I'm looking at God's Girls right now and it's definitely not nearly as big or pervasive as mainstream pornography and pornographic imagery (which is found in pop culture and all that jazz). It's effects are definitely limited, and I doubt many people have heard of it.
It's reach probably isn't even close to the millions.
However, I like the direction that it goes in...it's definitely a bit more positive, at least at a surface glance. The fact that it is so different from mainstream pornography may be why it's so small...but that's definitely making a logical leap without evidence, so I admit that. But if God's Girls were mainstream, I wouldn't complain. It seems very sex-positive.
Well, the history behind God's Girls is interesting and relevant. It's a spinoff of a site you might have heard of: Suicide Girls. It has similar style and professed values.
But the guy that runs Suicide Girls has been accused of mistreating his models, skiving on payment, and just being a general douchebag. So a couple of SG models broke off and started God's Girls on their own.
So if the SG/GG model were started by a misogynist douchebag, does that lead us to suspect that the SG/GG model is misogynist in a way that we, as generally heterosexual sex-positive lads who might be a little biased in favor of looking at naked women, are blind to? Or is death of the author in effect here?
I think you probably would need to look at the content vs. production. Like, someone can be a total asshole and murder people on a regular basis and write a book completely extolling the virtues of peace. Just because the other is an ass and completely hypocritical to the content he has produced doesn't mean the work suddenly adopts those traits.
But in the case of God's Girls, the website could have all this wonderful content, but if the guy is an exploitative jerk behind the scenes are your consuming it, you're really supporting his lifestyle and behavior which I think is a notch in the negativity zone. Walmart produces low low prices, but at what cost?
What are the identifiable features of non-misogynist (or minimally misogynist) porn?
Does such an animal exist - and if not, could it exist?
I think as long as the viewer is informed in some way that the players are all equally in control of the situation and have equal "consent" to what's happening, even if they are portraying a helpless role or a dominating role, that could be considered non misogynist.
You could probably make the argument that literotica/female prose porn/whatever is influential over media primarily consumed by and marketed toward women - a watered-down version thereof is the basis for a lot of formulaic romance movies.
While I haven't read any of this female erotica, I wonder if it tends to fall into the male-hetero ideal anyway. Does anyone have an example of this literature so that we can take a look at it, even if it's a summary?
I'm not really sure of a good way to cite it. It's kind of a niche market anyway - definitely not the sort of thing that ends up as an e-book - and it's usually (IIRC) written by committee and released on a regular basis (a publishing house might release a new one every couple of months or whatever). I'm not sure if those committee members are usually men or women, which is probably a relevant question. I may look around for some blogs or something with some excerpts posted if I've got time later.
Novels like that kind of fascinate me because I've always been interested in sleazy pulp fiction, a form of writing that revels in sexual titillation (and probably exists because of it). Those romance novels are pretty much the last remaining example of that kind of writing in the present, but I've never actually read a novel in that particular genre to give you an example.
I wish my grandmother was still alive.
She'd be a good resource haha. But still an interesting idea you've brought up here...
What are the identifiable features of non-misogynist (or minimally misogynist) porn?
Does such an animal exist - and if not, could it exist?
I think as long as the viewer is informed in some way that the players are all equally in control of the situation and have equal "consent" to what's happening, even if they are portraying a helpless role or a dominating role, that could be considered non misogynist.
But that's not a very satisfactory answer.
Yeah...I think what you're hinting at is education.
I hate violence...don't really enjoy it and have let myself take a beating before throwing a punch even though in those instances I was capable of defending myself. But I play God of War (which by the way, I still think was over-the-top and pretty bad story-wise) but in that instance I'm consuming media that portrays a character going against my values, but because I'm educated, I can piece it apart and understand that.
Same thing would apply to Pornography I figure...Like, you enjoy bondage and you are a man - that doesn't inherently make you misogynistic as long as you understand the power-play and don't legitimately think men are superior to women in some fashion and that women are subservient to men (this is an extreme example, usually feelings about women in our society are a little more subtle). But I figure that if you enjoy bondage you probably like the dom/sub aspect of it and could really go for either role.
*edit*
Anyway - does anyone have modern analysis on pornography or stuff that they recommend?
The issue isn't who the pornography is being marketed to so much as it is the content of what they are marketing. The word "natural" is a loaded term that I'd like you to define, because if it is "natural" for men to seek out and enjoy mainstream pornography in its current incarnation, I would have to disagree. This is a social construct, not an innate desire to butt-fuck, ejaculate on, or abuse women during the act of sex.
What are you using as your basis for the true nature of man? It seems like you are applying an idealized version of man, as these social constructs are as old as recorded history.
Because we've always been abusive to women it must be innate to humanity? Wat.
I did not and would not go so far as to make a positive claim on something so broad as it being 'innate'. However, it certainly is a part of our collective history and is not limited to any particular culture. Humanity isn't all butterflies and cupcakes, we've convincingly demonstrated that we can be a particularly vicious creature by modern western standards of morality.
This is not an appeal to nature. I'm not saying that we should encourage our baser instincts. We just shouldn't whitewash them as being merely social constructs.
