Reasons why I hate pornography

1. The quality is bad, a lot of the time. Grainy pictures, poor lighting, tiny streaming Real Video and VIVO.
2. It's sometimes distributed in AVI format. Who wants to download 150 MBs of an AVI file only to find out it's eleven minutes of "acting" and four minutes of the good stuff?
3. It has guys in it. I'm not anti-man, but I'm not a full-fledged homosexual, either. I'd just rather see women. Lots of women. Women with women, women on women, and from time to time, ten women for every one guy.
4. It's caused the proliferation of extreme perversion like Japscat and vomit porn. Don't get me wrong--to each his own--but we have to draw the line somewhere.
5. It can be hard to find the good stuff. You know what I'm talking about--Vivid DVD, Private Gold, Penthouse--the good stuff.
6. It's not graphic enough. I want to see it, I want to experience it. Give me money shots (on screen, not on me, you sick bastard) or give me death! I want to be able to SEE women making out, not a tangle of their hair!
7. It gives birth to people who hate pornography and see it as a waste. Most people online view erotic material of some sort--the Internet would most likely be a wasteland without the attraction of it.
8. There isn't enough of it!

...is not the reason you think it is.
Yes, i am a woman. No i do not have a moral or personal objection to porn. I see the human body as an art form, male or female. That's just the way i am. However, i, if not hate then strongly dislike porn for this message that it--probably subconsconsciously but definitely--sends:

"You are a woman. You are not welcome in computing. You have no right to think yourself geek."
No, honestly. Take a minute to think about this.

I want an mp3 and refuse to use :::cringes::: Napster so i go to an actual :::gasp::: mp3 site. Porn banners. *male* porn banners advertising "Enormous tits!" "see (insert name of female famous person here) perform a blow job on/have lesbian sex with/whatever else!" "Hot young college girls!". *male* porn. I go to a Warez site to either rip a program, or to get a crack for a program i ripped somewhere else. Porn banners. *male* porn banners. This subconsciously sends off the message "this is a place for men. We only expect men to come here, only men belong here."

It works on the assumption that they will make no money off offering things to women since there is no female audience in that particular place. I've pretty much gotten over this some time ago, and will just go get my hack or my song, ignoring the overly-endowed women looking "seductively" at me. But this is a relatively serious problem and bears at least mentioning. It seems almost like an inadvertent form of elitism, that these "high level" computer activities are reserved for men. It doesn't take much to turn a fledgling tech-woman away from computers, if she feels unwelcome and an outsider (i've *seen* this happen, many MANY times i am speaking from experience not generalization), and this maybe subconscious but not-so-subtle "you don't belong here" is not going to help the problem any...

• It's addictive. After a surprisingly short time the pictures and stories you have just don't do anything for you any longer. Real people can move, change, and improve; pornography doesn't. You have to go buy more to get the same "high", and then more, and then more. Orgasms are far more addictive than most people think.

• It's superficial. People have enough trouble getting others to see them as three-dimensional human beings without pornographers encouraging the problem. But pornography encourages the idea that sexuality is all that matters, and that it's all a matter of how you look or perform in bed. Ironically, pornography is usually artificial to begin with -- airbrushed photos, silicone implants, and faked orgasms all feed pornographic consumers a fantasy of what's "attractive" which is nearly impossible to find in real life.

• It's damaging. Pornography inevitably goes together with sexual fantasies which rarely live up to anything you'll experience in real life. A regular viewer of pornography who tries to establish a sex relationship with their S.O. a spouse eventually finds that their partner can't live up to what they've been imagining. And so the relationship fades, while the pornography habit grows.

• It's insulting. If someone who's interested in you knows you're interested in pornography, then they feel like they have to live up to the cosmetic standards that the models, actors, or fictional characters represent. As long as you're enjoying it, you're silently telling your partner that while they're good enough to sleep with, there's some needs they just can't meet that these pictures and words can.

• It's misdirecting. Pornography represents "sex for sex's sake" or, more often, "sex for my sake", rather than sex for love's or the relationship's or the partner's sake. Sex should be about both giving and taking, about intimacy and affection, because otherwise it's just a recreational sport. This may be suitable for some people, but it's a guaranteed slow death for any long-term relationship.

mblase says:

"It's misdirecting. Pornography represents "sex for sex's sake" or, more often, "sex for my sake", rather than sex for love's or the relationship's or the partner's sake. Sex should be about giving and taking, about intimacy and affection."

This fundamental assumption underlies many of the most common objections to pornography. However, the error here is assuming that people's personal sexual behavior should conform to a standard just because certain other people uphold that standard in their personal lives. Perhaps mblase would like his/her sex to be a certain way - about intimacy and affection and for the sake of a relationship. That is his/her right to expect and seek that fulfillment. But who is he/she to tell me, as a consenting adult, how my personal sex should be - what sort of sex I should enjoy with other consenting adults in my private life? What if I want to fuck the daylights out of someone, and that consenting adult wants to be fucked by me, with no other emotions attached, sex for sex's sake? What if that's what fulfills me at particular times?

