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The attempt to conjure pity for out of work pornographers doesn't wash. Credit: Alain Pitton/NurPhoto via Getty Images
Whenever I agree to write about porn, it’s followed by an immediate plummeting of my soul: oh God, I’m going to have to look at PornHub now. PornHub is the second biggest website in the world for adult content by traffic, but in terms of public profile, it’s far and away the leader. And PornHub is horrible. For example, I just checked in on the homepage and was greeted by multiple clips promising mini-versions of Flowers in the Attic. Ugh. Why am I here? Oh yes, to find out if PornHub will let me search for racist porn.
Not that I really have to search. In the homepage thumbnails, everyone is white, unless their race can be sold as a kink. Japanese wife. Chocolate. In the sidebar, I can click on the category “interracial”, because this is 2020 and apparently two people of different skin tones getting down is still as niche an interest as “babysitter” or “smoking”. “Female orgasm” is also a category, for that subset of men who are interested in whether a woman actually enjoys it. Have I mentioned, I hate PornHub.
But I am a brave journalist, so I press on. (Is this sex? Do people like this? Are women people? No, we are sluts and milfs and bitches, according to PornHub.) Will PornHub let me search for racist porn? Spoiler: it will. I put the word “racist” in the search bar, and am served multiple videos, all of which are definitely racist.
Some of them, though, have a veneer of woke, which is very heartwarming. I search for Black Lives Matter: I get a video tagged “black cocks matter”, and one “ebony slut”. All this should be a surprise, because PornHub was recently vaunting its progressive credentials. “Pornhub stands in solidarity against racism and social injustice”, the company tweeted, along with links to Black Lives Matter-adjacent campaigns that followers could support. It’s not a surprise, though, because PornHub is horrible.
If I wanted to be chippy, I would call this a perfect example of the indulgence model of modern liberal mores. Pay your tithe to the bail fund as directed, get back to whacking off over racism with your conscience salved. But actually, I would probably be being both chippy and incorrect, because does anyone really feel bad about their porn? The generally agreed position is that porn exists somewhere outside morality. Things which, at a tenth of the strength, would be instant cancellation offences in any other medium are granted licence in porn because someone, somewhere got an erection from them.
The porn industry’s success in positioning itself beyond petty questions of good and bad is one of the great marketing triumphs of modern times. If it feels good, watch it. Heck, watch it at work if you want to. Here, I run into some tricky terrain, because what happens in the dark between our own heads and hands is really no one’s concern but our own, and if you want to think about that particular woman bent OTK in a lace chemise then what does it have at all to do with me. Hectoring our fantasies seems a spectacularly fruitless endeavour.
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SubscribeReminds me of a Meme which appeared on Facebook, a child watching the riots asks his father, is there a place where everyone is equal and no one is judged by their skin colour dad?, yes son he replies, it’s called Pornhub.
Excellent article. It is a vile, corrosive, degrading and dehumanising industry and very harmful for society in general and women and young people in particular.
I’ll go you one better: it’s also destroying the potential for healthy sexuality in boys. The number of boys who are starting to watch porn before the age of ten has led to an enormous number of boys under 20 who are so dysfunctional from chronic masturbation to increasingly disturbing images that having actual, real life sex, is no longer a possibility.
Support groups for men and boys are growing in numbers. They are renouncing porn to try to find their way back.
It’s a very shitty situation when kids are no longer able to enjoy those hallmark moments of the first crush, the first kiss, the first romance, and of course the first time they have sex. That’s all gone.
Now they are masturbating furiously to some of the most fucked up themes we can imagine, because the more you do it, the more you need to search for things so outrageous that we can hardly call this sexual anymore. It is now officially chronic self abuse, done to the real life abuse of another human being who was very likely trafficked.
But as she said, don’t let reality get in the way of a w**k. Just pretend it’s all fake.
But it’s not.
One day I’d like to read an article that tries to show the industry in a nuanced light. Not necessarily a good light, mind, but one that acknowledges that alot of people work for it.
I’m guessing Sarah Diton did not go on gay-only sites then.
They make her grievances look like kindergarten.
(a friend told me this btw)
I hadn’t thought of that.
And just to add an extra twist to that one – gay Male porn is one of the most popular forms of porn … with women!
Great article from Sarah, thank you. (You won’t be reading this as I’m sure you’re too sensible to read the comments.)
IMHO the issue is that women’s sense of commitment to liberality kicks in and the majority simply cannot bring themselves to condemn something ostensibly done “in private”. They know porn is social cancer but have to limit criticism to working conditions, so if a woman consents and is well-paid and happily employed being slapped and pissed on, there’s no liberal basis for objection. Because whilst it’s all stuff like “solidarity”, thick-rimmed specs and spotty head cloths, feminism is cool. But heaven forbid you end up like sexless Mary Whitehouse – Ew, the worst, right?!
