I'm wondering how people will react to this. My guess is, same as always.

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I've been saying it for years (drumroll please):

ALL PORN IS FANTASY!!!!!!

Got it?

If people would just face this simple fact, we would all understand each other a little better.

I love porn. Porn got me through college and for that I am eternally thankful. See, I was studying a very difficult major while surrounded by beautiful girls everywhere and I had no time to date. At the same time, I kept "falling in love" with some of the hotties but I realized that if I was ever to graduate, I had to stop.
Then the Internet came along and with it porn. I quickly discovered newsgroups and found that in one night I could download thousands of images. The quality of those images was so great that I quickly discovered that it was more fun masturbating to them than wasting my time at parties trying to pick up girls. I was converted.

Another thing about porn is unlimited fantasy. I can jerk off to things which would never be possible or desirable in real life (s&m mostly - NOT KIDDIE PORN - SORRY). I couldn't ever imagine tying up a woman and/or whipping her in real life (and if I did try it, it would probably be a disaster). Yet I can view all these things in porn and nobody gets hurt. Not even my wallet.

I got off so much energy that I don't even want to waste time dating anymore. I have saved money, avoided STDs and stayed out of the bar and it's all thanks to porn.

Now, I'm not saying porn is better than a good relationship. It isn't. It is however better than all the alternatives; prostitution, escorts, bars, Craigslist, abusive or desperate relationships.

When I go out in the day, I am able to concentrate on my work better because I am not checking out girls cleavage. I haven't got in trouble for sexual harassment. I AM NOT A SLAVE TO MY SEXUAL DESIRES.

Bottom line: I FEEL FREE!!!!

Thank You Porn! Thank You! Thank You! Thank You!

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NOT Blood grounding incitement. I have seen the Bondo crap on the shelves; I am saddened by those whose apparatus is so sensation less that it takes violence to achieve arousal.

Even though I know no one agrees with me sex is not pain oriented; except in those whose restrictive up bringing included pain administered to genitalia. I am not thrilled by pain but many of the Americans I have met are incapable of anything but painful erections and copulations.

I worked in a porn shop for nine years, not all porn is about Bondo. But damn me if it isn't true that most of the younger working class males headed for the Bondo shelves first thing through the door.

Poor life, it sux. Sorry if this hurts some feelings, but gonzo bondo is not the fairy thing for every ill in sexual relationships. If fantasy had to be painful I would have capped off by now. Everyone is not genitally injured but many are pornography is just a symptom of a greater underlying illness. In and of itself it is not "Wrong" so stop trying to moralize about an emotional plague and understand why it is happening.

Grow the fuck up Americans, stop punishing children for sexual behavior and help them understand what is happening to their bodies and minds during pubescence. You are supposedly the Paragon of Animals, try acting like it.

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The problem lies, then, when men are unable to make the distinction between fiction and reality, and expect all real women to actually enjoy degradation. In my opinion, to deny that this also happens is to close one's eyes to reality.

A good example of how fiction interacts with reality is given in this article –All caught up in fiction- by one of Spain's most famous writers, Javier Marías, who happens to be a very intelligent person as well.

(I apologise to him for the poor, hasty translation and to Michelle Obama for dragging her name into this discussion)

At the beginning I did not like Michelle Obama [...] and had the feeling that she could not be trusted; I have found out that I shared this instinctive distrust of her with other people.

I could not stop myself from finding her a twisted, ambitious woman –a sort of a Lady Macbeth- and imagining that, should her husband make it to the White House, she would try to manipulate him.

Until I realised that my perceptions were not due to some kind of special insight on my part, but to the fact that, unjustly and unconsciously, I had been associating this woman with the fictional character of Sherry Palmer, President David Palmer's wife in the TV series 24, [...], who, during two or three seasons, committed all sorts of evil deeds behind her husband's back and conspired and endangered the whole planet in the process.

And Palmer and his wife were both African-Americans.

Since I became aware of my mistake, I am much more fond of Michelle Obama, or at least I have realised that there was no real motive to not to like her.

Link to full article in Spanish http://www.elpais.com/solotexto/articulo.html?
xref=20080928elpepspor_10&type=Tes&anchor=elpepusoceps

(sorry but alternet does not accept "long words", so the link cannot be made)

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Every woman who really wants to understand when men go through in this society should read and re-read the following paragraph again and again:

--Such worry and guilt are not -- as Jensen would have it -- a sign of his loving humanity, but his neurotic feelings of obligation. Men grow up in our culture with two special psychic burdens: (1) they feel inordinately responsible for their mothers and later, for women, and (2) they feel especially disconnected and lonely. In regard to the first burden, it's extremely common for men to talk about their guilt and resentful feelings of responsibility for making women happy, feelings that become exacerbated when they feel that they can't ever succeed in these efforts. Men primarily want women to be happy, not degraded, but feel that somehow they're supposed to be omnipotently responsible for making this happen. This isn't healthy interdependence and responsibility, but an irrational burden generated in nuclear families and patriarchal culture. It lies at the heart of much of the hostility and emotional withdrawal from which women suffer in their dealings with men. The woman involved might see cruelty. But for the man, the hidden logic is: "If I hold you at arms length, if I treat you like a 'piece of ass,' if I love you and leave you, then at least I'm not imperiled by the chronic sense of inadequacy, guilty failure, and pressured obligation that I seem to feel is my lot as a man in our culture." --

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It is so stimulating (intellectually) to see complex issues receiving well thought through analysis. In my years as psychotherapist I have discovered much of what Bader speaks to be true; we are creators of fantasy as much (maybe even more) as we are 'perceivers' of reality.

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I'm concerned that the writer conflates fantasy and reality while claiming to keep them seperate. To wit: when you say "The sexual ideal of two people lovingly gazing into each other's eyes is belied by powerful needs for something more out-of-control, perhaps forceful, and transgressive. As Woody Allen said: "If sex isn't dirty, you're not doing it right!" I agree wholeheartedly. But you're not talking about fantasy here, you're talking about reality.

In other words, what about actually "degrading" sex? It's one thing to say it's OK to watch gonzo porn because it's not real, but what about a real sex life with real facials, real pain, real DIRTY sex?

I would assume from the quote above that the author believes this is reasonably healthy. If so, doesn't that undercut the "fantasy" argument?

But again, thank God for this article. Reason is good.

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In which case, just what is it that keeps the consumer economy going gangbusters? Why did so many people buy the fantasy that smoking made them more like the Marlboro Man than like a working stiff with a bad cough?

There's nothing wrong with your fantasies, guys, just like there's nothing wrong with the Marlboro Man. Just pay some attention to what they're making you want to consume, and what goes into making the product, and what other effects it might be having on you and the people around you.

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If i have ever heard bullshit for an excuse, this hits the top of my list.

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Well done! In fact, the concluding paragraph is quite remarkable because the reader can substitute many other "boogeymen" for the topic of porn, (race, nationality, religion) and benefit from the gained insight. This would be a great kernel to explore and develop in civics and sociology classes, and in adult discussion groups.

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This is a relevant, well-presented piece, in loving disregard of the fact that some readers will always evade the fantasy/reality divide with facile logic and excuses for their own messed up comprehension. Porn has always existed... always will, and has kept some of us (with naturally low libidos) going in times of isolation (either with or without a partner, of course).

Some of the respondents who won't let go of the points made by Bader would be even more out of their depth in some non-American cultures where porn is even more explicitly commonplace.

