Pharyngula

Posted by: Glen Davidson | December 3, 2009 2:17 PM

I don't really see the point of these studies, aside from the fact that the researchers have to do something between sessions of watching internet porn.

Glen D
http://tinyurl.com/mxaa3p

Posted by: Physicalist | December 3, 2009 2:21 PM

If I search for movies of squid mating, am I looking for porn?

Yes. Definitely yes.

Posted by: J. James | December 3, 2009 2:23 PM

Hey, Ted Bundy blamed his serial killing on porn. I'm going to blame any serial killing I may do on crappy reality television.

Posted by: Gus Snarp | December 3, 2009 2:27 PM

Well, first off they were looking at 20 year old heterosexual male college students, not all men. Young people today in general probably watch more porn than older folks did. There's also that term: "watch pornography". When I was a kid you found some dirty magazines somebody's older brother had left lying around and that was your pornography. I'm pretty sure very close to every male my age saw dirty magazines at some point in their youth. Today kids can see what they want on the internet without going to nearly the trouble someone had to go to to get those dirty magazines, and what's on the internet includes video, which wasn't much of an option when I was young. So a bunch of 20 year olds said that they had all at some point in their lives watched pornography. That's not really surprising. Most said they first did so at around 10. Sounds about right, that's about when I saw my first dirty magazine. So I don't think it's unusual at all. The youth of the participants also probably slants the time and frequency numbers higher as well.

That said, those numbers seem to match my experience.

Posted by: Aram | December 3, 2009 2:34 PM

These studies often end up with "no duh" results. Consider:

"The study found that men watched pornography that matched their own image of sexuality, and quickly discarded material they found offensive or distasteful."

Was anyone surprised by this?

Also, PZ, and I may be nitpicking here, but while I agree that there may be no "normal" level, there is certainly an "average". Of course to approach that would require an experiment with a much larger sample set.

Posted by: skeeto | December 3, 2009 2:35 PM

According to that data, I'm well below average too. Is this an insult or a compliment?

As for PZ being below average, there's the saying, "An intellectual is a person who has discovered something more interesting than sex."

Posted by: T.A.C. | December 3, 2009 2:37 PM

Y'all have me worried. I am in a happy relationship and consider myself an educated, functional member of society, but I am WAY WAY above the average.

Posted by: Endor | December 3, 2009 2:42 PM

"I think it says that university kids are watching a pointlessly large amount of porn."

At the various places I volunteer, there are a large number of college-age women. (I think the local college gives credit or something).

I have been in ear shot for many, MANY conversations about the porn-watching habits of the male counterparts that seem to always end like this:

"Yeah, I can totally tell when he's been watching some cuz he totally becomes a worse lay. It's like, dude, just cuz women fake like they like it on the computer, don't mean real ones will!"

"The study found that men watched pornography that matched their own image of sexuality, and quickly discarded material they found offensive or distasteful."

I would be more shocked at someone who found this surprising.

Posted by: C | December 3, 2009 2:42 PM

Yeah, those numbers match my experience as well (as a guy slightly over 30). But I do think there's substantial variation; it shouldn't be impossible to find a guy who's never watched porn.

Posted by: Andreas Johansson | December 3, 2009 2:43 PM

The Torygraph article is - shock horror - awfully vague, but if I'm understanding it correctly it's talking about video porn only?

Posted by: Endor | December 3, 2009 2:45 PM

I'm curious. Is it (watching porn) a hobby? You know, like some people rebuild old cars or quilt or something?

Posted by: Anonymous | December 3, 2009 2:48 PM

``These studies often end up with "no duh" results. Consider:

"The study found that men watched pornography that matched their own image of sexuality, and quickly discarded material they found offensive or distasteful."

Was anyone surprised by this?''

That may seem `no duh', but it really isn't. One long-running argument about these things is one of desensitization, or escalation - that the widespread availability of stuff out there means that someone who starts watching fairly mild stuff ends up watching and liking stuff that they would have found distasteful or offensive before. That is, just the availability of this material ends up shaping behaviour (at least, ends up shaping what you would watch and think about). If that was true, it could matter quite a bit, so it is worth studying.

This study would seem to be a strong bit of evidence against that line of argument - as strong as it could be given the size and duration. Still, though, you might imagine this effect would be more or less at its strongest for young men near the start of their porn-watching careers, so it's worth noting that it doesn't seem to play a big role here.

Posted by: Somnolent Aphid | December 3, 2009 2:50 PM

i watch very little porn. ok, aphid joke.

Posted by: Colin Meier | December 3, 2009 2:53 PM

Here's a link to Altemeyer's site. OT, The advertised free book in PDF form (The Authoritarians) is also incredibly interesting.

However, the comments on methodology in sex research are contained in the "Click here to see Chapters One and Two" link under "Sex And Youth" on the left sidebar.

Posted by: blf | December 3, 2009 2:58 PM

This comment typed itself. The silly human is in the other room, doing who knows what, but the neighbour's cat doesn't seem to like it. And he's got a—ARRGH! SPRONG!

The "silly human" has returned. You hunk of plastic and metals stupider than an ant, the fecking cat was outside. I was trying to find screwdriver so I can fix your noisy fan. Geesh! I apologise for the inane babbling.










heh heh, little does the silly human know…

Posted by: Warren | December 3, 2009 3:00 PM

@6:

Did they include muting stuff so you dont hear the dumbass talk to the girl?

THANK you. The thing I detest more than anything else - even hideous mustaches - is the inane, moronic "dialog" in porn. Anything more articulate than a grunt is wasted, and should be mercilessly edited out.

Posted by: Antiochus Epiphanes | December 3, 2009 3:02 PM

I think it says that university kids are watching a pointlessly large amount of porn.

Kind of like listening to a pointlessly large amount of music. Porn is free and streaming all over the interwebs. My guess is that if it takes an college male 40 minutes to watch porn (3x/week), some of that time isn't...you know....active? Porn might be the new study music for some of these fellers. We had Dave Mathews (well not me)...kids today have amateur web clips, or whatever it is they are into. Many students admit to studying while watching TV/internet...but what are they watching?

Posted by: Tim | December 3, 2009 3:04 PM

If you need to ask if "R" rated movies constitute pornography, then you've never seen pornography.

Posted by: Celtic_Evolution | December 3, 2009 3:05 PM

And we care about this because. . . ?

Comedic value post... purely...

it's only a matter of time before somebody incorporates bacon...

3... 2... 1...

Posted by: blf | December 3, 2009 3:05 PM

The thing I detest … is the inane, moronic "dialog" in porn.

I recall reading somewhere once that those in the "industry" call the dialog "the comedy".

Posted by: Uncle Glenny | December 3, 2009 3:08 PM

I suspect, that aside from the sample (probably college students = easy casual internet access) they had an overly strict definition of "never." (In a psych evaluation I was once checked off as a cocaine user - for having snorted it once (really!) 25 years earlier.

But dammit, I've been up all night reading science blogs and I've got hours of downloaded movies I could have been watching!

Posted by: Dwayne Hicks | December 3, 2009 3:11 PM

Regular porn makes me laugh. Terrible script, acting and non existent story line. I know that isn't the point behind it but I can't get past it.

Posted by: Ivan N | December 3, 2009 3:12 PM

"An intellectual is a person who has discovered something more interesting than sex."

Replace intellectual with "scientist" and maybe this makes sense. In my experience intellectuals are very sex obsessed.

It's porn if you masturbate to it, it's not porn if it doesn't make you want to masturbate. For some people a documentary on Sarah Palin is clearly porn.

Posted by: Zeno | December 3, 2009 3:16 PM

Is doing research into the use of pornography just a cover for using pornography? One of my students once did some house-sitting for a university professor at a medical school. He discovered that the professor had a huge and meticulously catalogued collection of video porn. The professor said he was compiling statistics on the frequency of "safe sex" practices in professionally produced porn to see if there was a correlation with sexual practices in the general population. That could be a legitimate inquiry, of course. All I know, however, is that my student was nearly unable to use his hands for taking class notes after each house-sitting job.

Posted by: Andreas Johansson | December 3, 2009 3:17 PM

And we care about this because. . . ?

Because it's vaguely related to sex.

Posted by: marilove | December 3, 2009 3:19 PM

So am I really the only woman here that watches porn?

And April, ew, romance novels. Snoooore. I'm a bit of a literary snob, though. I can't get past the horrid writing. Not that porn movies are any better - but that's why I tend to stick to gonzo, which generally don't pretend to have a story line and just get right down to business.

Posted by: Kelseigh | December 3, 2009 3:20 PM

If you've ever been around any anime fan communities, you'll have loads of evidence that young females are just as into porn as anyone else. It just tends to be text, is all, and often poorly done.

Posted by: Rick R | December 3, 2009 3:22 PM

Lynna- "The local mormons have been mounting anti-porn campaigns big time. First, they tried selling the idea that if you went to any porn sites, you would definitely get a virus on your computer. Most recently, they have switched to the "news" that if you visit a porn site, it will make it possible for nefarious persons to store pictures of child porn on your hard drive without your knowledge."

*facepalm*

I know I shouldn't be anymore, but I'm still gobsmacked by the abject stupidity of mor(m)ons.

Posted by: Azkyroth | December 3, 2009 3:23 PM

A study that tried to analyze how pornography affected men's views ran into an unfortunate problem

People pointed out that throwing badly designed studies against the wall until something sticks, in hopes of vindicating anti-sex and religious prejudices, is bad science?

Posted by: Uncle Glenny | December 3, 2009 3:26 PM

I found a girlie magazine on the street once when I was about 14, but it only had women in it so I hid it outside until it turned to compost.

I had to make due with the illustrations in my Latin textbooks and on the covers of things like Robert E. Howard novels until a friend's basement flooded, damaging his father's collections of Amazing Science Fiction magazines (which he gave me - yes, the original L. Ron Hubbard serialization on moldy paper) and exposed a similarly aged collection of classic physique magazines (which he didn't give me).

Nothing else other than West Point and Anapolis college handbooks (HAHAHAHA!! My father wanted me to go to Annapolis! Me! Overweight chemistry nerd who connived his way out of required athletics! Obviously, I didn't go; I was a bit smarter than Joseph Steffan.)

There wasn't much gay good porn on the 1874 ArpaNEt. (Couldn't get into MILNET.)

Posted by: Keenacat | December 3, 2009 3:27 PM

marilove:

You're not. Regarding romance novels: If I want to peruse porn, every type of "story" is a bug, not a feature. Goes for movies as well as for written stuff. Plus, the storys are usually so bad that i cringe from embarrassment. Unsexy.
A piece of a porn movie went viral sometime ago in germany because of the exceptionally stupid dialouge...
"Housewife" shows "electrician" the fuse box. Loads of straw lying around. He: "Why is there straw lying everywhere?" She: "And why are you wearing a mask?" He: "Ummm... eeh... Gimme a blow job, will ya?"

Posted by: lordshipmayhem | December 3, 2009 3:28 PM

PZ, you don't need to watch as much porn as the typical guy "in a relationship", as you have this trophy wife you keep boasting about. ^_^

Posted by: BdN | December 3, 2009 3:33 PM

"All test subjects said they supported gender equality and felt victimized by rhetoric demonizing pornography. “Pornography hasn't changed their perception of women or their relationship which they all want as harmonious and fulfilling as possible. Those who could not live out their fantasy in real life with their partner simply set aside the fantasy. The fantasy is broken in the real world and men don't want their partner to look like a porn star,” says Lajeunesse."

Lajeunesse refutes the perverse effect often attributed to pornography. “Aggressors don't need pornography to be violent and addicts can be addicted to drugs, alcohol, gaming and asocial cases are pathological. If pornography had the impact that many claim it has, you would just have to show heterosexual films to a homosexual to change his sexual orientation.”

http://www.nouvelles.umontreal.ca/udem-news/news-digest/are-the-effects-of-pornography-negligible.html

Posted by: Warren | December 3, 2009 3:33 PM

@64:

Why dont they study the ones who cant go an hour with out it or the weirdos who watch stuff that makes your teeth grind.

I presume because it would be bad form for them to be studying themselves.

Posted by: Azkyroth | December 3, 2009 3:38 PM

This part does bug me. If people were sane, they'd want to know if it's safe, healthy, etc, not if every other bozo is doing it.

It is. However, that's orthogonal to whether one is justified in feeling awkward and keeping quiet about it, at least in a conventional worldview.

Posted by: BdN | December 3, 2009 3:39 PM

@The Pint

I can't comment on other studies but this particular one was partly designed to test if it's true that men who watch porn regularly tend to be more violent or mean and depreciative towards women. It was funded by the Interdisciplinary Research Center on Family Violence and Violence Against Women.

Posted by: Naked Bunny with a Whip | December 3, 2009 3:44 PM

How am I supposed to see porn when Fur Affinity has been down for days?!

Posted by: Marc Abian | December 3, 2009 3:49 PM

Has there ever been a porn movie with an involving plot and good dialogue?

Posted by: Ol'Greg | December 3, 2009 3:52 PM

I'm just not so sure porn has the effect people seem to think. I've watched a lot of it, and some of it is definitely the kind some people would find offensive, but honestly I find Glamor magazine more offensive most of the time with all it's "what to wear if you're over 30 and how to trap a man" tripe. I don't think it's a male thing anymore even. I think everyone watches some kind of porn. Personally I can't stand the ones with too much fake sounding statements, I thought it was just stupidity until some one actually told me that there are people who just live for hearing that. That being said I know one guy who falls way way below the average.

The way he puts it:

"I don't know what the difference is, I just ask myself do other guys not have an imagination?"

So I'd say the ones who don't watch it still think about it :P

Aaaand the one violent sociopath I knew hated the porn. Go figure.

So life experience has left me doubting porn is that big of a deal. The main issue to me is helping to protect the people in the porn from exploitation.

Posted by: The Pint | December 3, 2009 3:54 PM

@ marilove #51 - Nope, you're not the only one. I never understood what the big deal was about porn, at least in terms of omigodpornisbadanddemeansusall!

Seems a rather overblown reaction to what amounts to mostly poorly-shot (but admittedly hot) footage with cheesy soundtracks & lackluster dialog. Although there is definitely a lot to discuss about the workings of the porn industry, I think that's separate from the idea that porn itself is bad and should be avoided. Porn can be funny or a turn on or whatever - I always find it amusing when other women get concerned when it comes out that I have no problem with porn since a lot of the time it follows the "but don't you find it demeaning or worry that your husband will be more into the porn than you?" line of questioning. Nope, as 1) it's highly possible I watch more of the stuff than he does; 2) I don't know about those ladies, but is video really that threatening to one's self-esteem? Sometimes it can be highly educational to watch a pro work; and 3) you have a problem with porn but don't you read romance novels all the time??

Speaking of which, yeah, I'm a lit snob, too, but reading an occasional romance novel is like indulging in an occasional Big Mac - you know it's bad for you and will likely rot your insides, but it can still be naughty fun (assuming you find something that doesn't read like it was written by a mooning adolescent - it's possible to find them, it just requires a lot of hunting).