We need more “joyless feminists” like Ms Ditum willing to call degradation out for what it is.
“…to find out if PornHub will let me search for racist porn.”
Mindset in a nutshell.
I just googled racist and got “no results” found.
The internet has enabled addictive behavior. Pornography in moderation like anything human is a curiosity, exciting. When it becomes an OCD behavior we cross an invisible line whereupon it defines us.
A noticeable absence of a female response here.
I am so tired of the predictable and rather lame response of so many men who can’t stand the thought that a global industry that has commodified sex and is now grinding up human hearts and bodies and causes so much actual suffering, trafficking, and outright slavery, is somehow something to defend.
Is wanking that sacred?
And honestly, the same men who take issue with a woman writing about it and demanding proof, are really in willful denial.
I will post a fun animated video on how porn affects your brain here. I know how most men won’t watch it because you don’t want proof, you want to be right. But, wanting to is not being.
https://www.youtube.com/wat…
There is no question of canceling porn because consumption of porn is utterly universal (Lajeunesse). In that sense the situation is similar (except in that porn itself is not known to cause harm) to that of alcohol, a demonstrably destructive social force that is simply too popular to be banned (we know; we tried it!)
The real issue that could actually be addressed by public policy is one of workers’ safety and workers’ rights, which in the US rank very low on the scale of public concern.
This is the case with sex work generally – the right people make money off it, and the people who get hurt and exploited (women mostly) are of no great concern to anybody except the evil Left. Things will go on as they are until American values are updated to include sex workers as people. I’m not holding my breath.
Would you not think that massive rates of erectile dysfunction among young men, and about 1/3 of women 18-35 have experienced unwanted slapping choking strangling spitting during sex is harmful???
The ED thing… I know of absolutely no evidence that prevalence of porn is related to ED rates in young men. Happy to see some.
On the slapping/choking thing, I do indeed think those things are harmful! I would like to see laws against porn depicting choking enforced, along with laws against choking your sex partner against their will. In general these are preferences of the political Left, especially the second one.
I must be misreading your post. Are you saying that ” choking your sex partner against their will” is a preference of the political left? I never knew.
Alison, you don’t provide a link, but it sounds like a gloss on a Guardian article. The erectile dysfunction claim is highly dubious, and has been refuted. One should always question claims like this from those already ideologically opposed to porn.
“Our study, and now two others, have found there is no relationship between the amount of sex films men view and erectile functioning with their partner,” says Nicole Prause, PhD, a sexual psychophysiologist and licensed psychologist at the Sexual Psychophysiology and Affective Neuroscience Laboratory. Her research with Jim Pfaus, PhD, IF, was published in Sexual Medicine and was the first peer-reviewed study of this topic.
“In one case, the study found stronger sexual arousal in men who reported viewing more sex films at home,” she adds.
Only those men who were conservative and in relationships had any relationship between sex film viewing and erectile functioning.
“Taken together, this means that sex films do not contribute to erectile dysfunction,” Prause notes. “However, those whose personal values contradict with viewing sex films may be experiencing general shame around sex that also influences their erectile functioning.”
https://www.healthline.com/…
Just as an afterthought: claims have been made that female sex toys, such as vibrators, reduce clitoral sensitivity, and make it harder for women to achieve orgasm during “normal sex”. If true (I’m sceptical), would you see this as a justification for making female sex toys illegal?
Not intrinsically.
Something that’s a massive turn off for myself, but a good number of women (all within 18-35 as it happens) have asked for or delight in most of the above.
Anecdotal, perhaps, but if you think this is just a men/porn thing, members of your fellow sex might surprise you.
It comes down to being respectful and being emotionally intelligent enough to know when somethings appropriate or not. But that is really not always that easy and you can see how someone might get it very wrong with no ill intent.
“if you think this is just a men/porn thing, members of your fellow sex might surprise you.”
I think this one of the key problems in this debate. A small group of women (and some men) seem to think that they know how all women feel about sex and sexuality – but they just don’t. They know about their own – and even that in a perhaps not very insightful way.
Men learn about female sexuality by being surprised by it, and finding that it is something far wilder and more varied than they had been led to believe.
Fifty shades of grey is the tip of the iceberg. And increasingly the complaint about men is not that they expect too much, but that they are unadventurous and frankly boring.
And why is that caused by porn?
Are you speaking from experience or hearsay ?
I think this is a good point – even if society decides porn is bad (correctly), its widespread popularity and use make any sort of “prohibition” incredibly difficult.
However, I think people overestimate the danger of “pushing things underground”. I strongly suspect the vast majority of porn users – normal men – wouldn’t go to illegal lengths or start using prostitutes if they didn’t have the same free, easy access to porn. They’d just make do with the most erotic material available to them.
