On Pornsick Bastards
July 15, 2012 117 Comments
TW
Nearly all men watch pornography.
That is, of the men you encounter in your daily life, nearly every one of them consumes images of women being f’ked in a violent and degrading manner.
The other day I was spending time with a good friend who has recently begun dating a new man. This man, she says, frequently asks to ejaculate on her face and body, and will not stop harassing her for anal sex. When they do “make love”, he is a jackhammer. He treats her body as if it were a masturbation receptacle. She doesn’t like the things he asks for in bed, but she wasn’t all that upset about his requests. Probably because for her, and many straight women, his requests are the norm.
What is a pornsick bastard? They come in many varieties- from the man who posts the Hooters calendar on his bathroom door, to the man who cannot achieve release without recalling degrading images of women.
Pornsick bastards are everywhere.
Many studies concerned with the effect of pornography discuss the negative impact it has on male sexual satisfaction. The concern is that the “normal” cycle of PIV [penis in vagina sex] with an intimate partner is being interrupted by the male fascination with porn, since he can’t “successfully” f’k women in person as well as he once did.
Radical feminists object for another reason. We see that these men are participating in and propping up the system that says the purpose of women is her existence as a f’k object, rather than a person. They feel entitled to do whatever they wish to women’s bodies, instead of treating us as humans. They have no empathy for the suffering they cause.
This is our world right now.
As Rebecca Mott has pointed out, pornography and prostitution are two sides of the same coin. Porn watchers are johns- as much as they wish to deny this reality, and make excuses for their exploitative behavior.
On a personal note, I’ve found that most folks in my everyday life do no want to address the issue of pornsick bastards. Perhaps the problem is too big, and so it feels better to just ignore it. Maybe it’s because those around me object to the idea that they are, in fact, pornsick bastards.
And what then? When you realize that some of those you care about- your sons, your partner, or your friends- are pornsick bastards?
It is lonely to be awake to the truths of male supremacy in action.
About smash
Yes, it is lonely.
And it’s so much *worse* now than it was when I was young.
Little girls are in for a horrific time of it. By the time they are ten, boys are turning into pornhounds. You can’t stop it, any more than you can stop a mudslide that’s rushing down a mountain.
It’s true. The average first age of porn watching is 10. So depressing.
I observed its getting worse in the same man over the course of a relationship. My X-hub occasionally bought home “bargain bin” porn VCR tapes that were so old nobody would pay to rent them anymore. In the 1990s, mainstream porn from the 70s and 80′s didn’t seem so bad. I even watched it myself for awhile. But as time went on and the “old” porn got newer, he wanted to do the stuff he saw/the stuff his younger friends said their girlfriends did. The fact that I am disturbed by seeing women being choked merely meant I was a sad old prude, even though he is FIFTEEN YEARS older than I am. (Yes, I was an idiot–and I’m not even mentioning The Anal Wars.)
His words to the marriage counselor were “She grew up and I didn’t.” I prefer to say “I decided I was human, and you didn’t.” (This wasn’t the only reason I divorced him, but it was a biggie.)
The next guy I dated was a unicorn or something–he didn’t watch (much) porn. That relationship had its problems, but you know what kind of problems it didn’t have? Sexual ones. He did not insist I really liked what I don’t like. He did not insist that something I didn’t like be left on the table until he could wheedle me into saying I liked it. He did not insist I would magically have multiple orgasms from the acts that were most convenient and pleasurable for him. He did not say “if you really loved me,” not once–probably because I never loved him and never said I did.
That’s when I found out I can have a pretty decent relationship with a man as long as I don’t love him. That’s also when I gave up on men. I can’t trust myself to love them and have a spine too, and if I don’t love them, what’s the point? Having a man is not a price I’m willing to pay now that I’m old enough to know I can make my own oxytocin at home and save myself the agony.
Snarkurchin, the first guy you mention sounds just like every other gaslighting pornsick bastard on the planet. They are so predictable– it’s really cliché. They call us prudes, when they’re really the pervs.
When we love them, it is exceptionally painful. I’m sorry to hear you had such a hurtful experience.
Thanks, smash. I don’t think I had a particularly hurtful experience as these things go, though–just the average kind. I’m only sorry I didn’t wise up sooner.
FWIW, Mr. Unicorn was a gigantic sexist, too, just not (so much) in the bedroom. I’m menopausal now, and I live with my mother rather than put up with men’s foofooraw.
Being a straight woman sucks. It truly does. It’s like signing a bargain with Satan the day you were born, years before you have clue who Satan even is.
Lest this kind of talk get me branded as a man hating yadda-yadda (which I am), the person who taught me I am a person and that I should avoid anyone who thinks otherwise was my dad.
Love is the force that made us all and that keeps us all alive. The patriarchy has proven that such a force can be rendered toxic, and that sucks.
They call us prudes for not wanting what they don’t want for themselves either – they don’t want things stuck up their asses, but we have to be ok with things stuck up ours (for example). It’s as if we started demanding practices that required disgusting, uncomfortable or painful experiences specifically for their bodies, not for ours, and called them ”prudes” if they refused. Just imagine demanding that men gave us oral sex on our periods and if they refused we’d call them prudes. They want sadistic sex because it’s formulated and orchestrated (by porn) in a way that’s violent only for our bodies; when they say ‘rough’ they don’t mean rough for them, they mean rough *for us* and only for us. Of course they enjoy it, it’s structured in a way that is soft and gentle for them!!!! fucking idiots. Sure by ‘rough sex’ they don’t mean women biting their cocks or sticking anything up their asses or in their throats. Obviously!!
An ex-nigel of mine was a pornsick bastard who tried to groom me into watching and practising porn-sex but I would always refuse. He gave up on most demands, but would pretend to rape me because intercourse that seemed consensual didn’t please him. I agreed to the rape-pretend for a while because I thought it was the lesser evil, ‘then at least he will have a blast and won’t ask for anything worse’. Until one day we had an argument and he pretended that I was ‘enacting my victim role’ and fucked me anyway, when actually I was really mad at him and didn’t want to screw. So I guess he raped me (I have only realized this recently), and I learnt I should never opt for the lesser evil again because men are always going to screw you up no matter what, so at least you’ll rest in peace when you die knowing that you resisted. Setting ‘boundaries’ is a way of defending oneself and if someone really loves you, you shouldn’t be defending yourself, so ‘boundaries’ wouldn’t be necessary because he wouldn’t have the need to push them; when someone wants to hurt you, boundaries are useless; that stupid safeword didn’t do anything for me. And some friends we had in common know this happened (I don’t know how they know, I never told anyone, so maybe he said it himself being sure I wouldn’t report it), yet nobody has ever named it in front of me, but I once heard one of them telling a good male friend of mine, and my friend seemed worried, but the other guy said ”…and he did NOT rape her but almost, you know, it’s complicated, they had an argument and she was angry, he wanted to screw but she refused and he thought she was playing a rape-game they used to play so he fucked her”. He ”did NOT rape her but almost”? He ”thought” she was role-playing? MY ASS. Men know what they do. He just wanted to rape a girl and so he did. What bothers me most is that I had recently quit taking the pill and he knew it, and he didn’t bother to use a little fucking condom that time, so I had to go for the morning after pill. I didn’t consider that to be important back then since as all fembots I didn’t take reproductive risks seriously, but it makes me insane now. And the fact that the ‘nicest’ thing that has happened to me under porn-culture is rape (ALMOST rape as they said? that’s what I thought for a long time – not anymore though), makes me wonder what do more vulnerable girls and women go through. I was always stubborn to death and good at verbal acrobatics so I’ve always been hard to manipulate into enacting porn, I’ve always said NO, fuck off. But I couldn’t stop my ex bf from rape-roleplaying and finally overtly raping me. So I writhe in pain to think about what other girls and women go through, honestly.
tiamathydra, what you say in the first part of your comment is so true. Thank you for putting it so eloquently.
I’m very sorry to hear about your awful experience about your ex. I can see how he and his friends used gaslighting techniques to keep you from realizing the truth. In retrospect, these things are clear, but in the moment, it can be hard to see the truth through the fog.
Thank you. Yes, his friends helped keep me alienated. Only the friend to whom I heard one of them telling it was worried about me and asked me if something bad had happened and if he could help in any way, I didn’t tell him because I thought nothing bad had happened and he told me ”dump that bastard”. We’re still friends and he’s a dude but he’s gay so I know he at least is not sexually entitled to women.
