Which is your view on porn?

[nonamerasian]

(Based on three feminist positions.)

[truMp]

It exploits, but we can't stop it.

[younggiftedandblack]

I voted for the second one. Why do people feel it exploits women, but not men?

[yoMAMA]

I voted for the second one. Why do people feel it exploits women, but not men?

because most porn executives/dierctors/producers/CEOs of fortune 500 companies that make a huge profit out of this industry....

most of them, are men.

[hooligan]

Exploits, reinforces gender roles and then some.

[kitty]

i think porn exploits women. and in that way it's disgusting.

but it's also a guilty pleasure of mine, sometimes.

[yoMAMA]

i think porn exploits women. and in that way it's disgusting.

but it's also a guilty pleasure of mine, sometimes.

Amen!

Forget about all the jibbrish I said....


I love porn :biggrin:

[hooligan]

i think porn exploits women. and in that way it's disgusting.

but it's also a guilty pleasure of mine, sometimes.
guilty vice as well. although i'm trying to break that habit.

[Deadpool]

i think porn exploits women.

How is does two guys sucking each other off in front of a camera exploit women?

[hooligan]

How is does two guys sucking each other off in front of a camera exploit women?
:eek: you're right now, we are being really heterosexist. i think porn in general is like any other product that's out in the market. makes you wish you were something you're not, sets ideals (most of them false) in what's desirable and what's not. in most cases, reinforces many of the stereotypes. someone's always being exploited when a product is made in a capitalistic society. in this situation, it's sex.

[sageb1]

Depending on the local custom, erotica is ok, as long as it harms no one, is not violent, and does not make sex look boring.

As well, the more subtle it is, the more enjoyable.

So no, I don't endorse needless violence, the suffering of human life etc.

However, in countries where porn is banned or is a crime, I don't endorse making it there or importing it in.

Erotica however can be veiling in subtlies.

[asvenus]

i used to be in the 'i dont support it, but its up to the individual' camp....then i read Andrea Dworkins pornography....lord have mercy....porn is wrong, encourages us to exoticise and commodify sexuality and women, it is totally exploitative and i think its revolting....completely

[kitty]

homosexual porn is a byproduct of heterosexual porn and it commodifies certain kinds of men, ethnically. because we were in the women's forum, i was under the impression that we were discussing heterosexual porn, but if you want to get into all porn, then even homosexual porn will commodify and objectify people of a certain race or 'type'.

but, traditionally, it's been the women who are in this role. but in gay porn, usually it's asian or effeminate white men who are 'emasculated' and big bulking black men who play the sambo tops.

[younggiftedandblack]

but in gay porn, usually it's asian or effeminate white men who are 'emasculated' and big bulking black men who play the sambo tops.

Where did get your facts on this? Or is this just a personal observation?

[Faithless]

I see the "Everyone has the right to view or make porn, regardless of what you think about it." is winning at this point.

My chief rebuttal to that -- "child porn". You didn't exclude it from that poll option, thus, by inference, you must mean that, regardless of what we think of child porn, everyone has to right to view or make it.

Porn has it's goods and it's bad. And to make a blanket statement, that "it's all good", is a mistake. Child porn is one of the direct ways in which people are exploited by it -- if not worse.

Outside of "child porn", there is the issue of some overseas porn, where non-American porn actresses/actors are probably more exploited than their American counterparts. Kidnappings. Forced into it. I don't think there's an epidemic, but enough for a concern.

There's also the issue of the porn stars that get washed up, fucked up on drugs, and sort of forgotten. Again, probably no real epidemic, but enough for a concern. When you're rubbing one out to a Savannah or a Shanna Grant movie, do you think about their shitty lives outside of it?

Then as far as viewing it, probably people with no self control over this stuff should not view it. There are issues within some households, where the viewing sort of seeps out and tears apart the family.

Also, those who can't distinguish fiction from reality shouldn't be viewing it either. If you think women should all put-out like the women in porn, you're wrong. And "rape fantasy" is just that, by and large.

[AliBabaIncorporated]

someone's always being exploited when a product is made in a capitalistic society.
Yup, cuz under Capitalism, man exploits man. But under Communism, it's just the opposite!

[hooligan]

Yup, cuz under Capitalism, man exploits man. But under Communism, it's just the opposite!
you said it yourself! it's all about the man.