This is why cancelling “Page 3″ is such an odd victory. Such progress that we’ve stopped blokes looking at tits in a newspaper… but they’re watching sad-eyes Russian teenagers get “brutally face-fucked” instead.
Good article, if awfully depressing. To all those saying below that ‘everyone’ uses porn, that’s inaccurate. I never have. Anyone with any imagination can enjoy their own fantasies without having to pay some sleazeball to exploit losers to provide them.
I’m sure most men who believe their desire for porn trumps human rights will cry out that these is a lie, the UN lies, and all organizations tracking, fighting, and proving this is happening are really lying.
Please. Stop. You sound as insane as all the men screaming “It IS a woman’s d**k, because I am a REAL laydee (which is usually followed by “so choke on my lady d**k you b***h-something a real woman would never say).
You doth protest too much. I know that you know that it is all about a game to preserve the increasing abuse of women, and girls, and also boys. Because men want to believe their d**k is the most important and sacred thing in the universe.
It’s not.
So here are some statistics. I want you to try hard to take one second to remember that the porn you are wanking to so you can blort your goo is often the result of trafficking, real rape, and real life abuse.
And honestly, if i could, I would wish upon each of you to suffer the same fate as every person abused in the porn you watch. Fair is fair. If you watch it happen to someone else and revel in it, we should be able to watch it happen to you. Right?
https://www.enough.org/stat…
Pornography is the product of the progressive worldview that sex is principally for the pursuit of personal pleasure. As long as this destructive error in reasoning persists then pornography will flourish along with the slavery, rape, coercion and abuse of women that accompanies it.
Why doesn’t porn ever get cancelled? Perhaps it’s because women enjoy it as much as men (see the most recent research) , in spite of your sexist, gendered commentary, in which you assume that only men are consumers.
In fact, a good case can be made that women consume pornography (from the Greek “writing about prostitutes) more than men, when you include “romance” novels, really soft-core porn, in the definition. The research actually shows that women become just as aroused as men, and in fact, become aroused by depictions of bonobo copulating, a visual that men don’t find titilating at all.
Years ago there was a split within feminism between sex-positive (read “male-friendly) and censorious feminists over this issue. The sex-positive group won over the Victorian-lite censors because porn viewing by women is feminism’s dirty little secret.
At least it was until 50 Shades made porn fashionable among soccer mom’s. Then suddenly porn was about female “empowerment”, and therefore “woke”. Unable to spin this in a way that made men the villains, censorious feminists left the field to those who hand out dildos at frosh week as a sign of female liberation.
From that position, it becomes difficult for feminists, regardless of their hypocrisy in other areas, to protest porn when their own hands are so busy seeking self-gratification, because as we all know, a woman needs a man like a fish needs a bicycle- especially when pornhub is so handy.
And by the way Sarah, no one is forcing you to write about pornography or to view pornhub. And yet…
Yep, women enjoy seeing other women spat on, having their heads pushed down toilets, having their eyes ejaculated in and being pursued to accept a**l penetration despite the pain it causes them. A bit of social research told me.
You know you’re welcome to use your brain any time you feel like it?
Very little of pornhub is like that, though.
Criticism about porn is not sex negative I would argue it’s the opposite
I have worked with women abused in the industry and 13 year olds addicted to it who are assaulting other 13 year old and many more horrible things
It needs to be criticized
It’s not as simply as just don’t look at it when the drug is free and children and addicts have super easy access.
So to protest against exploitation makes you just another exploiter keen to get a cheap thrill. Just like denying you’re racist makes you a racist. Great example of the hole-in-one, heads-I-win-tails-you-lose argument that dishonest people use when they don’t want their tactics looked at too carefully.
Yes, women watch porn. Just want to make the point that 50 Shades is looked on as supremely badly written and laughable porn by countless thinking women and many of them I am sure are soccer mom’s.
Christianity is a Semitic religion and carries with it all the usual sexual neuroses associated with a religion spawned in the desert. First is the absolute horror of nudity, followed by the systemic practice of misogyny, the terror of ‘botty banditry’ and many other phobias too numerous to mention.
In the Classical World, the world of Greece and Rome nobody seems to have a given a fig about any of these. They spent much of their lives “gymnos”-naked. The great sporting events, the Olympic and other major Games for example, were, with the exception of one event, performed naked. Gay or straight, all were equal under the law, and finally they hardly ever performed human sacrifice, unlike off course, Christianity, Judaism and Islam.
Should an Ancient Greek or Roman have had the misfortune to be ‘catapulted’ into the 21st century, they would be astonished at our primitive behaviour and the barbarism it has engendered.
Please provide examples of Christians, Jews and Muslims performing human sacrifices
Human sacrifice, as practiced by the three Semitic religions was driven by the horror of Blasphemy, Heresy, Apostasy and Infidelity.