Posted by: Ol'Greg | December 3, 2009 3:55 PM

That being said this study makes it sound like people watch it like a movie.

You know, make some popcorn, watch a couple hours of porn.

I don't really know who does this?

It's usually connected to masturbation or sex with a partner, isn't it?

Posted by: Kemanorel | December 3, 2009 3:58 PM

Not trying to go too much into detail about myself, but my fiance goes to bed 2-3 hours before I do. What else am I supposed to do other than watch TV?

Plus, I heard it keeps the prostate healthy. I'll continue opperating under that assumption until someone provides me evidence to the contrary. I don't want to ruin it by looking it up myself if it's not true.

Posted by: Sir Eccles | December 3, 2009 3:59 PM

Surprised nobody has mentioned rule 34 yet.

Posted by: Janine, She Wolf Of Pharyngula, OM | December 3, 2009 4:00 PM

Posted by: Kelseigh | December 3, 2009 3:20 PM

If you've ever been around any anime fan communities, you'll have loads of evidence that young females are just as into porn as anyone else. It just tends to be text, is all, and often poorly done.

It is even older than that. Take a look at slash fiction, going back to Kirk/Spock pair ups.

Posted by: Who Cares | December 3, 2009 4:03 PM

Marilove wrote:

So am I really the only woman here that watches porn?

Posted by: Ol'Greg | December 3, 2009 4:05 PM

"Has there ever been a porn movie with an involving plot and good dialogue?"

Wouldn't a lot of European cinema basically fit this? No offense to it, but there's a tradition of films about sex and with sex in them that are still basically films with artistic merit.

Personally I always found this annoying. I like my porn with no pretenses.

Posted by: Ol'Greg | December 3, 2009 4:08 PM

"So am I really the only woman here that watches porn?"

You're not alone! Worse yet some of us don't even watch the porn that women supposedly watch, or read romance novels.

God I hate it when people tell me that romance novels are more reflective of women's sexuality.

Shoot me now.

Posted by: 'Tis Himself, Quel Dommage | December 3, 2009 4:10 PM

Lynna #30

Okay, so I went and looked at some porn just so I could count myself as a statistic. The real thing is much better. But then, I'm just a female, so what do I know.

I agree that the real thing is much better. My 50 something wife having a real orgasm is much more of a turn-on than some 20 something faking it.

Posted by: The Pint | December 3, 2009 4:14 PM

@ BdN #71 - Wonder if anyone could get approval for a study to see if porn encourages the same in women. If they're looking for connections between porn and violence, it seems like it would be a good idea to survey the responses of both sexes to porn. Ignoring women in the survey seems to imply only men can be adversely affected by porn. Wouldn't more information be gleaned by comparing the reactions between both men & women? And while there is a wide variety of porn out there that caters to the dominant male fantasy (and yes, some of it is rather disturbing), there's porn out there for everyone, so I would imagine there's an adequate amount of female violence against men style porn, too. I read through the article and it didn't say anything about the type of porn the men surveyed were exposed to, either.

Posted by: Speedy | December 3, 2009 4:16 PM

The problem with these studies is that people lie. Males won't give the true answer, they'll give the answer that they think reflects better on them: i.e., that they watch enough porn to show they are healthy and virile males, but not enough that they seem lonely and loser-ish. Three times a week is about what I'd expect from single males lying in order to achieve that delicate balance. But I'm just speculating.

Posted by: Lemming | December 3, 2009 4:17 PM

My favorite definition of pornography has been "Anything that you stop watching after you masturbate."

Posted by: littlejohn | December 3, 2009 4:23 PM

So, PZ is way below average in porn viewing, eh? Yeah, me too. And everybody else you ask.
It's kind of like Lake Wobegon, where all the porn viewing is below average.
And to Skeeto: "An intellectual is someone who's found something more interesting than sex."
Nope. An intellectual is someone who can hear the William Tell Overture without thinking of the Lone Ranger.
Gotta go. There's some, eh, research I have to do on another site.

Posted by: The Pint | December 3, 2009 4:29 PM

@ Endor #98 - "THANK YOU. They're not reflective of female sexuality, they're reflective of a slut-shaming culture that pretends all women need romance to get busy. It's the same as that "men are more visual" bullshit."

Exactly right. Crap like this implies an across the board standard that's detrimental to both men and women: "real women need romance; real men just want sex." To which we should call bullshit. What about the women who don't need (or even want) romance? What about the men who actually enjoy or even need romance to feel turned on? There's a wide spectrum of what turns anyone on and all this pigeonholing just makes things needlessly complicated and awkward and contributes to a lot self-doubt/wondering if one is "normal" if one doesn't conform to the standard.

Posted by: marilove | December 3, 2009 4:33 PM

I wouldn't fall into that catagory either, The Pint. Give me gonzo porn, or give me nothing.

Posted by: Bill Dauphin, OM | December 3, 2009 4:39 PM

'Tis (@95):

I agree that the real thing is much better. My 50 something wife having a real orgasm is much more of a turn-on than some 20 something faking it.

No doubt. But there are places on teh intertoobz you can go to see 20-somethings (and 30-somethings, and very few of them with anything other than the bodies FSM gave them) having what I'm quite certain are real orgasms. Further, at the sites I'm thinking of, the women are essentially completely in charge of what they do and how it's presented.

I've mentioned this here in the past, but I'm posting from work at the moment, and therefore reluctant to go snag the link! ;^)

Posted by: middlekk | December 3, 2009 4:43 PM

How much porn SHOULD we watch?

Just enough to get the job done, obviously.

It's probably apocryphal, but I heard there was a survey once that said 94% of men masturbated regularly, and the conclusion of the researchers was that 6% of men will lie about anything.

Posted by: llewelly | December 3, 2009 4:46 PM

All I know, however, is that my student was nearly unable to use his hands for taking class notes after each house-sitting job.

People! Please! Warm up before you exercise those muscles, cool down and stretch carefully afterward. And don't think the muscles in your arms and hands don't count - for those of us who require touch-typing for our jobs and social life, they're doubly important.

Posted by: Yubal | December 3, 2009 4:51 PM

I'd volunteer for the control group if these people need someone.

White single male 30 years who does not watch porn.

Posted by: Kagehi | December 3, 2009 4:55 PM

Actually, a few of the spoof movies, like "Pirates", do *attempt* to have some sort of real dialog, since they are spoofing the originals, but since the point of the whole thing is to have the sex in it, even the semi-good ones don't try as hard as they should.

That, and.. most of the people making porn are like the ones on a Showtime special about the remaking of "Deep throat". Everyone on ***both*** staffs, the people that owned the rights, who decided the other ones where not doing it right, and the ones that tried to get the rights to remake it, and came up with something stupid instead, where are complete frakking idiots. I wouldn't hire these people to remake single panel 1940s comic strip, never mind remake an already bad porn film, or anything else. Hell, I wouldn't hire either group to serve me a hamburger at McDonalds, they would probably fry the bun, and put it between two slices of hamburger, then fill my soda with ketchup, and put the soda in a container to dip my fries with.

You want to know why its all bad and plotless? Because the people trying to write plots for them are almost universally brain damaged, and every one else is making porn that caters to specific interests, and avoids even attempting a plot. There are no Mozarts in the industry, most of the Salieris are making bad reality TV shows (with a few very minor exceptions), and what is left is the "special" kid with a cheap drum and a stick, who sings off key, while not even managing to thump the actual drum with it.

But, enough ranting about how blindly stupid these people seem to be.. lol

Posted by: BdN | December 3, 2009 4:56 PM

Sorry, just realized that "unfortunately, this organism's mission is really to study violence perpetrated against women and children" could misinterpreted... It's unfortunate that they don't have data on this but it's really not unfortunate that such a group exists...

Posted by: Geoffrey | December 3, 2009 5:00 PM

Note that 'average' can be very different from median or mode (and in this case, probably is).

Posted by: NateL | December 3, 2009 5:13 PM

Forgive my ignorance Otrame, but what does 'slash' refer to? I originally thought it might just be slang for gay porn stories, but then you talk about spock and dr who etc..

Posted by: dean | December 3, 2009 5:20 PM

WAY back when I was an undergraduate (early 70s), the student govt showed porn movies, on campus, in lecture halls, for fundraising. Shows would begin at 7, and alternate between two rooms, switching reels every hour. Unless you've seen "Devil in Miss Jones", or "Last Tango in Paris", or others, with a lecture hall filled with about 150 semi-to-totally drunken young college students, you haven't experienced them.

Final comment/tribute to Davinci's Notebook (perhaps the researchers should have started their article with this)

Back in the not-too-distant past When I would need a quick repast Or a temporary break from my agenda Off to the bedroom I would head Pull out the Playboy from ’neath the bed And sneak a peek at all the portraits of pudenda

My alternatives were slim
If I tried to find another source for sin
I’d have to hang out with the weirdos in the back room of my local video store
But last month I finally made the call
I got a brand new cable modem installed
And it opened up the floodgates on a whole new universe of Internet porn

(Internet porn) Roman orgy scenes
(Internet porn) dominatrix queens
(Internet porn) girl on girl on girl on girl on girl on guy on sheep
(Internet porn) gross anatomy
(Internet porn) Pam and Tommy Lee
(Internet porn) when you’re given so much to choose from, who has time to sleep?

The song ends

Internet porn) melon-love.com
(Internet porn) there’s my neighbor’s mom
(Internet porn) bikers wearing diapers chasing nurses dressed like Smurfs
(Internet porn) Maison l’Esclavage
(Internet porn) un, deux, trois menage
(Internet porn) every kind of smut from every corner of the Earth

Or, perhaps, if they had known about the song, the research wouldn't have been needed.

Posted by: Susanna Reger | December 3, 2009 5:22 PM

Let's skip the discussion of porn and rather talk about masterbation. How many times a week do men masterbate??

Posted by: pablo | December 3, 2009 5:32 PM

Number 128 was in response to the question: "Has there ever been a porn movie with good dialogue and an involving plot?"

Posted by: David B | December 3, 2009 5:45 PM

Some of the wankers among us who are between girlfriends at the moment, and who have, further, when they have first found the internet and checked out porn, out of curiosity, have found that they have imaginations far more erotic than internet porn.

I don't watch any.

David B (notes that from the POV of logic, 'one' counts as some, and hence has a logically unassailable position)

Posted by: Bill Dauphin, OM | December 3, 2009 5:46 PM

Natalie:

Plus the guys are frequently gross, and it's a turn off.

What, you mean Ron Jeremy (image barely SFW... maybe) doesn't exemplify What Women Want®? Who knew?

Posted by: Benjamin Geiger | December 3, 2009 5:56 PM

Paddy-O:

A more relevant line would be:

"All these guys unzip their flies for porn, porn, porn!"

Posted by: BdN | December 3, 2009 6:04 PM

@ErikaM

I may be wrong about this, but I think the study is just beginning ("has launched a new study to examine the effects of pornography on men. [...]To do so, he has so far recruited and interviewed 20 heterosexual male university students who consume pornography.") Why there was a press release is another question...

And about the "hardcore BDSM, gang rape videos, etc", first the study says that 90% of the porn consumed by the interviewees was free and on the Internet. Second, the fact that in general, men seek images that already correspond to their view of sexuality doesn't mean there are absolutely no perverts or that some men don't occasionally watch something more... distasteful, to put it mildly...

Posted by: KiwiInOz | December 3, 2009 6:05 PM

And what is it with the guys who wear socks and watches while being otherwise naked and in action?

Is it that the studio floors are cold and they are working to rule?

Posted by: KiwiInOz | December 3, 2009 6:18 PM

Moggie, apropos of your comment #140, I have a friend who did security for Stryper (way back when) and he took great pleasure in recounting how they wanted to visit the Red Light District in Amsterdam when touring there. And it wasn't for research purposes (a la Pete Townsend) either.

Posted by: davej | December 3, 2009 6:21 PM

The problem is -- what is porn anyway? In a devout culture a girl showing off her bare ankles or dressing so that her shape could occasionally be discerned would perhaps qualify. If there was zero exposed flesh and women dressed in shapeless bags, guys would still girl watch.

Posted by: Hypatia999 | December 3, 2009 6:35 PM

I'm a 22 year old heterosexual female, a math major at a Canadian university and I watch porn videos on the internet every day. I agree with what some of the other women have said about the unconvincing performances and cheesey looking guys getting in the way of the porn doing its job: reducing the amount of time it takes for me to orgasm, and intensifying said orgasm. Finding good porn takes time and effort like a lot of things in life, but it's all worth it to find a hidden gem which will serve me time and time again. I like amateur stuff - real people having real sex. And, like a lot of guys I've talked to about this, I think it's a lot more enjoyable when the girl seems innocent and young (but over 18 of course).

Posted by: ChrisH | December 3, 2009 6:42 PM

Having spent the last year living with 2 flatmates who worked at an adult store... well, now I've moved out I'm not going to be surprised any more by (for example) 8 x 12 ft Belladonna banners suddenly appearing in the living room.

Seriously, don't Google Belladonna unless you want, erm, educating.

Posted by: April | December 3, 2009 6:49 PM

I think you missed my point. Romance novels are just dressed up porn. They put the romance in the title because porn novels wouldn't sell. In 2004 55% of all paperbacks sold were romance novels which tells you that women do enjoy this type of media.

You don't have to, that is fine. I don't think it is indicative of some odd societal pressure to make women want romance. I was very into them as a teenager. I created a rating system for the type of romance errr...porn it was. If the sex happened in the first 10 pages the book was going to be a level 5 hard core.

Posted by: Norman Doering | December 3, 2009 7:05 PM

Vincent Poffley wrote:
"Because a study with a sample size of 20, that only studies male university students in one country, and only heterosexual ones at that, is bound to say something profound about all humanity..."

Possibly. After all, with a sample size of only 1 that only studied a female porn star in one country, I was able to provide irrefutable, incontrovertible proof that working in the porn industry causes some women's breasts to grow to enormous, gigantic proportions:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MA_3kVV_cnE

Posted by: skylyre | December 3, 2009 7:28 PM

Just another girl here adding to the list of females who do enjoy porn. I have no problem with my SO watching it either, in fact I think it'd be weird if he didn't.

I still think I'm below the average (of the males in that lame study) however I tend to make good use of my imagination most of the time...

My imagination is sometimes inspired by good porn though :)

Posted by: Ol'Greg | December 3, 2009 7:52 PM

@ Emily I wonder some times if that changes with time. I hate "innocent" seeming girls though because it creeps me, and I don't understand why the girl should be "innocent" anyway. I may just hate innocence. *thinks about it*

Yeah, innocence, ignorance, ground pork. These are all things I dislike.

I'm with Bill on the BDSM thing. I mean, women are watching that too. Believe it or not. I think the bunk is that same argument that says men go for what they actually do can then be reversed to make the lovely women really want to be raped argument. Klassy.

I think porn ends up being male-centric because of the stigmas on women about sex. We don't get to contribute that much unless its... well slash fiction apparently.

But I used to like younger people and now it feels weird. I like seeing people my age.

