In addition to this long one from yesterday, the other post I’ve had percolating in my head is about porn and violence. It comes in response to something I hear quite often from folks: why is it that so many Christians seem so concerned with pornography, and less concerned with violence. For example, in response to my post on “anxiety and arousal” last week, “Dethboy” writes:
…the dirty secret of porn (is) that most of it is actually not that bad…
The most graphic pornography I have ever encountered entailed a woman having needles inserted, one by one, into her breasts, and then extracted. There was a trickle of blood, and it was expressed that it was painful, but overall, the atmosphere was erotic but clinical, precise. Compare this to Saw II, or Hostel, or Turistas. Is seeing someone have sex as negative an impact as seeing someone get thrown into a pit full of needles, have their kidney cut out while their awake, or have their eye torn out in graphic detail? Is seeing a woman get facialed as upsetting as seeing a man impaled on a spike? Would you rather have your children see a woman having sex, or a man being shot in the face? Hugo stands in the middle of a burning house, demanding that, right now, the candle be put out on the night stand, because it’s the *real* problem, not the walls catching fire or the ceiling caving in.
I’ve missed the horror films Dethboy references, but I get the point. “Porn is just about sex”, folks say; “violence is so much worse.” Surely it’s misplaced puritanism to get so worked up about pornography and to be less concerned about violence. There’s a thoughtful response to that, one that others have made (one that my brother Philip makes quite eloquently), and in this post I want to get to it.
Let me be clear that I have little stomach for graphic violence. I hated pictures like Natural Born Killers, Reservoir Dogs and Pulp Fiction because of the violence — bloodshed so relentless that it vitiated any redeeming artistic qualities the films had. I went through a brief period in early adolescence where I liked scary movies, but that ended by the time I was old enough to drive. I view the current revival of low-budget horror films as a cynical attempt by Hollywood to maximize profits by working with C-list actors and D-list writers to produce films that can generate quick and massive returns.
I’m willling to sit through heavy violence as part of a larger story; I actully liked last year’s “A History of Violence”, and I’ve sat through my share of war movies in the “Saving Private Ryan” and “Letters from Iwo Jima” vein. And of course, I’m also comfortable with sex scenes in movies, particularly when those sex scenes serve the primary purpose of advancing the plot and providing a depth to the characters, rather than serving merely to titillate. (The graphic sex in “A History of Violence”, for example, fit that bill.) I’m not by nature prudish! I am reluctant to see the bodies of others exploited on screen for my pleasure, whether that pleasure comes in the form of chills (as in a slasher film) or arousal (as in porn). When bodies tell a story, that’s somehow radically different than when they serve only to arouse or shock.
But the thing about depictions of violence in films, television, or in print is simple: it is the graphic depiction of something that we know to be fundamentally bad. To use Dethboy’s example, everyone recognizes instinctively that throwing someone onto a bed of needles is wrong. There is never an instance where to do so is good and loving. In certain instances, killing a bad guy might be justifiable, but most of us are aware that violence itself, while perhaps necessary, is never an a priori good. The violence we see in these films is violence of the sort few of us will ever engage in, Lord willing. The violence we see depicted is what the vast majority of us would never want done to us, and would never want to do to another.
But sex is different. Most of us will have sex at some point in our lives, with ourselves or someone else. Most of us want to have sex, and most of us (it is to be most fervently hoped) will have very good sex at some point with someone we love very much. Sex is, at its best, spine-tinglingly, earth-shatteringly, transcendently good. And most of us know that, or very much want to know it!
Porn lies. Porn misrepresent sex. It takes something that is fundamentally good and joyful and mutual and makes it selfish. It teaches a strong connection between the bodies of others and one’s own pleasure without demanding an iota of concern for the well-being of the other. Ask women whose husbands and boyfriends regularly use porn: are they better lovers as a consequence? Though they might pick up a “trick” or two, they are also far more likely to be distant, remote, and concerned with their own pleasure as a consequence.
Pornography is ultimately more harmful than depicted violence because of the far greater likelihood that those who watch porn will want to imitate what they see. Dethboy refers to “facials”: the ubiquitous habit in modern porn of ejaculating onto a woman’s face. When I was growing up, facials weren’t common in porn. And none of my male friends with whom I talked in great detail about sex talked about the practice; now, I hear frequently from young women whose boyfriends are eager to “try it”. Most of the women, understandably, are at best ambivalent about having their faces and their hair splattered! “Facials” are just one example of a “learned behavior” from porn.
When we see axe murders in the movies, only a tiny fraction of us (thank heavens) will say “Gosh, I’d like to try that!” When we see porn, and particularly when the young watch porn, they are far more likely to draw inspiration from what is shown. (Think about it, people: A young man, watching “Texas Chainsaw Massacre” with his girlfriend, is very unlikely to have an insatiable urge to trundle down to Home Depot, buy a Husqvarna*, and dismember her. Watching the male star of “Cum Bunnies of Cleveland VII” ejaculate on the faces of his co-stars may spark a more imitative response!) For those who watch porn regularly, particularly in adolescence, their sense of what sex is and of how it is supposed to work is deeply affected by what they see. And what they see is almost never loving or mutual. What they see, alas, is a lie.
So yeah, porn bothers me more than violence. And while watching a horror movie might give a teen a night of bad dreams, watching porn may help shape a whole worldview about men, women and pleasure. I’m pretty clear which is more harmful.
*Though you wouldn’t think if of effete little OKOP me, I know quite a bit about chainsaws, having spent much of my childhood on a ranch, clearing brush with an enthusiasm that would put our president (a famous brush-clearer) to shame. And based on years of experience, I’m a great and loyal believer in Husqvarna saws, another fine product from the socialist democracy of Sweden. This is the one I currently covet.
A quick reply: I studied media violence and its effects in graduate school, and you are way off the mark in suggesting that violence in movies has no effect. There isn’t a direct cause-and-effect sort of thing going on, but it most assuredly shapes how people (especially young people) view the world. Resources: On Media Violence, James Potter, and Stop Teaching Our Kids to Kill : A Call to Action Against TV, Movie and Video Game Violence, by Dave Grossman and Gloria Degaetano.
Ask women whose husbands and boyfriends regularly use porn: are they better lovers as a consequence?
I will say this: I have slept with a man I know for a fact regularly uses porn and with men whose porn habits I did not know (but who prided themselves on being good in the sack). The former was far better in bed than the latter. Sure, it’s anecdotal, but I figured I should answer your question. No idea if the porn had an effect on the fellow in question or not – there’s no real way to be 100% sure where his bedroom skills came from. But porn =/= bad sex.
