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

AdamRyan · Today 18:47

ScrollingLeaves · Today 18:16

I remember a poster once mentioned their sons listened to Jordan Peterson talking about it and that this influenced them nit to be taken in by the pull.

Jordan Peterson has some very anti-woman views. He thinks "enforced monogamy" is the answer to preventing incel terrorism for example. He is a hero for the alt right, antifeminist man. I strongly suggest you don'tintroduce your son to his thinking

The talk was about men and porn.
Sons addicted to porn could be the greater evil than hearing Peterson explain why porn is a bad idea in a convincing way.

I have heard him in some talks about gender identity ideology where I thought he said very true things.

So I suppose it is a case of not throwing out the baby with the bath water.

A lot of fathers won't confront the issue of porn because they themselves are compulsive users and part of the problem. They don't want to reflect too closely on their own behaviour, and they don't want to install filters because that would be cutting off their own supply.

I remember the Fake Taxi Driver series. If it's the one I looked at it is an actor pretending to be a taxi driver flirting with an actress pretending to be a passenger sitting in the back seat. She agrees to have sex with him and he parks up.

I don't know where Helen Rumbelow gets the the idea about 'remote country lanes'. It is nothing to do with rape. The taxi driver is not raping the woman or forcing her to have sex because she doesn't have any money.

Thanks for that insightful commentary, Barry Norman.

Fantasy, within the persons own head, is not validatedby being available on a screen. Images on a screen are provided by other people, which confirms that others think about whatever those images are. If these images are violent, include rape etc, then they confirm for the viewer that these are "normal" actions, thus validating the belief that rape is usual and acceptable. This is especially so if the viewers are young and impressionable, with little knowledge off adult sexual relationships.

Porn is a product, its nobody's fantasy. Sick of dishonest rubbish from men, trying to equate restrictions on porn as 'controlling their thoughts' ie oppression

That it's less common, doesn't mean it's not an issue.

Yes, but presumably there has to be something questionable about the fantasy in the first place, before you can worry that it's being validated by porn.

There are plenty of ways to evade any blockers (sadly). Heck even YouTube, twitter and reddit have an abundance of porn which aren't filtered by any sort of block, let alone the numerous websites.

I can't access the article but surely this sort of thing is made to appeal to (mainly) men as its a women in a vulnerable position of whom they can take advantage of easily. Sure they're set up, but when you really think about the popular searches and genres in porn its pretty grim as to why it is made and why it appeals to men. Schoolgirl and teacher (ew), stepdad and stepdaughter or some variation of, teen girls, degrading and absuive scenarios etc.

The other issue of course is young people viewing it and both girls and boys thinking this is 'normal' sex when it's not.

Barry Norman will have reviewed hundreds of violent films in his career. Helen Rumbelow isn't interested in that though. Instead she wants to tell us that the Fake Taxi Driver series is violent, and that this is a problem, even though the series does not involve coercion.

She is a master of the art of plausible deniability. She will imply something, but then say 'that's not what I wrote'. Instead of stating that the Fake Taxi Driver series will result in more women being raped by taxi drivers, fake or otherwise, she writes 'In the light of high-profile court cases in the UK involving taxi drivers ... these were both disturbing'.

Disturbing in what way? I think people like her will always find pornography disturbing. It's not about violence. She's trying to soften the British public up for a ban.

She is trying to soften the British public up for a ban. Good, I hope she succeeds.

Instead of stating that the Fake Taxi Driver series will result in more women being raped by taxi drivers, fake or otherwise

Don’t be ridiculous. She’s not trying to imply that.

Disturbing in what way?

You can figure it out yourself. Or maybe you can’t. It might involve catching up on some missed developmental stages.

I figured it out a long time ago. Seople are disgusted by pornography. We live in a society where people can do what they like as long as it doesn't harm others. So people who want a ban have to try and make a case that pornography harms others, no matter how vague or misleading their argument is.

