BBC article on the link between porn and sexual violence

[biddyboo]

There is a really good, insightful article on BBC news site today on the role porn has had in normalising violent and degrading sexual behaviour towards women.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c20wejy47evo

I hope this issue continues to be explored more in the media.

Thank you for posting this. I remember in the 80s and 90s liberals used t push back very hard against the idea that the media one consumes can influence one's actions in the real world. And for certain types of media, that's true. Statistically speaking, no one ever went on a homicidal rampage after reading The Iliad, or stabbed their uncle after studying Hamlet. Or set up a Satanic coven after listening to Marilyn Manson (well, possibly some teens did that, but probably didn't get very far after they discovered that covens involve a lot of time standing outside in the cold and dark chanting in esoteric Latin).

Porn is different because of the nature of sexual arousal and orgasm. The masturbation and orgasm means that the viewer is more physically involved than they would be if they were reading a book or listening to a record. And there's convincing studie which show that paraphiliac arousal is accumulative ie you have to go a bit further each time to get your nut. Kind of like heroin. Always looking to re-capture that initial euphoria.

Thats why on the transwidows threads we see so many widows explaining how their husbands started with porn, then cross dressing, then it escalated.

Same with how rapists often start by exposing themselves, or stealing womens underwear, the escalate.

We know that porn is affecting how men behave in real life due to the increasing prevalence of 'breath play' in their sexual demands. We know that porn is sadly making girls more and more afraid of womanhood due to what they think womanhood will demand from them in bed.

It needs to be understood for the scourge it is.

I think it's time men started to realise porn isn't about self actualization but about programming.
Men are allowing their humanity and dignity to be to be destroyed. They need to reclaim it.

One of my favourite films is Klute. The scene where the killer says he was told everything was ok, whatever you want is ok.
Let it all hang out, move fast and break things all come from people who have never really seen what humans are capable of. Freedom is dependent on boundaries.

If men don't start to take a stand and be counted we're heading to a very dark place. Somehow we need to convince men they are better than this.

Next they will be doing an article on how when it rains the ground gets wet.

Is ‘breath play’ the choking thing? I don’t want to google it.

My own teenage daughter shows all the signs of being afraid of womanhood and I don’t know what to tell her. It’s not looking great out there. Is the evidence on more girls feeling the same way anecdotal? I’d love to read about it.

I wish we could close the lid on this Pandora’s box.

It is indeed a scourge.

Let it all hang out, move fast and break things all come from people who have never really seen what humans are capable of. Freedom is dependent on boundaries.

This is an incredibly insightful comment.

I think it's significant that the philosophy of 'let it all hang out, don't judge me, I need to be authentic me, don't yuk my yum' only really started in the West (US & Western Europe) in the 1960s. IE it is the philosophy of a couple of generations who had never personally experienced war, Blitz, the horrors of deprivation and poverty. It is the philosophy of a coddled and spoiled society that has never properly experienced evil (or capital E Evil, take your pick).

And yes, that's led to a lack of boundaries, which in turn has led to a resurgence of Evil, which is what I think abusive porn amounts to. We've become so lax, so non-judgemental and so enamoured of moral relativism, that we've collectively fallen asleep on the job and allowed a different and new type of Evil to sneak in the back door.

Very much so. The sixties were all about breaking boundaries, which were seen as bad in themselves. No-one asked why a fence (boundary) was in place before tearing it down. We have let out the dragons.

What happened after the sixties to wrap things back again? Recession?

If they were better than this they would be repulsed by the violence and degrading language/acts in it. It's time we faced the reality that users of violent and degrading porn are not good men and never will be. You can't convince them to stop. They like the fact that it's abusive. It's a feature, not a bug.
That's the grim reality of it.

I have a teenage daughter who at 17 is far more reluctant to engage with growing up than I would expect.
What can you say? Look out for a lad who's parents banned the internet, that's got a whole heap of other problems waiting.