I’d say that porn can be bad for you, just as violent movies can be bad for you. But to dismiss all porn as bad and discuss it as a monolith is simplistic.
Check out Tony Comstock’s work (NSFW). Good stuff. Porn? Yes. Romantic? You betcha.
Apparently Dethboy is unfamiliar with feminist critiques of horror films, particularly the slasher genre. Teenage girls being chased by knife-wielding serial killers? The girl who is killed shortly after losing her virginity? No patriarchal messages their at all!
Ok, that was a little snarky, especially since I’m not entirely unsympathetic to his argument. Some of the things he references in his livejournal post, like the way that little girls are inundated with Disney princesses and white wedding dresses also send little girls the message that their primary value is their appearance. And what do princesses actually do, other than look pretty?
And while watching a horror movie might give a teen a night of bad dreams, watching porn may help shape a whole worldview about men, women and pleasure. I’m pretty clear which is more harmful.
I think it’s a mistake to look at this as an either/or proposition. There is a lot of violence (like the slasher films debbie references) which is deeply sexualized. There are also any number of films which involve the rape and sexual mutilation of women and the subject matter is presented solely as being violent, and thus, not that bad.
This is an eloquent, concise presentation of what I think is the best feminist case against almost all pornography. I would want to add two observations.
First, considering these two sentences: [Pornography] “takes something that is fundamentally good and joyful and mutual and makes it selfish. It teaches a strong connection between the bodies of others and one’s own pleasure without demanding an iota of concern for the well-being of the other.” In particular, mainstream, commercial pornography presents women (or anyone in a submissive, feminine, penetrated sexual role) as objects for the sexual use of men (or anyone in a dominant, masculine, penetrating sexual role). That is, pornography shows women being objectified.
Second, it can be hard to make a case that the portrayal of objectification actually causes objectification in the real world. Many fans of violent video games and films will point out that, contra Tipper Gore and Joe Lieberman, these portrayals of violence do not actually cause people to be more violent in the real world. Your last three paragraphs try to break that analogy: for whatever reason, men who view pornography are more likely to emulate what they see than people who view gratuitous violence in video games or blood-and-gore movies.
Now, you don’t really address the question of why there’s this difference. Why do people try to emulate what they see in pornography, and not in the Saw films? I would suggest it’s because pornography is not the real cause of this deplorable attitude towards sex; pornography just takes an attitude that’s already prevalent throughout our society (objectification = sexy), strips it down to its essentials, and turns it into a commodity.
Still waiting for Hugo to explain why he thinks there is no other possible configuration of porn other than “mainstream, sexist porn aimed at heterosexual men”, but I won’t wait underwater.
And while debbie is spot-on about the overlap between sex and violence, Hugo’s wrong when he pretends that violence is never seen as a good in and of itself. Nobody sees the good renegade cop blow away the bad guy and thinks “Gee, it was unfortunate that he had to resort to such terrible tactics in the pursuit of a greater good”. The violence itself is cool, awesome and justified.
Noumena, I think porn takes a universal human desire and distorts and misrepresents it; the desire to kill isn’t intrinsic (unless you’re a Freudian, muttering about thanatos), and even when it is, it is certainly not killing of the sort we see in the slasher movies that Dethboy cites.
Mythago, I am generalizing about the heart and soul of the porn industry. Porn aimed at heterosexual porn constitutes the overwhelming majority of what is produced, and men remain the primary (but not exclusive) consumers of porn. I’m talking about the primary problem, acknowledging that the issue is a vast and complex one.
This post reminds me of your lecture on the word “fuck.”
On further reflection, I do wonder what you think of other kinds of movies which glorify pain and violence, like Jackass, which has spawned no small number of wannabes.
Disclaimer: Hugo, since your post is mainly about the effect of violence or porn on media *consumers* I too am limiting my comments to the effect on consumers. (I would have different things to say in a conversation about production.)
—
Continuing Debbie’s theme there’s the old but point-on snark about movies where “cut off a breast and they’ll give you a PG-13, kiss a breast and you’ll get an NC-17.” (I’ve received, but not yet watched, Kirby Dick’s “This Film Is Not Yet Rated.” I’d probably have more tangible examples tomorrow.)
Rather than look at the troublesome but extreme examples of needle porn or Mel Gibson gore (where, you’re right, we’ll actually probably experience neither and be glad about it) it might be more instructive to look at middle-of-the-road imagery in both genres.
In those median examples you’re far, far more likely to see women treated… pretty much identically whether you’re talking about a police procedural or situation comedies or Johnny-Knoxville/Exxtreme-stunts specials vs something that’s going to show up after hours on the Playboy channel: “take it, Bitch” played for laughs or the frission of suspense isn’t any more appropriate, or less instructive, than the same words expressed in a suburban porno video.
I’m saying this, by the way, not to absolve porn but to place it in the broader context of media presentations of gender roles. Which cough up grits. To *single out* porn is to imply that *only* porn is problematic. Also, to single it out implies its effect *on consumers* is somehow different. Limiting efforts to curb sexual deprecation to porn would let the majority of the entertainment industry off the hook. And, finally, because I feel strongly that the two are intimately related, efforts to tone down sexual deprecation in the industry at large would tend to tone it down in porn as well.
figleaf
p.s. if we were discussing production I would single out porn because their consent and compensation practices are often (though not always) more problematic than, say, high-physical-duress contest programming. But, again, this conversation is about consumption, not production.
A second try to see if my comment makes it through this time: I studied media violence and its effects in graduate schoo. While you’re right that there isn’t a direct cause-and-effect sort of thing going on, media violence most assuredly shapes how people (especially young people) view the world, and on some people it can have a serious effects. Resources: On Media Violence, James Potter, and Stop Teaching Our Kids to Kill : A Call to Action Against TV, Movie and Video Game Violence, by Dave Grossman and Gloria Degaetano.
Ask women whose husbands and boyfriends regularly use porn: are they better lovers as a consequence?
An anecdotal bit of evidence for you: I have slept with a man I know for a fact regularly uses porn regularly and with men whose porn habits I did not know (but who prided themselves on being good in the sack). The former was far better in bed than the latter. No idea if the porn had an effect on the fellow in question or not – there’s no real way to be 100% sure where his bedroom skills came from. But porn doesn’t necessarily turn men into bad lovers.
Evil_fizz, people watch Jackass and then try stupid things. But the person who is primarily injured is the person inspired by the film; a man who is eager to “facialize” his girlfriend after watching porn is involving someone else in acting out what he’s seen. I think there’s a significant distinction.
