A
female
age
30-35,
*ep218
writes:Okay, so this is another porn question. I know I know, this seems to be a rather popular topic But I am straight up just curious. Obviously a lot of men like porn and a lot of women as well. This is a question for men, both single and in a relationship. When you watch porn you know it is fake, correct?I have heard from my guy friends and brothers’ friends as well, comments about the actresses. They say “I would love to have sex with her” or “What I wouldn’t give to have a night with her”, you get the point. So…you guys (not generalizing all men but the ones who think this) know that she is faking, that she probably pretends over half of the time that she is honestly enjoying what is happening to her? I don’t hate porn, but I don’t like it as well. I’m not insecure over it or whatever. I just thought it was funny. So, is this just guy talk, or do men really think the woman will act like that if they were to have sex with her or even that women should act like that during sex period? Just wondering! Thanks xoxo
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female
reader, Foot-In-My-Mouth  +, writes (1 May 2012):
 I must applaud person12345 for her very well-researched and intelligent responses.
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female
reader, person12345 +, writes (30 April 2012):
 First off, quoting psychology today is like quoting Cosmo. It's a pop psych magazine, it's not actual research. That article quotes the same small handful of correlation studies that all pop psych magazines quote over and over that don't actually show any cause and effect. It's like statistics 101 work, not real science.
No one can tell the difference between porn and reality. Consciously, sure. Your brain simply isn't that sophisticated to know it's fake subconsciously though. People are heavily influenced by things they see. If they see something and have it reinforced positively with something on the same scale as a hit of cocaine, that influence is magnified an enormous amount. Like Alex said, people are HEAVILY influenced by even split seconds of viewing advertisements, but suddenly when they're watching things for long periods of time while in essence taking a hit of a drug it has no effect? That goes against billions of dollars spent on advertising and pretty much every psychology study on the subject ever done.
"The evidence just isn't there."
The evidence is there so strongly that researchers are not allowed to expose participants to pornography anymore because it's too harmful. It's been so clearly shown to increase aggression and warp a person's sense of reality that it's unethical to show people pornography in studies anymore. It doesn't get much clearer than that. For reference, that kind of category also includes cigarettes. Every single meta analysis done on cause and effect studies shows harm. The vast majority of studies done show harm.
It's not simply people having sex, it's men dominating/humiliating women most of the time. 88.6% of mainstream pornography shows violence against women. That is not "just sex."
I have never said I think violent movies are OK or have no effect and I certainly haven't said I don't care about men murdering other men. I haven't talked about it here because that's not what we're talking about.
I've also never said masturbation was bad or wrong. It's sad that you believe masturbation (a natural thing), sex (a natural thing), and pornography (a corporate product that is addictive) are synonyms. That's like saying socializing is the same as drinking.
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reader, anonymous, writes (29 April 2012): Here's what Psychology Today had to say about porn:"But the evidence clearly shows that from a social welfare perspective, porn causes no measurable harm. In fact, as porn viewing has soared, rates of syphilis, gonorrhea, teen sex, teen births, divorce, and rape have all substantially declined. If Internet porn affects society, oddly enough, it looks beneficial. Perhaps mental health professionals should encourage men to view it."Perhaps there are a few freaks out there who can't discern the difference between porn and reality, and they are so F'd up they act on it. But it simply isn't a social problem. It actually helps in many ways.Again, if scientific evidence of the causes of violence and rape are your real concern, why the obsessive focus solely on porn? Why limit your efforts to one thing that appears to actually help overall? Why are you utterly uncerned about all the men who are murdered every year? If you believe watching two people have sexual intercourse (about the most natural human activity possible), surely you must also believe that watching action movies in which men are regularly mowed down with automatic weapons, hit with baseball bats, lead pipes, pistol whipped, shot in the chest with evey type of gun imaginable, kicked, punched, stabbed, insulted, threatened, sliced open with swords, crushed by cars, rocks, machinery of all sorts, fall off cliffs and builings, subjected to electrical shocks, locked up, tortured, starved, drugged, executed, eaten alive by sharks, lions, etc., causes men to act violently against other men?Is there some sort of evil black magic about watching humans have sexual intercourse that affects other humans in such bizzare ways? What about sex researchers who watch people have sex? Do they go ape sh*t all of a sudden? Your views remind me of the old "reefer madness" anti pot movie.I you were to say you don't like porn because of how it depects sex, you find it morally offensive, you think that wacking off constantly causes a man to lose interest in his wife or girlfriend, etc., I'd probably agree with you to a large extent. But violence and rape directed specifically at women? The evidence just isn't there. Asserting that "ALL" researchers agree with this, etc. doesn't make it true.Your stereotypical views of men being sex-crazed neanderthals who run around assulting and raping women because they've watched two other humans copulate is offensive, and down right silly.