[AliBabaIncorporated]

where non-American porn actresses/actors are probably more exploited than their American counterparts.
Uh, even Brazilian porn stars have better working conditions than Americans. They're allowed to wear condoms, for one thing.

[hooligan]

Uh, even Brazilian porn stars have better working conditions than Americans. They're allowed to wear condoms, for one thing.
yet, another thing that the US lacks, right behind human rights!

[nola]

Porn is mostly bad and exploitative to children, women and people of color and is run almost entirely by men.

[amietron]

Uh, even Brazilian porn stars have better working conditions than Americans. They're allowed to wear condoms, for one thing.
in american porn, they're not allowed to wear condoms? do they have STD testing before video shoots and stuff, then? do you think all of the femal porn stars are on birth control?

[rice cracker]

Well, for one thing there are degrees of porn. Soft core, hardcore, in-between core, fetish, on and on.

I like the porn that I like. I think the porn that I don't like is disgusting and vile.

[kitty]

Where did get your facts on this? Or is this just a personal observation?

personal observation (i do watch gay porn) and long-standing stereotypes both in the G&L community at large and in porn, at large. facts? i wouldn't know where to start looking for stats on race in porn. does anyone know of someone who has done a study?

[John0101]

Depends on social norms and customs.

In a patriarchal society, “porn” could be viewed as a male domination over females. I.E it’s raunchy and really depicting a male dominated idea of what sex is to him. But what if we lived in a matriarchal society and porn still existed and it showed a couple having sex who love each other and is a physical expression of their love and intimacy it creates a new idea of what sex in “porn” is.

Does this make sense?

[nola]

That would be erotica or love.

[rocketbunny]

Aren't some types of pornography considered "artistic"?

[truMp]

Aren't some types of pornography considered "artistic"?

"artistic nudity"?

[Mr.Lum]

The women get MAD money.....

[nola]

I'd feel dirty doing porn. I feel dirty watching porn.

[Mr.Lum]

Depends on social norms and customs.

In a patriarchal society, “porn” could be viewed as a male domination over females. I.E it’s raunchy and really depicting a male dominated idea of what sex is to him. But what if we lived in a matriarchal society and porn still existed and it showed a couple having sex who love each other and is a physical expression of their love and intimacy it creates a new idea of what sex in “porn” is.

Does this make sense?

It would be a snoozfest.

[hkRT]

The first time I saw porn material was when I was riding my bike one day and a page from a magazine with a naked woman on it just accidentally flew by and landed in front of my bike. I was about 10 years old at the time. I did not know nothing about porn and stuff like that. Never saw anything of that sort anywhere before. It was just sickening at first sight even though I didn't quite know why... it was just an unpleasant and weird feeling. Now if I see porn, it's not as shocking. It is still as sick and disgusting as it is stupid. It is not so much the nudity that is sick but the unnatural poses, the deliberate narcisstic flaunting of the body, the twisted images and intentions that make them so disgusting. I don't find a movie with nudity scenes disgusting if it is not exploiting or focusing on the nudity but just incorporating these scenes naturally as part of the story line to convey honest emotions.

[Faithless]

The women get MAD money.....
Some do. Some don't.

http://www.fact-index.com/e/er/erotic_actor.html
A frequently asked question concerning erotic actors is: how much do they make? Male porn stars generally make somewhere between $250-500 a day. There is no definitive answer when it comes to female porn stars, some claim that women are paid anywhere from $500-700 a day, others say between $1,000-1,500 per day. Still others claim that women work per scene and make between $300-1,000 per scene.

There may or may not be additional payment for still photography for box covers and/or advertisements for the film. Contract girls (girls who work exclusively for one studio) generally make somewhere between $100,000 and $2,000,000 annually. Porn stars do not receive residuals, royalties, or extra money when scenes are reused and re-released in other features.
No royalties? If they did get that, they would all get mad money.

.
What Asia Carrera says... (http://www.asiacarrera.com/faqs.html#4)
This must be the only place in the world where guys get paid less than girls, and we call all the shots. (feminists take note!) Guys get a couple hundred per scene. New girls can get between five and six hundred for a boy/girl scene, and the rate jumps as you become a bigger star. Contract girls get paid by the movie, instead of by the scene, and they make thousands of dollars per movie. Then the stars go on the road dancing, which earns from $2500-$15,000 a week, not including tips, polaroids, etc. It's good money, but remember, when you're still working at 40 or 50, we're out of a job!