The worst is, I didn’t leave him when he did that, we kept together for several months. I self-convinced that I was wrong and I made excuses for him in my mind all the time; I finally decided that he really believed I was in the mood for roleplaying and he really thought I was acting. Indeed, a slightly BDSM-y relationship (not wanted by me, the BDSM aspect, but anyways) and my allegedly almighty ‘bottom’ role ended turning against me, and somehow I’m glad for that. I dumped him because we’d been having fights for a while and one day he kicked my cat in a very nasty way. I’m not saying I shouldn’t have worried about that, but him kicking my cat made me totally angry and made him seem totally unacceptable from that moment, while I had been all that time putting up with the memory of him raping me because I thought it didn’t matter (and tolerating his misogyny, his porn use etc.)
We become incredibly delusional and self-hating under patriarchy.
Oh, NO HE DIDN’T. I just read the he kicked your cat. I gasped. NUH UH. OUT the fuckin’ DOOR. And, yeah, “rough sex”. They sure like to dish it, but they can’t take it. Scumbags.
Isn’t it amazing how we’re more emotional about our pets than our own bodily integrity? I know I’d rather be raped (again) than anything happen to my dog. Hell, from rape I can apparently dissociate, but it would break my heart if my pooch was in pain or harmed. I surprise myself at just how little I seem to value myself.
This makes me cry… :C
Yes, it seems like we put everyone and everything before ourselves. I couldn’t go to the end of my thoughts to realize I had been raped, but when he kicked my cat I instantly recognized the violence and didn’t make excuses for it like I did with the rape. We are trained to be silent about our reality even to ourselves from day one, that’s the truth.
The thing is I don’t understand why women don’t just say no to these men. I refuse space in my life for porn users whether they are potential partners or potential friends. I make it clear from the off that porn is a deal breaker for me.
How has that been working for you, throughthetrees? Do you still have males in your life?
yeah I do, I have a male partner and one male friend
Good
That is refreshing to hear.
I have a male partner who doesn’t use, also I have my brother and my dad who don’t (of course, I’m taking their word for it- who knows the truth of it).
Really? You ask *potential* male *friends* (let alone partners) whether or not they watch porn before you agree to interact with them in any way? As in, “Oh, hi. I don’t know your name yet, but I see you have a penis. Now, before we actually converse, tell me: do you watch the pr0n ever at all?” And the good ones say “Oh no, not me” and really mean it and really keep treating you like a human being because you said the magic words no other woman has ever discovered? Shee-yit.
Asking the average straight man of 2012 whether or not he watches porn is like asking him whether or not he jacks off. The average man of 2012 literally cannot distinguish between perfectly healthy masturbation and using images of tortured women to get his precious spoodgy woodgy on, because who cares who that hurts as long as no man gets hurt?
The thing I don’t understand is how you can skip right over centuries of history without so much as a fuck-ye-do to women who don’t have the privilege you claim for all of us. Truly: hands up, how many of us can get along in the current economy without a man?
I can’t, since I Iost my job. My male boss fucked me over, since I wouldn’t “know my place”. Now I live with a man. I’m like a pet, or Woman as Useful Object. Even though I’m technically his “room-mate”. I believe that men work together to ensure that women can’t survive without them and their money. It’s even subconscious for them, too, like an undercurrent of woman-disenfranchising that runs through every damn thing.
I believe they do too, consciously or not (and what difference does that make anyway?). I have a master’s degree in a female-dominated (i.e., low-paying) field, but have not been able to get full-time work, let alone benefits, in many, many years now. If I couldn’t live with my mom, I don’t know what would become of me, especially now that I’m too old to be a Useful Object to most men.
Me, too. Porn user? WE can NOT be friends. Nope. Not ever. FUCK OFF, DUDE. So, I am kind of lonely… I’m seeking out female friends. Hellooooooo…
Oh no ‘poor men’ they can’t obtain sexual gratification no matter how many times they pummel/subject a woman’s body to sadistic male sexual violence. No doubt Big Pharma will create a new viagra type pill which will ensure men will once again be able to orgasm/ejaculate on demand because male sexual gratification/sexual pleasure is reason why women exist!
No need to consider women’s right to refuse phallocentric heterosex because as always ‘sex’ is about men’s sexual gratification and pleasure. I’ve no doubt women and particularly radical feminists will be blamed for causing men to suffer from lack of male sexual gratification/ejaculation/orgasm on demand.
Or perhaps these men should just purchase a robot which looks like a female and then they can indulge themselves in self-stimulation without the necessity of having to sexually exploit/sexually degrade real women.
Good point, Hecuba. Many in the anti-porn movement focus on how porn harms *men*– once again framing the discussion in male terms.
That’s how my extremely empathetic and sensitive therapist could best relate to my concerns about porn, my concerns concerning the rape narratives that are paired with orgasmic conditioning and the real harm to the women you see on the screen. He agreed porn is bad…because of it’s addictive nature and how the user’s (man’s) intimate relationships suffer.
Yes, we hear that: ‘all men watch porn’. As if it was trivial. As if it was something to be proud of. What I hear is ‘yes, we men stand in solidarity with each other in our hatred against women’.
Men find it perfectly acceptable to watch porn but get offended when they feel that a man as been portrayed like an idiot in some ad or sitcom. wtf. Men scream misandry if someone dares to say that every man is a potential rapist. There was a time when I thought such a statement was exaggerated; then I saw porn.
There was a time when I thought that men and women were progressing toghether towards ‘equality’, overall (with a few exceptions).Then I saw porn. Thanks for the backlash, at least it is clear. Knowing that nearly all men enjoy viewing women being used/abused/tortured made me lose any respect and compassion I once was able to have towards men. Women should stay away from men, give up on them, turn their back. Seriously.
Yep, Missfit, the content of modern pornography is so clearly awful, and having knowledge of what men are seeking makes clear the true misogyny in our culture.
I’m in the process of doing just that. I DO NOT HELP MEN ANYMORE. Ever. Now, if I had an income of any kind, I would seek out another woman to co-habitate with. One of the rules of our house would be NO MEN ALLOWED IN IT.
+1
And, I’ll do the cooking.
If you say no to porn-users, then you’re saying no to men, period. Very, very few women have the option of saying no to men in terms of maintaining any sort of livelihood. I’ve never heard of any rich women (who presumably don’t need male contact to maintain their necessities of life) who have said no to men.
And then, even trying to maintain any social (not even economic) context without acting chummy to at least a *few* men is likewise impossible. Families.
Yuck! Friends? all the women we meet will have male friends, partners, kids or etc that we will have to mix with.
It will be interesting to see how this will develop. Males are making themselves and each other more and more intolerable every day.
Mary is right about that. There do exist some men who don’t use porn, and even fewer who have a porn critical viewpoint (ex Robert Jensen). But the majority of men use it, and it is very difficult to have a men-free life (not impossible, obviously).
Folks in my life know I’m anti porn/prostitution, but they steer well clear of the topics in conversation. When I post links on my “real” FB account that are porn/prostitution critical, I for the most part get crickets in response.
Even googling to research for this article, there was a fascinating blindness to the oppressive nature of porn.
This article in particular, http://www.itsnotthatweird.com/2011/07/wait-a-second-am-i-a-john/ where a man reads Melissa Farley’s study (the Newsweek one from last year) and confronts the question “am I a john because I watch porn”.
It is amazing how much privilege he has in that he was so blind to begin with that he hadn’t even considered that he might be a john. So it was good to see a man question that. However, the article reads as one justification after another for why porn use is okay. After all, he says, women in porn aren’t murdered at as high a rate as women in prostitution, so that makes it more okay.
Seriously. This is how much men love their porn. Disgusting bastards.
“If you say no to porn-users, then you’re saying no to men, period”
This isn’t entirely true. My partner does not use porn and I know at least one other man that doesn’t.
Just because there are men in the world and your female friends have male partners doesn’t mean you have to give any energy to those male partners unless you choose to. I don’t have to spend time with men I don’t like or respect just because one of my friends is in a relationship with them.
And yes women often have to work with men but that doesn’t mean they have to be friends with them.
Straight up. The d00d I live with does not use porn, and I know it for a fact. That makes him tolerable, maybe, I guess. He is a smug-ass, privileged, emotionally-retarded shit head. But, it doesn’t mean I don’t want to get some work and get the fuck up outta here. I wish I could take off and travel the world… for the rest of my life.
