[x86x87]

Porn has not distorted sexual behaviours. If anything it allowed people to experiment and not feel shame for wanting to experiment. Most sexual encounters out there are as vanilla as it gets. If you feel the need to compete with someone that has sex on screen for a living you are going to have a bad time.

[ethagknight]

If you want to argue that porn is not materially distorting sexual behavior, you would have far more credibility if you first acknowledge there’s a range of outcomes.

Pornography absolutely reframes expectations and impacts behaviors. To what extent, that is a fair debate.

[x86x87]

The range or the spectrum is there and implied for anything in life. The question is: if you take porn free sexual behavior and you overlap watching porn on top of it does the resulting spectrum differ? How do you control the effect porn has on us vs the effect of all the other things we are, as a society, exposed to?

For me porn does not reframe expectations. You still end up fucking and you still end up having to treat the other person as a human being. As long as everyone is having a good time and everything is between consensual adult I'm good.

[ethagknight]

You will not acknowledge, in your casestudy of one, that you have not been at all impacted by pornography? In any form or fashion?

[pessimizer]

Is this argument by pleading?

[ethagknight]

I just find it bizarre that some people are hellbent on denying that pornography has any adverse effects.

In this case, the argument reduced down to “well, not for me” which is likely a form of denial

[x86x87]

Find me one thing that has zero effects on you. Go ahead! I'll wait.

[jkic47]

"Allowed people to experiment..."

So, they experimented by trying new things, correct? Which, by definition, is a change (i.e., a distortion) in their sexual behavior.

If you try to read the "distortion" as being a non-judgmental "change", which was my intent, it may feel less triggering.

[pdxandi]

What did you mean when you later referred to it as damaging and addictive?

[jkic47]

Simple. While not all activities depicted in porn are damaging to all people, some activities can be damaging some people. Doesn't have to be black or white. Make sense?

[hpenvy]

Do you think that the distortions effects are negative or positive overall now? And in the future? I'd argue they are positive now and in the future, so it sounds like this is where your disagreement is coming from (since you said it as if it's overwhelmingly negative now and into the future).

[x86x87]

Can you find one example of an activity (outside porn) that is beneficial to all people?

[jkic47]

Smiling, for one? :-)

[x86x87]

nope. i can find cases where smiling is not beneficial. Eg: Lookup Angelman syndrome and tell me again how smiling is beneficial to parents that have a kid with this disease.

What else do you have?

[x86x87]

Yes and the point is that words have meaning and various words are loaded and triggering.

Whenever you are trying to measure change you need to control for all the things that are happening.

I think framing it as "may change" is closer to what you maybe intended but I'm just guessing.

[garciasn]

It most definitely has distorted sexual expectations from those who view it.

This, in turn, MAY have distorted behavior.

[x86x87]

Hard disagree. You probably start with the premise that there is a standard, normal behaviour and porn introduced deviations from it. It has not unless we are talking about really extrem, pathological cases.

[acdha]

An example which I’ve seen raised by researchers: 20 years ago, choking was considered an extreme, pathological case due to the risks. Now it’s very easy to find surveys where women report pressure or even attempts to do it without consent because a generation of men grew up with porn presenting that as standard. The same is true for things like anal sex, etc. which aren’t enjoyable and involve hassle/risk for the female partner but a lot of young men don’t realize that because they’re used to seeing porn actors imitating pleasure and often masking discomfort. I wouldn’t expect anyone to say that there were never extreme porn options on the market but it seems pretty broadly accepted that a lot of previously niche things have become mainstream as vendors are trying to stand out in a very competitive market.

[x86x87]

I'm sorry, what? Choking someone without their consent? This is not porn, it's assault.

Anal sex is not enjoyable? It is. And has been a thing for eons. In fact anal sex was a way to workaround getting pregnant before birth control was a thing/was mainstream.

I feel like we have the puritan point of view of what sex should be and anything that is not that is bad/not pleasurable.

So here's where I land: what whatever you want. Do whatever you want in the bedroom as long as it's 2 consenting adults. I don't believe that porn itself is to blame or be demonized for anything.

I also firmly believe that porn may provide an outlet for people to see and experience things that they don't want or cannot experience in real life.

[acdha]

> I'm sorry, what? Choking someone without their consent? This is not porn, it's assault.

Seeing it in porn is what makes some men think it’s mainstream and something that their partner should enjoy, and there are many reports that it’s no longer uncommon for someone to try it unsolicited and then express surprise when his partner complains.

> Anal sex is not enjoyable? It is.

For men, yes, but women don’t have a prostate and report far less enjoyment. That doesn’t mean that it hasn’t been used for birth control (people have been joking about technical virginity for ages) but again there are many reports of women being pressured into it or having men try it without asking because those guys are used to porn stars pretending to find it incredibly pleasurable and, in many cases, not at all discussing how to be safe.

