I hear so much about people (ok, usually conservative-types) being against porn, thinking it’s exploitative, thinking it’s degrading, thinking it’s the ruination of humanity, etc. But I’ve watched porn, and I don’t really think that’s (necessarily) true. It can be quite enjoyable really. We discuss it here very matter-of-factly as a part of life in general and a part of many of our lives in particular.
So what do Dopers think? Is porn bad? Is it good (i.e. as a teaching/learning tool as mentioned in the previously-linked thread)? If it is ok or good, is it something that you enjoy or something that’s ok being out there but not something that’s part of your sex life?
I think like anything else, the good or bad comes from how people use it. There always seems to be a small percentage that will abuse [inanimate object] to an unhealthy degree.
Now it will jade you. Introduce you to kinks that you thought you would never be into.
All I need to do now is find someone I can practice Shibari on.
Here’s a wonderful example of how we screw up our kids without realizing it: Mom told me that there are some really, really bad men out there who force women to make “dirty” movies at gunpoint and get them hooked on drugs so they’ll have sex with them.
WTF?
(Ok, I’m sure it’s not the girldhood dream of many women to make porn movies. I’m sure there are porn actors who are into drugs. Where did the gun thing come from?!)
So I went through childhood terrified of pornography. I went through college disgusted at it, and through a period of the “degredating, objectifying” philosophy where I believed no woman would do it unless she was abused as a child or had horrible issues. I guess by this point I realized that physical coersion was unlikely, but I believed psychological impairment or coersion was the norm.
And, uh. Then the internet happened.
It suddenly occured to me that not all 1 bazillion “hot horny schoolgirls” were being held at gunpoint with a syringe in their veins. And…well…if thousands of women are willing to make porn for free in their bedrooms or patios, there’s probably some who like to make it for money in studios. Given that there are willing women, why on earth would anyone go to the trouble of coercing the unwilling, through guns, drugs or even psychological manipulation?
So now there’s a schism in my head, with the rational part going: You go, girl! Good for you! Sexual empowerment! et al. But the little girl part of my head still cringes when I see it, because it thinks it’s bad and nasty and women were somehow hurt making it.
Just like violent movies, violent video games, guns, alcohol and books spreading Nazi propaganda, Porn is not suitable for the stupid.
Porn does ruin lots of women’s sex lives, but then again helps out all the lonely people. The females can compromise by using sex to determine the intelligence of a man.
There was an interesting show on HBO, maybe called Porn 101, that was about an amateur porn festival held in Boston. The entries featured on this show were fairly diverse, although for some reason they didn’t have male on male gay porn (in this show). The most strange one, to me, was the one featuring clown sex.
I do wonder, had internet porn been around when I was 13-21, would I have ever graduated high school/college, and how large would the calluses be on my palms.
But beyond distracting, I think it’s helped a lot of people be less ooged by sexuality. And it’s probably helped a lot of kids that would have otherwise felt abnormal. It probably doesn’t help people who are “addicted” to sex, but that’s going to be there whether there’s porn or not.
Actually, most of the conservative arguments i’ve heard against porn tend to focus on the immorality of the act and the fact that it is in opposition to “Christian” or “moral” values. Admittedly, some focus on its impact on women, but the arguments against porn on the grounds that it is degrading or exploitative of women tend to come more frequently from the left or liberal end of the political spectrum, and from particular groups of feminists in particular. There is quite a little schism among some groups of feminists over the issue of porn: some believe it is inherently degrading, while other believe that it has liberating aspects if tastefully and properly done.
While i realize that this is not always possible, i think that we need to separate porn as a general concept from the particular abuses that certainly do occur within the porn industry. There’s little doubt that exploitation and violence are pst of the industry, at least in some areas. But getting rid of porn altogether because of this seems to me to be an overreaction. By all means, do everything possible to stamp out coercion and illegal activites, but if the people participating are truly consenting adults, then i don’t see the problem.
Of course, then we get to the question of the porn itself, and its impact on the people who watch it. Of course, there are many aspects of porn that just don’t reflect most people’s reality. Like, for example, the fact that women in porn often seem to orgasm within about three seconds of being penetrated. Yeah, right. And the positions in porn are, more often than not, set up for best camera angle rather than for maximum comfort or pleasure. And the fact that almost every woman in porn wants the guy to “come on my face.” If people enter their real sex lives expecting everything to be like it is in a porn movie, they’re in for a big shock.
But most people, of course, are intelligent enough to realize that porn is not the same as reality, and they use porn accordingly. It’s like Lakai said, it’s not for the stupid.
There was an article in the local free weekly paper a few years ago about amateur porn. One of the author’s key arguments was that the rise of the internet, and the ability to set up your own website, has helped to “democratize” the production of porn, and remove some of the exploitative elements.
Most porn production companies were, until recently at least, controlled almost exclusively by men, and they called the shots (literally, heh heh). But with the advent of webcams and digital photography, people (and especially women) can make porn on their own terms and sell it directly, rather than being dictated to by some sleaze-bag porn king.
Also, over the past 5-10 years, more women have got into porn production. These women are often former porn stars themselves, and they bring with them a greater understanding of what it takes to provide a healthy, safe and non-threateneing work environment.
I think some of it is good and some is bad. I wouldn’t really want to spend time with the guy or gal who was raised on bang brothers.
I would truly never say that stupid people are rare. But I’m trying to avoid them whether they are living la vita meatholes or doing some other stupid thing, so as long as they are doing it far away from me, I’m not going to cry about it. I know some people who think they know about sex and people because of what they’ve seen in porn or on TV but if you took their porn away, they’d still be idiots and I’d still be disliking them.
That pretty much sums up my feelings on the subject, although I don’t think I’d place a tastefully done instructional video in the same column as your garden variety sleazefest.
One of the problems of course is that porn consumpiton can create such unrealistic expectations. Especially if a person has seen a lot of it before becoming sexually active in their own right.
The internet has indeed revolutionized porn. But there are certainly bad aspects to it as well. The internet can create the perception that any particular activity is commonly enjoyed by huge numbers of people everywhere. This isn’t a problem with most activities. But if you consider some of the freakier and/or WRONG stuff, the web can influence folks to think that maybe the illegal thing they would never otherwise do isn’t so rare and that it might be OK. Pre-internet, a pedophile might think himself a freak and never act on his fantasies. But now he can find “Lots of people” who also feel that way and he thinks, “Well gee, all those other folks like it, so it can’t be too bad.” There may be only a few hundred pedophiles out there, but the web brings them all together and makes them feel like there’s huge load of them, rationalizing their behavior in their own eyes.