How about saying yes to porn users, since that is pretty much all men, even the ones who say they don’t, and re-educating them? If your friend was to say ‘no’ to those requests and then, ‘this is what I like,’ and also, ‘maybe you might like these other far more satisfying sensual things,’ he could be enlightened. Just a thought. Obv, won’t be a popular view here, but its a thought.
Emma, this presumes that men are open to being negotiated with, and actually care what women want. I expect in the case of my friend, were she to set boundaries, or institute guidelines, he would only push harder. That is of course because her b/f is a pornsick bastard.
If women could convince men to stop abusing us, we would have had our revolution a long time ago.
Oh, I wish she’d DUMP his nasty ass with a quickness! How I wish.
Meee too!
She knows exactly what I think about him.
Women are taught that we deserve crumbs, and then when that’s what we receive, we aren’t surprised, and we learn to tolerate it. Hopefully my convos with her will help her wake up a little.
(hoping too)
It’s easier then you think. It can happen quite naturally as part of the act of physical intimacy. I know. I’ve been there. I’m not the only one. Men can be happily surprised that there is more going on in their bodies then a need to ejaculate, that pleasure can actually be pleasurable. Once you’re in that situation you tell them what you want, not in a ‘I’m putting my foot down way,’ but in a gentle, ‘here’s how’ kind of way. Treat them as you would want to be treated. If they don’t want that, genuine physical intimacy, as opposed to re-enactment of porn, then you walk away. We have the power, not all the time, but choose your sex partners carefully, get a man who does care about you, and he will want nothing else but to ensure you have a good time with him, and will be open to you ‘reconditioning’ him. If he is not a caring man, why choose him in the first place? If he’s not open to real life sexual exploration with another human being, what does he think he’s doing? I have discovered some very interesting things about myself, and about my partners through mutuality. Who wouldn’t want that? Can I just ask though, smash, are you in Britain, US, Auz? Just out of interest.
USian.
I just wondered, because from the UK it looks like the US has a much more overtly masculine culture. Some of the men here still have some ideas about chivalry and though that’s terribly old fashioned it also has its useful side. Maybe a little sexual repression on their part makes some of them a little easier to actually communicate with about such things. l’m just having thoughts, but it really does look super macho from over here. And we in the UK have a long way to go, don’t get me wrong, to redress the balance. But in terms of any feminist agenda I think I’d rather be here.
I’m in Spain and I also get the impression that the US has terribly misogynistic culture, porn is way more widespread in the US (here men over 40 here don’t really consume porn, there’s never been such a porn-culture, until now), the stripclub culture etc. didn’t really exist here until now (of course, prostitution and male entitlement to sex did exist, but that’s everywhere). But I also have to say that due to globalization, the terrible chauvinism of American men is influencing men of all countries… in the younger generations of adults and teenagers here, the number of pornsick bastards increases, when men didn’t use to be that horrible here, so all men are becoming unified in their hatred of women because of globalization and Americanization and young women in places that are not the US, are increasingly being treated as American women are treated. So we’re all in the same boat now, more than ever.
I couldn’t say for sure, as I don’t have a basis for comparison. However, from what I have seen of my world it is teeming with pornsick bastards.
Can I come and live with you? Pleeeease? I want to be an ex-pat. lol
I don’t have enough energy to reeducate men though. If men want relationships with women they should treat them all like human beings. It’s a concept they can grasp without being re-educated if they really wanted to
Well said.
yes exactly. I spent so much time and energy educating and helping my current male partner along (most of this process was undertaken before I discovered radical feminist theory, else I likely would have left instead of doing it). Right now, I’m reaping those rewards, because he actually is probably just about as pro-feminist as a man can be and I would say our relationship is quite healthy. But, I would also say that I will never, EVER undertake such an effort again. What a waste of my precious time and resources!! It took YEARS of blood, sweat, and tears to bring ONE man around, and he already had a tendency toward feminism to begin with. I will never waste my time like that again and will never recommend any other woman to do so. I don’t have plans to end this relationship anytime in the forseeable future, but when it does end, I will never be with a man again, that’s for damn sure.
Makes sense, LeeLysandra.
It’s not my job to “educate” men who abuse women by using porn. I’m 37 years old and NO MAN has EVER listened to a damn thing I’ve said to them about any womens’ issue (or anything else, for that matter). I’ve tried being nice, I’ve tried yelling, ultimatums in which I remove them from my life, I’ve tried posting links and stats and PROOF of the harms that women experience. NONE OF IT HAS WORKED. So, FUCK THAT.
I’m 35, and maybe lucky that my dad claimed to be a feminist. Though he’s a liberal. the reason I’m feeling soft on the ‘pornsick bastards’ is that 50 Shades of Grey has just sold to soooo many readers, most of them women. That got me thinking, why? Why do women like this stuff? Aren’t we sending out a bad message? That got me thinking about what it is that stimulates our sexual responses, and a bout how we are conditioned. I searched, I found THIS place and some other Radfem blogs. I found that paper that was posted here on Porn and Freedom. And I thought about all my experiences in relation to all of this. I could see how men are conditioned too. I know I’m someone who has submitted to that conditioning in the past, and that I’m someone who has challenged it also and had genuine mutual relations. I have a big responsibility now. I have a son to raise. My friend also has a young son. We want them to be the future, we want them not to end up pornsick, and my daughter not to end up getting screwed over. I have to believe that there is a way. It is NOT your job to educate men, believe me, I KNOW that feeling of having had enough, because they’re infuriating. But we, we could re-educate men. I have to believe its possible. As a society, through sex education in schools, through new parents of the new generation growing up. And, if I had the money I’d shoot a sex film, package it as porn, make it free to download, plant it in gents loos in pubs. Just as things were heating up between the couple they’d launch into a dialogue about how damaging porn is. I’d use the porn actors featured on Louis Theroux documentary. The ‘actors’, who said porn had ruined their lives. They’d do an alternative movie because they know very directly the damage and are able to articulate it. Oh if I had the money. I’d hit the main media with all sorts of campaigns. The revolution would be televised at prime-time, on every channel I’d attack the beauty industry for ripping us off, and the manufacturers of cleaning products for aiming it all at us and replace those adds with adds for men on how to, clean properly, what we really think of their macho ego centric show off behaviours etc. It would Rock.
“50 Shades of Grey has just sold to soooo many readers, most of them women. That got me thinking, why? Why do women like this stuff? Aren’t we sending out a bad message?”
Now you have *me* thinking. The National Coalition Against Censorship and the American Library Association, among others, are now, as a result of 50 Shades of Grey, openly promoting porn in public libraries. Are communities supposed to do nothing about this and just allow in the porn despite all previous reasons/laws for leaving it out? What are the implications of major organizations, one with a huge impact in public schools, now openly promoting pornography?
Go see:
“NCAC Pushes Porn on Libraries; Fifty Shades of Grey Propaganda: Brevard Buckles, Harford Holds”
http://safelibraries.blogspot.com/2012/06/ncac-pushes-porn-on-libraries-fifty.html
The other day I was in a women’s clothing store and they had 50 Shades of Grey in each table where the cash registers were so that women and girls would see it and be interested in it when they bought something. They’re promoting it everywhere, apparently, and maybe they have an agenda of furthering women’s consumption of porn with this.
Also, yesterday I was with a female friend (not a feminist) who was reading Cosmopolitan and it also had an article about 50 Shades of Grey, asking which chapter do you enjoy the most or which character do you like most or whatever else bullshit. It’s never asked ‘do you like the book?’ or ‘how do you feel about it?’, the assumption is that if you are a woman or a girl you will like it (because it represents our true sexual nature).
It’s completely awful. As you say, “They’re promoting it everywhere, apparently, and maybe they have an agenda of furthering women’s consumption of porn with this.”
You all have probably seen my post on this topic:
http://liberationcollective.wordpress.com/2012/04/02/on-50-shades-of-grey-and-the-erotization-of-male-domination/
Smash, did you put that link on the Stop Porn Culture FB page? If not, please do. I may add a link to that to my own post on the matter. Thumbs up.
It’s sad. As a personal choice, well that’s personal. But when you have major organizations, libraries, stores promoting this, then that’s what’s the most sad. And if you take a stand against the tide, like a very few library directors did, that you are roundly and loudly attacked. It happens to me and I spoke with some of the library directors so I know it happens to them.
