The Student Room Group

Does mainstream porn really represent the desires of men?

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Reply 80
Original post by Anonymous
So if someone's parents are a bit sub par, they should just be left to be damaged by porn? That's not really fair. Every child has the right to be educated about dangers in society, regardless of who their parents are, and I think that it's down to industries to recognise the dangers that come with their products and help to minimise the dangers.


But the products are clearly for adults only. What you're suggesting is a slippery slope of reducing the responsibility of parents until the entire burden of raising a child falls on everyone but the parents. Just like the benefit system has done, now no one has to pay for their own kids.

There should be more focus on increasing parenting standards than shifting the burden.

Posted from TSR Mobile
Reply 81
Original post by Jebedee
It's a growing industry and it pays to cater to as many tastes as possible. Most of the sites these days have tons of categories. Included are things like JOI and sissy. I think it's just that people see what they want to see to illustrate things which they already see or think they see in society.

Posted from TSR Mobile


That's not really true, there are all sorts of psychological experiments which talk about what I'm saying. It's an abstract concept, as it's hard to distance yourself from our self-created reality, but that's what the OP is trying to do- distance himself from our own reality and try to see how it may look to an 'outsider'.

Porn DOES cater to all tastes, but the majority of porn shows women as stupid/submissive objects in some form. There is a niche for dominant women, but that is all it is, a niche.

I really think you're missing something if you think that, if all cultures had porn, it would be the same as the 'western' world's porn. Think of it this way- in our culture, women being slim but curvy is viewed as beautiful, we think that's to some extent 'objective' apart from to a few 'weirdos' who find things we see as 'unhealthy' to be beautiful (like some people like overly skinny girls, some people like fat women). This is what you see most often in porn- women of different shapes and sizes but mostly on the slimmer side of the scale. However, in some African countries I have been to, their ideas of beauty is what we'd call 'fat' or 'large'. Of course while both of these ideas of beauty have a scale (some men prefer the smaller side of one scale, some prefer the larger side), in general, our ideas of beauty are on the slimmer side than some of the ideas in African countries. This portrays many things about our respective societies- in a society where food may be more scarce than our own, a women who is larger may signify that they are healthy, well-fed and have a job and are socioeconomically sound. In our society, where food is not scarce, being large signifies laziness.

The OP is just trying to take an epistemological point of view and I think he's quite right to do that, porn DOES show something about gender roles, because it is about the thing which is most inherently related to gender roles, i.e. sexuality.
Porn is not reality, so people I think will desire but just can't get it.
"Does mainstream porn really represent the desires of men?"

Not for me it doesn't. Most professional porn aimed at men is very rapey and generally treats women as if they are some kind of sex toy. I honestly don't like watching it. I get that people do like to be dominated... it just seems off putting when it is done in professional porn. I think it is because it is not genuine, i.e. the women doesn't actually want that like they might in a real life sex scenario.

If I am going to watch porn I would rather watch a video some couple put up online.
(edited 10 years ago)
Reply 84
Original post by Jebedee
But the products are clearly for adults only. What you're suggesting is a slippery slope of reducing the responsibility of parents until the entire burden of raising a child falls on everyone but the parents. Just like the benefit system has done, now no one has to pay for their own kids.

There should be more focus on increasing parenting standards than shifting the burden.

Posted from TSR Mobile


You'd have to be pretty ignorant if you thought that porn was only being viewed by over 18 year olds. What I'm suggesting is a two-pronged attack; educate teenagers about pornography in school and at home, and also have the porn industry show some corporate responsibility. It doesn't have to be one or the other. And for the record, I think the welfare state is a sign that we are a civilised country.
Reply 85
Original post by Observatory
I challenge you to go on any large porn site and produce a screenshot of "women being gagged and having their hair pulled". The vast majority of the videos are just of two people having sex.

As a minority sexual interest, BDSM is not illegal and I am not sure you could consistently argue it should be - presumably you don't think homosexual sex should be illegal?

Your post is suspiciously slickly written also. Are you part of the increasingly large number of party and NGO hacks on TSR "professionally"?


Firstly, I think it would be against student room guidelines to post that so you're just gonna have to trust my anecdote that I went onto a popular porn site (the hub of porn, if you will) and the first image I saw was an advert for containing just that, young-looking teenagers looking like they were in pain.

