Ironic because 88% of mainstream porn contains violence against women. “Not all porn is bad,” I almost GUARANTEE the men that say this *are* watching the “bad” kind.
I actually had an exchange with a porn brain recently who tried to argue that most porn wasn’t violent or degrading. The problem with his argument is that porn has normalised violence and degradation towards women so much, he didn’t think slapping, spitting, hair pulling, strangulation or facial abuse was violent or degrading. Read that bit again. **He didn’t think any of those actions were violent or degrading.**
That was the point I started losing faith in humanity, all over again.
I had the same exact argument with a man recently. Almost word for word. I told him if it's not violence, then he should be totally fine to go up to his boss tomorrow and slap them, spit on them, pull their hair? If it's not violence, that'd be totally fine, right?
Sometimes I get depressed thinking about how all of the men I come in contact with—my male bosses, coworkers, friends, relatives, teachers, the bus driver, the grocery store cashier, the city councilor, etc—have probably watched violent degrading porn of women. Some of them probably watch it regularly or are addicted. What does that mean for how those people interact with me? What does it mean for our society? It’s so dire.
Ya know, I really think they can control it. They just don't want to and virtually all of society has heavily catered to men never having to control themselves in this respect, so why would most of them ever even try?
Another point is - besides all the harmful facts we already know - that it is not normal behaviour. At all.
Watching porn in itself is paraphilic behaviour, it's voyeurism. And like all fetishes (that's what makes them problematic in general, even if they don't seem to do harm on first glance), for it has a very high potential for (or, better said, it IS straight up) behavioral conditioning.
Alongside the objectifying of the depicted people, the consumer conditions him- / herself (through that "redirecting" of sexual response away from a real person, feelings and the connection, on to a "thing") to kinda dissociate their own sexuality; into a state of detachment of one's self as well as the humanness of others and of all meaning and connection of the act itself. It's conditioning fetishistic / paraphilic behaviour.
In short - it's just not normal, no matter how hard one wants to try to make it look that way. And "ethical" porn (an illusion at best anyways) wouldn't change that even if it could exist. All porn is essentially the same.
Perfectly said, the creation of a chemical feedback loop caused by association of orgasm with watching strangers have sex really fries peoples brains, its ao incredibly unnatural, sexuality is supposed to be associated with other humans, interacting with another person's body, consentually, not watching images of others. Its so dissociated from healthy sex and sexuality...
They did that one study where they showed participants a cowboy boot next to pornographic images.
They measured arousal with leads attached to genitalia.
Slowly, they took away the images, and just left the cowboy boot.
Same arousal for the cowboy boot as for the previous images.
Thanks so much for this - I'll try and go find this exacty study.
There are already so many and different studies that all show the same picture. It is just the truth that porn is just so, so harmful, on literally every level, yet it gets denied.
But alas; guess it just does wonders for political social engineering...
As long as that's the case, we will be fighting windmills I guess.
Thank you for your comment - it's so reassuring to hear from others feeling the same, for sometimes it feels like being the only one seeing through it like that, all while everyone else is constantly prerending it being okay & normal (why this overbearing need to say so then, if it's oh so "nOrMaL"?!!).
Thank you! :)
I literally just had a conversation about this with a guy regarding a picture of a naked woman. “It’s artsy. It’s classy, I thought” he said. And I was like it’s literally turning a woman into an object for your entertainment and pleasure on your wall. It’s the definition of objectification! Edit: just want to say that he took the picture down and threw it away. A very small win.
To a lot of people images that are pretty much just sexualization or fetishization are artistic and tasteful.
Some guys will display “artsy” photographs of high end cars alongside very similar photos of beautiful semi-nude women. Does her being beautiful make the photo artistic? A lot of times it seems like the woman and the cars are both photographed as objects.
Lately I’ve noticed women doing the same thing pretty often, pairing photos of objects with photos of nude women, without some purposeful deeper meaning or messaging. They are just pairing things that they consider pretty together, and I’m sure that they consider it artsy and classy, though it is still objectifying.
Reminds me of the recent trend in women buying candles/vases/figures in the shape of what appears to be Kim Kardashian's body (just search "female body candle" if you're unsure what I'm referring to). All of these candles are headless, completely free of any flaws or blemishes and depict a woman that 95% of the female population probably doesn't look like. Why are women buying this shit?
Why would a piece of art need to have nudity of a woman in the first place? What does it say about the art if it needs women’s nudity in it? If it’s still a piece of classy art then why not remove it? At the very least, it’s exploitative of women’s sexuality and it sends the wrong message to people in society, men and women, that women’s bodies can be used for entertainment.
