Do you ever feel uncomfortable about porn?

[b4pxku4u]

Just trying to see if there is anyone out there who feels uncomfortable about porn in any way.

I don't mean certain scenes when it looks like one of the actors is too young, or the scene is violent or any of the things in the 'What turns you off about porn?' thread.

I mean generally.

All comments welcome.

 

[brmstn69]

M0rm0n B0ys, I'm fine with the "companion studies" and other scenes with just the "elders" together, but the "priesthood prep, disciplinary, anointment, etc." scenes bother me. I find the whole idea of geezers molesting boys and calling it religious rituals just plain creepy...

Also, and maybe this is a case of white guilt, but I'm very uncomfortable watching BDSM scenes with white doms and black subs...

 

[c750dt]

In general, I love porn. In fact, if I wasn't married to someone a bit more conservative than myself, I think it'd be fun to star in a few shoots. I wouldn't want it as a day job or even a regular gig though; that seems like it'd suck in all the bad ways. I kinda like the idea of fucking and sucking for an audience once or twice though.

I'm made uncomfortable about the general stigma there seems to be around porn and I feel kinda weird that on my own computer in my own place, I have to keep it hidden and locked up lest it be seen and I wind up in some conversations that won't benefit anyone.

 

[b4pxku4u]

M0rm0n B0ys, I'm fine with the "companion studies" and other scenes with just the "elders" together, but the "priesthood prep, disciplinary, anointment, etc." scenes bother me. I find the whole idea of geezers molesting boys and calling it religious rituals just plain creepy...

Also, and maybe this is a case of white guilt, but I'm very uncomfortable watching BDSM scenes with white doms and black subs...

Yep, you're right - there are some situations to set a porn scene which may not be appropriate. Sometimes I think the ones set in a school can be a bit disturbing.

 

[b4pxku4u]

In general, I love porn. In fact, if I wasn't married to someone a bit more conservative than myself, I think it'd be fun to star in a few shoots. I wouldn't want it as a day job or even a regular gig though; that seems like it'd suck in all the bad ways. I kinda like the idea of fucking and sucking for an audience once or twice though.

I'm made uncomfortable about the general stigma there seems to be around porn and I feel kinda weird that on my own computer in my own place, I have to keep it hidden and locked up lest it be seen and I wind up in some conversations that won't benefit anyone.

I guess it will be a long time before it is 'accepted' as OK. We go to quite long lengths to hide it or protect ourselves from being found out as owning it, let alone enjoying watching it.

 

[riojackblue]

No. How so? I have no bad conscience when I look at porn.
This is their job for which they are paid. Just as you and I are paid for our jobs at the end of the month.

 

[trencherman]

I'm made uncomfortable about the general stigma there seems to be around porn and I feel kinda weird that on my own computer in my own place, I have to keep it hidden and locked up lest it be seen and I wind up in some conversations that won't benefit anyone.

Same here.

 

[gb2000ie]

I'm made uncomfortable about the general stigma there seems to be around porn and I feel kinda weird that on my own computer in my own place, I have to keep it hidden and locked up lest it be seen and I wind up in some conversations that won't benefit anyone.

I couldn't agree more.

It's our Victorian prudishness that makes me uncomfortable, not porn in general. Sure, there are sub-genres of porn that I find deeply disturbing, but there are sub-genres of TV and books and art and entertainment of all forms that I find deeply disturbing, so that doesn't really mean anything.

B.

 

[gorgik9]

I couldn't agree more.

It's our Victorian prudishness that makes me uncomfortable, not porn in general. Sure, there are sub-genres of porn that I find deeply disturbing, but there are sub-genres of TV and books and art and entertainment of all forms that I find deeply disturbing, so that doesn't really mean anything.

B.

I'm definitely in full agreement with gb and c750dt!

While explicit sexual images and stories are universal and will be found in all ancient cultures, the concept of pornography is literally of Victorian origins and it's central idea is that the sexual picture as such can harm vulnerable people, meaning children, women and uneducated working class men.

But of course well educated upper middleclass men can handle just about anything...X_X:no:

The concept of pornography depends on superstition and reeks of vicious classism and sexism...I don't like that...

 

[Shelter]

I've never felt uncomfortable about porn. I like all varieties of gay porn and here as well the very raw BDSM (I wouldn't like to feel it on myself - but watching it makes me hard).

Only straight porn is nothing for me!

 

[c750dt]

^yeah. Vaginas are gross as fuck.

 

[Shelter]

^yeah. Vaginas are gross as fuck.

:blushing: I don't want to say "gross" but I've no feelings for. And yes you are right, it looks not very stimulating for me. But nonetheless I like to watch a naked girl or woman because of the beauty of the body. But I don't look at them with an sexual desire.

I think the same feeling from the other side has a straight man.

 

[Otage]

There really isn't any particular type of porn or scenes that I find uncomfortable, since the actors have agreed to do those scenes for what ever reason, and I think they are the ones who have to carry the consiquences of their choices.

But sometimes all porn feels uncomfortable, but that has really nothing to do with the porn, but more about my personal moods. Some times porn feels just so pointless, and I kinda feel uncomfortable at watching it at all. But that's easy to beat, just don't watch porn if it feels pointless

 

[b4pxku4u]

I'm definitely in full agreement with gb and c750dt!

