Is pornography the most honest media product (just to be safe, NSFW)

Porn is totally degrading to women for the most part.

Porn workers are heavy users of drugs (to endure doing the work) and alcohol. They get sexually transmitted diseases.

Porn depicts sex without any emotional component. how is that useful to society? Since it is not true for women, men who are oversexualized by exposure to porn may become violent or desensitized.

How is it honest in any way?

I think people feel safe in criticizing porn because there isn’t always a way to prove they actually like it (if that’s what you felt like doing) and it gives them something to bitch about. They feel great on their high horses talking about how porn takes the feeling out of sex but their own sex lives are indicative of emotonal stuntedness. That being said, I understand why certain kinds of porn are critiqued from a feminist perspective (that is not what the majority is doing, though) and I also get why porn is applauded from a feminist perspective (there are many kinds of feminisms). I do not think it is the most honest media produc – it’s just like any other product; that it has to do with something all of us do doesn’t make it honest, it makes it common. There are different kinds of porn and I don’t think it needs to inherently get a bad rep but for the most part, the porn industry takes advantage of many people and targets specific demographics that, I believe, are already at a disadvantage. It furthers/creates certain stereotypes that lead certain incapable people to inability to distinguish between porn and reality. It legitimizes gender and heteronormative binaries (mainstream porn, that is) and it isn’t all the closely regulated. It places people in danger (but so do many other industries) and sometimes, I just can’t tell if it’s acting or sexual assault (and how would I know? – that’s a problem). All that aside, I enjoy porn from certain sources that I trust (queer friendly, trans friendly porn done by the community members that it portrayrs, consensual and liberating) and that I don’t trust (so sue me) and I can see the issue with porn from all the angles.

I’d say the least honest. Most women don’t have F sized breasts, and most men don’t have 12 inch cocks.

I don’t think porn is honest. If it were, we’d all weigh 120lbs and have perfectly spherical, gravity-defying DD chests, and naturally-platinum blond hair.

Maybe I could agree with the honesty of porn if it weren’t for all the dishonesty it embodies. Too many men are led to believe that the Barbie doll ideal is actually ideal, that all women are closet lesbians, and that all women want to be gang-banged. True, some women are/do, but not all.

If you mean that sexual desire is honest, then I agree 100%.

As it is still fiction, there is a difference between whether it is “true” as opposed to “honest.” @Seelix brings up a good point – porn is wrapped up much of the time in fantasy and desire, and is honest at times about what people want or fantasize about.

This means that the images it portrays are going to be skewed to the ideal, or even the unreal. This isn’t necessarily dishonest – but the portrayals of women and men as looking a certain way is not because of porn, but porn may be considered honest is that it is portraying these physical ideals (when it does) for the very specific reason of arousal.

As Susie Bright states, “It’s a far different criticism to note that porn is sexist. So are all commercial media. That’s like tasting several glasses of salt water and insisting only one of them is salty. The difference with porn is that it is people fucking, and we live in a world that cannot tolerate that image in public.”

I’m not sure what is meant by the word, “honest,” in this context. Is that a kind of “tell it like it is” idea? Does that mean it conducts business honestly? Does that mean its message is honest?

I think it fails on all three grounds, although I’m not sure how many other “products” would make the grade.

Porn does not tell it like it is. It has certain tropes that must be included in order to convey a feeling that is internal. Ejaculations normally take place inside a body. The “money shot” is the solution to the problem of how you show, physically (and not with a look on a face), orgasm. But the bodies of porn actors are not real, and the way they make love is not the way most people make love. Most of us are not gymnasts.

Does it conduct business honestly? Please! From ripping off actors to shady financial deals to, well, I don’t know what all else, it’s not on the straight and narrow.

Porn’s message? Hmmm. What is it’s message? Sex is fun? Sex is athleticism? Sex is cocks and cunts going at it? What?

Whatever it is, I wouldn’t call it honest. I don’t know what other definitions of honesty people might use, but just from the few I’ve looked at, porn is not an honest media project.

It’s just another form of entertainment, capitalised on & commercialised, I don’t read too much into it, I love to watch it though, purely entertainment value, be that hysterical humour or morbid fascination….. Depends what the lads bring round to watch or the lasses…. :-/

I get part of the arguement that it’s degrading to women, but isn’t it also the same for the men most of the time?

