Is Porn Bad for You?

[Project Willow]

As you might imagine, the question involves a fairly complex set of rather poorly defined relationships and attitudes to attempt to coorelate in a statistical sense. But in as much as people have conscientiously tried, here is an overview of a number of such studies.

In 1992 Richard Green, a psychiatrist at Imperial College London, disclosed in his book Sexual Science and the Law that patients requesting treatment in clinics for sex offenders commonly say that pornography helps them keep their abnormal sexuality within the confines of their imagination. “Pornography seems to be protective,” Diamond says, perhaps because exposure correlates with lower levels of sexual repression, a potential rape risk factor.

I can see that providing a proxy scene of violation might temper impulses in certain violent individuals. This doesn't comfort me however, rather, it makes me feel even more uneasy, knowing that the violent impulses of some perpetrators are being projected onto unwitting porn actresses, whether they are consenting or not. It's not that I prefer the alternative, that the impulses be acted out upon live humans, it's just I prefer neither option. Regardless, as for the rest of your article, I can't take it on face value, I'll have to do my own review of the extant literature.

Anecdotally, it appears to me that rape-based porn is only a very small part of the marketplace. I'm no expert here, but a casual perusal of the titles available on a popular porn site such a Red Tube seems to back this up.

I've found that titles rarely accurately reflect content in that venue. We view the world through two different pairs of eyes.

[wintler2]

If you can see the problems with porn industry, can you admit that consuming the products of that industry might have problems?

Absolutely. I admit that it might.
But since your own response to consuming the products of that industry was to reject it and everything that you perceived it to represent, can you deny that it also might not?

Because if you can, I don't really see how you're going to get around that disproving-the-truth-of-your-own-witness thing.

Easy: just cos i stopped consuming porn doesn't mean what i have seen no longer has an effect on me, that i instantly lose all the dehumanising habits of thought or arousal that porn teaches.

And if you can't, can you see how there might very well be 8 million stories in the naked city (so to speak) and not just two, ..
Anyway. Simple yes-or-no questions, they're my stock-in-trade, doncha know.

Not in my experience, lol.
My obtuseness renders your argument as 'its all too complex to know", which lacks in utility.

I'll bet you can admit that for e.g. paedophilic porn; why not also for relentlessly sexist and degrading power-over fantasies?

The production of pedophiliac porn entails criminal acts on an ipso facto basis, whereas the production of porn that depicts (granted-for-the-sake-of-argument) relentlessly sexist and degrading power-over fantasies does not. So the two are not really comparable in any way,

Errrm, you only compared them in 1 way, wrt law, so i don't get how they are suddenly 'not comparable in any way'. Lets talk about abuse of power - both have it. Dehumanising of less privelidged class - both have it.

.. except that there's equally little reason to think that exposure to either is capable of creating a literal-minded desire or any kind of desire in an adult who is otherwise inclined and disposed.

I disagree. The stories we tell ourselves/consume have an effect on us - thats my own experience, i believe i've seen it in others, i doubt you could say anything to shake my faith that it is true.

[compared2what?]

C2W?...

This discussion could devolve into the mechanics of prevention, which are inevitably part of the equation in reality and we could go on for quite a while debating which process or another might be effective, and if any could be effective, however, that gets us off into meta concerns and away from the central question.

So if we can presume that it is possible to depend upon some sort of regulation, what then do you do with the central question?

Well....I don't see why anyone should have to abide by a presumption that requires anyone else to live in personal denial when that's not absolutely necessary. So no. We can't.

However, we can resolve that, theoretically speaking, we have no reason to think that some sort of regulation could hurt, assuming that the regulatory agency was flush with theoretical funding, fully staffed with highly trained and sensitive theoretical agents, and 100 percent compliant with every aspect of the theoretically rigorous system of public oversight by which it was theoretically governed. At least. Just, you know, on an interim basis, until we come up with a better idea.

Provided that you're down with that, of course. In fact, as long as we're at it, we might as well complement our theoretically robust enforcement efforts with an even more theoretically robust system of preventative measures designed to offer a comprehensively integrated program of aid, assistance, protection and comfort to the various classes and groups of people whom we know to be most at risk for sexual predation. And (what the hell) poverty, oppression, crime and sorrow of all kinds!