They will preach to the converted but will be unable to persuade anyone else. The people who they will least be able to persuade will be teenage boys, who look at pornography and see that most of what they watch doesn't involve coercion of women. They know that Fake Taxi Driver has nothing to do with court cases involving taxi drivers. Consensual sex is not the same thing as coercion, no matter how much some people want to jumble them up together.

Many of the women in the sex industry are literally being pimped out. Many others are traumatised and vulnerable people who are being harmed for money.

Your definition of coercion is way off or you are living in cloud cuckoo land if you think prostitution doesn't involve coercion in the majority of cases, even if you do believe that buying consent isn't coercion in and of itself.

You think you can tell that a woman in a video hasn't been sex trafficked? How? Are you Mystic Meg? You don't think they would say that on camera, do you? Have you never heard about all the women who've found out that videos of them being sexually abused as children are all over porn sites? If you regularly watch porn, you have definitely watched a filmed rape, no matter how slack your definition of rape is.

I figured it out a long time ago

you will never figure it out - you are incapable - but that’s okay, the conversation will move on without you and men like you.

We live in a society where people can do what they like as long as it doesn't harm others

Women are harmed during filming of porn. I suggest you watch the film "hot girls wanted". A porn actress in Japan died from choking on semen in a bukkake film.

Women are harmed in relationships with men who want to act out what they've seen in port. Anal injuries in teenagers are on the rise.

And men are harmed as 'legal' porn is a gateway into illegal images. It's estimated there are lots of men prosecuted for watching/distributing CSA who wouldn't have been interested without the porn slippery slope.

I don't know how porn addled men discount all this. But you do you

@AdamRyan 100%. We are all harmed by this proliferation of porn.

Even if the taxi videos don’t involve rape, they still send out a deeply unpleasant and disturbing message that women are theoretically willing to have sex with a random taxi driver. It promulgates this idea that women welcome flirtation from drivers, that he might well have a shot. When in reality women just want to get from a to b in peace. It’s a very vulnerable place, to be in a car with a stranger , and it would be excruciating if he came onto me. I know people are trying to minimise the porn and say it’s not showing anything illegal or nasty, but the way I see it it’s false propaganda about women that has the potential to put them in uncomfortable situations.

I'm not pro-porn at all but I do think this is a stretch.

In real life, even the most porn-addicted men aren't going to think that. A minute minority of disturbed fringe intel types, maybe... but even then... I really doubt that fake taxi will cause any real world harassment.

The idea of a taxi driver and passenger having sex is a fairly tame fantasy. Nothing especially unusual about things like this. And having seen fake taxi, it's not remotely realistic.

It's if the giant tits and heels type porn which everyone knows is very fake and porn-y.

Agreed. Since taxis have become more tracked, the drivers are less sleazy but it still happens. I know far too many women who have been raped in taxis. It feels pointless to try and prevent all this and then porn sets it backwards. Same with teacher/student etc, on one hand it's abhorrent but then men are watching it in porn. It ruins their minds.

It doesn’t matter if it causes real life harassment or not, the message it’s sending about women, the propaganda, is stereotypical and disturbing. The message is that women are ready to have sex with strange men at all times. And given that porn has already massively influenced male sexual behaviour (they’re all into slapping and strangulation now) I find it extremely hard to believe that men aren’t influenced by this shit. If you watched racist videos for hours a week and linked this to your brains reward centre I’m sure you would start to believe dodgy shit.

Men are influenced by porn. But they're not influenced to think women in taxis are all sleazy and willing to drop their knickers, that's just not realistic - at least not for anyone who's touched grass recently. I think few men are influenced in that specific way.

The sexualisation of women... that's porn unfortunately. It's going to show women in a sexual manner.

I don't think the key issue is that porn is too sexual. But that's just my opinion on it, probably expressed incoherently

You're assuming all men have healthy intelligent minds with a high moral code.. and that's a dangerous assumption.

Snuff