Times article on Pornhub - and the response to it

[RoyalCorgi]

In today's Times, Helen Rumbelow wrote an excellent article about Pornhub, and the preponderance of videos where men are shown to be enjoying violence and abuse of women.

On Twitter, someone called Mic Wright has claimed (either because he's stupid, or because he's deliberately trying to cause trouble) that Rumbelow didn't realise the porn participants were actors, and that she's just a bit silly for not understanding that this is all just fantasy and therefore harmless.

He clearly hasn't grasped, or begun to grasp, the idea that boys watching, for pleasure, scenarios in which women are beaten or choked, is not healthy.

What's depressing is the number of men who have joined in to mock Rumbelow.

What's also depressing is that men like this not only watch the most vile, disgusting porn revelling in the depiction of women being harmed, but are prepared to boast about it publicly on Twitter. They don't have the decency to feel ashamed. It makes me despair about men.

https://twitter.com/brokenbottleboy/status/1656178711627014145

OMG, the number of comments along the lines of, 'someone got caught on pornhub at work so convinced their boss it was research and had to then write a whole article about it'. Yes, like it's a really common / normal thing for women to be watching porn at work. Standard. No, it's not. File along with all the portrayals of women watching porn in modern tv and film, which are designed to normalise it and throw us all off the scent that this is actually exploitative, dangerous and damaging bullshit that does nothing but feed the capitalist patriarchy.

I remember a joke going around at the start of the Ukraine invasion; with all the sanctions eg McDonald's, Coke, pornhub etc, Russian citizens would soon be the healthiest and happiest people in the world. And it works as a joke because there is a truth there. It's not rocket science, so why do so many people buy in to this shite?

OMG, the number of comments along the lines of, 'someone got caught on pornhub at work so convinced their boss it was research and had to then write a whole article about it'. Yes, like it's a really common / normal thing for women to be watching porn at work.

Yes, this made me so angry. Rumbelow was clearly distressed by the content she had to watch. Why on earth these pornsick men imagine women get turned on by watching other women being choked, beaten, spat on etc is beyond me. They must be completely devoid of any idea of what women are like. It frightens me.

I was looking for discussion on this - I wonder if anyone has a share token for the article? I saw an excerpt in which she said she couldn't get the images of the women's pain out of her head for days. It's truly terrifying that teenagers are seeing this stuff and thinking it's what sex is like, and that men are conditioning themselves to see women as objects for torture.

Mic Wright came out in support of Freda Wallace the other day. Just to give another idea of how much of a misogynist he is.

Why am I not surprised?

I don't have a share token, unfortunately, but hopefully someone else does. Here's the link for anyone who has a subscription:

Share token:

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/a2da8e10-ee6f-11ed-87b0-716b9284a2b0?shareToken

I don't think it's any surprise people think that because it's actors it's harmless.

People have been fed this thinking as truth, in many contexts, for some time. You can have any sexual fantasy and it won't affect you. Playing violent video games or watching very violent tv doesn't affect you. Any roleplay is ok as long as there is consent, etc.

Thanks, for some reason that's still not working for me and I'm being asked to subscribe - I feel like this is such an important issue, I wish they wouldn't paywall it! I guess I have the gist anyway and I can't understand the defence of 'it's only actors/just fantasy'. People (and let's face it, mainly men) are rewiring their brains by orgasming to watching abuse. Porn seems to get away with not just its visceral hatred of women, but also racism, like any kind of offensive material is fine when it's for masturbating too - but masturbating to this stuff makes it more dangerous not less because it makes it more rewarding, and thr more taboo and transgressive the greater the reward becomes.

For articles you can’t see, copy the URL, go to archive dot ph, paste the URL in. Almost always the article will be there.

What widespread male-focused pornography seems to have achieved is a world where many believe that whatever paid female actors are doing in porn is what women enjoy in sex, when the reality is that the women in porn never say 'no' to anything the male directors order, and those things are what the male audience is expected to enjoy.

Five years ago I did some research on autoerotic asphyxiation and then it was defined as an almost entirely male phenomenon. Suddenly (it seems) women and girls supposedly demand to be strangled in sex. And slapped. And anally penetrated, when for most women there's nothing erogenous along that route and the health risks are greater than for men.

There was a time when I read articles about what women like in sex, believe it or not! But that's no longer the case, because women are supposed to like whatever porn creators use to interpret men's desires for what women's desires should be.

I don't think it's any surprise people think that because it's actors it's harmless.

Agreed. But also, although the participants may think of themselves as actors, they're not really acting. If you see two people having sex in, say, Normal People, they're not actually having sex. If you see a fight in Peaky Blinders, no one is really being hurt. It's all fake.

