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

I've been a total baldy since I was 8 or 9, so perhaps fortunately it's not an experience I've ever had to endure 🤣

Looks totally painful being pulled around by the hair the way it's done in porn, almost like whiplash. I can understand winding your fingers into someone's hair/scalp, but grabbing a fistful close to the scalp and yanking someone around by it? No thanks

A couple of years ago, an undergrad student of mine suddenly told an anecdote in class about his (male) flatmate calling out in the middle of sex because the girl had fallen unconscious after strangling. The student told it as a weird-but-funny story, but he was clearly quite distressed, despite the front. Young women in the class were quiet - it was a sad atmosphere. We had a useful discussion, I felt for all of them.

I knew an academic who used to write in 'pornography studies' from a point of view which validates deviations in sexual behaviour including practices which hurt people. She was delighted by hentai porn because apparently young girls could be empowered by fantasies of being pierced by godzilla's phallus. She used to take an amusedly dismissive tone when anyone questioned pornography, explaining that men's rape-porn fantasies weren't real, they were symbolic only. She was a strange woman with a strange upbringing, who didn't actually have sexual partners herself but did have a furious ideological commitment to the idea that no sexual representations or practices should be suppressed. I found her fury interesting but she and similar deluded female academics constructed some of the scaffolding that legitimised extreme pornography in that liberal academic sphere.

So shocking and depressing.

It's purely theoretical, so she can scaffold and imagine all she wants to buttress her academic slant. And the arrogance is likely ingrained since a young age as being the smartest girl in the class, possibly as a defense mechanism.

Utterly depressing and pathetic to have such little sympathy for women (and even the men). Not surprised she's not in a relationship, she's always in her head which sounds like a small room of narrowly curated ideas.

I think it is worse than that.

I think a lot of porn "treats women as objects to hurt and humiliate" whilst also implying that one can do that AND women will love it.

I think that the single biggest thing that we can do relating to porn is to ram a simple and true message down the throats of all teens and young adults - the vast majority of porn shows rough and violent sex, but the vast majority of women and all good men would rather something which could be described as "love-making" and involves giving and receiving pleasure, not pain.

In theory male teens / men should be very receptive to messages which are likely to increase the chances of a woman who has sex with them wishing to do so a second time.

I am not saying it's easy, but young women (older ones too) need to be taught to be explicit about what they want and what they don't want, and should be taught that if they're not willing to be clear with their (likely clueless) partner then they are not ready for sex.

I could give some links to articles that gender-neutral toilet transactivists wrote that will make people feel differently about gender neutral toilets!! They haven’t come from a place of health and safety.

Thank you. Both Martin Amis and he have analysed the harm brilliantly.