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reader, Alex242  +, writes (25 April 2012):
Funny, no one denies the impact of adverts, and of brand names in movies; there are Heart Of The Ocean necklaces, Rolexes in the James Bond films, cars in Transformers, etc.
Porn can work on the same principle-see it, want it. People(mainly men, that is true) who see enough porn will want their partners to look and act like the actors/actresses in porn. They will also want to re-enact some of the scenarios.
There is no doubt that what one reads/watches helps shape one.
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reader, person12345 +, writes (24 April 2012):
No one is saying porn causes otherwise non-violent men to rape, but there is no question among ANY researchers that porn use, especially violent porn use increases aggression (not the same as actually going and raping someone) and increases acceptance of rape myths (such as that all women secretly want to be raped, that it's possible for women to ask to be raped, etc…). Given that fewer than 3% of all rapes that occur end in any kind of a conviction, largely due to this kind of victim blaming, that's a problem. Among men who are deemed "risky" about violent behavior (which is between a quarter and a fifth of men) porn has a huge impact on them saying they might commit a crime or might rape someone.
All violent crimes decreased dramatically in the 90s, rape rates did not decrease at nearly the same rate. Among men who do commit violent crimes, they are seeing more and more crimes being directly influenced by porn, especially among adults who attack children. There is also an increase in anal rape, attributed to increasing porn use.
Why bring alcohol into this? At best it makes otherwise nice people behave like idiots and at worse it is a huge risk factor in violence. The fact that alcohol is worse and is legal does not make anything about the impact of pornography on its participants or users any better. If people want to wreck their lives, that's OK so long as they were given the tools to not do so as well. But they don't have a right to wreck others' lives because of their drug use.
Neither alcohol nor video games have anything to do with this and yes, they have both been shown to be harmful with fairly little evidence to the contrary. Nothing about them being good or being bad has anything to do with the topic at hand. I've never advocated for prohibition, people (especially kids) need to know that it can warp your perceptions about women and sex and make you unhappy with real life sexual interactions (there's even an active question on this site about that). I'm also not sure why everyone says prohibition didn't work, it's the only time in history alcoholism rates went down. It did "work," people just didn't like it. The fact that a small percentage of people drank illegally doesn't mean it was a failure.
You know as well as I do that those kind of correlation studies (that where certain things are increasing, other mostly unrelated things decrease) are completely useless. There's also an increase in sea pirates with global warming. That doesn't actually mean global warming causes piracy. Taking one country where almost everything is completely different and showing that something else is different too doesn't mean anything. People most likely watch more porn in repressive countries for the same reason more porn is watching in the religious South of the US, which is twofold. One is that sexual repression (sex is bad, masturbation is bad, nudity is wrong, etc...) fuels "sexual deviancy" and the other is that both of those areas are highly misogynistic.
Porn is a feedback loop. It exists because of misogyny, and it perpetuates it at the same time. Just because misogyny created it doesn't mean it doesn't help maintain it. For the most part porn is the visualization of male dominance over women. You've said so yourself. And that means that while it is around in its current form, women cannot be equal.
http://www.netspeed.com.au/ttguy/refs2.htm
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reader, anonymous, writes (21 April 2012): Porn is essentially the narcotic of the sexual world.
People who are disenchanted with sexual relationships, or cannot obtain one, are rejected and shunned by others, find refuge in it.
The fact that it isn't 'real' is hardly a concern (considering to the watcher, it is recorded images rather than themselves engaging in sex- thus not 'real' to begin with). It's the stimulus the viewer needs, and that's all that matters.
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reader, anonymous, writes (18 April 2012): "If someone gets shot in an action move they didn't really get shot. If someone is exposed to HIV or double penetrated or forced to gag/vomit in porn, that did really happen. Not only are they not the same, they are opposites."
