I might be mistaken here, but as far as I can tell this kind of porn is the minority. Also, isn't this 'degrading porn' meant for people who identify with the person being degraded? Whether you like it or not, the power dynamic is an integral part of human sexuality. That you see this in porn is just an effect of the phenomenon, not the cause. It's completely natural and benign. People saying that this is "wrong" and taboo are doing far more harm than good to the women and men (!) who enjoy being on that side of the power dynamic.

Secondly, porn isn't meant to be realistic. Complaining about that is just like the people complaining about violence in video games and movies. People are perfectly capable of distinguishing reality from fiction. The reason people enjoy porn is exactly because it is not realistic -- it satisfies a fantasy, whether that is sex with a person who is far out of your league, or rough sex, or otherwise. The way to go here is to improve sex education, not to blame porn for not being sex education.

I've dated women (note the plural) who were into this sort of porn. I'm not a random sample, obviously, but take a look at books like A Billion Wicked Thoughts and The Evolutionary Biology of Human Female Sexuality, or Meredith Chivers' work: bdsm-style desires appear to be more common than is commonly depicted in the media.

In terms of why a large amount of porn is like this, its simple, its theatrics. Emotion and body language is exaggerated to capture an audiences attention.

It has become only less taboo to talk about recently, coming to the mainstream in books like "Fifty Shades of Grey".

It's for both. There is an entire subculture of people whose fetishes involve degradation on either side. Two important points to take from that:

1) It is silly to extrapolate to all porn from that. Those genres are targeted at relatively small demographics.

2) The fetish has nothing to do with those people's attitudes about society at large. Men who are into degrading consenting women in the bedroom are not, by and large, misogynists, for example. It's a sexual fantasy, not a political stance.

However, fetishes notwithstanding, I don't think it can be said that most mainstream porn is sex-positive or embraces healthy attitudes.

I'm not sure I understood you correctly. Are you suggesting that "Hot Japanese Girls [sic] gets fucked and abused in every way" is marketed primarily to people who identify with abused women?

But again, the videos that explicitly and specifically portray violent and/or degrading male fantasies don't bother me as much as so-called "normal" videos that seriously misrepresent what is enjoyable to most women.

Whether you like it or not, the power dynamic is an integral part of human sexuality. That you see this in porn is just an effect of the phenomenon, not the cause. It's completely natural and benign. People saying that this is "wrong" and taboo are doing far more harm than good to the women and men (!) who enjoy being on that side of the power dynamic.

Something tells me that men and women who enjoy being on the submissive (or "less powerful", if you prefer) side of the power dynamic are still the minority of the market. While I'm sure that there are people who watch Mandingo videos because they identify with the lady or because they enjoy watching big penises, I'm pretty sure that most people who watch it are men who like to identify with Mandingo and fantasize about having a penis that big.

So, to sum it up, I don't claim that it's wrong or "taboo" to be on the less powerful side of the power dynamic. Hell, there's nothing bad with fantasizing about being on the more powerful side or about having a huge penis or what have you.

Secondly, porn isn't meant to be realistic. Complaining about that is just like the people complaining about violence in video games and movies. People are perfectly capable of distinguishing reality from fiction.

I wouldn't be so quick to equate these things. It's a lot easier for kids to confirm that the world is not really violent in the same degree and way as videogames than it is for them to find out what women find enjoyable in sex.

The way to go here is to improve sex education, not to blame porn for not being sex education.

Precisely, but how? How do you improve teaching kids about sex in terms of pleasure, not only reproduction and health, which seems to be what most sex ed focuses on?

There's a lot of porn out there that has no women at all in it.

I agree with you that there is a lot of bad porn, and that there are a lot of bad things prevalent in porn, but that specific point of the author stands pretty strong. You have to preface the discussion by asking "which porn?". In your comment you've already narrowed your definition of "porn" into a specific segment.

I honestly don't understand how you come the conclusion that women controlling their working conditions ends up propagating victim blaming in sexual assaults. Hopefully you can clarify.

>Second, a lot of porn out there focuses on and glorifies the woman's suffering, pain and degradation. Seriously, you only have to read the word "painal" once to realize that. However, if that's not enough, you might also look for the occurrences of "choke", "gag", "destroy", "slut", etc.

