If you have a few minutes to kill this morning, read through the explanation of why one would want to use a product called Find His Porn:
When should I use it?
If you feel he’s hiding something then now is probably a good time. Find His Porn scans your hard drive thus the time required is dependent on how big the hard drive and just how much porn they have stashed away. We suggest finding a time when he’s not home so you have ample time to run the tool and look at the results.
For the sake of argument, I’ll accept without comment the sexist assumption that it’s only women who are concerned that men are hiding porn. Let me save the women of the world some agida and a few bucks. If your man says that he doesn’t look at porn, he’s hiding it. And even if he’s not hiding it, do you really want to see what he looks at? The reason that the saying “men are pigs” is a cliche is simply because it’s true.
But let’s say you’re still curious. If, as in the demonstration video for Find His Porn, you find that your man has visited a midget porn site, what does that tell you? Does he have a midget fetish or was he just looking for a WTF moment? Are you going to ask him after you’ve prowled through his browsing history while he was out of the house?
Even though it promises to tell you something new about your man, in the end, Find His Porn at best just gives you information, not insight. In that respect, it’s like a lot of other products targeted at women, like Cosmo magazine, that are chock full of supposed “secrets” about men, like “We Like Chick Flicks”. Sorry, no: most men would rather watch porn than a chick flick, and you don’t need to spend $19.95 on Find His Porn to find that out.
Also, too: in case it isn’t obvious, I’m now following Dan Savage on Twitter, and that’s where I learned about Find His Porn.
Li
Better relationships through constant surveilance!
Why not, it works for crime, right?
Oh, it doesn’t. . . move along now. Nothing to see here. Certainly not midget porn.
Schlemizel
My wife became aware that our then 15 YO son was viewing porn on the internet. She wanted to go ballistic over it and I tried to talk her down a bit. I tried to have an adult conversation about pornography with him but am positive I screwed that up too.
Some day when he is much older I hope to ask him what he learned from that chat and moms freak out, poor kid is probably really messed up now.
c u n d gulag
Look, in the old days, why do you think Dad’s when to their workroom?
To build something?
No, that’s where he had his Playboys, Penthouses, Hustlers, Hooters, Jugs, and Butts magazines stashed. Or, maybe even “Gayboys in Bondage,” or something like that.
That lumber in the corner wasn’t called “The wood pile” for nothing…
EconWatcher
There’s something to be said for willful blindness. Do you really want to know EVERYTHING about your partner?
TheMightyTrowel
Instead of recycling the CW that ‘all men watch porn’ and women should deal with it (very Het of you btw), why not dig a little deeper into how things like this exploit and intensify patriarchal and deeply unequal ideals of relationships and ideas about gender which then lead to people being unable to discuss or share sexual fantasies and turn ons with each other. Saying (het) women have to deal with it totally misses the fact that (a) some het women like watching porn themselves, (b) that women’s sexual availability or lack-thereof is a stick used to beat women in our society and (c) that (het) men should keep their sexual interests secret because that dirty dirty porn will keep them from having good relationships with living (pure? christian? non-sexual?) women.
MM I usually like your sex/sexuality/gender posts but this is recycled from a rather trollish comment on some feminist blog somewhere.
MattMinus
I imagine the the kind of woman who would use a product like this would also have a very difficult time processing the difference between “what he wants to look at” and “what he wants to do”. The results would probably be hilarious.
Djpoopypants
Coming tomorrow – $50 software called” Can’t find my porn”, which negates the search software
Walker
Female porn is unlikely to be found on a computer. Now a Kindle, that is a different matter.
Because that is what the majority of female porn is.
kd bart
Is there an equivalent “Find Her Vibrator or Shower Nozzle” product?
Bondo
It only works on windows! I love you, mac.
beergoggles
I think it’s a great concept – prove yourself to be a conniving partner so that you can break up over something perfectly natural that people engage in and don’t make someone else’s life miserable.
Dan has a phrase for this: DTMFA.
Menzies
Heh.
I’ve always said I’m an outlier because the only reason I’ve watched porn is for those “WTF moments,” as you put it. But then I’m an outlier in many other ways as a male, as I’m finding out teaching ninety-three versions of them.
(Well, I suppose there is that one time I was on-site for the university’s showing of Debbie Does Dallas, but there were over two hundred people in the theater and it was more of an audience participation game than anything else.)
That said, I agree that information without analysis is worth a bucket of pig shit. I’m pretty honest with my partners about what I do watch/read, mostly because half the time, we both end up laughing quite a bit.
deep cap
There’s no point in storing pr0n locally anymore anyway. Most stuff can be easily accessed via the internet and you can start private browser sessions on most modern browsers.
The only way a spouse can monitor porn activity is if she controls the router or the firewall and can monitor incoming traffic.
ericblair
@Djpoopypants:
Released by the same company that developed Find His Porn, of course. What kind of arms dealer only sells to one side.
Heez
I’d like to say most people who would use this are the kind of morons who would let some fly by night joint perform a remote scan on their computer… but that would be a truism wouldn’t it? It also follows that the porn watcher is too dim to stash his hot midget action in an encrypted disk image.
It’s a simple product. For simple people.
peach flavored shampoo
I bet this does wonders for the relationship when the wife admits to not just snooping in on the site history, but blowing money to do an invasive search of his entire hard drive. I bet the husband suddenly becomes waaaaaaaaaaaay more trusting of his spouse. Or not.
Guster
So I’ve recently become re-addicted to text-based online games. MUDS. Like from the 80s, where you pretend you’re a medieval merchant or thief or knight. I’m way, waaaaay too old for that sort of perversion, but there you go.
The other day, my wife says, ‘What were your doing your computer at all hours?’
So I say, “Just looking at porn.”
“Oh. Okay.”
Then I felt bad for lying to her, so I told her the truth. Then I realized that I’d used porn to cover for my real shame of silly gaming.
AxelFoley
Shit, there really is an app for everything. SMH
AxelFoley
@kd bart:
ROFL, we’re done here, folks. kd has won this thread.
4jkb4ia
You don’t know my husband. He gave up watching R-rated movies 10 years ago. The last one was “The Last Samurai” and he decided there was no strategic thinking in it.
mistermix
@TheMightyTrowel:
I accepted for the sake of argument that only men look at porn and only women want to find it. That’s a naive and narrow view of sexuality, and I don’t subscribe to it, but Find His Porn does.
My view is that healthy relationships acknowledge porn (or other sexually-oriented material and objects) and discuss it to the extent that it’s relevant and important to either partner. Or, in other words, if one partner thinks that s/he needs to hide porn from the other, and the other wants to snoop for it, there’s a bigger problem in the relationship than porn.
PTirebiter
If he’s been hiding his porn as long as this one guy I know, she might end up locating that special file that’s been at-large since Polaroid quit making film packs. Everybody wins.