The issue isn't who the pornography is being marketed to so much as it is the content of what they are marketing. The word "natural" is a loaded term that I'd like you to define, because if it is "natural" for men to seek out and enjoy mainstream pornography in its current incarnation, I would have to disagree. This is a social construct, not an innate desire to butt-fuck, ejaculate on, or abuse women during the act of sex.
What are you using as your basis for the true nature of man? It seems like you are applying an idealized version of man, as these social constructs are as old as recorded history.
Because we've always been abusive to women it must be innate to humanity? Wat.
I did not and would not go so far as to make a positive claim on something so broad as it being 'innate'. However, it certainly is a part of our collective history and is not limited to any particular culture. Humanity isn't all butterflies and cupcakes, we've convincingly demonstrated that we can be a particularly vicious creature by modern western standards of morality.
This is not an appeal to nature. I'm not saying that we should encourage our baser instincts. We just shouldn't whitewash them as being merely social constructs.
They in large part are though and I think the dance you're doing is disingenuous.
Haha awesome. Time to scan through these and see if anything interesting comes up...while a lot of it will be smaller scope and it'll probably be harder to draw more general conclusions, we can still think about the "what if it had influence" or "does it based upon behaviors seen on a large scale."
i dont buy habaneros then complain that they aren't sweet enough. i buy sugar when i want something sweet.
trying to find some kind of egalitarianism in a product directed toward one gender is kind of silly.
edit: i think a good comparison would be romance fiction. consider the role of the males in such novels and consider whether they have (or should have) some kind of cultural impact or significance.
In badger2d's defense, I've also taken psychology classes and have read other materials on male vs. female sexuality, and pretty much everything he said seems accurate. Some of them are pretty obviously true even if you've never read anything on the subject.
Just because he didn't provide citations doesn't mean he's just making shit up.
Obviously true from what?
They sound like how female and male sexuality are stereotypically perceived by society to me, and I can think of many examples in my own experience that counteract those assertions. So if there's hard data to support them I'd love to see it.
You bug me. You learn this shit in Psych 100. There is a reason why a fucking Psych major says shit like that. Here is a citation for you:
Tested the hypothesis that evolutionary influences interact with socialization to produce sexual traits. In a survey of 388 12–28 yr olds, boys reported 1st arousal near the start of puberty, usually in response to a visual stimulus; girls reported 1st arousal at 2–3 yrs after puberty, in a social/romantic context. The modal boy reported arousal occurring several times daily, the modal girl once or twice a week. Boys reported their arousal as more discriminable, of greater intensity, and more distracting. Ss differed in attitudes related to sexual behavior except when reporting emotions and feelings coterminous with arousal. Retrospective samples of 262 students (aged 17–54 yrs) from West Coast colleges replicated the data. A survey of 280 East Coast undergraduates found that women's arousal was more partner-dependent than men's. Results supported the hypothesis. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)
Knoth, R., Boyd, K., & Singer, B. (1988). Empirical tests of sexual selection theory: Predictions of sex differences in onset, intensity, and time course of sexual arousal. Journal of Sex Research, 2473-89. doi:10.1080/00224498809551399
Go fuck yourself and use your brain. Your personal experience does not invalidate the field of psychology. God damnit.
You don't need to really understand any psychology to get why the hardware works the way it does for each gender. Think Darwin: who invests more energy into a child? why would that sex be less promiscuous? etc.
strakha_7 on
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But why is porn directed towards men and not women? Why does male sexuality take that form - a form based almost entirely on power over the woman, and satisfaction of one's ego?
I am of the opinion that worrisome porn is largely the symptom of whatever problem might exist in our culture's sexuality, but that it also reinforces it. Porn is a place where men can look at women as objects to be possessed, as entities without real autonomy or power of their own. Not all porn is like this, but the massive success of gonzo porn is disturbing.
That, and the reduction of women to body parts - how many times does the camera zoom in on a pair of balls slapping against a vagina? More importantly, why does this happen all the time - clearly a lot of men enjoy watching genitals slamming into each other! How many times does it stop and linger on a specific body part while the man or men describe and admire it?
Porn is not going to make a man go out and abuse a woman, or turn him into a rapist. That's not how it works. But the indulgence of potentially harmful sexual attitudes and norms can reinforce them. Some (many?) men become addicted to porn, because they prefer the artificial fantasy it has generated, and the indulgence thereof, to real interaction with another human being.
edit: evolutionary psychology has zero explanatory power. just because something "makes sense" and cannot be exposed to real and rigorous falsification doesn't make it true.
In badger2d's defense, I've also taken psychology classes and have read other materials on male vs. female sexuality, and pretty much everything he said seems accurate. Some of them are pretty obviously true even if you've never read anything on the subject.
Just because he didn't provide citations doesn't mean he's just making shit up.
Obviously true from what?
They sound like how female and male sexuality are stereotypically perceived by society to me, and I can think of many examples in my own experience that counteract those assertions. So if there's hard data to support them I'd love to see it.
