| VGPolyglot said: So, this is a topic that has profoundly troubled me for a while. I do have sexual desires, which I currently relieve through masturbation. However, it's hard to do that through thoughts alone, so I tend to use pornographic material too while doing that. Now, this is where the problem lies. The pornographic industry is not the happiest place at all, far from it in fact. Porn stars have a pretty high suicide rate and lower life-expectancy. This highlights the general unhappiness that porn stars have, and it makes it very hard to consciously watch porn without thinking of the working conditions and relationships, how dehumanizing it must be to have a job like that and the normalization of sex that makes it hard to fully enjoy it. So, what I tend to do frequently is use fictional media instead, mainly hentai (in the forms of anime and doujinshi), as since they're fictional characters it is impossible for them to be truly hurt/exploited. However, I can understand that for others it's hard to do it, and even for me I tend to shuffle things up in order to be able to stay aroused and avoid desensitization. So, there has to be a happy medium. I myself try very hard to not have pornography affect my views and treatment of women, and I hope that I have maintained that. But I was also curious on your guys' thoughts and perspectives on the matter. |
I don't believe that your respect for women and your consumption of porn necessarily have to be linked. I think it's possible to enjoy porn and respect women.
The porn industry is sometimes destructive, true, but your participation (meaning: watching videos on the internet) is negligible to the way the porn industry is run. Whether you watch or do not watch a video will not change anything for any human being -- apart from yourself and your personal enjoyment.
If you're concerned about the "dehumanization" of porn, and that saps your ability to enjoy such media, try to keep in mind that not all porn actresses (and actors for that matter) consider themselves to be dehumanized; some consider themselves to be empowered, and to enjoy the sex -- and the money and fame. Don't consider yourself responsible to figure out which is which: give people the benefit of the doubt in that they are making choices for themselves to better their own lives and circumstances (which, I'll add, I think is a position consonant with "respecting women"; assuming that women in the porn industry are being manipulated into doing things they don't "really" want to do, etc., strikes me as patronizing).
I'll also say that you have no responsibility to "chase women," which isn't something I'd recommend anyways. Sex is great. Relationships are great. (Or these can be great, at least.) But you shouldn't do anything you don't feel comfortable doing -- and that goes for watching porn, too. Don't force yourself to be other than what you are. Just recognize that there's nothing wrong with your taking pleasure in porn, and that you have no moral duty to abstain from it.