Linda Featheringill
Women will be able to tolerate porn only if they can separate simple sex from making love.
However, I’ve seen a few skin flicks in which the female star looked like she was feeling exploited. That situation is not funny and isn’t sexy, either.
And, of course, consenting adults.
tomvox1
Hell, why blow money on this dumb app? All anyone would have to do is run a search of the hard drive(s) for .mpg, .avi and .mov files. Something with the prefix “Dutch Teeners from Amsterdam” will usually be a pretty good tip off.
If you’ve got a snoopy person who really wants to see what’s been going on on their partner’s computer, they’re going to find out. I have a feeling that the results of such a probe will never be good. Unless they take some notes to utilize in the boudoir and don’t even mention where they got their new tricks from. Then, everybody wins.
Also, pro tip: You don’t need to download pr0n, ya idjuts. Stream away, my friends, stream away…
Suffern ACE
@PTirebiter: That’s true. We’re overlooking the market for people who have, in fact, forgotten where they put the porn.
Jerzy Russian
@Menzies: Interesting that you mention your university showing Debbie does Dallas. During my junior year at college many years ago the student council showed Deep Throat. I remember there being a big stink about it with the usual gnashing of teeth. However, in the end that showing was by far the most heavily attended event they had had in a number of years.
Getting back to the topic at hand, I don’t see how it can work if the man has either cleared his cache/history (Safari can be “reset”), or has his porn on DVDs somewhere in an undisclosed location.
MattMinus
@TheMightyTrowel:
There is no topic that cannot be used as the starting gun for the Oppression Olympics on this site.
RobertB
I liked “Shakespeare in Love”, is that a chick flick? And does having watched “Blade” about 10 times negate it if it is?
redshirt
As a long serving IT guy, believe me when I say 95% of Sales Guys have porn on their company provided laptop. I’ve seen VP’s of sales have their entire hard drives filled with porn. I’ve been dragged into fights between couples because the wife found porn on her husband’s work computer. It’s endemic.
Best just to try and understand why men are such pigs overall, rather than why your particular man is.
Schlemizel
@tomvox1:
I work in IT security and am aware of much more sophisticated means than looking for jpgs. For instance, one forensics app looks into files looking for the number combinations for skin tones. But you better plan on hubby being gone a a while.
catclub
@Djpoopypants: “Coming tomorrow – $50 software called” Can’t find my porn”, which negates the search software”
Actually, Truecrypt was there first, and it is free.
See also: Windows only, no Mac, no Linux.
burnspbesq
@Djpoopypants:
“No, dear, the reason I installed TrueCrypt on my laptop is that I sometimes use it for work and I have to protect documents that are subject to the attorney-client privilege.”
PTirebiter
@MattMinus:
Great line. Can’t wait to start claiming it as my own.
Vlad
@Jerzy Russian: “Undisclosed location”? Now I’m thinking about Dick Cheney stumbling across my porn stash.
Gee, thanks…
burnspbesq
@tomvox1:
But be sure to clear your cache and history at the end of every session. ;-)
4jkb4ia
@MattMinus:
Porn is a very good topic to talk about oppression AFAIK. There might be the issue of what kind of consent the actresses are giving which Linda Featheringill mentioned above. Also there was the NYT Magazine article on “Teaching Good Sex”. If porn and other brutal, callous images of sex (h/t Reviving Ophelia) are all you know, you won’t get to fully human sex that you have a right to.
And I admit I shouldn’t be in this thread anymore. It is just a tznius issue.
burnspbesq
@Vlad:
Given Cheney’s history of cardiac events, your porn might turn out to be the functional equivalent of the ICC.
geg6
But if I try to find his porn, he might turn around and start looking for mine!
Seriously though, who the hell gives a fuck if their guy (or girl) is looking at porn? I’d be more worried if he wasn’t.
daveNYC
@redshirt: I really don’t understand why people would keep stuff like that on a work machine. Hell, regular pr0n is bad enough, there’s plenty of stories about people keeping kiddie pr0n on work machines.
External, encrypted, hard drives people.
Amir Khalid
Clicked on the link and got only an empty page. Is it me or Firefox? Anyway…
The purveyors of Find His Porn are looking to profit off the sort of woman who doesn’t trust her man, or who hasn’t come to terms with his interest in porn. And if they’re right, there are plenty of such women out there, or at least enough to make a buck from.
They don’t care that if their product turns up any porn, or even if he finds out she’s using it, it’s likely going to damage the relationship, perhaps beyond repair — not least thanks to the level of distrust between them that is exposed. Which is kind of heartless of them, I guess, but not stupid.
burnspbesq
@catclub:
No longer needed in the Mac world. Whole-disk encryption is built into the OS, beginning with Lion.
Villago Delenda Est
@Vlad:
Unless your porn stash involves lots of waterboarding, Dick Cheney is not that interested in it.
Seitz
Three words, fellas: External hard drives.
Mary
@4jkb4ia:
I love watching porn, by myself or with my partner, but it can only hold my interest for so long. I consider it one small part of a healthy and varied sexual relationship. Sadly, for many it is all they know, but that’s not the fault of porn, it’s the fault of a society that places such a huge taboo on sexual education and expression.
David in NY
@daveNYC: About kiddie stuff. Having it will get you a mandatory five years in federal prison. Trading ten years. Mandatory. Sentencing guidelines above the mandatories depend on number of “images.” And do you have any idea what a hard drive can hold? And don’t kid yourself or spouse, they find ordinary folks. All too many people are heard, being apprised of these penalties, to say, “But it must be legal, I got it on the internet.”
A spouse who finds kiddie porn on a hard drive should take serious action. It is dangerous.
Cassidy
I’ve never understood a woman’s reaction to p0rn. Why is it such a bad thing?
David in NY
@Cassidy:
Gateway drug to infidelity.
Cassidy
@David in NY: That makes zero sense.
daveNYC
@David in NY: Um, OK… I don’t know if you read my comment as being protective of kiddie pr0n or something, but my point was that people are not only stupid enough to put regular pr0n on work machines (which will get their asses fired) they’re double plus stupid enough to put kiddie pr0n on work machines, and that will get them sent to federal pound me in the ass prison.
geg6
@Cassidy:
AFAIC, it isn’t such a bad thing. There are some types of pron that are bad (kiddie, for instance), but there are plenty of pron films and books that are simply sublime from a woman’s or couple’s perspective.
As a woman, I find pron to be whatever you make of it and quite a useful tool. But then I’m not a prude.
burnspbesq
@Cassidy:
To you, perhaps. To a typical suburban fundie Stepford wife …
Ben Cisco
@redshirt: Never got dragged into the employee/spousal unit main events, but I did have the misfortune of discovering and reporting material of a certain, um, equestrian quality on a client’s computer.
__
She was quite surprised when they walked her out.
