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I should be very clear here that I am a gay man, so I don't really have exposure to much of what is talked about here even if I have heard about it. What I fin

I should be very clear here that I am a gay man, so I don't really have exposure to much of what is talked about here even if I have heard about it. What I find interesting is that it seems to equate critiquing porn with critiquing the treatment of the people in porn. Those are 2 very distinct things, you can have issues with treatment within the industry without going down a prudish anti-porn route. Personally I feel like much of the issues with Porn, particularly in the US, stem from being uncomfortable talking about sex. Instead of feeling like we need to hide and be ashamed that we watch porn, it should be talked about so from a younger age we know its fantasy. We know that these positions, angles, noises, the perfection, isn't normal. Sex is messy. This shame about sex, our bodies, leads to many of these problems with how we view porn. I strongly believe that there is nothing wrong with consuming porn, casually, with your partner(s), regularly, whatever. It is just another way to explore your sexuality and we should not demonize that. We should however address the problems with the industry, but without demonizing its existence.

RHSeeger 1y ago
Your thoughts along this topic run similar to mine. I would extend it a bit to say that a lot of the problems in the industry, and how it treats people, are a direct result of the fact that it's considered shameful by a lot of society.
- nerdjon 1y ago
  Yes, 100%. Made worse by maybe afraid to speak up because of how might be judged ("Oh this person was asking for it because they do porn"). Feeling like you have no power. It is for sure a complicated issue and societal norms and expectations play into that.
thraway79879s8d 1y ago
The issues at play are really fundamentally about heterosexuality. The gay male money-free casual sex market "clears" --- grindr does in fact work. The (unpaid) heterosexual casual sex market will never clear regardless of app design, there are simply not even women interested in not enough casual sex for it to be any other way. Whether its 2024 voters freaking about inflation (despite it being lower than in other countries), or the rise of the manosphere since hetero dating apps, Americans in particular are very consumer oriented society that freaks out when consumption desires get impeded. Somewhere, between many culture forces (porn, 1990s-2010s sex positivity, hookup culture discourse divorced from reality, hip hop lyrics (?!) the end of the Hayes code (?!), straight men's "needs rising in the hierarchy" rose to include much more casual sex than previous generations aspired to....and now the cat is out of the bag. A lot of the discourse around this reminds me of say, gentrification discourse. There is a wish that the demand would just go away, that we could rewind the clock to when straight men were less horny, or fewer wealthy professionals wanted to live in the urban core. Neverminding that the former is a lot more sympathetic a goal than the latter, it feels like pipe dreaming divorced from actual tactical thinking about the size of the problem and therefore what remedies are actually sufficient. Actually rewinding the clock is, at least, really hard. Capitalism has been invading the domestic sphere for decades. It's the same process as, say, less home-cooking and more takeout or restaurant trips too. (And in that case, freeing women from the kitchen is unambiguously good!) In the housing case, the moral and correct answer is "just build more dense housing" --- allow supply to meet demand. In the straight casual sex case, the analogous answer is "just legalize prostitution", but the morality is admittedly less clear cut. Personally, I think we should try it, as all the other answers seem deeply seriousness given the scale of the problem. Better to do something that might actual work, then half-ass things that will certainly fail while the problem gets worse.
- bradlys 1y ago
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RHSeeger 1y ago

Your thoughts along this topic run similar to mine. I would extend it a bit to say that a lot of the problems in the industry, and how it treats people, are a direct result of the fact that it's considered shameful by a lot of society.

nerdjon 1y ago
Yes, 100%. Made worse by maybe afraid to speak up because of how might be judged ("Oh this person was asking for it because they do porn"). Feeling like you have no power. It is for sure a complicated issue and societal norms and expectations play into that.

thraway79879s8d 1y ago

The issues at play are really fundamentally about heterosexuality. The gay male money-free casual sex market "clears" --- grindr does in fact work. The (unpaid) heterosexual casual sex market will never clear regardless of app design, there are simply not even women interested in not enough casual sex for it to be any other way. Whether its 2024 voters freaking about inflation (despite it being lower than in other countries), or the rise of the manosphere since hetero dating apps, Americans in particular are very consumer oriented society that freaks out when consumption desires get impeded. Somewhere, between many culture forces (porn, 1990s-2010s sex positivity, hookup culture discourse divorced from reality, hip hop lyrics (?!) the end of the Hayes code (?!), straight men's "needs rising in the hierarchy" rose to include much more casual sex than previous generations aspired to....and now the cat is out of the bag. A lot of the discourse around this reminds me of say, gentrification discourse. There is a wish that the demand would just go away, that we could rewind the clock to when straight men were less horny, or fewer wealthy professionals wanted to live in the urban core. Neverminding that the former is a lot more sympathetic a goal than the latter, it feels like pipe dreaming divorced from actual tactical thinking about the size of the problem and therefore what remedies are actually sufficient. Actually rewinding the clock is, at least, really hard. Capitalism has been invading the domestic sphere for decades. It's the same process as, say, less home-cooking and more takeout or restaurant trips too. (And in that case, freeing women from the kitchen is unambiguously good!) In the housing case, the moral and correct answer is "just build more dense housing" --- allow supply to meet demand. In the straight casual sex case, the analogous answer is "just legalize prostitution", but the morality is admittedly less clear cut. Personally, I think we should try it, as all the other answers seem deeply seriousness given the scale of the problem. Better to do something that might actual work, then half-ass things that will certainly fail while the problem gets worse.

bradlys 1y ago
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