Now back to pornsick bastards, how will it ever be possible to stop that if porn has basically become mainstream?
MASS BRAINWASHING. Terrifying. If my library carries this shitty book, I’m gonna complain and annoy them until they don’t. I can be VERY annoying. Just checked. They have it in print, audio, everything. I just now called and left a scathing message, expressing my disgust and outrage. Meanwhile, I asked them to purchase A Door Into Ocean, and they won’t. GODDAMMIT! (RAGE)
Em_one, thanks for stopping by.
It’s good to brainstorm revolutionary actions.
Who me? lol. Well thank you very much. I love your blog. Love it. It was wonderful to find it and strange that it was 50 Shades of Grey that lead me here.
Thank you for saying so.
The number of radical feminists who are standing against the pornification of our society is growing every day. It is heartening to see it.
Women have always been called to account to fix the “problems” men have with women. How much energy are we supposed to spend on men again? And what have men offered to “fix” for us?
The other day I was spending time with a good friend who has recently begun dating a new man. This man, she says, frequently asks to ejaculate on her face and body, and will not stop harassing her for anal sex. ….
a little help here, please…and I am beyond sincere, however naive, in my request for feedback. I could have been that “friend”…my husband of one year has just begun doing/asking for these things…is this some sort of “red flag” that he is using porn? something I have suspected, but he would deny…I thought perhaps he was just getting “bored” with our sex life…????????
blueeyes1005, thank you for stopping by.
In my opinion, yes, this is absolutely a red flag that he is using porn, and I believe others will agree.
I’m so sorry to tell you.
i don’t know if this is the correct forum for my asking this, so please redirect me if it is inappropriate…i am wondering why this is an indication…I’m not “happy” about this change in our sex life (he is very difficult to talk to about our intimacy) but was so surprised to read your description that is exactly my situation…I just didn’t “know” that anyone else experienced this, how is it that it correlated to porn use? do you see what I’m asking?
Hi blueeyes, your questions are welcome here.
When I get home I will look up to see if there are studies correlating porn-sex (of the kind we’re talking about) with porn use. However, it’s pretty intuitive. Where do men get the idea to do degrading acts to their partners? There are only so many sources where they would have gotten these ideas. This is true, I think, particularly when the acts come “out of the blue”– outside the normal bedroom repertoire. As I wrote in my post, most men use porn, so it is very likely (even if you weren’t experiencing this change) that your husband does use porn. The fact of his bedroom behavior is just one more indicator toward that.
I am so sorry you are going through this right now. Please don’t hesitate to PM me if you want to talk more privately. I’m smashesthep at mail dot com.
You are being groomed to tolerate abuse.
I know that sounds horrible, but that is what red flags signal.
If you cannot talk with him about these things then you do not actually have an intimate relationship. That is a red flag too.
Yes blueyes, I think it is indeed a red flag, sorry. My ex watched porn and was constantly mentioning the same things during sex. He was not bored, so much as influenced by porn both on the computer and in print. Although he would never admit to being addicted to porn he used to watch it prior to us having sex virtually every time. This affected my self-esteem and eventually became just too much. It is very sad because in many other ways we were a compatible couple, and I still have feelings for him. However, I could never have a sexual relationship with him again because of his use of porn.
j c: yes, i see now that he clearly watches this before we are ever together…i can’t believe how his history is so perfectly correlated…and he doesn’t want to be with me as much as he used to, part of why I was “cooperating” because I didn’t want to lose him…it is all making more and more sense to me now…i know what you mean by affecting your self esteem!!! we are a compatible couple too and i love him, but after making myself look at what i am finding that he is looking at i don’t want him to come near me, i feel so embarrassed by the things i’ve done “for him” and i feel like he has taken something away from me, i’m not even sure what it is, but like I have sort of played the role of prostitute for him, thinking it was just a new way of experiencing me/us…but it doesn’t have anything to do with me now that i see the volumes of “mes” he has in his head…i feel like i am part of a sexual harem to him and i can’t handle that. someone mentioned “affairs”…i feel like he is having an affair…if you don’t mind my asking, did you actually divorce him because of this and if so, have you gotten over this???
Not entirely there were other reasons, but it was the primary reason. It was what led to me being unhappy in the relationship. I sensed a lack of emotional closeness, that all we did was have sex, not make love. Anyway, this was very recent, divorce was just final in May. So no I am not really over it. It is just a really sad thing……. He too watched all kinds of porn, straight, gay, bi,, I even asked him if he were gay or bi and he denied both.
Yet something about it was exciting to him, I don’t understand it.
blueyes… it means he is using porn himself or he has vocal friends telling him all about it. I’m not sure which is worse. Sorry
On the plus side, he knows its wrong and has thus far tried to hide it from you and now that you have such a clear indication, you can bring it out into the open and maybe your friend will have the courage to insist on change. You may want to educate yourself and her on reasons to be against porn. As an abolitionist, I hear of porn producers using women and girls and boys in porn against their will often drugging them to be compliant and dependant. I hear that porn is blueprint for perversions played out either significant other or with a prostitute or prostituted person(s). So human trafficking is a HUGE reason to keep porn out of your life. As is risk of disease if your friend’s new “man” sees prostitutes or prostituted persons.
Good luck and let us know if we can help you. I hope you can help your friend.
I’m sorry, I was quoting from the original post by “smash”…it is actually me that I am referring to..I was just so taken aback that someone else has the “same sex life” as me!!!! I really am surprised and now am trying to understand how/why this seems to be such a clear indication of porn use….as for talking to him, forget that. He refuses to talk about our sex life. Thank you for replying to my post.
the important thing here is that he’s disrespecting you and your boundaries. Someone who does that doesn’t love you
HUGE red flags for porn use ALL OVER. RUN FOR THE HILLS. This man does NOT love you or respect you or your boundaries. He wants to hurt you and he gets off on that. Think about that.
He is of course watching it or yes, considering his stupid friends ”advice” on what a good sex life should be. Either way, his not caring about your perceptions and morover, his requirement for you not to take your perception that some acts are degrading or uncomfortable (or even painful or unhealthy) seriously and his assumption that it’s his sexuality that is the ‘valid’ one and yours is an immature one in need of guidance (yes, because all these men assume that women’s sexuality is not valid and is the result of inhibitions imposed on us by religion or conservatism, since they want to believe the ‘liberated’ woman will enjoy porn-based sex) and therefore they want to enlighten us with their superior and better sexuality for us to give up what they think is our pathethic, weak, influenced, prudish sexuality, it all denotes a huge paternalism and despise involved in his refusal to talk with you about your sex life. There’s plenty of women and girls with the ‘same sex life’ as yours, it is of course due to porn, but it’s taboo to say it and only us poor old crazy radical feminists have the guts. You can watch some porn just to realize what men watch and enjoy all the time. And please do not think men are different to us and see something different in what we perceive to be torture and terror. We all see the same, both women and men. But men enjoy it.
”After all, he says, women in porn aren’t murdered at as high a rate as women in prostitution, so that makes it more okay.”
This tactic of making women accept ‘the lesser evil’ is so old and tired. I’ve also heard that porn reduces rape and therefore it’s ok, but these arguments are so hypocritical. Porn reduces rape? If it were remotely true (which it’s not actually), could it be because the non-prostituted women are not suffering the rape and brutality that is forced on prostituted women? Since prostitution is institutional rape, porn reducing rape means the women in porn, who are indeed being raped, are not considered to be real, and the implication is also that there needs to be always some woman who is either raped or prostituted (has her sexual freedom and free will suppressed, either by physical force or by financial coercion) because sex is a male need and a female duty. A group of women not suffering male violence because it is reserved for another group of less-fortunate women who will indeed suffer it, doesn’t make things better in any way, and since the violence is distributed through the mainstream media, it does affect the ”fortunate” ”violence-free” women as well. It doesn’t work to beg men to be nicer to us (Andrea Dworkin dixit), rather women joining together and working for the end of pornstitution and of course, marginalizing men who use porn and make porn-based demands, would be the solution.
to the comment that porn reduces rape, I’d say that a lot of porn IS rape and only encourages more rape of prostituted girls and women. Before the fact, producers of porn use trafficked women and girls, use drugs to make them dependent and compliant. When you take away someone’s ability to object to the point where their will is so compromised as to be practically non-existent, how is that not rape? After the fact, porn users are infected with desires to play out the sick things they saw in the porn, and many of them will try those things out on trafficked women and girls, thus increasing the demand for human trafficking. How can something like that reduce rape? It cannot.