Secondly, I never suggested BDSM should be illegal, and if you are suggesting it is a minority sexual interest, then shouldn't porn reflect that, hence the name of the thread. At the moment, BDSM themes occur in just over 80% of porn videos. And your accusation of homophobia is beyond the pale.

Finally, no I am not a professional hack, just someone who can write well.
Original post by Wilsoncw1997
Porn is not reality, so people I think will desire but just can't get it.


Get it,lol.... So many of these pornstars are escorts, you can even hire one, make a video yourself if you really wanted too,lol
Reply 87
Original post by Jessaay!
That's not really true, there are all sorts of psychological experiments which talk about what I'm saying. It's an abstract concept, as it's hard to distance yourself from our self-created reality, but that's what the OP is trying to do- distance himself from our own reality and try to see how it may look to an 'outsider'.

Porn DOES cater to all tastes, but the majority of porn shows women as stupid/submissive objects in some form. There is a niche for dominant women, but that is all it is, a niche.

I really think you're missing something if you think that, if all cultures had porn, it would be the same as the 'western' world's porn. Think of it this way- in our culture, women being slim but curvy is viewed as beautiful, we think that's to some extent 'objective' apart from to a few 'weirdos' who find things we see as 'unhealthy' to be beautiful (like some people like overly skinny girls, some people like fat women). This is what you see most often in porn- women of different shapes and sizes but mostly on the slimmer side of the scale. However, in some African countries I have been to, their ideas of beauty is what we'd call 'fat' or 'large'. Of course while both of these ideas of beauty have a scale (some men prefer the smaller side of one scale, some prefer the larger side), in general, our ideas of beauty are on the slimmer side than some of the ideas in African countries. This portrays many things about our respective societies- in a society where food may be more scarce than our own, a women who is larger may signify that they are healthy, well-fed and have a job and are socioeconomically sound. In our society, where food is not scarce, being large signifies laziness.

The OP is just trying to take an epistemological point of view and I think he's quite right to do that, porn DOES show something about gender roles, because it is about the thing which is most inherently related to gender roles, i.e. sexuality.


There's also the issue of the kind of women who go into porn. Personally I'd love to see some intelligent women portrayed in porn but unfortunately those aren't the girls turning up to auditions. Often they're unskilled and failed actresses and the stupid, ditsy characters they portray are quite close to their normal disposition. With the exception of a choice few who are actually very intelligent.

The only way this will change is if more hot women...
1: become more intelligent
2: learn to act

Posted from TSR Mobile
Reply 88
Original post by Jebedee
There's also the issue of the kind of women who go into porn. Personally I'd love to see some intelligent women portrayed in porn but unfortunately those aren't the girls turning up to auditions. Often they're unskilled and failed actresses and the stupid, ditsy characters they portray are quite close to their normal disposition. With the exception of a choice few who are actually very intelligent.

The only way this will change is if more hot women...
1: become more intelligent
2: learn to act

Posted from TSR Mobile


Most intelligent women who could act would be able to secure an acting job of their choice and so wouldn't have to resort to porn. And for most porn actors, men or women, it is just that; a last resort.
Reply 89
Original post by Anonymous
Most intelligent women who could act would be able to secure an acting job of their choice and so wouldn't have to resort to porn. And for most porn actors, men or women, it is just that; a last resort.


Exactly. Become the change you want to see in the world. So until more women are willing to, I don't think they have a right to complain about the industry.

Posted from TSR Mobile
Reply 90
Original post by Jebedee
Exactly. Become the change you want to see in the world. So until more women are willing to, I don't think they have a right to complain about the industry.

Posted from TSR Mobile


Wait, so you're saying until one is a porn actor, they have no right to challenge the porn industry? Seriously great logic. By the same logic, you can't criticise the policies of the government since you aren't an MP. What about the male actors? Or the producers who commission the acts? Why the blame on the actresses?
Reply 91
Original post by Anonymous
Wait, so you're saying until one is a porn actor, they have no right to challenge the porn industry? Seriously great logic. By the same logic, you can't criticise the policies of the government since you aren't an MP. What about the male actors? Or the producers who commission the acts? Why the blame on the actresses?


I don't mean on an individual level but on a societal level.
Reply 92
Original post by Jebedee
I don't mean on an individual level but on a societal level.


