Um…without wishing to take the mickey here, doesn’t that situation occur to most men every now and then?
I never touched him, ref, honest!
I have seen one or two of these myslef. I feel no compassion for an ignorant person. They are usually 40 something year old women griping about how they can’t earn a living anymore. Well, no shit. It’s the nature of the business. Young, thin, attractive. They should have planned ahead. I don’t think a person that, let’s say, took pictures for a living would expect to continue to do so if he knew he was going blind in a few years.
Yes, I would agree that just about ANY business is dangerous for a naive young girl.
I’d have to say yes. Most do know. It takes some serois balls to take off your clothes, no matter how young, naive, desperate. Granted, there are sleezeballs that use tactics such as drugs and false promises, but ultimately it is the woman’s choice.
Take a look at some porn sites(movies, too). Look at these girls faces. They give a ‘fuck me now’ look that most women in this country are afraid to give their own husbands. They don’t look so naive to me.
Always be ready to speak your mind and a base man will avoid you.
-William Blake
Satan wrote:
It would be very difficult for your wife to stick her penis in you.
Unless we’re talking about that whole strap-on thing again. 
I don’t mind being corrected when it’s warranted. And since you’re an attorney and I’m not, I will defer to your educated opinion.
>< DARWIN >
__L___L
I didn’t really mean to check back here before I had gathered my information… but I did!
Brian, let me clarify that my ex-husband had voluntarily quit using pornography before we met. I didn’t even know about his porn use until the end of the marriage. No resentment involved. It was something that he evidently felt shame about, but eventually succumbed to the temptations again. It wasn’t until after everything fell apart that I started to figure out what was at the root of the problem. When someone changes from everything you have known him to be (over a 4 1/2 yr period), you tend to want to figure out what the heck happened.
I do need to reiterate that while porn is damaging, it doesn’t damage all people in the same way. Some actually get to the point of committing a crime, but most men only manage to damage themselves or their immediate family.
I agree… wouldn’t you agree that most men use or have used porn? I say men, but I know that women do, too. Porn is equal opportunity.
Melin and jab1, here’s the relevant text of Justice Stewart’s decision:
(Jacobellis v. Ohio, 378 U.S. 184)
In other words, he’s using “hard-core pornography” as a synomym for obscenity. So in a sense you’re both right 
ooops. I mean from Justice Stewart’s concurring opinion.
Psycat I agree with 100% of what you say.
I am a strong believer that people make their own choices, and suffer the consequences good or bad.
I think it would be wrong to attempt to legislate morality.
I think that the level of predation is high towards woman in the industry.
While some companies such as Vivid Video seem to be staking a stand against this by instituting mandatory VD and age checks, and creating a “drug-free environment” (there is some argument as to whether they have succeded on that point,)the industry still has far to go.
You need only go so far as the bus station in any large urban area to find the chickenhawks waiting to feed off a scared and desperate runaway. It is most prevalent in L.A. That facet of the business is evil.
Believe me, I enjoy a Fuck-me look shot in my direction a great deal, I just don’t want it from a doped up 16 year old girl who’s only doing it to help her boyfriend and thinks she’s going to be the next Michelle Pfeifer. THAT is evil.
Often wrong… NEVER in doubt
**
Well, that may change things in your husbands case, but you cannot blame the porn on it. A lot of other factors could have been involved, especially the control-freak part which you admit.
Ultimately, did watching a porno make your husband cheat? No. Him wanting to cheat is what did that.
Now, did the porno contribute? Maybe, but that’s like blaming the car for an accident when the driver is drunk. Not the greatest analogy, but ultimately, your husband did it, and nothing could have “made” him do it.
Also, since there is not a prevailing view that ALL (or even most) men will cheat on their spouses when they enjoy pornography, making such sweeping statements against it and it’s effects is pretty ludicrous, personal experience aside.
**
Um… That is quite a statement “porn is damaging.” Sorry, but you are wrong. Porn CAN be damaging, just as a car can be damaging if operated by a drunk! That does not mean it IS damaging. Feel free to prove how porn is ALWAYS damaging or amend this, thank you.
**
“Most men?” I definitely need a cite for that.
**
Hmm… Okay, so most men have used porn, yet all porn is damaging. Seems to me that if these two statements were true, there would be zero marriages anyymore, because every guy would be out screwing everyone else.
Sorry. Maybe most men have used pornography, or at least had at various times, but I still don’t see the sweeping statement on how “it affects everyone negatively” can be used at ALL, let along in conjunction with this.
Ultimately, even if (though I don’t feel it to be true) a large portion of people were negatively affected by pornography, it should still be available for the people who are not affected negatively.
A large number of people are alcoholics, but we do not tell people who can imbibe respobsibly that they cannot have a drink after work, now do we?
And even though there are bars and liquor stores all over, nobody is making an AA member have a druink. As such, while porno is available, no body is making you, your husband, or anyone who does not wish to use it, look at it.