.
There's a website called adultstaffing that seems to comfirm the daily rate figures.

But I don't see any mention of health benefits.

[Mr.Lum]

^Do actors get health benefits?

[Faithless]

^ It depends, actually, on the studio, it appears, for contracted stars, only.

I would bet, by and large, they don't.

You see where some of the stars are asking for it.

From adultbeat --

This was our first meeting. It was undirected. Rob Spallone did a great job. He wasn't preaching. He let everybody talk. He was a moderator. 'Everyone be quiet. Next.' He was good about staying out of it. We addressed the issues. We want AVN to understand that the talent need health benefits, residual payments.

Don Hollywood offered his legal expertise for free to porn talent.

Rob Spallone suggested a fund be put together for talent, a percentage taken from every talent paycheck.

Talent wants an outside person, not Sharon Mitchell and AIM, to keep tabs of who works with who. That way, if this happens again, it won't be such a long period of time that we don't know after someone has tested HIV positive [Sharon Mitchell and AIM apparently held the news that Darren James had tested HIV positive for several days to do further tests].
But you'd have to imagine that securing health benefits (low cost, if not at all) for porn stars would be hard if there's a thing about the potential for HIV.

[Cipherous]

You guys think porn forces men to be more demanding of women? Or sways them to look else where to fullfill their sexual desires even if its not with their partner?

However, some argue that porn can "relieve" the man of a need to get with another woman without the man actually cheating on his partner.

[Bhodi_Li]

You guys think porn forces men to be more demanding of women? Or sways them to look else where to fullfill their sexual desires even if its not with their partner?

However, some argue that porn can "relieve" the man of a need to get with another woman without the man actually cheating on his partner.I have definitely relieved myself with porn.

[mr. x]

goes both ways

porno guys have humongous dicks so whats that say to women

[ism]

Some women dislike porn because they generally see it as competition giving a valued commodity away for free (a similar reason some women dislike prostitution, although (moving) images are intangible). No one makes a fuss about the male performers, who work under the exact same conditions, "exploited" by the exact same people, and "objectified" by the same viewers. This difference stems from the archaic idea that men are free to sow their oats and women are pieces of property with a price tag.

By saying that women are exploited implies that they are undervaluing a service they are performing. What value does sex have? Under English common law, rape was considered theft from the father or husband (whoever "owned" her) of the woman. How long was it before rape was instead considered a violation against the woman? So which is it, a violent act or a theft?

The mentality that women are being exploited follows the doctrine that women are property. Once women are given the freedom to do what they want with their bodies without being penalized by other women (including being thought of as "victims"), then we'll know society has reached sexual egalitarianism. These freedoms are based mostly on reproductive rights, and you must be consistent in fighting for all of them. Saying a woman has a right to choose what to do with her womb but doesn't have the right to display her body or perform services with it is completely hypocritical. Liberty transcends morality.

[nonamerasian]

No one makes a fuss about the male performers, who work under the exact same conditions, "exploited" by the exact same people, and "objectified" by the same viewers. This difference stems from the archaic idea that men are free to sow their oats and women are pieces of property with a price tag.

Interesting.

Instead of asking if porn exploits its performers, I asked if it exploits women. Perhaps I showed an unconscious bias by making making this a women's issue.

I've never really paid attention to the male performers.

[kasia]

aren't we talking about this in the context of the asian community? there is no real gay porn in the asian community, is there? porn w/ asian men are tailored for white gay males.

[AngryABCGirl]

aren't we talking about this in the context of the asian community? there is no real gay porn in the asian community, is there? porn w/ asian men are tailored for white gay males.

I've seen some gay Asian porn from Asia, but I think as far as the case for America, it's probably for gay white males.

[sOrr1ez]

....then i read Andrea Dworkins pornography....lord have mercy....porn is wrong, encourages us to exoticise and commodify sexuality and women, it is totally exploitative and i think its revolting....completely


I read Jenna Jameson's book... (It's really good.)
But when she talked about the adult industry, she didn't say that it was bad. I guess it's different depending on the star. She just said to take some measures, be careful and she listed some useful information.

