Oh, come one. Good porn is out there. I recommend the stuff by Abbie Winters. It’s the only paysite worth signing for. 
If in doubt, I also suggest you seek a legally questionable preview.
I’m a guy and I like it when the emphasis is on the girl. I mean, men are boring. I don’t want to see a woman yell her lungs out because a guy is just standing there while she’s going all Rockette on him.
Aaaand…here’s the World of Warcraft version of that song, my personal favorite. 
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=5430343841227974645
As far as the OP goes…
I’m a woman. I like porn, and I masturbate to it. (I tend to prefer reading erotica (Literotica being my fave site) to looking at magazines, but I also have about 10 GB of porn on my computer, so I do enjoy the visual stimulation too)
I certainly don’t have a problem with my hubby watching it/masturbating to it. If I do it, it’d be hypocritical for me to say he can’t, after all.
I guess I don’t get why some women think it’s something negative about them that causes guys to want to watch porn. A combination of insecurity/fear/low self-esteem/religious issues is my guess.
In my experience, whether a guy wants to watch porn or not has nothing to do with how good their relationship/sex life is.
Then again, I’ve made a career out of taking my clothes off for men for money, and have had plenty of casual sex with guys I wasn’t emotionally involved with in the past, so I’m probably not a “nice” girl anyways.
My hubby likes it just fine that way, too.
Check out The Women’s Guide to Good Porn and Porn for Couples for some recommendations. There’s a market for porn made by women for women, you just have to look for it. Especially look for porn made by female directors. Candida Royalle’s Femme Productions is a pretty good starting spot, imo.
Even sven, you continue to use logic very poorly and make one mistake that women (for reasons hard-wired or otherwise) very often make: Thinking that raising a counter-example completely nullifies any claim that a tendency exists in a population. Pretty much your whole post relies upon this fallacy.
The part about gays doesn’t, however; it’s wrong for another reason.
Homosexual relationships are by definition not heterosexual–that is, not the same–and thus may or may not be subject to the same internal dynamics.
You have a point here: relationships are difficult between any two types of people.
One main pseudo-problem with hetero realationships is that society demands that they last happily ever after. This just isn’t realistic. But part of the reason for that demand is that men and women screw and have kids, and kids stick around for awhile. Our society’s response to that reality is the myth of “eternal love” with social pressures to enforce the myth.
Sorry, but you’re full of shit. For example, our ability to talk is hard-wired. The fact that we’re social animals is hard-wired.There has been laughter and humor in every human society. There has been music in every single human society. Those are just black-and-white obvious examples, and it goes from there. Our tendency to wear clothes and ornaments is no doubt hard-wired (there is not a society in the world that goes buck naked without any kind of clothing or ornamentation).
It’s true that there are many things where the exact relationship between nature and nurture is hard to pin down, and we can argue about those all day long.
Who knows what you mean by that term. Humans have a certain biology that both limits us (we can’t breathe underwater) and empowers us (we can talk). Within our empowering qualities as well are limitations; e.g., we can do math in our head but we can’t add three numbers together simultaneously; just can’t do it.
Hmm, so whatever you feel is the truth, huh?
That sounds like a common critique of evolutionary psychology and its “just-so stories.” But such a critique doesn’t invalidate our observation of tendencies that our species exhibits over vast swathes of time and space. We can disagree about the origin of the tendencies, but they are there.
Yep, humans exhibit a wide range of behaviors, but you also see behaviors that appear in 100% of societies, such as speech.
And my response is this: Why do the vast majority of cultures exhibit behaviors opposite to the ones you cite? Because in addition to black-and-white, can’t-deny-'em universals in human experience (language, laughter, music), there are tendencies that are very strong but not 100% (male dominance, nuclear families, intertribal warfare).
Nowhere in my posts do I indicate anything of the sort.
Bullshit. You obviously haven’t read the book.
Right, you can invalidate any set of books you arbitrarily group together because you feel like grouping them together and feel like invalidating them. Nice.