AA+ Bonds
I can understand why some people might feel insecure that their partner’s pornography indicates what they “really” want.
But honestly, the best way to address that issue is some honest conversation about sex, which probably doesn’t occur to anyone who thinks they need a specialized computer program to spy on a loved one.
Bago
Can I just be creepy and put the phrase “ample time to run the tool” in quotes?
Veritas
Not all men look at porn. Unemployed losers who can’t get an erection with an actual women do. So, all “progressive” men look at porn, but not all men.
RealityCheck
FlipYrWhig
@Cassidy: I think it’s like this: “He’s choosing imaginary women over me. Is there something wrong with me?” Or “Is what he looks at really what he wants to do? That’s disgusting. Is there something wrong with him?”
AA+ Bonds
If a partner suddenly revealed that she had a severe problem with me owning pornography, like, the kind where she expected me to get rid of all of it and never obtain more, there’d need to be a ring on it or some kids to keep me from seriously reconsidering the entire relationship
David in NY
@daveNYC: Sorry, I didn’t mean to suggest you were being protective of kiddie porn, and agree with you that putting it on a work computer is stupid. I just have the misfortune to deal with people facing an actual five or ten mandatory years, or more, in prison because it’s on their home or work computers. And they had no idea the risk they were running.
Also, people who download lots of porn are apt to get some kiddie porn in the mix. This too can cause trouble.
I just wanted to underline the seriousness of the possible complications, since you mentioned a scenario that has led to prosecutions when the employer or law enforcement became aware of the situation.
AA+ Bonds
@Veritas:
– _ – come on, man, I appreciate what you do but you don’t need to persona-drop to be effective
AA+ Bonds
@David in NY:
IMO this applies mainly to people who download pirated porn instead of legitimately acquiring it from trusted sites.
kindness
For laughs I go to failblog.org. They will on occasion pull in screen shots of the Yahoo Answers page. You would not (well, maybe you will) believe the number of folks there who feel a partner viewing naked bodies they are not married to is a divorceable offense. I can’t believe folks would shitcan a relationship over casual viewing, but they are out there.
In cases like that, who is the real crazy person, the one who expects their partners to never want to see another’s body or the ones who will do it knowing they are treading on thin ice? I say both of ’em.
Monkey Business
Mine is in a folder labeled “Chicken”, on the same hard drive that has all my music, movies, and video games on it.
There. I just saved my hypothetical future girlfriend $19.95. I am the best hypothetical future boyfriend ever.
NCSteve
@Djpoopypants: Leading directly to the next product, “So, WTF Did I Put that Porn I was Hiding?”
Pavonis
@2
Yes, your child will learn about sex, sooner or later. Better be from a textbook or encyclopedia or something like that rather than porn. So much of modern porn just looks either painful* or so completely one-sided* that I’d be really concerned if that was your first or only introduction to human sexuality.
*er… this investigation was for purely academic reasons.
Joseph Nobles
Even if you only view porn online, you have scads of temp files which would probably show up in this search. After all, the picture isn’t really on the internet when you view it on your monitor. It’s right there on your computer. And leaving the page doesn’t erase it from your drive at all, not until that portion of the disk is overwritten. So unless you’re encrypting your disk and shredding everything you dispose of, you’ll be busted for the most rank, heinous stuff you ever had the misfortune to click on.
Seriously, folks, if you feel the need to do this to your partner, DTMFA. Using it will confirm one of two propositions only: they don’t deserve you or you don’t deserve them. Spare yourself the sordidness and just cowboy up and dump them.
Jerzy Russian
@Veritas:
I know this was/is snark, but I have this faint memory of reading about this company that provides pay-per-view movies for hotels. A large number of those movies are of course “adult” in nature. The state in which this company had the most business was Utah.
AA+ Bonds
@David in NY:
I do want to note here that a lot of people who download stuff illegally, such as pirated porn, aren’t aware of the risks, which can indeed include content that isn’t protected as free speech (as well as viruses and other malware, etc.)
The smart thing to do is budget pornography and buy subscriptions. (The smart thing to do is also to not be embarrassed at the idea of a monthly porn budget.)
Veritas
@All stats like that prove is that Mormons pay for their porn instead of pirating it off the net.
AA+ Bonds
@Joseph Nobles:
Amen. If you suddenly feel the moral urge to spy on your partner, what you’re actually feeling is the urge to end the relationship, which you can do with a little more honor and dignity than installing spyware.
David in NY
@Pavonis:
Actually, better from you. Be frank with your kids about sex, about homosexuality, about stuff people do, that people like sex. They should hear it from you first. When do you do it? The key is to stay ahead of their peers and their capabilities on the internet. That’s when.
I say this having accurately, but gently, explained to a nine-year-old what Bill Clinton and Monica were up to, and why grown-up people might do such a thing (something that was not self-evident at the time). I was met with something like disbelief, but I believe that this approach has paid dividends for both of us over the years.
AA+ Bonds
Here’s another porn tip: stay far, far away from forums/message boards/Usenet/any other porn-exchanging “community”, whether self-made or pirated.
Participating in those is a great way to get caught up in kiddie porn dragnets whether or not you’ve ever even viewed illegal content. All it takes is one thread with that content to convince cops to investigate every last user.
Sloegin
There’s a reason half the collection in a typical underfunded public library are romance novels.
Our children go to those libraries! Won’t anyone think of the children?!
debit
Well, as long as they don’t come up with Find Her Porn I’m safe. Whew!
Yutsano
@Veritas: Concerned moral scold is concerned. Still smarting over your banning I see.
AA+ Bonds
@Sloegin:
Forget Harlequin; if the librarians are ALA stalwarts, you’ll usually find 120 Days of Sodom on the shelf.
David in NY
@AA+ Bonds: I think you may be right, but don’t know for sure about the trustworthiness even of paid sites. I do know that file sharing is extremely dangerous — it puts people immediately in the ten year category, and that is a very long time to spend in prison.
I want to say that I think these penalties are largely nuts, but they are currently the law and likely not to change very soon (and even if they did it would not help anyone already convicted).
p.a.
most men? talk about understatement. I’m reminded of the snark line “98% of men masturbate, and the other 2% lie.”
cmorenc
This software product gives a new meaning to the phrase “whack job”. Whack job software to ferret out whack job porn.
AA+ Bonds
@David in NY:
It depends on the site. Families of sites from large, trusted vendors are usually safe because those folks make a living from providing legal content.
Nowadays, that doesn’t restrict you to “mainstream” porn either.
Veritas
@DavidinNY, yes, clearly those who download child porn should get a warning followed by a minor fine. No big deal at all.
RealityCheck
hitchhiker
The product is not about porn. It’s about taking advantage of the fact that lots of marriages are dysfunctional boobytraps, where partners routinely fail at the most basic communication tasks. It’s guaranteed, as lots of people have already said, to cause all sorts of pain, which means the people selling it must be mighty effing cynical.