One thing about the form of x-rated material in the American market which I find most perverse is the luxurious surroundings of many of the scenes: for me, this is the real sick fetish of our culture. It's not so much the girl who is being so thoughtlessly ravaged that is the focus at all times, but the setting for this act: the hood of a hyper-expensive sports car, or the garishly elegant interiors of multi-million dollar mansions... Now that's more a case of poisoned fantasy! The insidiousness of magazines for men which detail the artifacts and accessories that will bring them into favor with comely young women are a bigger threat to decency than most porn flicks ever will be...

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than reality. Many of us (perhaps not all) know the difference. And many of us are not in real-life situations where reality will excite us. So we must resort to fantasy. And we should be allowed to resort to it without blame or guilt.

And yes, much of the fantasy is in pleasuring the woman because we cannot do that in reality. And yes, if it were depicted as non-pleasuring, we would not be excited.

An example of the difference between fantasy and reality, in my eyes, is the fantasy of someone being pleasured anally by someone's tongue. The facial expression of the receiver can be a turn-on. But it's far from reality. The tongue isn't long enough to really give pleasure. But as a fantasy - why not. I will get more turned on by the facial expressions than the actual penetrating.

I'm glad to see an article like this that isn't anti-porn or anti-sensual in its bias like the original article before this one.

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... it's still degrading to women and men. People may call porn fantasies but really, are these healthy fantasies to be having? Porn doesn't promote healthy fantasies, nor do they promote healthy portrayals of sex. Sex is about an intimate connection with someone you care about. It's not about using a person to fulfill your sexual fantasies or needs. That's not love and I can't think of a time where porn left me feeling fulfilled. It left me with a feeling of emptiness. I'm sure I'm not alone in experiencing this.

I think Jackson Katz says it best on how porn hurts women and men.

"Girls and women suffer the most harm from a culture awash in misogynist pornography, but boys and men are hurt, too. It is important to discuss this hurt both for pragmatic reasons, and out of genuine concern for these boys and men. In order to stem the tide of cruelty, callousness and brutality toward girls and women that is now mainstream fare from the porn industry, men and boys in sufficient numbers will need to make the decision to stop paying for porn magazines, videos, and Internet porn sites. Some men will be motivated to give up their porn habits as they develop a greater sensitivity to the damage that eroticized cruelty does to girls and women – inside and outside the porn industry. But altruistic concern for harm done to women can not motivate anywhere near as many men and boys as enlightened self-interest. In other words, if they can be shown that porn hinders rather than facilitates a healthy sex life for men, there is at least a chance that enough men will reject it to truly make a difference. But unless heterosexual men perceive that they have a personal stake in a sexual culture that is not dominated by the cartoonish version of sexual fulfillment created by middle-aged businessmen in window-less studios in the San Fernando Valley outside Los Angeles, it is hard to see how the current trend toward greater acceptance of sexualized brutality will be reversed in coming generations. "

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This argument fits nicely with the terminology used in the bondage subculture. Getting together for bondage is referred to as "play" and events in public are called a "scene".

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suspicious things about porn

know many pretty women, girls; not one who wants to take her clothes off in front of camera.

Most pornography is for men, not women.

Pornography contradicts/obscures the spiritual truth of the body, that humans are altered in the womb. Media seems to be where where this capstone is contradicted most, and is the cause for the false way of the west.

Many women titillate. Why is this? This is oppressive. As women are respected for not wanting to do porn, so the question of why they attract so. What is with the objectification, the prettiness women often exude; and the accompanying nervousness?
That's the cause of the problem.

And the answer is a metaphysical one. As the female human being is donned with the trappings of the human, a sexual component is added, that is not added to men.

This brings us closer to reproduction, which people do not want to do the more they know what they reproduce.

A gentleman is aware of the problem and tries to deal with it, with the people, as do ladies.

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I'm tired of these porn rants by Jensen and others who feel they understand porn better than the rest of us. I like porn. I'm not addicted. It gets me through those dry spells. Beyond that it's means nothing. There is no mother issue taking place. Sometimes a spade is just a spade. Stop over-analyzing everyone. We don't all fit into the same category. I'm beginning to wonder about the people obsessed with someone understanding why people like porn. Maybe they are the ones with the problem.

People should live instinctively. We all plot and plan everything too much these days and it wreaks havoc with our minds because we are always worried about what is going to happen in the future. Live in the present like Buddhists do. Want less and you gain more. Your sex life will flourish and even if it doesn't you won't care because you're be happy without it anyway. Stop letting your friends and the tv tell you who you are and be who you were born to be.

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I would definitely agree that pornography is all about the fantasy, and that its main function is to make us feel good without having to do real sex. But then, why are we banning simulated child rape? And let's say there is this porn movie in which a barely legal black woman is being raped violently while a mature white woman kicks her in the ribs while screaming all the racial slurs, do we, even the most porn-loving liberal of us, not get bothered then?

Let us be clear: fantasy has its limits. Let us have no illusions and pretend otherwise. As I mentioned on my blog, when we feel better about watching a 21-year-old getting violently raped than a 15-year-old having sex lovingly, there is something clearly wrong about our fantasies.

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Pandering keeps us glued to our TV's and computers with our nose to the wall (and our butts in the air). This is ideal for a police state because it is a way of keeping slaves like us from talking with one another and comparing notes. There is also the fact that porn money supports the same rich crooks who get rich from every other human weakness from drugs to big pickup trucks. That money is then used for lies, bribes, and rackets.

Porn is just like drugs, junk food, alcohol, black slavery, and smoking. It is already pervasive and controlling, with racketeered money and sympathetic spokespersons paving the way.

We have always had porn. Let's kill the porn rackets the way we would any other racket. Let's socialize it completely so no one makes much of a profit.

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Thank you for this. Admittedly, being a male, this piece was a well-composed defense of one of those aspects of our gender that really sets us apart from women. I'm glad the term "guilt" got brought in in it's real and healthy sense. It's very difficult to navigate this culture sexually because all our sexual messages are either contradictory, or Orwellian in their use. We have direct access to more porn than one could ever consume in a lifetime, but Janet Jackson's Super Bowl boob almost brought in the Brownshirts. Teenagers are humping like crazy, but we teach "abstinence-only" sex ed, if we teach it at all...you know what I mean

Men are often made to feel guilty for wanting sex, sure, but that's just a woman's way of saying, in that moment, "I wish you wanted more of me than my vagina." But at the same time there is also internalized guilt in the man, who comes to feel shame for what is a natural, autonomic (meaning, cannot be consciously controlled), biological response - something women can never understand, much like we can never understand childbirth.

And porn, in many ways then, is for us what baby showers are for women...

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ALL YOUR FANTASIES ARE PLAYED OUT ON REAL LIVING BREATHING FEELING HUMAN BEINGS. WHEN VIOLENT FANTASIES ARE NO LONGER TAKEN OUT ON HUMAN BEINGS, MAYBE YOU WILL NO LONGER HAVE TO FIGHT WITH YOUR LITTLE INNER JIMINY CRICKETS .

I still suggest that men emancipate themselves. Lol

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Both sides seem to want to ignore this. Or that different people have different conscious and unconscious minds. There are many types of behavior that society is willing to examine and consider restricting, even though the majority of people involved cause no harm. Frankly, driving while intoxicated is one of them. Most people who drive with blood alcohol levels above the legal limit don't wreck or kill people. Supposedly, when drunk drivers are caught, they've driven drunk at least 14 other times. But when drunk drivers cause harm, the harm is often so bad that we're willing to impose controls on everyone.