Not sure what you mean by this?
So if society was more willing to be porn actors/actresses, they would be allowed to complain? If you're getting at porn being more acceptable, then I get it. Thing is, as it is, a lot of porn would be unacceptable according to societal standards about the sexualisation and objectification of women and men.
No woman wants to be 'gagged' to the point of excruciating pain I hope, well, each to their own...
But, women tend to have 'fantasy's' which can be quite...interesting, they seek danger, inside a 'safe' relationship. If that makes sense?
Reply 94
Original post by Anonymous
Firstly, I think it would be against student room guidelines to post that so you're just gonna have to trust my anecdote that I went onto a popular porn site (the hub of porn, if you will) and the first image I saw was an advert for containing just that, young-looking teenagers looking like they were in pain.

Secondly, I never suggested BDSM should be illegal, and if you are suggesting it is a minority sexual interest, then shouldn't porn reflect that, hence the name of the thread. At the moment, BDSM themes occur in just over 80% of porn videos. And your accusation of homophobia is beyond the pale.

Finally, no I am not a professional hack, just someone who can write well.

I disagree... who looks at a work of fiction and decides the wants and needs of men based on that. And besides, women are more likely to be profitable from porn than men, that's a fact. I got your hint and googled up the website, and what i noticed was that it was always the women being named, the men were simply there for the sake of providing their tools of trade.


And that is also not taking into account the amount of women dominating women porn there is up there...
(edited 10 years ago)
Original post by Anonymous
*Trigger warning - discussion of porn and its content*

First of all, I'm a guy. Yes I watch porn, as do the majority of guys my age (21). However, with the new surge of feminism like sites like everyday sexism, which I'll be the first to admit that I wrote off at first with the standard 'Equality has already been achieved here' argument, I've started to really think about the over-sexualisation of women and girls. Porn is such a big part of this. I've been trying to view porn through the eyes of someone alien to our culture and really think about the sort of message it's communicating to its viewers.

So for example, today I logged on to one of the most popular porn sites and was immediately confronted with an advert which was shockingly misogynistic in its nature which had the most 'extreme teen videos', and snapshots of very young looking women in what looked like serious pain. Is this really what men want to see, is this really how advertisers view the desires of men? I never really noticed these kinds of images before, I just went straight to the admittedly quite vanilla stuff, compared to a lot of the stuff on the site. But even this 'vanilla stuff' contains men name-calling, hair-pulling and men using aggression to move girls into certain positions. Without realising, I'd become mildly desensitised to all this - of course I would never dream of name-calling or hair-pulling during sex with a woman in real-life.

Even if as men we say 'no I don't get turned on by women being gagged and having their hair pulled', any woman who logs onto a porn site (and a lot of them do!) are confronted with the message 'this is what men want'. There is already a culture of women being fearful of men, for example not wanting to walk home along at night, being vigilant in clubs against their drink getting spiked, etc - porn is now telling them that as men, 'we want to abuse you and we get turned on by it', which in the vast majority of cases is simply not true.

I've included a poll so please help to prove to women that porn does not accurately represent the desires of all men.

TL;DR: Massive percentage of porn is violent. Men block out these aspects of it. Women see porn and believe porn really does represent the inner desires of men. Help me prove this isn't the case.


Well it could be argued that it represents the desires of most men only in that it includes some form of sex.
People have different fetishes and are into different things. I can bet that some dodgy genre pornos represents the inner desires of SOME men, but generalising this for the entire male gender is ludicrous.

Even if it does accurately represent our desires, a lot of the time porn can be an OUTLET for those desires rather than a "how to" video on violent/abusive sex.
Reply 96
Original post by Jebedee
Exactly. Become the change you want to see in the world. So until more women are willing to, I don't think they have a right to complain about the industry.

Posted from TSR Mobile


Original post by Jebedee
I don't mean on an individual level but on a societal level.


What on earth are you talking about?

I can 'become the change I want to see in the world' by fighting against the way in which women are portrayed in porn and other media regarding sexuality, I don't feel like it's necessary to BECOME a pornstar and make my mark by portraying women in a different light. O_o
Reply 97
Original post by FutureHeartSurg
Well it could be argued that it represents the desires of most men only in that it includes some form of sex.
People have different fetishes and are into different things. I can bet that some dodgy genre pornos represents the inner desires of SOME men, but generalising this for the entire male gender is ludicrous.

