A poll on attitudes to pornography

[flamingjimmy]

I never vote in polls on SF on principal - they're rubbish.

Porn is pretty poor on the whole - it's a pale shadow (with a tacky edge) of reality and all about 'technique' without emotion.

To look at it another way it's heavy metal guitar nonsense fret ****** as opposed to a beautiful song sung by a beautiful voice.

 

I think that anaology's way off.

 

It's the difference between going to see a band, and playing a show with a band.

 

Obviously playing is sooo much better, in every way. However that's not to say you can't have a perfectly good time going to see a band, especially if its a good band that play the songs you want them too.

 

I'll let you use your imagination to take that analogy back the other way.

[flamingjimmy]

Yeah, I found that disturbing too. It's one thing if this is something that the partner enjoys and has agreed to beforehand, but she obviously didn't nor had consented to it.

 

An ex-girlfriend once admitted to playing with various parts of me in my sleep, yes mainly that part. In all honesty I just found the idea kinda hot. I would never dream of doing that to a girl though, a double standard yes, but one I am comfortable with.

[Cyclone]

Glad to hear it!

 

I'm sure you knew that wasn't what was meant as well, but you do seem (or did seem) to be trying your best to make the OP thing her husband had a problem.

[Halibut]

I'm sure you knew that wasn't what was meant as well, but you do seem (or did seem) to be trying your best to make the OP thing her husband had a problem.

 

In the context of the OP I do believe her old man was pressuring her for sex/feeling her up while she was asleep. Taken as a whole and looking at everything she said about it, that was my view.

[Suffragette1]

An ex-girlfriend once admitted to playing with various parts of me in my sleep, yes mainly that part. In all honesty I just found the idea kinda hot. I would never dream of doing that to a girl though, a double standard yes, but one I am comfortable with.

 

I have no problem with it at all, provided that each party knows that it is not crossing the other party's line. Everyone is different and I have been known to do it myself:o, only when I knew that the man in question would be receptive to it.

[Frank Sidney]

I don't know how people are mean't to get it on in a relationship if one of the parties doesn't "try it on" Do they sit around a table and diary an erotic encounter, or perhaps arrange it by ESP..?

[Suffragette1]

I don't know how people are mean't to get it on in a relationship if one of the parties doesn't "try it on" Do they sit around a table and diary an erotic encounter, or perhaps arrange it by ESP..?

 

Didin't you know? Diarising for that crucial window is the new foreplay.

[JenC]

My bold. The problem is when impressionable youths consume porn before they have sex and benchmark the porn as being the norm. Porn has had a huge impact on girls and women and the ever increasing procedures such as breast implants, labiaplasty, Brazilians, shaved genitals etc etc.

 

I agree entirely with this sentiment. The impression certain types of porn gives young males and females regarding what the female body looks like is very worrying. This especially applies to the vulva; there are too many young girls who think there's something wrong with their vulva because their labia are long and they think this is somehow abnormal. And unfortunately there are surgeons who are only too willing to make money from these girls' insecurities.

 

Let's not forget men aswell. They're also given unrealistic representations of what the average penis size is and that can also have a damaging effect on a young lad who doesn't know any better. There was a programme repeated on TV not long ago looking into this issue (called My Penis and Everyone Else's), and at the end of the documentary they set up a gallery of maybe a 100 or so photographs of penises (just men from the general public) and it was really positive. It got the exhibition goers discussing their own genitals and gain a bit of perspective. A documentary well worth watching for both men and women; it's on vimeo.

 

In a similar vein, and doing something for women's anxieties, sculptor Jamie McCartney created an exhibition of plaster casts of 400 vulvas taken from volunteers which was displayed in Brighton. Unfortunately it's gone now, but anything which gives a real representation of what genitals actually look like, and the many variations, can only be a positive thing.

 

The key here is education, which should start at home. I think it's the parents' job to give their child the bulk of their sex education (or at least some of it), but I don't think this happens enough due to the parents' embarrassment more than anything. If it was talked about openly from a young age this embarrassment wouldn't exist and when the child got to the age of engaging in sexual relationships, they'd know how to do it properly, safely and with respect. It would also help them to understand that porn, and the bodies seen in some porn, does not reflect reality.

What's missing or lacking is really good quality sex education that tells young people that it is not ok to do things with your partner that they're unprepared for, or don't like, or have expressed reservations about; that it is not ok to pressure anyone into doing anything sexually that they don't want to do, and that no one has to justify their reasons for not wanting to do something; that the sex portrayed in a lot of porn is not necessarily the sex that people have in the real world (ditto, by the way, the sex portrayed in Hollywood movies, and literature, and music); that consent is a vital, ongoing issue whenever you have sex, of whatever kind; that safe sex is important, and testing for STIs vital - and so on.

 

I'd like to pick up on the bold part in particular. Purely in terms of mutual pleasure, the sex shown in Hollywood films and the majority of tv shows is stupid really. It's mainly based on penetrative sex only - how often do we see (or even have implied) female oral or manual sex in a Hollywood film? Sure there are some instances, but it seems this is somehow deemed more offensive?

 

(Bravo to Misfits on that score. Female oral sex, male oral sex and even mutual masturbation represented. )

 

 

I recall the excellent sex ed show on C4 showing a group of teens some natural/real images of male and female genitals. It was astonishing to see the reaction to ordinary breasts and bits as compared to the porn versions.

It was as if they'd never seen pubes, or non - surgically enhanced/trimmed/polished/bleached genitals before and found then vaguely horrific.

 

I remember that too Halibut; Channel 4 have proved pretty good in terms of sex education programmes. They also had one called The Sex Clinic (I think?) which looked at everything, from body insecurities, to masturbation, to sex toys etc., which was also very positive.

[Frank Sidney]

Didin't you know? Diarising for that crucial window is the new foreplay.

 

Then there's all this moaning and groaning and women having an "orgasm." I never knew such a thing as a female orgasm existed, I've never experienced a woman having an orgasm anyway..

[Bulgarian]

Purely in terms of mutual pleasure, the sex shown in Hollywood films and the majority of tv shows is stupid really. It's mainly based on penetrative sex only - how often do we see (or even have implied) female oral or manual sex in a Hollywood film? Sure there are some instances, but it seems this is somehow deemed more offensive?

 

I think people think oral/manual is a bit "seedy" and there is the feeling that ony one person is getting off on it, also it's not romantic stuff that people in love do.

 

Personally I'm all for both, you don't have to get fully undressed to do them, so theya re ideal for a "quicky"