In short: There's no point in making any concessions at this stage of the game, I feel. It's our fantasy, after all. So if there are no objections from the theoretical committee?

(to be continued.)

[Nordic]

I agree with Barracuda that if one peruses various porn sites that have a wide general appeal, there are very very few that portray any kind of rape fantasy.

There are, however, a surprising number of multiple men with one woman scenes, something that does NOT do it for me. Like Chris Rock, I have a one penis-per-fantasy rule.

And if you look at the highest rated vids on a site like xogogo.com, a hell of a lot of them involve scenes where both parties appear to be getting a hell of a lot of enjoyment. I'd say for a great many men, seeing the woman wildly turned on is hugely arousing. In fact, a lot of Japanese porn seems to be about showing just how turned on the woman is getting (in rather graphic detail). Then again the Japanese really seem to have a thing for bondage, sometimes in an origami-like confusion of beautiful knot-work.

For me, porn is most definitely a defuser, keeps me from eyeing every damn skirt that walks down the street in times of drought, keeps me from finding myself going after the real thing at times when doing so would be a really self destructive idea, and basically just serves as a sexual mood stabilizer. Women will probably never understand this -- god knows my wife doesn't.

As far as the girls who are actually being viewed, well, I sure wouldn't want any of them to be my daughter, but the images are already there, they're artifacts of something that has already happened -- I didn't cause them to be made, and I didn't even pay for them thus causig any more to be made. The images exist with or without me.

And my standards are probably pretty tame, I mainly respond to intense visual beauty, and those girls sometimes don't have to do anything but pose artistically. it seems the more beautiful they are, the less they actually have to do.

[compared2what?]

Are you positing that it is impossible to measure what percentage of men derive pleasure from witnessing rape?

Not exactly. I'm positing....

[Tedious post that was trying too hard and getting nowhere deleted.]

I'm positing that absent certain proof wrt whether real acts of rape are or aren't being depicted in any and/or every image comprehended by a dispute about online porn, there's no way for any party to the conflict to prevail over the others that's fair and considerate to the observations and experience on which it seems reasonable to assume all views of it are legitimately based. Consequent to which, I'm further positing a somewhat more expansive version of pretty much the same thing I already said here.

That's about it, really. Reciprocal understanding and reasonable mutual accommodation would both be good, if they were feasible. But they might not be. And they can't always be. That's pretty much been the cause of trouble since the world began, as I understand it.

I wish I had more. Because I can certainly see that more is needed. But I don't.

[Stephen Morgan]

I guess Mr. Morgan doesn't go to a lot of movies, then.

Or else he does and feels very very dirty about it later.

I see a clear dividing line. Movies are fiction telling a story. The actor must be seen as separate from the character. Don't write to "Edna Sharples, c/o Granada TV", there won't be an answer, even though some people do. Porn sex is actually happening, even if by some measures not "real", it's a physical fact and that is what causes the fake emotion to be objectionable. They porn actors arern't portraying characters.

A couple of examples from outside porn: one is page three of the sun. This is generally a topless woman, technically soft-core porn, and I don't mind that. I don't buy it, but I don't mind it. What I mind is when they put an alleged political opinion of hers at the side. Sun Stunna Busty Brandi thinks the fiscal crisis in the Eurozone vindicates The Sun's stand against monetary union, that sort of thing. Tits fine, synthetic personality not fine.

The other example is reality TV. I don't exactly watch it very often, to say the least, but the other day I found myself on a course which I'd been made to go on by the jobcentre, and to avoid having to do any work the staff simply made us sit and watch "The Fairy Jobmother", a TV programme on Channel 4, and in clear breach of intellectual property law. Traumatising, it were. We all know these things are set up, but they were blubbering away, and she was abusing them to their faces, then they're brainwashed into conformity and given a job by a company who then get free advertising on Channel 4. Then they cry again.

[Stephen Morgan]

And Stephen, how is the guy's apparent ability to "connect emotionally" in any way "disturbing"?

Well, I don't mind people whoring their bodies but that's different. Commercial sex is one thing, commerical emotion is another. Having emotions in public is shameful in itself, allowing people to film it for money is one of the most despicable acts a human can commit.