Porn stars do get to use condoms. Sometimes they rather have them not use them cause it looks better on camera, but if you're a major star then you make the shots.

My friend was telling about how asians make the most graunchiest and most disturbing porn. He said that asians will take any measures in some of the movies. But then wouldn't that be any other ethinicty also? Or do asians really make some interesting porn?
I personally haven't watched any porn. Not cause I don't like it or anything.
But I really haven't just found any use for watching it yet...
Yes I'm still young and everything, but I just haven't gone around to watching it yet.
My best friend bought me Paris Hilton's video as a joke. I heard it's horrible, but I might just get around to watching it one day.

[Hapa Meister]

I surf for porn at least 5 days/week and I'm proud! :biggrin: Lick me! :tongue:

[Hapa Meister]

Ever seen tranny porn? Heaven forbid!

[yuuteya]

Dont just think about it...

do it!

do it!

do it!

Participaction, get with the action...

[Hiroshi2]

Just jumping in (didn't read all 3 pages)



I don't understand why females look at the front cover of something like King or Hustler magazine or whatever, see the almost-naked woman on the cover................and then say that's degrading to women. No it's not. It's probably degrading to the ***** on the cover. But hey................she's legally and adult, she can do that if she wants to. It ain't got nothing to do with you. And yes, there are plenty of women willing to do the photo shoot if she doesn't want to do it.

[moser]

^ Guess it's like with minority groups, if one person does something bad, then it reflects on the group as a whole. I.e. with that Hmong guy in Wisconson, just because one guy shot a bunch of people doesn't mean that every Hmong person will do so - but some non-Hmong people are taking it out on/generalizing about the Hmong community instead of just that guy.

[Commando_turned_MD]

I love PORN. Without porn, masturbation would not be possible.

[kasia]

i think this thread is asking about women's views on porn.

[mslady]

do any of us read "Playgirl"? i've seen a few issues out of curiosity. i saw an asian guy in one issue with a really long .... u know what.

[nonamerasian]

i think this thread is asking about women's views on porn.

It was based on three feminist positions, but open to anyone.

[YuheiCarreau]

do any of us read "Playgirl"? i've seen a few issues out of curiosity. i saw an asian guy in one issue with a really long .... u know what.

A really long resume?

[mslady]

A really long resume?
hahaha, no... the guys in Playgirl are not applying for jobs. i should restate. the asian guy had a really BIG.... you know. :tongue:

but in all seriousness, Communist countries like China and Vietnam condemn any form of pornography. There is no Playboy, no xrated DVDs, nothing in these countries. Women in these countries are not be seen as sexy in the world's eyes. Hence, Miss China and Miss Vietnam have never ever been a Miss Universe or Miss World. and I haven't even started in Iran yet.

[achtungbaby]

It was based on three feminist positions, but open to anyone.
Since it was wrought from the feminist perspective and this happens to be the women's forum, let's try and focus on that voice.

[A.R.A.M.]

but in all seriousness, Communist countries like China and Vietnam condemn any form of pornography. There is no Playboy, no xrated DVDs, nothing in these countries.

Haha, you obviously have not been to Beijing recently. You can't walk ten feet without someone trying to sell you bootlegged porn. Of course, it is officially condemned...

[Faithless]

The perils of porn (http://www.smh.com.au/news/National/The-perils-of-porn/2005/02/03/1107228777880.html?oneclick=true)
February 3, 2005 - 12:20AM

As the internet boosts the use of pornography, there are fears that for some it can become a dangerous addiction, writes Jock Cheetham.

Porn is everywhere. While the excesses of child pornography grab headlines, images of sex, nudity and related activity are organically linked to many people's sexual lives. Porn resides most famously on the internet, but has seeped throughout society - it sells in service stations, infiltrates mainstream advertising and profits stock exchange-listed companies.

But contradictory evidence about porn's impact confuses the passionate debate for and against it. And as the internet boosts supply, an apparently growing minority of users suffers what some experts call porn addiction.

The 2003 Sex in Australia survey of 19,307 adults found nearly one in five men reported visiting an internet sex site in the previous year. Just one in 40 women admitted the same. Nearly four out of 10 men had watched an X-rated video, compared with less than half that many women. The internet porn use figures are likely to have increased with web use generally since then.