You bug me. You learn this shit in Psych 100. There is a reason why a fucking Psych major says shit like that. Here is a citation for you:
Tested the hypothesis that evolutionary influences interact with socialization to produce sexual traits. In a survey of 388 12–28 yr olds, boys reported 1st arousal near the start of puberty, usually in response to a visual stimulus; girls reported 1st arousal at 2–3 yrs after puberty, in a social/romantic context. The modal boy reported arousal occurring several times daily, the modal girl once or twice a week. Boys reported their arousal as more discriminable, of greater intensity, and more distracting. Ss differed in attitudes related to sexual behavior except when reporting emotions and feelings coterminous with arousal. Retrospective samples of 262 students (aged 17–54 yrs) from West Coast colleges replicated the data. A survey of 280 East Coast undergraduates found that women's arousal was more partner-dependent than men's. Results supported the hypothesis. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)
Knoth, R., Boyd, K., & Singer, B. (1988). Empirical tests of sexual selection theory: Predictions of sex differences in onset, intensity, and time course of sexual arousal. Journal of Sex Research, 2473-89. doi:10.1080/00224498809551399
Go fuck yourself and use your brain. Your personal experience does not invalidate the field of psychology. God damnit.
You don't need to really understand any psychology to get why the hardware works the way it does for each gender. Think Darwin: who invests more energy into a child? why would that sex be less promiscuous? etc.
I'm not trying to invalidate the field of psychology I'm asking for actual real support for assertions that people are making. Why does that bug you so much?
"Evopsych" is an explanation for why things are the way they are. Love it or hate it, I use it as a means to simplify the thought process for you. I thought that, in the context of this forum, the reference would be appropriate.
Regardless, you doubted the veracity of the differences between the sexes. It is a scientific fact that men are more easily aroused with visual images than women. Pretty much the rest of that list is also scientific fact.
Scientific fact does *not* mean that we know why it is that way. It simply means that it is the way things are. I will say it again: evolutionary psychology is a means to explain the why. I don't give a fuck about the why, in this context. The fact is, that this is the way the world is. We can move on from the evopsych now.
strakha_7 on
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But why is porn directed towards men and not women? Why does male sexuality take that form - a form based almost entirely on power over the woman, and satisfaction of one's ego?
cause men are fucked in the head?
honestly, i have no idea. why do i like sugar? it tastes fucking great. why does it taste great? cause we evolved that way?
I am of the opinion that worrisome porn is largely the symptom of whatever problem might exist in our culture's sexuality, but that it also reinforces it. Porn is a place where men can look at women as objects to be possessed, as entities without real autonomy or power of their own. Not all porn is like this, but the massive success of gonzo porn is disturbing.
That, and the reduction of women to body parts - how many times does the camera zoom in on a pair of balls slapping against a vagina? More importantly, why does this happen all the time - clearly a lot of men enjoy watching genitals slamming into each other! How many times does it stop and linger on a specific body part while the man or men describe and admire it?
Porn is not going to make a man go out and abuse a woman, or turn him into a rapist. That's not how it works. But the indulgence of potentially harmful sexual attitudes and norms can reinforce them. Some (many?) men become addicted to porn, because they prefer the artificial fantasy it has generated, and the indulgence thereof, to real interaction with another human being.
edit: evolutionary psychology has zero explanatory power. just because something "makes sense" and cannot be exposed to real and rigorous falsification doesn't make it true.
i think porn only reinforces fucked up power structures in people who are already fucked in the head. normal people who watch porn dont think women are solely objects to be ejaculated upon.
i think the effect of porn on society is about as powerful as the effect of violent video games or movies on society. in other words, close to non-existent. some already fucked up people get further fucked up by it. most people just enjoy it for what it is. penis sugar.
But why is porn directed towards men and not women?
I'd say a big part of this is simply that a) historically, adult men have had more disposable income than adult women, and more importantly b) until a couple of decades ago - as hard as it probably is for some of the younger people among us to believe - it was kind of scandalous for a "good" woman or teenage girl to overtly express any sort of sexuality at all.
Thus, a few decades ago a respectable woman couldn't be seen buying porn, whereas porn for men in some form has been pretty widespread since the 19th century, the industry developed to accomodate the demands of male customers. This is also why the pulp-romance/literotica genre still exists whereas stuff like pulp science fiction or war stories have mostly died out (at least in print) - that was a socially acceptable way to get the erotica fix and thus the market persisted.
i think porn only reinforces fucked up power structures in people who are already fucked in the head. normal people who watch porn dont think women are solely objects to be ejaculated upon.
i think the effect of porn on society is about as powerful as the effect of violent video games or movies on society. in other words, close to non-existent. some already fucked up people get further fucked up by it. most people just enjoy it for what it is. penis sugar.
But why is porn directed towards men and not women?
I'd say a big part of this is simply that a) historically, adult men have had more disposable income than adult women, and more importantly b) until a couple of decades ago - as hard as it probably is for some of the younger people among us to believe - it was kind of scandalous for a "good" woman or teenage girl to overtly express any sort of sexuality at all.
Thus, a few decades ago a respectable woman couldn't be seen buying porn, whereas porn for men in some form has been pretty widespread since the 19th century, the industry developed to accomodate the demands of male customers. This is also why the pulp-romance/literotica genre still exists whereas stuff like pulp science fiction or war stories have mostly died out (at least in print) - that was a socially acceptable way to get the erotica fix and thus the market persisted.
Yes, I could see that being true for the US, but Europe for example is far more liberal when it comes to sexuality and porn.
Unfortunately, pornography on all levels, whether it be gonzo pornography to mainstream pornography never portrays an egalitarian view of sex, but instead focuses on male pleasure. Is she moaning because she is legitimately feeling pleasure – or is it for the satisfaction of the male audience? And what act is the moaning tied to?