I know I never tried a Segal move on anyone, because when I was a kid, I knew that was just in the movies. But my younger brother who liked to imitate van dumb kicks actually got his leg broken into two by trying to kick someones ass on the freeway. your little theory sounds nice but doesn’t play out in the real world of influences
Paul, we’re talking about slasher films primarily here, not martial arts pictures.
My goodness, do some folks just live to come on the blog and belittle what they read here? Paul, when was the last time you had anything nice to say — not that that’s your responsibility, but I’m thinking that those who only come to gripe might be asked to go elsewhere unless they can leaven their criticisms with a little bit of kindness.
While I think the desire to imitate is self-evident, I will add that part of the reason is, in addition to sex being an activity that most people desire to practice at some point in their lives (quite unlike chainsaw dismemberment), sex is also private by nature. This private nature reduces the corpus of experiences of “normal behavior” to counterbalance the film depiction.
For example, suburban Americans ride home from the hospital in a car, and spend many hours each week in automobiles, progressing from baby seat to booster seat to big enough for a real seat. So when a 15 year old boy watches “Bullit,” he has real-life experience to show that becoming 10 feet airborne in downtown San Fransisco is not normative driving behavior. But when he sees a pronographic film involving a “facial,” his brain does not have any experience to say “no, that’s not how it works; this is just fantasy.”
But I’m one who believes that even violence does influence behavior, particularly in those who are in the “marginal case.” Womens’ Studies professors aren’t typically the “marginal case,” and would be unlikely to use a chainsaw on a human even after decades of viewing Quentin Tarantino films. But some of the other viewers may be mildy retarded kids who were abused by their parents and shuffled through a series of slightly less abusive foster homes and trying to find a way to cope with their emotions and adapt to life. Among these are the marginal cases who were teetering on the edge of violence.
Some claim that entertainment doesn’t influence behavior at all. But the very existence of broadcast media is financed by advertising, i.e., changing people’s behavior. (I think Medved made this point)
Which reminds me of Marcus Brigstocke’s 1990′s obervation that “If Pacman had affected us as kids we’d be running around in dark rooms, munching pills and listening to repetitive music.”
While I think the desire to imitate is self-evident, I will add that part of the reason is, in addition to sex being an activity that most people desire to practice at some point in their lives (quite unlike chainsaw dismemberment), sex is also private by nature. This private nature reduces the corpus of experiences of “normal behavior†to counterbalance the film depiction.
For example, suburban Americans ride home from the hospital in a car, and spend many hours each week in automobiles, progressing from baby seat to booster seat to big enough for a real seat. So when a 15-year old boy watches “Bullitt,†he has real-life experience to show that becoming 10 feet airborne in downtown San Francisco is not normative driving behavior. But when he sees a pornographic film involving a “facial,†his brain does not have any experience to say “no, that’s not how it works; this is just fantasy.â€
But I’m one who believes that even violence does influence behavior, particularly in those who are in the “marginal case.†Women’s’ Studies professors aren’t typically the “marginal case,†and would be unlikely to use a chainsaw on a human even after decades of viewing Quentin Tarantino films. But some of the other viewers may be moldy retarded kids who were abused by their parents and shuffled through a series of slightly less abusive foster homes and trying to find a way to cope with their emotions and adapt to life. Among these are the marginal cases who were teetering on the edge of violence.
Some claim that entertainment doesn’t influence behavior at all. But the very existence of broadcast media is financed by advertising, i.e., changing people’s behavior. (I think Medved made this point)
Which reminds me of Marcus Brigstocke’s 1990’s observation that “If Pacman had affected us as kids we’d be running around in dark rooms, munching pills and listening to repetitive music.â€
[mod: many misspellings corrected]
It seems you are arguing apples and oranges. There is a strong deterrent against slashing another person and not one for giving a “facialâ€. Well I guess there was a day when there were stronger moral codes, but some folks are in the process of eroding those. Maybe if we were to look at a population where there wasn’t the strong deterrent against violence, like young kids who view violence but haven’t the full cognitive stop to perform violent acts (if parents are absent to allow such viewing, what is your guess what they are doing). Another example would be a region in the world where human life isn’t currently being valued much, you finish the thought.
Think were there is a strong moral deterrent for “facialsâ€, porn, etc. do you think the occurance is significant to postulate that the relative degrees of porn induced maltreatment of others is really any greater then displays of extreme violence and their influnce on the relative degrees of harm to others?
(Hi, I’m Daisy — regular reader, first-time commenter. I think.)
Well said, Hugo! I wasn’t really expecting to a agree with you, but I do, whole-heartedly. It always bugs me when people are less willing to let their kids see sex scenes (of the plot-related, consensual, character-deepening variety) than violence, but porn is quite different, of course.
Hi there. Considering I live with the (now) infamous Dethboy, I thought maybe I’d pitch in my 2 cents.
I’ve grown up watching horror films, and I’m always amazed at how far they will push the envelope. With every new one that comes out, the graphic content goes farther and farther. Its very hard to shock me, but even Saw 2 made me cover my eyes, which was a landmark event, let me tell you. I’m also a professional nanny, and I look at the children of today and how desensitized they have become, as compared to my own generation, and the ones before me. Movies and video games are all about death and destruction. Nothing shocks them, nothing is sacred. Seeing a man tortured and beaten and then decapitated? They don’t even blink an eye or pause from eating their popcorn. In most video games now that will earn them bonus points.
Sexual content in movies is not realistic. Your average love scene in your basic R rated movie gives the wrong impression anyway. I’m certainly not saying that children should be emulating what they see in graphic pornography (or watching it), but I think overall the impact of what they are seeing most often, which is mainstream horror-action-thriller violence, is having more of an affect than Dethy’s aforementioned facials and edge-play porn. It’s also easier to come by. (the commercials are played on network television folks, you have to actually look for bukkake stuff)
Just a thought.
Miss Heather.
P.S. I’m a feminist, and most of Deth’s daily reading is feminist blogging. *grin*
I agree with Hugo, and have two points to add. First- from what I understand Porn is far more interactive than violent movies. You don’t get a bowl of popcorn and sit down to watch a porn flick then fall asleep. You watch porn to put yourself (and in some cases a parter) in a state of arousal. In other words, you are training yourself to be aroused by what is depicted.
Second is the private nature of sex. If we ommit instances of rape, sex acts are not illegal the same way graphic violence is. Hacking someone’s limbs off with a chainsaw will land you in jail pretty quick, giving your gf a facial won’t. The social cost of imitating violence is too high for most people, while the cost of imitating porn isn’t. (This is why Jackass was so widely imitated- ‘real people did those things and didn’t get hurt/arrested therefore I can do those things too.’ )
Hugo, I don’t think someone like Jello Biafra would agree with you. Know who he is? He’s the one who has stated something to the effect of, “What harms a child’s mind more—watching two people make love or kill each other?”
