So basically, Savage says “DADT” when it comes to porn? 
The problem with that is that a certain (often a significant) degree of exploitation goes into the creation of many products. The clothes on your back, the shoes on your feet. The coffee you drink. Just about anything you buy that was grown or manufactured in the developing world (or has components that were) most likely involved some exploitation of the people who grew or made it. Obviously a lot of people are concerned about that sort of exploitation - hence the growth of “fair trade” produce and the sweatshop protests - but you don’t tend to hear it extrapolated into a blanket condemnation of these industries as being inherently bad the way many people seem to think porn is. Yet the people whose labour sustains those industries are generally a hell of a lot worse off than porn actors, especially considering the amount of porn these days that’s made at home by enterprising amateurs who get to keep all the profits for themselves.
Married female, I prefer visual porn and have/will watch it mrAru. Also have experimented in the past with other females, plural males and group sex. [no animals or nonadults] and prefer monogamy. While mrAru was active duty Navy he had my permission to screw around while on long separations with the caveat that he better test clean for stds before sleeping with me [i have serious antibiotic allergies] but then again I trust mrAru totally. Not every couple are so matched.
I think he would be better off finding a new girlfriend if she is adamant about the no porn thing.
Look, as it was stated upstream, as long as it isn’t addiction level or as a sex substitute porn is no big deal. People have different horny levels - some want sex daily, multiple times daily or once a year, and if the partner is differently leveled, masturbation comes into play. No big deal, you can either break up and find someone who wants the same frequency you do or you can fap.
My girlfriend knows I look at porn and hates it. My excuse is I’m a guy and you can get used to it or leave. There are two kinds of guys: men who openly admit to looking at pornography to their SO, and those who say they don’t and keep it a secret. I’ve never been one for keeping secrets, especially about something that’s pretty universally done. If she’d rather be with a guy who has to continuously tell lies to her, more power to her. But then again I don’t cheat, I don’t come home late, and we’re always hanging out.
Personally, my point of view is, if I can’t touch other women (which I’m perfectly fine with being in a relationship), the least you can do is let me look. I can’t rid myself of hundreds of thousands of years of evolutionary instinct in one generation here.
Plus, the fact that she occasionally watches shows like Tool Academy only reinforces how vastly superior I am to those typical young adults, so she’s reminded how well off she is when all things are compared… 
Besides, if she can read her stupid Twilight books and watch Twilight movies and fantasize about vampires with 6 packs, I can do the same (only with considerably more to-the-point plots).
On the podcast, it’s by far what he recommends rather than leaving an otherwise satisfactory marriage, especially when there are kids or care-giving issues involved. His rationale is that you need, deserve, and have an inalienable right to non-self-induced orgasms and that lying and hiding such a thing from your partner is far less damaging to them. And besides, they really ought to expect that you’ll be getting your jollies somewhere if not with them just to keep yourself sane and able to stay in the relationship.
Which, of course, works out nicely for the prospective cheater–they get the best of all possible worlds, the stability and comfort and happiness of the marriage, plus the sex of whoever they have on the side. But it tends to suck for the cheatee–whatever issues there are that lead to the lack of sex are still there, plus they’re being robbed of their ability to make an informed decision about whether or not they want to stay in the relationship.
It’s not a large lie to you, and that’s fine. But it’s obviously a large lie to the woman in the OP, and it’s clearly and unarguably affecting something–her peace of mind. Her having a different opinion than you on the subject doesn’t make her bad and stupid and wrong, any more than it makes you bad and stupid and wrong. We all have things that, as stupid, petty, irrational, or irrelevant as they may seem to others, bother the everloving shit out of us, and those things are legitimately a big deal within our own relationships. It doesn’t mean people who have different points of view have to kowtow to our way of thinking, but it does mean we deserve honesty and respect on the subject.
I mean, think about any given thing that you consider to be a dealbreaker, or at least something that’s a big deal. I can find someone who doesn’t see what the big hairy damn problem is, and doesn’t think lying to you on the subject would ever truly affect anything. If you were in a relationship with said person and they engaged in said lies, I’m betting you’d be massively and righteously pissed off about it and think that person was a huge asshole.
And I am the sort of consumer who is quite aware of that fact. I choose carefully who I buy from, and make sure the companies I deal with regularly understand that they will lose me if they start such practices.
More powerfully, I make sure the boards of particularly egregious companies know that I am not buying their stock due to their human rights policies.
If I am that careful with who gets my money, how much more so do you think I would be with choosing who shares my sexuality?
. . . and how much of that home porn is fully participatory? Does the woman walk up to the camera and say “Yes, I know the camera is there, and I am doing this in full knowledge that my boyfriend will then release it to the internet”?? I think the production and release of a lot of that stuff borders on rape. Yes, it was consensual sex, but would she have consented if she knew about the camera? Or his intention to release the video?
Now, I’m not saying that what I’ve decided to call “Cruelty-free” porn may not exist. Heck, I might even like it if I found some. But the small amount of porn I’ve seen (which involved what you might call “Stars”) included men and women, but especially women, with dead eyes and micro-expressions of shame, contempt, and despair.
:rolleyes:
I’m sure there are examples of DIY porn made (or at least distributed) without the woman’s consent, and that is indeed appalling, but I know of no evidence whatsoever to suggest that these examples are anywhere near the majority. Heck, in a lot of cases there isn’t even a boyfriend involved. Women can operate equipment too, you know, and plenty of them just set up their own webcam, pointed at themselves.