On the same topic, many want to make driving with any alcohol in the blood at all illegal and this goes too far.

It's true that porn is fantasy. That's sometimes the problem. It just seems naive to claim that many men are aroused by seeing women in the position of victim, but that that arousal isn't linked to any sense of women in general as potential victims, or that if enough men see women in this way, that there could be effects that no one wants to see the women in their own lives potentially facing.

And it's naive to think that these topics should never be examined or studied or analyzed. Why not? What would the harm be? what harm does Jensen's article cause, and why does it make people so angry? Why is porn so precious? It should be legal; that seems obvious. It can probably go too far, if it helps normalize the harmful. If it's not scrutinized, how would anyone know? But the fact that any examination is apparently off-limits shows closed minds, not open ones.

It's this idea that porn should never be examined that puzzles me. That someone separating hard-core violent porn from milder porn, pointing out that porn seems to need to up the ante in order to remain commercially profitable, is automatically seen as a controlling prude is also puzzling. Why not look at the whole situation, and see what you find? I doubt that many people are doing this, and I can't see the need to attack the author for this, or to lump all feminists in an anti-sex category. Have any of you READ Erica Jong? Here's a taste:

"and then he would turn me over and give it to me from behind with his hard ,pronged, demonic. . ." Well, you get the rest. I guess if I only ever read her among all the feminist writers, I'd think all feminists had many sexual passages in their books (the one I quoted is very mild compared to others in her books.)

It is okay to examine things and separate large categories into different levels and to reach conclusions. We all do this. Once anything seems to be put into a "Don't even LOOK at this in order to perceive a larger picture", well, something is off. No subjects should be off-limits.

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As a gay guy stuck in the wastelands of the midwest, I have spent a good deal of my life immersed in the wonderful fantasies of gay porn. Yes it is a fantasy, but it allows me to experience (in proxy) situations and guys that would NEVER be available to me in real life.

And my extensive viewing and indulgence in porn--both gay and straight--has NOT made me some sort of psycho basket case, as so many of the anti-porn people would like to believe. If anything, it has made me more sympathetic and have a healthier attitude towards women then many so-called "proper" guys I know have.

And just like anything else that is "audio-visual learning", it has helped make me the World's Greatest Lover!

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First they talk about the most extreme available example; then they generalize about "porn."

I remember when display of pubic hair was banned (60s); that's probably what led to the shaved pudenda of today.

Porn is a product of and a response to sexual repression. Sexual repression is the cause of most (if not virtually all) of the sexual violence in our repressed society.

It is an inconvenient fact - ignored and denied by the censors - that the more sexually repressive the society, the more downtrodden and endangered the women are who live within those conditions.

No anthropologist would ever maintain that the natives of Polynesia, for example, were more healthy after the christians came and declared their lifestyle a product of devils.

How did puritan women fare?

Porn, I would maintain, is a symptom of a society opening up and seems to coincide with greater rights for women overall.

"Protecting" the poor women from their "degradation" is the first small step toward the bhurka.

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i congratulate alternet in giving the other side a hearing and reflecting the true progressive's position on the passe porn issue. no more sexual shame from the left or the right. no more 'media made me do it' bullshit. resolved: media doesn't cause evil.

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I find it somewhat interesting how Michael Bader perceives Jensen's article as "criticism." As if any person who raises concerns about the extremism within the porn industry is one of of "them" those nasty feminist anti-porn people. Is this what he believes?

Admittedly, I'm a woman, yet I couldn't care less if men want to wank off in front of the computer all day or part of the day. Just be honest about it. Be proud, say it loud! Keep it legal, above 18-years of age and get on with your life.

And please do not expect everyone to share your interests, or waste time trying to convince others that your desires -- conscious or unconscious -- should be shared by everyone.

I do believe Jensen is correct. The porn industry does need to clean up its act.

P.S. Love the previous post by H.R.Chuckn'stuff. His comments are mature, balanced, realistic. I also appreciate how he takes into consideration the female point of view. Good stuff.

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Great article!

This reminds me of that movie Summer of Sam. The main character can't imagine having anything but loving missionary style sex with his girlfriend, yet he pushes her to attend a swinger sex party with him. They both have lots of dirty sex with strangers, the main character feels no moral compunctions about doggie-style with a stranger and his girlfriend gets into it as well. Afterwards he becomes jealous, because these strangers/men have given his girlfriend enjoyment in a way he cannot due to his "obligations" as the author put it.

The great thing is, once we start understanding and observing this dynamic in our own lives, the less power it holds over us. The real problem, as I see it, is all the abstract thought theorists (most everyone on alternet and those getting second hand entertainment through televisions) have stopped paying attention to themselves. As a nation, our senses are locked into this outward focus.

Bring all those theories home, watch yourself, study yourself, turn your senses inward. Open up and let others have the opportunity to study you and tell you what they find. The first step towards a solution is an honest appraisal of the problem.
Great article!

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Bader makes much better arguments. Jenson does make at least one good point, but of course he does not know how to properly expound upon it. That is likely due to his feminist ideology. At any rate, Jensen is right about it being degrading. Of course it is. Especially since sex is one of the most powerful tools a woman has to affect political change. Yet most 18 year old girls have not the slightest clue how to use it, nor do they even understand the morality of doing so, and they definately do not understand why it is that the television and all the controlled media will never ever teach a woman how to use her power. As a result, the nation is politically stunted, and has been for decades, and now is becoming economically stunted. It has everything to do with porn, but you wont catch Jensen talking about this because he'd be betraying his feminist ideology, which was created for the sole purpose of teaching women to forsake their own greatest powers.

What I really dont understand is why would someone care about sexual degradation of women in porn when women degrade themselves multiple times a day just by perpetuating this farce of a debt-based blind consumerist economic model. It think it is far more degrading to constantly participate in actions that cause jobs to be sent overseas, and then to walk around totally oblivious as to how that system works and not ever caring that such a system can only end one way. I've written about this subject many times over the years, and at this point I have little pity for most of the women and men who are going to learn what true degradation means.

I do think it is ironic that once we default and start over and start repatriating all our industry, men are going to be working long hours for extremely little money. And there are going to be a LOT more prostitutes. And many of these prostitutes are going to wish they could return to the luxurious days of gonzo porn.

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is set at 225.

PORN = BORING!

jdfu!

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Yep. Porn is perfectly healthy, miraculously exempt from the critique that the left would apply to any other commodification of basic human activities. Can any of you see how deeply in denial you are? This is so clearly a complicated defense of men's right to masturbate to whatever turns them on, whatever the social cost. There is zero philosophical consistency, and a denial of the class component of the industry. If we are talking about movies and pictures, women participate because of the money, they wouldn't do it for free. This being true, can no one ask the simple question: why must women turn to porn for money?

It's one more example of the way the left shoots itself in the foot by refusing to accept any possibility that our own behavior might be suspect.

I await the wave of bullshit that will assail this. Ask yourself: would you tell your coworkers what you masturbate to? Your mother? Your wife? Your children?

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"I can't help it, if I'm lucky..."

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EVERY MAN THAT HAS RAPED A CHILD OR A WOMAN HAS USED PORN TO FANTASIZE THE ACT.

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If degrading and violent porn stayed a fantasy there would be no problem. But it does not. Many of the the men I have had sex with have attempted sexual acts that physically hurt me and left me feeling degraded. I am sure it was a surprise to them that I did not enjoy their acts like the women on the big screen did.