It’s called freedom of choice. It’s something this country was founded upon.
Yer pal,
Satan
I didn’t read the whole thred, but I’m posting anyway…
I have a very good friend who makes his living as an adult-site webmaster. He works 4 hours a day, six days a week, and makes about 3 times what I do in my data analysis job. He can live anywhere he wants and can take time off as often as he wants.
I’m a some-time filmmaker, and a couple of years ago my friend wanted to make a documentary on the adult site industry. I was his videographer. We found that ALL of the webmasters we talked to were very intolerant of illegal content, such as underage girls. They were very leary about anything that had the APPEARANCE that it might be illegal. They made sure that the models had proper identification and medical papers, and all of the models signed contracts. No I.D., no contract. No contract, no photo session. They knew that they were out of the mainstream and they were very scrupulous about their work. They were well aware that the illegal operators brought trouble to a private business and sought to shut them down (self-censorship) before they could ruin a profitable business for all of them.
While making the documentary we attended a photo/video shoot. The models were well paid and genuinely enjoyed what they do. Some of the models ran their own websites and were making a ton of money from both sides of the camera. By the way, most people haven’t been on a set. I can assure you that it’s very tedious. You have to love what you do or it will drive you nuts!
What we DIDN’T see was a bunch of drugged-out hookers. We DIDN’T see women being abused.
What we found was that people in the internet porn business were generally nice people (not all of them though) who were having fun and earning a living.
I don’t think it’s evil. I just have different priorities (flying, filmmaking, looking for a girlfriend) so I don’t engage in it.
What is evil is in the eyes of the beholder. As an ob/gyn over many years, I have had pts of almost every occupation you can think of. Some of these were adult film actors. With a rare exception , these females were approximately 20-24 years or so, were very pleasant, well mannered. They all said they did it for the money. They all said that after a couple of years or so there desire was to go into some other occupation.
These women were able to separate love and love making. Each was either married or had a boyfriend. True love emanates from the brain and when sex took place as a business they were able to separate love from work.
Obviously this was a small sampling but if they were sluts, it wasn’t apparent to me.
As soon as the cameras stopped rolling, they stopped the oohs and the ahs, showered and went home. Some of these girls had finished graduate training in whatever and put themselves thru school
I’m not stating any personal beliefs. Just providing a little insight from my professional observations.
Tassey, I am sorry for what happened between you and your husband. But I can’t believe porn caused the failure of your marriage.
As many people have brought up, there are personalty defects that cause some people to be addictive. I would say that the porn was not what was wrong, but your ex’s underlying personal problems.
My uncle has an addictive personalty. He is an alcholic. After 15 years of sobority, he still attends AA meetings 5-6 times a week. He now seems addicted to AA (which is better, at least). He also diets and execises to the extreme. I have watched my uncle suffer in his life, but I would never sugest his problems came from a bottle. It’s him. It is his inability to control his compulsions in certain areas.
I think porn is like alcohol. Most people can handle it. Some people, who have certain personality problems, can’t. Take away the porn, and these people still have personalty disorders. It has been my experiance that most people get a cheap thrill form porn- it’s a lite snack, not to be confussed with the real thing. I have had boyfriends who liked porn, but they never expected me to act the way the girls in the videos did.
And who hasn’t let their mind wander when talking to someone? I think if that happens a lot, that could be a sign that a relationship may not be going well, hmmm?
Anyway, I don’t think porn is evil, anymore than alcohol is. But I laugh my ass off evertime I watch it! Love the acting!
Dizzy
You people have been holding me back long enough! I’m going to clown college!
Tassey said:
But how do you know the porn, as opposed to your husband’s inherent personality, was the “root of the problem”? If he had voluntarily quit posting messages on web bulletin boards, and then started again, eventually leading to him becoming completely involved in them to the point of excluding you from his life and perhaps even meeting women on these boards, would that mean message boards are inherently evil? No, of course not. (And, yes, this exact thing happened to an acquaintance of mine.)
Porn didn’t lead your husband to cheat. He already had it in him and porn was one way to let it out. Obviously, that didn’t help enough.
In fact, your whole reiteration is wrong – unless you can back up exactly how “porn is damaging” to everybody.
Actually, most men don’t damage anybody.
Rather difficult to give any definitive answer without defining “porn”, let alone “evil”.
From easy to dismiss to more compelling arguments against porn –
• Images / depictions of people are evil. (Including photos of your sainted grandmama and your 3 month old niece?)
• Images of people without their clothes on are evil. (gynecological medical textbook illustrations? your 3 month old niece on the changing table?)
• Images of people that sexually arouse others are evil. (photos of a cute fashion model? profile shot of a sexy movie star? picture of my girlfriend’s face smiling at me?)
