The first time I saw pornography, I was 14 years old. I was babysitting for a neighbor down the street and was looking for children’s videos for the kids when I came across a few unmarked tapes. I put one in and to my surprise, it was porn. Though I turned it off straight away (the kids were around but didn’t see it, thankfully), I went back to the videos after I’d put the children down for their naps. I was a teenager and I was curious.
In retrospect, the movies on the tapes were regular, “straight sex” porn. This was the 1980s and the women in the movies didn’t have fake breasts and were not shaved to an inch of their nether regions. The men were pretty hairy and lots of them had mustaches, a la Magnum P.I.’s Tom Selleck. The routines were fairly standard: Guy meets girl, have a bit of conversation, clothes come off and sex ensues (heavy petting, mutual oral sex, sex in various positions, The End). Nothing about it felt weird or unsavory and in fact, I revisited those tapes several times over the next few months as the babysitting jobs continued. Of course I was always careful to rewind the tape back to the exact spot and put the tape back on the exact shelf in the television console where I had found it.
I’ve watched porn here and there over the years and what I’ve noticed in recent years is how much fetish-oriented porn, specifically “punishment porn,” is starting to become mainstream. One quick browse at a handful of online porn sites reveals an overabundance of disturbing, graphic key words such as “GAGGING” and “ROUGH” and “PUNISHMENT” and “DRILLING” and “FORCED,” among other gems. Photos of women being dragged by the hair and seemingly forced to give oral sex to her “boss” or “landlord” or other “authority” figures abound. Storylines are focused on revenge and retribution; men are getting back at women for ignoring them or cheating on them or for screwing up a proposal at work. Finding a video showing a woman literally being slapped around while engaging in sex acts is easy to find; instead of being concealed within fetish-oriented porn sites they’re readily available on many mainsteam, free porn websites. It’s an unsettling trend.
Los Angeles-based sex educator, author and lecturer Jamye Waxman agrees that these types of porn films are on the rise. “I see an increase in finding the craziest things one can do in porn. That’s because the Internet has upped the ante, so to speak, regarding what it takes to get noticed. I find this type of porn a cry for attention and not necessarily a healthy outlet for sexual exploration. Of course if two people generally love being punished, beaten, whatever, who am I to stop it? But I ask this: If you love it, why? That’s what I want to know,” she says.
Physically, the actors in these videos and photos are getting more and more extreme as well. The women have bowling ball-sized breasts that leave the skin on their chests looking like it’s pulling at the seams OR they’re flat-chested and petite and “barely legal.” They are shaved completely bare and the skin down there is bleached (ouch!). The men, with their thick necks and bulging veins, look like they’re bursting with ‘roid rage, which I suppose suits since they’re always pissed off and looking for revenge! The thing is I do not know a single woman who finds this type of fury or crazed sex wrath appealing. Sure, some of us like a little smack on the bum sometimes. But find me a woman who enjoys having a man’s *meat* forcibly shoved into her mouth to the point of gagging and I’ll show you one who is nothing but a figment of a disturbed man’s twisted imagination.
Waxman, who has written and produced four erotic films for an adult entertainment company, believes that every individual has his/her own sexual fetishes and desires but that this type of physically-abusive porn is troubling.
“I can’t say what is sexy and arousing for every individual, but I do see sex as something pleasure based with a limited infusion of pain, and even that pain should be pleasurable,” says Waxman. “As someone who was spanked loads as a child, I don’t get off on being smacked around and honestly find it degrading. I’m curious if there’s a lot of this porn where she’s doing the slapping, but even when I have seen women emasculating men, it doesn’t work for me. Sex is a balance, and there’s no balance when someone takes away your power by such a jarring jolt of force. I prefer loving and sensual to this type of brute force. I got into the industry to make more of the types of erotica that I’d watch and learn from.”
I don’t want to speak for all women but most I know would agree with Waxman’s sentiments. Pornography is something I enjoy on occasion and I’m sure this is true for many women. But this popularization of “punishment porn” is something that I find alarming and, quite frankly, sickening. And because it seems so prevalent on mainstream porn sites, if I want to watch porn I’ll opt for websites that advertise “Classic Porn” — as it is so amusingly called. That would be porn from the ‘70s and ‘80s, the stuff from my babysitting days, where men and women could have sex without anyone being slapped. Call me a prude but that’s just how I like it.