Well I don’t know what porn you’re watching, but that certainly doesn’t describe most of what I’ve seen (and I’ve seen more than a small amount). I wouldn’t find it appealing if it did…and I don’t think most other viewers would, either. It sort of defeats the purpose to show sex as unenjoyable.
Then again, if you’re starting from the assumption that the participants don’t really want to be there, you’ll probably read that into their expressions anyway.
There is plenty of porn out there that is made by women. Empowered women. Sex-positive women. Women who own the means of production.
And it’s not all romantic flowery crap that involves an intrusive story line.
Well, when the woman is setting up the webcam (and the man or other woman is looking at the monitor and saying things like, “no, move it a little to the right. Do we have another light?”) it’s pretty clear that things are consensual.
Abby Winters used to post here actually, IIRC under “abby”. “Ask the Pornographer” was her thread.
(Abby Winters has a site for girls-only amateur style porn).
Okay i can feel you, but I had a thought running through my head that I frequently have when i see porn or some sort of erotica. You know that your gig involves taking off your clothes… hence you might need to work on that aspect. The skin bar is obviously a visual industry… so working on your “visuals” might be wise. It reminds me of how I use to get pissed off when some guy on my favorite team would show up for training camp out of shape… i mean… you play ball… you kind of know what condition you need to be in to do your job.
My problem is is that I have 4-5 bars on my beat. I’ve been in the womens locker room on multiple occasions … the magic is lost.
TO the OP… man if this is merely the beginning of your relationship… damn… This doesn’t bode well at all. In the beginning your shit isn’t even suppose to stink.
And Abby Winters is not a
real person. Link not safe for work.
I thought that was common knowledge by now.
Something I’ve wondered about. Stipulating that many sex workers have been abused, are you sure the right conclusion is that sex work is therefore icky? I tend to see people as rational agents, and I wonder whether victims of sexual abuse go into sex work because they find value in it.
Maybe it’s a way for them to take control of their sexuality: they put themselves in a situation in which they’re being paid for sex, instead of a situation in which it’s taken from them.
Maybe they feel like they’ve lost the sense of romantic mystique that other folks attach to sex, a mystique that makes sex work unappealing, and since they don’t have that, they may as well get money for it.
Maybe somehow sex work is something that helps them wrap their heads around what happened.
Is there good evidence that sex workers who previously suffered sexual abuse find that their sex work exacerbates, rather than ameliorates, the trauma?
That said, I suspect that the Internet has changed a lot of sex worker demographics, especially given its resultant mainstreamification of porn. What was true in Debbie Does Dallas days may no longer be true.
Finally, Bricker, I can think of another small field of work where people gain pleasure from watching other people do the work they’re paid to do. Performers. Do your objections to porn apply also to live music or to movies? If not, what’s the difference?
Big T — please remember our “two-click rule” and to label any not-safe-for-work links.
Thanks
Ellen
An update, we had a couple long talks this weekend, one sitting on lawn chairs under the stars Saturday night out in the field and one yesterday. I was honest and firm about it being a mental thing. I even got to the point of asking her if it was ok for me to picture someone else in a sexual fantasy, and she tried to say no. So then I asked her if she wanted to be the thought police, to control everything I think. I think that made her think a little. It really is just vicarious fantasy, with visual aids. Yeah I could do all the same stuff in my head, porn is just the lazier way.
I explained to her that porn wouldn’t exist if people didn’t put themselves on camera to be seen and if there weren’t millions of people that wanted to see it.
There was one positive aspect, we did discuss our own fantasies. Even though she’s quite wild she seems to have a hard time acknowledging that it’s ok and natural for other people to be in your fantasies.
The conclusion is she still doesn’t “agree” with porn but she’s very glad I’m being honest and is willing to try participating with me some. I told her I didn’t know if she would like it but was glad she was willing to try. We watched about 30 seconds of a movie once before and it got her all hot and bothered quickly, but I think it was from jealousy.
No.
Primarily because I can’t think of too many instances in which the seemingly-eager actor or musician is revealed to have been feeling forced or approached the business reluctantly. It’s true that a number of child performers of an earlier age have said their experiences were less than positive, but as a general principle, mainstream actors and musicians don’t seem to have much of a track record of feeling trapped or coerced into their performances.
It may not be something that’s natural for her. Some of us are just wired that way–we enjoy sex, we enjoy looking at other people, we enjoy watching or thinking about other people being with each other, but the idea of touching or being touched by other people ranges from “meh” to “ewwww.” It’s not an issue of attitude or dysfunction, just one of those not-particularly-common-but-not-all-that-rare variations in sexuality where it’s hard to wrap your head around the opposite view because it’s so foreign to your essential nature.
It sounds like it was a positive conversation, which is great. I’d advise a fully passive approach on the watching porn together idea, though. If she initiates it, go along, but don’t bring it up yourself. Sharing the experience sounds good on paper (and is quite good with people who don’t have jealousy hangups about porn), but in reality is almost certainly going to give her something tangible to hang her anxieties on. Proceed with extreme caution.
Yeah it’s risky. Like I told her, people’s deep private thoughts aren’t always pretty. But I think she was picturing me worshiping and desiring the models/porn stars, when I really wouldn’t want to know most of them in real life, I explained that to her.