Some couples seek counselling when porn use exposes relationship troubles. More couples have visited the Melbourne sex therapist Dr Janet Hall for counselling over porn in the past three years. A typical scenario, says Hall, who wrote the book Sex-Life Solutions, involves a man viewing porn when he should be with his family, partner or at work.

"The internet has fuelled demand," Hall says. "There is an insatiable appetite out there. You have that instant pleasure hit. But once you try to feed that appetite it starts to multiply."

The porn user must take responsibility and not just say, "Everybody does it", Hall says. He should listen to his partner and empathise with the distress. The relationship usually loses intimacy and trust; women feel disconnected, used and compared with porn actors, she says.

A study of US women whose partners regularly used porn found nearly two-thirds felt OK about it. The rest perceived a negative effect on their relationships, sex life and self-image, the Journal of Sex and Marital Therapy reported. A quarter thought their partner's porn use was like an affair.

The most common response to an affair, says Dr Bob Montgomery, director of communication at the Australian Psychological Society, is for the offended partner to say: "You see, that's why we're not having sex."

"But it's always the other way around," Montgomery says. "People only start to get seriously sexually interested in someone outside their primary relationship when it is already going stale or flat. Security in a relationship is not locking your partner in a cupboard and throwing the key away. It's making this so good that neither one of us would want to jeopardise it."

Discovering an affair or secretive porn use initially shocks a partner, says Eric Hudson, western Sydney manager at the counselling network Relationships Australia. While many couples use porn without problems, Hudson says, honesty is the first step to recovery for those who have kept it secret.

"It's important that the offended partner gets to a place where they don't think it's about them," he says. Rebuilding trust is an important goal. "I try to help the offended partner move beyond seeing the pornography as sick or perverted to try to understand what purpose it might have been playing."

Some research links habitual porn use to low self-esteem, stress relief and self-image issues in terms of masculinity.

In heterosexual porn, women are always ready for sex, never criticise or laugh at men and never tire. Porn users sense a power over women because there is no negotiating the emotional and intimate aspects of sex.

Most experts' concerns focus on more extreme forms of porn, and some psychologists note the negative effect of demeaning and degrading language in porn on consumers. But the scale of the problem is difficult to specify.

The internet feeds porn use for the triple-A reasons: accessibility, anonymity and affordability, says Dr Michael Flood, research fellow at the Australia Institute and co-author of the report Youth and Pornography in Australia. And while a survey by the journal Sexual Addiction and Compulsivity of 7000 US participants in online sexual activity found most people felt OK about their use, Flood says, 10 to 15 per cent had problematic use - including obsessive (constant thoughts) or compulsive (uncontrollable urges) use.

US anti-porn advocates like to call porn the crack cocaine of sexual addiction. The American Patrick Carnes helped pioneer the sex addiction field in the 1980s. His sexhelp.com website estimates 3 to 6 per cent of people are sex addicts. "Sexual addicts struggle to control their behaviours and experience despair over their constant failure to do so," the site says. "Their loss of self-esteem grows, fuelling the need to escape even further into their addictive behaviours. A sense of powerlessness pervades the lives of addicts."

Branches of Sex and Love Addicts Anonymous, a 12-step program based on the Alcoholics Anonymous model, operate in Australia. But many Australian psychologists do not use the term addiction. "There is no way which is clear why the word addiction is being used for someone who is passionately interested in something," says Juliet Richters, a researcher on Sex in Australia and co-author of Doing it Down Under. "People do lots of things that get in the way of their lives - it doesn't mean we diagnose that as an addiction."

Who defines addiction and excess anyway? Some people might call weekly porn use excessive, or any masturbation bad, says Kath Albury, a researcher at the University of Sydney who wrote Yes Means Yes: Getting Explicit About Heterosex. "Other people would say as long as you're not losing any skin off your penis through chafing, your porn use is fine," Albury says.

All porn is not the same, she says. "Some kinds of porn are pretty gross, where the people involved are not happy. And in some everyone is having a good time and the viewer can feel happy that the actors are exhibitionists and I'm a voyeur and I'm happy."

Albury is co-chief investigator on the Understanding Pornography in Australia project with Dr Alan McKee, of Queensland University of Technology. McKee is also ambivalent about claims that porn is damaging. The project surveyed more than 1000 porn users, 87 per cent of them male. The unpublished results show 58.4 per cent felt porn had a positive effect and 6.8 per cent negative. Some other researchers say because the project's sample is self-selected any ashamed porn users probably did not participate.