To be rude about, or even query God’s divinity and other supposed powers, was a Capital crime, to be punished with the utmost savagery.
For both Jews and Christians, the start is ‘Leviticus 24 : 13-16, together with other tracts both from the Torah and the Talmud. For Islam, Sharia Law is the handbook.
“Stone the Blasphemer!” was the cry, and in some parts of Islam still is.
Due to the possible shortage of adequate stones, burning alive seems to have later become the preferred method of execution, no doubt because it also brought a greater sense of ‘theatre’ to the whole occasion.
So for centuries, Europe to take but one example, reeked of barbecued human flesh, as thousands perished in various ‘Crusades’, ‘Witch Hunts’ and Heresy Purges. The Auto- da -Fe (Act of Faith!) of the Spanish Inquisition were particularly memorable, but there were a plethora of other examples, too numerous to mention here.
The last execution (hanged) for Blasphemy in the U.K. was performed in Scotland, as recently as1697, whilst in Spain the last Heretic was (mercifully) garrotted in 1826.
However to end on a cheerful note, who can forget that splendid scene from “The Life of Brian”, when ‘Deuteronomy of Gath’ is executed by stoning? And, horror of horrors (bearded) women were present!
What you are describing is people killing others in the name of religion. Not a good thing, but not the same as human sacrifice, which is ritual killing to propitiate a god or gods. We all know that people like killing other people, and religion provides as good an excuse as any other. What Christianity does not do (unlike your romanticised Greeks and Romans) is condone human sacrifice.
Weasel words I’m afraid. All were ‘sacrificed’ to appease a brutal, vindictive god. In the case of Judaism and Christianity the Bible fairly reeks of this poison almost from the start.
However we shall just have to agree to disagree on this matter.
The Christian God – as described in scripture and theology – is loving and forgiving, not brutal or vindictive. I fully accept that people calling themselves Christian have often been brutal and vindictive, but they’ve never practiced human sacrifice, as I think your inverted commas now acknowledge. It’s really not a question of agreeing or disagreeing, just one of avoiding loose inflammatory language and trying to get the facts right!
Oh dear, not only rude and impatient, but persistent to boot.
Try reading your bible, and then you will “get the facts right”. Perhaps.
Your silly denials had added foolishness to your other shortcomings. You may prefer murder, but I,sacrifice, live with it.
I’ll leave it others to decide who’s being rude, but I plead guilty to being persistent, because you can’t get away with restating untruths without evidence. The suggestion that Jews have carried out human sacrifice is particularly obnoxious; it’s the so-called blood libel, as old as the hills and completely without foundation. These are volatile times, when careless talk can literally cost lives – you should think more carefully before making such statements.
I was taught “never to mock the afflicted “, however, in your case I shall make an exception.
I have already given you the biblical reference for sacrificing the blasphemer, and numerous other examples, yet you persist in splitting hairs preferring to call it murder, not sacrifice. Was not Christ sacrificed to appease the Sanhedrin and Pharisees?
As to ineptly trying to equate this the “blood libel” myth, that is simply ludicrous.
Finally, is your last paragraph a thinly veiled threat? It certainly reads like one. If so, you have laughably revealed yourself to be the demented bigot, I suspected from the start of this conversation, and also illustrated why historically christianity was so keen on sacrificing Heretics and others.
I think you need a course in self-awareness
Answer the question you insolent toad, is your final sentence a threat
or not? Think very carefully about it.
None of these listed are examples of human sacrifice as part of the liturgy of either Islam, Christianity or Judaism. Actual human sacrifice was. however, part of the rituals of pre Abrahamic religions. That is, humans were killed to appease the Gods.
Thousands perishing in crusades (at least you didn’t exaggerate because it certainly wasn’t millions) or people being hanged isn’t “human sacrifice” as part of a religious ritual either. The inquisition is largely exaggerated.
You might as well say that the enlightenment or Britain were built on human sacrifice because of Hiroshima or Dresden (or your desire for killing millions In China).
The difference between your British nationalism and wokeness is slight on religion and Christianity.
Andrew Derrick and I, both ‘devout sceptics’ had a brief discussion on this subject a month ago. We begged to differ, although really I think we were not talking about religion, but rather semantics.
However what was Leviticus 24:13-16 all about? My point is people were killed in the name of religion, for being blasphemers, heretics, or even disbelievers. Do you seriously challenge that?
The liturgy is an irrelevance, what matters is the homicidal thought process that demands death for unorthodox behaviour.
Thank you for condescending remark about the Crusades, coupled with the nonsensical remark about the enlightenment and “Hiroshima or Dresden”.
Your Parthian shot, the final paragraph was also rather vulgar don’t you think? May I hazard a guess that you are from the Emerald Isle, and thus have a slight problem with everything English? My apologies if this incorrect. “Manners maketh man”, as the good Bishop said.