That's a non-sequitur. Your prior post addressed the issue of a correlation between viewing porn and violence by viewers of porn against third parties. Whether the people in porn are victims is a different issue.
If this is all about the science of what causes violence, it seems odd to focus so much on porn. According to the FBI searchable database at ucrdatatool "dot" gov, forceable rape in the US rose throughout the 60s, hit a peak of 109,062 in 1992, and has since dropped off to 84,767 in 2010. I'm not going to bother doing a search for statistics, but I have a hard time believing porn usage has been dropping off significantly since 1992. Overall violent crime rates in the US have also been dropping quite steadily over the past 20 years or so.
Once again, why all the emotion about porn if this is really all about the science of what causes violence?
If you do want to switch topics and discuss whether or not porn actors are victims, we can do that.
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reader, chigirl  +, writes (18 April 2012):
 Some guys think it is real, but that really depends on their maturity and intelligence/experience with a real life woman. Virgin men who brag about sex they've never had and who are insecure will probably more often make comments like that. Real men with real experience know it's just fake and wouldn't actually want it either even if it wasn't fake. Not when there are just as many beautiful women around who DON'T prostitute themselves and they can be with them.
Guy's in general aren't attracted to the town bike, even if they make comments about wanting to ride it.
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reader, anonymous, writes (18 April 2012): "It's been shown many times (in studies performed since the 1970s) that porn does not "cause" violence among about 3/4 of people, but among risk groups it is a very significant contributing factor in their likelihood to actually commit sexually violent offenses."
Aren't people trying to find/have found evidence to say the same thing about violent video games and movies?
I have a feeling that's what male anon is getting at. Those are 100% fake and people seem to be effected the same way by them.
Besides isn't alcohol a far more consistent contributing factor to the likelihood of both violent and sexually violent offences? I don't hear many people calling for that to be banned because we all know how that worked out. Ban pornography and you get the same result except this time the commodity being traded isn't a liquid drink, it's people. You remove the safeguards that protect many of the people involved.
Plus statistics illustrate that across Europe one of the most dominant contributing factors to incidence of violent sexual offences is immigration and specifically countries with high levels of immigration from Africa and the Middle East. With such immigrants being 7 times more likely to commit a rape. If I'm not mistaken pornography is banned in their countries of origin.
person12345 I'm all for greater safeguards in porn but it's a change in societal attitude towards women, sex and greater education that's needed to combat sexual violence, not prohibition of porn, because everyone knows prohibition doesn't work, it didn't work for alcohol and it's certainly failing miserably as regards drugs. There are even studies that show that incidents of rape in places where prostitution, for example, is legal are lower than in prohibited countries.
In fact in countries where there is no immigration, pornography and alcohol are banned, reported and verifiable incidence of rape, sexual violence and violence towards women are far higher. Indeed porn use in prohibited countries is the highest in the world too. http://wikiislam.net/wiki/Muslim_Statistics_(Pornography)
You can't just point to one thing as a contributing factor and try and remove it, it won't solve anything. As regards porn you just make it underground, you remove any and all protection for the men and women involved, you force the already under-budgeted and wholly insufficient legal system as regards sex crimes with a new sex crime and divert already inadequate resources from sex crime victims who rarely get justice anyway, to investigating people who willingly produce and distribute porn.
It's the risk groups that need to be resolved not porn. What gives a guy the attitude in the first place. Because of all the studies I've read on the issue the results are usually correlated on the prevalence of porn use amongst sex offenders. But of course they are going to use porn, sex is their deviancy, it's a no-brainer that they would want/need to view that. Just like many serial killers were very often obsessed with true crime books, and detective stories. Just like chefs watch culinary programs. A persons obsession or deviancy is going to be used by them.
A far more relevant solution would be to base the studies around adjusting views around sex in general amongst young men, boys and women. There should be a far greater openness and willingness to promote healthy sexual values and views on women in general instead of this idea of banning anything sexual and not discussing it at all because it's morally wrong to show an erect penis on TV, or "we don't want to promote sex in youngsters so let's just ban nudity and only barely talk about the biological workings of sex in schools". It is the societies where "modesty" is the name of the game that have higher incidence of deviance.