• Images of people that exist for the purpose of arousing (“prurient interest”). (Uhh…“exist for the purpose of…?” I have some existentialist questions about this…)
Note that all of the above refer to “people”. In practice, the unexamined assumption when speaking of “porn” is usually that we mean women.
Let us consider the following less silly assertions –
• It is a characteristic of our species that the male’s sexuality is more wired to visual stimulation. In the male, the visual sexual impact of others has a lot to do with whom he is or is not sexually interested in, at least in initial stages of courtship and flirtation. It also plays a significant role in provoking actual arousal in the immediate here and now of viewing.
• In light of that, you could say that each individual woman’s visual sexual attractiveness is an asset she possesses. (please refrain from posting questions about “pieces of asset”), and that women in general possess their own appearance as collective assets of the gender.
• Photography in particular means that the sexually stimulating images can be (and are) separated from any individual woman’s possession (i.e., the visual consumer can stare and leer without taking into consideration any reaction of the person being stared at, a situation remarkably different from staring at a here-and-now sexy attractive female who can encourage you, make fun of you, leave, throw bourbon into your eyes, inform you that you are about to follow her back to her apartment, etc.).
• The experience on the part of men of being able to consume such imagery means that real live women in general is not “where they have to get it from”.
• The proliferation of such images, their omnipresence, means that men in general are exposed to a great number of them ‘passively’, i.e., they don’t have to be purchasers of Playboy et al to be consumers, and can be considered to be involuntary if not necessarily unwilling consumers.
• Both of the above can be argued to have a negative impact in terms of sexual politics, sexual economics, and plain old emotions, on both men and women. That fact that such an argument can be made doesn’t make it so, but it is worth considering.
I wrote one of my less turgid sociology papers on this stuff –
Sexual Objectification and Visual Aspects of Sexuality.
Designated Optional Signature at Bottom of Post
Yep, pornography is evil. So is watching Dirty Harry movies, The Godfather, listening to Rage Against the Machine, or anything that elicits human emotion.
Just because Clint Eastwood can blow away scumbags in a fictitious movie doesn’t mean I can do the same in real life.
Do I jump off the cliff because Ron Jeremy does the same?
There’s always another beer.
O’k, here’s a “hypothetical” situation (and the timing of this “hypothetical” situation is merely a coincidence since it is appropriate to this debate.
Let’s just say you and your spouse have always been open with each other regarding sexual fantasies and desires. Suppose you came home from a really long day, and logged onto your computer to check out the goings on the SDMB. You don’t feel like getting instant messages from friends and family who are usually online right about now, cause you still have work to do and don’t want to spend the entire night online. You use your spouses AOL account to get online. Lo and behold, you notice that the last 2 dozen sites he has logged onto were internet porn sites. Not just ususal, run of the mill porn, but things that you never imagined your spouse would be into.
(Remembering that this is still hypothetical) Do you:
- Wake his sorry ass up and confront him about it
- Pretend you never saw it
- Ask him about it in a way that lets him know that you want to be more attentive to his needs
- Wake his sorry ass up
- Go find some porn sites of your own
- Have a very dry martini and enjoy a little pity party for one thinking that you don’t turn him on anymore
- Wake his sorry ass up
This “hypothetical” situation is really starting to get to me, so any advice on the matter would be greatly appreciated.
Geeze.
Well, I guess it would depend on whether we were talking about something like kiddie porn (reprehensible and disturbing) or B&D - out there, but certainly not immoral in and of itself.
In the former case, waking his sorry ass up would probably be a good step.
In the latter… maybe a cautious and calm exploration of this area… a decision by you if this is something you’d be comfortable in exploring… a decision by you if you can handle knowing that he has these tastes.
- Rick
No, nothing illegal- just bizarre.
OK - then I would venture that you have to decide if you can handle that he has these tastes. I don’t think you can conclude that you don’t turn him on - don’t fall into that trap. But he may just feel that, notwithstanding your open, sharing, relationships… that this is something he’s never been comfortable sharing.
Can you live with that?
If you can… then don’t make a big deal of this. Does it really matter? Men can be… strange creatures sometimes. I like to think I’d be able to share anything with my wife, when she comes along… but I’ve had a number of extremely serious relationships, and one fiancee… and I don’t think I ever 'fessed up each dark and dirty secret I had. Not that they were SERIOUS dark and dirty secrets, of course… but still.
Anyway, I don’t know what to say, except to offer my personal conviction, as an outsider, that marriage is more important than a passing interest in slightly bizarre porn.
Hope this helps.
- Rick
Thanks, Rick,
I’m sitting here on “shot-o-brandy” number two and trying to figure out why this is bothering me. I think that ugly jealous side of me is starting to surface. I actually checked out some of these websites. I have (believe it or not) taken courses in “alternative” sexual behavior (don’t ask) and have always considered myself open minded about sexual issues. THIS, however, is disconcerting. Don’t think I can help him with this one.