Girlfriends and porn

In My Humble Opinion
61

I’m surprised she’s not angry at you for pre-cheating on her with old girlfriends before you even met. Naked pictures are considered cheating? She literally stays awake at night worrying about it? Dude, seriously? That’s a whole raft of insecurity to me, and I would run far far away. My ex-wife was, amongst other issues, just like Shakes’ ex, constantly jealous and insecure. It’s not something anyone should live with. So either she either needs to get over it, find out the root causes as to her insecurities, or dump her.

This is all assuming that you don’t watch porn hours every day, or have a lot of rather extreme fetishes that you watch all the time. Porn addiction is rare but definitely possible.

62

That’s pretty much my wife’s take on pornography. And i think there’s a lot of truth to it, or at least to the part about objectification and unrealistic normalization of certain appearances and behaviors.

As to how much this stuff “spill[s] over into reality,” i think that depends on the person. I’ve never really believed that violent video games make normal people violent, and i don’t really believe that the fantasy nature of porn need impinge heavily on an intelligent person’s expectations regarding their own sex life.

Just my 2c.

63

And here we thought you lot would appreciate some guidance on the topic. :smiley:

64

I’ve been trying to craft an explanation for why I don’t like porn.

The quote above is close, but not exactly on the mark. For me, I think it’s closer to say that I don’t like porn for the same reason I don’t like strippers.

And I love the female body.

But in both cases – strippers and porn – I can’t suspend my disbelief. I can’t stop wondering about why a person would choose to do this. I’m sure that there are porn performers and strippers who are empowered, healthy people expressing their sexuality, free from the rigid social constraints imposed by our phallic, patriarchial society, blah blah blah. But I don’t see that. I see women (and men, although to a lesser extent) making choices driven by external factors like substance abuse and damaged psyches. I am convinced that the world of porn stars is a world with more substance abuse and psychological trauma than we see in the general population. When I think of a 22 year old stripper giving a lap dance to a client, I don’t imagine an empowered feminist.

So this is my objection to porn: it’s a bad thing because it exploits a panoply of weaknesses in people in order to create the product.

65

+1

And I think this even knowing that I, myself, wouldn’t be totally opposed to being in porn. I still can’t get over both my mother’s early conditioning (she actually told me “those women” were being forced to do what they were doing at the end of a gun held off camera…I don’t think she was right, but it certainly planted a seed of porn = coercion in my head) and what little I do know of statistics (which is that for every med student putting herself through school, there is more than one crack addict looking for tonight’s score). These still interfere with my suspension of disbelief. I can’t always convince myself that THIS woman is the empowered feminist and not the crack whore.

Which is why I love the internet. Lots of amateur porn, made in couples’ own bedrooms. I like that stuff, when it looks like *everyone *involved is really enjoying themselves!

66

You’re seriously comparing the proportion of women who enjoy porn to that of men who enjoy cross-dressing? What?

Any time I’ve discussed porn with friends, virtually all of them seemed to enjoy it. Although in my experience, women tend to prefer textual porn more than visual. Personally, I find visual porn…ridiculous and kind of, um, embarrassing? I can’t stop imagining how the actors must have felt while filming it. But then I know plenty of women who enjoy it. I haven’t seen any amateur porn, though, WhyNot. makes note to self

Honestly, in the OP’s shoes, I’d break up with her. Looking at porn is normal. Considering it cheating is absurd and [armchair psychoanalyst hat on]probably a symptom of deeper issues. That she also claims not to masturbate or have sexual thoughts doesn’t help.[/hat].

67

I like both amateur and professional porn but I prefer amateur porn. I don’t know what about it I like. Maybe I feel like a voyeur while I’m watching the homemade stuff. As to the stuff about pornography being degrading to the women in it- well, that’s part of what I like, but that’s my kink talking.

68

Way to ruin it for the rest of us, killjoy. :mad:

69

The people in it aren’t always as pretty, and the camera work can be far less interesting (most people don’t have a cameraman, just a fixed webcam), but for me, the idea that these people are really digging each other and feeling good more than makes up for it!

I can’t stand that “I’m making these moans to get you off, not because this feels good” sound of pro porn, or those darting glances to the camera when you just know they’re thinking, “Is the light right? Did I remember to wax? Where the hell is Tony going with that camera now? I wonder when we’re going to break for lunch…did craft services made egg salad again? Ugh, I HATE egg salad. Oh, shoot, I need to pick up some milk on my way home…” :smiley:

70

They’re beyond mismatched as a couple; she wants to live in a world where guys don’t watch naughty videos on the internets, and nobody wanks to the thought of someone else. Come on now. You don’t even wanna know the shit that goes through my mind when I’m wanking.

Then you don’t want to hear about the day I decided I’d never step foot in a skin joint again.

In the old days when I was young and had something more closely resembling a social life, I’d go out in mixed gender crowds, and at times the guys would want to stop at a skin bar. Sometimes the girls would object, and for a while I was among them, and then I stopped giving a shit, and realized it wasn’t the end of the world. Some of the places had good drink specials, and occasionally at some of the cheap, crappy places we went to, you’d see a girl whose tits were both real and perky. Those were good days.

So one day I’m at the skin bar, and this woman who was, well, somewhat overweight started dancing. She got almost no tips. I mean, I think she walked away with like $5, and the poor thing was trying her best. I almost wanted to give her a 20 out of pity. When the song was over, she yelled at the audience, and called us all a bunch of cheap bastards.

Belief suspended. Right then, I had an “Oh shit” moment, and all the reasons for hating strip clubs that I forgot about came back to me. Ah, that’s right, I remembered, these women hate their jobs even more than I do, probably have horrible lives, and when that girl walked away with no money, it probably hurt her even worse inside than the rest of her life, as she thought to herself “I did that for nothing.”