Of course it cannot, it was a male bullshit study that had been done in Europe (Denmark I believe) trying to justify porn. They always try to justify everything they do and they have every institution at their disposal in order to do so. Even if it hypothethically reduced rape (which it doesn’t) ”reducing” rape by assuring permanent rape to an entire subclass of women who will always be the targets of male violence, is nothing but a pathethic and failed attempt at harm-reduction based on the assumption that men need to rape and torture women. But to make things even worse, it’s not true, and it’s actually the very opposite because prostitution is now culturally mainstream; porn is the main sex education that children and teenagers get, so I agree with you that it does increase rape, as social tolerance to rape and victim-blaming.
I wish to say that porn and prostitution has always interconnected, since the first image of porn was made from what was put into the bodies and minds of prostituted women and girls.
What angers many exited women from the sex trade is that the normal violence and degradation of porn is only an issue when it may affect women and girls outside the sex trade. It is ignored or made invisible that porn has always been used to torture the bodies and minds of the prostituted class.
It is considered porn is more violent now – but porn has always push the minds and bodies of the prostituted beyond the limits – push to as near to death as possible. Women and girls inside the sex trade are not allow to have a voice when embedded in the sex trade – so their routine porn torturing is made into entertainment, a form of leisure – this is done by making out that the prostituted are so sub-human that they do feel pain as other women and girls do, therefore it cannot be torture.
Thank you for visiting my blog, Rebecca, and for your comment.
I completely agree that many objections to porn focus on what it does to women in relationships with porn users, rather than on the horror of being in pornography. It is important to note that those inside pornography are the ones being tortured.
Additionally, exited women should be leaders in the abolitionist movement.
I want to thank everyone for so respectfully enlightening me…I am honestly very overwhelmed and upset, but I appreciate knowing what I have suspected, which is why I was looking for information in the first place…I just didn’t expect to find it so specifically…and now that I have, I feel sick and betrayed and angry…and because this isn’t something that I would EVER talk about with anyone (and can hardly believe I have found a place to have this revealed) receiving comments and observations like he “doesn’t respect/love” me or that I am being used as an outlet for his pleasure without any interest in mine, much less being able to talk about that with him (paraphrasing here) is really not acceptable….I want to throw up and at the same time say “Thank God” if that makes any sense at all…this is a man holding a position of helping humanity not degrading others…no one would ever believe me (except here…or because I can’t/won’t talk about it)…I really feel shaky and kind of panicky…this has felt all wrong all along and I don’t have any proof. He won’t talk, I’ve tried. If I bring this up he will become furious and accuse me of attacking his character…the last time we had a disagreement about some part of this, he left and didn’t come home for a day. I’m not sure what to do, but I will figure it out…he knows how I feel about pornography, I would never have married him if I thought he was into this…and he knows that!!! which only increases my confusion.
Oh blueyes. I am so, so sorry to hear that he has done this to you.
I am glad, however, that you are coming to know this truth- despite how painful it is.
I hope you are able to find someone in your life to talk with about this. Please know that you are not alone, as much as it feels that you are. There are so many women who have experienced just what you have.
Big hugs from me. Again, please let us know if there is anything we can do to help you through this.
To the rest of my commenters, do you know of a support site for spouses of porn users?
So sorry to hear this. I do not know where to go to get assistance, but I do know some people who might. Try this: http://www.pornharms.com/beaware/
I’m also very sorry, and don’t know where to go (there is almost no social consciousness about this so it’s hard to find support). As female-bodied beings I would bet my hands that all women know instinctively what prostitution and pornography is. It’s not hard to follow this female wisdom coming from our Selves since it’s purely visceral so it’s the easiest thing; no more mental gymnastics, just the simplicity of trusting what your Self tells you.
Can’t even believe you thought it only happened to you. This is proof of how isolated women really are from each other, which is what enables men to abuse us. Many women/girls may be thinking this only happens to them. In the case of girls, and a lot of teenage girls and young women are victims of this because the youngest generations are the most pornsick, it is also a way of grooming a sexuality that is still developing into slavery. You are definitely not alone, Blueyes. Enough females suffer from this to spark a revolution, if we united forces.
Great points, timathydra. We are isolated, we think “this only happens to me”, and men get away with it.
Yes, and it’s so sad. Women have can’t be allowed to match experiences -what Mary Daly would call spinning- because that’s where the force of our resistence stands.
“As female-bodied beings I would bet my hands that all women know instinctively what prostitution and pornography is.”
I don’t know about instinctively…whatever was “instinctual” was flushed out of me through exposure to pornographic materials that are normalized in our rape culture. (Oh, and being raped probably helped.) You’re right on about the “grooming a sexuality that is still developing.” I was definitely groomed to accept and eroticize male dominance, so I literally didn’t see the harm in most pornography.
The difference between a “pornsick bastard” and ME was that I didn’t identify and want to emulate the aggressor, I was fine (made myself be fine?) with the idea of being degraded and dehumanized. Which is, in a word, sick.
@blueyes1005: This YouTube DIRECTLY addresses people in your situation, describes how they feel, etc., and it appears the speaker is an expert worth contacting for help. Here’s Part 1, then see Part 2 after that: http://youtu.be/lD73ps7HsJ4
Oh, Goddesses… RUN AWAY! I wish I was a superhero with a flying boat and I could come get you right NOW. To be awake and know the truth is horrifying and can truly take your breath away. You are NOT alone.
I’m an ex porn user and I’d feel bad about it if it would’nt slow me down to stand against it. Really the abuse that porn fuels just reaches all aspects of society. It is a sickness though and if you are a guy that wants real intimacy, a woman that acts like a porn star just makes you wish you skiped the whole ordeal.
Radical feminists have no sympathy for porn users. Glad you’ve stopped using though.
I have spent the last day, with some help from a computer geek, with the opportunity to look at his internet history. I feel very guilty doing this, I have never “let myself” cross that boundary before…I don’t feel I have the right to trespass but I can’t stand the tension, so I confess I looked. Okay, so I am in shock, I am beyond devastated…you all were right, but I didn’t know how “right” and I am imploded with things I didn’t even know existed. WHERE HAVE I BEEN???!! He has sites for just about everything, lots of MALE porn, lots of really “out there” things that make me SICK. Violence, groups, weird stuff….and he is doing this at times that just kill me now….times he would tell me I’d been working too hard and to “sleep in”….!!! times I would go to bed early. once was ON MY BIRTHDAY which I can’t stand the thought of…all these images and other women …and men…and mostly everything is movies, movies movies…I thought I might find pictures, there aren’t many pictures except “close ups” you know what I mean?…..I haven’t looked at the you tube, but I will….he keeps asking me what is wrong, I just don’t know what to say to him….I feel like all I have been is a convenient person to do some things with, like it wouldn’t even matter if it was ME…and here is the part that really hurts, his hard drive shows he was doing this the whole time we were dating up to the night before we got married!!!!!!!! I don’t know if I can get over this, how could i be so stupid??????? We had these talks when we got serious, he said he HATED PORNOGRAPHY and thought it was ABUSIVE to women!!!! Is he gay because he is looking at all these gay sites???? I felt scared but strong before I “looked” and now I feel scared and weak, like I have no clue who I am with. How can someone lead such a lie? Right in front of me?? Matt…?? If I had a mother to go home to, I would. I don’t have anyone here I can talk to. Thank you for listening and mostly I just wanted you all to know that you are right….I feel like a stranger in my own house. I’m educated, I am a nurse. This is insane…I married the man of my dreams
blueyes, first of all, do not blame yourself for not having known. Men can be very sneaky about porn use. We do not want to think of those we love watching horrible abusive content like this. We are not to blame for not knowing otherwise.
You do not need to feel guilty for having looked at his history. He has created this problem.
I know that porn users often move from softer stuff to harder stuff over time. I can’t speak to whether watching male/male action means he is gay, though I think it’s too early to tell that.
A good book on the topic is _Pornland_ by Gail Dines.
I hope that you save your evidence and that if you ever decide to confront him you are able to back your claims up.
I am devastated for you that he has done this. I truly wish you peace as you come out the other side of this– whatever happens.