But in porn, the woman is being penetrated, slapped, choked, spat on or beaten. The actors aren't pretending to do those things. And you have to ask whether the female participants are truly consensual, or whether they have been coerced.

Same guy (Mic Wright) was harassing Glinner on Twitter, saying their kids went to the same school.

Just your common or garden bellend.

Also, it's an interesting paradox that the people commenting on this article are so clear that these are actors, it's all pretend, and yet at the same time, as @nepeta outlines, many porn watchers somehow also believe that porn depicts what women want.

I wouldn't want to be in a relationship with someone who gets off on watching women being hurt even if it is just 'fantasy' or 'acting' (setting aside the question of coercion, which I think is also a valid point). It's bizarre that these blokes can't see that as a problem. Why would you want to be with someone who thinks of women in that way? It is terrifying they can't see the obvious issues here.

Queer Theory strikes again.

Bring back shaming, that's what I reckon.

The Twitter misogynist apparently claims to be a school governor. Is there any way to let the school know how he’s behaving?

I agree about the actors.

I also don't understand why men don't question their own morals, if they are getting turned on by watching others being harmed. Even if it is acting.

I wonder where these men would draw the line?

What degree of violence is it socially acceptable to have a wank to? If it's only acting and special effects is it ok to wank over an acted scene where a woman is being beaten to a bloody pulp? Killed?

If that's not ok, then what's the difference between that and the simulated rape many men get off on? The ability for them to convince themselves that deep down the bitch whore likes it really?

Or maybe they do think it's ok, and that'll be the next wave of porn.

It's also a question for women apparently.

https://www.businessinsider.com/what-women-fantasize-about-2014-11

Women's sexual fantasies do not always reflect what they want in real life, according to a recently published study in the Journal of Sexual Medicine.

For example, while a large proportion of women in the study said they fantasized about being dominated in some way, half of those women specifically indicated that they would not want to live out their fantasy of sexual submission.

...

Some of the less common sexual fantasies women reported in the study were:

• Dominating someone sexually. (46.7%)
• Watching someone undress without him or her knowing. (31.8%)

It's also a question for women apparently.

It should be a question for anyone who watches porn. But sexual fantasies per se have nothing to do with that. Are you one of those incredibly disturbing but numerous men who thinks it’s impossible to masturbate without porn? Please be aware that’s not how it is for most people, and your graph is off topic.

God, that article is depressing. Men can be so awful can't they. I swear we're going backwards as women
They keep finding new ways to grind is down.

I've been following Exodus Cry who work on exposing the industry and the trafficking that goes on in Pornhub.
The interview with Max Hard-core, saying how he breaks girls down until they'll comply with anything is terrifying and heart breaking.
The girls talking about how they are picked for how young they look, wearing children's clothes, but because they are of legal age nothing is done.

I disagree. I think the ethical issue would apply to anyone that even has those types of fantasies.

There may be additional ethical issues with pornography like the use of "actors" that have to portray the fantasy.

But surely the basic issue isn't porn, it's that you get turned on by such and such a fantasy, regardless of whether that's just in your head or you are watching a porn video of it.

yeah he “identifies as a reporter” these days. Seems to have a beef that he’s not working for a big name newspaper.

He’s been captured by trans ideology which is a shame as he used to be exactly the kind of journalist that is needed to get to the bottom of these issues and uncover the insidious creep of this indoctrination and the damage to young people. He’s intelligent enough to know that being GC doesn’t equal hating on trans too yet spends too much time on Twitter ignoring the nuances.

he deleted a wholly unnecessary nasty tweet to glinner where he brought glinners kids into it, then took fright when glinner contacted the school. He used his partners kid’s (not his child) school play as a reason to insult glinner. Low blow, immature.

he RTs from Freda Wallace who penned a shite note full of crap about why they left Twitter, misogyny was rife. Telling “cis” women his tits were better. Because you know that’s what actual woman do

his Twitter timeline is a good example of how left men hate on women, don’t get the issues, interspersed with a few “let’s make it look like I’m the good guy who supports women” tweets. He needs to step away to see it.

glinner has been on the right side of calling out this mess from the start, there’s no golden bridge for mic who rts Owen Jones and other misogynists.

Fantasies in someone's head aren't the same as watching someone being abused in real life 🙄

I feel like we've had this conversation before and I have no interest in "but 50 shades!" twattaboutery

But surely the basic issue isn't porn, it's that you get turned on by such and such a fantasy, regardless of whether that's just in your head or you are watching a porn video of it.

No, the basic issue js that one class of humans are, in real life, being systematically tortured and abused for the amusement of the other class of humans, and that children of both classes are growing up to believe this is normal.