Clare Kleinedler is an American freelance journalist whose work has been featured in the Los Angeles Times, the Irish Times, People and WIRED. She currently resides in Ireland and chronicles living abroad on her blog, An American in Ireland. @clarekleinedler
Or as @charlieconnelly observed some time ago, the first eleven years of the 21st century shall be remembered for porn single handedly doing what evolution could not – the eradication of pubic hair
People say that often and I think it’s giving porn too much credit. A lot of men who are old enough to remember when pubic hair was normal will say they were repulsed the first time they encountered a woman without it. Of course, a lot of them came around to the idea eventually. But porn exists to make money and it makes money by reflecting what turns its viewers on – not what repulses them. So pubic hairlessness must have already been “trending” (is that an all-purpose word yet?) by the time porn picked up on it, at least mainstream porn.
Where porn does come into it, I think, is in reinforcing that trend and transmitting it onto a new generation. But that’s far from doing the work “single-handedly”.
I’d normally be the first in line to claim credit where it’s entirely undeserved, but I definitely did not say that.
Sorry guys, I believe I have attributed the comment to the wrong author… I am searching now to correct my mistake
Hi Clare,
Brilliant post and sadly very true. Porn has become more and more violent and even mainsteam porn consist of a lot of that “punishment porn” you refer to. Its no longer at the fringes of this huge industry.
I read a book called Pornography—Men Possessing Women (1981) by Andrea Dworkin when I was 17 years old and from then I felt strongly that pornography was an expression of violence against women and had a real fear of it. Since then I read a lot of “sex-positive” feminist literature (I hate that term because it implys feminists who dont identify as sex-positive automatically are sex-negative/anti-sex) and there is a lot of erotica made for women, by women that contains no acts of no-consentual sex, real or implied, or violence.
See: http://www.goodforher.com/feminist_porn_awards
Anyway its an issue Im really interested in. Great read, thanks for writing about your experiences so frankly!
Ciara
Great piece, Clare! And yes, I also think it’s a disturbing trend. It’s something that’s increasingly prevalent in queer porn as well.
I don’t know anything about mainstream porn at all, but I’ve got a friend who is a fetish and spanking model and who blogs about it (I don’t want to link to the blog because I’m at work and try and avoid browsing porn at work, but googling “pandora’s bot” should do it!) and there are a lot of assumptions here that I know she would challenge. “If you like it, fine, but you should ask yourself why” is hugely judgmental disguised as gentle concern. If someone told me that they were fine with me being queer but they thought I ought to ask myself why I was – with the clear implication that it was somehow wrong or pathological – I’d be pissed off.
Maybe there’s something to be said about the idea of punishment porn going mainstream, and what that’s saying, but you’ve got to be careful you don’t invalidate people’s experiences of their sexuality in the process.
Completely agree, Mary and I’m absolutely loathe to tell other women what they should and shouldn’t like and why they should and shouldn’t like it. However, some of these sites go way beyond spanking and well into unambiguous degradation territory. I think it’s interesting that at the same time there has been an emergence of torture porn in mainstream cinema.
Mary: I understand your viewpoint but I am not talking about fetish/spanking porn, I’m talking about porn that’s being advertised as mainstream and highlights women being slapped around (like across the face as they are being dragged around by the hair and choked with her “manager’s” necktie). S&M, bondage, spanking, etc. are defined fetishes and so the viewer knows what she/he is getting – I am not passing judgement on those genres. I find throwing in a few abuse scenes in “straight” porn movies to be disturbing. I think this is what Jamye is referring to.
I get that. But you do also have
Sure, some of us like a little smack on the bum sometimes. But find me a woman who enjoys having a man’s *meat* forcibly shoved into her mouth to the point of gagging and I’ll show you one who is nothing but a figment of a disturbed man’s twisted imagination
Well, no, my friend has written several times about how much she likes that.
I just think you need to be a bit more careful to separate the criticism of disturbing trends in mainstream porn from “most women I know…” type comments, or generalising about women prefering loving and sensual sex to rough or quasi-violent sex (for what it’s worth, I know MANY women who prefer the latter!) Your criticisms are probably valid, but as soon as you start talking about what women “generally” prefer, you’re going to alienate a lot of potential readers – me included, since being queer means I’m not going to get off on what “most women” are presumed to get off on!