I don’t think John Gray’s thought on the matter is by any means the final word, but I think he has many insights. As to whether his work deserves the vaunted appelation “science,” well, I’m not sure whether any of the social sciences are in the same league as physics and chemistry.
When come back, bring valid premise.
I think we’ve had this discussion before. Anyway, I’m not getting involved in the argument…just count me in as another woman who likes porn, probably looks at it more than him these days, and certainly wouldn’t stop him from looking at it. I don’t own him, you know.
Didn’t we have a pornographer here on the boards once who said essentially the same thing. Abby something.
ITA. And why do they always have to fuck like they’re mad at each other?
I think that kind of pron must be sexy to guys for one of three reasons:
I just want to see pretty naked people making each other happy. Is that so wrong?
Oh my god, YES! You sick freak you!
I know why most porn sucks-low budget, it’s hard to find decent looking people willing to do it, but dammit. It’s still annoying.
Whoops, arguments are valid or invalid, not premises.
And my premise was a priori true.
Hey, did you read anything in this thread besides where you pissed on it? Cuz I was kind of making that point recently.
“Homosexuality is different from heterosexuality by definition” only because the sexes involved are different. Until you prove that homosexual relationships are functionally different, and that the people involved don’t experience the same disconnects as in hetero relationships (hint: you can’t, because they do) your premises about male/female relationships are easily falsified, as others have noted.
What does a heterosexual bring to a second date?
A U-Haul.
I’ve never been able to grasp this concept. Is the idea that if enough people of authority tell you that sex is bad, then you believe them? Because speaking as a guy, that just does not compute. All the disapproval in the world cowers in fear from the unstoppable sex drive of a teenage boy.
You seem to be trying to disprove the assertion that men are predisposed to spread their seed far and wide with the idea that a stable intimate relationship provides better sex. They have nothing to do with each other. As has already been stated upthread, multiple times, by men: sexual desire is not a zero sum game.
As much as some in this thread continue to aggressively assert that there are no basic traits innate to the genders, I’m starting to think that viewing sexual desire as a zero sum game is a uniquely female perspective.
I think the point is that while many are “heavy into drugs or were sexually abused” many are not and without personal knowledge of the actresses there’s no way to tell which catagory they fall into. Thus, any feelings of pity or distress you have over scenes is because you are projecting the performers as belonging to the former group rather then the latter combined with the basic problem that, it’s just not your style of gettin’ it on and is a turn off.
Okay, hold up. Projecting is kind of a loaded word and it’s not really what I’m getting at so I’ll try another way. Plus it ignores the whole arousal issue.
Basically, we have our own tastes about what does and does not turn us on. If it turns us on we’re enjoying ourselves and are suitably distracted. If not, then we’re not distracted or frequently, outright bored. Boredom leads to analysis. Analysis+distaste leads to speculation about these women’s horrible lives and pity ensues.
Now, that’s just a very clumsy analysis but I am leading to a point.
What happens when you are watching porn that you actually do enjoy? Well-made “erotica” with two attractive people who seem to be having a great time etc. Now, there’s no good reason I know to think that just because the women is starring in higher quality porn the women doesn’t have drug/abuse issues and so my question is this. Do you still pity them?
I’m curious. Where do you draw the line between romance novels and erotica? Is itsimply a matter of how well written it is? How explicet? How about erotica vs soft-core porn?
Like many others on the thread, I agree with point 1. I have read similar advice columns and heard female acquaintances go off on jeremiads about how if a man checks out porn that the relationship is in jeopardy and the woman needs to lay down the motherfuckin’ law about this unacceptable behavior. I agree that it’s just petty, vain, and naive to dictate a very personal habit that doesn’t involve anybody else. Of course it’s possible to overdo anything, whether it be stamp-collecting or lesbian porn.
However, Aeschines, you’ve ventured into fucking moron territory by blaming porn on the wife being a fat cow. Perhaps sometimes that’s true but not always. The honeymoon phase usually diminishes at some point without either partner losing attractiveness. Even if it doesn’t, men have a strong desire for sexual novelty. And sometimes a man just wants action a lot more often than the woman does, and gets tired of imposing. There are a million different reasons and not all of them have to do with the woman being a cow.
