Advice from three of our guy friends. This week they answer the following: “What do you do if your girlfriend, whom you love very much, doesn’t understand why you like and watch porn occasionally: she’s intellectually and viscerally opposed to it, thinks it is a horrible industry that exploits people and perpetuates sexism and misogyny, and has suggested to me that it might be a deal breaker?”
Straight Single Guy (L.A. Chris): Well she has a point, but she doesn’t fully understand men if she makes that a deal breaker. (Good luck finding a man who doesn’t like porn; it’s hard enough to find one that doesn’t like sports!) Some porn is perfectly healthy, and if a guy can’t explain that convincingly, or is too afraid to put his foot down, then he should throw in the towel and throw away his stash. That’s not to say he can’t dabble now and again, but he should stay away from the Brazilian fart porn and Japanese girls exchanging bodily fluids just in case.
Straight Married Guy (Fred): Keep it a secret from her! Okay, you could try to explain that it has nothing to do with her, that she’s not in any competition with it, that it’s a normal and unavoidable part of being a guy, and that she’ll never find any guy who doesn’t look at porn from time to time… or you could just make it a private thing. Don’t talk about it and definitely don’t let her see any signs of it. Ignorance is bliss. If you’re feeling lucky, you could also point out her relationship with shoes (or women’s magazines, or whatever) and say that you’re viscerally opposed to it, think it is a horrible industry that exploits people and perpetuates sexism and misogyny, and suggest that it might be a deal breaker.
Gay Commited Guy (Terence): First thing you do is hide. Hide everything. If you’ve got magazines, burn ’em cause no one uses them anymore anyway. Then remember to clear your cache and history after you get your rocks off online. Don’t get rid of every site you visited that day, just the porn sites. She’ll never know… I say this because you should never change something about yourself for someone else. It’s like quitting smoking for someone else; it rings empty and isn’t terribly successful. Your question doesn’t even hint that you have a problem with porn. So if that’s the case, then I think your only option is to hide your porn and slowly, over the years, bring her to understand that your porn is not her problem.
Our “wise guys” are a rotating group of contributors, some of whom wish to remain anonymous and some of whom like the attention. This week they’re all a little shy.
First of all, there IS good porn out there for women…MINE for one thing!!! Check out: candidaroyalle.com. There are others too. Secondly, all these guys who say you can’t find a guy who doesn’t like porn? I beg to differ. I would say most of my male friends and most of my serious lovers were not that interested in it. They found it boring, infantile, and mostly a big turn-off. I’ve got something to tell you guys: NOT ALL MEN LOVE PORN! At least not the typical kind that insults women AND men! Not that I even care…I’m in the biz! And I believe everyone has the right to enjoy what they want and that porn is NOT the root of all our social ills. (I’m a founding board member of Feminists for Free Express too…FREE CHOICE!) But this notion that all men are incontrolably driven to want to watch porn. Nope. Not true. Rant over.
The question was not wether porn is good or bad.. but what to do if the girlfriend says “quit watching it or im out”!
Short answer .. they are not intellectually or viscerally compatible.
A good annalogy would be a couple where one is politically left and the other – right. One believes in right to choose .. the other the right to life..
One voted for Obama.. and the other .. well… DUmp that Bush man!!
:))
Yeah, what Fred said.
Thanks rhapsody! And yeah, we have written about feminist porn in the past. Here are a few links from DailyBedpost, though we’re not sure how much longer the site will be live for. We promise to write more on this site soon about how to hunt down ethical porn. (In the meantime, the site http://www.hotmoviesforher.com, in our blog roll, is a great resource.)
http://dailybedpost.com/2008/11/a-day-in-the-life-of-aporn-lib.php
http://dailybedpost.com/2008/10/a-day-in-the-life-ofa-feminist.php
And here’s our friend Claire from Babeland chatting about porn…
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eInoqcV61-4
Fred, one of the posters here. Sheesh, who said anything about lying? I just said keep it private. There is a difference. My point: do not keep a 6-foot poster of Angelina Jolie in the living room you share with your girlfriend or wife. Keep a folded 3×5 card of Angelina Jolie in your wallet. (this is a metaphor). If asked about it do not lie, yes, you have a picture of Angenina Jolie. Also, all porn is not equal. Some porn is demeaning to the women in it. Some is not. Porn as a catch-all term is problematic. Due to the number commenters that mistook what I said, I’m going to repeat myself: Do not lie about porn, just keep it out of her face!