The most important thing to me is do both parties seem to be having a good time or doing what they want to be doing. I'll even tolerate weird porn boobs, but the insipid fake orgasms bother me.

Now there's where some damage happens. Nothing like having guys actually expect you to put on a show like that. And you then have two options, a good show, or a partner who is actually enjoying herself.

Posted by: jacqueline | December 3, 2009 8:13 PM

@ post #86
"his best work (andrew blake), like Paris Chic, is art; it's art involving and about fucking, but it's art."

when exactly did peddling a product for $19.99 to the tune of masturbation become art?

@ anyone in particular
"no control group"
commence Chomsky cloning
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SNlRoaFTHuE

Posted by: Finback | December 3, 2009 8:16 PM

I'd be interested to what degree it is *created*. And by that, I'm qualifying the terrifying Iron Man/MODOK slash fic I wrote solely to make people cry..

Posted by: DesertHedgehog | December 3, 2009 8:31 PM

Andrew Blake... I'm glad someone out there likes Blake. His "House of Dreams" and "Secrets" were always my examples of what porn video could be--- elegant, stylish, great sets, all very Michael Mann/early MTV/"Miami Vice" colours and images... No dialog, really, just passable music.

Posted by: Ol'Greg | December 3, 2009 8:45 PM

@ Emily "but I definitely wouldn't associate not faking it to innocence. If that's what you were saying, because I'm actually not sure."

Oh no, that's not what I was trying to say. Sorry I ramble sometimes.

Posted by: The Calm One | December 3, 2009 8:56 PM

My (mid-40's) girlfriend watches porn often. Interestingly, she has a taste for male on male action... I wonder why?

Posted by: BlueMonday | December 3, 2009 9:03 PM

Reading a book--any book--makes me horny. My ex had the same reaction to libraries. If you stumbled down a dark aisle in our local library, no telling what you would've come across...

I used to do burlesque, and while my own performance usually didn't result in turning me on (too focused on the routine), I always enjoyed the scenes both onstage and backstage.

I've never been into internet porn, erotica, videos, or stills. It's not that I'd turn them down, necessarily, I just get turned on easily without them, so I don't go looking. Live burlesque is wonderful, though, and I do seek that out.

Posted by: Josh, Official SpokesGay | December 3, 2009 9:12 PM

Oh, honestly. Why is that anyone is so hung up about pr0n that they feel the need to research it? People like to get off. Some more than others. Some people like to do it masturbating to text or visual porn. Some prefer real sex. Some others like a mix of both. Big deal.

Me, I love porn. Most guys I know do, too, gay or straight. I'll let women speak for themselves.

One interesting (nay, irritating) difference I've seen between gay male couples and hetero couples is the attitude to prOn. (NOTE - I'm going to generalize here, but I don't mean to make a definitive statement about *everyone*. Spare me the lectures about essentializing - I already know all people don't fit stereotypes.)

With gay male couples, there is virtually never any controversy about one or the other guy jacking off to prOn whenever he feels like it. Boyfriend not home? Fap. Boyfriend home but not in the mood? Fap. Boyfriend home and wants to play along? Fap.

Many hetero couples, by contrast, seem bedeviled about it. I've talked to many women who seem to believe their boyfriend wanking to prOn means:

a. He doesn't love me

b. He prefers a fantasy to the real me

c. Something's wrong with me; I don't give a good lay

I don't think any of these are true, and that it's an unfortunate misunderstanding. To me, prOn is not a "substitute for the REAL thing," but a pleasure all unto itself. Just as I sometimes want a juicy cheeseburger, there are other days when I crave a veggie pasta primavera. Variety, not hierarchy.

And on the topic of "disturbing" prOn - for Christ's sake, fantasy is just that: fantasy. Most of us are capable of indulging in erotic fantasies about "extreme" sexual acts that we'd never, ever do in real life. Frankly, I don't believe people who claim they've never fantasized about something more extreme than what they'd be willing to do. People who worry about this and moralize about how awful it is to fantasize about rape, bdsm, or even more extreme fantasies are boring, loutish prudes. And liars.

Posted by: tresmal | December 3, 2009 9:39 PM

A study that tried to analyze how pornography affected men's views ran into an unfortunate problem: no control group. It seems there does not exist a population of males that doesn't see some porn regularly.

Posted by: Procrastinator | December 3, 2009 9:47 PM

Where's lying lion on this thread?

Posted by: Jadehawk, OM | December 3, 2009 9:51 PM

*applause for Josh*

Posted by: skylyre | December 3, 2009 9:54 PM

Why is that anyone is so hung up about pr0n that they feel the need to research it? People like to get off.

Dude, you just answered your own question.

It's like that owl who wants to know how many licks to the center of a tootsie pop. No one really cares, and it's a different number for everyone anyway.

::Puts on lab coat:: Now, time for my own research.

Posted by: Rorschach | December 3, 2009 10:14 PM

Where's lying lion on this thread?

He's dead, Jim.

:P

Posted by: NixManes | December 3, 2009 10:22 PM

"Anything that you stop watching after you masturbate."

What is really being sought in a definition is something that is solely used for this purpose.

We men can masturbate to just about anything. There are stories of teenagers masturbating to the underwear ads in the old Sears catalogs, which might not be considered porn by most.

A bit of trivia: There was a study (sorry I can't remember the source) that said the average length of time a pay-per-view porn movie is watched a hotel is 8 minutes.

Posted by: Gilmore | December 3, 2009 10:42 PM

Sorry if someone said this upthread, but uh...did PZ post this just so he can pretend in public he doesn't look at porn? What's that line about protesting too much?

Posted by: mattb | December 3, 2009 10:50 PM

Interview data. Pff. The average is probably higher. I bet the guys they interviewed didn't want to look like pervs or porn addicts.

Posted by: Hayate Yagami | December 3, 2009 11:11 PM

Was watching Conan O'Brien last night, and I think he got it right. What the results really meant to say was that men watch it three minutes at a time, forty times per week.

/joke (?)

Posted by: Phelps | December 3, 2009 11:14 PM

Quite frankly, a sample size of 20 is embarrassing and really not worth talking about. I'm a college student and last week I surveyed 40 students in only a couple of days for a class project.

As a side note, great news from my little class project. Of the 40 random college students I found to survey, 3 were atheists, 1 was agnostic, and 12 claimed no religion. The sample was 20 males and 20 females.

Posted by: evilgoader | December 4, 2009 12:06 AM

Hey all!

First time posting but been lurking for a while.
I guess there's not too much I can say that already hasn't been said but it's difficult to interpret anything interesting from such a small data set.

That being said it might be interesting to conduct a study relating the amount of porn watched with degree program. I wonder if there's any difference in habits between say an engineering major and a liberal arts major hehe.

OT but I just finished reading a post by Ann Coulter on the "Climategate" thing going on...
The stupidity and bigotry of the comments left by the readers was so bad I had to come here and get it out of my system.

Anyway, my two cents.

Posted by: evilgoader | December 4, 2009 12:16 AM

Oh of course, here it is:
http://www.humanevents.com/article.php?id=34656

BTW, can someone point me to a link with some handy html tags, such as quoting text and things like that?

Posted by: Rorschach | December 4, 2009 12:32 AM

evilgoader, that is a disturbing and misinformed and full of lies article, as to be expected from Coulter, and even more disturbing comments.

Coulter's "points" have been thoroughly debunked of course, no surprise there.

Posted by: D Sakarya | December 4, 2009 12:58 AM

This show the importance of finding the correct Standard Deviant.

Posted by: Ol'Greg | December 4, 2009 1:01 AM

"My thought is that there is at least a part of it is a fantasy about getting to teach someone the pleasure of the flesh, to share in the whole discovery and experimentation stage."

Hmmm... that may be why it doesn't work for me then. I never had that phase, myself, so it's hard to fantasize about it for me because it isn't something I value or fear. I never was with some one who knew less than me and I never allowed myself to seem naive. Aaaaaaand.... anyone who remembers my first boyfriend story from that other thread probably gets the picture :/

It seems like most of the things I watch are either fairly nice amature scenes between adults in their late 20's to late 30's (sex orientation doesn't matter. I like gay porn and lesbian porn as long as it's nice in my mind). I don't mind the gang bang porn, and some times I watch the really freaky stuff... but that's more like what Bill Dauphine was talking about. To me it's similar to watching Saw or something... some kind of gothic horror that you watch to alleviate the things in your own mind. Nothing I've seen compares, for instance, to the nightmares I have some times.

For those looking for historic and classy films from the past, this site is cool.

http://www.filmsite.org/sexinfilms1.html

I read the most amazing book in one of my classes that was by an art historian who studied pornography. I wish I could remember it. I want that book back, I'd like to read it again. I'd also like to remember who the author was.

Posted by: Midnight Rambler | December 4, 2009 1:24 AM

RickR @84:

You could make a case that "Caligula" would fall into this category. (I wouldn't. "Caligula" started out as a surreal historical fantasy with A-list stars, then had porn scenes added by an unscrupulous producer. But the result is one of the most revoltingly spectacular movies in cinema history.)

Posted by: Shane | December 4, 2009 1:43 AM

I am almost 20 and a university student in australia and i have watched porn in the past but very rarely watch it to the point in which i would maybe see 5 minutes a year if that. I believe i could be the elusive control they were looking for.

Posted by: Jadehawk, OM | December 4, 2009 1:56 AM

For the woman who thinks she's visual: then you don't need to see pictures of it honey. Just imagine it.

Posted by: Haley | December 4, 2009 2:02 AM

As for romance novels, I'm a female who finds them about as erotic as reading Cosmo sex suggestions. Which is to say, not sexy at all and rather hilarious.

I also second the bit about muting it.

Even as a feminist, I don't really mind that the study only focused on straight men. Clearly it was just beyond the scope of this particular study...

Posted by: Blahman | December 4, 2009 2:18 AM

@206 Actually. I think you are the one in need of an education. You've spouted a lot of utter nonsense without providing a single shred of evidence to support your claims.

Prove that porn, using the definition given in post 101, hurst women. Please illustrate how men fantasizing about having sex with women hurts those women. Please illustrate why your thoughtcrime should be punished.

Please show that erotica hurts the women involved in relationships with men. Please show why these women are so ignorant, deluded and controlling that they think that being in a relationship with a man means that they get to have control over his every sexual thought. You're an incredibly sexist controlling bitch if you think that you should have that kind of control.

Please provide evidence to support your ridiculous statement that a woman a man fantasizes about is more likely to be raped because of that fantasy.

Please prove that porn is detrimental to every couple's sex life, since you've claimed that it is.

Please shown us why men should not want to have sex with women, and why we should by into your invented madonna/whore complex.

Please prove that erotica is emotional abuse without assuming that it is. It is a women's responsibility to get over the fact that as mammals, we will all fantasize about other human beings. If you can't get over that fact, then you don't deserve to be in a relationship.

Erotica doesn't damage healthy relationships, or people who are sexually healthy. Look! I have just as much actual evidence to support this claim as you provided. ie. none.

Pornography exists because people, both men and women, like to watch other people having sex. If you don't, then you are the one who is broken and you need to go see a good shrink to get your problems sorted out.

In short, go F yourself, because you're obviously not very good at it and need some practice.

Posted by: Azkyroth | December 4, 2009 2:25 AM

You people are seriously in need of blah blah blah blah blah blah

Secondhand [Citation needed]

Also, did you even fucking READ the thread?

Posted by: kiki | December 4, 2009 2:36 AM

Just reread post. I can't spell.

Posted by: visiblelurker | December 4, 2009 2:55 AM

Jadehawk, OM (#106):

The thing I detest … is the inane, moronic "dialog" in porn.
1)which is why I can't understand why anyone bothered to translate manga pr0n. it completely and utterly ruins it.

Well, that is all down to preference, right? I hate dialog in pro porn videos as much as anyone (amateur is a different matter), but I find most H-manga has at least tolerable dialog, and I find untranslated work to be almost useless.

And while no live action porn video I have ever seen has a worthwhile plot, there are some few H-manga that have rather entertaining plots.

Posted by: kiki | December 4, 2009 2:57 AM

Ha ha. Very funny smartass. Ugh, I should have known better than to expect a serious answer.

Posted by: Azkyroth | December 4, 2009 3:24 AM

Wow, this thread lasted 12 humorous and enjoyable hours before the inevitable feminist killjoy (#206) started wagging her finger.

1) Incred U. hasn't identified its gender.
2) Incred U. is not a "feminist," as feminism's core premise is that men and women, generally speaking, are mentally and morally equal, and Incred U is edging into the category of "views on sexuality intelligible only under the assumption that all men are conniving psychopaths and all women are gullible morons."

Posted by: Incred U. | December 4, 2009 4:04 AM

Grad school: http://rmott62.wordpress.com/2009/12/01/
dont-touch-my-porn/

Don’t Touch My Porn

Always round me I hear excuses for looking, reading, making and promoting porn.

It makes me sick – but then I know the cost in every cell, moment, and waking dream of my life.

What may be leisure for you, was and is part of my torture.

What the hell do you think goes to make your porn – do you not allow yourself to think very deeply, for then you may have a glimpse into hell.

Sure I hear the constant not my porn, my porn is harm-free. Look everyone is happy in my porn, my porn is liberated after all.

I ask you how do know that, were you there as the porn was being made. You know the stories of all the actors in the porn.

Do you know that the “actors” are not women who have been round the sex trade, and are living inside a world of violence and degradation. Smiling and looking happy is their job.

Do you know that to make your porn they are not addicted to drugs to just handle the pain and degradation that is their norm.

Do you know that so-called acting is not just filmed rape or other forms of sadistic sexual violence.

Of course you don’t know, you just hope it is harm-free.

You are watching on porn real raping, real degradation. Hell, they are real women being fucked until they are dead inside.

Is that your idea of leisure.

But you may say it not all violent, my porn is nice.

Porn is based on violence and degradation, even when made pretty. It is not erotica.

Most porn is all about grinding women and girls, and some men into the dirt. Then saying that is all they are, that is their only role in life.

Porn makes real humans into to fuck-holes, then scorn them, ripped away at any essence they have left.

But to add insult to injury, much of porn need its victims to look very happy, to appear sex-crazed, and to never feel any pain.

For many actors in porn there is no freedom, no empowerment and for far too many death is the only real exit.

You are watching the living dead when you choose to watch porn.

If you fight for human rights, how dare you watch or read porn.

Are you saying these tortures don’t matter, coz those women are sub-humans. Be honest with yourself, of course you.

Don’t pretend it is not torture, coz that will make me think you just stupid.

Is it not torture to doubly or treble penetrated anally. Is it not torture to have extreme s/m done until near-death. Is not gang-raping torture. That just a tiny part of the norm of most porn.

Every torture that is done to political prisoners, to kidnap victims, to rape and child sexual abuse victims, by armies in brothels and so many more place – is either copied from porn or porn repeats as “fun”.

Porn and torture are interchangeable.

So watch porn if you must, but don’t pretend on the side of angels.

Posted by: Chris Lamb | December 4, 2009 4:09 AM

Dear PZ,

It's porn if you whack off to it.

- Chris.