Yeah. I supposed you meant something like that. You and I disagree of course, but that is not unusual.

It wouldn't surprise me if Mr. Deen "connects emotionally" with the bank teller too during routine transactions, because that's just how some of us are — we see people as people, not merely objects, and we tend to connect on an emotional level as a matter of course. So, naturally, when such a person has sex with someone, even in the context of a performance, it isn't difficult to imagine that he connects emotionally with them there, too. Personally, I find that beautiful.

I don't think we know that he does connect with them. He seems to do so, the article said, and this appearance is appealing to women. Obviously we can't know what's going on in his head. Perhaps he's a psychopath who has learned to adequately feign emotion to manipulate normal people.

Anyway, people aren't always people. Most of the time people are functions. cf Millgram, Stanford. Cogs in a machine, not truly responsible.

On the other hand, it could be the non-connection — especially during such an intimate act — that I might find ugly.

Well, if it was proper sex, fine. I suppose it comes down to whether you want porn to resemble normal sex with bigger bits. You might find it more arousing if it manufactures the normal emotions and therefore closely resembles the normal act, or you might want to keep a clear psychological divide between the two by having porn not replicate the psychological aspects of normal sex.

[semper occultus]

For me, porn is most definitely a defuser, keeps me from eyeing every damn skirt that walks down the street in times of drought, keeps me from finding myself going after the real thing at times when doing so would be a really self destructive idea, and basically just serves as a sexual mood stabilizer. Women will probably never understand this -- god knows my wife doesn't.

...quite...but then she doesn't have to contend with testosterone poisoning....

Fascinating Facts About Testosterone

by Karla Jennings

When Joan's muscle aches - the result of an early hysterectomy - became disabling, she asked her doctor for help. He prescribed the male hormone testosterone. But after just a few weeks on the medication, Joan discovered an astonishing side effect: Testosterone not only relieved her pain but it also boosted her once-normal libido to an X-rated level.

"Now I know what it's like to be a nymphomaniac," she says. "I'd walk down the street and wonder what everybody looked like naked ... what they'd be like."

But her sexual intensity had a down side. Both she and her husband found it unnerving. "He couldn't keep up with me," says Joan. She couldn't even keep up with herself. "It became an inconvenience," she confesses. "If you could turn it on just on Friday nights, it would be nice. But to think about sex all the time, every hour .... I didn't enjoy it."

http://www.susans.org/reference/testos.html

[Nordic]

For me, porn is most definitely a defuser, keeps me from eyeing every damn skirt that walks down the street in times of drought, keeps me from finding myself going after the real thing at times when doing so would be a really self destructive idea, and basically just serves as a sexual mood stabilizer. Women will probably never understand this -- god knows my wife doesn't.

...quite...but then she doesn't have to contend with testosterone poisoning....

Fascinating Facts About Testosterone

by Karla Jennings

When Joan's muscle aches - the result of an early hysterectomy - became disabling, she asked her doctor for help. He prescribed the male hormone testosterone. But after just a few weeks on the medication, Joan discovered an astonishing side effect: Testosterone not only relieved her pain but it also boosted her once-normal libido to an X-rated level.

"Now I know what it's like to be a nymphomaniac," she says. "I'd walk down the street and wonder what everybody looked like naked ... what they'd be like."

But her sexual intensity had a down side. Both she and her husband found it unnerving. "He couldn't keep up with me," says Joan. She couldn't even keep up with herself. "It became an inconvenience," she confesses. "If you could turn it on just on Friday nights, it would be nice. But to think about sex all the time, every hour .... I didn't enjoy it."

http://www.susans.org/reference/testos.html

Damn that's just fucking hilarious! THAT'S WHAT IT'S LIKE TO BE A GUY, LADIES!!!

I used to wish I could just pull the fuse on my sex drive. Just yank it out until I needed it. It's FUCKING ANNOYING most of the time!

I have to admit that's one good thing about getting older! I'm turning 50 very soon, and my sex drive is in a really good place now, it's there, but it's not TOO there.

[Simulist]

I don't think we know that he does connect with them. He seems to do so, the article said, and this appearance is appealing to women. Obviously we can't know what's going on in his head. Perhaps he's a psychopath who has learned to adequately feign emotion to manipulate normal people.