Quite. Speaking as a boomer...as a child I always thought my parents and grandparents were too buttoned up, too judgemental, too small minded. It's only as an adult and a mother (and now grandmother) myself that I came to realise that my grandparents and parents, having lived through the Nazi invasion and occupation of their country and a subsequent famine, then lengthy civil war, had seen much more of humanity at its extremes than I ever had or have. They'd seen the full gamut from true Evil to unbelievable selfless kindness and charity. And if they seemed buttoned up, it wasn't because they were small minded - in many ways they were more open minded than I was. It was because they'd witnessed what human nature can become when all norms and boundaries are stripped away, and they knew that those boundaries, constructed slowly over centuries of trial and error, are what keep us safe and civilised.

Apologies this was meant to be a reply to @Grammarnut post.

Entirely agree with you. There has been an urge since the 50s (?) to break with the past because it was blinkered and small-minded. In the West, in the main we have been isolated since the 50s from the horrors of war so those of us who did not experience these things think the boundaries our predecessors set unnecessary. The results are all around us - and the internet and huge expansion of other technologies has amplified it.
One result of this disconnect from the past (sorry, this is controversial, I know) was the unwillingness to believe in the horror of what happened in southern Israel on 7th October 2023 - an oppressed people like the Palestinians could not have done this, thus it was propaganda...I am not completing that thought.

It's an interesting enough article, but probably has more relevance to teenage boys and those in their twenties than the Dominique Pelicot and the others. A lot of these crimes happened before Andrew Tate was even posting videos.

We know that violent pornography is a problem, but a lot of these men grew up before the internet was a thing, so actually it shows that there are some men who have had these dark desires long before we could argue the influence of the internet, granted the internet provided the platform in which these men organised the crimes.

Basically as much as I would like to see the disappearance of violent pornography, I'm not naive to think that is a silver bullet, and that there have always been evil men and will always be evil men, but that also doesn't mean that we do nothing.

Yes.

I think there is a real sense that we have brought his own ourselves, as a culture, by accepting certain lies.

Whatever you want is ok, is one.

What you think about inside your mind is just pretend and won't affect you is another.

A "natural" human being with no boundaries is the most healthy expression of humanity and will be the least harmful as well, is a third. I am sure there are more.

Thousands of years of society knew this was bs, and thousands of years of religion knew it too, and tries to develop systems to manage people's inerior propensity to evil. And then suddenly in 1967 liberals figured out that was all wrong, did away with the whole thing, and left human beings to become their true selves without dogma or social rules or mental self-disapline.

So that's where we are now.

I remember an experience that I had as a young woman, perhaps aged 22.

I was sitting in a mixed group of much older people at a choral singing event. About four other women and one man, all in their fifties and sixties. I think the conversation might have been about censorship. He mentioned something to do with the freedom to watch pornography and I naively said, ‘But isn’t pornography wrong?’ He then turned on me and gave me a public dressing down: I was prejudiced, judgemental and generally a horrible human being for holding this viewpoint. Not one of those women sitting around the table said a thing! In fairness I think they were nice middle class women and completely taken aback. I completed the day but didn’t go back to the second day and never went back to the choir again.

The establishment and world at large used to condemn those who had sex outside marriage. Now we have arrived at a point where very little seems to be off limits. Where and when did the change happen?

I agree with this.

No-one would deny that a man repeatedly watching videos of black people being abused and tortured and degraded was a racist. Yet we have the absurdity of pretending that men who enjoy watching women being abused, tortured and degraded are not misogynists.

Pornography of women being abused became popular because men really, really liked seeing women being abused.

This tells us something about how so many men really view women, and would like to be able to treat us.

There used to be a radical lesbian feminist slogan, back in the 80s or 90s or sometime in the distant past -
'PORN IS THE THEORY - RAPE IS THE PRACTICE'
which was widely dismissed at the time as typical hysterical extremism from a bunch of man-hating dykes.
It's a pity they weren't listened to, because it looks like they're being proved tragically right..

I think it’s long been recognised that Mary Whitehouse was ahead of her time.

It's no wonder some men are eagerly awaiting the proliferation of realistic sex robots and when that happens I think things will get even worse for women and children because these men will be able to practice putting their degrading fantasies into action, and that's definitely likely to encourage them to try it out on a real human being.