Not from Ireland, no. But of partly Irish descent. I’m just replying in fashion, mark. You often describe posts as woke. Yet to me hostility to Christianity and the crusades is very similar to woke indeed. And I’m not a believer.
Hostility to the religious past and hostility to the past in general have the same attribute: they uproot us from our past.
Although there are known examples from ancient Rome, and possibly from Greece
I think something can be said for the Greeks, but the Romans? Astonished at our primitive behavior? I guess, if not feeding people to the lions and not watching slaves fight each other to the death are considered the height of barbarism.
“Something can be said for the Greeks”,
Is that how you describe the second greatest people ever to walk the face of this miserable planet?
The Greeks/Hellenes produced the basic matrix for what is the now the Western World! Wake up!
The Romans ‘clambering on the shoulders of the Greek giant’ brought something unique to the party, the ‘Pax Romana’, an incredible period of centuries of Peace throughout the Roman World.
The problem off course, was that testosterone filled men, deprived of the traditional outlet, internecine Warfare and murder, had to be placated. The answer was State sponsored entertainment, the Ancient equivalent of ‘Rollerball’ -Gladiatorial Games.
Modern research seems to indicate that many of the Gladiators were ‘volunteers’ who craved the adoration of the mob, just like modern superstar sportspersons.
As to to the Lions, one of the capital punishments of Ancient Rome was to be sentenced to death, “Damnatio ad bestias, literally death by beasts. This was not an exclusively Christian punishment, but rather one for miscellaneous malcontents.
You may have a quadruple first in Classics, but you must up your game.
You’re right. I was not fair to the Greeks. Thinking only on the question of barbarism, not attempting a global assessment of their achievements.
Human sacrifice in Christianity? I’d be interested to know about this. Or do you mean the “Big One” by Jesus? Hmmmm, I suppose that’s a grey area….
Weren’t the fights to the death in the Roman Games human sacrifice? If not to the traditional Gods, at least to the perhaps more important Gods of civic contentment and cohesion?
I love your “terror ‘botty banditry'”. The possible unintentional omission of a particle notwithstanding, the phrase could be ambiguous to the uninitiated, although I fear that to express my curiosity here may lead me into treacherous back passages….
Well said, guilty as charged, particle omitted due to slovenly/arthritic typing!
Fuller response to Christian human sacrifice to follow.
Pederastry in the Ancient World is beyond our comprehension is it not?
The hypocritical ‘Virus’ of Christianity has much to answer for..
Still waiting to hear about the evidence of Christian human sacrifice that you’ve uncovered
Just received your intemperate epistle, you must learn to be patient. “Manners maketh man”, as the great Bishop said.
As to human sacrifice, I have given a fuller account to the somewhat impatient, Andrew Derrick in this thread.
However I do not believe it is solely about dragging some poor wretch to the top of say, an Aztec Pyramid, and gouging out their still palpitating heart, from a trembling, writhing body, before flaying them, in order to ask the ‘god person’ for a rainy day.
Ah, once infected always infected it seems……as a reluctant lapsed Christian, I pine for those days when I could kneel and pray with sincere humility and sing praises to a benevolent creator (and his rather cool son, I have to say). Old habits die hard…..
Yes indeed, but then the “dawn of reason” comes!
Diogenes of Sinope was also ” rather cool” as you say. You may find him interesting.
In a crowded field you’ve managed to make the least historically informed comment of the week! Well done Mark.
While you celebrate, have a look at how Romans thought of or used slaves, temple prostitutes etc. and then maybe have a think about why it was that, in your liberal Roman Empire, women and slaves flocked to the new cult of Christianity.
Many thanks, praise indeed!
Did I say “liberal Roman Empire”? No I didn’t, you fantasize!
The subject of Roman slavery is too complex to discuss here, but do you, for example have any idea whatsoever of the manumission rates for domestic slaves?
Temple Prostitutes, were all ‘volunteers’,
weird by 21 century mores, but perfectly acceptable to contemporary (eastern) society.
Agreed, the poor, women, and slaves, were seduced by nascent Christianity, but they were, and still are, far too stupid to make a sensible appreciation.
Without wishing to sound patronising, have you ever studied the Classical World at say University level?
You seem parrot the same old rubbish that Hollywood spews out in piffle such as Ben Hur, The Robe, and even, the otherwise interesting, Gladiator.
I appreciate that Roman slavery was not like TA slavery, which is what springs to the mind of most. Freed slaves were not automatically given citizenship however; it is the universal human dignity and equal value that attracted to Christianity, and still does by the way.
I haven’t studied the classical world at university which I’m sure makes my opinion worthless in your eyes, given your attitude to slaves, women and the poor. Thank the Lord, literally, that Christendom dominated and our society learned to value all lives rather than perpetuate your scholarly classical contempt for the lower strata.