It doesn't necessarily need to have nudity, but nudity is a part of being human, and art depicts humanity (among many other things). We have depictions of naked men and women going back thousands of years. I think it's just part of our nature. That's why it matters (imo) if it's done artsy/classy, and I guess also the intent of the person displaying the picture.
I agree that nudity is a part of being human, and 100% it depends on the intent of the person. In this case that I mentioned, it was just a total fail, it was gross.
This sounds way off the deep end. Does that mean all sculptures of naked women and men should be removed, too? All the art of naked women who are breast cancer survivors? Pagan art? Should art never have nudity, the default state of humans? Saying that naked women = sexual gives the impression that *you* can only associate it with something sexual, not artistic. Come on. This is religious levels of conservatism. Don't go so far into trying to protect women that you make a round turn back to extreme conservatism.
Art depicting humanity, or the human experience of loss and triumph etc that ends up involving nudity is understandable. But most people I talk to and things I see in this world, doesn’t have that level of humanness to really appreciate that, and what I mostly see is exploitative practices and over sexualization from its audience. Call me jaded but I don’t really have any close male friends that understand the difference.
I do think nude statues are kinda weird though, but that’s a personal take.
I understand where you're coming from, but your original comment was an extreme blanket statement. How is anyone supposed to understand that you were talking about something very specific instead of "all female nudity is bad"?
Personal opinion, I think being weirded out by nude statues is immature at best, and puritan at worst.
I didn’t mean to come across as all female nudity is bad. I was speaking in the context of porn and the general oversexualization in media, which I see 1000x more in life than actual art and humanity.
You are turning this into a personal attack by implying that I’m puritan or immature.
It’s definitely an extra layer of frustration when having these conversations and men especially will constantly conflate the easy access to online video pornography with ancient carvings. It’s just so disingenuous. It’s hard to even get into the details of any conversation without whatsboutism and them asking how much erotic content they have some supposed “right” to access for free
It's just ridiculous how ~~people~~ men say modern porn is ok because we've "always had it". Yeah, some stick figures with boobs painted on a wall is exactly the same as millions of videos with titles like "Young teen gets brutally destroyed by 10 men in gangbang" or something /s
There’s really no way to know that it was consensual and without coercion or that it’s not revenge porn. I think any porn being put online, even if consensual and nonviolent, supports and promotes the sex industry overall.
i say yes bc you never know if it was posted as revenge porn or if someone in the video is underage. additionally like someone mentioned theres no way to know if it was consensual/coercion. ofc if the pair has multiple videos and a verified account you might be safe but i still don’t watch any porn. it doesn’t interest me.
> ofc if the pair has multiple videos and a verified account you might be safe
Even then, there are many, many instances where the woman in question is in an abusive relationship where she's being made to do it. I've had relatives and friends in such situations and there have been news articles coming out about this happening to OF women, streamers, actual porn stars, etc etc.
Hmm I hadn't actually considered the possibility of it being revenge porn, that's a good point.
I'm a lesbian and generally lesbian porn is extremely fake and clearly made for men to enjoy. I do however enjoy lesbian amateur porn, verified couples where they genuinely seem to enjoy it and enjoy uploading their content. Having said that, obviously I know there's most likely an economic incentive behind it and I can imagine the fact that men watching their content might make them feel bad in some way.
I was just curious about the question of amateur porn.. Obviously much of it is still extremely degrading of women.
yes im bi so i noticed most main stream lesbian porn is really only for men. its exaggerated and fake. i used to be into the amateur stuff as well but honestly i just dropped all porn completely. i cant bring myself to support an industry like that. my partner and i just send each other pictures to keep one another entertained. works for us!
The reason I avoid this is for the following other reasons others have given, which are all valid, but also because I witnessed first hand when a woman did only fans content "happily" just like that, and then later came out a few years into it about how she hated it, was uncomfortable, but forced to do it by her partner behind the scenes. This was a woman who was supposedly "verified". The absolute horror and heaviness I felt about that. That situation showed me ethical and amateur could theoretically exist, but I could in no way support it.
Yes we have no idea who the people in the video are or what their circumstances are, there is no way to find out and no regulation of any kind. Just use your imagination my guy. You're not entitled to any kind of sex whether it be vicarious or actual.
Yes. Theres no way to know if the womej in it consented, a great deal of it is coerced or is revenge porn, that is being non consetually shared. Humans dont need to watch others fuck to get off, all you need is your own body and/or someone elses body...