Posted by: Walton | December 4, 2009 4:38 AM

I'm not sure what to think about the porn industry. It's something of a moral dilemma for me.

I don't think porn is intrinsically wrong, in theory. If some people are willing to have sex on camera and others are willing to pay to watch it, then there's nothing inherently wrong with this, as long as it's genuinely consensual. It's just a commercial relationship like any other; in the absence of irrational religious views, there's no reason to think that sex is any more wrong than any other activity, nor is there any special reason why it can't be the subject of a commercial transaction.

However, as I understand it, the mainstream commercial porn industry is, in practice, highly exploitative; many women (and some men) are trapped into the porn industry by their economic circumstances, and cannot be genuinely said to be giving free consent. As such, the use of porn in general can be said to be morally questionable.

Posted by: JeffreyD | December 4, 2009 4:54 AM

Incred U. at #221 and previous, you are seriously creepy. I am neither kidding nor attempting a jape when I suggest you seek counseling. While there may be whispers of truth in what you say, your attitudes seem to indicate deeper issues with sexuality and whether any form of it is acceptable. Whether you are male or female is immaterial, by the way, nor do I care to know.

On to other posts, I am glad to see some women willing to admit they like and/or need porn of some kind. I always thought one of the worst of the patriarchial tricks played on women was getting them to deny they had an interest in sex.

In closing, Boom chicka bow wow from my guitar.

Posted by: The Swede | December 4, 2009 5:20 AM

Walton, I fixed it:

However, as I understand it, the mainstream commercial *item* industry is, in practice, highly exploitative; many people are trapped into the *item* industry by their economic circumstances, and cannot be genuinely said to be giving free consent. As such, the use of *item* in general can be said to be morally questionable.

I honestly and truly fail to see the difference between porn and, say, Nike sneakers from this perspective. The majority of people around the world are trapped in their current situation by their economic circumstances and are exploited for it, usually with life-shortening results.

Having sex in front of a camera beats getting worn out and dying poor and early in my book. Although there are some people who manage to combine the two, of course.

Posted by: jacqueline | December 4, 2009 5:38 AM

@kiki #212
@azkyroth #214
@jadehawk #218

kiki, apologies for simply fattening your initial inquiry...yes jadehawk and azkyroth, said comparison doesn't come to a proper exacting parallel, (highly unlikely significant other will be fucking porn star, slightly more likely significant other will be fucking ogled recipient/victim), yet kiki's meaty considerations still bring me to the following---

why would a woman feel hurt/annoyed/angered/etc over ogling?

likely a variety of reasons, she may not engage in ogling and expects the same of partner, her partner may have ogled only her in the beginning of the relationship--she sees this deviation in ogling as signaling a decline from heady romantic beginnings, doesn't feel as desirable or fascinating (cue self esteem issues), etc, etc, etc.

why would a woman feel hurt/annoyed/angered/etc over porn?

see above.

why would a woman feel hurt/annoyed/angered/etc
over her partner having sex with another woman

again see above.

why would a woman feel hurt/annoyed/angered/etc
over the various hair products her partner silently applies by the light of day?

admittedly above reasons do not work for all scenarios.

Posted by: Knockgoats | December 4, 2009 5:52 AM

This comment was typed using NO hands. - NMcC

I recently watched the film "My Left Foot: The Story of Cristy Brown" (1989, director Jim Sheridan, starring Daniel Day Lewis). Brown was a writer and painter who did all his professional work with his left foot - he had athetoid cerebral palsy, and no control over his hands. I did wonder whether he could reach his crotch with it.

Posted by: Silič O'Nopolitanopoulos, Färschdbischuf Beesknees aus Ulm und Klein Elguth, Elector Pharynguline. | December 4, 2009 6:02 AM

Not enough.

I need to develop less specific tastes.

Posted by: kerim | December 4, 2009 6:19 AM

Don't know what all the fuzz is about.
I watch porn rather often. Especially Japanese porn since it is the weirdest available while at the same time interestingly the rape rate in japan is amongst the lowest in the world.

That being said i think the question is rather WHY you watch porn and not so much how often.

I envy everybody who can "get off" watching a porn movie. I rather spend my time under the table dying of laughter.

Posted by: Walton | December 4, 2009 6:35 AM

My point is that the exploitation level is much, much worse in other areas where we generally don't think twice about using the products of exploitation.

Actually, I think we do think twice. Lots of people choose to boycott, and actively campaign against, multinational businesses which rely on sweatshop labour. I personally choose not to participate in such boycotts and campaigns, because the difficulty is that if the sweatshops in developing countries shut down, those who work in them will be returned to an even worse state of poverty. The sweatshop/cheap labour stage is a necessary part of a country's path to industrialisation and development; this can be seen in countries such as Taiwan and South Korea, which initially grew their economies by manufacturing cheap mass-produced goods using a plentiful supply of sweatshop labour, but have now become comparatively wealthy and developed nations. But this is an economic argument. It does not mean, or imply, that I am unconcerned about the welfare of exploited sweatshop workers. So I don't think there's any inconsistency between my stance on sweatshops and my stance on (mainstream commercial) porn.

I would have to reiterate, though, that I don't think there's anything inherently wrong, in and of itself, about using media for purposes of sexual gratification. My quibble is simply with the commercial porn industry, and those who grow rich from it. There are certainly plenty of people who post erotica on the internet for their own and others' enjoyment, without any economic exploitation being involved, and I see no moral problem with that whatsoever.

Posted by: scooter | December 4, 2009 6:45 AM

#240

depends on the ape
I oppose many apes, probably most apes
they are very disappointing
but contrary to angels
at least there is something there to oppose

Posted by: R-Tam | December 4, 2009 7:25 AM

I'm just trying to calculate my average time spent on porn. So...do romance novels count, or what? If so, I total at something at 5 hours a week. Without, more like half an hour...

I used to be realle turned off by porn. It's so obviously aimed at men it does nothing to turn me on! The guys are fugly, and it follows the male gaze, meaning breasts, thighs, (female) ass, etc. All squishy female parts. Hardly any hot ab shots, muscles or firm male booties... Achem. I don't buy this "women just aren't visual" crap. It's been my experience that if (most) het men have to follow the female gaze, it quickly turns into a boner killer. So mainstream male gaze is a lady boner killer :D

Which is why I lurve me some gay pr0n. And the vids of real people having real sex, since that usually focuses on both. I certainly give no business to mainstream porn - there are really horrible things going on in that industry D:

Posted by: Svlad Cjelli | December 4, 2009 9:29 AM

We quickly discard material we find offensive or distasteful?! There's a shocker.

I also discard what I find boring, tedious or annoying.

Posted by: Clemens | December 4, 2009 10:21 AM

1. The porn discussed in PorNo-campaign events is on the extreme BDSM end of the spectrum
2. There is porn made (as in, scripted, conceived and directed) by women for women. Exploiting themselves, huh?
3. Ask Sasha Grey if she sees herself as a victim. And do you think Jenna Jameson was 'exploited'?

You can still find it morally questionable, that is your business, but your black/white-picturing does not get you anywhere. And by making the clear distinction between the evil, dirty men and the poor, helpless women, you are the one who is sexist.

Posted by: anonymous! | December 4, 2009 10:32 AM

40 minutes? 20 minutes? What about the study compiled by Ramada that showed pay per view porn was never watched for more than 10 minutes? :)

Posted by: ErikaM | December 4, 2009 10:44 AM

Ok, I knew someone would jump on my bringing up disturbing porn. I realize a lot of people are into BDSM, and as long as it's consensual, more power to them. But having browsed the shelves, I maintain there's a difference between the "mainstream" BDSM porn (doms training or punishing the subs, and whatnot) and the truly hardcore, extreme BDSM.

If, as the researchers claim, men stuck with porn "that matched their own image of sexuality," then ok... what I want to know is where men *get* that image. I mean, if your image of sexuality is kidnapping women and torturing them in your specially equipped van (this a real plot I saw on a DVD cover), where do you get that image? At what age? And while I realize that male-centric and misogynistic are not synonymous terms, misogynistic is the more appropriate of the two if someone's image of sexuality demands abuse of women.

p.s. How do I quote on this board? Do I need to be registered with one of the services first?

Posted by: Renee | December 4, 2009 10:57 AM

PZ, you're old. Just because you can't get it up anymore doesn't mean you're morally superior.

Posted by: Kemanorel | December 4, 2009 11:07 AM

You are watching on porn real raping, real degradation. Hell, they are real women being fucked until they are dead inside.

Is that your idea of leisure.

But you may say it not all violent, my porn is nice.

Porn is based on violence and degradation, even when made pretty. It is not erotica.

Incred U., leave your fear tactics at home.

****NSFW****

www.cam4.com

****NSFW****

All amateur, free, and live from around the world; from their bedrooms to your computers. I thought I'd actually include it because no only does that kind of site prove Incred U. completely wrong, but some people mentioned liking just real stuff... can't get any more real than this via a computer.

(Note: there's plenty of good looking people on that site, but anyone can sign up and stream video and there are some ugly people streaming that probably shouldn't be, so click at your own risk.)

Posted by: Azkyroth | December 4, 2009 11:35 AM

If all porn was rape

But in Incred U's parallel universe, all porn IS rape, because women don't have the moral and intellectual capacity to meaningfully consent to having sex on camera (or, perhaps, at all).

Posted by: Andi Marie | December 4, 2009 11:41 AM

I am a woman, a feminist, a skeptic, and a mother. I not only watch porn, but write it as well. Much like marilove above, I have always had more masculine sensibilities about sex anyway.

I have had many fights recently with skeptics about porn and sex, and the bottom line to me is this: Prove the harm.

Exploitation exists in all forms of labor. In my mind, the solution to bad pornography, which there is plenty of, is BETTER PORNOGRAPHY!

I personally know both porn performers and directors. NONE of them were forced into it, but I don't doubt that it has happened in the past. Again though, that is not porn's fault, it is the people who do the forcing.

There is indeed porn that is misogynistic, hateful, and possibly mean-spirited against women (and men). Ironically, it is usually NOT the hardcore BDSM pornography.

BDSM is not about one person forcing their will on another. It is about two (or more!) people coming together to explore where their sexualities meet, with VERY CLEAR boundaries and guidelines about what is acceptable and what is not. Kink.com has some of the most hardcore stuff on the internet, and yet they are known in the adult community for being the most sensitive to their performers.

For people seeking hot porn that is very clearly consensual, look into Tristan Taormino, Courtney Trouble, Shine Louise Houston, Candida Royalle, Nina Hartley, and Annie Sprinkle.

Posted by: Raging Bee | December 4, 2009 11:57 AM

Now I'm very confused.

If you're that confused, that probably means the study is so lame it's not worth discussing.

Posted by: Peter | December 4, 2009 12:01 PM

Don't be confused. You'll recognize porn when you see it. An average of 40 minutes for a single person seems about right, but three times a week is a bit on the low side. Or am I not normal?

Posted by: Tom | December 4, 2009 12:20 PM

The purpose of this study is fairly simple to figure out... it's to give the scientists an excuse to watch porn.

Posted by: R-Tam | December 4, 2009 12:38 PM

Kemanorel

While I found Incred's post to be idiotic and agree with a lot of your rebuttal (the parts where you talk about how porn can be healthy in a relationship, mainly), I feel there are some things where you're somewhat of an Anti-Incred, meaning either ignorant, exagerating or just plain dishonest in the other direction.

"It is also one of the few industries where women get paid more than men."

No. No no no no. There are more female porn actors, but male actors get paid more (they justify this with their rarity). As are the (mostly male) directors, camera crew, etc.

"they want to do it because it pays well and it's empowering to them. They love being the object of men's fantasies."

And you don't see a problem with a society that produces people who like to think of themselves as other people's objects?
You are making false blanket statements. While some women go into it because it empowers them, others find it degrading but do it anyway, because they're hard-up for cash. To say all women porn stars find empowerment in objectification is no different than saying that all women do it because they're forced into it, and thus are being actively raped.

Look, you can't just pretend that the industry is la-dee-dah, fine and dandy. It's not. There are lots of horrible things within the porn industry. (That, of course, doesn't affect the value of porn as such...It's like another user said, many of our clothes are made in sweatshops that perpetuate horrible abuses, yet that doesn't make clothes evil)

A very prominent example are Linda Boreman's accusations, the star of mainstream porn flick "Deep throat":

In her first two biographies, Linda Boreman characterizes making the film as a liberating experience; in her third and fourth biographies (written after making the acquaintance of anti-pornography activist Andrea Dworkin), she charges that she did not consent to many of the depicted sexual acts and that she was coerced to perform by her abusive husband, Chuck Traynor, who received $1,250 for her acting. She also claimed she was hypnotized by Traynor, who brandished handguns and rifles to control her.

In 1986, she testified before the Meese Commission that "Virtually every time someone watches that movie, they're watching me being raped." And in the Toronto Sun on March 20, 1981 she said that, "It is a crime that movie is still showing; there was a gun to my head the entire time." While the other people present on the set did not support the gun charge, both Traynor and Damiano confirmed in interviews that Traynor was extremely controlling towards Boreman and also hit her on occasion. In the documentary Inside Deep Throat (see above) it is claimed that bruises are visible on Boreman's body in the movie."

And this... this here is on par with Incred. Seriously.

"Patriarchy indeed... If pornography was caused by patriarchy it would all be in missionary, the women wouldn't enjoy it, and no one would orgasm because all sex is dirty. And the middle-east would be flooded with porn shops filled with so many tapes they have stacks of them on the sidewalks."

WHAT IS THIS I DON'T EVEN

I feel like this is too moronic to dignify with a response, yet I really think this doesn't come from a place of denial and more like from never having thought about it, so...Short answer, using just the most obvious example.

Mainstream porn follows the male gaze. Meaning the, achem, "objects" of titillation are women, their bodies, breasts, thighs, etc. It rarely shows the female gaze, meaning shots of male sexy parts.

Valuing the male perspective more than the female perspective is an expression of patriarchy.

Patriarchy doesn't transalte to sexual puritanism as you seem to think. It's just that the biggest modern advocates of patriarchy are religions which also have puritan values. You have a very stereotypical image of what patriarchy is and I suggest you read up on it. It amounts to more than desert tribe religion, just like racism has forms other than "No negroes" signs

Posted by: Acronym Jim | December 4, 2009 12:41 PM

Evilgoader@191

I wonder if there's any difference in habits between say an engineering major and a liberal arts major hehe.

The liberal arts major creates porn preferred by the engineering major and the engineering major facilitates the ability to type using both hands while watching porn.

Posted by: Bill Dauphin, OM | December 4, 2009 12:50 PM

OK, cue my usual schtick...

Walton:

I don't purchase much mainstream commercial porn (just because it doesn't appeal to me), but if I did I'd probably avoid stuff produced in parts of the world where sex trafficking is widely reputed to be rampant (i.e., Southeast Asia)... but do you have any actual evidence that women performers in porn produced in the U.S. and Western Europe (for example) are working under any coercion or actual compulsion (aside from "economic compulsion," which I'll get to in a minute)?

