> 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.
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 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?
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.
Yes, it is far more common than people think and admit, and it really shouldn't be a taboo (like it is for women, but perhaps even more so for men). However, I do think that if you look at all the porn combined, this is a minority.
From my experience both first hand and watching other relationships females are waaaaaaay more interested in abusive, degrading sex than guys.
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.
I think your misreading the comment. It's a classic case of rule 34 somewhere someone is into this crap and it you don't need a lot of customers to make money with porn. I mean being eaten by alive is a fetish vore. http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=vore
>Also, isn't this 'degrading porn' meant for people who identify with the person being degraded?
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.
Also, isn't this 'degrading porn' meant for people who identify with the person being degraded?
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?
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.