Just my two cents for now.
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Mythago, I am generalizing about the heart and soul of the porn industry.
No, Hugo, you’re waxing wroth about porn, period, not the industry–especially since the ‘industry’ is not identical to the consumers. You chop and contort to try to make your point, dismissing “violent” films that doesn’t fit your theory and applauding porn when it does not serve “merely to titillate”. (Because, goodness knows, watching a violent ambiguous-maybe-rape-maybe-not sex seen in a dramatic film is A-OK, no sexiness there, but watching two people on film have sex to get off is, like, bad.)
I’m all for feminist critiques of pornography and the sex industry, but it’s extremely tiresome to read what is, in essence, your expiating your guilt about (and apparently not-well-suppressed attraction to) porn. It’s like listening to those ex-gays rant about the sins of sweet, sweet homosexual sex.
First- from what I understand
Would that be from reading Hugo, or from watching porn?
I think the biggest difference for me between porn and violent films is that in violent films the women are able to react with horror, fear, loathing, and rejection of the violence; in porn they eroticize the otherwise natural repulsion of the human body towards pain and undue suffering. That’s why the sex in porn is often interpreted by the viewer as degrading.
So much turns on what porn we’re talking about. My stance towards the porn mainstream is criticism, though for a somewhat different set of reasons than Hugo’s. However, I’m certainly not willing to expand that criticism to all erotic images.
One thing that keeps coming up over and over is porn that includes elements of pain or degradation. I do think that the “gonzo” genre with its facials and rough sex have become mainstream within porn, and I think that’s a problem. I don’t think it’s a problem because images of pain and degradation shouldn’t exist; I’m a sadomasochist. I do those things, generally as a bottom. I think it is a problem to present them without context. As QGrrl said, the normal reaction to pain and suffering is to recoil. Presenting it as erotic without explanation is presenting it as universally erotic. But it is not. It is only erotic to a subset of the population, and only in a narrow, defined set of circumstances. I don’t think people ought to be presented with what it essentially BDSM without a context that makes clear that it is BDSM. I think it is irresponsible to do so, and harms women.
(BTW, in written erotica I’ve seen, this is not a problem. The set-up of such stories gets into the characters’ heads and the reader knows why they are doing what they are doing and what they think about it.) From what I’ve seen of gonzo porn, which is mosty advertisements because I stopped paying mainstream porn years ago, they almost celebrate the lack of context and actually seem deliberately to portray slap-and-choke, gag-inducing blowjobs and facials as universally erotic. Which they damned sure are not. Some women who do BDSM do like rough blowjobs and gagging — but when I know the woman and know what she finds erotic, seeing something like that is entirely different than seeing some young performer who may well hate it and may be a victim of coercive industry practices.
As a rule, I think that the more limited and specific the audience and the less distance between the audience and the performers, the more favorable our view of porn ought to be. At one end of the spectrum is a perfomance for friends by friends, who know each other personally; and after that, work made for a specific community by performers who are a part of that community. At the other end of the spectrum is the San Fernando Valley machine, that chews up and burns out women and cranks out a mass of material for an audience that they know little about except what they buy.
Q Grrl, bingo. Thomas, you clearly are familiar with an aspect of porn production with which I am not, and I’ll mull your comments.
Mythago, cheap and hostile armchair-psychology struck me, for a while, as the exclusive province of the MRAs. I was clearly mistaken.
Hugo, I don’t think I’m relying much on specialized knowledge of porn production. My example of the friend-to-friend end of the spectrum is a personal one, and I typically raise this when arguing with antiporn feminists against the idea that a broad swath of erotic images is problematic. Years ago, a close friend sent me erotic photos of herself. The photographer was her regular top, and the intended audience was exactly two people; my wife and I. I knew why she was doing what she was doing; we’ve known each other since before she first discovered her interest in BDSM, and though we’ve never really been sex partners, we had talked both technique and emotion about BDSM for years. I had a good knowledge of the performer and the circumstances of production, she had a good knowledge of the audience and how they would see it, and since the work would only ever be seen by four people (and only ever has, unless she has shown it to others), there was no concern with a wider audience taking a different interpretation. The person in the photo was no object to me; she’s a friend. I didn’t see a body, I saw a person I knew well.
Now, someone whose sexual morality privileges the limiting of sex and even desire to a committed relationship would still find fault with this. However, it is my contention that such an exchange amounts to a sexual encounter by other means; any problem one has with it travels not through the typical objections to porn, but through objections to the sexual encounter. I further contend that the more erotic material is like a sexual encounter between performer and audience and the less like a depersonalized commercial transaction, the less it is subject to the criticisms that you, I and many of us level at the commercial edifice of mainstream porn.
Thomas, you’re right that I find your anecdote problematic, but even as it falls short of the mark (as I see it), it’s clearly in a different category from the impersonal world you and I both loathe. Good food for thought; thanks for sharing!
I have though about this a great deal overnight to identify an inconsistancy that I could not seem to pin down. It is not your reaction to horror, which is culturally based (compare for instance the violence in the Ring versus Saw III; then compare the violence in Audition to the murder rates between Japan and the US) as you speak of it here (you are talking primarily about American “slasher” films) but your talking about Porn because it is selfish. Porn is bad because it is selfish (and imitative) – okay, let us put aside the fact that the same thing could be said for masturbation and/or drinking starbucks coffee – my difficulty here is WHO you are reaching out to. You are deeply concerned for the welfare of the men who watch the porn, in the way their selfish acts are changing them; you are concerned with the women who deal with these men; you are maybe concern with how porn affects feminism and (north american middle class) women overall. The one group I cannot find you caring about is the real and actual people who make the porn. The men who watch the “Facials” and the women pressured by such, you worry about – but the actual woman and women, with actual names who get the facials in these films you don’t speak for or really show any concern for at all. I am trying to understand why? Why are you less concerned on the impact on the men and women IN the porn industry (numbers in the US are vague – some say 20,000 some say over 100,000)? I know you often speak up for the feminism and how porn hurts men and hurts women but rarely under the umbrella of men and women does there appear any realistic inclusion of the needs, names, desires, fears and effects on the people within the porn industry themselves – though they are equally “God’s children”, no? I just wonder why?