It seems counterintuitive but there is some evidence that the liberalisation of pornography has contributed to dramatic DECLINES in sexual violence. Here Prof Anthony D’Amato argues that the massively increased access and decreased cost of porn caused by the rise of the internet led to great declines in rape:
http://anthonydamato.law.northwestern.edu/Adobefiles/porn.pdf
Here the University of Hawai’i claims that liberalisation of pornography in 1990s Japan led to declines in sexual violence:
http://www.hawaii.edu/PCSS/biblio/articles/1961to1999/1999-pornography-rape-sex-crimes-japan.html
And finally a Clemson University report notes that: “the arrival of the internet was associated with a reduction in rape incidence…. I find that internet access appears to be a substitute for rape; in particular, the results suggest that a 10 percentage point increase in internet access is associated with a decline in reported rape victimization of around 7.3%.”
http://www.toddkendall.net/internetcrime.pdf
The idea is that many potential rapists are now choosing low-risk pornography instead of high-risk sexual violence.
However there might be negative effects for non-rapists in watching violent pornography, I don’t know.
when were these studies conducted? this trend in porn is fairly new and there is a lot of other studies to debunk these
Great post Clare. Thanks.
SO glad to see the comment above from Mary. This post is so judgemental. I’ve been called a lot of things in my sex life (and enjoyed them all), but “a figment of a disturbed man’s twisted imagination” is a new one on me.
I’m more offended on behalf of the many men I’ve known who enjoy consensual rough sex. Not one of them has been “disturbed” or “twisted”, in fact they’re kinder, more respectful and more feminist than any men I’ve ever met. The kind of men who understand that just because you want to be spanked (properly, none of your little taps on the bottom thanks) and yes, maybe a little gagged, does not mean you’re a damaged whore, or a victim of some awful experience. They understand that women are sexual beings too, we have appetites and dark fantasies and the ones who have the courage to express it (in a society where judgey judgey people lurk on every corner, even feminist blogs) are the strong ones, not the vulnerable ones.
As for porn, yes rough porn is becoming more prevalent. No great mystery as to why, viewers crave uniqueness, they want to go a little further each time. The Internet caused “classic” porn fatigue, and now this is whatwe’re left with. Worrying? Perhaps. But talk to any red-blooded male, Irish ones in particular, and they’ll tell you they find such porn boring and staged and fake. They’ll watch natural women in amateur porn any day over faux lesbians in a faux threesome getting “drilled” by some faceless bloke.
Moreover, the ones who DO watch the rough stuff aren’t into it because of the forcing. You’ll see a willingness in the female performers in this type of porn that is like gold dust to men. The idea that a woman would actively consent and enthusiastically participate in sex — THAT’S their fetish. Not punishment. Though there are men out there who enjoy D/s (that’s domination and submission to the uninitiated), they are in the minority, sadly for me
I’ve got one of them at home and he treats me like a princess, when he’s not treating me like his whore. You can read all about it on my blog, linked above.
There’s nothing to fear from porn. It’s a masturbation tool, like a vibrator to my mind. Men are not animals, they can differentiate between fantasy and reality. Those who can’t are the problem, and they need help — porn is not causing their issues, merely exacerbating them. If it wasn’t porn, they’d be up a tree with binoculars.
I’ve waffled on too much! Suffice it to say that you certainly DON’T speak for all women… especially not me.
You’ll see a willingness in the female performers in this type of porn that is like gold dust to men. The idea that a woman would actively consent and enthusiastically participate in sex — THAT’S their fetish. Not punishment.
By “willingness” you mean that by acting in these types of movies, the actresses must be willing to do it because they’ve taken the job and are acting in the film, yes? Because the role they play in the films (not all of course, the ones I’ve seen) is that of the whimpering, crying, resistant victim. I can’t help but to wonder if that image is what is “gold dust” to men. Yes if the portrayal is that of a willing woman who is consenting to this type of sex that’s one thing, but that’s not the type of porn I’m writing about here.
But talk to any red-blooded male, Irish ones in particular, and they’ll tell you they find such porn boring and staged and fake… They’ll watch natural women in amateur porn any day over faux lesbians in a faux threesome getting “drilled” by some faceless bloke.
That’s really not backed up by the figures. Amateur porn is out there, sure, but the multimillion dollar American porn industry is not based on that. What people say is not necessarily what they do: ask people if they’d be willing to pay a small premium to know that their clothes were made by fair-trade label and they might say yes, but that’s not denting Primark/Penney’s profits any time soon.