Porn is not the problem and it's certainly not going to be a solution either. It's merely a distraction from the real issues.
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reader, person12345 +, writes (18 April 2012):
If someone gets shot in an action move they didn't really get shot. If someone is exposed to HIV or double penetrated or forced to gag/vomit in porn, that did really happen. Not only are they not the same, they are opposites.
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reader, anonymous, writes (17 April 2012): Is violence against men in action movies fake? I find the idea that it is 100% fake to be more harmful than if it were real.
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reader, person12345 +, writes (17 April 2012):
It's been shown many times (in studies performed since the 1970s) that porn does not "cause" violence among about 3/4 of people, but among risk groups it is a very significant contributing factor in their likelihood to actually commit sexually violent offenses. The effect has been so clearly shown that modern studies are not allowed to knowingly expose subjects to pornography because it's been so clearly shown to be damaging. Now people are only allowed to do polls/surveys and statistical analyses. Every meta analysis ever done on this has found that pornography has a significant effect on a person's likelihood to commit violence. There is SO much information about this out there that I can't even pick one thing to post here because it would take pages and pages and pages. I will just use two quotes from two of the most well-respected researchers:
"The relationship between particularly sexually violent images in the media and subsequent aggression...is much stronger statistically than the relationship between smoking and lung cancer." -Researcher Edward Donnerstein
"There has been some debate among researchers about the degree of negative consequences of habitual use of pornography, but we feel confident in our findings that pornography is harmful," researcher Dr Claudio Violato noted. "Our study involved more than 12,000 participants and very rigorous analyses. I can think of no beneficial effects of pornography whatsoever. "
Also Dobson didn't come to that conclusion, Ted Bundy said it on camera. You can easily find the tape on Youtube, you don't have to "get access" to it. The fact that someone who it later turned out was a nut happened to film it doesn't change that it he said it. The importance there is not that he was blaming porn, the importance is that porn was an interest for him, back when getting hardcore pornography was not very common. Statistically speaking, sex offenders are more likely to name porn as a sexual interest than non-sex offenders.
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reader, anonymous, writes (17 April 2012): Oh so that's why I killed all those people and have turned into a serial killer, and here was me thinking it was because I was clinically insane and a psychopath.
Funny you should mention Ted Bundy actually seeing as my girlfriend has researched him extensively on a paper she's doing about human sexual predation. Funny because no reputable psychologist has ever stated pornography was an attributing factor in his crimes. The only psychologist who came to that conclusion Dr. James Dobson, who just so happened to be the founder of Focus on the Family and a devout Evangelical Christian with a deep hatred for pornography, what a coincidence eh? Who most other psychologists including my girlfriend who gained access to the tape, say was told what he wanted to hear by Bundy as a final act of manipulation. I guess Ted Bundy managed to manipulate you too.
People really should do their research before they start spouting garbage like pornography turns men into serial killers. 100's of millions of us watch it and lead very healthy good lives with a healthy attitude towards both sex and women.
Of course it's not a victimless offence, it's not an offence at all. It's legal.
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reader, Danielepew  +, writes (17 April 2012):
 Ted Bundy was putting the blame where it did not belong. "Porn made me do it". He never said "Someone made me watch porn", because no one did. He was a sick person.
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reader, pep218 +, writes (17 April 2012):
pep218 is verified as being by the original poster of the questionThanks guys for your responses!!!
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reader, anonymous, writes (17 April 2012): It's mainly teenage boys who don't realise the women in those vids don't look/act like real women. It's obvious they are acting they look bored to me some of them. My first boyfriend loved porn, he had pictures on his phone watched full length films (without masturbating to it) saved videos off websites but wouldn't have real sex with me. This person bought a porn clip into college and played it infront of me and his friends talking about how good it was, he would also say how he watched a good film last night. He began telling me how to wear my hair and using me as a fashion accessory. My new boyfriend realises these women are airbrushed thank god.
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reader, Foot-In-My-Mouth +, writes (17 April 2012):
Agree entirely with the first female anonymous poster and person12345. I was only yesterday reading a book about Ted Bundy where he confessed, shortly before he was to be executed, that reading violent pornography was largely responsible for his perverted attitude towards sex and ultimately sparked off his spree of sex crimes. Porn is not a victimless offence, whether real or fake.