@Adirondackwannabe For people who analyze porn and its patterns, that kind of thing is easy to see – but for ‘normal’ people, all they see are cocks shoved down women’s throats – it looks disempowering.

The view that pornography is necessarily degrading to women is an archaic view that died with the first wave of feminists – or should have. Women and men choose to participate in pornography. It presents just as much opportunity for empowerment through sexuality as it does degradation, and if it is a degradation then it’s a chosen one.

@Simone_De_Beauvoir is of course correct when she writes that “certain incapable people” might be unable to separate pornographic fantasy from reality, which is not the fault of the industry or of the actors but of an individual’s failure.

Having said that, I’m not sure what is meant, exactly, by “honest,” although I agree entirely with @Seelix that pornography often reveals desires we didn’t know we had. (E.g., pornography helped me to discover that I’m gay.) But I don’t think it’s an honest depiction of what sex is typically like. Obviously it revolves around performance, like any other form of entertainment; @iamthemob has a nice quotation explaining why it’s not so different from those other forms.

@Simone_De_Beauvoir That’s just degrading treatment of a person. If that’s the type of porn someone likes. doesn’t that just reflect on the person, not necessarily porn per se?

@Adirondackwannabe It does both, imo. Porn, like any other form of art (if that’s what it is; it is, to some) is a reflection on our world and because it shows specific actions more than others, we can see how certain groups are supposed to (allegedly) behave towards others and even if the participants are willing, the scripts are about girls outnumbered by guys and being taken. (not always, but generally) In our world (feminists, sociologists) we call it the ‘male gaze’ – that porn represents the gaze of a male on a female (not the way it really is, because obviously this is not how people always interact, no matter the gender, but the way it is assumed men will like). And besides, you see a lot less women (in porn) shoving cocks (via strap on or otherwise) down men’s throats.

@Simone_De_Beauvoir Get your point. That type of porn would be degrading to women. Unfortunately, that type probably is honest as well, because it reflects some views of parts of society. That’s sad.

I think that @Simone_De_Beauvoir brings up some salient points about the problems underlying porn – that they’re problems with society (or the market), and porn is a reflection of rather than a producer of those problems. Of course, it may contribute to reinforcing those issues – but I think the contribution is small in comparison to the myriad free and public media that we are supposed to.

In response to the issue of honesty, my perception is that all media lies. It is all dishonest. I do feel that porn lies the least. This is particularly the case when we compare it with media generally associated with the “truth” – the news and documentary genres. In general, I find that news programs more often represent an agenda – the production is often exploitative in an insidious way, most purposefully in the statement “If it bleeds, it leads.” Documentaries are often clearly agenda-oriented – the directors and producers have a message, and editing and music, subject selection, etc. are all meant to further that agenda, and puts forward truth that is contextualized – their truth.

Porn’s agenda is clear cut – give the consumer something that will turn him (or her) on. That is offensive – but in the way, I think, that the truth is often offensive – it is “blunt.”

The criticism that most people point out is properly levied at all media forms, and is dishonesty in the porn setting solely in that it is the fantasy that the market wants – often, an idealized form of something that is often pretty messy.

After having debated this time and time again, I think it mostly comes down to just one thing. Arguments can be made either way about the morality of it, and we can go back and fourth all day without answers on who it’s degrading to and who not, and what it causes and what it does not cause, but really, I think it boils down to shame and embarrassment that stems from insecurity and a desire to hide our intentions.

Some people see porn, and it causes them to reflect in an introverted manner on their own desires, it casts light on the animal within. Most people are perfectly comfortable with such feelings in a private setting, but when it comes to externally expressing and talking about those feelings and desires, all you get is “it’s degrading, I don’t like it”. When what they are really thinking is “It’s degrading to me personally, because I don’t want to admit that I’m an animal and I too some times want the exact same things depicted in porn”.