Moreover, the ones who DO watch the rough stuff aren’t into it because of the forcing. You’ll see a willingness in the female performers in this type of porn that is like gold dust to men. The idea that a woman would actively consent and enthusiastically participate in sex — THAT’S their fetish. Not punishment.
Again, I think that’s a misreading of the market. The market isn’t driven by images of men with women who are just enthusiastically consenting, it includes images of acts where the women appear not to be consenting. And if a majority men are fantasising about acts which they are unable to perform because a majority of women find them too degrading / unsexy / not in line with their fantasies – well, that’s still a potential problem.
One of the reasons my friend blogs is to make it clear when she’s acting non-consent and actually consenting enthusiastically. Conversely, women in mainstream porn may (“may” not necessarily “are”) be acting an enthusiasm that they don’t feel – porn is still acting. For my friend, feminist porn is about acknowledging the problems in porn and making it clear what her role in the process is. Mainstream porn has a murky track record when it comes to catering to women’s fantasies and needs, and in being explicit about women’s active role in consenting, designing or producing porn, or about the types of pressure which are exerted on its actors and performers.
I don’t think there is anything at all wrong with getting a kick out of sexual acts which feel degrading or slutty or whatever, or with being someone who really isn’t into that at all. We just need a society in which it is EASY for women to get to know their own sexual preferences and work out which side of the line they fall – and a blanket defence of a mainstream porn industry isn’t any better at advancing that than a blanket condemnation of it.
Whether or not consenting adults like their sex rough, it’s worth looking at this question of violence becoming part of mainstream porn, for exactly the reasons Clare suggests: mainstream porn tends to be how a lot of us learned about sex as kids or teenagers.
Sex education in the classroom (co-ed, no less!) was too mortifying for me to get much benefit out of it, and my well-meaning Catholic mother was too vague and metaphorical to be useful. What I learned about sex came from the magazines hidden in my father’s nightstand, and from the unmarked videos my friends found stashed behind their parents’ TV cabinets.
Part of the adventure of sex is figuring out what works for you, but I’m not comfortable with a generation of kids patterning their sexual behavior on fantasies of women in ball gags. Sorry, I’m not.
Porn is not for children, it’s for adults. If your kids are looking at porn you have an Internet security/supervision problem. Porn’s not the issue there.
Teenagers will look at and learn from porn. Again, it’s the parental responsibility to educate them that porn is fake, and real sex does not look like that. Porn, again, is not the issue there. It’s the lack of sexual education. Any teen who’s adequately informed about sex will be able to recognise that porn sex is not real sex.
I agree, but not all parents do, and children suffer. I would rather see more education about sex, sexuality and consent in schools and other youth-oriented services than relying on parents.
the fact that adults have created a society so damaging and harmful that a million security settings have to be set on a computer before they can use it is the problem…not that the parents are too naive to realize the extent of how harmful the world is.
Clair, I agree, and pornography is one of the few areas where I feel that “what about the children!” is a very justifiable argument. For that reason, I tend to be more concerned about soft porn than hardcore porn, just because it’s more ubiquitous: I absolutely remember being a seven-year-old girl and trying to figure out what sex was from the glimpses of top-shelf magazines and my grandparents’ newspaper’s Page 3, and I hate the fact that today’s little girls are even more exposed to naked starlets in classically submissive positions, through the whole lads’ mags culture.
I don’t know how you manage a society in which hardcore and violent porn is ubiquitous and accessible by children who are in the process of developing their sexual awareness. Obviously parents play a huge role, and (as ever), children who have loving and stable parents who model good relationships probably remain relatively unaffected, whilst children without stable role models are more vulnerable.
So yeah, I definitely agree there’s a problem with kids having their sexualities formed by porn. I don’t know what you do about it, though – I tend to the belief that the best reaction is not “people! stop making and distributing porn” but “men! stop being shite and getting off on really disturbing misogynist shit and putting it all over the place!”
I remember a male friend showing me a video on his mobile phone once of a very dead-eyed woman giving a blowjob whilst getting repeatedly punched into the side of the head.
He didn’t find this at all erotic. He and his mates had passed it about because they found it HILARIOUS.
I can’t quite get my head around that. It was violent pornography, but to the lads it was just plain funny to see a woman (actress/amateur, didn’t matter to them) being walloped about whilst “forced” to give head. None of these guys were violent weirdoes or anything – they’re normal twentysomethings with girlfriends they love, kids they dote on, and mums they adore.
I’ve thought about it a lot, and I still can’t figure out the giggle response. “Punishment” porn as comedy, not boundary-pushing fantasy?