Easy to imagine them doing the numbers . . . 100 million men, 95% use internet to look at port, most of them are in relationships, some fraction of those have insecure wives . . . BIG MARKET! Wow, we only need to reach a tenth of a percent to make a million easy dollars.
That’s what the product is about. Somebody making money off sad people.
Also too, Dan Savage! Rock star.
David in NY
@Veritas: I don’t see you out here advising folks to avoid child porn, like I do. Perv.
Paul in KY
@Schlemizel: A 15 year old viewing free porn on the internet! You can knock me over with a feather ;-)
Paul in KY
@Djpoopypants: I got 99 problems & that b1tch finding my porn ain’t one.
Villago Delenda Est
@Veritas:
Is it “child porn” if no actual children were involved in its production? Is it “child porn” if photos of your kids skinny dipping are considered to be taboo by some prude at the Photomat?
These questions have been around for some time now. Scolds have not been able to come up with coherent answers to them. Because they’re too busy being assholes. Like you.
Lee
I’m confused.
“Men are pigs” is ok, but “the drunk chick saying ‘I’m so wasted'” is not?
Where did all of our pearl clutchers go? Do they have the day off?
canuckistani
As a Mac user, I do all my midget-porn surfing in a separate account (“admin” – could it be more innocuous?). The power of UNIX keeps everything including cookies and temp files hidden from (the important part) my kids who use the computer for games and (I hope) non-porn surfing.
My wife is sufficiently disillusioned with me that the discovery of midget pron really wouldn’t make much difference.
Veritas
@Village yes, and your second question is a strawman. Oh, and Pedos shouldn’t get 10 years in prison, they should get a very, very long sentence in a psychiatric institution. They’re disordered and they won’t stop.
Catsy
@beergoggles:
This eleventy bajillion times.
I think this product is a fantastic idea. I would welcome a partner using this on me and confronting me with my porn downloads and bookmarks, because that would tell me two things I definitely need to know sooner rather than later: 1) that my partner cannot be trusted to respect my privacy and property, and 2) that my partner has a very unhealthy attitude towards sex. We are not a good fit: don’t let the door hit you where Darwin split you.
Seriously, though–this is just another symptom of how deeply fucked up our culture is when it comes to what people do with their bodies in the privacy of their own home.
Thankfully, this is something I’ll never need to worry about. My partner of 8 years has a marvelously dirty mind and a healthy respect for sexual pleasure, and when one of us is in the mood and the other isn’t, we usually have an exchange along the lines of “am I taking care of myself tonight?” At which point the more randy of us retreats to the bedroom with a laptop to do just that.
True story, only half-relevant: at one point my other half took a retail job and by sheer coincidence, she ended up working beside the husband of someone I used to be involved with (relax, it was a poly relationship). By the time we had split I didn’t much like him and apparently the feeling was mutual, and he got the idea into his head that he could do me some damage by slyly informing Jess about various bisexual group sex scenes I’d been involved in, I assume because Jess looks fairly wholesome and he thought it would shock her. I don’t recall her exact response, but it was something dry along the lines of “Oh I know, but you’re committing a serious breach of etiquette by telling me under the assumption that I don’t.”
Villago Delenda Est
@Veritas:
Not a strawman. Actual cases have been brought based on pictures of naked children taken by their own parents.
Is it better for someone with these inclinations to jerk off to pictures of digitally conjured children, in private, or for them to seek actual children to molest? If no actual children are involved in production, is it still a crime? What is the crime? Abusing children, or deviant sexuality? And who gets to define deviant? You? Me? If no other person is actually harmed, except in the sense of those who obsess, for example, over gay sex that might be going on somewhere RIGHT NOW OMG squick squick squick, is that a crime?
Veritas
@Villago pedophiles don’t stop with porn. No, they don’t need to be jerking off to anything, they need to be getting some serious psychological and psychiatric treatment. Let me repeat, if you are sexually attracted to kids you have a problem.
Hazel Stone
Wow. The sexism, it is deep here. You do understand that your “men are just dogs” shit is misogynist, essentialist AND insults men?
Some people hate porn because it turns guys into obsessive misogynist bastards. Others hate it because it is based on humiliating and degrading women. Others hate it because of the links between porn, prostitution and trafficking.
Me, I hate everything about it from the tedium of the tropes to the fact that there are strong odds you are watching a woman who has experiences sexual assault recapitulate her abuse, since many in the sex industry were “groomed” to think of themselves as worthless by incest, molestation or rape. What other reason would a woman have (other than financial desperation or drug addiction) to humiliate herself like that and leave herself open to discovery and all the bad consequences that come from having porn featuring oneself out in the world?
The topic of porn is a great way to bring faux lefties out of the woodwork.
Veritas
Really you don’t think Michale Jackson, Jerry Sandusky, et al didn’t look at child porn as well as rape children? That’s most likely where they started. Also comparing child porn to gay sex? Really? Really? Is it LGBTQP now?
Catsy
@Monkey Business:
I used to hide mine in a folder called “Seafood”. Derived from porn -> pr0n -> prawn.
It wasn’t intended to be a serious security measure, just a layer of obfuscation for anyone using my PC who happened to glance at the directory tree in Explorer–mainly my kid when he used to use my computer for games.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
Reminds me of the conversation I had with my sister at Thanksgiving.
Sister “My son was up tell 3:00am doing programing”
Me “No he wasn’t”
Sister: “,..”
Brother-in-Law thinks for a moment and then shrugs
Nephew: looks away.
Villago Delenda Est
@Veritas:
How do you know that it doesn’t stop with porn? Do you have personal experience that tells you this? Have you conducted studies?
If no child is actually involved, why are you so concerned about it? Why does it concern you, as a matter of exercising state power?
A century ago, attraction to the same sex was an indication that you have a problem. Is it still for you? Be honest. Wait. That’s not possible for puritanical moral scolds like you. Never mind.
debit
@Catsy: Back in the day, my ex had some on a VCR tape labeled “Spanish Lessons”. One day when I was (thankfully) kid free and alone, I thought, “Neat! I’ll brush up on my…oh. Well then.”
Veritas
Wow, you really ARE comparing pedophilia to homosexuality. Strangely, Rick Santorum probably agrees with you (though he’d reach a different conclusion).
Villago Delenda Est
@Veritas:
No, I’m asking you questions. You’re the one drawing the conclusions.
You’re a lot more like Rick Santorum than you’d care to let on.
Homosexuality was “deviant” 75 years ago. Think carefully before you draw a conclusion.
Oh, wait, I’m asking you to think. Never mind.
Villago Delenda Est
Also, you keep dodging the questions that you don’t want to answer, because you have no good answer for them other than your own blind puritanical prejudice.
Veritas
So there’s no difference between homosexuality and pedophilia, and no difference between gay sex and child porn, right? Is that what you’re saying? That pedophilia is just another kind of sexuality?