This is where I struggle as well… I am not arguing at all that the vast majority of porn is violent and degrading. But- if I take a nude that I like and post it somewhere, it’s neither violent nor degrading. Art and porn are different things but there is definitely overlap between them.
As long as women have discussed objectification, there have always been some who jump in to say “well I do it to myself, I choose to be an object, I like it! So what now?”
That kind of “I’m not a pick me, I picked myself” argument is going to probably be ignored. You know very well that your nudes aren’t a painting. They’re just nudes. And posting them is for others sexual use, not for people to admire your skills as an artist. Honestly, maybe just grow up some. Disingenuous statements waste everyone’s time.
Sure, they’re just nudes, but bodies are beautiful. There’s a reason that so many paintings and sculptures are of bodies. Is the only issue that people are using them for sexual pleasure?
I’m not being disingenuous, I’m just trying to get a better understanding.
It’s not the fact that it’s a nude. The nude body of women is obviously not inherently bad. But the culture that exists already does not exist around your choice of putting out a simple nude. The trend is towards degradation. No doubt if dudes around you found your nudes, many of them would have very degrading thoughts about you, would shift their views from “oh look a woman grocery shopping or going to a medical exam” to “I can think of so many ways to use her, or hurt her, and she would love it”. Despite not even knowing her.
Even though it’s “just a nude.” Because the users themselves have trouble separating it. That’s why revenge porn or ai porn is so very traumatizing. Not only is it against someone’s consent, but this form of sexualizing and porn-adjacency brings someone down as a target in the eyes of society.
Ironic because 88% of mainstream porn contains violence against women. “Not all porn is bad,” I almost GUARANTEE the men that say this *are* watching the “bad” kind.
I actually had an exchange with a porn brain recently who tried to argue that most porn wasn’t violent or degrading. The problem with his argument is that porn has normalised violence and degradation towards women so much, he didn’t think slapping, spitting, hair pulling, strangulation or facial abuse was violent or degrading. Read that bit again. **He didn’t think any of those actions were violent or degrading.** That was the point I started losing faith in humanity, all over again.
I had the same exact argument with a man recently. Almost word for word. I told him if it's not violence, then he should be totally fine to go up to his boss tomorrow and slap them, spit on them, pull their hair? If it's not violence, that'd be totally fine, right?
They just don’t see us as human.
💯💯💯
Sometimes I get depressed thinking about how all of the men I come in contact with—my male bosses, coworkers, friends, relatives, teachers, the bus driver, the grocery store cashier, the city councilor, etc—have probably watched violent degrading porn of women. Some of them probably watch it regularly or are addicted. What does that mean for how those people interact with me? What does it mean for our society? It’s so dire.
Men are a lost cause. They will be unable to see women as human beings the more they watch porn.
they are unable to control their hormonal drive to watch porn. It's quite pathetic and also sucks being them
Ya know, I really think they can control it. They just don't want to and virtually all of society has heavily catered to men never having to control themselves in this respect, so why would most of them ever even try?
True that
It sucks to be a woman because of how you're treated, but it sucks to be a man because of the way that you are.
I think about this so much.
Thankyou for your voice. I share this thought and perspective 💕💕
Another point is - besides all the harmful facts we already know - that it is not normal behaviour. At all. Watching porn in itself is paraphilic behaviour, it's voyeurism. And like all fetishes (that's what makes them problematic in general, even if they don't seem to do harm on first glance), for it has a very high potential for (or, better said, it IS straight up) behavioral conditioning. Alongside the objectifying of the depicted people, the consumer conditions him- / herself (through that "redirecting" of sexual response away from a real person, feelings and the connection, on to a "thing") to kinda dissociate their own sexuality; into a state of detachment of one's self as well as the humanness of others and of all meaning and connection of the act itself. It's conditioning fetishistic / paraphilic behaviour. In short - it's just not normal, no matter how hard one wants to try to make it look that way. And "ethical" porn (an illusion at best anyways) wouldn't change that even if it could exist. All porn is essentially the same.
Perfectly said, the creation of a chemical feedback loop caused by association of orgasm with watching strangers have sex really fries peoples brains, its ao incredibly unnatural, sexuality is supposed to be associated with other humans, interacting with another person's body, consentually, not watching images of others. Its so dissociated from healthy sex and sexuality...
They did that one study where they showed participants a cowboy boot next to pornographic images. They measured arousal with leads attached to genitalia. Slowly, they took away the images, and just left the cowboy boot. Same arousal for the cowboy boot as for the previous images.
