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

As I just said:

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.

(End of my quote)

Let me give an example.

If someone is enjoying the fantasy of murdering people, then personally I think that's morally questionable regardless of whether they start making pretend murder videos for such people to enjoy.

Maybe a video market would throw up a load of extra issues, but just the basic issue of enjoying murder fantasy is an ethical issue itself.

It doesn't matter if you watch the videos or not. The core issue of enjoying the fantasy is still there. You can't just dismiss this as a real ethical issue.

The responses on the Times page itself were much more reassuring - but still one or two complete arseholes.

wow, pp is equating someone who has a passing fantasy of murdering [the person who cut them up in traffic/their annoying neighbour/their ex/their abuser] with a person who watches snuff videos. Good argument there, very convincing.

Anyway, since pp is cutting and pasting their own comment I’m going to do the same -I think my comment actually merits it and at least will help keep the thread on track. Also it gives me the opportunity to correct a typo.

The basic issue is 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.

I'm gonna be drumming it into my two boys that porn isn't real sex, what a shit world.

I found the article really disturbing, and the Twitter reaction to it more so. I'm at work just now looking around at men and thinking, if this is so mainstream it's highly likely that some of these men are watching it. I find that very scary. And even more scared for my teenage daughter.

wow, pp is equating someone who has a passing fantasy of murdering [the person who cut them up in traffic/their annoying neighbour/their ex/their abuser] with a person who watches snuff videos. Good argument there, very convincing.

That's not actually what I said. I didn't specify it was only a "passing fantasy". And I certainly didn't say they were equivalent in that way.

Imagine someone is repeatedly having and enjoying the fantasy of murdering innocent random people.

That's morally questionable by itself, regardless of whether they start watching "fake", pretend murder content.

So yes, you don't need to watch the videos for the basic ethical issue to be there.

I once had to do legal research into extreme porn, the kind that is illegal. I was looking into how easy it was to find (turns out it’s very easy: illegal porn is just a google search away). I didn’t watch any of the videos but I looked at thumbnails and descriptions, and it was so distressing I had to keep taking breaks like the times journalist describes. Pornhub also hosts a lot of illegal material… I looked at the stuff which was most popular with men in the U.K. that day and I think 15% qualified as illegal extreme pornography. It was very upsetting to see the kind of things that men were eagerly consuming. This wasn’t niche stuff but the most popular videos in the U.K. it doesn’t matter if it’s just actors and “fantasy” - why are men getting aroused by depictions of women being raped? Students having sex with teachers? Incest? women being filmed in secret without their knowledge?

its also frustrating to see men joke about women researching porn and saying they must have enjoyed it, they must have masturbated etc. the only other research project which came close in terms of how it disturbed me was when I had to read a bunch of materials about the Holocaust. Men, maybe you want to question why this is your chosen wank material.

If you want to start a thread about morally questionable fantasies please do - there’s certainly a discussion to have.

This thread is about the systematic (not fantasised) abuse of women and girls in the porn industry and the way in which actual, real life, violent abuse is being normalised to generations of children and teenagers. The discussion you want to have is off topic and you are minimising real life violence every time you attempt to draw this false equivalence with fantasy violence.

This wasn’t niche stuff but the most popular videos in the U.K. it doesn’t matter if it’s just actors and “fantasy” - why are men getting aroused by depictions of women being raped?

I think the thing is that it’s never just fantasy. If there’s violence depicted in porn, it’s real violence that was genuinely inflicted on the “actor.” If there’s rape depicted… there’s certainly no way to validate that consent existed, and there’s basically zero chance that the consent is enthusiastic (the best case scenario is that the woman is doing it for the money)… so it exists in exactly the same void of ambiguity that rapes frequently exist in, from the rapists’ point of view, i.e. a point of view where consent is, again, at best, irrelevant.

Well I guess it's kind of begging a question. Assuming pp is right and ethically there is no difference between fantasising about something and watching porn of it. Then why isn't there vast amounts of porn being made to cater for all the women who have the fantasies?

Clue: it's because there is a difference between imagination and reality.

Great Post

its also frustrating to see men joke about women researching porn and saying they must have enjoyed it,

The man who made the documentary about the girl (I say girl because she was about 18 and seemed so young) who went to film with iirc Max hardcore - people said to him ha ha that must have been fun and he talks about how bad it was and how he regrets not doing more for her.

They are.. they walk among us. How can they respect us when they fill their heads with this.