Thank you for updating us all on this. You are in my– and our– thoughts in this very difficult time.
Blueyes, how devastating for you. Words cannot really express the sadness for you. Your life has indeed been turned upsidedown by this discovery. It is the discovery of betrayal. He lied to you, for a very long period of time, and given that track record, you cannot trust him about anything ever again.
Sadly, you may wish to consider separating from him and rebuilding your life. The entire relationship is based on a web of lies, and it would be nearly impossible to trust him ever again. It is the same level of betrayal as an affair, and that is how it feels to many women who find out about their partner’s secret porn world. If he is a jealous or controlling type, then get some support and advice from domestic abuse advisors before leaving him (it’s just a hunch).
Given he was looking at porn with the women in it as well as gay porn, he could be bisexual. If he has acted on that, you could be at risk for STDs.
Best of luck for the future, you will get through it.
xxx
my heart just BREAKS for you blueeyes. being confronted with the horrible truth like that is such a deep soul-shattering betrayal. being betrayed by the man you love, the “man of your dreams” is something that so many of us women have in common. it HURTS. it is physically painful. i remember my heart just racing and thumping hard against the walls of my chest when I had similar discoveries about my ex-husband. i could hear the blood whistling through my ears like wind and I worried I would have a heart attack. i really thought the pain he caused me might kill me.
Love, romantic love, the ideal of the happy perfect marriage, of the “good” man is such a giant con job. and we as women have the choice of either waking up into bitter reality or keeping our head’s buried in denial. i am not going to promise you that it won’t continue to hurt, A LOT, for quite a while. it will. but i hope that you are able to find some of the peace in understanding that i have myself found in radical feminism. seeing the patterns, the systems that are set up to con and trap you, you can begin to forgive yourself and to let go of your illusions. that, and radical feminists are the most compassionate and principled defenders of women’s tortured hearts to be found.
please know that you are not alone. and that many wish you nothing but the best
Oh blueyes.
That is a veil you cannot un-lift. Countless women have come to this desert, this scorched landscape that constitutes men\’s sexuality–it is unlivable, unthinkable! The lies, the betrayal, the substitutions for time with you. How dare he.
You were absolutely right to do what you did. He is emotionally abusing you. Every last shred of evidence is justification for pursuing as much truth as your heart can handle. If you\’re like me, those truths, in time, will reconfigure every memory you have with him (in autopilot setting) and you will fall thoroughly out of love.
As for his sexuality, there is nothing that really encapsulates his interests or activities except for, maybe, ”Pervesexual.” He is a pervert (as most, if not all, men are). The sociology and psychology fields have not yet caught up with what is happening to men who are jacking off to every goddamn thing under the sun (animals, children, inanimate objects, male-on-male, female-on-horse, and on and on). Instead, women are left in shambles as they confront this pandemic in silence or in the company of those who would tell them to a. get over it or b. join in. It is a violation of your emotional and physical person-hood on every level and anyone who tells you differently needs to stay clear of your path to getting the hell out.
I would also agree with the point about an STD check. It is peace of mind if nothing else.
Do you have anywhere you can go? Do you need someone to e-mail about this? There are *so many women* who have been here.
If it is any consolation – and I realize that might be hard to come by right now – your devastation is partially due to your own capacity to love. As in: you cannot *fathom* betraying another person like this or forgoing a connection/respect-based sexuality with the debasing and sick images or videos he has chosen. He does not know how to feel what you feel and won\’t figure it out in his lifetime. You have and will love harder, more fully than he ever will and you will do it again one day (if only with yourself–a great person to treat so wonderfully).
Until then, hold fast to the people and beliefs that affirm your brave and necessary actions. There is already a vast cohort of women standing by your side. You can do this.
Thanks for this great comment, pisaquaririse.
Thank you pisaquaririse and everyone. I really wish this was, or there was, someway to get all of this more out in the open. Now that I know other women have been/are in the same situation there has to be some way to make women more publicly aware….like pre-nuptial counseling needs this in it’s program!!! If not for the guy to answer honestly, for the girl to know WHAT TO LOOK FOR!! I am not a stupid person, I am well educated, I am a registered nurse…I am not overly religious, but I do consider myself very spiritual. I maybe have “overprotected myself” if that is possible. I just don’t gravitate toward people who tell dirty jokes or find base humor amusing and guys who come across as sexist or sexualize women in talk/interactions are guys I avoid. I didn’t like guys who hit on me because they liked my “looks” I went for guys that liked how I viewed the world…like my husband did. I have not caught up somehow with what is happening in the world…in the process of protecting myself/setting boundaries for what I find acceptable, I guess I have set myself up for not being informed…like I have no “street wisdom”…I think now that is why he picked me, because that was very important to him falling in love with me…I was so “innocent and sweet” but smart and strong. I feel like my innocence is gone and I am so mad at him for using me because that is how I feel, I think he used me I think he would have used me forever to hide his demons. I make him look NORMAL and “moral”. I am the “perfect wife”. I don’t have anyone to email or talk to and I have never used a blog before (I know…I sound like I’m from the dark ages…it has been my choice) so I am self conscious that I’m not sure if I am sharing too much or if I am dominating the space. If I have, I am sorry. I just can’t thank you enough. I have made an appointment with a counselor. I’m too embarrassed to share this kind of thing with anyone and pretty soon he is going to rage at me for avoiding him, I need help confronting him, I don’t know what he will do, but I do have the usb port that has copies of his downloads and I will give it to him because if I don’t have proof he’ll call me a liar.
Blueyes, you are not dominating the space at all. We are glad you are here.
I’m very glad to hear you are visiting a counselor. I caution you that many counselors think porn use is no big deal, so be sure to choose one who respects the fact that this is unacceptable behavior.
Knowing the truth is unbearably difficult, but as pisaquaririse says, this is a veil we cannot un-lift.
Take care of yourself in this difficult time. You never deserved this kind of treatment. Never feel guilty or ashamed- he is the one at fault.
‘many counselors think porn use is no big deal’
That’s the worst; the fact that porn seems so widely accepted. Porn is referred to in vague terms and portrayed as ‘cool’. Many women don’t know how heinous and violent mainstream porn has become. Men know this – they are the one asking, looking, consuming more and more degrading material. Men know – this is why they try to keep their partner in the dark, because they know she would be rightly offended. Then when she find out and rightly act repulsed and outraged, they try to convince her that she is overreacting. They make us look like we are the one with a problem. And they have malestream society to back them up. It sometimes makes me feel as if I was sent back 200 years ago discussing with people defending and justifying black slavery and being attacked for expressing that slavery is wrong while I know that I am the one being humane and moral.
Blueyes, I missed this comment of yours upthread:
He won’t talk, I’ve tried. If I bring this up he will become furious and accuse me of attacking his character…the last time we had a disagreement about some part of this, he left and didn’t come home for a day.
Given all the circumstances surrounding this, his behaviour when challenged, his long term lying and double personae (as well as his porn use) – this is not someone you should be thinking about staying with, nor trying to ‘help him with his problem’. You have said you are not streetwise in these matters, and what I have just told you is the information that you need to make an informed decision. Getting married to him was not an informed decision, you were duped into marrying him, a lie. This is not something you can save. He has a domestic abuser personality, he ticks enough of these boxes. Many a woman has remained trapped in a domestic abuse situation through love, pity or compassion for the abuser. How they get trapped into that relationship is because he seems nice, compatible, different to the others – but it is a con until they have you committed into the relationship. This is textbook. Women are not generally stupid, they don’t pick abusers because they want to be abused, they are tricked into it. Again I stress, consult with a DV drop-in centre, and work together on an exit plan. Don’t worry about the porn partner support group stuff, you need to get away. And safely.
Sorry, but I needed to be blunt – I sensed the shift in your last comment to trying to resolve this (and getting caught up in the ‘proof’ thing) – I don’t want to see you trapped in a relationship that is bound to get much worse. Cut your losses.
‘It sometimes makes me feel as if I was sent back 200 years ago discussing with people defending and justifying black slavery and being attacked for expressing that slavery is wrong while I know that I am the one being humane and moral.’