Yes, she's usually moaning for the satisfaction of the male audience, and the act it's tied to is, again, usually just the satisfaction of the male audience.
I feel that there's something missing from your OP, which the snippet above comes closest to touching but still doesn't quite get there. Which is the fact that the vast majority of pornography is made for men, and not for any socially constructed sexist reason, but for entirely natural reasons in the ways men's and women's sexualities differ.
Consider the following truthful generalizations: men draw considerably more arousal from visuals than women do, men can become highly aroused in general much faster than women, men are more likely than women to become highly aroused even in the absence of an emotional sense of intimacy with a partner, men can physically stimulate themselves to orgasm more easily than women can, and on top of all that, men are much more likely to feel 'blueballs' than women ( couldn't think of any more scientific way to put that one) leading to the stronger desire for the easy-access no-strings-attached stimulation that porn provides.
Add all the above together, and you have excellent reasons for why men are much more likely to be interested in porn and hence why porn is much more likely to be oriented towards male pleasure, because that's the more lucrative audience.
None of this is meant to defend any specific presentation of porn, or to comment in any moralistic way at all on porn in general. Just that, the OP struck me as containing rather a bit of headscratching over why porn in general tends to cater to male pleasure, and I think the reasons for that are both obvious and natural.
Got some cites for those generalizations?
Cites were asked for, and one was provided covering most of these generalizations. A bad choice of explanation was used to make it easier to relate to. I wanted to make sure this stayed grounded in reality. The reality is that men and women are quite different. So It Goes was not aware of this.
Why things are the way they are is not very important to the porn debate. Men seek more "instant" gratification, women seek more partner-based gratification. My limited sample size of two tells me that women get more out of porn if they are made with their partner. But that's not a scientific study, that's personal experience.
Changing gears, I remember the song Stand by Jewel when it first came out and being confused by the sexual imagery coming through it. I'm somewhat relieved to now find that this was a normal reaction!
strakha_7 on
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I'm aware of it, I was curious if there was scientific fact that grounded those opinions or not. Mostly because there are many many people who will generalize like that based not on their experience with psychological studies but because of stereotypes and social constructs that are commonly portrayed in the media and in our culture.
FWIW, I absolutely cannot stand most modern-day pornography, certainly not porn videos. Maybe I'm old-fashioned, or a prude, or whatever, but gangbangs, facials, and whatever else porn feels the need to include these days has no appeal to me and I'm kind of amazed at how many people like it.
I remember finding my dad's old Playboys from the seventies back when I was like thirteen. Now that was much better. Nobody pissing on each other or spread-eagle shots like something from an OB/GYN training video, just attractive women posing naked. I really can't understand why that kind of thing has turned into a niche market. I remember reading in some magazine article about when Playboy first starting showing pubic hair - they apparently couldn't compete with Penthouse, who did show it. Things spiraled from there until you got ridiculous crap like Hustler.
And this is definitely having an effect on todays society. My gf worked as a lifeguard for several years and some of her coworkers were of roughly high school age, and apparently a lot of guys these days have grown up fully believing that facials are a totally standard part of the average person's sex life. It's really bizarre, and makes me kind of glad I didn't have as easy access to porno back in the 56k days.
FWIW, I absolutely cannot stand most modern-day pornography, certainly not porn videos. Maybe I'm old-fashioned, or a prude, or whatever, but gangbangs, facials, and whatever else porn feels the need to include these days has no appeal to me and I'm kind of amazed at how many people like it.
I remember finding my dad's old Playboys from the seventies back when I was like thirteen. Now that was much better. Nobody pissing on each other or spread-eagle shots like something from an OB/GYN training video, just attractive women posing naked. I really can't understand why that kind of thing has turned into a niche market. I remember reading in some magazine article about when Playboy first starting showing pubic hair - they apparently couldn't compete with Penthouse, who did show it. Things spiraled from there until you got ridiculous crap like Hustler.
And this is definitely having an effect on todays society. My gf worked as a lifeguard for several years and some of her coworkers were of roughly high school age, and apparently a lot of guys these days have grown up fully believing that facials are a totally standard part of the average person's sex life. It's really bizarre, and makes me kind of glad I didn't have as easy access to porno back in the 56k days.
OK this brings up something I'd like to know, which seems very important to this discussion. Do we have any real facts about what most pornography is like? I'm sure everyone posting here has seem some porn, but there's so much porn available that it's hard to generalize about it. I'm wondering if anyone has every tried to estimate what the porn market overall is really like- how much of is the really hardcore stuff, and how much of it is just pictures of naked women. My guess is that most of the stuff that's really degrading to women is only in a minority of porn, although it might be more prominent on internet sites.
My gf worked as a lifeguard for several years and some of her coworkers were of roughly high school age, and apparently a lot of guys these days have grown up fully believing that facials are a totally standard part of the average person's sex life. It's really bizarre, and makes me kind of glad I didn't have as easy access to porno back in the 56k days.
Wait.... they're not?!