Rihilism
I think it’s extremely important to talk about sex with your children. One of the most important aspects of this discussion should be emphasizing the need to ask your partner what their desires and preferences are.
I’ve watched the occasional adult movie (is there some kind of award for absurd understatement?), and have picked up a “trick” here and there. Unfortunately, some watch porn and see something they would like and try it without asking for their partners input (double entendres are a-flyin’). Often you can tell if your new partner is “porn-trained” and sometimes I swear I recognize the porno they stole the “act” from. Often, these are the least enjoyable sexual encounters because rather than feeling spontaneous, they feel rehearsed and stilted (or in some cases, downright selfish. Nothing worse than someone who is selfish in bed).
IMO, a healthy discussion of sex with your kids (or your partner, for that matter) should include a discussion of pornography and the drawbacks that arise from relying on porn as a teaching tool…
Veritas
Opposition to pedophiles is “puritanical prejudice”. You heard it here first.
Snarki, child of Loki
Well, anyone that is snooping on hard-drives should be given the hint that “.xls” files are for “x-rated llama sex”.
And you REALLY don’t want to know what the “.xlsx” files are.
Just delete ’em all, it’ll do AMAZING things for your relationship, guaranteed!
Bruce
I agree. “Opression Olympics” wins. Hand down.
Cris (without an H)
Veritas: this is a thread about porn, why are you talking about pie?
Catsy
@Cris (without an H):
You’ve obviously never seen American Pie.
NCSteve
@burnspbesq: Why do you think he had all those tapes of “enhanced interrogations” in that bigass saff he had put into his office?
Rihilism
@Hazel Stone: I watch gay porn. Does that make me a faux faux lefty?….
Emmy Lou
You’re missing something big here: when he moved out, my ex left one of the computers for our young daughter to use. He said he’d wiped all the porn off it. He hadn’t. Luckily I figured that out before she did, but $50 would have been a cheap price to pay for at least some security while I saved enough money to just replace the computer.
gil mann
@Hazel Stone:
You mean like having self-appointed moral guardians stigmatizing the living shit out of them under the pretense of concern for their well-being? Those kinda consequences?
smintheus
@FlipYrWhig: I think it might be more “he’s a creepy voyeur”. I’ve always avoided it as plain voyeurism.
MGB
@Hazel Stone: the only pr0n I view has all men. Hot hot men. So am I a faux leftie?
TooManyJens
@Hazel Stone:
Have you ever asked this question of a woman who’s done porn?
I’m not much of a porn watcher myself. I hate the kind of porn whose target audience is “men who don’t like women but want to fuck them,” and there’s a hell of a lot of that out there. But your generalization just doesn’t hold up. There are women who do porn because they enjoy it. They don’t consider it humiliating. There is porn that’s not misogynistic. You’re weakening your critique of the legitimate problems with porn by making these false, sweeping statements.
Brachiator
@Djpoopypants:
Even better, software which redirects to a directory containing pictures of puppies, kittens, flowers and unicorns.
@Rihilism:
It’s also important to leave your kids the fuck alone and let them have a fantasy life. A lot of what people (yes, men and women)see in porn fires their fantasies and doesn’t have much to do with what they want or seek in a partner.
Do you think, for example, that teen age girls and women really want to marry a vampire, or to have to choose between a hot vampire and a hot werewolf?
Porn is performance. Between prep, camera setups, start and stop, lube and special equipment it is pointless to talk about what professional performers do and what people might want to do. The best you can say is, “Kids, don’t try this at home.”
Unless you have a swing and a monkey.
Catsy
@Hazel Stone:
Speaking as someone who actually knows people in the sex industry and has worked in that industry and with them, I feel pretty comfortable saying that you don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about beyond what you’ve read or been told.
It is of course true that conditions like those you describe exist in porn. There is plenty of porn that is degrading and misogynistic, and it sucks. But the opposite is also true.
For every porn actress I’ve met who felt exploited or degraded by that work, or who did it out of financial desperation, there were far more who had did it because they enjoyed sex and loved having a job where they could get paid for doing something they enjoyed. To pick just one example, a woman I worked with had the job of masturbating on cam while chatting with an IRC chat room full of horny (and obnoxious) men. My job was to moderate the chat room, boot the rude ones, and keep the rest in line. She loved her job. Her husband made a lot of money and she didn’t have to work, she did it because she was sex-positive and it was fun for her.
Sex-negative attitudes like yours are just as destructive and misogynistic as the ones you claim to hate, and do as much or more to reinforce stereotypes.
ruemara
I do the tech support on all the house machines. I can find the porn in less than 2 minutes. Amateurs. And why is porn an issue? If there’s a problem in the bedroom, yet the guy is pornhoarding, the other person is gonna bitch. Especially when the other person swears they don’t like teh pron. 2 lies at 1 blow.
Catsy
@Hazel Stone: Forgot to add, being unable to imagine any reason other than drug addiction or financial desperation that a woman might do porn says a lot more about your own ignorance and limited exposure to actual sex workers than it does about porn. Something to keep in mind the next time you start going on about “faux lefties”.
Brachiator
@Hazel Stone:
You realize that a lot of guys don’t need porn to be obsessive misogynist bastards. And the issue of prostitution and trafficking is complicated. However, there is a lot of voluntary and amateur porn out there.
Sorry, you need to get over yourself here. Some porn performers are exhibitionists. Some try “mainstream” acting and find it boring.
And, at least in Southern California, I know quite a few women who watch porn. Curiously, some watch gay male porn, mainly because they find that there are more hot looking men.
And in the world of amateur porn, there is quite a bit that features women acting out their fantasies, with partners and strangers. This gives lie to all kinds of nonsense about women not being into porn or sex.
And then there are the men who like to watch porn movies featuring pretty male transsexuals.
Funny thing about porn. It accommodates all kinds of fantasies.
JGabriel
mistermix:
Depends on what you mean by “chick flick”. If we’re talking Katherine Heigl rom-coms, then yeah, I’d rather have a migraine for two hours. The experiences are much the same, except the migraine doesn’t make you despair over the stupidity of humanity.
On the other hand, screwball comedies from the 30s & 40s kind of fall within the definition of “chick flicks”. I love those old screwballs and could watch them for ages.
.
DougJ
Do musicals count as chick flicks?
Also too, I did enjoy the first Bridget Jones movie.
geg6
@Hazel Stone:
This sentence right here is why I simply cannot take you seriously at all. All pron is video, I presume? All women who have posed for Playboy or Penthouse are victims? This is utter bullshit. Not all pron is some skanky-looking crackhead doing three or four guys who pound away at her without ever looking at her. You need to get out more.
r€nato
@David in NY: observations:
1) I’m convinced that a fair number of the folks nabbed in the last several years for possessing kiddie porn, simply got curious and used their bittorrent client to see what was out there… not stopping to think that those images might be coming off a police-owned server, or that it is relatively trivial for the cops to locate who had that IP address on a specific date and time, or that one really shouldn’t go there even out of curiosity and ease of availability.
