Pornography is turning sex into an extreme sport - Hadley Freeman

[IwantToRetire]

All of this discourse is a desperate avoidance of an obvious truth, fussing over the deckchairs long after the iceberg has destroyed the ship. Because the simple but apparently unsayable fact is this: pornography is bad. No, not just for kids. For everyone. And it has eaten the world.

From an article in the Times https://www.thetimes.com/comment/columnists/article/pornography-sex-extreme-sport-bonnie-blue-gnb60xlsf

Can be read in full here https://archive.is/byS6O

Can confirm, men are absolutely porn sick nowadays - and really normal men, too. Dating is not advisable unless you want to be strangled without warning. They don't even seem to realise that's a serious crime.

I’ve been having the same issue with the archive site, I’m having to complete up to 20 CAPTCHAS to get reading an article

https://www.ghacks.net/2024/12/23/in-the-age-of-ai-captchas-are-mostly-a-burden-to-humans/

Hadley’s article was excellent.

A very good article.

Hadley is in good form here.

It's probably impossible to get rid of porn, but I'd be happy to go back to the days when it was fairly difficult to get, and much more difficult to get if your tastes weren't quite vanilla. Boys being exposed to Page 3, which was my generation, was probably a lot less harmful than boys and girls being exposed to the idea that choking and spitting and lots of other extreme stuff is standard sex.

I sometimes listen to the Rialto Report podcasts, which is a series about vintage porn - basically interviewing performers from the 70s or 80s about their experiences. It's an interesting slice of social history, and doesn't shy away from the dark side, but it definitely feels like a more innocent age. Of course a lot of the 70s generation were actual actors or directors who hadn't quite made it in mainstream Hollywood. They weren't Bonnie Blue types looking for internet fame.

The trend now is dehumanising, and the algorithm pushes the consumer into more and more extreme images, more and more niche fetishes. I don't think we've come to terms with what this is doing to men's brains, or boys' brains.

I was only a child in the seventies, but I was very aware that in the sex addled men vs dolly birds scenarios in the media, the women seemed to hold the upper hand over the men who could only think with their trousers. I’m thinking of carry on films, Benny hill, Robin Asquith “sex comedies” etc. It seemed that if you let men squeeze your boobs then you could get them to agree to anything. I grew up thinking that it men could be very silly.

looking back now I obviously was not aware of the dark side of all of this but I still think the shift in mainstream depictions of sex has gone from women having the power to “let” men have sex with them, to men using these nasty acts to assert their power over women. It seems that women were portrayed as having more agency in the act 50 years ago than they do now.

And women's and girls' brains! Lots of women have been conditioned to become aroused by this dark and dangerous stuff, too.

Yes, or think it’s expected of them. So many posts on this site from women who just think this sort of stuff is normal, not deviant and dangerous.

A lot more women are having relationships with other women. Which is not surprising.

Porn is the end of humanity.

Great article, thanks for the link.

Aside from pornography, the other thing that makes me feel like I come from another century (which to be fair, I do) is the advent of the dating app. Honestly I would be lost to everyone who's out there.

I'm in my fifties now but about 15 years ago I found myself in a relationship with a man who was addicted to porn.

Even 15 years ago it had gotten quite dark but nothing as bad as now.

I spoke to him alot about it and even back then he said it was worrying him the way it was going and he did try to stop (but failed) while we were together.

His take was 20 years prior when he was in his twenties (end eighties, start nineties) before the internet really he said it was magazines and then the odd video got swapped around but even the 'racy' videos were yes anal sex and sometimes foursomes with two couples swapping. Apart from that thought it was all pretty normal sex (as in what would be called vanilla now).

He said the change from then to when we were going out (2008-2010) was hard to put into words. He had seen things he never really wanted to see but they were shoved in his face via pop up's or the home page on the porn site. He ended up he would spend hours per day on there but as he said himself he was so desensitised to it he kept looking for more and more unusual or extreme things and only about 5% of it turned him on anymore. I said how can you even be bothered then if only 5% does anything and the rest of the time you are just wasting your time. 'Oh but I don't want to miss anything new that might be good' was what he said. Anyway he is long gone and in fairness to him he never tried anything with me except he pulled my hair hard once and I yelled at him. He expressed surprise because he thought all woman liked having their hair pulled. Eh no! He didn't ask for anal (which was just as well cos he wouldn't have got it but he had had it with a previous girlfriend who in his words was a bit of a slut cos she did anal back then when nobody really did). He wasn't one to put himself out too much in bed and didn't have much of a sex drive (cos it was all going on the porn) so it was really bad for my self esteem.

That was 15 years ago so god knows how much worse it is now. I keep hearing horror stories about choking and spitting and it seems anal is norm now (eh no, over my dead body).

I am very, very glad that when I was a young teen/young adult the 'in' thing in porn was oral sex and men were most keen to practice on you. That was fine obviously cos good for both partners. Apart from that yes they maybe wanted a few different positions but anal was considered 'gay'.