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Next time you're at a party, get hold of a balloon, by one end, and squeeze it. Your goal or task is to make the balloon fit inside your hand.

Funny enough, and as you can well imagine, no matter how hard you try, how creative you are or how big your hands are, if you squeeze HERE, the balloon will bulge out THERE.

And this just happens to be one of the secret core truths of reality. (pardon the preposition).

Just as draconian drug laws end up producing a thriving black market and drug cartels...just as repressive puppet regimes end up producing insurgencies...so a society that, on the whole, represses natural, honest sexuality, produces porn and prostitution.

A previous poster said it all when he/she mentioned, in an almost titillating way, "...and DIRTY sex". What a concept, what a unique and odd concept, when you think about it. Why "dirty"? What EXACTLY does "dirty" mean? and the actual important question, "why".

Now, we can all come to some basic commonality on the concept of victimization. Victimization in any aspect of society is damaging to society-at-large, as well as to the victim...and so we rightly condemn and reject it. Why allow porn depictions of rape or rape-like acts when the actress is over 21, but criminalize depictions of child sex? Well, one explanation may be that for the 21 year old woman, there IS a "willful consent" scenario that is theoretically available (if not particularly likely), whereas, in the case of the child, there is NO scenario in which you can imagine actual willful consent.

Not to mention, even in the depiction of fantasy in a film, the reality of the actor/actress's actual sexual experience during filming of the fantasy scene, would preclude ever depicting a child in that situation. The minor child is not capable of giving willful consent. Even using very clever cinematographic techniques...

But, every day on TeeVee, we are welcome to watch one actor point a gun at another actor and kill him. This is the depiction of a sort of ultimate victimization, or it is an arms-length victimization such as shows like The amazing forensic murder sleuths. yet THAT sort of victimization seems to be "ok".

"Squeezing the balloon" in one place, and it pops out somewhere else.

For myself, I see internet porn as being a bit of a sad thing...in some ways, for some people, it becomes a surrogate or substitute for actual sexual experience...it lets the steam out of the pressure cooker, so to speak, so people who would otherwise be out having real sex with real people and raising the overall level of joy in this world, instead draw into themselves and RELINQUISH the chance to make someone happy.

But, on the whole, I agree on almost all points with the author...there are always psychopaths and sociopaths who cannot recognize the boundary between their individual fantasy and the collective reality, and act in ways that victimize others...and this number may be on the rise.

There's another point to make with so-called gonzo porn...it certainly probably is escalating...I'm not exactly a "student" of the genre, so forgive me if I am a little behind the rest of the class...but how far, really, can it go? It must, at the end of the day, still represent eroticism. There's a point where it's been stretched too thin, and it becomes too "cartoon-ish" to keep it's audience.

Porn is, as far as I can tell, a "point-of-view" fantasy...it's effectiveness can be measured by how easily or fully the viewer can imagine themselves in the scene, whether as participant or voyeur. That's one of the reasons that much male-targeted porn uses male actors that most male porn consumers would rank as "at or below MY OWN ranking", the scale being, of course, what men the ACTRESS would choose, if she could choose anyone.

lexicon

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Interestingly, in the news today it's reported the man who filmed "Deep Throat" the movie that "launched" the modern hard-core porn industry has died. But there's more. In the article Linda Lovelace describes her experience....

"Linda Lovelace, the star of Deep Throat, maintained she had been forced into the film by her controlling husband, Chuck Traynor, who was paid for his efforts.
Traynor beat her so violently during the filming that in some scenes her bruises are visible, despite an extensive make-up job.
Linda would later claim that every time anyone watched the movie, they were essentially watching her being raped. She later left Traynor."

FANTASY, eh?

http://www.dailymail.co.uk
/news/worldnews/article-1081172/
Deep-Throat-legendary-porn-director
-Gerard-Damiano-dies-aged-80.html

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"Well, we have four points of view to consider in analyzing its meaning: 1) the writer/director's plot and/or intent, 2) the actual experience of the actors while making the film, 3) the woman or anti-porn critic watching it and imagining it being done to her, and 3) the man masturbating to it. Jensen thinks it's obvious that there is just one reality here, when actually there are four."

Thats a big part of the problem, isn't it. Anti-porn crusaders only consider one of those viewpoints... their own... with any seriousness, and consider the others either unimportant or inferior. That is why you don't see them talking very much tothe women they are trying so desperately to "protect". In reality, they have no use for them unless they can be the source for another horror story about the porn industry.

It is a cause in search of an argument, not an argument inspiring a cause.

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To discount porn as pure fantasy without consequences for people is to be disingenous while to say it(porn) is all consequences is to overstate the case. Furthermore, to attempt to address porn without addressing gender roles, commodification, and capitalism is to simplify an interesting subject and make it less burdensome.

IMHO, porn is the result of a puritanical society which pushes sexual pathology on people and seperates sex from human well being. Until we as a society can embrace sex in all its deviations as a normal part of life, until we can teach young people to embrace their sexual selfs, until we can help adults to see each other as people who may or may not share similar (sexual) proclivities, what is called "pornography" today is here to stay. If anything, the porn conniseurs I've met (including myself) are more well adjusted when it comes to sex and their bodies than those who would demonize sexual fantasies. Yes, porn can be misogynistic but so can the evening news: point is, equitize it all or shut the hell up. Rant over.

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This pathetic article is a lame attempt to try to render the violence & degradation of pornography to harmless 'fantasy'. Men want and seek any reason to be not held responsible for the consequences of their actions or 'fantasies'.

So what's next? White men behaving as racists in sheets and burning crosses on lawns is just fantasy or is it practice for real life encounters with people of color? These behaviors enbolden white men to begin acting out their 'fantasy' feelings on others who are the victims of their fantasies.

We all know this to be true.

Children act out fantasies to cope with or construct real life situations they can control and soldiers practice 'fantasy' encounters with an enemy to enable them to act on and dominate these others.

Dennis Rader, the BTK killer, got his start on murdering women by fantasizing with pornography.

Bind. Torture. Kill.

As a 'fantasy' pornography works to prepare, disconnect & desensitize men to the horrors of their actions in real life, whether that is on the streets against strangers or in the Abu Grahib prison.

