's explained by the vastly higher numbers of men who watch it.

OP you’re right. Because it’s not just about the sex workers or the men, or even the wives and girlfriends but about the effect that it has on women and girls growing up, realising that this is what men see in them, that that is what their main value is.

Oh 50 shades again. Because a book written about some entirely fictional characters is exactly the same as watching a real life woman being choked or slapped in porn
You are really trotting out the pro porn tropes here. I see you.

The sort of porn available on sites like pornhub is not made for women. It is made for men. How do we know this? Because men make up the vast majority of viewers and it's a commercial enterprise. Pornhub will be very clear what its main market is looking for and its effort is channeled into encouraging that market to return: it's neat isn't it that pornhub can now produce evidence that women like the worst sort of content on the site more than men. It's almost like that might help deflect criticism of their most exploitative and degrading content 🤔