In the old days before peer-to-peer, there was quite a high hurdle to finding child porn. Even in the early days of the web, downloading porn binaries (of any sort) from Usenet was a cumbersome process.
No, I’m not excusing it. It’s disgusting and I cannot fathom how anybody could find it erotic.
I’m just fascinated in the contrast between the old days when most of us figured that there was a relative handful of creepy kiddie porn fans, we were certain we didn’t know any of them, and one had to be really, really dedicated to it and likely involved in making it or being a creepy child molester in order to get access to kiddie porn versus today’s paradigm where all it takes is curiosity and a mild lack of morals to find it… at first. If one keeps at it, then one is certainly treading the path towards being exactly like the creepy kiddie porn collectors from the olden days. I think it says something about how we never really know what people are truly like behind the face they present to the world. For all you know, your fine, upstanding, professional, middle-class neighbor might have a secret kiddie porn collection.
2) I’m also amazed at how relatively common it is to read in our local paper about men (it’s always men, usually middle-aged) who are caught at a rendezvous with what they thought was a 13 or 14 year old girl who wanted to have sex with them (as if!)… and the cops show up instead. The depth of stupidity involved (hello, haven’t you heard…; hello, you have never met this person, you have NO idea who is on the other end) is mind-boggling.
3) Finally (at last)… it’s common to read stories on a regular basis in our local paper about teachers caught having sex with or flirting with students, and in one case a cop assigned to a high school campus traded literally thousands of text messages with some 17 year old girls he wanted to screw. Incredibly, the cop was not charged with anything but he did lose his job and his certification to work in law enforcement anywhere in the state. There was also a notorious case here of the wife of a (Republican, Mormon) county supervisor who was caught molesting a boy beginning at the age of 13, it went on for 3 years and included the classic grooming behaviors of any child molester. Her teenaged, almost-legal daughter was having sex with the boy too. ICK.
The upshot of all this is, if I had a teenaged girl I think I’d be suffering from chronic anxiety that she was surrounded by potential molesters. It’s really amazing how frequently it happens.
Rihilism
@Brachiator: Dear me, you have me suggesting a great many things that I don’t recall mentioning, such as actively intruding into your child’s fantasies, sexual or otherwise, or suggesting that the only reason to watch porn is to come up with ways to please a partner or that acts performed in a porno should always be attempted. Gosh, I need to start paying attention while I’m typing or else my subconscious will take over and I’ll start typing shit I never intended to say.
Oh, and thank you for the educational instruction regarding what the porn industry is really all about. Until today, I assumed I was watching documentaries. Silly me….
RossinDetroit
I can’t believe nobody has mentioned one very obvious use of this snooping software: finding grounds to nail him with the law. Say you want a divorce. Or child custody. Or a protective order. If you can prove that he has nastiness on his computer you’re halfway there.
Brachiator
@Rihilism:
My response wasn’t just to you, but used your note as a jumping off point to extend the conversation about porn. But my main point still is that “conversations” about porn to kids can be dopey. I recall as an adolescent tuning out parents, no matter how well intentioned, because sex is personal, and conversations just tend to be icky. I didn’t want to talk about what I liked or disliked with my parents or other relatives, and didn’t much want to hear them pontificating on the point. This is separate from conversations about safe sex, self respect, etc.
Another note may have made this more clear, but it’s stuck in moderation and I’ll just wait for it to either clear or disappear.
And as always, your mileage may vary.
Just from this thread, it’s clear that a lot of people bring all kinds of baggage about what they think porn is all about. And yeah, some people think that they can imitate what they think they see. It’s good to see that you, apparently, are one of the enlightened ones.
@r€nato:
I’m not sure about this. Some of the cases that make the news often involve more than a few casually downloaded images. Don’t know, and don’t even want to speculate. But I agree with your point that the InterTubes may make it easier for these people to indulge their creepiness.
Brachiator
@JGabriel:
Not suggesting that you think this way at all, but I am amazed at the degree to which some men denigrate a class of movies as “chick flicks,” but think that whatever movies they like are just “regular flicks,” or even if they acknowledge them as “guy flicks,” think that the women in their lives should be happy to see them.
I also recall a film critic, with a huge degree of snark, referring to an actress in an action flick as fulfilling little more than the role of “a warm place to put it.” And this was a woman critic, just in case anyone was wondering.
Some of the younger guys I work with absolutely refuse to see anything they think to be a “chick flick.” I recall noting that Bridesmaids not only seemed to be a fun, hit film, but also that guys who were dragged to see it admitted enjoying it. Didn’t matter, even though his wife had indicated interest in it. And since she didn’t like going to the movies by herself, her only option was to make it a girls night, or skip it.
I also mentioned to another co-worker who was dissing the Twilight films that if I were a teenager or a young dating adult, I would go to see one of these films in a heartbeat if a girl or woman asked me to accompany her. You would obviously score all kinds of sensitivity points.
Origuy
Coincidentially, xkcd has a comic about hiding your porn.
Studly Pantload, the emotionally unavailable unicorn
Is it just me, or are societies where pr0n is most openly accessible without legal consequence (generally – no kids, no animals, no actual phycial abuse) also most likely to be societies where women are most likely to have pretty much the same liberties as men and are afforded at least a near-equal level of participation in industry? And aren’t societies where most any pr0n is legally curtailed most likely to impose great restrictions on individual liberty, with the most onerous of those restrictions directed toward women?
At whatever rate, one can sidestep the commercial stuff altogether, anymore, what with tons and tons of people all too happy to use the digital medium and Internet to proudly display their own passions and kinks. It’s like we’re becoming almost as much a society of exhibitionists as voyeurs.
Also, too, a semi-recent news story comes to mind where U.S. university researchers tried to guage what sort of effect viewing pr0n has on young men’s attitudes towards women but had to scuttle the study when they absolutely could not come up with any young men that didn’t view the stuff.
David in NY
@r€nato:
I generally agree:
1) I think that a good number of (usually) alienated people collect lots, and lots, and lots of porn, fairly indiscriminately. They end up clicking on, and keeping, some illegal porn, and then get in very bad trouble. Those who have just been looking at it are invariably harmless, but they can spend years in jail.
2) People’s fantasy lives do get them in terrible trouble (and it’s not always just sex). And this conduct, showing a willingness to go beyond just looking at pictures, may indicate they pose some danger to young people.
3) Look, I’m officially old in a couple of weeks, and came from a family of teachers, and I have trouble with this stuff. I wonder if people really haven’t lost their sense of personal responsibility about this stuff.