LOL the same happens to me, I feel like I’m discussing slavery with people from another century. I usully don’t have the guts to discuss porn openly with doods in real life (it’s enough to know that they use it, I don’t wanna hear them justify it anyway because it makes me sick) but knowing in what kind of culture we are immersed and that people think it’s the natural and inevitable order of things and that there’s no problem with it… it makes me think of the ancient regime somehow, that these people are so obsolete and narrow-minded (ever notice how words in patriarchy are distorted and used against women? men use to call us ‘narrow-minded’ for not accepting porn). Most people are still living by Biblical principles, porn-culture is the same as the Bible = woman must be the slave of men, the purpose of woman is to serve men. When I see a pornsick guy defending his beloved material as if it was the most modern, liberating discovery in the world, I think of a priest in medieval times. They’re the same.
Blueyes, your story makes me so sad and I identify with you. I’m diagnosed with some patriarchal invention called ‘asperger’s syndrome’ which is a mild condition supposedly in autism-spectrum, which to me simply means I’m very introverted so I don’t have a lot of street smarts or emotional intelligence either and that makes me very naïve socially, and goddess knows males who didn’t know me well have tried to take advantage of that so many times unfortunately (they thought I was slightly retarded maybe? which I’m not). I’ve seen the ‘ugly face’ of so many males who are thought to be caring, loving guys or have a great reputation, and obviously I haven’t told anyone because all females know that when it’s our word against a man’s word, we better shut up. I know what it is to block reality from entering your mind because it’s too painful, however, the information enters the dark recesses of your knowledge anyways, and when you get into radical feminism it successfully discloses and you finally have full access to it.
Don’t spend anymore energy or time in your husband, he doesn’t deserve anything from you. If you tell people in your life who are not radical feminists about your husband’s porn use, you need to know that you are probably going to be told over and over again by many of them, that it’s your problem, that you have to stop being so childish and selfish, that you better accept it, that you should ‘respect’ his habits… *especially* counselors, psychologists, sexologists. Do not forget for a moment that they are part of patriarchal institutions made by men for the benefit of men at our expense, and have studied male-created degrees at male universities and their job, whether they’re aware of it or not, is partly to reinsert dissident women into being useful for the patriarchy again.
Reality is awful and this world is fucked up and sci-fi? Yes, it’s true. Some women deny it by embracing their housewife role, others by embracing the slut role, others like us both used to deny it by simply blocking reality from entering our minds and dreaming of another world as much as you could. But no strategy to deny male abuse works in the end, we are cannon fodder, all of us. When we realize this, we become powerful, we learn to stop directing our love and empathy to men who don’t deserve it and we start directing it to the ones who really need it; women.
Be strong and, be it a counselor or a friend or whoever, NEVER let anybody tell you that your pain is not justified or real and that your perceptions are wrong and need to be changed into other perceptions that beneift male use of pornography.
It is really mind-boggling. People will generally agree (at least publicly) that things like sexism, racism and torture are wrong. Unless you put the label ‘sex’ (‘porn’) on it? Then it should suddenly become acceptable? How a woman is supposed to react when she sees things done to a teenage girl that she knows, instinctively, no teenage girl in her right mind, across time and place, would want to be done to her body?
‘porn-culture is the same as the Bible = woman must be the slave of men, the purpose of woman is to serve men’.
Exactly. People try to oppose porn and religion’s views of sexuality (porn being the liberation of sexuality and religion being the repression of sexuality) while both perpetuate the same definition of sexuality which is that sex is dirty and thus women (=sex) are dirty and that they must be punished somehow.
[This comment needs a TW. Carry on then. -smash]
Lonely indeed. A couple of anecdotes from pornsick bastards I have known:
A good friend of mine, intelligent in most other respects, genuinely believes the women in porn videos are NOT ACTING (his reasoning being that no one would go into porn who didn’t enjoy it – right. That’s why there are McDonald’s employees and office drones – we LOVE what we do). We have watched porn together and I’ve provided running humorous commentary, “Oh REALLY, dudebro? You’re going to whap her what with your WHAT? Yeah, good idea.” His response? “Well, she seems to be enjoying it.”
This is such an amazing feat of cognitive dissonance that I’m borderline impressed.
He’s just another fucking sociopathic moron. Ugh. Men are fucking entitled to make up any shit they want, without ever THINKING. And, if you don’t believe him, you’re the crazy one. I’d avoid that turd like the plague he is.
‘People try to oppose porn and religion’s views of sexuality (porn being the liberation of sexuality and religion being the repression of sexuality) while both perpetuate the same definition of sexuality which is that sex is dirty and thus women (=sex) are dirty and that they must be punished somehow.’
Yes, and they also have the Biblical belief that our destiny is to suffer. If society as a whole is ok with the violent, disadvantaged and sordid reality of women’s lives as a result of male power, and thinks that the mental horror and nullification we are subjected to in all areas of life is the inevitable order of things, it means it is still widely believed that women must suffer and be punished for being women or otherwise ‘nature’s’ or ‘the species’ order will disrupt. I once read an article about Neanderthal women who used to hunt and therefore were independent from men, and the headline was ”How feminism made Neanderthals go extinct”. Men want to make us pay for the fact of being females somehow, they can’t stand it. To the sex-pozzies and BDSM supporters you ask ”and why should women enjoy being punished or hurt sexually, more than men?” and they have no answer because they obscure sex as a class with their individualistic liberalism, but the underlying answer which no one says is: ”women should enjoy being sexually punished and hurt because their bodies are inherently dirty and evil”. The principles are the same as those of patriarchal religions, nothing has changed, and apparently it takes too much thinking outside the box and courage to be authentically transgressive, which the only really transgressive thing in this world is to believe women are human and to genuinely care for them, and only radfems do this.
I’m solo mom 18 years and celibate 8 years. In 2002 my partner wanted to cum on my face. I said no, and he didn’t just shrug it off, he felt offended and really mystified. I did not know about modern porn then. The “Anal Wars” ha ha never started. He did use some ugly slang and pushed my head down really hard and that was the last time he touched me. I felt sorry for him, and then learned through the pornharms and other NGO’s about the modern gonzo porn.
I told both my daughters about this gonzo porn epidemic. My 20 year old says she doesn’t relate with men her age, and sadly said, “I don’t know why they think they have to be so mean.” I told both daughters to screen for porn use. Yourbrainonporn documents twith MRI’s that the pornsick brain can return to more normal after cessation of porn use.
We need our early “stranger danger” to include not to let people show young people these private pictures, because these are often used to groom vicitms. Girls need to know they can say no to viewing objectionable images, they get to define what is healthy for them to view.
I feel sympathetic for you blueeyes, because I remember how betrayed I felt when my partner was asking me to do “new” things and then I found out he was a pornhead. After that I became educated about the issue because it was so troubling. I too, have been called a prude since my coming of age in early 1970′s by liberal men who manipulated and coerced me to have casual sex, or “date sex” or this disgusting boyfriend that wanted to sperm my face. NO THANKS dudes. It’s really sad to have my intimate space violated by this guy’s consumption of rape of women porn. It’s still so upsetting and I’m now much happier as a lapsed het than ever before.
I was careful to always earn my own way. I think women can consider a life of independence from men that way. Things with women and men were way different when I was young, before this porn epidemic. Men may think they won some crumb of victory over women by being porntards, but they are losing the battle when it comes to creating intimacy with a woman.
22-43% of American women now report lack of sexual desire to their doctors. Guess why?
Here is my idea: women are purchasers of cable television services. Demand that our providers do NOT stream any XXX content. And, the Comcast who provides local service and earns $1Billion a year profit on this woman hating propoganda. Why don’t women demand “clean” broadband. Before I cancelled Comcast due to a move, I asked them how I can speak to a manager about their XXX services to which I object. The customer service was all over it with my filters and blocks I could put on my services. No, I don’t want my broadband carrier profiting off pornography which depicts harm to women, period.
Thanks for this great comment, survivorthriver, and for your cable provider idea.