Actually, there are reasons to suspect that human trafficking for sex is overstated even in the places where it occurs (Susie Bright had a bit about this on a recent installment of her In Bed podcast)... but I'm happy to err on the side of caution in avoiding giving my money to traffickers. But if I buy the latest AVN-winning film from Vivid Entertainment, I'm pretty sure the performer I'm watching weren't being kept chained in a basement between takes.

Regarding "economic compulsion," I'll side with The Swede...

I honestly and truly fail to see the difference between porn and, say, Nike sneakers from this perspective. The majority of people around the world are trapped in their current situation by their economic circumstances and are exploited for it, usually with life-shortening results.

Having sex in front of a camera beats getting worn out and dying poor and early in my book.

...and go one step further: Even in jobs that most of us would consider nonexploitative, and which support a perfectly pleasant middle-class standard of living, most of us do what we do because we're "trapped in [our] current situation by [our] economic circumstances"... by which I mean that, barring very lucky people — astronauts, athletes, artists of all types, etc. — most of us spend most of our adult lives doing things we wouldn't be doing if we didn't have to earn a living.

Ahh, but even so, surely any "legitimate" job is better than sex work, right? Jacqueline (@232) certainly seems to think so:

if unemployment firmly directed me to a nike sweatshop i would be sad

if unemployment firmly directed me to the bunny ranch where i would be having hourly unhappy times with a host of unsavory men i would be ENRAGED.

But this way of looking at it is packed with unexamined preconceptions — unhappy, unsavory, etc. — and this is ultimately what I'm getting to. There's an presumption here that sex work is certain to be unpleasant (and, though this is unspoken, presumably dangerous), and that's compounded by a presumption that sex work is inherently less desirable than even similarly unpleasant and dangerous "legitimate" work.

It's my contention (and those of you who are familiar with my previous comments knew this was coming, I'm afraid) that these presumptions are rooted in a serious (and IMHO pathological) cultural prejudice against sexual pleasure, which in turn is rooted in religious notions of the inherent corruption of all mortal, fleshly pleasure.

Like The Swede (but unlike Jacqueline), I would choose sex work over the grinding toil of the sweatshop... but wait, there's more: My own actual job is a white-collar, professional position doing work I find modestly satisfying, and for which I'm comfortably well compensated, but nothing about it is anything I would be doing if I didn't need to make money and support my family. If I could provide for my family equally well by having sex in front of cameras or with lonely paying strangers¹, I would change careers in a fraction of a heartbeat!

If you strip away our enculturated notions of the innate depravity of sex, and set aside our deeply ingrained learned sense of shame around sexuality, and judge sex work on the same bases you might judge other work — the cost of the work in terms of time, unpleasantness, and risk (including physical wear-and-tear in addition to acute risks) versus its rewards in terms of remuneration, security, and personal satisfaction — I suspect sex work stacks up pretty well for many people.

¹ This is possibly the most laughable hypothetical in the history of human argumentation, but the cosmic implausibility of anyone wanting to watch me have sex (let alone pay to have sex with me) doesn't really affect my point. ;^)

Posted by: sasqwatch | December 4, 2009 12:58 PM

Basically, whenever I'm not surfing for porn, I come here.

Perhaps I'd better rephrase that.

Posted by: Rick R | December 4, 2009 1:01 PM

Midnight Rambler @201- "Well, it had some extra gratuitous "porn" scenes added in after the Penthouse guy took it on, but it didn't need them. The scenes with Helen Mirren performing oral sex on Caligula's mistress, and his first wife bathing in semen as a group of men masturbate into the bathtub, were there already."

You forgot the scene where Malcolm McDowell rapes the bridegroom in the kitchen. :)
It's true that "Caligula wasn't exactly chaste in it's original intent. But the added gratuitous and graphic orgy scenes were clearly something different, shot with a different crew. The lighting in these scenes is completely different than the rest of the movie, for example.

Speaking of "Caligula", this is pretty funny, but NSFW-

http://noxdineen.vox.com/library/video/6a00c22522e9f18fdb00cdf39ecf0fcb8f.html

Posted by: Raging Bee | December 4, 2009 1:14 PM

Mainstream porn follows the male gaze.

"Mainstream porn" is not, by any stretch, the only kind of porn available worldwide. And these days, it may not even have the majority share of porn viewers. It's still popular, but huge numbers of men (and women) are looking for, and finding, and making, other forms of porn that are so different from "mainstream" that generalizations like that quoted above just don't apply anymore.

I agree that one solution to bad porn is better porn. Another solution to bad porn is better education. I had a good upbringing, and explicit comprehensive sex-ed in junior-high, so when I started seeing how stupid, nasty, and disgusting porn could get, I was able to separate right from wrong in what I saw, look for smarter porn, and make decent judgements about what sex, and women, were supposed to be like.

Posted by: Aratina Cage | December 4, 2009 1:40 PM

Speaking of "Caligula", this is pretty funny, but NSFW- Rick R

Posted by: Incred. U | December 4, 2009 1:54 PM

"Of course, for people like Incred U, that 22 year old doesn't exist."

What if I was that 22-year old?

You're all talking at it from the perspective of the user/abuser.

You have no cred with me or any other former sexually abused and trafficked woman. And yes, trafficked applies to women who were born on this continent, and suffered here.

Read what Linda Boreman had to say, until you get it. Read what RMott62 has to say. You're abusers. If you watch porn or justify it, your an abuser.

Try applying your rational to race. See how that works.

Posted by: Rev. BigDumbChimp | December 4, 2009 2:02 PM

Incred. U

Do any women ever enter the porn world willfully and of their own choice?

Are they capable of that choice?

Posted by: Rev. BigDumbChimp | December 4, 2009 2:09 PM

Try applying your rational to race. See how that works.

What a strange analogy to try and make but it's one people like to throw out when trying to make strange defenses of their position because it's SHOCKING!!

How would you apply this "rational" to race?

Hypothetical: There are Vietnamese people who are slaves in factories making shoes.

Therefore any shoes made by Vietnamese people are evil?

Posted by: Ol'Greg | December 4, 2009 2:17 PM

"What if I was that 22-year old?"

Incred.u, what if I>/i> was?

You're actually talking to a former model here, and while I didn't do porn I knew people who did.

So yeah, I do know what I'm talking about.

If you were that 22 year old and I knew you I would use my judgment about where your desires were coming from. I would tell you it's a hard industry to get into, and a lot of people get hurt along the way... but I'd let you make your decisions for yourself and try to be a good friend unless you turned psycho-junkie and started stealing my stuff and making life crappy around you. I'd tell you I hope you go to rehab or something and then cut you out of my life.

If you just liked the attention from cam-whoring I'd say more power to you, try and stay safe, and report any stalking to the police regardless of what you do for a living.

Hey... guess who's speaking from experience here :D:D:D

Posted by: Bill Dauphin, OM | December 4, 2009 2:19 PM

Rev BDC:

Hypothetical: There are Vietnamese people who are slaves in factories making shoes.

Therefore any shoes made by Vietnamese people are evil?

Great minds must truly think alike, because I almost made essentially this same analogy.

Except that it seems to me that the anti-porn side's argument is more analogous to saying "therefore all shoes are evil."

Posted by: Rev. BigDumbChimp | December 4, 2009 2:22 PM

Except that it seems to me that the anti-porn side's argument is more analogous to saying "therefore all shoes are evil."

Good point.

Posted by: Jadehawk, OM | December 4, 2009 2:24 PM

Like The Swede (but unlike Jacqueline), I would choose sex work over the grinding toil of the sweatshop...

Posted by: Rev. BigDumbChimp | December 4, 2009 2:26 PM

Where had Incred. U gone?

I want to ask her what type of shoes she wears.

Posted by: Ol'Greg | December 4, 2009 2:37 PM

BD I think we're on the same page. I wouldn't be opposed to sex work if I could:

1) Chose and reject clients
2) Control how many people I am involved with, what I do
3) Have good insurance
4) Not be socially rejected, be able to find other work if I wanted to, not be considered a bad person... etc.
5) Depend on protection through law like any other citizen

Posted by: truth machine, OM | December 4, 2009 2:42 PM

This is a science blog????????

Science is a patriarchal construct designed to perpetuate the oppression of wymyn.

Posted by: Azkyroth | December 4, 2009 2:52 PM

Try applying your rational to race. See how that works.

...if you watch, say, anime or hip-hop music videos you're an abuser?

...I don't get it.

Posted by: Rev. BigDumbChimp | December 4, 2009 2:54 PM

My grandma told me that compulsively doing these types of studies without control groups can make you go double blind.

zing!

Posted by: Sarmatae | December 4, 2009 3:04 PM

Posted by: Bill Dauphin, OM | December 4, 2009 1:56 PM

Technically speaking stripping is not pornography. Something sexual in nature performed in front of a live audience is not considered pornography. The key is in the name if you break it down "graphy". Sort of means "The depiction of". I am pretty sure.

Don't know if that makes any difference in the discussion. But lets say a woman was forced to work as a stripper. Strictly speaking she is not engaging in pornography, because stripping is not pornography. The only way that would do as an argument against pornography is if she was forced to dance as a stripper and was photographed, video etc.. It is the depiction of that strip dance which is the pornography. Ok then enough nit picking please continue.

Posted by: Sarmatae | December 4, 2009 3:10 PM

Sorry my last post was supposed to be a comment to something Bill Dauphin said in post #282 and my script line didn't work at the top of my post.

Posted by: David Marjanović, OM | December 4, 2009 3:33 PM

I don't know about watching, but lots of women like reading porn. And many, many of them like reading slash. Now, if someone wants to do a study on why so many women like reading--and writing--about two or more guys having sex, I would be very interested.

…and…

My (mid-40's) girlfriend watches porn often. Interestingly, she has a taste for male on male action... I wonder why?

For the same reason, I suppose, why there is (as I've read) fake lesbian porn for consumption by hetero males: if you're hetero, members of your own sex aren't sexy, so they're at best uninteresting background that occasionally obscures what you really want to look at (and/or imagine) and at worst offputting.

See comment 243 for a very similar phenomenon.

Where's lying lion on this thread?

Banned. Check out the bottom of that page.

PZ, you're old. Just because you can't get it up anymore doesn't mean you're morally superior.

Have you… like… read the post?

and then I remembered the Australian creepy crawlies

Also, look up the Giant Queensland Stinging Tree – "it won't kill you, but you'll wish it had"…

Posted by: Bill Dauphin, OM | December 4, 2009 4:20 PM

David M (@309):

I think you've got it just right: For straight women, gay male porn is a good bargain, in the same way that, for straight men, lesbian porn is, as Coupling's Jeff Murdock puts it, "porn efficient":

"Lesbians are porn efficient. It's sex with a greater density of women. Porn-wise, lesbians are like a jam sandwich, without the sandwich and just the jam. In fact, lesbians are just a big blob of jam. Well, not actually. Unless they've exploded in all the lesbonic excitement."

Kagehi (@310):

Demonizing sex *leads* to these things....

You can't attack part of humanity and human nature, and then stand around mumbling, "Oh, woes me! How did it go so wrong!"

Right. Just what I've been trying to say in several of these threads about sexuality, sex work, and sexism.

Posted by: Blahman | December 4, 2009 5:17 PM

Well yes, if you define porn as only those things that men prefer then it is patriarchial. If you use a better definition which is anything that any given person finds arousing, then it certainly isn't. It's much better in my opinion to forget about the outdated negative connotations of the word.

Posted by: Rev. BigDumbChimp | December 4, 2009 5:21 PM

huh?

Posted by: Jadehawk, OM | December 4, 2009 5:28 PM

"Getting Off, the End of Masculinity"

yeah, very feminist. Completely ignoring the existence of women who like porn. *rolleyes*

Posted by: Rev. BigDumbChimp | December 4, 2009 5:37 PM

Here is the problem I am having with the weaponized phallus, a problem of a more limited scale than men’s deeply enculturated hatred of all things female, especially the female body (which they see as a thing to be conquered, defiled, humiliated… taken). It’s that fact that so-called “progressive” men (people really should look up the sordid history of that modifier), those who claim to stand for justice and against domination and exploitation, engage in the self-same, woman-hating, weaponized-phallus trash-talk as right-wing men.

Ahhh it's obvious now.

This isn't about men hating women, this is about certain women hating men.

Yes and I know how you'll react to that. I'm hoping you do.

Posted by: Jadehawk, OM | December 4, 2009 5:43 PM

not so much "express(ing) a desire for sex" as they are expressing A DESIRE FOR MONEY that requires sex times with partners they would not have sex with for free

1)Doing something for money you wouldn't otherwise do is the standard description of "having a job"

2)doing something for money you wouldn't otherwise do is NOT THE SAME as doing something for money that's altogether repulsive to you. only the latter is an actual problem.

Posted by: Azkyroth | December 4, 2009 5:49 PM

"Getting Off, the End of Masculinity"

yeah, very feminist. Completely ignoring the existence of women who like porn. *rolleyes*

The shark is jumped.

Posted by: Incred. U | December 4, 2009 5:55 PM

Rev. Why does this make you think 'this is about certain women hating men"?

"Here is the problem I am having with the weaponized phallus, a problem of a more limited scale than men’s deeply enculturated hatred of all things female, especially the female body (which they see as a thing to be conquered, defiled, humiliated… taken). It’s that fact that so-called “progressive” men (people really should look up the sordid history of that modifier), those who claim to stand for justice and against domination and exploitation, engage in the self-same, woman-hating, weaponized-phallus trash-talk as right-wing men."

Posted by: Azkyroth | December 4, 2009 6:08 PM

Weaponized phallus?

I know genital piercings and tattoos are getting more popular, but that's just ridiculous.

Posted by: Incred U | December 4, 2009 6:15 PM

http://home.igc.org/~sherrynstan/

You just choked on the cracker.

Here's the author of The Weaponized Phallus:
http://home.igc.org/~sherrynstan/

Don't you want to watch the MySpace vids? Lotsa hot porn.

Posted by: jacqueline | December 4, 2009 6:23 PM

@ Bill Dauphin #271

again why are we, and by we i mean you, actively pairing sexual pleasure with sexual labour?

again,
PLEASE TO BE NOTING THE HUGE F#$@-ING DIFFERENCE

having trouble distinguishing fantasy from reality? id say so

you
"There's an presumption here that sex work is certain to be unpleasant"

me
yes, having sex with someone i wouldn't want to have sex with for free would be entirely unpleasant

you".....these presumptions are rooted in a serious (and IMHO pathological) cultural prejudice against sexual pleasure, which in turn is rooted in religious notions of the inherent corruption of all mortal, fleshly pleasure."

me
what?!? if im copulating for pure,cold hard columbian cash with men that i wouldnt choose to have sex with for free, then it clearly not about my sexual pleasure, it about MONEY MONEY MONEY. my aversion does not come from shame, it comes from having sex with men i normally wouldn't want to have sex with

quoting you qouting bits of me "But this way of looking at it is packed with unexamined preconceptions — (this part is me "unhappy, unsavory, etc." my quote ends here) — and this is ultimately what I'm getting to"

im awfuly picky about who i invite into bed. perhaps you, not so much

and so here comes the hypothetical...
(note: this is not a threat)

assuming your straight,

would you choose your legitimate job over f@#$-ing or being f#@$-ed by the most repellent of men?

i must know. you must tell me.

i know, the hypothetical is all with the dramatic...my apologies

Posted by: Bill Dauphin, OM | December 4, 2009 6:29 PM

R-Tam:

And why is the porn industry caters to men and not to women? You are creating a false equivalence. We are not talking about some subset of porn that caters to men, we're talking about all porn, which, taken all together, overwhelmingly caters to men. The condom is designed for men, the pill for women, nothing wrong with that. But they belong to the larger category of contraceptives.