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I agree with a lot that you say and its certainly a more open minded look at the issue that the forgone conclusions that many people cynically mimic. I agree that sexual fantasy is a healthy part of human sexuality and even spirituality. I think that our society is largely sexually inhibited in the name of morality, but I think the closer you look there is even more to the picture than your article illuminates. I actually am a fan of certain kinds of porn, but I see a lot of differences across the different genres. If porn is fantasy, its different genres show us what people fantasize about . . . and that's where I see hardcore porn as troubling. I practice tantric sexuality and in this spiritual discipline, the fundamental concept is that of differentiating physical pleasure from spiritual sensuality and allowing the spiritual to grow. Physical pleasure isn't bad and of course it comes along with any sexual experience, but the spiritual element is more unbounded and can lead to much greater satisfaction and orgasms than just the physical alone. This is why sex is better when you love the person you are having sex with, and why true erotic feelings can be more fulfilling than extreme sex depicted in hard core porn. from my perspective I see hardcore porn as encouraging just the opposite from spiritual, desensitizing sex. Hard porn shows sexual fulfillment depending on body shape, and focuses on pushing the physical side of sex to the limit. This can let our fantasies run wild, but they are fantasies that may never be fulfilled for those without large body parts, aren't models, don't practice risky behavior, and who don't use other people for their own sexual fulfillment. But real fulfillment is out there for anyone (even if you don't have a partner) if one only learns to approach sex from a different angle. I like porn sites like MET ART - they have attractive European females and lots of movies. But the movies are not about the models getting penetrated by four penises at once, in fact they're mostly solo females. WHat the videos consist of is the women that are expressing their erotic libido relatively subtly but are much more arousing to my spiritually erotic fantasies. I like seeing couples that really reacting to each other erotically as well . . . but the trouble is that this is so rare. The hardcore porn is so much more common and I've only found a handful of sites I like. I'm big on freedom, but I do think that while many masturbating males are simply fulfilling fantasies, I do believe there is a large degree of learning about sexuality that happens through porn. Sexuality is such a sensitive topic that many people really never learn about it well enough, but the internet lets people learn in privacy. Wouldn't it be nice is that could be used for better sex, not harder sex. I'm not into mind control, so maybe its a matter of putting good porn out there along with (what I find to be) stuff that can encourage negative sexual thinking, so people can choose for themselves. And, sadly the reason that this hasn't happened is something that we talk about a lot on this site --- corporate interest. Promising more bang for the buck is what sells. 4 penises are better than 1. Silicon breasts are better than humanly shaped ones. It may be getting better - there's more sites for regular high school and 20 something guys that want to see girls that are attractive without being porn stars and are pretty laid back about sex without being sluts. That's a step in the right direction. But I don't see much in the way (yet) of sites encouraging intentional eroticism done in a really kind way. I'm waiting for the Christian community to break down and carry Christs message of spreading love and create websites that show real life couples that really love each other and are uninhibitedly living their sexual fantasies and becoming fulfilled in a guilt free way.

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The truth of the matter is, people have sexual desires that conflict with the morality of society and they would fuck people they want to fuck in the ways they want to have sex with them, if it weren't for society

Let's face this fact.

In ancient times, men were warriors, tribes of men and women did not get along, they had their own religions values and behaviours and demonized the others as less then human, and we STILL do this, and we still LOVE doing it despite the moderners protestations - he is also tribal. When many smaller ancient cultures conquered other smaller tribes and villages they

1) Slayed everyone to prevent the village from rising again - preventing acts of revenge
2) Took the women who were virgins/unmarried
3) Slaughter all youngins and children who were cognizant of what had occured
4) May / may not have took the small babies as their own if they did not kill them.
5) Took others as slaves / sold others into slavery.

Slavery was the economic model until just recently in historical time, that means - for millions of years, human beings were unkind, tribal and enslaved one another.

The deep subconscious desires we see expressed are from a more brutal and harsh animal past, for which our bodies were designed to function in. So in modern society these subconscious desires for misfire and are easily deceived because of the illusions that images present us with.

Modern life is filled with lies and half truths, all magazine covers are covered with photoshopped people. That is not how they really look, and yet people eat it up!

Fantasy is just reality that hasn't happened yet. Think about slaves who fantasized about being free, or gays fantasizing about being accepted and not shunned by society.

Idealism, fantasy, reality, are all connected in complex ways. To understate how fantasy plays a large part in what we really want, betrays a lack of understanding of human beings.

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(With credit to another commenter, the last time this came up:)

The rate of sex crimes has been declining even as porn has become pervasive, and even as abusive porn has become more extreme.

GENERAL crime rates have gone down, too, so this doesn't actually prove that porn is beneficial: only that it isn't causing a crime wave.

However, there is reason to think it might be preventing some crimes: in general, porn is a substitute for the real thing - several commenters have gone into considerable detail about this. So to the degree that abuse porn substitutes for real abuse, it could be preventing a lot of real crime. Making porn as a social service? Who would have thought! Certainly not the makers themselves.

But that is what the actual statistics imply.

There is a dearth of real reporting from within the porn industry, so it's hard to know, but I suspect that even Bader is exaggerating the impact on performers themselves. I should also say here that I don't know much about abuse porn, because it's a turnoff for me and I avoid it. But I do know something about moviemaking: it's about illusion (a quote from a famous movie, "The Stuntman.") The conventions of porn require that the sex act itself be seen to be real, but that doesn't apply to the production values. Those are scripted, approved beforehand, and subject to "movie magic."

With some hesitation, I'll share one scene I did see: every time the guy started (verbally) "abusing" the girl, she laughed. This was not a nervous titter: she clearly thought he was pretty funny, probably because she knew who was really in charge.

Of course, that made a pretty poor abuse scene, so they put it in with more "normal" material, which is how I saw it.

There is also a reality of human nature: for every conceivable kink, and some I couldn't conceive of, there are people who get off on it. Some of those people work in porn. They're ideal employees, especially the exhibitionists (of both sexes).

The truth is that we have no idea why people go into that work. Just on general principles, I assume they range from the terribly desperate to those who love their work - rather like, say, waitressing. Or joining the Army. With the largest contingent those who think it's easy work for a lot of money (I've seen personal testimony to this effect.)

For a truly informative and interesting article, someone should go and ask them. It doesn't happen all that often, and when it does they seem eager to talk about their lives, just like most of us. All this nebulous theorizing isn't very useful.

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Every Michael Bader piece I read, I feel like a door is thrown open wide.

I respect Robert's work but have always felt an unease that something was just not quite right... and thanks to Bader I can put my finger on it. I had to finally unsubscribe to Jensen's antiporn people because the myopia was even worse among their ilk than in Jensen's own writings.

Thanks, Mike, just got the Librarian to order your book so I can read it. Thanks, Alternet... *blush* I know, I know, I rarely credit you for the good stuff, so... there, you did good. You have my gratitude.

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I believe that some European countries such as Denmark and the Netherlands have pornography very available and pervasive. If you are to believe some of the assertions of the anti-porn crowd, then the Danes and the Dutch must be people of total depravity. A bunch of misogynist psychos.

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The metaphorical value of porn almost spoils any transgressions that occur-- just another capataliist venture-- no liberation. . .
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=poNZmxDb9A8

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Exactly. We are watching "fantasy" performed within the realmn of capital. Even though I have been around enough and used enough to consdiered a "consumer" the fact remains that the images are not cartoons or imaginary. They are for some one, a way to pay the rent. Thus, who controls the fantasy that is being produced. I am not in favor of any censorship and also realize that it has and always will exist and that it is as yin and yang as any other issue.

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It's difficult to make the decision to respond to this load of garbage; I've got better things to do. But, it's hard to let this go, too. So here goes:

Right off the bat, Bader mentions that at age 13 he asked his new friend, Andy, if he (Andy) was an idiot. Nice friend, Bader. Rather than understanding that Andy didn't know about television, Bader just assumes Andy's an idiot, and has no problem with belittling his new "friend."

Okay, so we see immediately that Bader's world paradigm is a one up/one down world, in which he likes to put the "other" down so that he will automatically rise to the top.

I haven't seen any porn in a couple of decades, but are gonzo flicks and other porn all animated now? Because in the next paragraph, Bader says "If the woman on the screen is having 4 penises shoved into her, something that would demean and degrade any real woman reading Jensen's article (and probably the actress performing such scenes)" -- So, who's acting? When I saw porn in the 1970s, the women who acted in the films were actually being degraded, and often really being physically abused. What's changed?

I just looked up "gonzo porn" on the internet and the third description to pop up reads, "Assorted girls getting ass-fucked and pussyfucked by hard cocks · Brunette teen in a schoolgirl outfit gets banged"

Sounds like there ARE real human women involved in the making of these films. Huh.