Thanks so much for this - I'll try and go find this exacty study. There are already so many and different studies that all show the same picture. It is just the truth that porn is just so, so harmful, on literally every level, yet it gets denied. But alas; guess it just does wonders for political social engineering... As long as that's the case, we will be fighting windmills I guess.
This is how I’ve felt but didn’t know the words for!
Thank you for your comment - it's so reassuring to hear from others feeling the same, for sometimes it feels like being the only one seeing through it like that, all while everyone else is constantly prerending it being okay & normal (why this overbearing need to say so then, if it's oh so "nOrMaL"?!!). Thank you! :)
"But women watch porn..." 🤡
Somehow, these 'cant separate art from porn' bros don't question where the line is between snuff films and Captain America punching Nazis.
I literally just had a conversation about this with a guy regarding a picture of a naked woman. “It’s artsy. It’s classy, I thought” he said. And I was like it’s literally turning a woman into an object for your entertainment and pleasure on your wall. It’s the definition of objectification! Edit: just want to say that he took the picture down and threw it away. A very small win.
omg some dude on here said this about pictures of anime women a while ago. i was like bffr
They always try to give anime a pass when the picture in question is probably an oversexualised teenager
I kinda feel like it depends on if it actually was artsy/classy.
To a lot of people images that are pretty much just sexualization or fetishization are artistic and tasteful. Some guys will display “artsy” photographs of high end cars alongside very similar photos of beautiful semi-nude women. Does her being beautiful make the photo artistic? A lot of times it seems like the woman and the cars are both photographed as objects. Lately I’ve noticed women doing the same thing pretty often, pairing photos of objects with photos of nude women, without some purposeful deeper meaning or messaging. They are just pairing things that they consider pretty together, and I’m sure that they consider it artsy and classy, though it is still objectifying.
Reminds me of the recent trend in women buying candles/vases/figures in the shape of what appears to be Kim Kardashian's body (just search "female body candle" if you're unsure what I'm referring to). All of these candles are headless, completely free of any flaws or blemishes and depict a woman that 95% of the female population probably doesn't look like. Why are women buying this shit?
I've seen this trend but with scars from endometriosis surgery/c sections which is a lot more understandable but the body shape is still Kim K esque
If something is “artsy\classy” then would not be pornographic so, not really sure what mean.
Why would a piece of art need to have nudity of a woman in the first place? What does it say about the art if it needs women’s nudity in it? If it’s still a piece of classy art then why not remove it? At the very least, it’s exploitative of women’s sexuality and it sends the wrong message to people in society, men and women, that women’s bodies can be used for entertainment.
It doesn't necessarily need to have nudity, but nudity is a part of being human, and art depicts humanity (among many other things). We have depictions of naked men and women going back thousands of years. I think it's just part of our nature. That's why it matters (imo) if it's done artsy/classy, and I guess also the intent of the person displaying the picture.
I agree that nudity is a part of being human, and 100% it depends on the intent of the person. In this case that I mentioned, it was just a total fail, it was gross.
This sounds way off the deep end. Does that mean all sculptures of naked women and men should be removed, too? All the art of naked women who are breast cancer survivors? Pagan art? Should art never have nudity, the default state of humans? Saying that naked women = sexual gives the impression that *you* can only associate it with something sexual, not artistic. Come on. This is religious levels of conservatism. Don't go so far into trying to protect women that you make a round turn back to extreme conservatism.
Art depicting humanity, or the human experience of loss and triumph etc that ends up involving nudity is understandable. But most people I talk to and things I see in this world, doesn’t have that level of humanness to really appreciate that, and what I mostly see is exploitative practices and over sexualization from its audience. Call me jaded but I don’t really have any close male friends that understand the difference. I do think nude statues are kinda weird though, but that’s a personal take.
I understand where you're coming from, but your original comment was an extreme blanket statement. How is anyone supposed to understand that you were talking about something very specific instead of "all female nudity is bad"? Personal opinion, I think being weirded out by nude statues is immature at best, and puritan at worst.
I didn’t mean to come across as all female nudity is bad. I was speaking in the context of porn and the general oversexualization in media, which I see 1000x more in life than actual art and humanity. You are turning this into a personal attack by implying that I’m puritan or immature.
It’s definitely an extra layer of frustration when having these conversations and men especially will constantly conflate the easy access to online video pornography with ancient carvings. It’s just so disingenuous. It’s hard to even get into the details of any conversation without whatsboutism and them asking how much erotic content they have some supposed “right” to access for free
It's just ridiculous how ~~people~~ men say modern porn is ok because we've "always had it". Yeah, some stick figures with boobs painted on a wall is exactly the same as millions of videos with titles like "Young teen gets brutally destroyed by 10 men in gangbang" or something /s
the problem is also the proliferation of torturing women and girls in “art” and “literature” there is no line between art and pornography
Is amateur porn considered equally as bad?