This very moment, right now, there are children in the world who are going to die because they don’t have food, and while we may think on an intellectual level that it’s terrible, no one reading this is going to cry for them, no one is emotionally invested in them, none of us are going to sell our houses to raise food money for them as if they where our on kid, we will just say it’s terrible and let them die anyway, on some level, we just don’t care. People say porn is degrading to the women, and that its terrible for them, but likewise, no one is going to sell their house to give them money so they don’t have to do it any more. On some level, we just don’t care about them, this is one of the things that leads me to suspect, that denouncing porn is just about self interest, and the denial of the animal within.

Some times criminals will report a crime that they instigated to draw attention away from them selves, some times closet homosexuals will denounce being gay, some times people will act macho to hide their emotions, and some times people will denounce porn to draw attention away from people finding out, that they would just love to have a dozen guys with massive dongs ram it down their throat, slap their face and call them a whore.

Before someone tells me that in their case they have no secret desire, and that they are comfortable with their desires, and that they truly don’t like it, note, that I said “some people” not “all people”. Furthermore, note, that if someone did have secret desires that they deny, my answer would only cause them to deny it further.

I do think that porn producers also have an agenda sometimes – I do think they put a spin on their companies or production – as in, this series will be about how women are nurses and maids and schoolgirls and they’ll be doing their bosses/superiors because women just lOOOOve to be dominated by authority and this series will be about giant black guys and asian girls because those two never have sex together and the guy’s cocks are too big for the asian girl’s vagina because I’m an idiot who doesn’t actually know anything about people but stereotypes but I don’t mind perpetuating those stereotypes to make money – ‘regular’ media does the same. The more honest kind of porn is homemade porn – I love that kind (not the kind that’s made to look like homemade porn but just the kind some people made for no good reason and posted.)

The only honest thing about porn is the glimpse into what men want to whack it to and/or wish sex was really like.

Other than that, porn is so unreal on so many levels that it’s basically a lie. The only exception to this is real amateur porn, which is usually two people in an existing sexual relationship doing what they like to do on camera.

@Simone_De_Beauvoir, @MissAnthrope – Aren’t the statements about amateur porn conflating “reality” and “honesty”?

Media is a product – and I think that porn is upfront about what it is doing. Other media enforcing stereotypes do it in a much more significantly insidious ways.

@MissAnthrope – Although a mostly male market, is it appropriate to lump all porn into the expression of what men want? And if so…what’s the point?

@iamthemob – Perhaps it makes more sense in my head, but no, I’m not confusing the two. Porn doesn’t seem honest to me. It’s as fake and dishonest as a lot of commercial marketing; in both cases, you’re told what you want to hear, certain ideas/things/elements are promoted, others omitted, all for the goal of making money. It’s selling something that doesn’t really exist and has also somehow convinced a lot of people that it does actually exist.

I made a sweeping generalization, but let’s run with it rather than getting bogged down in semantics. Most porn is intended for male audiences. ‘Most’, as in, almost all of it. Yes, there is female-oriented, plot-based, high production value porn, but it’s a niche market and can be difficult to find.

@iamthemob To me, reality is honesty, no? And yes, porn doesn’t try to seem objective.

I feel like any disagreement on this point is completely semantic, but maybe I’m wrong.

I believe that porn, as a media product, is almost as dishonest as most other forms of media (reality television, sitcoms, action films, etc.).

I feel like it is honest in the way that (1) it is clear that it is a fiction (for professional porn), and (2) it is clear about what its agenda is.

It is impossible, I believe for media to portray reality. I think that it’s possible to come close…but whether the depiction is realistic is separate and apart for me from whether the genre, in comparison with other media products, is honest.

My friend has a private tech support company. He is constantly fixing computers that are locked up. The biggest cause by far is spyware and viruses from porn sites. When the clients surf porn, their machines freak out. When they don’t, it’s all good.

No, I don’t believe porn is an honest media product at all.

@RealEyesRealizeRealLies – How is that related at all, though? Companies that would be doing this aren’t clearly selling the product – their using the product as a vehicle. Those that are putting anything in a site to ride on downloads, etc., is more likely attributable to the fact that it’s popular on the internet.

It seems like what you’re saying can be translated to the internet generally, or a product like email (since scams come from people emailing you with attachments, etc., not related to porn by necessity). Such a connection doesn’t mean that the internet is a dishonest product, nor that email is a dishonest tool. The intent of neither is to spread spyware and viruses.