... just kidding. All I could think of when I read that was this Dave Chappelle joke though:
OK this brings up something I'd like to know, which seems very important to this discussion. Do we have any real facts about what most pornography is like? I'm sure everyone posting here has seem some porn, but there's so much porn available that it's hard to generalize about it. I'm wondering if anyone has every tried to estimate what the porn market overall is really like- how much of is the really hardcore stuff, and how much of it is just pictures of naked women. My guess is that most of the stuff that's really degrading to women is only in a minority of porn, although it might be more prominent on internet sites.
That's actually a really good question. I suppose you could investigate stuff like DVD sales, website downloads and memberships, and probably a few other things.
I was under the impression that the general trend for the past few decades has been toward hardcore as opposed to softcore, but magazines like Maxim sell extremely well and that's about as soft-core as it can get and still be considered "porn" in anything but the most academic sense of the word.
I'm going to third or whatever the violent video games analogy. Most people can tell the difference between reality and fantasy and are fully capable of indulging fantasy through entertainment without having their world view warped.
@Duffel
The people most likely to have their views on sexuality shaped by porn are probably teenagers. The reason here seems to be more a failing of sexual education than anything else. I mean lets face it, the national approach to sex education is to pretend that sex doesn't exist. Teenagers have no experience and no real education about sex, so they try to fill in the gaps with porn. In essence, because they don't know (and nobody will tell them) what the reality of human sexuality is, they have no basis to discern fantasy from reality.
Why is so much porn geared towards male fantasies? Because there are a lot of men who like sex so much that they are willing to pay for simulated experiences.
Why isn't there more material directed towards women? Maybe because industry hasn't figured out what women are willing to pay for. Of course, there are some notableexamples.
Anyway this entire discussion calls to mind a certain blog worth reading as it gives a female perspective on the porn industry.
It would be rather nice if there were some actual numbers on porn at hand. There are very large amounts of porn that have little to no relation to the stereotype of modern-day porn. It's entirely possible that this is an example of the vocal minority issue, and not an actual representation of the industry as a whole.
I'd also like to see how much of the infamous sorts of porn is because everyone involved thinks that kind of sexuality is freaking hot and not just because they need to pay the bills. Gaspers and size queens do exist.
--
I can also add to the anecdote that there are women who specifically enjoy and request "facials" and similar things.
The people most likely to have their views on sexuality shaped by porn are probably teenagers. The reason here seems to be more a failing of sexual education than anything else. I mean lets face it, the national approach to sex education is to pretend that sex doesn't exist. Teenagers have no experience and no real education about sex, so they try to fill in the gaps with porn. In essence, because they don't know (and nobody will tell them) what the reality of human sexuality is, they have no basis to discern fantasy from reality.
Yeah, I think you pretty much hit the nail on the head here. The question, in my mind, is how much this is going to change sexual behavior in the future. I think most of us (20+ age, although I'm sure there's some younger people on the board) are probably the last group of people who grew up in an age where every single kind of sexual situation imaginable wasn't available to us with an internet connection and a mouse click.
As someone who really doesn't like the kind of sex in most porn (that I've seen), I really can't get too enthusiastic about that brave new world... but, then again, I'll presumably be having sex with people of my own generation anyway, so I guess it won't really matter to me personally.
It's still pretty strange to think about how this sort of environment will affect us say, three or four generations down the road.
OK this brings up something I'd like to know, which seems very important to this discussion. Do we have any real facts about what most pornography is like? I'm sure everyone posting here has seem some porn, but there's so much porn available that it's hard to generalize about it. I'm wondering if anyone has every tried to estimate what the porn market overall is really like- how much of is the really hardcore stuff, and how much of it is just pictures of naked women. My guess is that most of the stuff that's really degrading to women is only in a minority of porn, although it might be more prominent on internet sites.
I worked at a video store that did an extremely high volume of porn rentals and sales and all I can really say is that tranny porn does much better than you might suspect. Like, even with a cynical suspicion, it does about that good or better.
Overall, though, what I would consider "par for the course" would include anal and DPs, don't know how many people still consider that freaky, but anything besides partner sex or some combination of threesome sex would fall outside the typical renter's purview.
I can also say anecdotally, having watched numerous renters open an account and progress, the regular viewers start with the "tame" stuff and move towards more hardcore stuff the longer they rent. Read into that what you will.
The blog about being a porn clerk by Ali Davis was a little shocking in how identical our experiences were as porn clerks, even though she was writing from Illinois and I was working in California, which leads me to believe there's definitely a "type" that shows a proclivity for porn addiction. I highly encourage anyone who hasn't read it do so (just did a google search and it looks like she published it and it's no longer easily accessible on the web, but I'm sure it's out there somewhere).
This reminds of one time in a college class on the internet and society. One of the topics was unsurprisingly porn and the main paper was not only utter tripe, but representative of most attempts at these kinds of "studies".
I'm still kind of stupefied that someone actually got paid (or at least benefited from being published) for googling "rape porn", and then writing a paper about how the "rapist's eye" present in all these thousands of sites was turning people into rapists. The number of just straight up retarded assumptions that go into this is staggering:
1) That watching certain kinds of things can significantly influence your behavior. The closest anyone can come to actually supporting this with any evidence is those stupid things were they compare survey results before and after stimulus. Which is so far from proving anything it's not even funny.
2) The idea that just because they found some really big number sites for something online that must mean it's super popular. Hell, they didn't even bother to attempt a comparison to how many other none-rape porn sites they could find, they just threw out some big number and went "SHOCKING!"
