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

Perhaps read what he ACTUALLY said!

I have thanks Valerie and I don't agree with him at all.

You wanted to show that porn does harm others, and you came up with fake news. It isn't true that a 'porn actress in Japan died from choking on semen in a bukkake film'. This is what it says on this site https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/the-goldwater/

"I have never reviewed this website, but within 2 minutes I located a fake news story: Japanese Porn Star Drowns In Semen While Filming Bukkake Scene. This fake/satire story originated in the now defunct Sunday Register, which was a known satirical website. The Goldwater did not label this article as satire, so one must assume it was passed off as real news. Overall, The Goldwater is a Questionable Source as confirmed by three different reviewers."

In a recent article by Julie Bindel she wrote 'Tina sold sex from high-end London hotels for years and was forced to sleep in handcuffs every night'. She gives a reference for this, a link to a site belonging to Rachel Moran. Yet if you do a search on this site for 'Tina' or 'handcuffs' nothing comes up. There is testimony from women but no Tina. None of them say anything about handcuffs.

I have read Rachel Moran's book and it doesn't say that women are physically forced into prostitution. That's not her message.

You could easily have done some research as I have done and seen that this story is false. Bindel's readers could easily click on the links in her article and seen that they don't confirm her opinions. The problem is that even though people like you know nothing about the issue you think 'that sounds about right to me' and you don't bother.

People like Julie Bindel rely on people like you not bothering to check the facts. You insist that prostitution does 'involve coercion in the majority of cases'. But you can't back it up with facts. So I would say that the evidence is that it is people like you who are living in cloud cuckoo land.

Listen to Richura’s Gupta on Woman’s Hour yesterday about coercion and prostitution. She called prostitution sex by invasion.

She said she did not consider ‘sex work’ to be an appropriate description.
(The woman’s hour presenter interjected at that point to say not everyone agrees with that, annoyingly imo, as I do not see ‘both sideism’ as being valid here.)
www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m001np00

Are you really arguing that porn and prostitution are low risk activities? 😆🙃

If a woman is having sex on camera, she is not " acting". she is actually undergoing and experiencing what is happening to her/ body.

This idea that it is 'just' an " actress" with the implications that it is not 'real' is pure bullshit.

😂🙃cringe

Just saw this story on Twitter. Jesus f'ing Christ. Is there no end to the depravity of men.
https://www.scotsman.com/news/opinion/columnists/horrific-case-of-french-husband-accused-of-drugging-wife-so-strange-men-could-rape-her-should-make-politicians-rule-out-decriminalising-prostitution-dr-jacci-stoyle-4214806

You've got Alec Baldwin waving guns around on set and suicides from Love Island. You don't want to talk about these though, you want to talk about made-up stories about pornography.

There is a great deal of modern slavery in countries like India but people like Richura Gupta don't want to talk about that. Instead she wants to make generalisations about prostitution worldwide.

SuePine69 · Today 14:50

AdamRyan · 12/07/2023 13:58

Are you really arguing that porn and prostitution are low risk activities? 😆🙃

You've got Alec Baldwin waving guns around on set and suicides from Love Island. You don't want to talk about these though, you want to talk about made-up stories about pornography.

There is a great deal of modern slavery in countries like India but people like Richura Gupta don't want to talk about that. Instead she wants to make generalisations about prostitution worldwide.

I heard Ruchira Gupta talking a lot of sense on Woman’s Hour

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m001np00

about little girls being sold into prostitution in India. She also described prostitution/rape, as ‘sex by invasion’ not ‘sex work’.

Don’t worry, the BBC was very quick to interject, re her interpretation that prostitution should not be called ‘sex work,’ to say that ‘Not everyone agrees with that’.

Not the BBC itself but the WH presenter

I posted about this here some years back, so excuses for those who've read it before.

Years ago I took my kids on a holiday. My older son had his own room but his brother, who was about 10 or 11, had to share mine. And this turned out to be a blessing. Such a blessing.

in the middle of the night I must have made a noise which told my son I was awake. So he started talking in the dark...

I had blocks on our Wi-fi at home but one of his friends who had a very disrupted home life, including a steady stream of stepfathers, had shown my son abusive porn. DS2 found it incredibly worrying. He was revolted at the idea he would be expected to take part in violent threesomes or watch women weep or scream. Poor little bugger thought it was compulsory.

I succeeded in reassuring him. Among other things I pointed out how unlikely it was that his friends' parents - lovely, affectionate couples - were treating each other like that. When I managed to make him laugh I knew I was winning.

So boys don't automatically get turned on by things on Pornhub. Gentle, loving boys like my DS are as repelled as women are. We need to talk to them, and reassure them.

“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”

I have read and listened to Jordan Peterson a fair bit and never come across anything like this unless you are referring to similar ideas to those expressed by Louise Perry and Mary Harrington? His interview with Helen Joyce was interesting and thoughtful, not on YouTube anymore as they deemed it hateful so I am very skeptical nowadays when I hear anyone dismissed as “hateful”, misogynistic and son on. There is a human tendency to demonise particular people, newspapers, forums etc. I used to do this too before coming into women’s rights and gender identity debates. I kept looking in vain for articles about women’s rights in the Guardian, I only ever read the Guardian or Independent and would have been disparaging about the Daily Mail or the Telegraph and their readers, it took a while before I understood that I needed to read and listen more widely.

Can you share links to Jordan Peterson saying what you find objectionable?

I would much rather my daughters find boyfriends who are reading/listening to Jordan Peterson than pornography. He encourages men to behave with integrity and to value family and relationships, to find a sense of self respect in being their best from what I can tell.

Anyway not to make the thread about JP, the topic is too important and should not be derailed but I could not let what seems an unjust accusation against a named individual who I think has a contribution to make in fighting pornography and gender identity ideology pass without comment.

Meghan Murphy is good on this topic

https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/feminist-current/id603245791?i=1000610037783

https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/the-same-drugs/id1504029211?i=1000613944352

A PP mentioned Exodus Cry

https://exoduscry.com/

there is also this organisation campaigning against the pornification of society

https://www.collectiveshout.org/

Most people wouldn't accept "it's fictional" as an excuse for positive portrayals of extreme misogyny in mainstream film or TV drama, why should pornography be any different?

The Fake Taxi pornography series launched in 2012, why is it being talked about now?

It takes some balls to sneer at people for not keeping up with the latest porn releases as eagerly as you do.

According to Wikipedia "Exodus Cry is a Christian non-profit advocacy organization seeking the abolition of the legal commercial sex industry, including pornography, strip clubs, and sex work, as well as illegal sex trafficking. It has been described by the New York Daily News, TheWrap, and others as anti-LGBT, with ties to the anti-abortion movement".

On the Exodus Cry site it states that PornHub has got videos of Ukrainian refugee women. Julie Bindel stated 'Pornhub has a new category: “Ukrainian girls and war rape videos”'. This is false.

As for Ruchira Gupta, I don't know about her, but I do know about her Cambodian equivalent, Somaly Mam. It turns out she is a liar. "During the years Somaly Mam was supposedly trapped in a Phnom Penh brothel, she was actually attending school in her hometown." She also told a supposed victim to say that a pimp gouged her eye out when the truth was it was the result of the removal, at age 13, of a non-malignant tumour.

Activists like Somaly Mam promote brothel raids where the women are either deported or imprisoned. Women held against their will try to escape. Police brutality against prostitutes is enormous, including rape, but these activists don't want to talk about that. They try to deny funding to rival organisations who don't share their ideology.