You may translate it to the internet generally if you’d like, but I’m not talking generalities. I have no hard statistics to present, but would you disagree that porn sites are statistically (not generally), but statistically a much much greater percentage of malware source than say, hmmmm… Cartoon Network?

The percentages are relevant to the principles who own the sites.

Do you suppose that if all porn were banned, that malware would automatically become prevalent on Cartoon Network web site, or YouTube, or Google Searches, just because of their popularity? Methinks not.

@Simone_De_Beauvoir: Homemade porn (or amateur, except studios often make fake amateur porn) is definitely my preferred variety, too. It’s so much realer and more convincing and intimate. It indulges voyeurism better than the studio-produced stuff, and it’s somehow less insulting. It doesn’t make me say, “You expect me to believe that? You expect me to be turned on by that?” Studio porn attempts novelty too often, and the excessive dominance male actors exercise over female actors is, I think, sort of another exaggerated and unrealistic aspect of that novelty, that fantasy.

/ramble

@absalom And I just find it hot that people want to have sex and want others to watch it – I’ve often said to my partner “I wish you and I can create an event, where we have sex in the middle of the room and all our friends are in a circle around us watching” – and that there is something spectacular about that kind of thing, if it were ever to happen.

@absalom – My knee-jerk reaction to statements about male-dominance in porn is that men in straight porn make nothing in comparison to the women. Women are the stars, and making the bucks.

That it’s one of the rare industries where that’s the case I think speaks more to society than to porn.

It’s not that simple.

Also.

@MissAnthrope – My statement wasn’t meant to simplify the matter, if that’s what it was directed at. I still do have to look at the first book – but there are empowering and disempowering aspects of all industries.

@iamthemob – I know, but my comment still stands – the truth is that it’s not as simple as who gets paid more, or that the women have the power because they have a certain amount of choice, or any of the other arguments people use to justify the degradation of women in porn. There are wide-reaching effects of pornography that most people don’t realize or even think of.

@MissAnthrope – But what evidence is there that there are wide-reaching effects? There’s evidence on both sides.

My problem with most of the criticisms of porn are that I think the problems are result not cause. They stem more likely from general attitudes about sex in repressive societies as well as general misogynistic attitudes.

@MissAnthrope

It is, of course, a complicated issue. But I’m sorry: that second book looks especially ridiculous. And from a review by PW: “The author’s appropriation of addiction terminology—viewers are called users, habitual viewing is an addiction, and pornography featuring teenagers is called Pseudo-Child Pornography or PCP—is distracting and suggests that rhetorical tricks are needed because solid argumentation is lacking.”

This is the kind of hyperbole that taints reactions to perfectly harmless forms of pornography, and the kind of rhetoric that does everything it can to place blame on a product – a product – rather than on a person. It’s insidious and misleading and it even offends me because it strips humanity of its agency and seems to say implicitly that we are all simply slaves to what we consume.

I’m looking inside this book on Amazon and am already bothered by its subtitle: “How Porn Has Hijacked Our Sexuality”. Sexuality cannot be “hijacked” any more than it can be truly altered at a gay-to-straight camp. Porn, moreover, does does no such hijacking; it only reveals what’s already there.

@absalom – I have not read the second book, but it looked interesting and it was something I wanted to read. I have read the first one and I highly recommend it.

@iamthemob – Seriously, read the book. It’s very complicated and my poor, feeble brain is incapable of laying it all out. And, even if I tried, it wouldn’t be a quarter as good.

@absalom – My ambivalence about the issue is obvious by my going back and forth, I’m sure – but I don’t think it’s merely revealing. I don’t think it’s hijacking, but it – like most other forms of media, I would argue – is definitely reinforcing and contributing to the standards that are already there. Again, I don’t think as strongly or subtly as others.

@RealEyesRealizeRealLies – It depends for me – is the malware coming from reputable websites or the random ones? How many porn sites are hit as opposed to others? Were the users heavy porn users?

Porn is perhaps the most ubiquitous product on the internet. It seems inevitable that most of the malware or spyware would be traced back to porn. If porn were banned on the internet, I think that most of the problems would be traced back to whatever the new surfing frenzy would be.

That could be.