The only useful fact they managed to dredge up as far as I could tell was that apparently the rape porn scene has some disturbing racial undertones.
HamHamJ on
While racing light mechs, your Urbanmech comes in second place, but only because it ran out of ammo.
something that has always had me wonder is, as a percentage of consumers (so i guess 'per capita' is the framework i seek), who seeks what breakdown of interracial porn
like, black dicks white chicks
my gut instinct would say that sort of porn is primarily sought out by black dudes and white ladies
BTW, here's an article about differences in sexual arousal from visual stimuli between men and women. It's low-jargon and a little funny, in that dry math teacher sort of way.
The short of it: even when women report on a numeric scale that they're sexually aroused by an image, the brain still shows less activity in comparison to when they report no sexual arousal. In men, the effect is more pronounced.
BTW, the effect seems to have a huge social component. I can't find a free-text article that demonstrates exactly why, but the short of it is that the intensity of stimulation moderately correlates to social & cultural factors (especially in women) including religion, education level, and reported attitudes towards sex. I did find an abstract that briefly mentions this: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17668311
I'm sure I could find more, because IIRC this has been very well corroborated. Appeals above to Darwin and evolution need to take a skepticism pill.
Also, I wish this article were free because it was a big deal when it was published. http://pss.sagepub.com/content/15/11/736 - Basically, heterosexual women respond well to erotic images of couples and of either gender, but men respond best to erotic images of women.
Feral on
every person who doesn't like an acquired taste always seems to think everyone who likes it is faking it. it should be an official fallacy.
The videos are very interesting. I was kind of surprised by the last one. I didn't know about the lunch meat thing. Kind of wish I didn't.
commercial male heterosexual pornographic imagination
It's kind of an interesting concept I guess. I've always assumed that there were things out there targeted at women, but I guess there aren't. In this world the only way to get it is through your wallet, and that's the only way things will change mainstream or otherwise. People are making too much money for it to be any other way.
something that has always had me wonder is, as a percentage of consumers (so i guess 'per capita' is the framework i seek), who seeks what breakdown of interracial porn
like, black dicks white chicks
my gut instinct would say that sort of porn is primarily sought out by black dudes and white ladies
or, white dicks, black chicks
where i'd assume the inverse
but maybe not!
i think that's very interesting
If the article that Green Eyed Monster mentioned is the one I'm thinking of, one of the stories was about a seemingly quite racist video of black monster dicks abusing innocent white women, and she says that it was rented quite often by all sorts of people.
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I think you probably would need to look at the content vs. production. Like, someone can be a total asshole and murder people on a regular basis and write a book completely extolling the virtues of peace. Just because the other is an ass and completely hypocritical to the content he has produced doesn't mean the work suddenly adopts those traits.
But in the case of God's Girls, the website could have all this wonderful content, but if the guy is an exploitative jerk behind the scenes are your consuming it, you're really supporting his lifestyle and behavior which I think is a notch in the negativity zone. Walmart produces low low prices, but at what cost?
I think as long as the viewer is informed in some way that the players are all equally in control of the situation and have equal "consent" to what's happening, even if they are portraying a helpless role or a dominating role, that could be considered non misogynist.
But that's not a very satisfactory answer.
I wish my grandmother was still alive.
She'd be a good resource haha. But still an interesting idea you've brought up here...
Yeah...I think what you're hinting at is education.
I hate violence...don't really enjoy it and have let myself take a beating before throwing a punch even though in those instances I was capable of defending myself. But I play God of War (which by the way, I still think was over-the-top and pretty bad story-wise) but in that instance I'm consuming media that portrays a character going against my values, but because I'm educated, I can piece it apart and understand that.
Same thing would apply to Pornography I figure...Like, you enjoy bondage and you are a man - that doesn't inherently make you misogynistic as long as you understand the power-play and don't legitimately think men are superior to women in some fashion and that women are subservient to men (this is an extreme example, usually feelings about women in our society are a little more subtle). But I figure that if you enjoy bondage you probably like the dom/sub aspect of it and could really go for either role.
*edit*
Anyway - does anyone have modern analysis on pornography or stuff that they recommend?
I did not and would not go so far as to make a positive claim on something so broad as it being 'innate'. However, it certainly is a part of our collective history and is not limited to any particular culture. Humanity isn't all butterflies and cupcakes, we've convincingly demonstrated that we can be a particularly vicious creature by modern western standards of morality.
This is not an appeal to nature. I'm not saying that we should encourage our baser instincts. We just shouldn't whitewash them as being merely social constructs.
They in large part are though and I think the dance you're doing is disingenuous.
http://www.readersread.com/excerpts/romance.htm
Haha awesome. Time to scan through these and see if anything interesting comes up...while a lot of it will be smaller scope and it'll probably be harder to draw more general conclusions, we can still think about the "what if it had influence" or "does it based upon behaviors seen on a large scale."
i dont buy habaneros then complain that they aren't sweet enough. i buy sugar when i want something sweet.
trying to find some kind of egalitarianism in a product directed toward one gender is kind of silly.
edit: i think a good comparison would be romance fiction. consider the role of the males in such novels and consider whether they have (or should have) some kind of cultural impact or significance.