Okay, Jeff. 
Anyways, can someone tell me what kind of porn involves “playing cards”?
-Joe
And then he set up camp in fucking moron territory when he blamed the wife’s issues on her being a woman.
I couldn’t agree more. I once went to an erotica site and read the entries (some were good, most were just ok–perhaps it’s easier to film people fucking than it is to write well). There was a Q & A section to the site. Alot of basic sexual questions–and good, factual info was provided. So far, so good. I wrote in and asked for a suggestion re porn for someone whom porn turns off (that would be me). The reply raved about a new dvd, In The Garden Of The Shadows–how it starred this newcomer and was beautifully lit and filmed and the story was mesmerizing. Ooh, just up my alley. I bought it.
Well, it does indeed have some attractive people in it (well, I dislike large breasts, so other than that, she was very beautiful). The story was less than mesmerizing–the story was batshit insane. Yes, they were all wonderfully lit and the settings were gorgeous.
Thing is–it was STILL the man yelling at the girl, still the man grabbing her by her hair, still the man running the show, STILL with that godamned money shot.
Blech. No thanks. And this is one of the best? Meh. No thanks–my fantasies can outdo your porn film any day of the week.
So, here I am–$40 poorer and still no fan of porn. WHY can’t we have something akin to Pride and Prejudice but that “goes all the way”? Why does it have to be no plot, no character development, just some man’s idea of what women feel when they are excited sexually? (case in point: I know of no woman who licks her lips in the way depicted in porn-it’s ridiculous).
Sorry, OT a bit.
I do have something to say to the OP. Whether you (or anyone here) feels that this woman should not be threatened by porn or that she should lose weight or just accept her husband as he is (notice that he doesn’t accept her the way she is, apparently)…you are all entitled to your opinions and feelings.
None of them matter–this is an issue that needs to be resolved by the people immediately effected by it, ie the spouses. No one else really has a say in the dynamics, the resolution of the conflict, the ideal solution. Those are as idiosyncratic as couples themselves.
I think by “romance novels” I mean the old Harlequin “bodice rippers” that are marketed towards “housewives”. Most of them are really cheesy and stupid and more likely to illicit giggles than arousal.
I don’t know if you CAN draw a line, it’s one of those “I know it when I see” it type of things.
Merijeek, I THINK he means those novelty card decks that have nudie pictures on them.
Trust me, teenaged girls go through the same thing.
The anti-sex social conditioning young women get doesn’t destroy the sex response. It perverts it in to self-loathing and shame. Young women don’t naturally undergo a sexually latent period as children- a toddler can have the same orgasms an adult woman experiences. This means girls getting scolded for masturbating as children learn a lesson that they will take in to adulthood. Since there is not as much open sex talk among girls, they never really learn much about what these feelings mean. And since masturbation is a bit more complicated for girls, and much more stigmatized, they don’t learn what pleases them, much less how to communicate that to a parter. So they end up having sex with some oaf who hasn’t a clue, when they don’t have a clue themselves, so they conclude that sex must be a man’s world. Meanwhile, they still have all these feelings, but have long learned to channel them instantly to shame. Did you know most women describe their genitals as “ugly”? Plenty of women couldn’t draw a decent picture of what all there is down there. How are you supposed to have good sex when you’ve never had a chance to explore you body, learn it, and become comfortable in it?
Women have the same nerves as men. In written descriptions with identifying factors taken out, a woman’s orgasm is indistinguishable from a man’s. It’s the same thing- but with potential for multiple orgasms and no refractory period. The only real difference between male and female sexual response is how they’ve been conditioned.
But she said just make damn sure those nudies don’t depict other men. Now that’s sick!!
I’m knid of wondering if the term ‘hard-wired’ is being abused here. Other than bath houses porn has been available to the common person for,what, 50 years? Maybe 100? I love my burritos and they’ve been around that long, but I don’t think anyone is ‘hardwired’ for burritos.
Did anyone read Dear Abby yesterday? I thought it was headed toward material for this thread but then went a whole nother way…