Even if it does accurately represent our desires, a lot of the time porn can be an OUTLET for those desires rather than a "how to" video on violent/abusive sex.


I really doubt most guys see porn as an 'outlet' for those desires, just as masturbating with your hand isn't an outlet for having sex with a real woman.

Also, you're missing the point. He's saying that the dismissive nature of many women depicted in porn movies reflects the perception of women in society, he's not talking about BDSM per se.
Reply 98
Original post by Anonymous
*Trigger warning - discussion of porn and its content*

First of all, I'm a guy. Yes I watch porn, as do the majority of guys my age (21). However, with the new surge of feminism like sites like everyday sexism, which I'll be the first to admit that I wrote off at first with the standard 'Equality has already been achieved here' argument, I've started to really think about the over-sexualisation of women and girls. Porn is such a big part of this. I've been trying to view porn through the eyes of someone alien to our culture and really think about the sort of message it's communicating to its viewers.

So for example, today I logged on to one of the most popular porn sites and was immediately confronted with an advert which was shockingly misogynistic in its nature which had the most 'extreme teen videos', and snapshots of very young looking women in what looked like serious pain. Is this really what men want to see, is this really how advertisers view the desires of men? I never really noticed these kinds of images before, I just went straight to the admittedly quite vanilla stuff, compared to a lot of the stuff on the site. But even this 'vanilla stuff' contains men name-calling, hair-pulling and men using aggression to move girls into certain positions. Without realising, I'd become mildly desensitised to all this - of course I would never dream of name-calling or hair-pulling during sex with a woman in real-life.

Even if as men we say 'no I don't get turned on by women being gagged and having their hair pulled', any woman who logs onto a porn site (and a lot of them do!) are confronted with the message 'this is what men want'. There is already a culture of women being fearful of men, for example not wanting to walk home along at night, being vigilant in clubs against their drink getting spiked, etc - porn is now telling them that as men, 'we want to abuse you and we get turned on by it', which in the vast majority of cases is simply not true.

I've included a poll so please help to prove to women that porn does not accurately represent the desires of all men.

TL;DR: Massive percentage of porn is violent. Men block out these aspects of it. Women see porn and believe porn really does represent the inner desires of men. Help me prove this isn't the case.


TL;DR, Violent porn and specialist interests are not "mainstream" those are definitely niches watched only by a minority, hope that clears your **** up. Porn is a great thing, I can't see my self being done with it any time soon!
Reply 99
I don't think so.

When I give a girl the ol' pink banana, I don't expect her to moan loud enough to make the roof cave in, while obviously enjoying herself as much as she would be if she were watching paint dry.

That, ladies and gentlemen, is professionally-shot prawnography.

I don't expect her to make any noise at all (if she does, no problem, it's just not indispensable to me). I expect her to enjoy it a bit more than watching paint dry or grass grow.

I don't expect her to enjoy it if I were to let my baby pudding flow into her eyes and nose like you see in blue pictures. I wouldn't enjoy it either.

I don't consider the pink banana a staple food. Doesn't need to be eaten every time. On the other hand, if I go and wave/kiss hello to the man in the boat, I expect the favour to be returned.

I do expect her to eat my baby pudding if she wants it in her mouth. It's nutritious, delicious, I cooked it up specifically for her, and it's worth its weight in gold. Spitting it out would be comparable to asking a Michelin-starred chef his favourite food, ordering it, and then spitting it out in front of him.

I expect anal ("The Baby Cannon - Inert Trainer"). I love anal. It's my favourite kind of horizontal recreation. I expect her to like it as well, and ask for it once in a while, at least.

I expect her to look at rumpy pumpy with the same sort of cheerful enthusiasm one may have for a back-gammon or Monopoly match on a rainy day. This isn't in prawnography, it just bears mention.

I expect her NOT to regard it as an opportunity for chunder-inducing pet names, cuddling, scented candles, and/or anything you might find in a Harlequin book or "Twilight". Just like in the blue pictures, I'd prefer no nonsense and more action.

Finally, I DO expect, and I mean ALWAYS, patience. If it takes me half an hour or more to load and fire the baby cannon, I expect her to enjoy this. In return, I will load and fire the baby cannon multiple times in succession.

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