You bug me. You learn this shit in Psych 100. There is a reason why a fucking Psych major says shit like that. Here is a citation for you:
Knoth, R., Boyd, K., & Singer, B. (1988). Empirical tests of sexual selection theory: Predictions of sex differences in onset, intensity, and time course of sexual arousal. Journal of Sex Research, 2473-89. doi:10.1080/00224498809551399
Go fuck yourself and use your brain. Your personal experience does not invalidate the field of psychology. God damnit.
You don't need to really understand any psychology to get why the hardware works the way it does for each gender. Think Darwin: who invests more energy into a child? why would that sex be less promiscuous? etc.
I am of the opinion that worrisome porn is largely the symptom of whatever problem might exist in our culture's sexuality, but that it also reinforces it. Porn is a place where men can look at women as objects to be possessed, as entities without real autonomy or power of their own. Not all porn is like this, but the massive success of gonzo porn is disturbing.
That, and the reduction of women to body parts - how many times does the camera zoom in on a pair of balls slapping against a vagina? More importantly, why does this happen all the time - clearly a lot of men enjoy watching genitals slamming into each other! How many times does it stop and linger on a specific body part while the man or men describe and admire it?
Porn is not going to make a man go out and abuse a woman, or turn him into a rapist. That's not how it works. But the indulgence of potentially harmful sexual attitudes and norms can reinforce them. Some (many?) men become addicted to porn, because they prefer the artificial fantasy it has generated, and the indulgence thereof, to real interaction with another human being.
edit: evolutionary psychology has zero explanatory power. just because something "makes sense" and cannot be exposed to real and rigorous falsification doesn't make it true.
I'm not trying to invalidate the field of psychology I'm asking for actual real support for assertions that people are making. Why does that bug you so much?
"Evopsych" is an explanation for why things are the way they are. Love it or hate it, I use it as a means to simplify the thought process for you. I thought that, in the context of this forum, the reference would be appropriate.
Regardless, you doubted the veracity of the differences between the sexes. It is a scientific fact that men are more easily aroused with visual images than women. Pretty much the rest of that list is also scientific fact.
Scientific fact does *not* mean that we know why it is that way. It simply means that it is the way things are. I will say it again: evolutionary psychology is a means to explain the why. I don't give a fuck about the why, in this context. The fact is, that this is the way the world is. We can move on from the evopsych now.
that would be silly.
the argument is, as you say, about why.
cause men are fucked in the head?
honestly, i have no idea. why do i like sugar? it tastes fucking great. why does it taste great? cause we evolved that way?
i think porn only reinforces fucked up power structures in people who are already fucked in the head. normal people who watch porn dont think women are solely objects to be ejaculated upon.
i think the effect of porn on society is about as powerful as the effect of violent video games or movies on society. in other words, close to non-existent. some already fucked up people get further fucked up by it. most people just enjoy it for what it is. penis sugar.
Thus, a few decades ago a respectable woman couldn't be seen buying porn, whereas porn for men in some form has been pretty widespread since the 19th century, the industry developed to accomodate the demands of male customers. This is also why the pulp-romance/literotica genre still exists whereas stuff like pulp science fiction or war stories have mostly died out (at least in print) - that was a socially acceptable way to get the erotica fix and thus the market persisted.
This, pretty much.
Yes, I could see that being true for the US, but Europe for example is far more liberal when it comes to sexuality and porn.
That was not very clear to me from reading this post:
Cites were asked for, and one was provided covering most of these generalizations. A bad choice of explanation was used to make it easier to relate to. I wanted to make sure this stayed grounded in reality. The reality is that men and women are quite different. So It Goes was not aware of this.
Why things are the way they are is not very important to the porn debate. Men seek more "instant" gratification, women seek more partner-based gratification. My limited sample size of two tells me that women get more out of porn if they are made with their partner. But that's not a scientific study, that's personal experience.
Changing gears, I remember the song Stand by Jewel when it first came out and being confused by the sexual imagery coming through it. I'm somewhat relieved to now find that this was a normal reaction!
I remember finding my dad's old Playboys from the seventies back when I was like thirteen. Now that was much better. Nobody pissing on each other or spread-eagle shots like something from an OB/GYN training video, just attractive women posing naked. I really can't understand why that kind of thing has turned into a niche market. I remember reading in some magazine article about when Playboy first starting showing pubic hair - they apparently couldn't compete with Penthouse, who did show it. Things spiraled from there until you got ridiculous crap like Hustler.
And this is definitely having an effect on todays society. My gf worked as a lifeguard for several years and some of her coworkers were of roughly high school age, and apparently a lot of guys these days have grown up fully believing that facials are a totally standard part of the average person's sex life. It's really bizarre, and makes me kind of glad I didn't have as easy access to porno back in the 56k days.
OK this brings up something I'd like to know, which seems very important to this discussion. Do we have any real facts about what most pornography is like? I'm sure everyone posting here has seem some porn, but there's so much porn available that it's hard to generalize about it. I'm wondering if anyone has every tried to estimate what the porn market overall is really like- how much of is the really hardcore stuff, and how much of it is just pictures of naked women. My guess is that most of the stuff that's really degrading to women is only in a minority of porn, although it might be more prominent on internet sites.
Wait.... they're not?!
