I have been watching porn movies since the early 80’s. Internet porn has been become regularly and easily available. I have been visiting Red Tube for some time, usually with the sound off. Then I made the mistake of watching with the sound on. :eek:
Now, I approaching 50 yrs old. Maybe I am becoming more sensitive, or maybe these damn kids should get off my lawn, but when I listen to what the performers say to each other …I think. Man’ that’s just MEAN’.
Now, even when I watch with the sound off, it’s like a see it differently. They seem to regard each other differently in a way I did notice before. I know they aren’t supposed to act like they love each other, but they should still regard each other as human beings.
Some sites have a category called “Female Friendly” porn. Which as far as I can tell is just like regular porn sans the throat gagging, facials and nasty talk.
Not sure Female Friendly is the best name for it, but there you have it.
I’m no expert, but I have put in a significant number of hours over the years, uh, researching this and related issues.
It’s certain that niche porn that would strike your more mainstream viewer as “mean” (humiliation, BDSM, etc.) is more commonly available and often mixed in with mainstream and other niche porn on many sites where one commonly finds porn.
Aside from that, however, and what I think the OP is asking about, is that I’ve definitely noticed that a large portion of mainstream porn has gotten “mean”, compared with porn that was available generally a decade or two ago. It seems that much of the porn one can stumble across includes humiliation mixed in with the dirty talk, name-calling, spitting, and rougher sex.
I am not sure what to attribute this trend to. I’ve occasionally read commentary that brings up factors such as a growing need to be more extreme due to the great degree of free access to porn there is now, or that there is a handful of very misogynistic and prolific producers such that the product is skewing more towards abuse in porn than market demand actually warrants.
Regardless of why, it is something I’ve noticed, and I’ve noticed other people noticing it.
It’s not too difficult to avoid, at least for the most part. Seeking particular performers or producers whose work you’ve enjoyed in the past can make a difference, as can frequenting sites that cater to women or otherwise address the treatment of the performers (who was that 'Doper who produced such a site?). Careful use of search words can cut down on the mean stuff (“homemade” or “solo”, for instance - but this depends on taste). Otherwise it’s a matter of clicking as soon as the clip throws up a red flag and selecting something else.
Who is it that likes the mean stuff? I can sort of understand someone having a fetish for BDSM stuff, but it does not seem to be about that. To me the meanness is very off putting (not to mention the spitting, indeed), very anti-erotic. I would much prefer to have at least the fiction maintained that everybody is enjoying themselves.
Exactly. I am visiting a free mainstream porn site. It has a section for for ‘rougher’ fare and I do not go there. This is the mainstream and I have to ask just far out of the stream am I? The spitting disgusts me. The fingers shoved into the mouth disturbs me, as well other things I don’t want to mention here.
I was watching an internet video the other day. A man was doing it with a beautiful large breasted woman. I started to notice the lack of eye to eye contact, the roughness, then the fact that he was roughly re positioning her as if she were a rag doll.
It turned me off. So either porn has changed, or I have changed, or both.
We have had a number of threads on this same subject recently. My porn viewing has reduced significantly from what it was in my 20s/30s but from what I have seen some major “establishment” commercial-mainstream porn studios still try for “respectable” content. But ISTM a significant enough segment of the hardcore porn world has given up on seeking “respectability” as a quaint 1980s/Early-90s notion, from when you’d be seen by the clerk going into the back room at the neighborhood Video Club to get a tape or DVD to rent. To Hell with respecting Mr. and Mrs. Whitebread’s sensibilities, they say, let’s go get the perverts het up, they’re the real loyal customers.
As with other entertainment idioms, the expansion of access channels has resulted in that what used to be underground-fringe interests now have easy accessibility and distribution. And once the “X-treme” segment of the market establishes some presence, that tends to have a bar-raising effect, with some of the vibe percolating into the so-called mainstream.
I wonder if part of the attractive of “mean porn” may also be the very fact of it being offensive and transgressive, so its fans seem to be saying *“In your face (literally:eek:), y’all ‘sex-positive’, ‘couples-friendly’ wusses! Hell yeah, that’s right, fems, we’re getting off on objectification and degradation and liking it!” *
Another hypothesis is in how new performers these days often get into the business setting out directly to do hardcore, after (by now) having grown up on a diet of Internet-age hardcore . The performers of the 80s had mostly grown up with normal sex and needed to learn how to turn it into “porn” sex (which usually only passingly resembles normal sex). ** The new crop grew up learning “porn sex” as the “norm”, so they only make it even more so. **
Heck, someone who felt like it could say it goes along with the much-decried “coarsening” of the general culture.
That would be Abby Winters, who apparently is still producing (or at least the label with her name is); we also had Mike South who was active more recently.
I don’t know to what degree the change is due to the fact that porn has lost most of its stigma. In the 1980s, a mean porn video would be considered a very controversial thing, and could lead to a political backlash against the industry. Nowadays that never happens since porn is everpresent and free. So perhaps the industry is more free to experiment and does not have to pretend to be non-controversial to avoid backlash.
The bottom line is this: If you don’t like it, watch something else. But that doesn’t mean criticizing the people who watch it because they like it. How many things are you into that others may not accept?
I know that a percentage of the population enjoys child porn, snuff films and reruns of She’s the Sheriff, but if I began seeing them broadcast on every channel it would be difficult not to see it as an ominous sign.