I’m reminded of Jackass – people falling around laughing while men shoot Johnny Knoxville with paintballs or tasers – or violent comedies like Pineapple Express. For some reason, seeing people in pain can sometimes be funny!
Hmm. The Jackass thing makes a certain amount of sense, but Knoxville was always a willing participant and getting a (very painful) laugh out of the whole thing himself.
I presume the female in your example was a willing participant too (otherwise it’d be rape) but, yes, presumably not getting the giggles out of it the way Knoxville does!
When I was in secondary school, pleasure in the suffering of others was one of the main sources of amusement for many of my peers. I guess they had pretty low levels of empathy. In that case, an absurd and painful situation for someone else could be hilarious, I imagine! I wouldn’t be surprised if the average young male had lower empathy than others (just guessing though).
there is a difference between someone laughing at the stupid guy who gets hurt and a woman having her asshole riped to new levels in pain during sex…an act that is supposed to be pleasurable
Interesting article by Marina Hyde in the Guardian back in 2007….
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2007/dec/22/ukcrime.uk
[...] read this piece on the Anti-Room today and it made me rather angry. It talks about “punishment” porn becoming [...]
There’s a link here to a 15 minute lecture with slides on research conducted on a hetero-sexual internet pornography forum.
It’s called ‘Widening the Glory Hole’, by Simon Lindgren.
It draws out some interesting themes, in a non-moralising way, giving the picture of an almost completely male, “homo-social subculture” (much like sci-fi or gaming forums), with the watching of porn and the online discussions that ensue outlined as a process of “hegemonic masculinity” with “reductive female categorisation” as a significant factor within the discourse.
It’s called ‘Widening the Glory Hole’
http://www.simonlindgren.com/2010/10/22/talk-at-ir11/
Interesting post. I don’t want to necessarily assume that violent pornography = violent sex in real life, but the fact that there’s so MUCH of it is a little unsettling, that it’s presented as normal (albeit within the heightened and unreal context of porn).
ALL pornography is sick and demeans not just the women who are victims but the men who enjoy it. Fetishising sex as some sort of past-time outside of the loving context of marriage and procreation is a perversion of our physical gifts. I don’t wish to over-personalise this but you people seem very, very, very lost and sad and I genuinely feel sorry for you.
God Bless.
Attracta McCarthy-McKenna
@attractamac
I agree entirely with Mary here, this post is pretty damn narrow-minded. Regardless of your main point, stuff like:
“The thing is I do not know a single woman who finds this type of fury or crazed sex wrath appealing. Sure, some of us like a little smack on the bum sometimes. But find me a woman who enjoys having a man’s *meat* forcibly shoved into her mouth to the point of gagging and I’ll show you one who is nothing but a figment of a disturbed man’s twisted imagination.”
is unacceptable. Calling a woman somehow twisted or disturbed for her personal sexual desires or practices, telling them what they should or should not like, is unfeminist in the extreme.
What’s worse is that you’ve even written them out of existence, calling them imaginary and denying their own personal experience in favour of your own personal views on the subject. You can’t just say that you don’t claim to speak for all women and then pull a trick like that.
None of this does any service at all to your main point, which I think is a solid one. As said already, you really really need to make this distinction.
Clarisse Thorne made a good point today in an article on Feministe: “Between consenting adults, there is no ‘should.’”
http://clarissethorn.com/blog/2009/02/02/there-is-no-should-and-the-sex-positive-agenda/
Yes. Should is a word that is well replaced with ‘could’ in these conversations. Sure, everyone’s kinks come from somewhere. I’m not sure that means they shouldn’ t be indulged, maybe even adressed through sex.
There are much wider conversations on this topic going on in the erotica and porn world.
I was interested to see they’re here in Ireland too – when I read the post I worried the comments would all the along the lines of Attracta McCarthy-McKenna’s little doozy.
I agree about the condemnatory language, but I get it. Most of us grew up with a single track feminist viewpoint on porn. Then I found the internet though, and my world expanded a bit, along with my sexual development and my knowledge of what I like and I don’t.
Susie Bright said it best: the answer to bad porn is not no porn, it’s more good porn.
See http://www.sexisnotthenemy.tumblr.com for some very positive images and discussions, for example.
I think the fundamental point about violence against women finding its way into mainstream porn is valid, to be honest. It’s the new kinky, I’m afraid, and it’s getting popular, but yes, it ignores all the safety and discussion and respect and knowledge that goes along with BDSM. And it’s still cheesy.