As to fear for one’s children, I think that if parents have more responsibility than the mother you note, and if they actually talk to their kids about sex (at the current level of the kids’ peers and their internet) there is really not much to fear. I don’t think we ever did with out boys (though perhaps should have), but if they had been girls
we surely would have said they didn’t have to let adults touch them if they didn’t want to be touched, and that they could talk to us about it any time, we wouldn’t get mad. I think that kids fear talking about sex with their parents, which is why stuff like that Penn State doesn’t get immediately reported.
And frankly, I’m kind of astonished at the amount of internet porn folks here think is a usual amount. I’ve been married 30 years, and although I surely can’t say I’ve never looked at porn, I clearly don’t spend much time doing that by some standards. I guess I think Groucho’s comment to the woman who had seven children (in part, she said, because she loved her husband) may be appropriate: “I love my cigar too, but I take it out of my mouth once in a while.”
Rihilism
It really depends on the relationship between the child and the parent. I’m in no way suggesting that it has to be the same for everyone nor am I suggesting the discussion has to go into gory details. Human desire to watch the sexual act as well the desire to sexually fantasize is, of course, part of human sexuality. I’m merely suggesting that talking about it generally or as specifically as both parties are comfortable with, or at least letting the kid know that they are free to talk about it if they want to, is a good idea and may even save the kid from mistakes later in life (porn addiction, shitty-lover syndrome, etc.). I’m not suggesting you should sit down with your teenager to watch a fisting video and asking repeatedly, “Is this what turns you on?”. That, of course, would be unproductive.
My parents never mentioned sex once. Not a single time in any context, good, bad or indifferent. I don’t know that I would have felt comfortable discussing sex or pornography with my parents, but I think that had just as much to do with the fact that they had created a taboo by never mentioning it than with it just being an icky subject to talk to your parents about. I never expected them nor would I expect anyone to get into specifics, but, IMO, ignoring sexuality (including the desire to watch pornography) completely doesn’t strike me as particularly helpful or healthy.
As for the baggage others might bring to the discussion of porn and sexuality, you may wish take a moment to examine your own carry-on…
David in NY
@Brachiator: I think r€nato’s right that for some it starts casually as part of a broader interest in porn. It seems to me (I’m a non-psychologist who has to deal with such folks from time to time) that some of these just get bored with ordinary porn and move on to more eccentric stuff. Often, the “professionals” find that the people in this group are not primarily attracted to children.
Villago Delenda Est
@Veritas:
The only person who has said this, in a declarative way, is you.
Dumbass.
I’ve been asking questions that you don’t want to answer, because they challenge the prejudicial baggage you carry.
I happen to agree with you that if you’re sexually attracted to children, something is wrong, for the mere biological fact that cannot have anything to do with the reproductive drive.
Having said that, I’ve yet to see any actual proof that every last person who looks at child porn will eventually pull a Jerry Sandusky “horse play” session in a shower.
Furthermore, you’re the one who started screaming about deviancey. I was pointing out that, historically, gay sex was considered to be “deviant” by the vast majority in society. Some still do, as your obsession with Andrew Sullivan’s obsession with butt sex indicates. As the Tennessee Tea Party does with their twitter about Barney Frank.
I asked a bunch of questions that you didn’t want to answer, obviously because to do so would cause a questioning of your prejudices.
The central issue for me about child porn is if actual, living children are exploited for it. These children cannot give informed consent about being in kiddie porn. They’re not old enough to deal with the emotional tsunamis that come with sexual activity…particularly when adults are involved. They need to be protected.
I still don’t see how an interest in kiddie porn automatically turns you into an active predator of actual children, 100% guaranteed. While it’s clearly true that it’s a potential danger, it’s no more so than anyone watching more conventional porn (say a scene of rough heterosexual sex staged against a dumpster in an alley) is going to act the scene out for real in their own local downtown with a total stranger passerby.
It’s a question of dealing with what is, rather than what if. You’re all hot and bothered about what if.
Brachiator
@David in NY:
There is a wide range of stuff before you get to anything remotely involving children. But as I said, I don’t know, so I’ll take your word for it. As I noted, the thing I see about cases that make the news are not a few images for curiosity sake, but large numbers of images.
And of course, the despicable thing about child porn (not stories or drawings) is that here children have to be exploited to produce anything. A person who grabs some images out of curiosity, and does not report the site, might be said to be indirectly encouraging the activity. That said, I also understand the dilemma. The person who snags the images and has no ongoing interest in it doesn’t want to be associated with it.
gil mann
@Brachiator:
Even without the context, it’s pretty obvious that she was bemoaning the kinds of roles available to women in blockbusters, not evincing misogyny. (I’m a little confused by this part of your post, so that might’ve been your point, but if not, CONSIDER YOURSELF DISAGREED WITH VEHEMENTLY)
@geg6:
I’m with ya, but “you need to get out more” was a pretty counter-productive way to cap that off, assuming Hazel doesn’t live in the San Fernando Valley.
David in NY
@Rihilism: I think you’re right, and I think Brachiator is missing the point a little. Talk about sex with kids should not be “pontificating.” That is counterproductive. But sex is all over the place, and the kids need to know what you think about it, and indeed, that you think about it. When our kids were quite young, they needed to know what this “homosexual” or “gay” stuff was, and my wife explained, I thought brilliantly, that while she and I wanted to make our family together, some men, say, wanted to make a family with other men. And there were divorces and stuff to explain. Or later, I had to explain to the nine-year-old the Clinton-Lewinsky events. And then our teen-aged boy, who had been intimidated by his immigrant girlfriend’s father, asked us just what was permissible. And my wife gave them condoms. Not all this stuff was totally smooth, but basically it worked.
My parents weren’t very good at talking about this stuff either, and I think it stunted me in a social way. My kids, on the other hand, are very confident in dealing with sex in a responsible way.
CarolDuhart2
It seems to me one of those situations where it may be better not to know. Do you really want to know that he likes a certain kind of person or sex that you aren’t or don’t enjoy? The knowledge isn’t going to make you any happier, and the fact that you snooped on him won’t make him happier either. It might be of more help for people who want to know if that second-hand computer has things on it they would rather not have on there.
One time I had my external hard drive repaired by replacing it with another one inside the case (At the time it was cheaper than buying a new one, and I had stuff on the drive I needed to keep). Well, inside the hard drive was someone’s candid pictures. I still have them, and have never distributed them. Not too out of the ordinary, but not surprising either. But what if it was child porn? True, I would have deleted it immediately, but still….Would I have told the repair guy? and what he didn’t know or remember who it was either? Destroy my only working external hard drive during hard times?
So a software like that is useful-but needs to be a utility included in security software suites.
Comrade Scrutinizer
Meh. Mrs. Comrade Scrutinizer already knows where the stashes are, dips in to suit herself when the mood strikes, and knows what to securely erase if something happens to me.