It seems to me that you've just made your argument dependent on a fairly arbitrary categorization: You say porn is patriarchal because it lacks a corresponding female-centric analog, but condoms are not because they're part of the larger category of "contraceptives," within which they're balanced by female contraceptives such as the pill.

So far, so good... but what if I say porn isn't a category in itself, but rather a subcategory belonging to the larger category of "media"? Perhaps you'd say that categorical scheme is an arbitrary construction on my part, and I could hardly argue with that... but my scheme is no more arbitrary than yours. And if we put porn into the category of media, I think it becomes pretty easy to point to other subcategories of media that are as lopsidedly aimed at women as porn is at men. It's just that there's orders of magnitude less armwaving about those women-centric media, because they're not so powerfully identified with teh seks.

But I think you mistake my argument in any case: I'm not trying to claim our society isn't patriarchal or sexist; it clearly is both. I'm simply saying that porn isn't the cause of the problem. The preponderance of male-centric porn no doubt reflects the inherently patriarchal notion, deeply embedded in our culture, that women are fragile and must be shielded (by the patriarchs, of course) from the strong passions of the flesh... but porn doesn't cause this notion, and attacking porn will not correct this imbalance.

If/when we achieve a society with better gender equity (I'm making the rash assumption that gender equity, rather than erasure of gender, is the goal), there will still be porn, and much of it will still be marketed to one gender or the other and will take on that gender's perspective — it's the nature of media, and of art, that it has a point of view — it's just that the distribution of target audience and corresponding perspective will be more even.

But the mysoginist porn industry is still that - mainstream. I'm going to keep using that word till the happy day it won't apply anymore.

You keep using that word; I do not think it means what you think it means. No doubt there is misogynistic porn — after all, what medium or mode of expression has there ever been that was proof against being used to express hateful ideas? — but it is not generally true that porn treats women with contempt or hatred, and that includes even the large majority of mainstream porn. Unless, that is, you're asserting that the mere act of putting women's sexuality on display is inherently contemptuous... and if that were what you meant, I'd have to wonder who it was who was truly expressing patriarchal ideas.

Even stipulating that most mainstream porn adopts a male-centric perspective, it does not follow that men's point of view implies men's contempt. Do you consider those (admittedly too few) examples of porn that is female-centric to be instances of misandry?

I'm going to take a moment to change into some Nomex underwear before I make this next point, but...

Objectification is to deny someone's agency, thoughts and feelings. The objectified person exists only to serve your needs and is not allowed needs of hir own.

Objectification of actual people is a whole 'nother kettle of horses of another color, and entirely outside the scope of this conversation, but an image on my computer screen (or on my TV, or in the magazine in my hands) isn't a person; it's just a picture. That picture (or at least, that instance of it) really does "exist[] only to serve [my] needs" and has no capability for "needs of hir own," regardless of what I do or think. My relationship with the picture is limited to receipt of some photons, and that doesn't constitute even the faintest hint of a relationship with the person whose image the picture represents. As long as she has not been harmed in making the image, nothing about how I consume the image has any power to harm her.

Before you get too upset about how inhumane that sounds, consider the analogous situation in regular, nonpornographic media: As decent human beings, we're concerned that actors work under safe, fair conditions, and that their labor is respected and equitably compensated... but we do not worry about whether they're degraded by the actions of the characters they've created, nor whether they personally enjoy the things we see their images doing on the screen (and if so, what their motivations might be). We quite easily separate the people from the images they create specifically for our amusement.

If it's not wrong for me to consume the moving image of, for example, Tom Hanks "only for my own needs," why would it be any more wrong for me to do the same thing with the moving image of Jenna Jameson... even if what I need from a picture of Jenna is somewhat different than what I need from a picture of Tom?

If we see things in porn that reflect badly on our society, let's fix society, shall we, rather than just breaking the mirror?

PS: Notwithstanding these comments, which must read like a blanket defense of mainstream het porn, my own actual preferences are for what you'd probably call indy stuff that's about as woman-centric as porn can be (well, as woman-centric as it can be while still involving female performers).

Posted by: ddpej | December 4, 2009 6:37 PM

Azkyroth @ 324:

But if Incred U posted only its own thoughts, we'd never hear from it again.

Somehow, this fails to upset me.

Posted by: ddpej | December 4, 2009 6:42 PM

Incred U @ 336:

I have been quoting and giving websites of a former sexually abused woman [etc.] ... The quotes and links are here for the readers.

I have no complaint with your links, and the sources of your quotes have nothing to do with the fact that we rather value thought and rational evaluation here. Quote if you like -- but at least put enough effort into it to frame the quotes properly with your own interpretations thereof.

Posted by: jacqueline | December 4, 2009 6:48 PM

@ clemens #247

jenna jameson was raped "at 16, when she was returning home from a football game, she was gang raped by four men, beaten with rocks and left to die on a side road. Hardly a couple of months later, she was raped again, this time by her boyfriend's uncle"
http://www.inoutstar.com/news/Jenna-Marie-Massoli-aka-Jenna-Jameson-509.html
jameson also mentions the rape in her autobiography

also this
porn + men = decreased sentencing for rapists from juried males

http://profiles.nlm.nih.gov/NN/B/C/K/V/_/nnbckv.pdf

coupled with this
Women in Poverty:
A New Global Underclass
http://www.onlinewomeninpolitics.org/beijing12/womeninpoverty.pdf

is mightily unpleasant

Posted by: WRMartin | December 4, 2009 6:55 PM

Is it just me or is Incred. U incredibly moronic and in need of counseling?

Posted by: Phoenix | December 4, 2009 7:10 PM

Why are the people who oppose porn so quick to deny agency to the victims of sexual abuse/assault? That a person has been abused is always presented as some kind of trump. This is an incredibly offensive thing, and it infantilizes agency possesing adults. It also requires the initial assumption that sex work is inherently "bad". If workers at McDonald's had been abused previously, nobody would hold that against them.

Posted by: SC, OM | December 4, 2009 7:25 PM

1)

If it's not wrong for me to consume the moving image of, for example, Tom Hanks "only for my own needs," why would it be any more wrong for me to do the same thing with the moving image of Jenna Jameson... even if what I need from a picture of Jenna is somewhat different than what I need from a picture of Tom?

I'm curious, though it's not exactly on point: What do you think of professional (or college) basketball, football, or boxing? Do you think there's objectification of (especially black) men there?

2) Re consumption: Capitalists respond to effective demand. Women make less than men (and are also more subject to consumption-related shaming). (That appears possibly to be changing as the internet has made some producers realize that even a fraction of global demand is huge.) Re production: As laborers, women have far less power; but there should be no assumptions about free, uncoerced choice in any case - men or women. I've made such assumptions in the case of porn, but I'll admit that this was on a weak evidentiary basis and probably not morally supportable.

That is certainly not to deny these people agency, but to say that I think the key is to support sex workers in their struggles (which requires becoming aware of them and of the situation in that "industry") rather than evading the, er, hard realities.

Posted by: SC, OM | December 4, 2009 7:51 PM

SC, I think that's what most people here have been saying: that to improve the lot of prostitutes & porn stars, one needs to improve and fix their social and economic circumstances rather than end porn/prostitution.

Of course, and I agree with that (other than I would say work with them rather than on their behalf). And admittedly I haven't read much of the thread (David M. be damned! :P). I was mostly responding to Bill's:

...but do you have any actual evidence that women performers in porn produced in the U.S. and Western Europe (for example) are working under any coercion or actual compulsion (aside from "economic compulsion," which I'll get to in a minute)?

...Regarding "economic compulsion," I'll side with The Swede

"I honestly and truly fail to see the difference between porn and, say, Nike sneakers from this perspective. The majority of people around the world are trapped in their current situation by their economic circumstances and are exploited for it, usually with life-shortening results.
Having sex in front of a camera beats getting worn out and dying poor and early in my book."

...and go one step further: Even in jobs that most of us would consider nonexploitative, and which support a perfectly pleasant middle-class standard of living, most of us do what we do because we're "trapped in [our] current situation by [our] economic circumstances"... by which I mean that, barring very lucky people — astronauts, athletes, artists of all types, etc. — most of us spend most of our adult lives doing things we wouldn't be doing if we didn't have to earn a living.

I think this really minimizes the horror of this life for so many people and the real coercion they face. I appreciate and agree with the contention that it's (exploited) labor like any other, but I think the realities of it in the vast majority of cases (as in so many forms of labor) are being lost. And there really is quite a bit of evidence concerning Eastern European sex workers in Western Europe, for example. That said, for those who can/do choose it, there do seem to be positive aspects.

[Fuck but this thread is crying out for puns.]

Posted by: SC, OM | December 4, 2009 8:03 PM

watch it lady

Honey, you gave away your *ahem* hand for all time on this thread:

http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2008/12/rightful_actions.php

Posted by: R-Tam | December 4, 2009 8:40 PM

Bill Dauphin

But I think you mistake my argument in any case: I'm not trying to claim our society isn't patriarchal or sexist; it clearly is both. I'm simply saying that porn isn't the cause of the problem. The preponderance of male-centric porn no doubt reflects the inherently patriarchal notion, deeply embedded in our culture, that women are fragile and must be shielded (by the patriarchs, of course) from the strong passions of the flesh... but porn doesn't cause this notion, and attacking porn will not correct this imbalance.

No, dude, you are mistaking my argument. I never claimed that porn was the problem (in fact, in one of my posts I said the opposite) The sexist mainstream porn industry is simply a symptom of the patriarchy cancer rotting in our society. We don't really disagree on that at all.

And yeah, I knew that this category thing was fuzzy when I wrote it. But I still think the concept as such is valid, even if we can't really define the categories. After all, it's notoriously hard to define porn, yet it would be ridiculous to say porn didn't exist because of that. You know porn when you see it. And you know a demographic imbalance when you see one. I know, I know, not very scientific :P

Yes, I suppose "mysoginy" was too hard a word there. "Sexist mainstream media" fits better. (And when I said "I'll keep using that word" I was refering to "mainstream", not "mysoginist")

Objectification of actual people is a whole 'nother kettle of horses of another color, and entirely outside the scope of this conversation, but an image on my computer screen (or on my TV, or in the magazine in my hands) isn't a person; it's just a picture

Achem. You keep misreading me. In the context of the discussion, I was talking about actual people, not pictures. Namely, protesting the claim that porn actresses enjoy being objectified. So, um...yeah. Nice debunking you got going on, but it doesn't really address anything I said...

Look, dude, I have this feeling that you're conflating me with someone else, since our positions are actually near identical.

Posted by: SC, OM | December 4, 2009 8:48 PM

R-Tam,

What are you suggesting we do? What are you doing?

Posted by: Azkyroth | December 4, 2009 8:57 PM

jenna jameson was raped "at 16, when she was returning home from a football game, she was gang raped by four men, beaten with rocks and left to die on a side road. Hardly a couple of months later, she was raped again, this time by her boyfriend's uncle"

This is terrible but its relevance to the topic at hand is unclear, unless you're alleging that she was appearing in porn at 16.

Posted by: Incred.U | December 4, 2009 9:08 PM

Mapping the Pornographic Text: Content Analysis Research of Popular Pornography

http://tinyurl.com/y93v3xj

Posted by: Azkyroth | December 4, 2009 9:18 PM

Posted by: Incred.U

One thing you can say about porn: the, say, voyeur-fetish-sites don't try to call it something else when they're masturbating in public.

Posted by: SC, OM | December 4, 2009 9:40 PM

I've made Janine giggle.

So

cool.

Posted by: SC, OM | December 4, 2009 10:07 PM

SC

Do about what?

What are you doing?

Posted by: Bill Dauphin, OM | December 4, 2009 10:23 PM

Jacqueline (@331):

Please go review Jadehawk's comment @321; her two points sum up my position re labor and pleasure pretty well.

But I'll try briefly to respond to you: I was not conflating sexual pleasure and sex work; rather, I was saying that our society's attitudes about sex work are distorted by our distorted attitudes about the supposed sinfulness of sexual pleasure.

Look at it this way: In a restaurant, the focus of the staff's labor is to give the guest pleasure; the chef, kitchen staff, waiters, hosts, and buspersons may all derive personal satisfaction from doing their jobs well, and that satisfaction may or may not rise to the level of "pleasure," but their pleasure isn't the point of the exercise: the guest's pleasure is. The staff is doing work they (for the most part) wouldn't normally do if they didn't need the money, and often doing so under trying conditions.

Yet because there's no particular enculturated shame around gustatory pleasure, nobody calls the restaurant staff whores, and nobody makes the a priori assumption that they're being coerced, and must be miserable. They might be working under duress, and they might be miserable — that could happen in any workplace — but we don't automatically assume that's the case.

In contrast, there is enculturated shame around sexual pleasure (except within very narrowly defined boundaries of permissibility). Since the sex work customer's pleasure, unlike that of the restaurant guest, is presumed to be illegitimate, the enterprise of providing it is necessarily presumed to be corrupt, and we therefore have no choice but to consider the providers either villains or victims. We think of a busperson or waiter as having honest work, but we think of a stripper or a porn actress as a victim... and we (by which I mean, you) make that judgment without even bothering to ask them all who likes or doesn't like their work.

Most of us earn a living doing something that wouldn't be our first choice of how to spend our days; only a relative handful are lucky enough to support themselves doing something they truly enjoy. But that's just the human condition. People who truly despise their work should quit it, if they can; people who despise their work but cannot quit because of economic deprivation deserve our sympathy, and our help, and our efforts to create a more just society in which their plight will be less likely; people who are truly forced to work against their will are true victims, and they deserve all our efforts at rescue and rehabilitation.

But all of that is true regardless of the nature of the work. Slavery is slavery, and it's no less horrific if it happens to be nonsexual slavery; conversely, satisfying work is satisfying work, and it's no less worthwhile if it happens to be sexual in nature.

Our work is our work; our pleasure is our pleasure. Sometimes they overlap, but more often they do not: PLEASE TO BE LEARNING THE F@$#ING DIFFERENCE!

SC (and please forgive me for respond to your points out of order):

I think this really minimizes the horror of this life for so many people and the real coercion they face.