I think there’s a fine line. If you’re pro-porn, and sex-positive, you have to be careful what you are accepting of. Plenty of porn does still send dodgy messages, yes. And boys stay boys a long time, as that phone video post illustrates. Sigh.
I wish mainstream porn would go back to focusing on real people and real sex, and the idea that they might like each other. Dara O v Brian has a bit about this, about having angry sex with people you don’t even like. The thing with fetish sex is the very clear awareness that there’s an agreed scene and that everyone goes back to being themselves again afterwards and I don’t think mainstream porn recognises that in the same way.
Ack. You could talk about this forever.
Oh god, sorry that’s so long!
Pornography distorts sex in a similar way, perhaps, that romantic comedies distort love. The rom-com consensus that each person can expect to find “the one” – an individual that one is destined to be with and with whom no effort or compromise is needed – seems a particularly harmful idea.
But romance and romantic comedies are widely accepted in public, as are very violent action films and brutal torture horror films, in a way that pornography is not. So porn attracts fear and negative attention while other potentially harmful genres of fiction do not.
there is a difference between distortion and downright perversiveness. There is a difference between a funny laugh over a romantic comedy and a young girl who has to venture into a dating world where all her potential partners have been nursing off extremely dehumanizing (against women) pornography for years. Common sense is really needed here ppl
I completely agree with the author of this article. There is a very DISTURBING trend in pornography that I have witnessed growing up over the years. Women are being degraded, exploited to in disgusting and frightening ways. The shelf life for a woman in todays porn business is around 3 months. These women are enduring incredible amounts of pain to their bodies. Women are enduring double anal and triple pentration. I read an article not long ago where the author stated women in todays mainstream porn are reduced to 3 holes and 2 hands. Their bodies are pushed to the very limit. I DO NOT care what anyone says there is something inherently wrong and disturbing in that. There is something wrong with a society that leeches off such disturbing acts. Women, esp. young girls are the ones that are going to suffer from this. The average age for a young person to see porn today is eleven years old. These extreme and violent porn is changing the way women view themselves, the way men view themselves and the way men and women are viewing relationships. Porn is now mainstream and bleeding into all aspects of our media. This is scary and the consequences are grave. I am of the assumption that we value nothing in this society…If a man from 60 years ago saw a clip of our porn today and was asked what he thought of our world today..he would come to the conclusion that women have been reduced to dogs.
I’m with Mary and ShellyMC
I guess I’m a “figment of a disturbed man’s twisted imagination”? Not quite. I’m a very well adjusted wife and mother. I had a normal childhood. I never got into drugs, my parents are still married and we were middle-class. I didn’t watch much porn when growing up, and what I did see was mostly boring vanilla.
I love it when my husband drags me around by my hair, ties me up, and shoves his cock down my throat. It’s hot. I love it when he gets out the floggers, whips and paddles and beats me until my ass is red. It gets me so high I feel like I’m flying. It makes me so much more sensitive to touch and the sex afterwards is amazing. Sometimes he smacks my ass- and none of this “tapping” shit- while he’s fucking me on my hands and knees with a fistful of my hair and a gag in my mouth. And I love it.
You don’t have to love it, you don’t even have to like it- because you don’t have to do it if you don’t want to. But you can take your derogatory assumptions about me, my husband (who is the most loving and gentle and accommodating man I’ve ever been with), and anyone else who enjoys it, and kindly fuck off.
Better yet, do some research. Start here: http://www.alternet.org/sex/146023/feminist_sex_submissive_how_i_reconcile_my_politics_with_my_sex_life/
“The thing is I do not know a single woman who finds this type of fury or crazed sex wrath appealing.”
Another thing, lol, I bet you do. I bet they wouldn’t tell you. Because of that lip-curling look of disgust that would be plain on your face and the fact that it’s really none of your business, anyway, since you aren’t the one they’re having sex with.
Alright. I understand what the poster is saying, she doesn’t wish to be exposed to kink. That in itself is all good. but, what infuriated me about this post was the disregard for how people can choose to have sex. The sources were really prejudiced I really quite honestly think that I am not as Jamye Waxman put it “a figment of a disturbed man’s twisted imagination.”
So I want to address a few points:
Jamye Waxman says, “I find this type of porn a cry for attention and not necessarily a healthy outlet for sexual exploration. Of course if two people generally love being punished, beaten, whatever, who am I to stop it? But I ask this: If you love it, why? That’s what I want to know.”