Having to hide your pron is a sign of a sick relationship.
geg6
@gil mann:
Perhaps my meaning may not have been clear by using that as an ending.
What I meant was to get out of such rigid thinking and meet some people, including women (including me!), who like (some) pron. Also to not have such a rigid definition of pron such as to think it only includes films, and only certain kinds of films at that (such as those depicting heterosexual sexual encounters). This is someone who is pontificating about the dangers of and latent violence of pron who obviously knows nothing about pron other than what she’s read in an Andrea Dworkin screed.
Wil
Sounds more like conservatives, really.
Everybody knows that conservatives hate America and are just evil people in general.
As long as you want to play that game…
Rihilism
@David in NY: Sounds like you guys did a pretty good job with your kids! I think it’s pretty awesome you guys explained the “gay” thing. My early life would have been a hell of a lot easier had I known that what I was was just something that certain people are. Raised in a Catholic family who didn’t talk about sex led to me compartmentalize my sexuality in a very unhealthy manner. I recall at one point praying to God to let me see just one picture of a naked man (I was too mortified to even dare sneak a peek while in the gym shower), and then I would let that part of me go. Needless to say, that one picture led to my downfall and fall from grace, ;).
I always thought that people that were unable to overcome their own discomfort with discussing sexuality were dooming their kids to make the mistakes that can result from ignorance, bad information and potentially destructive behavior. I was very lucky in that my parent’s inability to even mention sex did not do any lasting damage (unwanted pregnancies, AIDS, sexual and/or marital dysfunction, obsessive or aggressive sexual behavior, porn addiction, the list goes on…). Seems like that is what it comes down to. Does anyone really want to rely on their children being lucky?….
Rihilism
Let me also add, that if more parents discussed pornography and the role sexual fantasy in human sexuality with their daughters, then perhaps finding their husband’s porn ‘stache would not come as such a devastating shock to the women who are being targeted by this software company….
mclaren
The only meaningful consequence of this piece of software will be to increase usage of free open source public key encryption software.
Has no one ever heard of Truecrypt?
David in NY
@Rihilism: Actually, even good parenting won’t work if you’re not a little lucky — some people just get dealt damaged or rotten kids. And many kids subjected to actual abuse come through quite well. But yes, on the sex front, I think we did well (and I credit my wife whose rule it was, “talk to the kids about sex”).
I will say, however, that on the porn front, maybe I’m just old, but I sort of see the women’s side. I like women, and I think a lot of commercial porn just doesn’t portray them in a way I would find at all flattering, if I were a woman myself. So I can see them being disturbed that their husband likes it. But life is very varied, and very complicated, and it all depends on individual cases, and maybe I’m just old fashioned.
gil mann
@geg6:
No, I know what you meant, the phrasing just tickled me is all.
BTW, this shouldn’t be taken as an endorsement of phrase-tickling porn. That niche is for sickos.
Greyjoy
The problem with porn, getting away from whether it is or isn’t exploiting the people featured in it, is that people who watch a lot of porn tend to become desensitized to actual real-life sex. They start by watching regular sex in porn and then down the road they can only get off by watching extreme acts. And since few people want their sex lives to revolve around some narrowly-interpreted kink that perhaps they have zero interest in, then their partners turn to porn more and more–creating a cycle of alienating their real-life partner in search of more and more material that “does it” for them.
As someone above said, you can usually spot a “porn trained” person because they tend to repeat acts they see which don’t actually, you know, feel good from the female perspective. Awkward positions, insufficient foreplay, penetration without lube, etc. These people don’t understand that porn is filmed the way it is for visuals, and that the actors are acting. It’s not real any more than “Armageddon” is real and Ben Affleck and Bruce Willis really saved the planet from a killer asteroid.
So I’ve used gender-neutral pronouns here but since MEN are by far the majority users of porn, then I’ll just be explicit (heh) and say that porn turns *men* into obsessive porn-searchers who develop unrealistic expectations about women, about what turns women on, and who end up losing interest in their real-life relationships because they can get made-to-order satisfaction online, which is a lot easier and more gratifying than dealing with a real human who might not want to have sex that day or who might not be interested in a threesome with a midget. And if you’re a single guy who wants to spend 6 hours a night in the basement, then fine–I guess. It’s your life. But if you’re in a relationship or if you’re married, then it’s not JUST your life, it’s the lives of your family that you’re avoiding and ignoring, and who you’re asking to tolerate having someone in the house who is completely disengaged and disinterested in you as a person because they’ve replaced you with a computer screen.
Yeah–for everyone who’s about to say, “Hey, I watch porn and I still have a healthy relationship,” GREAT. You’re not the problem. The men who do spend 6 hours in the basement because your wife or girlfriend isn’t a 19-year-old half-Asian with 42JJ boobs who enjoys golden showers and bukkake…you’re the problem.
Rihilism
@David in NY: Oh, I don’t think you’re being old-fashioned. I can see the woman’s side too. When I suggested talking to kids about it, that’d be one of the first things I’d talk about…
Thymezone
WTH? I have never looked at porn, in any medium, except for the time my friend Brian talked me into going to a porn movie back in 1973 and I left after about ten minutes.
I am not on a crusade, I don’t give a fig what anyone looks at as long as it’s legal. You can have porn apps on your smartphone for all I care. I just don’t care for it. I prefer actual, hands on experience, and if there is another person present, hey, so much the better. Pictures of other people doing the sexy do absolutely nothing for me.
But more to the point, what kind of moron shit is it to proclaim that all men like porn? That’s just bullshit.
Studly Pantload, the emotionally unavailable unicorn
@Greyjoy: I call rubbish (heh). It’s like saying, anyone who has an ocassional drink will wind up living the life of Ben in Leaving Las Vegas. I’ll daresay you can’t back up that assertion with a credible source.
@Thymezone: It’s a hard and fast rule in life that there are no hard and fast rules in life. (Speaking of which, “Hard & Fast Rules 3: Revenge of the Midgets” is a great kink DVD.) (I kid – I find the commercial grade stuff unwatchable. Real people capturing themselves actually enjoying themselves is more my speed, should I feel the need.)
Chet
No, it’s a pretty enduring reality. Most recently researchers at one college or another had to scrap plans to research the effect of regular viewing of pornography on men because they couldn’t find a control group – literally every single man they interviewed regularly viewed pornography.
In your case, it seems we’ve found one of the 2%.
smintheus
@Chet:
No, obviously it’s not. I’ve never watched any either and have no desire to. A reality-based cliche would be ‘some men are pigs’, except that might raise the question ‘which ones?’.
arguingwithsignposts
@Studly Pantload, the emotionally unavailable unicorn:
Except Rule #34
Menzies
@Jerzy Russian:
Heh. We do one porn movie every year. I found out this year, due to my partner being chair of the same group I worked for for a few years, that technically we don’t have the rights to those movies, but that no one really cares.