So,in a nutshell you admit you know nothing about Roman slavery.Well done!
Christianity did not invent “universal human dignity” etc as you claim. That had been around for centuries, as you should know.
Your opinion is not “worthless”, merely ill informed. That may be corrected.
I do not have “contempt for the lower strata”, as your so vehemently assert.
I have the utmost sympathy for their plight, locked in a world of ignorance, superstition and violence, with little hope of escape.
I said I didn’t study it at university. Does that equate to knowing nothing? Perhaps, in your eyes.
I’ll happily be corrected on the point that freed slaves were not automatically given Roman citizenship, if I’m incorrect.
Your opening salvo in this discussion started thus: ” In a crowded field you’ve managed to make the least historically informed comment of the week!”.
Now, as a result of a little chastisement, you have turned into an angry, self pitying, pathetic specimen, with a pronounced persecution complex because of your poor ‘University’ education.
However to your query. Up until the year 965 AUC (212 AD to you), the rules were, if a Roman citizen freed a slave, the slave became a Roman citizen, with almost full rights. If a Peregrinus, ( a non Roman citizen ) freed a slave, he/she also became a Peregrinus. In 965/212 all citizens of the Empire became Roman citizens, thus all freed slaves became Roman.
So, at the time of your Redeemer for example, if you had to be a slave, it was probably desirable to belong to a Roman citizen.
I feel you should look for another venue to post on, your negativity and anti-Christian, Semitic, Islamic, bent is unpleasant, and your name calling OTT.
What name calling exactly? What is so unpleasant about criticism of a fallacy?
Surely Eton didn’t teach you to whinge like this?
If it did, ask Waldegrave for your money back, I’m sure he will oblige.
Remind me to not disagree with you…..
What are you referring to? The above is only a piece of light hearted banter after all, or did you find it otherwise?
WTF do Roman slaves have to do with Christianity being oppressively backwards and prudish about sex?
In p*rn videos I’ve seen, the performers appear to be bored out of their skulls. I wonder about filming myself in the act, to see if I appear so too.
Any comments or experiences?
“The generally agreed position is that porn exists somewhere outside morality.” I don’t think the writer really understands porn. In itself it does nothing immoral, unless you think any freely made transaction in a money-based economy is immoral. What it does do is artificially recreate and display a simulacrum of our desires. It manifests in, dare I say, a safe space, what people want, albeit often in an exaggerated form. Are those desires within us regardless of the existence of porn? Of course they are. They have deep and very complex origins. And make no mistake, those desires, no matter how vanilla or fetishistic, normal or kinky, are fundamentally DE-humanizing. Sexual desire, by itself, does not respect the other as a subject. It is purely animal, 100% id, and as such, ‘evil’, but only a moral problem if it subsumes and dominates our humanity in the real world. That is why in a real relationship, so much work has to go into seeing the other as a whole person, all of their natural darkness and all of their light, and respecting the whole person. But porn is not a real relationship. It is no different from any art in that sense, though in other senses it can be deemed most often to be very bad art. Like any art, it gives back to us who we are, just on one ‘base’ level, and that is for sure not pretty in any moral sense. We’ve known since Freud that sex is totally amoral, so like the feminists who went into spasms of cognitive dissonance at the popularity of 50 Shades of Grey, it is wrong-headed to expect consumers of porn to have a moral relationship with it as if it is a real relationship. PS. All the examples the writer gives about abuse and bad behaviour in the industry are about people in real relationships, real people treating other real people badly. That is not porn.
As a young barrister in the early 90s I regularly prosecuted obscenity cases. The Met’s Obscene Publications Squad would raid a sex shop in Soho and grab handfuls of VHS tapes and magazines.
Anything portraying violence, children, animals or less than flaccid male members was considered prima facie obscene and prosecuted.
The legal test for obscenity is whether the material would ‘tend to deprave and corrupt’ persons who are likely, having regard to all relevant circumstances, to read or see it.
I considered ‘deprave and corrupt’ to mean that the material must somehow alter the mind of the consumer for the worse. I always felt it pretty unarguable that most pornography does deprave and corrupt – it changes thought patterns and implants ideas and images that would not otherwise exist.
Somewhere in the late 90s police raids and prosecutions stopped. The law remained the same but the police and the CPS seem to have decided – without public consultation – that we were no longer capable of being depraved or corrupted by material which only a few years earlier would have had precisely this effect …
I can only assume that the shift in policy was the work of the Blair government. The strange new morality disapproved of such harmless pleasures as smoking in pubs but was fine with the a**l Sluts appearing in your phone (and your kids’ phones) and all debasement that went hand in hand with the exploding porn industry.