@iamthemob

No, you’re right of course. That was just my flippant philippic in response to some of the lines I read from @MissAnthrope‘s second linked book, which I would be wary of.

The first book does look more reasoned and more convincing.

But I am also ambivalent on this, even though I’m trying to argue from only a singular stance. I’m not blind; I can look at straight porn and see that someone is obviously going to be getting the wrong impression.

And, yes, it sometimes reinforces extant and potentially very harmful constructions of gender, and that is important to acknowledge. But I keep coming back to the source, which of course is not pornography, and it seems to me the porn is a product of the construct rather than the other way around. (I believe you said that earlier, too.)

I also keep coming back to the issue of degradation, which in my mind is a an argument that fails when the possibility of choice is involved. It seems a little presumptive of me (or of anyone else) to say that a woman who chooses to act in porn is degrading herself; for all we know, she may enjoy it and feel empowered. (I’m thinking Sasha Grey, even though her empowerment is also a performance, etc.) It’s not likely, and most women probably end up in porn for the wrong reasons, but choice can never be dismissed.

My problem, I suppose, also stems from the fact that every time people talk about porn and it’s badness, the inevitable reaction is “degrading to women.” Not from everyone, and not only, but it will come up and be repeated – (see the first post on this thread).

I can’t help but find this personally really heterosexist! Whenever I talk about porn, I never think about straight porn…I think of two hot dudes. Who’s being exploited there? (well, the young, hot and potentially short-sighted about their futures…maybe).

@iamthemob: Agreed.

All this talk of pornography has totally made me want to not watch pornography for a while…

yeah, it’s no fun right after it’s been over-intellectualized. ;-)

Beyond all the superficial bullshit brought forth by uptight pricks about morality and social decline, porn is harmless, but it’s also retarded.
I’d say it’s superficial, but I don’t think it has for any intent other than jollies off getting to be taken seriously. As you say yourself, sex is one intense drive we humans have, and within good reason, as this is how we reproduce. Porn doesn’t need much more than to exist, so I guess it is honest in that way, butt…

In a greater way for what it is, it’s not honest at all. The scripts and scenarios that come with the adventures are about as subtle as a sledgehammer, and don’t even need to be questioned. The results are always the same, and if we took those scenarios (Surely I jape.) that lead to said porn results from real life, the results differ much.
Nothing happens in real life like it does in porn. Acting in a porn flick is also a lot of hard work, quite strenuous on the body, what with all the retakes and awkward positions to be taken. Prolly ain’t as fun as it looks.

Traditional pornography is like a sickeningly dressed up version of the real thing, and that’s what gets to me about the people who condemn it.
I suppose I can understand the influence it has on young minds, but I say the media and it’s gender role bullshit are much more dangerous, since those are planted in soil which people step foot upon, other than some crap that exists mainly to make you touch yourself.
Porn is so goddamn ridiculous that I don’t know how it can be taken seriously enough to harm anyone. On the other hand, that it at least generally bases its premises on actual human desires may be something to think about. Still, either way, it isn’t honest.

Also, that said, I still think porn is pretty cool.

@Symbeline – Again, though – we’re talking about honesty in comparison with other forms of media. Saying that “that’s not how sex happens” isn’t really a critique on the honesty of it, but perhaps the quality of it.

If we argue that honesty means that it has to truly depict the subject, then I don’t know how we can call “Harry Potter” honest, because that’s not what happens when a child is subject to abuse of his caretakers, etc. etc.

Fictional presentations aren’t dishonest if they’re not “realistic.” Porn is, in comparison, really clear about what it’s doing – it’s there to get you off the best way possible.

Hmm, good point. But porn makes no effort on to say whether or not it’s mythical since it wants its settings to be real for you to enjoy it, whereas Harry Potter is making it clear it’s not real for one second.
Still, I didn’t think of it that way, besdes saying that it exists merely to get one’s jollies off, in which case, I agree, it’s quite honest there, if only for how it’s dishonest about everything else lol.

I was watching porn. Was there a question here?

Honestly to the honesty question; most of us will never face a serial killer or zombies but those are very popular entertainment genres. Porn exaggerates and speaks to our needs and sometimes fetishes in an entertaining way that most of us realize is not “real”. Thank heavens for the internet for making our little fetish groups seem less bizarre.