However distasteful I would encourage people to visit Pornhub. To note, anyone can get to it in a few clicks- so without filters our kids at any age can. Filters are useful but most 10/12 year olds can find a way around them. Have a look at the opening two pages and count the number of times the words slg and bit* are used alongside other such words. They are numerous. The porn is mixed- some porn is actually quite entertaining but mostly its vile, deeply mysoginistic and we should be really worried our kids can access this in a couple of clicks. In my view this is setting a tone for the way that boys and young men behave and if we do not tackle some of these sites we are at risk of going backwards in terms of violence against women.

Absolutely this.

The same men who will catcall a young girl walking home from school in her uniform.

These men are someone's husband. Brother. Dad. Uncle. Son.

Obviously NAMALT but y'know if I don't say it someone else will have a problem

You're not wrong OP and there are important conversations we need to have about the state of porn and society, but of all the targets (fake taxi/cop) she could have chosen for her article she probably couldn't have picked one's more likely attract the kind of derision it has.

Whilst overall I think she's on the right side of the battle, I think she launched a weak attack on one of the "enemy's" better fortified positions. There are so many examples she could have chosen to write about (like old men with very young girls, depictions of incest and "step daughters", disney type cartoons) that wouldn't have had the same kind of defense mounted.

But who knows, maybe she knew that and did it anyway because she wanted this reaction and discussion.

but of all the targets (fake taxi/cop) she could have chosen for her article she probably couldn't have picked one's more likely attract the kind of derision it has.

Did you read the article, not just the quote pulled by the gross misogynist? She wasn’t “targeting” one particular trope, she watched all the most popular videos and happened to mention in one paragraph one trope she found disturbing (in the light of all the abuses by real cops and real taxi drivers.)

I think you are 100% wrong. If disgusting scumbag men hadn’t latched on to that one paragraph to deliberately misunderstand and use as a pretext to heap derision on her, the vile creatures would have seized some other pretext.

Because their real problem with the article is not that they didn’t understand that paragraph - it’s that she’s shaming them, quite deservedly, for their wank material.

I didn't say that there was "no difference" precisely. I said that there was a core ethical issue either way. (With fantasy of harm to others.) Porn can have additional issues to it.

With regard to your argument, what are you even arguing? Men watch porn, but women will not (made by consenting adults), because it's unethical?

I'm skeptical that the fantasy is relatively harmless, and the bad thing is the fantasy porn. Isn't it the underlying fantasy that will be driving a lot of the porn creation? Also you can just go straight from the fantasy to real world harm sometimes.

This is spot on OP, thanks.

A tiny minority of 'ethical' porn makers aside, most porm producers recruit young, often vulnerable women, many of whom have already experienced sexual trauma. They pay them small amounts of money to be filmed being violated and assaulted by men they don't know. If the women show their distress/cry, then that makes the video more popular.

It's not acting. They're not actors. It's not entertainment and it's terrifying that our kids are going to watch this one day and think it's normal.

The videos ARE real world harm; women are harmed in the making of them. And they introduce and normalise the fantasy, desensitising viewers to the brutality and degradation.

Most women keep their sexual fantasies in their own heads, they rarely discuss them in public, so surveys like the one quoted are not the norm. Violent porn allows those people who wish to see sex in terms of violence and harm to validate their own beliefs. I do not know if porn hub ever questions the origin of their content, but some organised abuse groups film their attacks on women and children, there are no "willing " actors involved. The perpetrators will disguise themselves to avoid identification.

My argument is you cannot police what someone thinks, people think about all kinds of stuff they would never countenance in real life. So i don't think any fantasies are morally wrong as such. What people choose to think about is their own business.

A man who chooses to watch women being sexually degraded, sexually assaulted, and violently treated is morally questionable because that woman is actually being choked/called misogynist terms whatever.

There is no equivalence between fantasy and porn. Men like to argue there is to confuse things and deflect from the fact that essentially they are getting off on harm to women.

Isn't it the underlying fantasy that will be driving a lot of the porn creation? Also you can just go straight from the fantasy to real world harm sometimes.

And this was my other point. If this statement were true you'd see a lot of porn aimed at women, as they have all the fantasies you linked. That isn't what happens. Therefore the hypothesis that fantasy leads to porn is flawed.

My hypothesis is male entitlement to sex leads to porn as some men have no qualms with watching women being harmed for their own sexual pleasure. Porn is now normalised so men think "everyone does it" and they watch it and become entitled. Its a vicious circle that has nothing to do with womens fantasies.

I could say your own argument is a justification for being able to "get off on the fantasy of harm to women". You are saying that anything is OK as long as it's just a fantasy.

Also note that porn doesn't have to use real actors. It can be animated. In the future probably computer generated. Of course there are still issues with it like the impact it will have, but it doesn't have to have the issue of using real people.

It's filmed prostitution and it has all the same moral problems in terms of exploitation and abuse. I think it should be discussed as such - none of the bullshit about acting and fantasies.