While explicit sexual images and stories are universal and will be found in all ancient cultures, the concept of pornography is literally of Victorian origins and it's central idea is that the sexual picture as such can harm vulnerable people, meaning children, women and uneducated working class men.

But of course well educated upper middleclass men can handle just about anything...X_X:no:

The concept of pornography depends on superstition and reeks of vicious classism and sexism...I don't like that...

I wonder if that is entirely accurate. Pornography is graphic images of people or situations designed to stimulate. Do you mean that the concept of DISAPPROVAL of pornography is Victorian, classist, sexist, etc?

However, it still does not explain why people far from Victorian values, from different cultures and more than a hundred years on, still feel uncomfortable about watching porn. I think there is something more and I am trying to find out what.

 

[Shelter]

Otage I'm in total compliance with you in this special case. Sometimes I like porn and it will tease me very much and sometimes it is only boring for me. It is if you like to eat a steak, your mouth is watering with the thought of a good steak, but if you will get it day after day you won't like it anymore.

 

[gorgik9]

I wonder if that is entirely accurate. Pornography is graphic images of people or situations designed to stimulate. Do you mean that the concept of DISAPPROVAL of pornography is Victorian, classist, sexist, etc?

However, it still does not explain why people far from Victorian values, from different cultures and more than a hundred years on, still feel uncomfortable about watching porn. I think there is something more and I am trying to find out what.

You started a thread on weather people here "feels uncomfortable about porn in any way" and "I mean generally." Well that's the highest possible level of generality, not having problems in some way with some subgenre of porn, or the production of some specific porn studio but "generally".

And feeling "uncomfortable"- about what? We could engage in a discussion about the way some porn studios treats their young models, but that would probably - at least in parts - be to engage in a much more general discussion on how the entertainment business in general treats people working for them.

But we could also engage in a very different and much more traditional debate on the problematics of explicit sexual imagery in visual porn - it's just that I honestly don't find explicit sexual imagery problematic...

Oh, and by the way - pornography isn't necessarily something pictorial or cinematic. Long, long, long before there were any porn videos or porn photos, there were of course written stories - NIFTY archives is still a pretty popular site on the net, and I dare you to find something as "dirty" in visual medias as Samuel R. Delany's 800+ pages porn novel "Through the Valley of the Nest of Spiders".

No, I wanted to place my discussion on the same level of generality as you had from the beginning, and - in my opinion - the only reasonable way of doing so is to get historical and talk about when, how and why Western societies in the mid-to-late 19th century decided to exclude explicit sexual imagery and explicit sexual literature from respectable culture in general under the labels of "pornography" and "obscene publications".

Of course there's much, much more to say, but maybe this particular post is long enough...

 

[b4pxku4u]

Yes, gorgik9, you're quite right - I had forgotten about pornographic writing completely. I now wonder whether any discomfort that people felt intensified in any way when mainstream pornography took off, i.e. when magazines and videos became increasingly available. In other words, looking at a magazine or a video is less easy to disguise than reading a book.

Whilst I take your (gorgik9) views seriously, I am not convinced that it ALL stemmed from the 19th century - true, the anti-sensualism did but I suspect attitudes to public dissemination or discussion of sexual things have been the same for years; hypocrisy has been around much longer than the 19th C.

I suspect any discomfort people feel (and I readily recognise that many do not) cannot purely come from a Victorian attitudes to sex in public. Conscience, for example, has been part of our make-up since humans have been around. In the West, apart from extreme porn, it is legal and readily available. So is any discomfort that some may feel purely because we are afraid of being found out? Or judged? Or ridiculed? Or is it our consciences at work?

 

[gorgik9]

I think I should have underlined more clearly, that the desicions in the Victorian era I was talking about were various kinds of legal decisions: new legislation and decisions in important court cases with the consequence that printing, publishing, selling or distribution a piece of obscene publication (or if you prefer: porn) could send you off to prison, sometimes for many, many years.

The decision in the British case of Regina v. Hicklin in 1868 would get imported into US legislation and used by the US Supreme Court for almost a hundred years as a legal test for obscenity, until this court fabricated a new legal test for obscenity - slightly more liberal than the Hicklin-test - in the decision in the case Roth v. United States.

So I don't think this explains everything, but I do think it explains quite a lot.

 

[b4pxku4u]

I see now where you're coming from. I was talking about more individual attitudes, though of course they would also be influenced public debate and the resultant laws.

Very interesting to hear that British laws were imported. I suspect that the reverse is true nowadays.

 

[gorgik9]

I see now where you're coming from. I was talking about more individual attitudes, though of course they would also be influenced public debate and the resultant laws.

Very interesting to hear that British laws were imported. I suspect that the reverse is true nowadays.

I forgot to say that the USSC decision in Roth v. United States was in 1957 and that the general trend in US legislation in the late 50s, through the 60s and up until the mid 70s was liberalizing, but then came the big conservative backlash in the USSC decision in the court case Miller v. California 1973 and - getting more and more conservative in the 1980s - the infamous Meese commission 1986.

Coming from a slightly different angle: Since pornography has been something illigal, something criminal, (and in parts still is) in so many countries for many generations time, it easily becomes a word with no other real meaning than "baaad" or "awful". Quite often saying that a picture, a movie or a book is "pornographic" doesn't necessarily mean much more than "I don't like it".