I remain fascinated by the layers of hypocrisy and contradiction. Research has shown that 100% of men with access to porn consume it. It seems that somewhere between 40 and 60% of women admit to watching, depending on the study. Does the absence of feminist uproar imply tacit approval? Does it mean that while we have collectively decided to recalibrate the rules of social and professional interaction (much for the better), to compensate for the removal of sex, innuendo and flirtation we have collectively – men and women alike – agreed to service all those impulses through internet porn?
Yesterday there was a leading article about Incels. If you’re going to have millions of Incels around the world, you’re going to need a lot of porn.
Must check out PornHub. I had never heard of if.
What is OTK?
Am I giving away too much by replying? 😀
OTK = over the knee
The classical method (Greco-Roman, Christian, etc.) for coming up with and justifying a codified set of moral behaviors involved observation of the consequences and concomitants of any various type of behavior.
I appreciated this article, and think that Ditum could go even further, based on her own observation about what proportion of porn seems to be non-exploitative. (“[Ethical porn] makes up such a tiny proportion of the industry, it’s like putting a chicken in your back garden and claiming you’ve fixed factory farming.”) This is the criterion for judging whether this category of behavior is moral/should be permitted in a just society or not: Does its commission generally produce bad effects? The answer, at least with regard to porn actors, is yes.
Although Sarah is no doubt right about the abuse and disrespect in the porn world, especially of women, what does she mean by “racist” porn? We are all “racist” in that none of us are “colour blind” – it is deep within our limbic system. We should recognise this to better check our biases, in order to more effectively fight for equality. However, to have a preference in aesthetic/sexual attraction to a particular race(s) is completely natural, and deep within our particular personalities. This doesn’t mean we can’t be attracted to or have relationships with people of any other race. And it doesn’t mean we have to behave in a harmful or hurtful racist way. People must go cautiously if they want to suppress or shame people for their basic personal instincts, emotions and attractions. That always ends badly, and is exactly what some trans-activists are now doing in trying to shame heteronormative men by labelling them “transphobic” if they don’t want to date transwomen. Dangerous stuff.
Hi Dan, I think she means by “racist porn” what you get when you search for that in pornhub.com….
The harmful and hurtful kind, not the pick your preference categories kind she refers to at another point.
I think that’s her point, the race element is par for the course in categories and filtering Choices….there is also the racist element in all its nastiness.
(Gross! thought I should confirm the facts rather than just say ‘I think….’ it’s confirmed 🤮)
Don’t you think that phrases like ‘ebony s**t’ are inherently racist (as well as various other nasty things)?
No. It’s certainly “racial” – but no more racist than saying “white s**t” or “Asian s**t”.Or noting that Asian people don’t make as great players of basketball as African-Americans.The other nasty things are glaringly obvious but are another issue.
No. It’s certainly “racial” – but no more racist than saying “white s…” or “Asian s…”.Or noting that Asian people don’t make as great players of basketball as African-Americans.The other nasty things are glaringly obvious but are another issue.
“I just checked in on the homepage and was greeted by multiple clips promising mini-versions of Flowers in the Attic. Ugh. Why am I here? Oh yes, to find out if PornHub will let me search for racist porn.”
Nah, you just ended up there to jerk off.
In order to be against porn, you have to know something about porn, and, nobody knows anything about porn because nobody watches it, except inveterate reporters who immediately signal they do not watch it except to write articles about it!. In short, no one shows up at the water cooler – plastic bottles having become verboten – and says, “Hey, have you seen that flick where this guy with the 12 incher…?” It’s a billion dollar industry without customers!
“Female orgasm” is also a category, for that subset of men who are interested in whether a woman actually enjoys it.
Has it never occurred to you that there are a lot of men who know very well that she does, and actually enjoy watching her do so?
Please, all those who defend porn, defend this for me? I’m having trouble understanding how this is your freedom or right?
https://www.iwf.org.uk/news…
Well nobody did it yet, so I’ll point out something that the obnoxious author has missed altogether: Erotic appeal is out of reach for tools like morality and political correction.
Discussing it is akin to discussing whether it is right or wrong that ocean waves exist, that people die or that birds can fly.
The author has firmly sedimented her reputation as a whining woke priestess with access to mass media. The only thing that keeps her here is the comments section.
The author is missing the essentially comedic aspect of porn which often comes out in its titles (“Shaving Ryan’s Private’s”, “Lust in Space” etc etc).
Comedic, because porn belongs to that part of life which we simply cannot be proud of. We can feel shame and guilt, or we can stop taking ourselves so seriously and accept that our fantasies are a bit ridiculous, break taboos that in normal life we would support, and reveal things about us that we really don’t want to acknowledge.
If Christians, feminists, anti racists, even porn crusaders find themselves aroused by fantasies that run contrary to their actual espoused views, well it’s just funny. Part of the great cosmic joke. Don’t beat yourself up, don’t lash out at others, you’re just going to have to come to terms with it.