Moreover, Bader describes this violence with words like "4 penises shoved into her" with a nonchalance that makes me wonder if he actually believes that "in real life" these acts would be degrading, or, more to the point, whether degrading a woman is problematic.

He then goes on to say that degradation isn't the source of a man's arousal. But it seems to me that it is exactly the source. If men wanted to simply look at a woman's naked, available body, that would be what porn was. The only thing that would need to change would be the women.

And frankly, even without all of the violence, parading naked women through magazines and films so guys can jack off is, in and of itself, degrading to women, since it turns human beings into objects to be used. But that's not even the issue here, and I'm not going to waste my time going in that direction. Anyone paying attention can tell the difference between erotic art and porn. Porn degrades, erotic pictures/movies, do not.

In the next paragraph, Bader goes on with his lopsided view and states, "When a woman sits at a café and gets turned-on by a big hairy biker standing at the cash register, she is inferring something about him, perhaps that he's tough, sexual, aggressive, and/or selfish."

What make Bader assume that a woman is going to be "turned on" by an aggressive, selfish biker? I'm not turned on by aggressive, selfish bikers.

He says, "She's unconsciously interpreting the image. For reasons that have to do with her personal psychology, reasons about which she may well be unaware, these traits trigger her libido." Again, why does Bader assume my libido is triggered by someone who looks like he could hurt me?

His point that the woman "objectifies" the biker, but he's making the point by using a stereotypical male image of women, as they are portrayed in pornography - things that like to be hurt.

To be continued...

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Bader then points out that people's fantasies would often not be what they would chose to have take place in reality. True, but that's not necessarily because their fantasies are about degrading situations. And again, HIS example fantasy is being the most powerful person on the planet - president of the United States, and he's got some woman under a desk sucking him off (it can't be very comfortable for the woman, she's clearly in the one-down position with regard to Bader), and he's having a good laugh at the congressional rep behind his back by talking with him on the phone while he's being sucked off - quite a fantasy. Bader is screwing both the woman and the congressman, from his position as supreme commander.

He then suggests that maybe that wouldn't be someone else's fantasy, but the three he comes up with are all degrading, so he doesn't seem capable of imagining a fantasy that doesn't involve one-up/one-down degradation. And he seems incapable of seeing the degradation, repeatedly talking about knowing the difference between fantasy and reality.

This may be shocking, but I know plenty of people who have fantasies that are NOT based on abuse and power. Go figure.

I can't help but wonder, as I'm reading, "A woman I treated used to masturbate to the fantasy of being held down and sexually ravished against her will.." how women who are "treated" by Bader fare. Perhaps the women are feeding Bader just what he wants to hear, but I can‘t believe that it’s helpful to a woman to have a man tell her that if she fantasizes about being raped that’s healthy.

Next up, Bader says, "the male libido is neither more powerful than that of women, nor can it be adequately explained through trite generalizations about the cruelty of men under patriarchy. Instead, sexual arousal for both men and women depends on one thing -- the momentary elimination of feelings and beliefs that inhibit it."

Discussing the inherent cruelty of men against women in pornography is hardly "trite." Further, sexual arousal, for me and for my husband, most emphatically does NOT depend on "eliminating feelings and beliefs that inhibit it." We don't have feelings and beliefs that inhibit our arousal. And if we did have feelings and beliefs that inhibited us, whose to say that by putting a formula together in which a man dominates a woman, and packaging it as a fantasy, that would make us "uninhibited?"

Bader says, "We can't get aroused if we're too guilty about hurting the other, or too worried about him or her" Where does THAT come from? My husband and I are not afraid of hurting each other. We don't hurt each other and we aren't frightened.

"We can't get turned on if we're feeling rejected, inferior, damaged, or helpless" Duh. But why does a man need to degrade a woman if he's feeling rejected, inferior, damaged, or helpless? Sounds like just striking back at the enemy. As in: "Oh yeah, well if you're gonna make me feel like shit, I'll just watch four guys shove their dicks up your ass..."

That doesn't seem like a particularly healthy way of dealing with feelings of rejection or inferiority.

To Be Continued...

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Bader says, "It turns out, for example, that both male and female desire gets shut down when guilt and worry squelches the capacity for selfishness and aggressiveness."

So what's the point here? That we should try to make sure we don't squelch our selfishness and aggressive behavior, because that would be, what? Bad? Additionally, it presupposes that all people are running around feeling guilty. What a bizarre world view. And, he assumes that without guilt and worry, people are AUTOMATICALLY selfish and aggressive. That's as stupid as fundamentalists insisting that if we aren't afraid of God's punishment, we will not behave. Like being a good person depends on threats. - But then, plenty of people have made the case that fundamentalist religions and pornography are two sides of the same coin.

Is Bader incapable of enjoying an orgasm if it isn't connected with being selfish and aggressive? That's pretty pathetic.

Moving along, Bader says, "Good and healthy sex requires not only affection and love, but also the capacity to not worry about one's partner, to "let go" with selfish abandon." Again, I am confused. How does letting go translate to selfish abandon? I have no problem letting go, and neither does my husband, but pleasing ourselves and each other is not based on degradation or one person overpowering or abusing the other, or fantasizing doing so.

Bader says, "The sexual ideal of two people lovingly gazing into each other's eyes is belied by powerful needs for something more out-of-control, perhaps forceful, and transgressive." What a load of garbage. We'd be bored, too, if all we did was "gaze lovingly into each other's eyes." Bader doesn't seem to have much imagination if all he can conceive of besides "gazing" is belittling women.

On to Jensen, Bader says, "Jensen thinks it's obvious that there is just one reality here." I didn't get that from Jensen's article at all. Bader, in spite of suggesting there are four different views to the porn issue, seems to see all of this in very black and white terms, with one side being violence and one-upsmanship, and the other side being stagnation and boredom.

This next paragraph is so over the top I can't believe Bader's even saying this stuff. He says, "In the overwhelming majority of pornographic sex, including the extreme gonzo scenes Jensen describes, the women come to enjoy it. If they aren't, themselves, actively, insisting on it, they eventually appear to get aroused. In other words, they're invariably depicted as enjoying their so-called degradation. Everyone is turned on. Everyone. Based on my own clinical experience and on a review of the research, if the actresses were to respond on film realistically -- say, by screaming in pain, sobbing, dissociating into grim and vacant fugue states -- the overwhelming majority of men would get turned off, lose their erections, and change the channel. The male viewer does not, in fact, want these women to be demeaned and hurt; unconsciously, he wants them to be happy."

Is Bader simply insane? First, portraying women as being happy about being abused is nothing other than sick anti-woman propaganda.

Secondly, some abusive people want those they abuse to look like they are suffering, but the men who don't want to admit that they LIKE the idea of punishing a woman with their cocks will - of course, duh - want the women to smile while their rectums are being ripped open.

More - "Sexual arousal is what we call a "marker," an unconscious symbol, of the fact that the women are not hurt." Huh? Sounds like blathering. Followed by, "It reassures the male viewer he can temporarily escape from the worry and guilt about women that typically haunts him and chills his libido."

To Be Continued...

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Where does Bader get this stuff? Why on earth would anyone assume that men - what is this, all men, most men, who are we actually talking about here? - why would he assume men are typically haunted by worry and guilt about women.

You know, if I spent my time jacking off to images of women having their heads stuck in toilets, or choking on the semen of ten cocks, I might just feel haunted by guilt about women, too.

