Personal Experience

My initial reaction to seeing porn for the first time

My initial reaction to seeing porn for the first time

Until a few years ago, my awareness of pornography was limited to glimpsing at magazines on the top shelf of the newsagent. Unless you were looking for those magazines, it was rare that you’d come into contact with porn by accident. The advent of the internet has obviously changed all that. But still, I naively thought that porn just meant some amateurish videos showing couples having sex. This changed just the other day. I was using a shared computer (using internet cafes is becoming a rather intimidating experience for me now though) and when I tried to type in the URL I wanted, all sorts of things came rolling down on the screen. “Father and daughter do it together, that is the best”, “Barely...

What’s at the core of porn? 14yo posting porn on FB and other news in April

What’s at the core of porn? 14yo posting porn on FB and other news in April

This month my blog is based around one quote from the article ”Is porn hijacking our sexuality? (Part 1)?” “After all, most of us would know pornography when we see it. But there’s no definition of pornography in UK law: “obscenity” is covered by the Obscene Publications Acts (obscene material is defined as that with “tends to deprave or corrupt)… these definitions are intended to be narrow, and there’s obviously a huge volume of material that is pornographic, and yet doesn’t fulfill the criteria for obscenity”. I am no expert on U.K. law but I would argue that in many ways depravity and corruption is at the core of pornography. In the U.S. a letter drafted and signed by 117 member of the House and...

Male participants needed for research project

Male participants needed for research project

Participants are needed for a London Metropolitan University research project exploring men’s experiences of, and perspectives on sexualised media and the sex industry. I’m currently recruiting for men to help with the research by completing an anonymous and confidential online questionnaire, and/or by taking part in face to face interviews. The online questionnaire will ask very general questions about your perspectives on sexualised medias, such as advertising, magazines and music videos. It will also ask about your experiences (or not) of strip/lap dancing clubs; paying for sex and your use (or not) of pornography. It will not go into great detail and you can skip anything you don’t want to answer. So, if you’re a man aged 18+ and if you have something to say about ‘sexed up’...

EMMA Winter edition. The dream of being a porn star – Part III: Getting out and staying out

EMMA Winter edition. The dream of being a porn star – Part III: Getting out and staying out

This article contains language that some may find offensive In the 2011 Winter edition of EMMA (Germany’s leading feminist magazine in Germany, and the only political magazine in Europe entirely run by women) a large part of the magazine was dedicated to pornography. We’ve translated them into English. Below is the third and final part of ‘The dream of being a porn star’, a detailed account from a survivor of the pornography industry. I had a relationship with a man at the time. He saw me as a human being, because I was a human being with him from time to time. I could talk to him and as long as he did not touch me it was lovely. But from the time when...

EMMA Winter edition. The dream of being a porn star – Part II: The reality of the porn industry

EMMA Winter edition. The dream of being a porn star – Part II: The reality of the porn industry

Warning: this article contains descriptions and/or references to violence and/or sexual assault In the 2011 Winter edition of EMMA (Germany’s leading feminist magazine in Germany, and the only political magazine in Europe entirely run by women) a large part of the magazine was dedicated to pornography. We’ve translated them into English. Below is the second of three parts we will be publishing of The dream of being a porn star, a detailed account from a survivor of the pornography industry. My first shoot was in Berlin, in a garage. It was a film that wasn’t shot for the German market as it was too extreme. The film was for the Dutch and Belgian market, where those things were allowed. But I was told everything...

EMMA Winter edition. The dream of being a porn star – Part I: The road to porn

EMMA Winter edition. The dream of being a porn star – Part I: The road to porn

Warning: this article contains descriptions and/or references to violence and/or sexual assault In the Winter 2011 edition of EMMA (Germany’s leading feminist magazine in Germany, and the only political magazine in Europe entirely run by women) a large part of the magazine was dedicated to pornography. We’ve translated them into English. Below is the first of three parts we will be publishing of The dream of being a porn star, a detailed account from a survivor of the pornography industry. Kim is sitting opposite Alice Schwarzer (Germany’s most prominent feminist and publisher of EMMA) and Chantal Louis (Editor of EMMA) and talks. She talks and talks, for one hour; two. And what she said even dumbfounded Alice Schwarzer and Chantal Louis who did not...

Australian teachers urged to address porn in sex education

Australian teachers urged to address porn in sex education

Below is an article from today’s Sydney Morning Herald about the findings of two Australian researchers who have examined the influence that porn is having on the sexuality and sexual behaviour of teenagers. Porn industry ‘veterans’ who took part in the research noted that there had been a shift from ”lovey-dovey sex” to Gonzo sex, a cinematic style where a hand-held camera is used to film what is often a violent scene. They also interviewed young female performers, who confirmed that pornography had become more violent in recent years, and that they had to pretend to enjoy being treated badly. The researchers argue that “young people urgently need help to critique pornography’s representations of gender and sex, and to help them distinguish between what...

fetishes.

fetishes.

Porn loves variety. Log on to any porn site, free or paid, open a porn mag, walk into a porn video shop, and you’ll see it laid out before you like the infinite varieties of toothpaste in a supermarket. Amateur, Anal, Asian, Barely Legal, BBW, Ebony, European, Gangbang, POV… a complete list would fill a book. You become the immaculate consumer. Every possible definition is available to you, and the definitions become definitions that only exist insofar as they offer you choice. Every possible narcissism is possible, every combination, every motion of this immaculate world can be bent to your exact whim. The word ‘fetish’, once used about objects with magical properties, continued in the 19th century through use of objects with sexual properties...

Porn and Me: an adolescent’s relationship with porn

Porn and Me: an adolescent’s relationship with porn

I am a teenager living in the US and this is a short account of my relationship with porn. I started watching porn when I was in 5th grade. Seriously? 5th Grade? Yup. I had gotten my first laptop, and it was so easy to access. All I had to do was open up an internet browser, search, and there it was. It started by just looking at girls in their underwear, but then slowly developed until I was watching porn. At first it was just every now and then, then it became more frequent, until I was watching it 3 or 4 days a week. ‘Lesbian’ porn, hand-jobs, and then the list goes darker. I would masturbate to it, and the endorphins would...

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