"The Porn Myth" , page 3

Hmm, my 2 cents (or pence, as I'm English)... and I feel I shoulld come clean and state where I'm coming from.

I'm a working-class, 31 year old, white male, pretty good physical shape but getting a beer-gut and I have one white hair, currently single and I do enjoy porn, also, this may have a bearing on my attitude (or not), I was raised by women and consider myself to have been brought up in a stable, loving nurturing environment. I don't think it is immoral or "wrong" to watch or participate in porn. I have enjoyed porn in the context of a relationship with previous partners. I have also seen porn that has made me feel ill.

Porn doesn't make me feel inadequate, just as the Die Hard movies don't make me feel less of a man - I realise that it's scripted and quite often unrealistic. There are a few porn stars I consider attractive, they tend to be the "more normal" looking, without massive boobs etc. Someone previously stated that the most attractive thing in a woman is confidence, damn right. It's the thing I really go for in a lady, but if she doesn't have confidence, then it can be built (I'm not specifying sexually either). Women come in all shapes and sizes and different women are attractive for different reasons, I'm personally not into overdone plastic surgery, I would say plastic surgery at all, but I guess if done well then I wouldn't even know it had been different before - such as a nose job. Big can e beautiful as can slim, it all depends on the woman and generally comes down to how confident she is within herself.

However, porn (like guns), can be massively damaging, I work for a record-store chain and went apeshizzle when we were expected to stock "adult" movies. There's no way I want a little kid coming in my store and picking that up "hey mum/dad, look what I found", no way. I managed to not stock it on this argument, eventually. Also, I think there is some weight to the argument that porn can reinforce negative stereotypes, setting PEOPLE (not just women) as objects - BUT, pornstars earn more money than me... 1 hour of my life is worth about £8 and to be honest I've done some pretty horrible things for that money, like unblocking the customer toilet. Everyone should be entitled to make choices in their lives as long as they don't harm others. On the porn debate, this is tricky, does it have a negative effect on society as a whole? I don't think so, there are so many other factors that are contributing to a breakdown in society already, poverty being a chief evil and people (generally) aren't kicking up as much of a stink about that.

Some people, just cannot handle things in a responsible manner, guns, drugs, alcohol, food, fuel... The Cambridge dictionary defintion of porn is "books, magazines, films, etc. with no artistic value which describe or show sexual acts or naked people in a way that is intended to be sexually exciting but would be considered unpleasant or offensive by many people". There is a very obvious and pertinent Bill Hicks quote to follow this. I think this definition would lower the threshold of what "porn" is, as there are so many things that are accepted, that previously were considered taboo. 2 girls 1 cup, yeah, that's extreme and not to my taste (sic), I never want to see that, EVER, but who am I to judge if that's what my neighbours are up to in the privacy of their home in the context of a loving relationship? What also distresses me is the fact that it's so prevalent and almost unavoidable - SPAM, etc, potentially the greatest learning tool available to humanity (the web) and what's most searched???

I too have noticed a trend towards "off-balance" couples, check out the majority of UK football players or soap-stars, but maybe they all have great personalities? Hope so, or I'm doomed.