It's the farthest thing from my mind to minimize the horror of anyone being coerced into any sort of labor, and I certainly don't mean to suggest that I think all sex workers are happy volunteers. My initial "where's the evidence" comment to Walton was intended as a genuine opening for information, not as an attack. But I do think there's a tendency, based on (probably largely subconscious) moralism on the part of many, to assume that coerced sex work is automatically much worse than other sorts of forced labor, even ones that carry huge risk of crippling injury or death. My intent is not to excused forced sexual labor, but to redirect the focus to the forced part of the equation: It seems to me that lumping people who got into stripping or porn because "they needed the money" together with all other sorts of forced labor risks devaluing the plight of those who are in genuine, unambiguous bondage (no, not that kind of "bondage" </inapropriately flippant aside>). Some degree of economic necessity is at the root of most of our labor, but it doesn't usually rise to the level of coercion or slavery; if we fail to make the distinction, we do (IMHO) a significant disservice to true victims.

Then too, there's the tendency on the part of some here to presume that all sex work is coerced, which (as others before me have pointed out) denies women's agency in much the same way as other, more overt, forms of sexism. You note that...

...for those who can/do choose it, there do seem to be positive aspects.

...but others here continue to insist that every single sex worker is a rape victim, no matter what they say.

Personally, I'm very careful about what porn I purchase, doing business with less than a literal handful of providers where I'm as certain as anyone could possibly be that there's no coercion involved. I'm in contact with some of the women involved (who, in the case I'm thinking of, are involved in all aspects of the business, not just in front of the cameras) through online forums and e-mail, and I'm absolutely sure that they're not only uncoerced, but proud of and creatively fulfilled by their work. My main purpose in this thread has been to rebut the presumption on the part of some that no such possibility exists.

On a more theoretical note:

I'm curious, though it's not exactly on point: What do you think of professional (or college) basketball, football, or boxing? Do you think there's objectification of (especially black) men there?

Well, the racial disparities in various sports is an interested question, but not one on which I have either data or informed opinions... and my guesses, hunches, and unfounded speculations are probably not useful in the current conversation. And I'm a fan of enough women's sports not to see sports as objectifying men per se.

But more to the point of my earlier comment, I think we do "objectify" athletes when we watch them play, and inherently so. In fact, there's a sort of situational objectification that happens whenever we watch anyone perform a particular skill, whether it's shooting a basketball or creating a character on film or giving a lecture or giving a blowjob: The whole point of a performance is to focus your attention on one aspect (or set of related aspects) of a person.

If you're giving a lecture, I need to "objectify" you as an intellectual. If I'm thinking about all sorts of other aspects of your subtle and integrative personhood while you're trying to teach me about the early history of anarchism in North America, then either I'm ADHD or you're not doing your job very well: Instead, I need to ignore most of what makes you you, and just focus on the purpose of that moment. Similarly, if I'm watching Maya Moore dribble the ball up the court at Gampel Pavilion, I'm not wondering whether she prefers Brahms or Beethoven, or what she had for lunch, or whether she's getting enough sleep, or what she'd look like naked, or whether I'd want my daughter to marry her; all I'm thinking about is whether she's going to pass or drive to the hoop. I have reduced her from "person" to "basketball player," and even further, to "UConn forward." If that's not objectification, I don't know what is.

But... that sort of objectification is purely temporary and situational. If I met Ms. Moore on the street (not impossible, as we don't live far from campus, and the students sometimes come to our town to shop or eat), I would relate to her as a person, and not just as a game piece on a basketball court. If I met you, I'd relate to all of you, and not just what you could teach me.

And those women I'm acquainted with from that porn site: There are moments when they are nothing to me beyond their orgasms, and what they do to get there... but if I met any of them on the street (that probably is impossible, since they're in Australia), I would relate to them as whole, complex, unique human beings, just like anyone else.

I suppose I'm blundering around the point, but what I'm trying to articulate is a distinction between a momentary focus on one projected aspect of a person on the one hand and an enduring, potentially dehumanizing attitude on the other hand. Too often, I fear, some folks assume that the former necessarily implies the latter.

Posted by: SC, OM | December 4, 2009 10:51 PM

But more to the point of my earlier comment, I think we do "objectify" athletes when we watch them play, and inherently so. In fact, there's a sort of situational objectification that happens whenever we watch anyone perform a particular skill, whether it's shooting a basketball or creating a character on film

Yes. Let's define "objectify." And let's avoid the academese...

...or giving a lecture or giving a blowjob

Hmm...

Let's ponder...

Posted by: Bill Dauphin, OM | December 4, 2009 10:58 PM

R-Tam:

You keep misreading me. In the context of the discussion, I was talking about actual people, not pictures. Namely, protesting the claim that porn actresses enjoy being objectified.

No, I didn't misread you. I understood that you were talking about actual people being objectified... and I was disagreeing that porn actresses are being objectified (at least not by the audience; if they're being mistreated in the workplace, that's a different issue). I disagree because the image serves as a buffer between the performer and the audience. It's the performance, not the person, that gets objectified, and that only in the moment (this is the same concept I just blathered on about in my reply to SC). So, I grokked that you were referring to people; my intent was to suggest you were mistaken, and should have been talking about the pictures instead.

As for what the actresses enjoy, I certainly never suggested that they enjoy "being objectified." Instead, I suggested that some of them might enjoy their work... which is only the same thing if you make the predicate assumption (which I do not) that sex itself inherently objectifies women.

To put a finer point on it, what I was really saying is that it's not valid to assume that female sex workers do not enjoy their work, based on no other information than the sexual nature of the work. Some in this thread (and honestly, I've lost track of who) seemed to be saying that it was fundamentally impossible for sex workers to find their work anything other than repulsive, but I personally know (at least anecdotally) that's not the case. I know there are at least a few, and I suspect many, women (men, too, for that matter, but the impact of sex work on women seems to be the center of the thread) who actively enjoy sex work, and I'm guessing there are many, many more who may not be thrilled, but nevertheless find sex work relatively more enjoyable or at least less burdensome than other jobs they might have to choose from.

And the real point is that many of us could say the same about our own (nonsexual) jobs.

Look, dude, I have this feeling that you're conflating me with someone else, since our positions are actually near identical.

Well, looking back, it appears that the post of yours that I responded to was mostly aimed at someone else... but it was parenthetically also addressed to me by name. Since the "tone of voice" was that of attack, that's how I construed it... perhaps leading me to "hear" your comments with a slightly different tilt than you intended. If you say we're in substantial agreement, I take you at your word.

Peace?

Posted by: Josh, Official SpokesGay | December 4, 2009 11:13 PM

No worries, I've had a few glasses myself, SC! (I am friendly territory though, not an enemy:)

You asked what I meant by "sex work per se." I was referring to Bill's statement that some people seem to see sex work itself - all kinds of sex work, even voluntary sex work - as exploitative simply because it's sex . Not because it's coerced, not because it's exploitative, but simply because (these people assume), sex work must be universally and inherently degrading, just because it's sex. Such people won't distinguish between coercion/degradation and freely chosen-even enjoyed- sex work. To them, sex work cannot be freely chosen or enjoyed, by its very nature. Because, as Bill surmises, they hold a deep-rooted but unrecognized prejudice that sex itself is dirty and shameful at its very core.

I agree with his observations. Ima pour another glass of wine.

BTW - if anyone has any spare weaponized phalli, please chuck them my way. Hard and fast.

Posted by: Jadehawk, OM | December 4, 2009 11:27 PM

...But I've had a few cocktails...

Posted by: SC, OM | December 4, 2009 11:29 PM

...seem to see sex work itself - all kinds of sex work, even voluntary sex work - as exploitative simply because it's sex . Not because it's coerced, not because it's exploitative, but simply because (these people assume), sex work must be universally and inherently degrading, just because it's sex. Such people won't distinguish between coercion/degradation and freely chosen-even enjoyed- sex work.

And how do you do this, empirically speaking?

Posted by: Rev. BigDumbChimp | December 4, 2009 11:35 PM

SC can you email me your address real quick?

I thought I had it, but the makers is telling me no.

Posted by: David Estlund | December 4, 2009 11:42 PM

I'm on iPhone only this week so it's hard to read everything, but 40 minutes? Really? That's a lot of self love... Or do they watch it for the story...

Posted by: Josh, Official SpokesGay | December 4, 2009 11:46 PM

SC wrote:

And how do you do this, empirically speaking?

It's probably the wine going to my head, so apologies, but I don't know what you're asking. Are you asking me how to distinguish between coerced and non-coerced sex work? I mean, intellectually, it's obvious what the distinction is. If you're asking me how one would comprehensively investigate that, in the real world, before buying porn, I don't have a good answer for you. Probably others have thought about this more than I have, so maybe someone else has a good answer.

One clear way that someone else mentioned was to watch amateur porn (especially solos) that people do on their own web cams. Seems to be less of a possibility of abuse there.

But, as others have pointed out, it comes down to your definition of coercion. I think there's a salient difference between what you might call "situational coercion" - economic necessity making a porn work choice more attractive - and outright coercion, such as sexual slavery. Obviously, the latter is most abhorrent. I agree with Bill and others that I don't see a bright line between economic circumstances forcing a person to take a menial job as a grocery bagger, or a job as a porn performer. That's because I don't accept - like Bill - that sex work is inherently more degrading than anything else.

I suspect - though, no, I can't be certain - that most of the porn *I* encounter isn't being shot with a gun pointed at the performers just off camera. That's just damned implausible to be happening on a wide scale. Yes, I accept that it can and may happen, and that there are other coercive and abusive practices involved in the production of some porn.

It is not my default assumption, though, as a baseline. Are you suggesting that it should be?

Posted by: Bill Dauphin, OM | December 5, 2009 12:13 AM

Josh:

It's my deep-seated copy editor DNA.

The sad thing is, I'm a professional copy editor myself! (Actually, my title is Technical Writer, but in practical terms what I do is mostly copy editing and desktop publishing.)

But comment threads are necessarily, I fear, a medium of first drafts, and typically hurried ones, at that.

As for the "how do you know your porn is not coerced" question, I agree with your comments. Personally, I do business mostly with an Australian company whose main site focuses mostly on solo female masturbation scenes. The nature of the content largely rules out outright rape (there are some girl-girl scenes, and a few in which the "starring" woman has a male "assistant"... but to date only one of the many hundreds of videos the site has published has included penetrative intercourse). In addition, many of the women who appear in the videos also work "behind the cameras," as video editors, webmistresses, blurb writers, etc., and many of the other contributors (the site owner is very protective of them, and gets pissy if you refer to them as models or actresses) participate regularly on the user discussion forums, which are not just dirty-talk, but often thoughtful and politically astute discussions that wouldn't be out of place here. And as I mentioned to SC, I've corresponded with one of them by regular e-mail (albeit only briefly).

Of course, it could all be a very elaborate hoax, but I don't believe that anymore than I believe we're living in The Matrix. I'm mortally certain they are exactly what they seem to be: Empowered and happy young women making a living being Naked On The Internet™!

Posted by: Josh, Official SpokesGay | December 5, 2009 12:24 AM

The sad thing is, I'm a professional copy editor myself! (Actually, my title is Technical Writer, but in practical terms what I do is mostly copy editing and desktop publishing.)

Ah, don't beat yourself up Bill. Let me do that for you:) No one - no one - can be his/her/its own copy editor. We just can't take the same critical eye to our own stuff that someone else can. Notice my own overly long comments above as proof.

I worked as a newspaper reporter for a few years, and did some copy-editing there. I now write and edit a publication for the organization I work for, which calls for a lot of slash-and-burn when I get articles from contributors. But I always put my own writing in front of a trusted, red-pen-wielding outsider before I publish it.

I actually enjoy copy-editing - it's a fun challenge to distill a writer's point while preserving the author's voice. It's good for the writer, too, to be forced to confront muddled writing, which often indicates muddled or incomplete thinking. The end product is usually superior.

Posted by: Rev. BigDumbChimp | December 5, 2009 12:41 AM

I kicked him in the shins at a Comic Con party once. But I was a chicken so I made it look like an accident. Thanks for the link. I'm surprised this one wasn't on there.

See I have this comic / morals thing that kicks my ass occasionally.

HUGE fan of Cerebus, not such a big fan of Dave Sims.

Actually the later Cerebus stuff is brutal to read, but the first 150 are fantastic.

Posted by: R-Tam | December 5, 2009 6:10 AM

SC

I teaspoon.

And if you ask for clarification, I'm just going to repeat that. *rollseyes*

Bill

Peace :D

Posted by: Daniel | December 5, 2009 7:40 AM

Also, who watches porn for 13 minutes at a time? How about getting to business? Don't these people have things to do?

Posted by: Pygmy Loris | December 5, 2009 10:26 AM

Bill and others,

Here's my perspective on sex work. I wouldn't want to do it even in a world where there was no societal shame attached because I, personally, find the idea of having sex with men I don't necessarily think are attractive awful. The reason being that it turns one of the few inexpensive pleasures I have into work.

In our current culture I'd have to be very hard up for cash to do any sex work, particularly the kind that is preserved via film, simply because it will always be out there and there is tremendous social shame attached to the work. Also, my dad might see it and it would break his heart.

Posted by: Anon | December 5, 2009 11:37 AM

Care to provide any sources for the unsupport4ed assertions made at that link? Or are you going to continue to pretend that being female gives you a privileged position when determining what is proper sexual behaviour for men? I mean, good grief, they quote Andrea Dworkin as something other than the crazy fanatic that she was.

Posted by: Phoenix | December 5, 2009 11:46 AM

You are making an inherent assumption which nobody ever supports with anything other than assertions or extremely poor philosophical arguments. You are assuming that sexual objectification is inherently wrong and that this is so obvious that it doesn't need to be proven. This is of course either utter nonsense if you use the normal definition of the word as posited by those you are arguing against, or something that needs to be actually proven if we are to use your definition. To use a broad definition when applying a term, and then to insist that the narrow problematic definition also applies to everyone in the first category is dishonest.

Posted by: Ol'Greg | December 5, 2009 1:56 PM

"What if I was that 22-year old"

Ha! I didn't think to read that as "what if I used to be that 22 year old. So what if you were? What should I make of that and what you did in your past? You aren't that person now, so time to stop obsessing over it. Search my name for backstory if you want Incred.U. You'll find that shared experiences don't always leave people with the same interpretations of life. Now I'll be honest, I was a lot more angry, and I used to spout a lot of stuff that sounded a bit like the things you say... some truth and a lot of distortion. I've spent a lot of years working on myself and had good opportunities to learn from people, and I've done a lot of thinking about the role of women and sexuality. Because you really can't have healthy relationships operating from that kind of viewpoint. You can't look at a male partner and have a part of you convinced he's hiding WMD in his trousers.

Oh and in general I'm surprised no one brought up this http://theyshootstars.com/

Posted by: Ol'Greg | December 5, 2009 3:17 PM

""Because the former is a slap in the face. She's there and has to watch him doing the ogling, so she's automatically involved."

So when it comes to our SOs ogling other people it only matters if we are there to see it? That still seems pretty messed up to me."

I don't think it doesn't matter, but think about it. This isn't a male/female question. Women ogle. Lesbians ogle. People at work look around for the good looking co-workers even if they have no intent of doing anything with that information.