Elizabeth, read my first post ever on porn, about Lara Roxx:
http://hugoschwyzer.net/2004/04/17/porn-hiv-freedom-responsibility/
I have spoken up on behalf of those who work in porn. I’ve also had students who were big time in the industry:
http://hugoschwyzer.net/2005/06/06/journals-and-the-stories-of-djamila-beth-and-julia-ann/
IAWH’sP
Don’t worry, Elizabeth, Hugo thinks that masturbation and even fantasy also fall short of God’s expectations. He’s a critic (if a critic tempered with compassion) of absolutely all sexual expression that falls outside the bounds of the expression of intimacy through service to the other partner in a committed relationship.
(Hugo, that may sound like a rather critical description, but on analysis of the text, isn’t that your actual position? That the only sexual conduct which is not short of the mark is that subset of sexual conduct which gives loving intimacy to one’s romantic partner in a committed, monogamous relationship?)
Thomas, that’s fair. I plead guilty as charged.
Thank you for your references, I have read both of them now and still pretty much have the same problem – you seem far more interested in Lara Roxx of age 10 then you are of Lara Roxx of age 18 – and even go so far as stating what Lara’s emotions are (because people who work in porn are not really capable of having the full range of emotions?) – How do you know that Lara is not proud of her work because you are not proud of her work? And how is the arguement that the “cost” of porn is seen in her having HIV any different than the “cost” of gay men being homosexual is them dying of AIDS (a chorus heard universally in the 80′s from churches AND government). But then again, unless you can point me to some other posts, perhaps your view of non-monogomous gay sex is the same as sex workers; I can’t tell. As for your students, I find it interesting that Beth comes across as a fully rounded student who you clearly have an emotional connection (and follow up on, citing her marriage after your class had finished) while your student from the porn industry Julia comes off as two people – the female in your class who is “bright and talkative” and the grey shroud once she opened her mouth about life in the sex industry. I know Beth’s dreams, asperations and what she is good at – I don’t of Julia – what job does she work toward, what hobbies is she planning? I don’t know and if you did, you chose to share with us a full rounded life picture of the woman who chose “sex only within marriage” and a woman in a baseball cap for the woman who had or continues to work in the sex industry.
It just seems that quite honestly (to go back to Suicide Girls for example), the sex industry is doing more to promote these women as full rounded individuals who have concerns, worries, dreams and the full range of human emotion than you are as a feminist. And to return to your post, we are asked to imagine the pressure and damage which might occur BECAUSE of these women as it occurs through men on other women, but not asked to imagine the lives of the women in the industry itself. From what little I can gather it seems because they are complex individuals and to reduce them back to children or as shadow figures makes them far easier to deal with than as full rational adults. Unless there is some other reason?
the sex industry is doing more to promote these women as full rounded individuals who have concerns, worries, dreams and the full range of human emotion than you are as a feminist.
Well, there’s a stunner. Sean Suhl, Hugh Hefner, Bob Guccione, Joe Francis, Hugo Schwyzer. Only one of them apparently isn’t a feminist.
Elizabeth, that’s so far out of left field I’ve got no way to respond, sorry.
“Watching the male star of “Cum Bunnies of Cleveland VII†ejaculate on the faces of his co-stars may spark a more imitative response!”
Seriously, why is this a problem? This reminds me a little of the suggestion, several years back, that viagra was a terrible development because lots of wives would find their impotent husbands would want to sleep with them. By all means, leave a relationship before you do anything you’re not comfortable with. But I don’t see any right to object to something because it effects someone’s sexuality in a way you’re not comfortable with.
People shouldn’t consent to splatterings they’re not comfortable with, but if they do the problem’s their willingness to put up with stuff they shouldn’t, not with “Cum Bunnies of Cleveland VIIâ€.
I’ve a lot of sympathy with arguments that performers are abused and exploited – Elizabeth’s point. That’s very powerful. But the suggestion we need to keep a lid on people’s sexuality strikes me as puritanical. It’s very 1900s feminism.
Hugo, I did say you are not a feminist; I have however asked why different women are getting different treatment from you and that if I want an insight into some of the feeling of some of the females in the sex industry, while you post having one in your class; you have chosen to write about her in a way that makes it difficult if not impossible to identify with her or her asperations, the Suicide Girls website (referring to your cast last week) however does. My question is why? You are the one making a case that I am claiming you are not a feminist and then claiming it is impossible to respond. What I am asking, again, is why do you not seem to care as much about women in the industry as you do about the men who look at them? About the women who interact with the men? About a consistancy perhaps?
Elizabeth, I care deeply about the women who work in the industry, and I said in both my Lara Roxx and Julia Ann posts, I know that they are not all of one mind.
I am not a social scientist, studying porn from every imaginable angle. I am providing one feminist analysis of porn — one that is informed as well by Christianity and by men’s studies. I’m attempting to add a new voice to the discussion, one that is at once feminist, Christian, and particularly sensitive to issues of masculinity as well.
I am trying to inspire change; my concern is less with analysis and description than with polemic. I do the former in the classroom, the latter on my blog.
sorry edit first line from “did say to did not”
And the guy who wants to facialize his girlfriend isn’t also trying something stupid?
Actually, many of the Jackass wannabe stunts involve groups of kids. I see the distinction you’re trying to make, but I think the “oh, I saw it in a movie, and I want to try it” mentality is the same.
Also, Evil_fizz, most of those who try stupid stunts try them ONCE. They aren’t as likely to get hooked on their idiocy as a young man is on what he sees in porn. If he “facializes” his gf once, dimes to dollars he’ll want to do it again. The Jackass kids are one-offs, I think.
By all means, leave a relationship before you do anything you’re not comfortable with. But I don’t see any right to object to something because it effects someone’s sexuality in a way you’re not comfortable with.
IMO, if you’re thinking about this as just one individual porn consumer’s sexuality, you’re missing the point. “Mainstream” porn plays a role in setting cultural norms for sexual behavior, telling us what we can legitimately expect our partners to do for us. If you ever read Savage Love, you’ll see these expectations put quite explicitly: if someone writes that their partner won’t do oral sex, he advises them to drop ‘em like a hotcake. Not that Dan Savage is reading straight from the Cum Bunnies DVD extras, these things are all drawn from a messy cultural stew, but… porn is part of it.
Too much Normative Cum Bunnies XII will (might) shift the standard deal from “You can object to facials, and no one will think less of you for it” to “You can object to facials, but people will think you’re a prude, and many men will be unwilling to commit to long-term sexually monogamous relationships if they know facials are off-limits, so you’re really hurting your chances here”. I don’t think I have the right to object to individuals’ sex lives (probably Hugo will differ with me here) but I do have the right to complain if I don’t like the social consensus about what is and isn’t expected in a “normal” relationship.