I remember reading articles about feminist porn back when this site’s advice column was on DailyBedpost – couldn’t you do some background check work on your porn and stick to the parts of the industry that aren’t exploitative? Go search for those old articles on DailyBedpost and use them to help convince your girlfriend that there is ethically sound smut out there.
A note to L.A. Chris and Fred: Please remember that there *are* some guys among us who aren’t into porn. At least, I’ve never seen any that I could handle for more than 10 seconds. The best of it, I found to be kind of boring (blank expressions, dead eyes and uncomfortable posing) and the worst I’ve ever seen was kind of disturbing and left me feeling sad. I find written forms to have much more appeal. Particularly erotica written by women. I make no pretense of moral superiority because of this; it just seems to be an artifact of the way I’m wired.
Now I don’t care for porn at all (of any kind), but I disagree with a lot of the comments. Why should he try to tailor his porn consumption to only porn that his girlfriend might not find as offensive? Should we only have fantasies that our partners find acceptable? Of course not. You share/act on the ones your partner likes, and the ones they don’t, you keep in the privacy of your own head. Keeping something private is not the same as lying, and our partners have no right to dictate our fantasies. That’s just what porn is – fantasy.
I also think that any woman who tells her man to give up porn or it’s a dealbreaker is really telling him “keep watching porn, but keep it well out of sight, because I don’t want to know about it.” That is, unless she’s completely naive, because I think most of us have figured out that most men watch porn, whether we know about it or not.
LOVE the Dharma Initiative porn, HATE the advice. Like other commenters have suggested, lying about it only perpetuates the idea that porn is evil and dirty and that men lie about their sexual activities and desires (oh, and that women don’t have masturbatory fantasies, too). When I first moved in with my now-husband, I was initially threatened by porn consumption, thinking all the usual thoughts that it meant I wasn’t attractive or sexual enough. It took a lot openness, reassurance, and, frankly, exposure to come to understand that wanking visuals are not a threat, and that checking out other people was going to be something we BOTH do, and that’s okay. Now, to get a copy of “Kate Gone Wild.”
This is either awful or idiotic. Yes, an un-Godly amount of porn has entered the world that would sicken an albino rat, but there certainly is some that does no more than say “sex is nice.” You can always just get vintage stuff from my youth and view that…the mechanics haven’t changed and you get women who look like women and not 12-year olds. If the woman he loves won’t cut him some slack that way, he has a massively dysfunctional relationship. He may as well–reluctantly, which is why I said it could be awful–cut his losses now and leave. But for heavens sake, don’t lie about it. No good thing happens if you lie about it.
Lots of porn is awful. I just finished a paper last semester about pornography. I really can’t blame her considering most of what she probably knows about porn. Luckily, the focus of this paper was feminist pornography! Seriously check it out. Em and Lo have done a lot on them. I think Erica Lust is probably seriously the best. Check out her site and also a few of the other sites she recommends. As long as you explain that for you, porn can just sort of be a sex toy, and you negotiate by eschewing the awful mainstream porn that is packed full of misogynistic depictions of women, you two should reach a compromise in no time!
I completely agree. If you lie about porn, and she finds out, it will only help prove her case, and convince her even further that porn is the devil. Going behind her back is not the solution. The advice given by the ladies above me is wonderful. Start with reading some erotica together that you’ve carefully selected to appeal to the sorts of things that you know she likes.. If you’re feeling confidant, try writing some of your own, about the two of you, for her.
Don’t lie to her!
It’s ok to delete your browser history if you share one computer. You have the right to have your privacy!! But if she asks you please be honest. If she can’t accept you the way you are she’s not the right person for you anyway.
don’t hide it. there is female empowerment porn. I swear i’ve seen it somewhere. However lying will just piss a woman off. tell her she can still be a feminist and enjoy porn. try getting her to read some erotica and finding similar porn that puts the woman in charge. that might help. good luck
No don’t hide it, worst thing you can do. It is a little hard for me to understand as I’m a woman who likes porn. The little porn my husband looks at he denies (he seems to be shy) despite the fact I’d love to share it with him. Anyhow I’m no fool, despite browser clearing activities there are always ways I can find it. I look so I can then see what he’s into. Not to have a go at him.
The problem here is lying, I believe annoys and hurts all women the most. I would say lying trumps looking at porn too.
Perhaps compromise, find porn that’s more female friendly, something that has ethics your girlfriend cannot oppose.