Well, I guess I have jump started the process of leaving. I have been so helped by this blog, I don’t even know how to explain just how much…enough that I got my husband to agree to go to a counselor who could see us on Saturday, a therapist who knew I wanted to do an intervention really, and who was prepared to give him information for a recovery center locally that works with various sexual addictions…I wouldn’t tell him why and I am amazed he agreed to go, except that I told him it was just for one time so that I could tell him what is bothering me. I believe his curiosity got him there. I told him how his use of pornography made me feel. He told the therapist he didn’t know what I was talking about. I gave him another chance to be honest and he denied it again! So I pulled out the USB and told him that I knew by his internet history that he is using everyday, what and when and then I told him that I love him and we can work through this if he will get help. He went into a rage, swearing at me, calling me unbelievable names, telling me he “hated” me and the marriage is OVER because I DECEIVED HIM by using software on his computer, so he “can never trust me again”. It is all MY fault. I know intellectually, because of what all of you have shared with me, that isn’t true. I also know the jello feeling I had going into that office yesterday was at least a “feeling” because today I am numb. The therapist wouldn’t let me go home with him, which I think was smart. I stayed in a hotel last night and will again tonight. He’s capable of not answering the phone for days after this. Unless he has a change of heart (the therapist thinks it is unlikely) I realize my marriage is over…I also realize that the last 18 months have been with someone I only thought I knew, and that this hasn’t ever been a “marriage”. I sound so logical on paper but inside I feel like a huge part of me is dying. I see the therapist (who I like) again tomorrow and I have been able to take the next two days off work. Thank you for making me feel understood, not crazy, and not over-sensitive or reactive. Thank you for giving me information that I couldn’t seem to find before. Thank you for caring. Some of you give me hope I will get over this. All of you make me realize I would NEVER have a child with this man…I just hope it is possible someday to find a man that is worthy of something so preciousl. I am lucky I found out now…I think I’m going to move back to where I lived before we got married, where I have friends and some family. I’m too alone.
‘because I DECEIVED HIM by using software on his computer, so he “can never trust me again”. It is all MY fault.’
I read this kind of comment on many columns and discussions, saying that the woman did not have the right to look into her partner’s computer, she snooped, breached his sacrosanct privacy, blablabla. It is a tactic to put the blame on the woman in order to avoid the real issue which they try to frame as a ‘private’ issue but that is having real consequences on the woman’s well-being.
A woman who is questioning herself and her relationship needs to know all the facts and the reasons why her intimate life is so unsatisfactory. It is her right to know. If she asks questions to her partner and he is lying to her, she is in her right to find the truth by herself; her psychological wellbeing is at stake. It is important to know with whom exactly we are sharing our life; otherwise, what’s the point? Believe me, I would never have bought a house and have a child with my ex if I knew he derived pleasure from looking at girls being humiliated and sexually hurt. For me, such a person can not be a good person at heart. THEY are the deceivers!
I wish you all the best. A breakup is hard but it is often the only path to sanity. I am now at peace with myself and I know I couldn’t if I stayed with my ex. I got closer to some of my female friends. Reading on feminism and spirituality helped me too. Good luck!
Oh blueyes, I am sending you so many hugs. You are so brave to have stood up for yourself, and your husband’s reaction makes it even MORE clear that you’ve done the right thing.
Good.For.You.
The hardest part is over. It really is.
The sad parts, the guilty parts, the remorseful parts, the “oh no do I take him back?” parts–they may or may never come (righteous, justified anger is one hell of a time saver in these matters). But you stood his lies down and were, thus, given the opportunity to glimpse at the pornsick monster many men manage to keep hidden. Be so relieved blueeyes! The part of your heart that is breaking is so much smaller than the part he would have broken down the road.
The other thing you may be going through – and hope I am not projecting – is a much larger break-up with loving men–or, at least, feeling good about trusting and loving men. That’s a colossal undoing and a lot to take on while amidst this emotional upheaval. Might I suggest you go easy on your head and heart for a short while and focus on getting out of your immediate state of shock and sorrow? The larger questions around men and how to relate to them will happen naturally and you have a great many blogs (linking from this one and *including this one*) from which to explore such questions.
pisaquari @ gmail < feel free to use it
blueyes, I’m glad that you can see that he is a manipulator and you have left. I’m so sorry for this difficult part of your life, but I am glad it is happening now rather than later.
It’s almost freeing in a way to recognize the truth– even though it hurts so unbelievably much.
I truly do believe that you will get over this and will be better on the other side.
Always feel free to stop by here if you need support, or email any of us.
Best of luck with your move. Take good care of yourself, okay?
We care. *hugs*
I am SO GLAD you found a therapist that behaved appropriately in this situation! Isn’t it mind boggling that if you hadn’t held up that usb stick, he may have kept up the denial? The…audacity! Then, weren’t you lucky that he showed his true colors, right there in the therapist’s office! I hope that, in the midst of all the pain and feelings of betrayal and anger and despair and horrible everything, you can summon up some tiny modicum of triumph. THIS MAN HAS NO REAL POWER OVER YOU. And for that I look at you admiringly.
”The other thing you may be going through – and hope I am not projecting – is a much larger break-up with loving men–or, at least, feeling good about trusting and loving men. That’s a colossal undoing and a lot to take on while amidst this emotional upheaval.”
Yes this is true. When you have been with a particular male and you know he is an asshole, you can stop loving him and you can even feel that righteous hate at him, but it’s harder to see men as a class as harmful to women and stop caring about them. Of course many of us who are not separatists have a few men in our lives that we trust and love, but that should be earned by them and we should be the ones who decide and judge if they are worth our respect, because they are in a privileged position while we are in an oppressed position. So it should them who had something to prove to us (that they see us as human, for instance), not the opposite. For heterosexual women it’s toughter to be a feminist because it interferes with your attraction to the oppressor, but it’s also true that as you get deeper into feminism, few men will end up seeming attractive to you, as it will become much easier for you to spot entitlement and misogyny and you will see it in most of them, so you will instantly feel disgusted by them. But yes, we should always have a distrust of men in general, and only when one of them has really proven that he does not operate by patriarchal paradigms can we consider him an ally.
“Of course many of us who are not separatists have a few men in our lives that we trust and love, but that should be earned by them and we should be the ones who decide and judge if they are worth our respect, because they are in a privileged position while we are in an oppressed position.”
Well said.
This has been a really fascinating sharing. Blueeyes, you really stayed present for yourself, asked hard questions, and went very quickly through reaction to taking direct action. I’m buoyed by the support from others you found here and your openness to exploring your own situation and learning new information fast.
I admire your courage.
Do we women here need some good old -fashioned clever slogans on t-shirts to raise public awareness on lousy porn infesting our entire culture?
“You want what? You FIRST”
“What do Abu Graib and porn have in common?”
“And you think lying paid women are hot?”
“Porn – creating new Viagra customers every day”
How can we ridicule and make porn lose it’s allure and hidden mystery?
I think that breaking the silence is the best strategy. Breaking silence is what women did to grow public awareness of the prevalence of rape and molestation. Thank you all, and Blueeyes especially, for helping to break the silence around the epidemic of violent and degrading porn.
Then I think a groundswell of snarky public attitude by women about the porn-torture industry could go viral?
When I was in my early 30′s (over twenty years ago) I had a roommate (not a lover, just one of several people living in a large house) who went with friends to a really nasty strip club and came back bragging about the experience and about the fact that he “got the number” of one of the strippers for a planned “hook-up” later.
I was HORRIFIED at this and wanted to have nothing to do with him afterwards. He simply couldn’t understand why I thought his behavior was so disgusting. The fact that going to the strip club gave him a physiological experience of sexual pleasure was his only yardstick with which to measure his choice. I tried (briefly) to explain to him that just because something gives him “wood”, that didn’t mean that it was a honorable, respectful or “good” thing to do. I pointed out how many of these women are little more than economic sex slaves, how many of them are rape and incest survivors/run-aways who use drugs just to get through their shift, plus the incidence of long-term PTSD in “sex workers”.
I might as well have been speaking to a rock. He heard nothing, did the usual come-back of “you’re just being a prude” or some such nonsense.
I have known for a long time that porn proliferation and “sex work” mainstreaming is BAD NEWS for women. Of course they want to treat us like the women they see in porn. They’ve been brain-washed to believe that viciously hurting and degrading women is “normal” and that any woman who wants to retain her ability to control her own bowels is “anti-sex” and “hung up” and a “prude”.
Goddess help us all.
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This is one of the best, most powerful pieces on porn I’ve ever read. I heart you for the amazing work you’re doing here, Smash. I just linked to this piece on my Facebook page. Can’t wait to see all the pornsick dudes come out of the woodwork to defend their right to wank off to women’s oppression. Fucking bastards.
Wow, thanks so much for saying so Miranda
You are so right that the pornsick dudes will come out in force to defend their right to wank. It’s so overwhelming when they do, so be sure to take care of yourself in the wake of the onslaught.