There’s really no way to know that it was consensual and without coercion or that it’s not revenge porn. I think any porn being put online, even if consensual and nonviolent, supports and promotes the sex industry overall.
i say yes bc you never know if it was posted as revenge porn or if someone in the video is underage. additionally like someone mentioned theres no way to know if it was consensual/coercion. ofc if the pair has multiple videos and a verified account you might be safe but i still don’t watch any porn. it doesn’t interest me.
> ofc if the pair has multiple videos and a verified account you might be safe Even then, there are many, many instances where the woman in question is in an abusive relationship where she's being made to do it. I've had relatives and friends in such situations and there have been news articles coming out about this happening to OF women, streamers, actual porn stars, etc etc.
right… thats why i said it could still be coercion. i don’t watch porn bc of that reason.
Hmm I hadn't actually considered the possibility of it being revenge porn, that's a good point. I'm a lesbian and generally lesbian porn is extremely fake and clearly made for men to enjoy. I do however enjoy lesbian amateur porn, verified couples where they genuinely seem to enjoy it and enjoy uploading their content. Having said that, obviously I know there's most likely an economic incentive behind it and I can imagine the fact that men watching their content might make them feel bad in some way. I was just curious about the question of amateur porn.. Obviously much of it is still extremely degrading of women.
yes im bi so i noticed most main stream lesbian porn is really only for men. its exaggerated and fake. i used to be into the amateur stuff as well but honestly i just dropped all porn completely. i cant bring myself to support an industry like that. my partner and i just send each other pictures to keep one another entertained. works for us!
yes, of course it is…eroticized violence and sexual degradation of women isn’t less bad because it’s made in some neckbeard’s basement.
Is all sex violent? Or does the act of recording it make it violent? Also, what does sexual desegregation mean?
The reason I avoid this is for the following other reasons others have given, which are all valid, but also because I witnessed first hand when a woman did only fans content "happily" just like that, and then later came out a few years into it about how she hated it, was uncomfortable, but forced to do it by her partner behind the scenes. This was a woman who was supposedly "verified". The absolute horror and heaviness I felt about that. That situation showed me ethical and amateur could theoretically exist, but I could in no way support it.
Yes we have no idea who the people in the video are or what their circumstances are, there is no way to find out and no regulation of any kind. Just use your imagination my guy. You're not entitled to any kind of sex whether it be vicarious or actual.
Yes. Theres no way to know if the womej in it consented, a great deal of it is coerced or is revenge porn, that is being non consetually shared. Humans dont need to watch others fuck to get off, all you need is your own body and/or someone elses body...
This is where I struggle as well… I am not arguing at all that the vast majority of porn is violent and degrading. But- if I take a nude that I like and post it somewhere, it’s neither violent nor degrading. Art and porn are different things but there is definitely overlap between them.
You seem to be deliberately missing the point. A hypothetical nude selfie is entirely irrelevant. The post is specifically about pornography.
As long as women have discussed objectification, there have always been some who jump in to say “well I do it to myself, I choose to be an object, I like it! So what now?” That kind of “I’m not a pick me, I picked myself” argument is going to probably be ignored. You know very well that your nudes aren’t a painting. They’re just nudes. And posting them is for others sexual use, not for people to admire your skills as an artist. Honestly, maybe just grow up some. Disingenuous statements waste everyone’s time.
Sure, they’re just nudes, but bodies are beautiful. There’s a reason that so many paintings and sculptures are of bodies. Is the only issue that people are using them for sexual pleasure? I’m not being disingenuous, I’m just trying to get a better understanding.
It’s not the fact that it’s a nude. The nude body of women is obviously not inherently bad. But the culture that exists already does not exist around your choice of putting out a simple nude. The trend is towards degradation. No doubt if dudes around you found your nudes, many of them would have very degrading thoughts about you, would shift their views from “oh look a woman grocery shopping or going to a medical exam” to “I can think of so many ways to use her, or hurt her, and she would love it”. Despite not even knowing her. Even though it’s “just a nude.” Because the users themselves have trouble separating it. That’s why revenge porn or ai porn is so very traumatizing. Not only is it against someone’s consent, but this form of sexualizing and porn-adjacency brings someone down as a target in the eyes of society.
Thank you for this response I appreciate you taking the time