Hi. I’m a new poster here (regular reader.)
I just have to say that yami summed up what I have been trying to articulate for some time. It is the sort of social “codification” of these practices that is the real problem. The prime example that comes to my mind is the issue of brazilian waxing and the like. I’m a 21 year old female and don’t feel that the in-progress social standardization of being completely bald is a phenomenon without roots in the Porn industry. The prevailing idea regarding the waxing has gone from “it’s cool to do” to “you’re DIRTY if you don’t do it” (and yes, my male acquaintances have used those exact words.)
This might have veered slightly off-topic, but I agree with yami in that we both feel that it is our right to object and complain if the trends discussed have the potential to redefine what is expected from women in the average relationship.
Most of the objections to porn fall into two broad umbrella categories: (1) people are harmed in the making of the stuff; and (2) people are harmed by the product. That covers lots of kinds of harm, and sweeps in all the typical objections from both conservatives and feminists. The argument that porn is a normative force that causes the culture (and specifically, male sex partners) to do things they don’t want to do is in the latter category.
I think the argument is essentially correct. As others have pointed out, adolescents don’t have a lot of background against which to measure what sex looks like; and as I pointed out, porn is often without context about where the performers are coming from to get to the things they do. Porn keeps coming out with men coming in women’s faces. People start to think that’s “normal.” Porn keeps coming out with women with no pubic hair. People start to think that’s “normal.”
That’s one reason why porn for mass consumption is a problem: speaking to a wide audience without explicitly saying, “what we’re doing here is unusual and only exists in limited circumstances” is effectively saying the opposite. Doing something without comment, and doing it over and over, normalizes it.
This, in my view, is less of a problem with material that speaks to a specific audience: the more specific the audience, the less the problem. For example, a group of people who have a lot of anal sex can watch anal sex and not think that it can be done comfortably without warmup except by people with lots of experience. However, from what I hear these days lots of guys just think they can lube it up and stick it in, with little hesitation and no warm-up. They think that because porn performers (many of whom have a lot of anal sex and therefore a lot of practice relaxing the sphincters) do it all the time like it’s no big deal. But it is a big deal, at least for most het folks who are not porn performers.
(The same thing applies with tremendous force to BDSM. A general audience can watch a scene and not know whether it is super-edgy and dangerous and required months of planning and prep and discussion, or was just another Saturday night. That’s a problem.)
I agree with most of the recent posters.
In addition to specific practices (hair removal, anal “intercourse,” facials, etc.), there’s entire ethos / demeanor that surrounds sex acts. While I understand that healthy sex can be at times more primal and aggressive than pink ribbons and cuddling, the focus in porn is on people acting in very anonymous, harsh, and cruel ways toward one another.
This is different from the classic moralist argument that “porn is bad because it shows extramarital sex.†It is possible to have non-marital relationships which are characterized by affection and kindness toward each other (even if only for one night) instead of humiliation, brutality, and degradation.
Some will object and say that people’s sexual desires are fixed, and, while I am beginning to see truth in this with respect to sexual orientation, culture does shape the style, emotions, and practices that we find erotic. Advertisers have successfully associated sexuality with cigarettes, shaving cream, beer, sparkplugs, and Internet domain registration. In the same way, show a young man who has no desire to insert himself into anyone’s rectum (male or female) several images of very attractive naked women receiving “anal,†and it becomes something he desires.
William Saletan had a good article about the CDC’s recent study that heterosexual anal intercourse has recently become normative. I don’t think that happened independently of pornography (and Internet discussion of sexuality). As the article discusses, anal contact is a very efficient way to infect women with an STI, not to mention the “mechanical†risks.
http://www.slate.com/id/2126643/
And while the concerns about “what becomes normative for women to be forced to do†are valid and a good focus for a feminist blog, there’s an issue for men also. I observe women becoming increasingly accustomed to rougher and rougher sexual practices. As a man, I’d like to be seen as assertive, masculine, and untamed or edgy at times in the bedroom. But I expect that a woman who is used to increasingly harsh sexual practices will consider me a boring, effeminate wimp because I also would like sex to be generally surrounded by affection and intimacy and don’t brutalize her like previous boyfriends did.
As I recall, the peace movement has made the point, for well over forty years now, that we do engage in the sort of violence we see in the movies, and worse, through proxies. The horrors of Saw pale in comparison to the effects of a long rod penetrator made of depleted uranium, or a cluster bomb. And the air, ship, and tank crews who inflict these horrors do so in the name of the advanced nations they fight for, or in other words, in our names.I accept that you may have a good reason to discount the relentless diet of mindless mayhem from slashers and video games in suppressing any urge to think about the effects of long rod penetrators or cluster munitions on the “enemy”. Maybe you have analyzed the relation between the police procedural paradigm we see in shows such as law and order , and the willingness of so many Americans to put up with the military commissions act. You can’t fit everything into one post. But it concerns me that you don’t link to any such analysis; you seem to assume that most of us find violence unacceptable. In a country where a majority of the population supports at least some wars, where large majorities call for capital punishment and support a harsh justice system, I think you have to say more.In a sense, your post gives the impression that violent media, particularly in the form of things like police procedurals, have the ability to get past your analytical faculties, what I would call the mind’s immune system, in a way that pornography has not. You see the dishonesty of much modern erotica, but I wonder if you see how violence presented as entertainment also manipulates our emotions, also distorts the truth, also lies.
K, your comment seems to model sex on a continuum with intimate, loving and soft on one end and vigorous, anonymous and brutal on the other. While you explicitly admit of some exceptions, I think the problem is more fundamental: I think you are trying to collapse into one axis (with room for some exception) phenomena that are actually fairly independent.
As most regular readers know, I’m a sadomashochist. Many of the things I do with my wife are incredibly intimate; including those that are either emotionally fraught or physically painful, and in fact, especially those. Lots of people do at least a little BDSM, and this will be true on the whole for that entire subset of behavior. So there is a widespread component of human sexual behavior where the position of an activity on a pleasure/pain scale or even a psychological comfort-level scale is not going to provide much information as to where it falls on an intimacy scale.
Futher, anonymous does not equal cruel. I can’t speak much from personal experience about anonymous sex, but plenty of people (gay, straight and bi) will tell you that they cruise for and have anonymous sex that is mutually enjoyable and respectful. I’m not saying that you should like or accept that kind of sex; some people have moral views under which that conduct is unacceptable. What I’m saying is that, if you have a problem with that conduct, the problem is that you don’t like anonymous sex for whatever reason, not that it is cruel or brutal. The latter assertion is an empirical one, and one that I do not believe the evidence supports.