He could be a psycho, I suppose. Then again, he might be just a nice guy who does porn.

Anyway, people aren't always people. Most of the time people are functions. cf Millgram, Stanford. Cogs in a machine, not truly responsible.

I strongly disagree. People are always people, never just functions; sometimes though, unfortunately, playing a "cog in the machine" causes many of us to lose sight of that simple fact, from time to time.

[compared2what?]

For me, porn is most definitely a defuser, keeps me from eyeing every damn skirt that walks down the street in times of drought, keeps me from finding myself going after the real thing at times when doing so would be a really self destructive idea, and basically just serves as a sexual mood stabilizer. Women will probably never understand this -- god knows my wife doesn't.

...quite...but then she doesn't have to contend with testosterone poisoning....

Fascinating Facts About Testosterone

by Karla Jennings

When Joan's muscle aches - the result of an early hysterectomy - became disabling, she asked her doctor for help. He prescribed the male hormone testosterone. But after just a few weeks on the medication, Joan discovered an astonishing side effect: Testosterone not only relieved her pain but it also boosted her once-normal libido to an X-rated level.

"Now I know what it's like to be a nymphomaniac," she says. "I'd walk down the street and wonder what everybody looked like naked ... what they'd be like."

But her sexual intensity had a down side. Both she and her husband found it unnerving. "He couldn't keep up with me," says Joan. She couldn't even keep up with herself. "It became an inconvenience," she confesses. "If you could turn it on just on Friday nights, it would be nice. But to think about sex all the time, every hour .... I didn't enjoy it."

http://www.susans.org/reference/testos.html

Damn that's just fucking hilarious! THAT'S WHAT IT'S LIKE TO BE A GUY, LADIES!!!

I used to wish I could just pull the fuse on my sex drive. Just yank it out until I needed it. It's FUCKING ANNOYING most of the time!

I have to admit that's one good thing about getting older! I'm turning 50 very soon, and my sex drive is in a really good place now, it's there, but it's not TOO there.

^I've often wished that a male poster would make a point roughly along these lines at various stages of the other gender-war slug-out threads we've had here. Because....I don't know. I'm naturally hesitant to start telling guys who they are and what they feel and why. So I fully pre-stipulate that they know and I don't and that they're not all the same as one another and (blah-blah-blah) in advance, okay?

Okay. That said, it does seem to me almost criminal that male children pretty routinely go on to become adult men who live the whole of their lives in a society that simply refuses to acknowledge that they spent very nearly the whole of adolescence in a state of such very extreme emotional and physical duress that it's roughly equivalent to sexual assault in some ways. I mean, it's not like you can meaningfully consent to being sexually overwhelmed by your own hormones, they're just going to go ahead and have their way with you whether you want them to or not.

Anyway. I'm not in a position to speak to the truth of that experience, and may not have characterized it just now in apt terms. But whatever it's like, it's sexually very extreme. It's common to almost all men. It's nearly exclusively male. It's too heavily socially stigmatized to be admitted to very often. And boys/men are systematically shamed, mocked and scorned into repressing and otherwise remaining silent about it.

I'd say that qualifies as societal misandry. Personally. Figuratively speaking, I'm pretty sure that it frequently causes wounds that leave scars of some kind, and that I've often seen them. But what do I know? That kind of thing is inherently subject to eye-of-the-beholder bias even when it's not an other-gender observation. So I could be totally wrong.

Nevertheless. FWIW.

[Simulist]

Thanks C2w. You're not wrong on this at all; in fact, I think you're very right.

[Nordic]

I'd say its less societal misandry as it is biological. It's like a curse of evolution. It would be nice if we felt that way only in the presence of a fertile female, but no, we feel that way 24/7. And then there are the chronic wet dreams, which at that age, when either your mom still wakes you up for school, or you have roommates sleeping a few feet away in college, are simply embarrassing, AND they haunt you all day, psychologically it's like your mind got fucked but you didn't.

It's seriously overkill on the part of our biology. I mean, if I had the libido at age 20 that I have now at 49, I would still be plenty driven to reproduce and keep the species going, so I can only wonder what the evolutionary benefit to having the young adult males of our species so ridiculously over-sexed.

