I'm trying to work out my stance on a certain feminist issue that is a tad delicate. Anyone, if you don't want to know my stance on pornography, please stop reading now :) Please and thank you.
It's such a split opinion on this topic. I actually go back and forth a lot. I mean, obviously I believe in peoples right to choose and if people want to see porn and other people want to make porn, well, who am I to stop it.
But it's incredibly, incredibly problematic. Firstly, because you never know which women are there against their will. Human trafficking is a reality. And it leads to places like prostitution and pornography, that's just how it is. However, how can you ban something that's going to happen whatever the law says, especially now with internet, when people were still finding ways to assess it 100's of years ago.
The second major issue is how it encourages sexual/rape culture, how it influences how people see sex, how they see members of the opposite sex (speaking primarily of heterosexual porn, as most porn is created for the straight white male's viewing pleasure. A lot of porn is degrading to women. Porn fetishizes races of women (Asian/Latina etc), has an excessive amount of violence against women/ domination and other humiliating/degrading content, and in general gives a perspective of sex that is unrealistic and harmful.
I don't approve of it for these reasons. I think it encourages rape culture and I dislike that it is directed completely at another demographic. For me to enjoy porn, I have to a) be turned on by women and b) be turned on by women generally in a submissive role.
I've actually been told that as a woman, it's more satisfying to watch gay porn, because those guys are actually hot. Guys in straight porn are usually middle aged, ugly and not at all fit, because whoever it is making it thinks it doesn't matter. A majority of the audience in male and they aren't looking there.
I'll admit easily that I'm no authority on pornography. I only watched porn for the first time like, a month ago. I knew it would make me uncomfortable but the curiosity finally got the best of me. Writing smut is very different but I needed clarification on some physical things, for like, positional purposes. To be honest, it wasn't what I was expecting.
Overall, personally, I find porn okay. I mean, it's really, really boring. Seen one blow job, seen them all. If it has a story, it makes it a bit better, even if it's a stupid one, but after 10 minutes, I'm bored and just go back to whatever I was doing.
I think pornography would be much better if it changed its culture. I'm not saying you can't like watching girls be dominated or whatever, I'm not kink policing, and personally I find that really hot (thankfully cos how would I ever enjoy porn otherwise?), but it shouldn't be the mainstream and porn should be much more assessable to women as well. Like, you get ass and tits catagories, where can I go to find catagories objectifying men like that? I want an abs catagory, or something. I want to see the camera focusing on the hot guy, rather than the way it is now, with the man being basically just a tool to fuck the focus of the scene, which is the woman.
Edit: I think now that it's been a few months since I saw porn for the first time, I feel like I've got a grip on my personal preferences and why I have them. Well, not so much why, but why I dislike the other stuff. I'm so picky, it's pretty ridiculous. I have to search super hard to find what I want because if it's not what I want, I get so bored. Same with smut. If it doesn't fit my kinks just right, it's not worth it.
My friend basically said that porn is like 50% just close ups of genitals and it's true. Honestly, neither gender has attractive junk and are there really people out there that like looking at that? Apparently, but I'm not one of them. And honestly, actual sex doesn't do it for me. The reason I need a storyline most of the time is that that is what is getting to me, not the imagery. I mainly like college stuff, cos it's more about skantily clad pretty girls shaking their asses, more than anything else. I think half clothed is actually sexier honestly. The rest is just gross.
Still, I like the freedom to be able to choose to watch/not watch. Porn isn't as a big a deal as I always thought it would be. It's mostly for just when I'm really bored. I mean, I get better sexy-feelings from just reading a really good Destiel fic but I don't rule it out as totally without merit.
Hopefully posting this won't creep you out, lol, but this really piqued my curiosity as someone who's been watching porn since they were 13 (even back when I had dial-up, lol -- at least that taught me the virtue of patience, waiting 3 minutes for 15 second previews to download :P).
ReplyDeleteMost porn is produced by A: giant production companies who hire pornographic actors, or B: amateurs who are just filming themselves fucking. Human trafficking and pornography definitely do overlap at times, and that's an important issue, don't get me wrong; but the vast majority of porn out there doesn't fall into that category, just in case you thought that.
I certainly agree that most porn degrades the shit out of women, pretty much spot on there with what you said. It's kinda sad how hard it can be to find a blowjob vid where the guy isn't choking the chick or grabbing her head and forcing her to suck it, or a hardcore vid where the woman isn't evidently in pain from being fucked at 300 RPM.
I disagree on the fetish thing, though -- we don't really get to choose our fetishes, and what's wrong with being attracted to a certain race? That's like calling me sexist cos I'm only attracted to girls. Like, I'm quite into girls with a very fair white complexion, but I'm not part of the KKK, I just like white booty :P If the fetish is children/rape/torture/stuff like that, obviously that's a whole other story.
Having seen as many blowjobs as I have, I'd say they aren't *all* the same, but I'd agree that it's hard to find one that really stands out as far as technique goes.
If you want porn with attractive guys, perhaps you should try what they call 'female friendly' porn. It's not necessarily targeted towards women exclusively, but the guys are a lot better looking in general (i.e. they make me feel pretty bad about how I look at times :P) and it's a lot gentler than regular porn -- it's a lot closer to what you want, from what I'm reading anyway. I would give you a link but... yeah, that'd be weird, you and Google can sort it out on your own :P
With the fetish thing, I do disagree with you, because porn really does make race a special interest catagory. While I agree with the fact that people can't choose who they are attracted to, nor should they have to, when I was talking about ethnicity in porn, that wasn't what I meant. White is still very much the majority, it's that porn uses racist stereotypes in a way that fetishizes race. And not just with women, I've seen heaps of 'white girl fucked by black cock' type stuff, which to me (and this is racist of me, no doubt, but I also think that's the point) says this helpless white girl is going to be dominated by the monsterous black guy which is also degrading for her because she's white and he's black and that's very othello 'black ram tupping white ewe'. I understand that porn works because it doesn't try to explain itself, using stereotypes is a way of making the viewer get the idea very quickly, but these are harmful, degrading stereotypes that affect culture outside of the porn world. Everyone internalises racism, including me, and the only way to stop that is to be aware of it.
ReplyDeleteWell, if that's the issue, your problem isn't so much with race being a category of fetish; it's with the way that's explored in the production of porn. The same use of stereotypes exists in all forms of media, pornographic or not. So I guess that in the same way that people should be educated on how the news media, the film industry, and the music industry capitalise on stereotypes to send a certain message, propagate certain perceptions, etc., people should also be educated on the stereotypes porn presents. Fixing the issue of racism in porn wouldn't do much without also fixing the same issues present in all other forms of media. But I do see your point.
ReplyDeleteYeah, I don't have a problem with people being attracted to particular races/ethnicities, that's mostly fine. It worries me that it can be largely due to society and environment, but I accept that people shouldn't be made to change or like things they actually don't out of a sense of fairness or equality. I like fair skin/blonde hair/blue eyes, sue me. But I think that porn as a medium is overwhelmingly large and a driving factor in sexual stereotypes to do with race and just sex in general. Like, lack of female pubic hair as a fashion, it's almost completely due to porn. So while I think that society as a whole SHOULD change, I don't see porn simply as a byproduct of it. I think it is a cause, not just an effect.
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