For cryin out loud! Sex is in the same general universe as play. It's fun. Accidents can happen but pain isn't the point. What's going on with men in these perversions they've fallen into is desire, but it's not sexual. It's desire for status, for dominance. So of course pain is the point. Otherwise how can you tell you're dominant? If the submissive doesn't have to put up with crap? It's crosslinked with sex to make it more hurtful and more dominant, but it has nothing to do with it. To get confused about that just because sexual organs are involved would be like confusing biting someone's jugular with eating a feast because both are done with a mouth.

Hmmmm.... interesting points, but I'm not sure they work in the real world, where unfortunately sex is sometimes 'in the same general universe as war', not play.

The point of view of the owner of the jugular vein or the sexual organs needs to be given more weight - it's a lot less theoretical for them, and the actual words used - 'sex' or 'vapirism' or 'a rose by any other name..' - are probably less important than the reality of the experience.

Rape, it is, as you say, about status and dominance, but you can't say the reality of rape has nothing to do with sex/isn't sexual.

I think we make a real mistake using the same word (ie sex) for something which is nothing but violence and hatred. If you define sex as including anything which has male ejaculation as a component, then, yes, you're right. We'd be closer to reality having different labels on dominance-fueled activity and that based on enjoyment. They're different realities; they need different words. (And I don't see the perversion of getting off on dominance, which lots of men seem to have talked themselves into, as important. It's just more evidence of a big need for therapy.)

This is exactly right. We do not have to give the feelings of freaks who demand they be allowed to dominate and abuse any weight, let alone more weight than their victims. Whatever they claim to need for their mighty precious orgasm is not our problem to deal with and never should be.
I'm surprised someone would even suggest that on a feminist chat.

I return to the fact that there is a category of violence that is perpetrated by men against women, which specifically involves what you referred to, quixote9 ,as 'the sexual organs'.

Regardless of the motive - rage, dominance, whatever - this specific form of violence is not expressed by hitting women over the head - though that happens too, unfortunately. There is assault, and there is sexual assault. i.e. a specific expression of rage, dominance, whatever, which is carried out by means of a sexual act which involves 'the sexual organs'.

I agree with you quixote9 that that's not how the sexual organs are supposed to be used, but the word 'sex' is needed to describe what happens when men who don't share your idea of sex-as-fun use their sexual organs as weapons to attack women's sexual organs.

'They're different realities; they need different words'.
- how about 'consensual sex' and 'non-consensual sex' ,'sexual assault' . 'sexual abuse', and 'rape'. I think they adequately express the difference between sex-as-fun and sex-as-violence.

I think this brings us back to the subject of the thread: the link between porn and sexual violence. It appears distinction between sex-as-fun and sex-as-violence is increasingly being blurred by the porn industry, for instance the normalisation of strangulation during sex.
A survey for the BBC in 2019 found that in a study of 2,000 young women aged 18–39, 38% had experienced unwanted slapping, choking, gagging or spitting during otherwise consensual sex. And a similar proportion of men admit to choking or strangling a partner during sex without their consent.
A 2020 investigation by the Times found hundreds of images of sexualised choking and strangulation on Pinterest, Instagram and Tumblr. The images included pictures of young women being pinned down and strangled by men, women with gags over their mouths and children being gripped by the throat.
...
Pornography has also played a role in eroticising strangulation, as part of a wider normalisation of violent sex. And research has found links between people seeing choking depicted in pornography and engaging in it themselves.
Sexual strangulation has become popular – but that doesn’t mean it’s wanted - Durham University

Sex is the reproductive act, whatever form it takes. Saying rape isn't sex makes it meaningless, it's an offense against sexual autonomy, and it's also a failure of love, which a lot of people feel has an important relationship to sex, or should.

We have the language to describe that, we don't have to change the ones we have to describe reproductive processes.

It sounds like we're talking about the same thing, using somewhat different words.You're right that we also need language to discuss violence that uses sex. I'm just utterly repelled by the con job porn has foisted on us, where they get to pretend it's about sex (and you couldn't possibly think there was anything wrong with that, could you?). Somehow it needs to become clear to the meanest intelligence getting off on porn just what kind of revolting harm they're committing.