Thomas, I didn’t mean to say that sexuality can be placed on a single axis, but it’s probably fair to say that if we have axes marked slow/vigorous, long-term/anonymous, gentle/brutal, monogamous/promiscuous or group, pleasant/painful, pornography tends to depict behavior further toward the right on each of those axes than is typical for people without sexual disorders.
But my point was really just to say that there are actions (i.e., facials), and there is an ethos or mood (sex, even missionary, between people who clearly despise each other), and we can object to the mainstreaming either of certain actions or certain attitudes.
But mainstream society associates certain attitudes with corresponding actions. While you may personally consider Spinal Tap’s “Smell the Glove†a beautiful celebration of intimate love, many people have a very different reaction to those symbols. But I don’t want to debate BDSM with you, and I think it’s getting a little off-topic.
As to “anonymous,†I did not mean “crusing†per se, or even long-term vs short-term relationships. I was returning to Hugo’s discussion of “distant†and “remote†and putting the focus back on the emotional / psychological element rather than strictly what actions were performed. I don’t think that anonymous=cruel for any definition of “anonymous.â€
Instead of “anonymous,” I meant “impersonal,” as inspired by the Regas test:
“liberating, life-giving, joyous, fun, easy, ecstatic, fantastic…resist(ing) all cruelty, all exploitation, all impersonalization”
So to restate my point a bit more clearly: in addition to popularizing objectionable actions (hair removal, “facials,” and anal penetration of women), porn popularizes a demeanor, mood, and value system that tends toward “cruelty, exploitation, and impersonalization,” even if not all porn includes all three attitudes.
These objections do not require a strict traditional value system, but can be maintained even while endorsing a degree of Spring Break-type hedonism, promiscuity, short-term relationships, and casual sex.
Thanks for clarifying, K. Now that I understand your point, I agree.
I sense two premises here that I would like to make explicit, because I disagree with them both.
The first involves the idea that violence in popular media either does or does not validate the portrayal of sex in the entertainment industry. I happen to believe that the two issues have some deep and interesting connections. But that does not mean that taking a position on violence binds you to any position on sex or sexuality. You can object to either, both or neither feature of the current entertainment landscape.
The second assumption holds that pornography (or for that matter violence) creates attitudes, rather than reflecting long-standing social- and human- realities. Actually, even stating that simplifies the problem unacceptably. I suspect anyone who has ever investigated pornography has experienced a culture, one which promotes its assumptions vigorously. At the same time, anyone who knows human history knows that the attitudes and desires played out in pornography have a very long history. When people propose to avoid the attitudes that pornography describes by rejecting the pornography, I think of the character buried in sand in Beckett’s “Happy Days”. I agree that a lot of pornography expresses aggressive, depersonalized attitudes to sex, but that kind of sex has a very long history in our culture, and it will not go away because we don’t like it. I think in the end we have to face that aspect of our selves. Whether someone looks at what we call pornography to validate or to question an impersonal attitude to sex does not, unfortunately, depend on the book, film, or picture in question: it depends on the observer. And that, in turn, makes the question of what attitudes pornography promotes a very complex one indeed.
“Most of the women, understandably, are at best ambivalent about having their faces and their hair splattered!”
An exclam! My goodness you’re sure of yourself.
Far be it from me to defend most porn, but this essay of yours is a bunch of rubbish. Fitting, I suppose. Most depictions of sex are rubbish too. Garbage in, garbage out.
“Pornography is ultimately more harmful than depicted violence because of the far greater likelihood that those who watch porn will want to imitate what they see. Dethboy refers to “facialsâ€: the ubiquitous habit in modern porn of ejaculating onto a woman’s face. When I was growing up, facials weren’t common in porn. And none of my male friends with whom I talked in great detail about sex talked about the practice; now, I hear frequently from young women whose boyfriends are eager to “try itâ€. Most of the women, understandably, are at best ambivalent about having their faces and their hair splattered! “Facials†are just one example of a “learned behavior†from porn.”
Notwithstanding the risk of contracting a disease if your partner should happen to be infected, you’re unlikely to die or be fatally wounded by a “facial”, heck some of us might even enjoy it along with some of those other popularized “objectionable” sexual practices mentioned by K.
“I am reluctant to see the bodies of others exploited on screen for my pleasure, whether that pleasure comes in the form of chills (as in a slasher film) or arousal (as in porn). When bodies tell a story, that’s somehow radically different than when they serve only to arouse or shock.”
Would being aroused by depictions of sexuality where you could be sure no “exploitation” was taking place be okay with you? What if you knew with certainty that the performers wanted you to watch and see them?
Ask women whose husbands and boyfriends regularly use porn: are they better lovers as a consequence? Though they might pick up a “trick†or two, they are also far more likely to be distant, remote, and concerned with their own pleasure as a consequence.
My husband is so *not* “distant, remote, and concerned with [his] own pleasure” in bed that I snorted, reading this rhetorical question. I don’t think he’s a better lover *as a consequence*, but I also doubt that those husbands who *are* selfish in bed are such as a consequence of *porn*. I mean, people have been assuming that men are, culturally-within-the-mainstream-of-this-culture, selfish in bed since at *least* Victorian times, and more so, that that is How Things Ought To Be and women who expect something different are being silly. “Lie back and think of England,” anybody?
How can you possibly separate out a *causative* relationship between “watching porn” and “more selfish in bed”?? Even if there *were* a statistical correlation, such that any number of women piping up and saying anecdotally “My porn-watching partner is a GREAT lover” doesn’t matter, how do you know the causative link isn’t in the other direction?? Maybe selfish lovers are more likely to watch porn because they’re self-centred and distanced lovers in the first place, so they don’t really care that porn is all about sensation, not emotion!
And honestly, if people imitate what they watch, why not push for porn that creatively and lovingly *celebrates* human sexuality instead of lumping it all in together? And I’m so very very dubious that the particular acts you mention are automatically degrading. I’ve found that in sex, as in so much else, everything depends on context.
Urgh, sorry for going off and ranting at you. I really enjoy reading your blog posts because they always spark a great deal of my own thought and enrich my positions. But sometimes I just really feel like ‘women in Hugo’s head’ and ‘myself and the women with whom I am emotionally intimate’ are such completely different sets that I become entirely baffled and frustrated …
Marianne, I am writing in response to a number of anecdotal stories about women whose husbands regularly use porn, masturbate to it, and then express little or no interest in love-making with their wives or partners.