Again, the claim is not that porn is evil for showing uncommon things but the problems around misrepresentation and consent. If sites promote videos showing women pretending to find it highly pleasurable to be slapped or choked, having forceful anal sex, etc. some fraction of the men watching it are going to think that’s representative of real life. Hopefully they will talk with actual partners about what they enjoy, but that’s certainly not a given and there’s a long, ugly history of men resorting to threats or violence when they think they’re owed something.

This is another area where companies’ promotion algorithms raises questions about how much they’re contributing to a trend, too. If their design encourages studios to push boundaries harder to get more interactions, the feedback loop is no longer organic - they’re shaping the market, not just responding to customer demand.

[x86x87]

you know, the same kind of discourse used to be applied around videogames. The claim was that they will turn kids into murderers. In reality: video games make you smarter and may even contribute to kids being more social.

It's the perpetual protestant bullshit that has plagued the society in US for hundreds of years now. God forbid we see a breast or are exposed to a dick or mention the possibility of inserting something into an asshole - everything will break down.

[ametrau]

You’re starting from the premise that if it’s possible, everyone does it. Obviously wrong. You can be influenced, and the influence of porn is extreme / deviant behaviour (to counteract the hedonic treadmill).

I’m exhausted writing something so obvious.

[jkic47]

There is no point arguing with people unwilling to engage because their minds are made up...

[x86x87]

I agree. No point in arguing with you. You start from a premise and after that that's it.

[pessimizer]

You can't require that people accept that you're right as a precondition for arguing with them. If you want to argue that porn perverts sexuality, you can't demand that your opponent acknowledge that their sexuality has been perverted by porn. You wouldn't take that structure seriously in any other context.

[adrian_b]

There may be some feeble-minded people whose sexual expectations may have been distorted by viewing porn, like there may exist some people who believe that something they have seen in a superhero movie has some relationship with reality.

Nevertheless, that cannot be true for most people, who are able to distinguish fact from fantasy.

In my opinion a much more important role in distorting the sexual expectations of young and inexperienced people has been played for some centuries by the conventional representation in literature and starting with the 20th century also in movies of a conventional feeling of "romantic love", which has been a completely fictional creation that does not correspond to any feeling that exists between real humans.

Instead of the fictional "love", between real humans there exist 3 or 4 distinct sentiments, which are independent, so they can exist or not exist separately, even if when they exist simultaneously there exists a positive feedback that reinforces them (e.g. physical attraction, love in the sense of opposite of hate, i.e. as also possible towards friends and family, and trust; even physical attraction is a different sentiment from considering that someone is beautiful or handsome).

When I was very young I was confused by the depiction of "love" in novels and movies, where frequently one discovered the appropriate partner for the rest of their lives by falling in "love" at the first sight, after which they never had any interest for different people. In reality, the only sentiment that is possible at the first sight is physical attraction, while "love" in a stricter sense is possible only after months of shared experiences and trust is possible only after several years, outside of completely exceptional circumstances.

Moreover, none of such sentiments is exclusive towards a single human. There are many valid reasons to choose monogamy, but that is a choice enforced by rational will, not a characteristic of human feelings.

So when I was very young, my expectations about human relations were distorted by these conventional incorrect descriptions of "love" from fiction, so I could not be certain of the nature of my feelings towards others, i.e. whether they were "love" or not. I have also seen many others who have been confused for the same reason, so they were not able to analyze their own feelings and distinguish e.g. between physical attraction and trust, with bad consequences.

On the other hand, viewing porn has never distorted my sexual expectations, because there was no doubt about that being fantasy and not reality.

Therefore I believe that many classic novels or RomCom movies may be more prone to distort sexual expectations than viewing porn movies.

[x86x87]

I like your balanced approach here. Agree that humans are multifaceted, complex creatures.

[bko]

Maybe it was true for millenials. We may have grown up with unlimited unsupervised internet, but we didn't have tube sites and mobile phones to make it available privately at any time. Check out what Billie Ellish (gen-z) had to say about the influence on her generation:

> “I think porn is a disgrace. I used to watch a lot of porn, to be honest. I started watching porn when I was, like, 11,” the “Bad Guy” singer said, saying it helped her feel as if she were cool and “one of the guys.”

> “I think it really destroyed my brain and I feel incredibly devastated that I was exposed to so much porn,” she added, saying she suffered nightmares because some of the content she watched was so violent and abusive...

> “The first few times I, you know, had sex, I was not saying no to things that were not good. It was because I thought that’s what I was supposed to be attracted to,” she said.

https://www.cnn.com/2021/12/15/entertainment/billie-eilish-p...

[x86x87]

This thought has crossed my mind. Different generation may experience things differently and the subjective experience of any individual cannot capture all pros and cons. That being said, I don't think rich people (eg Billie) can actually capture why something is good or not in the context of "normal" people given how disconnected they are - i may be wrong.