Fuck me running, I’ve never been back to a titty bar since.

71

If it is that important to you, then be open about it and move on if a compromise can’t be reached.

However, one thing I’ve wondered reading the thread (and apologies if it came up later, I’ve kind of skimmed the last 20 posts or so) is how you’re consuming your porn?

I once had a friend who complained all the time about a girlfriend that was angry about his looking at porn. Eventually learned she didn’t so much care that he looked at porn but wasn’t keen that he’d just sit down at the computer after dinner (while she was in the same room watching TV), put on headphones and pull one off.

Not saying anybody is doing anything like that, but there may be issues beyond just looking at porn in general that are getting presented too broadly (or interpreted too broadly).

72

She should have said something instead of expecting him to read her mind.

73

I expect appropriate royalties, should I ever wander through there. :wink:

But I think you may be assuming facts not in evidence. All we know is that she wants a BOYFRIEND who doesn’t use porn. There *are *men who don’t. I know this not out of some Savagesque agreement or naivete, but because I myself have gotten shit from men who didn’t use porn and didn’t like me using it, either. They are out there, and she should find one of them.

74

Well… isn’t this true of most things you buy? “Making choices driven by external factors”–like needing to eat, and not sleep outside in the weather, and stuff?

Most porn and sex-as-product is much less sexy than actual real personal sexual expression, for sure–but I don’t see that the dynamic is fundamentally different than it is for other kinds of products. I mean, food is a lot better when it’s grown and prepared by people who care about its quality for reasons beyond marketing, too. The best art is never produced by the most commercially-minded artists.

75

Yeah, I nearly always avoid porn where I suspect the women are not genuinely enjoying themselves. I’d like to think I can tell the difference, though I’m sure I’ve been fooled many many times. Certain genres lend themselves to it, though. I’d bet big bucks that web cam solo masturbation is not coerced, for instance.

76

I haven’t seen this pattern proposed before; could I bother you any references you have? But even if this ranking reflects actual consumption, I’ve not seen anything that would support the idea that this is biologically based. Women’s erotica tends to be text-based in part because the written word is easy to create, cheap to distribute (especially now that there’s the web), and discreet both to write and to consume. Again, in my experience, women’s appreciation of visual porn is highly dependent on having found materials that they find appealing, which tends to be material created for women (or, in rather a lot of cases, for gay men). The fact that such material is a minority of the commercial market merely means that men are more willing to pay for porn, for whatever reason (and shame/nervousness on the part of potential female consumers is certainly part of that).

Now, I also think that there is a greater desire by women to have erotic material connected to a narrative, both from my impressions of what women I’ve talked to like and from research showing that women have more erotic reactions to non-porn films than men, and pay more attention to context, setting and suggestions of emotional/social relationships between the actors in pornographic material than men do. I think this has the effect of making film and photography relatively less valuable as vehicles for women’s porn; still photography is essentially non-narrative, while in film it’s relatively hard to find actors who can actually act who are willing to have explicit on-screen sex. (My solution: comic books.) And of course women have different preferences for the content of porn than men do.

77

Yup. Sorry, OP, but as you yourself said, this is probably a dealbreaker. If she’s so against it that she’s lying in bed at night worrying about it, nothing short of you never looking at naked boobs on the computer again will be enough, and as you also said, she probably won’t believe you if you stop anyway. Her insecurities will end your relationship, and make her insecurities worse in a nice negative feedback loop, but she’s the one that has to work on them - there’s not much you can do.

78

But that is true, as you say, of every job. The porn thing at least has the reputation for having a higher than average percentage of victims of abuse as its workers, which seems to indicate that it very literally exploits abuse victims. The fact that *sex *is involved, when sexual abuse was so prevalent among these actors when they were children, adds another layer of ick. They’re either choosing to or forced to perform the very same acts that messed them up to begin with. (Of course, this assumes that sexual abuse “messed them up”. Yes, I’ve been vocal before that it doesn’t always mess people up and I stand by that, but yes, *most *often it does.)

Again, I don’t believe this (myth? theory? fact?) so strongly as to be strongly anti-porn. I fervently hope that, even if that particular actor I’m watching was abused, s/he’s healed and is now doing porn because s/he wants to…but I’m not entirely convinced of that, and it interferes with my *personal *pleasure watching commercial porn. I don’t believe it strongly enough to want to shut down the industry or even care much if you like it.

But if bagel shops had a disproportionate number of counter clerks who were sexually abused as children, I’d feel oogy about buying bagels, too.

79

Count me in as another chick who says the girlfriend needs to grow up. Looking at porn isn’t cheating, and I personally wouldn’t find it acceptable to be in a relationship with the Dan Savage solution of we both politely lie to each other.

80

I haven’t heard of that idea specifically, but it tends to mesh perfectly well with something different I’ve read.

What I’ve read is that when we’re conceived, we’re all essentially girls, but then we get a shot of testosterone. The amount is generally based on our X/Y chromosomes, so that boys get a lot more. Those that get a lot develop various traits, including brain structure, that are more masculine. Those that get little develop more feminine traits. In some cases, the amount of testosterone is pretty mismatched with the chromosomes, so we get boys who aren’t terribly masculine and girls who are very masculine. The last two cases explain why there are gays and lesbians.

Now I’m not sure I entirely believe that, but it makes sense in the larger context of the book where I read it. And yes, the context of the book posits that there are very real biological differences in the brains of men and women. It looks like there’s a lot of evidence to back it up.

And I probably didn’t explain it very well. The authors took two chapters to explain what I just attempted to in a paragraph.

The book is Why Men Don’t Listen and Women Can’t Read Maps by Barbara and Allen Pease. The references section has probably a couple of hundred listings, but the only ones I recognized were Baker, Darwin, Dawkins, and Hite.