I am delighted that that has not been your experience, but in countless fora across the net and elsewhere, that is what is frequently reported.
It’s true that violence is usually presented as, at best, a necessary evil.
I don’t think that alone is sufficient to show that violent images have less dangerous influence than porn. The thing about violence is that we tend to do it in response to perceived threats of violence from others. The more violent I perceive my world to be, the more likely I am to think that violence is the appropriate response. Porn may make objectification look good, but violent movies make killing and weapons look necessary.
The objectification of women is terrible, but as an American I think the tendency of my fellow citizens to say violence is necessary when it is not is a bigger problem.
Mythago, cheap and hostile armchair-psychology struck me, for a while, as the exclusive province of the MRAs.
I’m sorry, am I stealing your flava? You’re happy to wax from your armchair about what people who use or participate in porn think and feel, apparently based on your own hideous porn-using past (as you’ve told us about, at length). Predictably, you don’t much like it when that same analysis is not a one-way street.
If he “facializes†his gf once, dimes to dollars he’ll want to do it again.
If she doesn’t coo like the girls in the video and kicks his ass out, dimes to dollars he’s likely not to do it again. As for the Jackass videos, don’t assume that nobody does them twice. I wish I had a buck for every time I’ve had to explain to my kids that just because you didn’t get hurt THIS TIME when you (slid down the bannister/rode your scooter without a helmet/did some other dumbass stunt) doesn’t mean it is safe.
I’d like to respond to two comments.
“I am writing in response to a number of anecdotal stories about women whose husbands regularly use porn, masturbate to it, and then express little or no interest in love-making with their wives”
Why is this a problem? Many husbands just aren’t attacted to their wives. Is this really a big deal. If wives had no interest in their husbands we wouldn’t think it was a terrible problem they weren’t servicing their partner – people are perfectly entitled not to sleep with their spouse.
“I do have the right to complain if I don’t like the social consensus about what is and isn’t expected in a “normal†relationship.”
The chastity crowd hate programs like Sex & the City, becuase they think it places an unreasonable expectation on them they’d rather do without. I can’t complain about people wishing the world was structured in a way which which would make them happier. But, at the same time it’s not really a legitimate complaint, it’s just something you’ve got to put up with.
Many husbands just aren’t attacted to their wives. Is this really a big deal?
Yes, I think it’s a big deal.
If wives had no interest in their husbands we wouldn’t think it was a terrible problem they weren’t servicing their partner – people are perfectly entitled not to sleep with their spouse.
People are perfectly entitled not to speak to their spouse for weeks at a time, too, but I doubt anyone would suggest that this is healthy behavior in a marriage.
Of course, when you look at marital relations as “servicing”, I guess I could see why at least one of the spouses would kind of lose interest.
I sense here a confusion between personal and public issues. For most of us, the effects (if any) of what we call pornography upon us as viewers or readers falls into the realm of the personal, because each of us brings a very specific history to what we read or see. Except in a general sense, advice on this subject given to one person really will not fit others. On the other hand, our obligation to those people involved in the making of falls into the public realm, because whatever we bring to the viewing of a picture or film, we all have the same obligation not to participate in the exploitation of another person.
I would argue that should you give moral advice on personal issues, it works best if you do so with a sense of give and take, either by making your suggestions in person and listening to the individual(s) you advise, or else by stating general principles, which each person can adapt to his or her own situation. Conversely, in the case of a public issue, specific strictures apply broadly.
Thus, I think you can reasonably argue that nobody should support an operation where they know, or have good reason to suspect, the managers exploit the workers. But I do not believe that it works to give advice about marital relationships in the same spirit. If a hundred people watch a film with exploited actors, the actors get exploited in the same way; but the relationship between outside influences (including what we call pornography) and a troubled relationship will differ in every case.
I’m just curious here. What do you think is worse for a growing boy, that he should look at pornography or that he should get no information about sex at all?
On a completely separate matter, I disagree with your statement
But the thing about depictions of violence in films, television, or in print is simple: it is the graphic depiction of something that we know to be fundamentally bad.
That is most certainly not the case. At least nine out of ten war movies or crime movies are celebrations of the pornography of desirable violence. Who in the audience ever thinks it’s bad when, at the climax of the crime drama, the brave police detective whips out his gun and blows away the leering bad guy? In this article here is an example of Senator Joseph Lieberman demonstrating what I’m talking about:
Lieberman likes expressions of American power. A few years ago, I was in a movie theatre in Washington when I noticed Lieberman and his wife, Hadassah, a few seats down. The film was “Behind Enemy Lines,†in which Owen Wilson plays a U.S. pilot shot down in Bosnia. Whenever the American military scored an onscreen hit, Lieberman pumped his fist and said, “Yeah!†and “All right!â€
He wasn’t pumping his fist and saying “Yeah!” because he disapproves.
Folks are missing the point of the post: I’m talking about horror movies, slasher pics, not war films. I am drawing a key distinction. In the latter, violence has redemptive possibilities; in the slasher pics, it doesn’t.
I never thought of things this way.
I don’t look at a lot of porn. But I do find slash and fanfic very arousing, and use it as a masturbation aide from time to time. Maybe its stereotypical for a woman, but I find written erotica to be 10x more arousing than most visual imagery. And what turns me on most is stuff I wouldn’t really want to do in real life. (E.G., I love reading about, thinking about, two men having sex. Watching two guys go at it turns me on more than anything. But I don’t want a gay boyfriend, or even a bi one.)
How does your theory apply to written rather than visual material, or is thre a difference at all to you? To me, there is, as you would say, a “colossal distinction”.
Hugo,
I’ve been married for 15 years, never been divorced, and my wife and I have fun off and on with porn. She has frankly been the one to suggest it, not that it matters.
I also think that if a guy is watching porn and not having sex with his wife – a big problem according to you – he probably wouldn’t really be having sex with her ANYWAY, and the porn is just a release (more acceptable than having an affair). He doesn’t want to have sex with HER, in my opinion, although I’m not the boss and sole decider of the universe. I DO think that all these Web sites you refer to on that issue (but don’t quote – anywhere) are possibly one-sided. If they exist.
So my question is: Why would a person who has been divorced three times feel such an intense need to tell others what or what not to do – under the theory that he knows what’s good for your relationship – and, in particular, to tell someone who has been happily married for a long time what he is “doing wrong”.
Why be so judgmental? Do you really think that you have all the answers to this stuff?
What do you think is worse for a growing boy, that he should look at pornography or that he should get no information about sex at all?
That seems like a really crappy either/or. It’s not like porn = sex. Porn is a depiction of a specific kind of sex, maybe.
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