Disturbingly, some mainly middle-aged men replace real relationships with internet porn, says Professor James Ogloff, a clinical and forensic psychologist at Monash University. "We saw a 32-year-old who had spent 12 hours a day in his mother's basement who had no real relationships. His biggest problem after stopping was: how do I now fill my days?"

Ogloff believes between 10 and 20 per cent of internet porn users access "not just pictures of women or men having sex" but "images that we would have been surprised at just a few years ago". One client said any picture of a nude woman used to turn him on. Now he wanted more extreme material.

"If you'd have asked me two years ago how many people are interested in serious S&M, or who are bisexual or interested in children, we all would have grossly underestimated the numbers," Ogloff says.

"It's almost like we're seeing a virtual sexual revolution. And the majority of people I've spoken to have not told another living human what their thoughts are, what their interests are."

The drive to escalate use may have a chemical basis. Pornography stimulates masturbation. One aspect of orgasm is the pleasure/reward response, which involves the release of dopamine, says Dr Gemma O'Brien, a physiologist at the University of New England. Dopamine affects the mood mechanism in the brain, she says. Chocolate and cocaine also stimulate the dopamine pathways.

"When people stimulate the dopamine pathways frequently, all the dopamine gets released. Then when they try to stimulate themselves again, whether by drugs or sex or whatever, there's not enough dopamine left in the nerves to release and give a nice response," O'Brien says. "So they have to go to higher and higher doses, more and more intense stimulation."

Whether such chemical desensitisation relates to seeking greater stimulation through more exotic porn use remains unclear. However, sexual violence in porn and any eroticising of rape worries Flood. "There's an association between seeing violent pornography and developing more sexually aggressive attitudes and more tolerance for rape and sexual assault. And there's an association between seeing violent pornography and being sexually violent yourself."

But McKee says such correlational studies do not prove people who are exposed to violent porn will become violent, but rather that the kind of person who is violent towards women is also likely to enjoy violent porn.

Aggregate studies also draw McKee's fire. Pro-porn advocates often invoke one Danish study suggesting sexual crimes decreased after porn's legalisation there in the 1960s. But anti-porn advocates cite other aggregate studies such as one finding sexual assaults increased in South Australia after porn laws were liberalised in the '60s, but were stable in Queensland where porn stayed illegal.

The data from such studies is "wildly contradictory", McKee says. "Half the results seem to find that where there's more pornography there's more rape. The other half seems to find that where there's more pornography there's less rape. The problem is there are so many variables." An objective position is thus impossible, McKee says. "The biggest problem is if we pretend we already know the answers."

Bob Montgomery is not even convinced porn use has increased. In China and India some sexually explicit material is thousands of years old. "It was used then as it is now," he says. "Repeated surveys show little change in men's sexual behaviour at all."

While the material is now more explicit, he says the solution is education about sex and porn. "The best place to learn is at home with parents discussing that," he says.

And helping couples be sexually successful in long-term relationships benefits them and family stability, he says, while porn is only a threat for the ignorant and misinformed.

Women watch too, but don't brag about it
For years, the assumption was that men liked sexually explicit material and women did not, says Dr Bob Montgomery, the Australian Psychological Society's director of communications. Then "someone took physiological measures and found that the women were just as turned on as the men were, they were just less likely to say so", he says.

It was "more acceptable for men to report being aroused by pornography than it was for women", he says. Now sexually arousing books or videos are used in therapies to help women having problems achieving orgasm.

Kath Albury, a researcher at the University of Sydney, says while women generally don't enjoy porn as much as men, that's at least partly because porn is made for men. But porn made by women for women sells quickly from women's sex shops, she says. "It doesn't mean that it appeals to all women but it does definitely indicate that there is a sizeable market out there."

Professor James Ogloff, of Monash University and Forensicare, says he hasn't come across a single woman in Australia who was accessing the internet and obtaining illegal information, such as child porn. He says they are looking at pornography, but it doesn't seem to be of the same nature as what men view. Ogloff says research shows women are more interested than men in the broader relationship - such as conversation, intimacy (other than physical), a more emotionally based relationship - not just the sexual stimulation.