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You're searching for that specific type of porn - of course it's going to be degrading. Your whole argument falls flat on it's face I'm afraid.

Of course it stands to reason that porn marketed to men will put more focus on the parts that men are more likely to enjoy and the marketing will also reflect this.

So a scene showing fairly vanilla sex will be labelled "slut gets destroyed by huge cock" or something.

To be honest I would suspect that women in porn who truly hate the experience wouldn't last too long. It's more likely that they simply find it boring after a while than outright unpleasant. In other words doing anal to them would be like debugging to us.

Usually men have the dominant role during sex whilst women prefer to be submissive (though obviously not always the case). Using hyperbolic language is a safe and effective way to demonstrate dominance.

And it really doesn't matter that destroy isn't meant literally - it's still used as a term intent to degrade and humiliate. It's about male power fantasies.

Women also read romance novels set in Victorian times - are you now going to claim that we'd all like to wear corsets and swoon at the arrival of our heroes?

Also: I don't see guys clamoring to become pizza delivery drivers, either, and yet it's a common porn trope.

Producers have to have some way of making their product grab your attention, and "two people fucking" isn't going to do it.

1) Yes, most porn focuses on the male's pleasure, which is a common complaint. That's why James Deen makes money: http://www.slate.com/blogs/xx_factor/2011/11/17/porn_that_wo...

2) Yes. Some women are into that. I feel like you are unnecessarily close-minded about the idea that women might like a range of experiences. I also agree with other commenters on their ideas that naming porn conventions do not actually indicate suffering, pain, and degradation.

3) True. Porn is not meant as educational material; be safe.

4) It does create unrealistic expectations, but almost nobody expects porn to be like real life.

Female porn stars do get to choose what kind of sex they have. I hate victim blame just as much as the next woman, but saying that porn stars can choose what to do is not victim blame. Porn stars live in a world where they get paid for what they decide to do. The skin industry does have some people who are not there by choice but necessity...but the vast majority are there because they chose to follow that route. Though I think concern for the performers is admirable, most performers are ok with where they are. It's actually a little bit ridiculous that men get up in arms about women when they choose to go into the industry; it's a mostly free choice. Men act like the performers can't like what they do, which is wrong. http://goodmenproject.com/featured-content/its-a-lap-dance-a...

And an entire subgroup which focus on the same with the man -- but most people don't look that far, because they just want to look down on porn.

It is religious bullshit, repackaged as concern for women(TM).

If her decision offends you then don't watch porn.

Here's the article: http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2010/jul/02/gail-dine...

There was another article that mentioned that an explosion in access to [western made] pornographic materials in many African countries has distorted the views across the male population (from adolescents to old men). As a consequence the stats on rapes being committed has gone up very significantly (Alas: I cannot seem to find a link)

While I'm not about to argue that porn is a particularly accurate depiction of sex, I always find it interesting that these kinds of criticisms of it always seem to ignore the frequent cunnilingus in it. One of the things I like about this article is that it's about data mining rather than selection bias. Not to say that the article isn't biased, but that it's less biased.

It's not that I ignore the frequent cunnilingus in porn, it's that I don't see the need to mention it because I don't look at porn as an equation, as in "Well, he's going from ungentle and obviously painful anal directly to rough fellatio, but that's perfectly okay because of the long cunnilingus at the beginning."

I'm not trying to portray all porn as bad and degrading, nor am I denying that there is good (and sometimes even realistic) sex in it. Nor do I claim that it all should be realistic. What concerns me and motivates me to comment on porn are the following things:

1) the prevalence of casual degradation of women in porn.

2) what people learn to expect based on porn.

3) how many people seem to be either unaware of some (or all) of the above or aware but believe it's normal and acceptable.

That being said, there's a lot of different types of porn. Saying "I watch porn" is like saying "I read fiction". It certainly tells us a bit about you, but isn't particularly definitive - do you read lightweight trash like Dan Brown, do you prefer mysteries, bodice-rippers, fantasies, war novels, or the complexities of writers like Eco? Perhaps a little bit of everything depending on the mood?