And if you think immoral or unPC fantasy is a male preserve, you’ve got a deeply unsettling shock coming.
I am interested in why seemingly so many female journalists get so upset by porn. There seems to be a suspension of reason. There is so much porn online because there is so much demand. There are so many different genres because there there is a demand for all of them. It is pure business, there is no agenda, no porn would be there if enough people didn’t want it.
Any length of time spent on porn tube sites reveals that although the means of distribution may be quite centralised the means of production are not. There are hundreds of thousands of men and women making porn all over the world.
When one considers the billions of weekly views this is attracting, I have not found any journalist willing to challenge the assumption made by this one that porn production and consumption is inherently wrong. Why? People have a sexual impulse. For a great many people this is not satisfied by sexual congress because they do not have a willing sexual partner. How can it possibly be moral to say that this sexual impulse must be repressed rather than satisfied or that it can only be satisfied by fantasy not images of people having sex?
Why are vanilla sexual tastes ethically okay but others immoral?
My theory is that many heterosexual women fear pornography because they feel it reduces their sexual power over men. Men are less likely to act in ways which would otherwise not coincide with their interests due to their sexual impulses if these are easily satisfied by porn.. Thus the ready availability, ubiquity and range of porn is considered a bigger problem than its sheer existence since those factors allow the more ready satisfaction of sexual impulses whose non-satisfaction increases women’s power over men.
Who is questioning whether a desire to maintain and exercise that kind of asymmetric sexual power is ethical? Isn’t it a throwback to times gone by when society was patriarchal? Should heterosexual men view vibrators and dildoes as immoral on similar grounds?
Womens’ sexuality is a display of power over men? What are you talking about? No woman I know feels like she is wielding power over her man when they have sex.
Porn typically depicts women as a series of holes to be used by men, not as human beings with the desire for satisfying touch and connection. So in that sense you are right- it is a depiction of men taking power from women.
If you think a woman who actually enjoys her sexuality, but doesn’t want to share it with you on-demand, is somehow an example of her taking power over you, or anything but her expressing her own preference and desires, then you are the one with the problem. You were raised by those horrible parents who tell their girls “he only hits you because he likes you” (I heard that one in first grade.) Or “don’t tell him no or you don’t like him because it will hurt his feelings.” God forbid a boy learn that he’s not allowed to grab and keep everything and everyone that he wants, or bless his heart he might have to feel something like sadness or rejection. So, if you think women use sexuality for power, and that’s their only power, then YOU ARE THE PROBLEM.
Women are allowed to tell you NO for a whole host of reasons, none of which have anything to do with YOU and your fragile ego. We get to want what we want whether that includes you or not. Grow up you giant toddler.
Same Old, Same Old. So you do not like the explicit depiction of nudity and sexuality. I can think of lots of things I do not like to see depicted on the screen. I am free not to watch them, just as you are free not to click on Pornhub or other similar sites. The difference is that I do not try to censor the things I dislike. your real problem is that porn is VERY popular with a lot of people, most of whom have progressed beyond the negative attitudes adopted and preached by various religionists as well as by a regrettable number of ‘feminists’. Get over it and learn to live with it.
Where did you get that she doesn’t like depictions of nudity and sexuality? She talks about racism and misogyny.
Probably the constant bitching about porn as a concept. And failing to understand categories by calling them “racist”
Right on. Great article. I’ve shared it with the 2 Roads network here: https://www.2roads.me/why-d…
Let me address the author of the piece:
Why don’t you keep your interfering nose out of other people’s business. if you don’t like porn, don’t look at it.
The people involved in the making of porn are in favour of it or they wouldn’t do it.
The people who watch it must be in favour of it or they wouldn’t watch.
Neither are interested in your opinion.
Why do you expect something to be “cancelled” just because you don’t approve of it?
Just butt out & get a life, why don’t you?
Whoah! Although you do make some good points, I was more interested that your comment actually got through the Unherd moderators! I’m not saying that’s a bad thing, but your success will no doubt diabolically tempt me to quench that dubious urge to be a lot nastier in my comments from now on!
There are some animals out on here today.
But Perdu says anyone participating in something must favor it. This is the perfect example of modern morality. No judgement on good and bad, just if you do it or not do it deciding on if it is acceptable. But still, my guess is there is correct and not correct somewhere in that liberalism pseudo-morality as being not correct is the modern equivalent of evil, and is wonderfully subjective so completely relative and situational and thus acceptable to the morally fluid.
How very pretentious. Presumably you are also an animal? African ape perhaps or something else?
Yep, imagine how “in favour of it” the “actresses” in “Broke Amateurs – Virgin Assholes Destroyed!” are. They definitely don’t wish they could earn money *any* other way. That must be why they have to be plied with cocaine and alcohol prior to taking part, to heighten the pleasure!