How would you feel if you were with a guy who constantly asked who you were looking at when he wasn't around? Only eyes for me!

Now... to me that sounds like a scary control freak.

Posted by: Azkyroth | December 5, 2009 3:31 PM

Do you know how to use a mouse? Move from page to page? Left click?

"Care to provide any sources for the unsupport4ed assertions made at that link?"

Goodbye. Loser.

That's a no.

Posted by: Bill Dauphin, OM | December 5, 2009 4:37 PM

Pygmy Loris:

I wouldn't want to do [sex work] even in a world where there was no societal shame attached because I, personally, find the idea of having sex with men I don't necessarily think are attractive awful. The reason being that it turns one of the few inexpensive pleasures I have into work.

Fair enough. I certainly understand the desire to keep a sharp distinction between work and pleasure. At the risk of being accused of trivializing, I've had several friends who've contemplated turning beloved hobbies into businesses, and they've all wrestled with an admittedly less intense version of the same question. And I've heard interviews with people who do make their living doing what they love (e.g., artists, athletes, musicians) in which they express a certain bittersweet wistfulness that something once pure pleasure has become work.

OTOH, I often hear people express a sense of joy and unbelieving good fortune when they're able to make a living doing something they'd happily do for free.

As for having sex with people one doesn't find attractive, I think it's a matter of personal choice: Some musicians wouldn't want to play in a wedding band, because they couldn't stand the thought of playing cheesy songs that are not up to their standards; others are so happy to be making a living playing music that they'll do any song with a smile.

Backing out of the metaphor, I guess I'm not especially picky about looks (maybe because I've never been in a position to be picky about looks!). I subscribe to the old joke that sex is like pizza: When it's good, it's really, really good, and when it's bad... it's still pretty damn good. Certainly I've never seen a woman in a porn film that I would have rejected in real life based on attractiveness alone (which I distinguish from filthiness or other invidious personal habits). Prostitution (in all its various forms) might be different, because in that case there's nobody screening clients based on who some third party might enjoy watching... but then again, in my hypothetical World Made Safe for Sex Work™, you'd have considerable ability to reject clients based on your own standards, much in the way that providers of more conventional personal services typically reserve the right to refuse service.

All that said, though, even in my hypothetical utopia, I'd have no expectation that sex work would be everybody's — or even many people's — first choice. My purpose in this conversation has not been (howevermuch it might seem otherwise) to serve as a cheerleader for sex work; only to suggest that if we, as a culture (hell, as a species) had a more rational, healthier attitude about sex itself, we might be better able to see sex work as equivalent to other kinds of work, with all the good and bad that entails.

Posted by: The Swede | December 5, 2009 6:52 PM

The point is that using people's bodies for pleasure, in a context in which certain groups are valued primarily in terms of their bodies, is objectifying.

Such as for example when watching sports. Or newscasters on TV - heck, many kinds of actors in mainstream media.

Posted by: The Swede | December 5, 2009 7:44 PM

Then feel free to leave; since you're providing not a single viewpoint or comment of your own except derision that we won't go chasing support for your assertions ourselves no-one will cry to see you go.

Posted by: cola82 | December 5, 2009 9:22 PM

I actually draw my own porn. I hate video that includes real people. Most of it is gross or offensive, but in general I just don't like the acting. So, since I can draw, I just create what I want to look at.

Also, I'm a woman. For what it's worth.

Posted by: A. Noyd | December 5, 2009 10:29 PM

Screw U (#408)

Pharyngula posters are mommy's little boys hanging onto their pee-pees. Including the one who's hung-over and craps out with a swine flu excuse. The dog ate his homework.

Is a "weaponized phallus" the sort you're trying to shove down my pants with your retarded generalization about the posters here? Because I don't want it. I like being a woman--one who's more rational and intelligent than you with your dogmatic, disgusting version of feminism. Fuck off.

Posted by: Azkyroth | December 5, 2009 11:49 PM

I like being a woman

But since women aren't capable of making an informed decision about what they want and taking responsibility for it, this doesn't count, right Incred U?

Posted by: Sven DiMilo | December 6, 2009 12:45 AM

Actually, I for one was pretty hung over this morning. Getting too old for that shit.

Posted by: Rorschach | December 6, 2009 4:49 AM

At Pharyngula, we can hold our liquor pretty well.

Yep.

Getting too old for that shit.

Not yet...:-) (but being a doc helps....)

Posted by: SC, OM | December 6, 2009 2:15 PM

Such as for example when watching sports. Or newscasters on TV - heck, many kinds of actors in mainstream media.

Moron.

Bill:

Actually, in this particular case, I think I do, because I've been watching this company since its origins as something very much like an online art experiment. I'm fairly certain they don't have any business connections to any other adult-industry businesses, and they don't have any creative connection with other porn, either, except for the fact that a very, very small percentage of the contributors have some previous experience as strippers or in mainstream porn.

So I'm pretty confident that this particular porn hasn't been "mined in a war zone," nor is it being "sold to finance an insurgency" (unless you count the Australian government; I presume they pay their taxes).

A bit literal, there, dude.

But in a larger sense, it's impossible to be absolutely certain that any business selling any product isn't perhaps distantly connected to something "morally shaky," given the economic interconnectedness of the world.

Of course, but when we're talking about certain products or things made in certain regions we have reason to suspect coercion of some sort. I was responding primarily to your "clearing" of most porn from the US and Western Europe.

We can either be economically paralyzed by that fact, or we can do our best to make morally informed choices, and hope the best is good enough. If I'm not mistaken, Josh was getting to this same point last night.

Again, I don't think making assumptions about porn from certain countries is all that morally defensible. I don't think looking at this solely from the perspective of a consumer is, either.

Sure. But some in this discussion (both in this instance and in other conversations I've had on this subject) seem to approach sex work with the idea that economic need is the same thing as economic coercion... a standard they typically do not apply to other sorts of work.

Yes, I realize I was entering an ongoing conversation and understand the comparison you were making and why, but I was trying to make a point about the equivalence of low-wage, dangerous labor in bad conditions - much sex work, migrant farm work, janitorial work, etc. - and to distinguish these from different sorts of labor. Economic need - real need - is indistinguishable from economic coercion.

I understand you're a broad-based critic of capitalism, and you may well see the need to earn a wage at all as inevitably coercive.

It is, of course, but that's not what I was saying.

That a reasonable and arguable position, but it renders the "economic coercion" critique of sex work per se moot, IMHO.

No, it's an economic-coercion critique recognizing the specifically nasty aspects of the jobs done by poor, desperate people. It's not about sex work per se.

At the social criticism level, perhaps it's correct to say that all wages are slavery... but that risks creating a false equivalency between, for instance, me and actual slaves.

You were the one leaning in that direction.

It certainly would in the sense I mention in my last sentence above, but that wasn't my point. I wouldn't compare my job to an awful job in a restaurant, either, but I would compare it to the job of a chef or house manager. When I said hypothetically that I'd be willing to switch to sex work, the predicate was that it be for a position that was equivalent to my current work in other aspects. That is, I was attempting to hold all other variables constant except for whether or not the work was sexual in nature.

I get this, but since the vast majority of sex work (and food-production work) is in the real world the result of coercion, desperation, and/or a lack of other options and fairly miserable, your chef or house manager comparison is misleading. Again, I understand what you're trying to do, but I don't want to see the realities get lost. There should be a discussion of the actual work and working conditions in all of these jobs.

My whole angle on this conversation is that for reasons unrelated to the actual work or working conditions, we hold sex work to different standards than we do other forms of labor. My take is that it's a mistake to do so; you, obviously, disagree:

No.

Here, I think, we may have hit a point of irreducible disagreement. I really do think having sex is, at some fundamental level, no different that the other sorts of interactions people have, and that the desire for sex is fundamentally similar to other physical desires. And thus, I think treating sexual interactions as economic work is morally equivalent to treating other sorts of interpersonal interactions as economic work.

I think we've arrived at the crux of it, possibly. Any time we turn human interactions into forms of economic exchange, we're on different territory. Another level of alienation - from self-expression, from sexuality, from emotions - is introduced for workers. I'm not making a moral argument, other than by way of an alienation argument. (By the way, Arlie Hochschild's The Managed Heart might be an interesting read for the nonsociologist.)

but at the moment, I'm teetering on the edge of swine flu. Maybe I'll get back to you tomorrow.

Yikes. Hope you're feeling better.

Posted by: Ziggy | December 6, 2009 7:50 PM

The best definition I've ever seen for porn was "Anything you lose interest in immediately after masturbating."

Posted by: SC, OM | December 6, 2009 10:43 PM

I think you and I do have some genuine points of disagreement (i.e., as opposed to misunderstandings that might be resolved by restatements), and they might be interesting to talk about, but I grok that our points of disagreement are distinct from the general run of anti-porn/anti-sex-work arguments I've been meaning to respond to in this thread...

The latter is definitely true, though I'm not so sure about the former. I think you're in the mindset of the sex-work-as-moral-category argument (and we're in agreement on that) while I'm focusing on sex work as alienated labor. I'm not so sure we really disagree on anything fundamental.

plus which, I did say I'd let you have the last word! ;^)

And here it is. :P

We'll have to do the objectification dance some other time, too

Ooh - sounds fun! ;)

(you know it's bound to come up again!), because while I no longer think I have swine flu (my symptoms are progressing differently from my wife's), I am still feeling like lukewarm crap.

Ouch, but glad you're feeling slightly better; hope your wife is soon.

Posted by: Azkyroth | December 7, 2009 4:24 PM

So, if you ever want to express that thought again, especially when talking to feminists, stay far, far away from "object" and any variation thereupon. Use words that don't deny these women's basic humanity and agency. "They like starring in men's fantasies" or "The thought of being fantasized about is very attractive to these women"

Duely noted, R-Tam. That's definitely a better choice of words for what I meant to say. I appologize that I'm not nearly as eloquent in my speach as others here at Pharyngula. I tend to cause confusion of some point whenever I write about something at any significant length (i.e. over 2 sentances long).

Never apologize for words other people put in your mouth.

But, yeah, it's worth noting that "object" for feminists seems to be kind of like "flaunt" for gay rights advocates - the word has connotations for both groups that completely short-circuit the ability of a subset of their members to interpret statements containing them rationally or in context (as some poor sod whose name I don't recall found out a year ago when he inadvertently woke a swarm by using the term in expressing his distaste for Public Displays of Affection by couples of any gender pairing, and got dogpiled on for about 200 comments).

Posted by: Blake | December 7, 2009 11:07 PM

I just read that thread about "flaunting" and you are exaggerating wildly. Also, I thought your comments there were unreasoned and invidious. hand.

Posted by: Eric Dutton | December 8, 2009 3:43 PM

Ol' Greg wrote:

I feel guilty for coming back to this thread, but I'm now wondering if people consider much that the "gaze" of "mainstream" film and art in general is male-centric. I mean. It's funny to isolate porn as if it is the only place that is dominated by the male gaze.

Posted by: Eric Dutton | December 8, 2009 6:43 PM

Like that sex is fun and variety is good? That seems to be something your friends are missing.

And trust me, the desire for variety and adventurousness in sexual activity predates porn and is not caused by it.

I'm not arguing against variety. For example, adding pedophilia to your sexual toolkit is adding more than variety. Not all variety is create equal, or ethical.

Here's what I'm talking about.
Women must be young to be sexy. Women must shave everything below their eyelashes to be sexy. Women who won't take it in the ass aren't sexually adventurous, and may be prudish. Women who don't enjoy a little pain with their sex just don't get it. That is the assumption of a tremendous amount of mainstream porn.

So, no, they weren't missing variety. They were lacking variety.

Posted by: Azkyroth | December 8, 2009 11:19 PM

"Trust me" is never a persuasive argument.

You're right. It's a figure of speech. (Am I being trolled?)

I'm not arguing against variety. For example, adding pedophilia to your sexual toolkit is adding more than variety. Not all variety is create equal, or ethical.

...what?

Here's what I'm talking about. Women must be young to be sexy.

Right, because in every society, prior to the development of pornography, older women have been considered just as desirable as mates as younger women. Where's your evidence that this attitude originates in porn?

Women must shave everything below their eyelashes to be sexy.

Given the extensive history of various levels of depilation in various cultures, what makes you think this originated with porn?

Women who won't take it in the ass aren't sexually adventurous, and may be prudish.

What exactly is it that you feel is untrue and/or objectionable about this statement (I'm guessing it's not the phrasing that blatantly assumes that no woman would want to engage in anal sex for her own reasons, or should consider that she might want to, which is the issue I see with it)? And where's your evidence that it originated with porn? You don't seriously think that anal sex was invented in the 60s or 70s, do you?

Women who don't enjoy a little pain with their sex just don't get it.

Your evidence that this originates with porn...?

That is the assumption of a tremendous amount of mainstream porn.

References?

So, no, they weren't missing variety. They were lacking variety.

Does not follow from your argument.

Posted by: Bill Dauphin, avec fromage | December 9, 2009 6:17 PM

Eric's points seem to be similar to those made by Cindy Gallop in her TED talk and her related website. I think the video was actually linked earlier in this thread, in a context that made me expect a generic anti-porn rant, so I didn't click through to it. Later on I stumbled across it in another context, and was glad I gave it a look.

The point is, Eric, you're making an argument that can very easily sound like anti-sex prudery; presuming that's not what you mean to be saying, you need to make that clear... as Gallop does in her talk.

Posted by: Eric Dutton | December 9, 2009 6:57 PM

My instinct is to object to the idea that I should have to explain at length what I'm not saying just as I would object to the idea that president Obama should be expected to reassure the right that he's not a communist. From the right, a person with a lack of depth-perception might see him as a communist, I suppose, but that's not Obama's responsibility.
BUT, I have also seen some of the commenters you've had to deal with in here and I can understand that frequent users of this forum would have to do a bit of profiling lest they spend a lot of valuable time arguing subtle points with fools. (Please don't read any irony in that paragraph. That's sincere, and it's not a dig at anyone I've been talking to.)

I haven't listened to the Cindy Gallop talk but I am a fan of TED Talks. I'll have to hunt that down. Why were you glad you gave it a look, just out of curiosity? I'm assuming that you recommend it.

So, for the record, I'm a pro-sex atheist-poet-dad who is not exactly anti-porn so much as anti-pro-porn. I'm also pro-hyphen.

Now, with that said, what do you think? Am I making any sense above when I speculate about the effects of porn? Do you just flatly disagree with me? Do you think that mainstream porn is perfectly harmless to the viewer and his/her concepts of sexuality? Would you like a beer?

Posted by: Jadehawk, OM | December 9, 2009 7:14 PM

as though their wives or girlfriends were refusing to be seen naked during sex.

Posted by: OneHandClapping | December 11, 2009 3:01 PM

Well I am WAY above average, with an exponential trend when broadband became commercially available. (Downloading with dial-up = cold shower)

As for well made pron, well I had a favorite video that got passed around and eventually never made it back, but it was the best I had seen. I actually watched it the whole way through! The movie was called Latex.

Nowadays though, I also prefer the good amateur stuff. Real people doing real people.