[Project Willow]

I agree with Barracuda that if one peruses various porn sites that have a wide general appeal, there are very very few that portray any kind of rape fantasy.

I've caused confusion by talking about rape and rape fantasies without making it clear what I was saying about either of the two. What I meant is that I was seeing rape in many videos, not rape fantasy story lines, but it's been made clear to me such a discussion is impossible.

<triggers>
I would have gone into how I've spent 20 years painting and drawing physical and emotional responses to assault, and for that reason I don't think it's necessarily projection when I see those responses in the young women in some videos. I would attempt to describe a portion of videos where the woman is thrown about with as much respect to her person as the NYPD has shown in dragging around protesters. There is little thought given to the woman's comfort, let alone pleasure, she is treated like a tool, men using their penises as cudgels. Those would be some outward signs perhaps to someone who hasn't been assaulted. I concede this may be play-acting. I've been there however, I've been in innumerable scenarios where I was subject to the whim of the men assaulting me, yet I was still required to respond as if this weren't the case. I was required to move my body around and perform appropriately, but in those situations, as much as you may try to fake it, the body will betray you. Even if you can stifle yourself vocally, pain and fear will cause intermittent tightening and stiffness in certain muscles, other times they will cause a limpness and flatness. It takes a great deal of energy and attention to keep these reactions from showing and to keep yourself from getting seriously injured. I would say that I've seen all of these in a significant number of videos, and they look like rape to me, from beginning to end.

But again, we can't have that conversation because my experience renders my voice incredible, because my traumatized eyes are probably lying projectors. No one's eyes can be trusted and we don't know what actually happened on the ground. What I don't understand is at what point can I trust my own eyes? Can I trust that I am seeing a woman treated as a tool or is that projection as well? If I point that out, am I jsut shaming people? Are only male eyes to be trusted? And what of porn survivor's voices, those who say if it looks like the woman is being hurt she probably is, do we go on in ignorance of that as well?

Is there nothing we can explore about the porn industry other than to issue blanket condemnations of its (guessed at) abuses?

What if it is all play-acting and there is no abuse? If I had to describe human sexuality based on the content of porn I'd say that both men and women are sexually aroused by the control and debasement of women, and that would be an obvious distortion of reality. Why is that so?

Back to my original question, which if it can't be why are men getting off on rape, if men aren't seeing rape, what are they seeing? If no one person's eyes can be trusted then what are we all seeing?

As far as the girls who are actually being viewed, well, I sure wouldn't want any of them to be my daughter, but the images are already there, they're artifacts of something that has already happened -- I didn't cause them to be made, and I didn't even pay for them thus causig any more to be made.

If you are consuming porn then you are definitely one of the reasons it exists. There should be no requirement that another person is raped, abused, or debased in order for you to temper your unbearable hormone storms.

When men no longer feel the need to make dishonest, exclusionary qualifying statements about their daughters, the world will be a much better place. We are all your daughters.

[compared2what?]

Thanks C2w. You're not wrong on this at all; in fact, I think you're very right.

Really?

In that case, I should probably mention that while I can honestly say that I first thought of it in those terms while watching Johnny Depp being consumed by his bed in Nighmare on Elm Street, I cannot honestly say that Nightmare on Elm Street taught me it. Neither can I honestly say that I might well never have recognized it as something I knew/felt had I never seen Nightmare on Elm Street. I do concede the possibility, of course. However, while I obviously have no real way of knowing for sure, it doesn't seem like a very likely one, all things considered. On the contrary -- and as memorable as that moment remains for me, lo these 25+ years later -- I couldn't seriously hope to claim that I'd have any reasonable basis at all for saying that Nightmare on Elm Street is capable of creating that thought, or any other, or a thoughtful disposition, or a lasting interest in social attitudes toward sex and gender in one single adult anywhere on earth in and of itself.

I'm far from the only person who's ever understood that particular scene to have those connotations, granted. Nevertheless, my best guess would be that relative to the overall number comprising the entire class of adults who have seen Nightmare on Elm Street, the overall number comprising the entire class of adults who viewed that scene as I did is far, far too low to be correlated with exposure to it and that the subset of that class to whom it was particularly meaningful in any way that had any applicability to anything wholly unrelated to Nightmare on Elm Street is still yet far lower.

^For the purposes of analogy.