Now, its one thing to argue against certain behaviors because those behaviors lead to social or personal pathologies. For instance, I think persons engaging in non-monogamous sexual activity should wear condoms to prevent the spread of disease and unwanted pregnancy, both of which are major social problems that I, as a member of society will share in the cost of. It is, therefore, my right to criticize unprotected sex on this basis. If mblase would like to make the argument that being sexually fulfilled in some way other than the traditionally accepted way he/she describes above leads to similar pathologies, he/she may make that argument, but as it stands, his/her argument, along with most similar sentiments against pornography, sounds something like "Pornography presents sexual fulfillment in a way other than that which I am fulfilled by or feel comfortable with, therefore I oppose it." Hardly a sound basis for an opinion, it seems to me.

This node is entitled "reasons why I hate pornography" and it would be reasonable for mblase to use the reason above as an explanation of why he/she personally doesn't like - or is uninterested by - pornography, but the inclusion of the phrase "It's misdirecting" indicates he/she is uncomfortable with other people liking pornography, and, as I hope I have argued above, this is most often not a sound sentiment.

My first attempt at doing this writeup was getting mixed voting, and in my opinion was not very well-written. So, I'm making a second attempt.

There are three things I would like to say about pornography. The first is that in our culture anything associated with sex has acquired a sort of mysticism, due to the way we talk (or don't talk) to our children about sex. Ordinary people, and I include myself in this, are brought up to believe that sex is scary, forbidden, dirty, wrong, etc etc. These beliefs are strongly imprinted, remaining perhaps for a lifetime; even though as an adult one is expected to have sex if one wishes, the injunctions against it from childhood remain.

Whether it is right or wrong, avoidable or unavoidable to do this is beyond the scope of this writeup. The fact is that people have strong feelings about sex due to their upbringing, and these feelings tend to heavily influence discussions about sex and sex-related subjects such as pornography.

That is why I do not subscribe to many of the assertions being made in this node about porn. It can hopefully be agreed on by reasonable people that the main assertion -- "It's just sick" -- is based in taught attitudes rather than some inherent property of sex or pornography. Similarly, many of the other assertions follow from that very basic first one. If there were not something special and scary about sex, then it would not seem reasonable to state that "pornographic fantasies negatively warp people's views of reality," or "porn is an unhealthy substitute for real sex." All of the arguments along those lines also apply to accepted parts of our society, and yet they do not elicit the ire that porn does. For example, your average science-fiction novel is an unrealistic fantasy, a bit of escapism that warps our young people's minds. Another example: professional sports represents an ideal that the average person cannot reach, just as people say about porn, and televised sports make a poor substitute for actual sport and exercise. And yet, only the most uptight moralists are willing to argue against sports and fiction.

Another point that has been brought up along different lines from the above is that of addiction. It has been stated that viewing porn will lead someone to move on to "harder and harder" stuff, and furthermore that masturbating to porn is a compulsive and unhealthy activity.

It is true that some people masturbate compulsively. It is also true that some people seek out wilder and wilder varieties of porn to acheive arousal. However, this behavior does not manifest itself in the average person. These things are signs of sexual addiction, a condition which occurs in people who are biologically predisposed to addiction, whether it be to alcohol, gambling, sex, or other drugs. The fact some people are alcoholics does not mean that it is bad to have a beer, or that everyone displays alcoholic tendencies. Similarly, sex addiction is not an argument as to why porn is bad for anyone.

Thirdly, it is often said that pornography is the oppression of women, that it encourages bad attitudes in this respect. In part, I agree. However, there is nothing specific to porn about this argument. If you believe that societal attitudes about women are guided by media, then Mademoiselle, Maxim, Newsweek, Playboy -- all these magazines represent the cultural status quo and are more guilty of what you speak of than pornography. Of course, as above, ingrained attitudes towards sex make people focus on Hustler and not Time.

Furthermore, to argue about Hustler is to argue about a specific instance of porn. Many people talk about porn being a particular way: airhead models, photo retouching, etc. As such, you are not arguing about porn in general, but rather expressing dislike for how a particular kind of porn is presented. From this you are not excluding that you may like some porn, and you are not arguing that porn in general is bad.

That sums up what I wanted to say earlier, but failed to do satisfactorily. I have one last thing to say, which is to respond to the notion expressed above that porn is "a waste of time." What constitutes a waste of time? It is a peculiar notion of some people that an hour spent in disagreeable labor is a good use of time, while an hour spent in some physically pleasurable activity is a waste of time, on no more basis than that. I disagree.

So you think it's a waste of time anyway. Well, I think what *you're* doing is a waste of time. Still, it being your time, you are free to spend it how you want. And if you are doing no harm to others, then I have better things to worry about than what you're doing.