If you go onto to a porn site and look at vintage porn you will see in general (not all of it) but quite alot of it is what I would call 'nice' porn ie lots of foreplay for the woman and then kind of normal sex.

I used to watch it occassionally (like twice a year) and always went for 'nice' porn but now I don't even do that as simply getting to the home screen before you start choosing is utterly vile. There are things on there that quite frankly are not 'sex' - they are torture, violence, degrading, humiliating, frightening, painful acts that quite frankly I don't know who could have even thought they would be remotely 'sexy' (I never go near these videos obviously but you can' help but see them on the home page briefly which is why I no longer use porn even a couple of times a year for the 'nice' stuff.

I cannot even bear to think about the woman who are in them. Surely nobody in their right mind would be participating in this unless they were desperate for a fix or desperate to feed their children. Aside from that I can only assume the woman are trafficked and doing it against their will which is horrifying.

I watched a short series which Donald Sutherland was in called Human Trafficking and it's worth a watch. It's obviously 'tame' but I was shocked cos it showed how some of the woman end up trapped and quite frankly the woman who was tricked by 'her boyfriend' could have been something most of us would have fallen for.

So no thanks I don't want to see - amputees, woman taking a poo and walking off (that's it, no sex just a poo) or anything else that past partners have told me they have seen.

In all fairness to Mr 'Porn addicted' when I found out about his addiction I demanded he show me what sites he was using and he begged me not to look at it because of the 'horrible stuff'. In his own way I think he was trying to protect me. I remember being quite horrified and 'scared' of this dark underworld which I had previously been unaware of (I knew about top shelf mags and the odd video) but seeing some internet stuff even 15 years ago was terrifying.

I also feel very sorry for the young woman of today.

I gave up dating 10-11 years ago as I got busy with other things. I had dabbled with the idea of giving it another go recently but as one poster said above her friend in her sixties was getting pressure to do anal etc (WTF) i don't think I will bother.

I'm in peri at moment so hopefully my libido will vanish completely soon and then it's fluffy dogs and girls tv/films/books for me. I don't care if it's make believe. At least it is nice. Worrying times.

I'm GenX and mid-50s. Growing up, sex was supposed to be fun and sweet, loving and if it hurt, it meant something was wrong.

Oral sex was the wildest thing in the mainstream in the 80s. Obviously, men and boys behaved badly and raped and harassed us too, but in a consensual relationship, no one asked to pull my hair, spit on me, do anal or hit me. Sex was sensual, and, gasp! really romantic and emotionally connecting.

So glad I married my DH who is also GenX. Our sex life is waning in the libido department, but it's still loving and satisfying.

Also, I think it's odd that people think they need to see sex to have it. Men and teen boys were very capable of getting turned on and having sex in the dark, back in the day. They didn't need to see us to make love to us!

I despair that when women like me die out, no one will know sex can be beautiful.

Pornography has ruined a whole generation of children and men!

It’s the teenage boys who feed on this vile stuff and think it’s what women want or what they’re entitled to before their first sexual experience. It taints everything.

From what I can work out (not a porn user) it’s not so much sex now as depictions sexual torture and degradation of women. Hadley is spot on as usual.

Find it so sad reading reading threads like this. The world has changed so much,and not for the better in this respect. I am old, and I grew in the era of 'dolly birds'. And 'hedge porn'! 😀But did women have more agency then? I think in many ways they did. The times, they were a-changin', after all. And porn now is another world away. And now I have an infant grand-daughter. How the hell will she, and all the other girls, navigate their teenage years in 14 years time?

I share your worry.

'I despair that when women like me die out, no one will know sex can be beautiful' (Delphinium20 at 22.42 today).

You know, that's really touched a chord with me. I feel that too, and I need to explore that somehow, through what medium I have yet to discover.

I keep feeling we're at the end of our civilization and grotesque things such as pornography make me believe it even more. We so need to reclaim the beauty.

It’s not just sex, the whole ‘courtship’ exercise has gone completely. It’s just an ugly circus of pretence, lust, deception and exploitation now. No wooing or romance. Sex is on the cards before the first date is over often.

Eughhhhh "beautiful" sex eughhhhh.

I think some people just don't like fucking. This is fine, obviously. But please stop pathologising those who like having our hair pulled please and thank you.

Also getting nostalgic about sex in the dark is... depressing

Eh? You like having your hair pulled? Fair enough then, but most of us don’t.

How do you know what "most people" like? If I can accept that some people like sweet sex, even if this idea makes me feel physically sick with its childlike conceptualisation, why can't you accept that others like sex that involves domination, submission, novelty, visual stimulation? Why do you think there's such a big market for it?

I wonder would anyone enjoy having their hair pulled during sex if they had never seen porn that showed a woman having her hair pulled during sex?

Of course I can accept that. I just don’t think that’s what most women enjoy, certainly not being hurt.