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reader, anonymous, writes (17 April 2012): I don't know why the mere fact that something is "fake" is a valid criticism of it. The Santa Claus Parade and Alice in Wonderland are fake too, which is why people like them.
Who do you expect guys to fantasize about: a fantasy lover who is honestly enjoying everything as much as he is, or a real-life woman who thinks about the grocery list or watches the clock while waiting for the sex ordeal to be over? Fantasy will always be better than reality.
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reader, Danielepew +, writes (16 April 2012):
I think the best way to answer your question is to ask you a question as well:
When you watch a movie, do you know it's fake?
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reader, person12345 +, writes (16 April 2012):
Well that depends. Older guys probably consciously mostly think it's fake. The more worrying thing is people who don't realize it's real. What I mean by that is the idea that it's fantasy when it's not. The comments about thinking the women are hot or something aren't wrong, those are real women. It's not like the women aren't real, they are real. Even if the lighting and makeup and breasts aren't, those women exist and are real. It's not as though they're cartoons or a figment of someone's imagination. And minus the acting, the physical part of porn really did happen. Those women really were exposed to dangerous bodily fluids and really were penetrated.
Overall I find the idea that porn is 100% fake to be much more harmful overall than the idea that it's real.
In general I think adolescents, especially inexperienced adolescents, can have their sexualities severely damaged by both ideas. There have been questions on here from young women who let a teen guy see them naked for the first time only to be mocked for not having massive breasts or waxing. I have had friends who were assaulted at parties in high school after watching violent porn as a group. Also from many women who have partners who think sex is like porn. Rough, a hierarchy of power, and that women gain all pleasure from pleasuring men.
Also, the vast majority of "amateur porn" is made by the same large corporations as the mainstream stuff. Since the popularity of amateur porn profits in general for the porn industry have increased 300%. It doesn't exactly take a rocket scientist to use bad lighting and cameras and lose some of the makeup.
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reader, anonymous, writes (16 April 2012): "When you watch porn you know it is fake, correct?"
Not all of it is. Just the mass-produced industry stuff is. As a regular user I only go amateur and no, not the industry stuff but regular couples who have uploaded their own or had sex in front of a webcam.
Most guys I know, know it's fake, it's actually more common amongst the women I know to think the act itself is real, if it's that fake then why feel threatened by it? We all know the actresses fake it, but the actors don't.
"They say “I would love to have sex with her” or “What I wouldn’t give to have a night with her”, you get the point"
I hate to break it to you OP but we guys say that about pretty much every girl and I bet you 100 bucks there are guy friends of yours that have the said the same about you to each other, there's probably one right now describing all the ways he'd do you or rubbing one off thinking of you, it's what guys do, you girls do it too. We have dicks, guys your age would stick those dicks into just about anything that moves, or at least we like to say we would.
"So, is this just guy talk, or do men really think the woman will act like that if they were to have sex with her or even that women should act like that during sex period?"
It's mainly just guy talk, but unfortunately for you, a lot of guys do think that's the way sex is supposed to be like and it makes them crap in bed.
It does give a lot of guys the wrong idea because they've seen more porn than they've had sex but it's up to you to set the guy straight if he's doing it wrong.
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reader, anonymous, writes (16 April 2012): I think a bigger question to the guys....do you know who and what kind of girls engage in porn? They are someone's daughter who has gone estray, they are someone's daughter who he had no problem sexually molesting when she was a young girl, they are someone's daughter who was drugged and was not aware of what she was doing, they are someone's daughter who started hanging with the wrong crowd, got hooked on drugs and found an easy way to support her habit by doing porn, they are someone's daughter who was raped and never really got over it, they are someone's daughter who was kidnapped drugged and trafficed for this purpose only, they are someone's daughter who was told could earn big money flashing those boobs in the bar, and then to become a stripper, and then finally, have degrading sex while being filmed, they are someone's daughter who grew up thinking she was only good enough to have someone treat her that way for their own sexual satisfaction...it goes on and on...
And I hope and pray that when you have a daughter of your own, none of these things happens to her and maybe just maybe you will think differently about getting your rocks off watching the things some creep does to her...ya, porn is harmless.....
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