I say that what I get off on is different from what other people get off on. I like having bruises, they remind me of the fun times. I don’t know why I particularly like it. But, I like trusting the guy I am with so that I can give up complete control. I can stop what we are doing at anytime if either party is uncomfortable. I like being smacked around. I like being bound, gagged, blindfolded, and beaten.
Jamye Waxman says, “ that this type of physically-abusive porn is troubling…..”
Why is it troubling? I really don’t see why. You aren’t being forced to watch it. You can read descriptions and go on to more vanilla type porn.
Jamye Waxman says, “I can’t say what is sexy and arousing for every individual, but I do see sex as something pleasure based with a limited infusion of pain, and even that pain should be pleasurable”
Nope. That is why masochists and sadists exist. A combination of pain as punishment and a nice helping of pleasure as a reward for being a good girl goes quite nicely together.
Jamye Waxman says, “As someone who was spanked loads as a child, I don’t get off on being smacked around and honestly find it degrading.”
I like being degraded then.
Jamye Waxman says, “ I’m curious if there’s a lot of this porn where she’s doing the slapping, but even when I have seen women emasculating men, it doesn’t work for me.”
There are lots of porn where there is a Domme and a sissy boi.
Jamye Waxman says, “Sex is a balance, and there’s no balance when someone takes away your power by such a jarring jolt of force.”
If you consent to have your power taken away then there is balance. I myself love being forced to submit.
Jamye Waxman says, “I prefer loving and sensual to this type of brute force. I got into the industry to make more of the types of erotica that I’d watch and learn from.”
Keyword: I
OP said,”I don’t want to speak for all women but most I know would agree with Waxman’s sentiments. ”
No. Most would not agree.
[...] I was prepared to be open-minded when I came across this post criticizing “punishment porn” that someone posted in the Submissive Women group on fetlife. Then I read this: Sure, some of us [...]
“The thing is I do not know a single woman who finds this type of fury or crazed sex wrath appealing. Sure, some of us like a little smack on the bum sometimes. But find me a woman who enjoys having a man’s *meat* forcibly shoved into her mouth to the point of gagging and I’ll show you one who is nothing but a figment of a disturbed man’s twisted imagination.”
Just…wow. For a figment, I’ve always felt so very REAL.
There are plenty of porn websites that do not contain the type of porn that is disturbing to you. There are plenty of porn websites much more disturbing than those you have mentioned.
But let’s be clear about one thing- Charles Manson didn’t need the Beatles to drive his insanity and neither will disturbed individuals require these types of websites to drive their own madness forward. If anything, this is a reflection of the liberalization of our culture, and a greater acceptance of personal fetishes and tastes. Does it go to an extreme? Yes, but people who watch Aladdin don’t run out to a carpet store the next day to purchase a flying rug. It’s a fantasy.
The roided men are as much a a stereotype as the big-breasted women. Their sexual actions are as silly as any “classic” porn from the 80′s. There is stilted dialogue, terrible lighting, bad acting, and horrible editing.
What these movies fail to show is that love, caring, tenderness, through aftercare is an integral part of a power exchange in a D/s bedroom. What they fail to show is how a couple can become incredibly close through their shared experience of pain and pleasure. People who work at meeting each other’s needs are not influenced by punishment porn, amused by it perhaps, but certainly not changing their value system.
Disrespecting the person you love has consequences that are far-reaching and could severely damage your future together. I would prefer finding out my partner watches punishment porn than discovering she has a personal profile at ashley madison. The first one, while demeaning to those who are offended by it, is a walk in the park compared to the second one, which raises the issue of trust.
Finally, there is so much porn on the internet that it all seems to melt together until it looks just like snow on an old black and white TV. What? Some guy is slapping a girl around? I just viewed pictures of a crazed Norwegian killer shooting innocent children for a demented cause. I don’t think he was influenced by punishment porn.
I also read about the Lesbian couple on a nearby boat that saved over 40 children. Seems the press doesn’t want to tell the story because the women are gay.
Instead we write stories about types of pornography that offend us and try to get a rise out of the general public. Perhaps then, we should all fear the porn industry more and remember their assumed internet motto, “All the bases are belong to us.”
All YOUR bases are belong to us. well, I messed up that famous quote from the poorly translated video game that became a quotation sensation. Must be getting late.