Bader then analyzes Jensen, saying that "Such worry and guilt are not -- as Jensen would have it -- a sign of his loving humanity, but his neurotic feelings of obligation." Uh huh. Jensen hasn't said he feels worried and guilty about women, nor has he said that worry and guilt are an expression of loving humanity. So saying Jensen really just has neurotic feelings of obligation is nothing but made up mumbo jumbo in response to something Bader made up about Jensen.

At this point, the article is so far off target, and it is so clear that Bader believes his perspective is reality, rather than HIS PERSPECTIVE, that it's hard to justify wasting time reading, or responding to the rest of this incredibly stupid, un-insightful, and self-justifying crap.

However, I can't let this last part go without comment.

Bader closes with a few gems: "We demonize rather than try to understand horrible tragedies like pedophilia while refusing to think about and face the epidemic of emotional neglect facing children in American families."
What does this sentence mean? Is he talking about demonizing the adult perpetrator of pedophilia or the victim child? If he's talking about the adult perpetrator, why does he follow this with talking about facing the epidemic of emotional neglect facing children? Or is he saying that when sexual abuse occurs, it occurs because children are just so lonely that they seek attention even when it's inappropriate sexual attention from an adult? Is Bader under the impression that sexually abused children are responsible for their abuse in some way? I mean, what is Bader saying here?

He continues with, "We assume that looking at dirty pictures leads people to do dirty things,"

1) he reduces pornography to "dirty pictures," and 2) he throws this porn issue in between the horrific act of adults fucking children, and sex ed in school and the issue of abortion:

"that learning about sex in high school makes teenagers want to have it, and that making abortion more available automatically makes girls open to teenage pregnancy."

Bader goes on to state, "None of these are true, but terrible public policy has been made in their honor."

The fact of the matter is you can't put all of these statements together and then analyze them all as one, because they are not all one. And "looking at dirty pictures" in fact DOES promote violence against women, and there has been ample documentation to prove this.

While not all people who torture animals are serial killers, virtually all serial killers have tortured animals. And, while not all consumers of porn are rapists, virtually all rapists have massive collections of pornography. Ted Bundy said that pornography didn't make him kill women, but it desensitized him to women, helping him to view them as objects that existed to gratify him. When statistics show that more than half of college aged young men would rape a woman if they were positive they could get away with it, and also believe that many women want to be raped, these young men are consuming porn as information - and they are reinforcing porn’s ugly message that women are objects to be used and vilified by viewing it while experiencing intense pleasure.

So Bader's point of separating fantasy from reality is not much of a point because the separation is hardly black and white.

To Be Continued One More Time...

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And, finally, going back for a moment, in the middle of the article, Bader quotes Woody Allen, as though Woody's got a healthy perspective on sexuality. Remember, Woody is the guy who was fucking his own daughter.

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It seems to me that most feminist criticisms against pornography are actually anti-feminist. It seems ironic that many of our attitudes about sex come from the Spanish Inquisition, and our subconscious fear of being punished (nee, barbarically tortured) for enjoying it. They seem to suggest that women couldn't possibly enjoy having sex or acting in pornography/watching it, and should just keep their damn legs shut. The idea that pornography is degrading suggests that sex, masturbation, and the human body are dirty and disgusting, which I couldn't disagree with more. These kind of attitudes strike me as being extremely conservative and anti-humanistic.

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Well we all have a face
That we hide away forever
And we take them out and show ourselves
When everyone has gone
Some are satin some are steel
Some are silk and some are leather
They're the faces of the stranger
But we love to try them on


FREE AMERICA

REVOLUTIONARY (DIRECT) DEMOCRACY

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That women like porn too and we're tired of watching men's fantasies about fucking women, about humiliating women by offering them something at the outset, fucking them, then leaving them on the side of the road with nothing.

Why does the porn so rarely show the man's face, the man's moans, the man's pleasure, or the woman's perspective? Its not to humiliate a woman, it is to cater to the only market the porn industry understands, which is just as bad.

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How does the author explain the implicit racism and normative heterosexuality and lookism that is rampant in porn? I have NEVER seen a white woman penetrated with a golf club, but I have seen a black woman penetrated with one. Whose guilt does that assuage? Ebony Butts? Spicy Latinas? Docile Asian women that liked to be tied up? Really? The websites that feature this stuff play on sexual sterotypes that have NOTHING to do with men's guilt or the introduction of orgasms for women. This stuff serves to reinforce what white men believe about the sexuality of women of color. The basis of porn is that not everyones sexuality is equal, or even existent, and that white men get to say ultimately what goes.

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You obviously have never seen the porn series 'Blacks on Blonds'.

So exactly why is it that we weenie weenie white males get off so hard watching our brothers of color gangbanging drop dead gorgeous blondes??

You know why?? I think it's because us white guys wish we were brothas rather than such pansy ass whitebread excuses of man.

Why do we get off imagining we were watchin our women get getting nailed by Cubanos in Miami with oh so largo pingas??

Why are white guys with little weenies excluded from porn ??? Isn't there some affirmative action in this industry. Shouldn't we show that weenie weenie males can satisfy a large fat lady of color??

And be honest, now...to a REAL woman, size DOESN'T count.

Women of Color !!! Help a Weenie White Brotha !!

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I don't know if I want to laugh or scream at the truly lame excuse this article uses to justify gonzo porn. What BS to say that men are really helpless victims,warped by their feelings of masculine insecurity which leads them to just want porn that shows happy women wanting sex and really it's all just innocent fantasy,what's the problem ???
If your watching a women getting double anal penetrated and you actually believe that she's enjoying it your lying to yourself not fantasizing ! Let's have a show of hands how many men want to get double anal penetrated ???
And why not... it hurts and it's degrading. Nothing sexy about it when your on the receiving end now is there ?
Here's some questions to ask yourself about porn, particularly gonzo porn: Why does America have high rates of domestic abuse and rape. Could these high rates have anything to do with porn that presents women as objects that enjoy violence and degrading sex ?
There is nothing sex positive about gonzo porn... it's exploitive. Let's stop making excuses for violent porn and start having a real conversation about sexuality, gender stereotypes and equality.

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It is absurd to suggest that pornography is simply fantasy and has no bearing on reality. It is certainly real for the many battered women coerced into acting out the things their partner sees in porn. It is real for those women abused in the making of it, and for those sexually assaulted or raped because of it. And it is all too real for those families that break up due to it - one in three divorcing couples in the UK now cite pornography use as a major cause of marital breakdown. Pornography is having a serious impact on our society, and is severely damaging relations between men and women.

On the one hand, pornography promotes a totally false view of female sexuality, and the misogyny inherent in it inevitably affects the way women are perceived and treated. On the other hand, it is also shockingly revealing about the barbarity and cruelty of male sexuality and forces women to reevaluate the men around them. If pornography shows how men feel about the other half of the human race, then men should not be in positions of power or authority. If men lack humanity and empathy to such a degree, then they are not worthy of our affection. And if they can be so easily manipulated by the captains of the pornography industry to demand as a "right" material which corrupts and brutalizes them, and not see how they are being used to make these people rich, then they are not worthy of our respect. Pornography is not just fantasy, it is propaganda against women which indirectly reveals the savagery and arrogance of men. Its effects are very real, and damage everyone.

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I'm loathe to trust an author who flacks his or her work for sale in the first page of an article but I was willing to give this a go because the topic does require a longer form analysis.