... just kidding. All I could think of when I read that was this Dave Chappelle joke though:
I was under the impression that the general trend for the past few decades has been toward hardcore as opposed to softcore, but magazines like Maxim sell extremely well and that's about as soft-core as it can get and still be considered "porn" in anything but the most academic sense of the word.
now i'm not talking about whether that's natural or how much that's porn or whatever whatever
but my totally insignificant anecdotal experience says it's not a fringe sexual activity
@Duffel
The people most likely to have their views on sexuality shaped by porn are probably teenagers. The reason here seems to be more a failing of sexual education than anything else. I mean lets face it, the national approach to sex education is to pretend that sex doesn't exist. Teenagers have no experience and no real education about sex, so they try to fill in the gaps with porn. In essence, because they don't know (and nobody will tell them) what the reality of human sexuality is, they have no basis to discern fantasy from reality.
Why is so much porn geared towards male fantasies? Because there are a lot of men who like sex so much that they are willing to pay for simulated experiences.
Why isn't there more material directed towards women? Maybe because industry hasn't figured out what women are willing to pay for. Of course, there are some notable examples.
Anyway this entire discussion calls to mind a certain blog worth reading as it gives a female perspective on the porn industry.
I'd also like to see how much of the infamous sorts of porn is because everyone involved thinks that kind of sexuality is freaking hot and not just because they need to pay the bills. Gaspers and size queens do exist.
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I can also add to the anecdote that there are women who specifically enjoy and request "facials" and similar things.
Yeah, I think you pretty much hit the nail on the head here. The question, in my mind, is how much this is going to change sexual behavior in the future. I think most of us (20+ age, although I'm sure there's some younger people on the board) are probably the last group of people who grew up in an age where every single kind of sexual situation imaginable wasn't available to us with an internet connection and a mouse click.
As someone who really doesn't like the kind of sex in most porn (that I've seen), I really can't get too enthusiastic about that brave new world... but, then again, I'll presumably be having sex with people of my own generation anyway, so I guess it won't really matter to me personally.
It's still pretty strange to think about how this sort of environment will affect us say, three or four generations down the road.
Overall, though, what I would consider "par for the course" would include anal and DPs, don't know how many people still consider that freaky, but anything besides partner sex or some combination of threesome sex would fall outside the typical renter's purview.
I can also say anecdotally, having watched numerous renters open an account and progress, the regular viewers start with the "tame" stuff and move towards more hardcore stuff the longer they rent. Read into that what you will.
The blog about being a porn clerk by Ali Davis was a little shocking in how identical our experiences were as porn clerks, even though she was writing from Illinois and I was working in California, which leads me to believe there's definitely a "type" that shows a proclivity for porn addiction. I highly encourage anyone who hasn't read it do so (just did a google search and it looks like she published it and it's no longer easily accessible on the web, but I'm sure it's out there somewhere).
I'm still kind of stupefied that someone actually got paid (or at least benefited from being published) for googling "rape porn", and then writing a paper about how the "rapist's eye" present in all these thousands of sites was turning people into rapists. The number of just straight up retarded assumptions that go into this is staggering:
1) That watching certain kinds of things can significantly influence your behavior. The closest anyone can come to actually supporting this with any evidence is those stupid things were they compare survey results before and after stimulus. Which is so far from proving anything it's not even funny.
2) The idea that just because they found some really big number sites for something online that must mean it's super popular. Hell, they didn't even bother to attempt a comparison to how many other none-rape porn sites they could find, they just threw out some big number and went "SHOCKING!"
The only useful fact they managed to dredge up as far as I could tell was that apparently the rape porn scene has some disturbing racial undertones.
like, black dicks white chicks
my gut instinct would say that sort of porn is primarily sought out by black dudes and white ladies
or, white dicks, black chicks
where i'd assume the inverse
but maybe not!
i think that's very interesting
http://web.mit.edu/gabrieli-lab/Publications/2004/Canli.NatureNeurosci.2004.pdf
The short of it: even when women report on a numeric scale that they're sexually aroused by an image, the brain still shows less activity in comparison to when they report no sexual arousal. In men, the effect is more pronounced.
BTW, the effect seems to have a huge social component. I can't find a free-text article that demonstrates exactly why, but the short of it is that the intensity of stimulation moderately correlates to social & cultural factors (especially in women) including religion, education level, and reported attitudes towards sex. I did find an abstract that briefly mentions this: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17668311
I'm sure I could find more, because IIRC this has been very well corroborated. Appeals above to Darwin and evolution need to take a skepticism pill.
Also, I wish this article were free because it was a big deal when it was published. http://pss.sagepub.com/content/15/11/736 - Basically, heterosexual women respond well to erotic images of couples and of either gender, but men respond best to erotic images of women.
the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
commercial male heterosexual pornographic imagination
It's kind of an interesting concept I guess. I've always assumed that there were things out there targeted at women, but I guess there aren't. In this world the only way to get it is through your wallet, and that's the only way things will change mainstream or otherwise. People are making too much money for it to be any other way.
This really needs to be a band.
EDIT: Preferably a riot grrl band.
If the article that Green Eyed Monster mentioned is the one I'm thinking of, one of the stories was about a seemingly quite racist video of black monster dicks abusing innocent white women, and she says that it was rented quite often by all sorts of people.