That said, this article is full of so many justifications, generalizations, and misconceptions it's not to be believed. The one that finally led me to conclude that the author is completely unreliable on the subject was this:

"In the overwhelming majority of pornographic sex, including the extreme gonzo scenes Jensen describes, the women come to enjoy it. If they aren't, themselves, actively, insisting on it, they eventually appear to get aroused."

Take for a minute the premise that all porn is fantasy. Using that as a basis you can not use any player's appearance of arousal as justification for calling the acts depicted enjoyable. Granted, with men there is a more concrete connection between arousal and ability to perform, but has the author who is a clinician never heard the term disassociation (which is just a fancy way of saying going somewhere else in your head but still keeping your boner in the physical world)?

Or, to put it more plainly: just because I go to work and get my work done doesn't mean I'm enjoying it.

Movies get edited, cameras get paused, scenes get restarted. The enjoyment of the players or lack there of is, in some ways, largely irrelevant to the broader discussion which is how porn comes to form the expectation that real-world women will perform the way the men masturbating to porn expect them to, subjugating their own desires to satisfy his. Porn is about fantasy, yes, but it's more about control.

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I think most of the guys with their dicks in their hands would be unable to perform if porn were their personal reality show, even were the cameras not rolling.

As mammals, males seek out females in rut. No greater evidence of rut can be found than lots of ready males sticking it in. This actually means it may be the hard dicks as evidence of rut that turns men on. (Yuck!)

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In an interview just before he was executed, Ted Bundy said: I'm no social scientist, but I've lived in prison for a long time, and I've met a lot of men who were motivated to commit violence. Without exception, every one of them was deeply involved in pornography - deeply consumed by the addiction. The F.B.I.'s own study on serial homicide shows that THE MOST COMMON INTEREST AMONG SERIAL KILLERS IS PORNOGRAPHERS. It's true.
Read the article here: http://www.tldm.org/news6/bundy.htm

Forensic psychiatrist Park Deitz, who deeply believes in the connection between witnessing sexual violence on film and committing it in real life, has been called as witness for the prosecution in numerous high-profile serial killer and other murder cases. Dietz takes the popular media and their effects on behavior seriously. He believes that slasher movies, violent television programs, and news reports--especially television news reports--contribute to American society's problems with serial killers, sexual sadists, stalkers, and product tamperers.
While a member of the Attorney General's Commission on Pornography, 1985-86, Dietz became concerned not about the sexual content of pornography but about its violent imagery. The public should stop worrying about nudity, he believes, and concentrate on how often movies, television programs, and magazines combine images of violence with images of sex. He acknowledges that some people turn to sadism after suffering sadistic abuse as children. But for others, he says, a deadly seed is planted by violent imagery, seen at a formative age, most often on television and in movies. Dietz is convinced that a vulnerable youngster may watch a sexy slasher movie and become conditioned to sexual arousal through such images. When that boy becomes a man in his 20s or 30s, society runs the risk that he will seek sexual gratification through actual, not fantasized, brutality.
"The system could not be better designed to create a nation with so many sexual homicides," Dietz says. "We pay for tickets to have this done to our children, and that amazes me." He says he wouldn't mind if every teenaged boy in America received a subscription to Playboy, and he's only partly kidding: "While they masturbated, they would be looking at attractive naked female bodies, instead of eviscerated female bodies."
What has convinced him are the number of cases he's worked on in which sexual murder, murder with torture, product tampering, carjacking, or workplace violence was inspired, instructed, or otherwise influenced by mass media. Serial murderer Joel Rifkin explained to Dietz how he'd re-enacted-- with live victims--a strangulation scene from the Hitchcock film Frenzy. Jeffrey Dahmer had tried to recreate a sequence from a low-budget slasher movie called Hellbent Hellraisers II, in which a victim is hung and skinned.
"Every time Body Double is on TV, there are sexual psychopaths in the audience," Dietz says. "Every time the news covers a workplace mass murder, there are people who have already bought the gun and say, 'Yeah, that's the way out of my dilemma.'"
...He also asserts that the United States is exporting sexual violence to other countries through international distribution of Hollywood films. He says he is beginning to see a pattern of increased serial killing and sexual murder 15 to 20 years after those countries began importing American-made slasher films. The interval between the advent of the movies and the spurt in crime matches the period between when a vulnerable boy might view such material and when he becomes best able to commit sexual homicides.
http://www.jhu.edu/~jhumag/1194web/dietz.html
and
http://www.slate.com/id/2121404/

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... but if would have been even more interesting if it were a feminist one.

Porn has been in sharp debate among feminists. You've got "second-wavers" (Baby Boomers/60s-70s-early 80s feminists) saying that it's all bad, and you have many younger, "third-wavers" (Gen X/'90s-today's feminists) saying that it's not all bad.

I defend porn because it is a First Amendment issue that will not end in our lifetimes.

I also defend porn to pose this question, borne of personal experience: Why must the progressive, open-minded, thinking, intelligent, sane, discretionary, consenting, committedly coupled, legal adult men and women that use porn to enhance and vitalize their own lives of intimacy, be punished for using something that is doing some GOOD in their lives and helping them to keep their commitment STRONG and HEALTHY???

Not every single user of porn is a deranged, deviant, sex-offender. Many sex-offenders were abused in thier own childhoods by parents that were products of a deeply repressive social climate that bully-pulpited elder parents and relatives into thinking that pleasure of any kind is a mortal, damning sin. They learned from these bully-pulpits how to raise their children into believing that no pleasure of any kind will get them into Heaven. Not only that, they were also bully-pulpited into controlling their children with whatever use of power they could. If that meant committing illegal, bodily acts on their children, they did so and got away with it, because the repressive social climate of not discussing anything of a sexual nature at all meant denying anything that happened. Dare a child try to tell another parent/adult what happened, he/she was punished and told never to talk like that again. Repressed actions resulted in heinous crimes once the children "grew up" and never really were counseled into dealing with their repressed, abusive childhoods - Because psychotherapy was not commonly practiced in the repressive culture. The bully-pulpits forbade it.

Blaming porn and banning it will not help solve the problems of abuse at all, let alone make society better and more "free." It will take us back to those horribly repressive times and will drive demand for porn at levels even more obscene than obsenity itself. As the saying goes ... The Desperate, WILL.

Stop trying to punish those who use porn for their own enjoyment!! Defenders of porn are fed up with these tired anti-porn arguments and are challenging them whether you like them or not. Don't like porn? Do not consume it. Leave those who enjoy it TO THEMSELVES AND THEIR LOVING PARTNERS!!!

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I masterbated twice while reading it...

;-)

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So well thought out and expressed, about the complicated reasons why porn is popular and why what is seen on the screen is NOT what people really want to happen in real life.

I to, as a woman, have many fantasies, many of them 'on the edge' as it were...but should they ever happen in real life, i would be horrified and scarred. In 'fantasyland' where everything has a 'happy ending' its a whole different story.

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This article does not address the fact that successful female porn stars frequently have breast augmentation surgery often leaving them with ridiculously large breasts with an unreal shape. Doesn't continual male stimulation by fake-looking women cause men to be less-stimulated by women with real breasts of normal size? How does this affect their sexual relationships with real women?
Porn seems to me to be indicative of a common problem in our culture. We don't want to take the time to have what we want if it involves a lot of time. I can understand the point (intellectually) that it is stimulating for a male to see a woman happily enjoying sex even if that sex would be degrading in real life, but I don't understand why it isn't better to take the time to find a woman that you really love (who loves you back) and spending the time to learn what gives her pleasure while she learns what gives you pleasure.

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