Houellebecq "but you cant really compare it to rape. "
In most cases I'd agree but the definitions of rape can be broad and the tactics some people will use to control a partners sexuality can be quite extreme.

A demand for sex backed by a threat of violence or some other harm could reasonably be considered rape, why then not demands for sexual abstenance backed by similar tactics?

Neither should be relevant in a healthy relationship but as a society we've seen the need to deal with one side yet ignore the other despite it being clear that there are plenty of people around who use a variety of tactics to try and force partners into conforming to their expectations of abstenance.

In my view a significant amount of the anti-porn arguments are window dressing for attempts to justify that control.

The kind of long bows used to camoflage a fundamental belief that some people have that they should be able to control others sexuality which seem to crop up on most topics related to human sexuality.

Gay marriage will hurt the children, women who have abortions might experience some grief etc. Not the real reasons, just shallow justifications to push a more fundamental agenda.

R0bert

'Gay guys seem to have a grand old time without any of this nonsense, hooking up in public toilets with random strangers.'

Sure Houllie, no wonder disease is so rampart in this part of the community.

Hasbeen,

I think monogamy does suit women. In most non-consumer societies it is imperative that women have recourse to a stable, devoted partner so that she can nest and raise their offspring. Men are required to quest. They are driven to constantly project and they are the ones who are programmed to spread their seed as widely as possible. Women can pass on their genes just as well from one man as with many men.

I think the penchant for women in the modern West to change partners is simply because they can. At no other time in human development has the woman been able to get up and leave with the kids and the goods and have the resources to maintain them. Again, it's modern social democracy and consumer society that bestows this facility upon her.

I think squeers nailed it in the first post,

'The representation of insatiable, unsentimental, promiscuous woman directly contradicts reality. Indeed pornography offers an attractive alternative to romanticised sex and prudish, stifling monogamy.'

A close friend of mine revealed once that at one stage in her pregnancy she was flooded with hormones and suddenly for about a month or two became ridiculously horny. She found herself constantly and secretly searching the internet and her partners computer for the filthiest porn she could find, and kept it a secret as she couldn't believe she could be so perverted. She was a fairly uptight lass, but she reckons it gave her an appreciation of how guys go through life with these distracting urges and how it must play on their psyche to be constantly feel like and be told they're dirty perverts. She felt ashamed but couldn't help going back for more and more porn. I said just go with it and enjoy.

'My argument above was that men and women are fundamentally incompatible domestically, and marriage usually destroys the only thing that does work between them; spontaneous sex, hence the honeymoon period, followed by boredom and/or serial adultery.'

You must watch the same French movies I do. The French seem to accept this as the way of things, the English not so much.

'it follows that every predilection, however deviant, is catered for, indeed cultivated.'

Sounds good to me. Who is the moral guardian when it comes to this? Who decides what is deviant? Is not the consumer the king? What is to gain by giving people something they don' really want when you can just give them what they do want? Morality is then defined democratically by the market.

Sex is a weakness? It's a joy. Exploit me for all I'm worth!

I suppose perhaps I have options that the ugly and socially inept man may not, which is what my;-) books quite often discuss; The intrusion of free-market economics into human relationships and sexuality, making winners and losers.

'Above all, it is an eruption of pagan expression'
Sounds even better!

''Above all, it is an eruption of pagan expression''The truest thing Houliie has said. I dare say also to become what they call a sexpert you must first be a pervert.

I haven't read the book and I'm not inclined to take this author's interpretation of it as gospel.

I'm inclined to regard porn (in situations when it is a problem, which is not all situations by any means) as a symptom rather than a cause. If there is a "disconnect between our minds and bodies" I'd argue that porn is not the cause of that disconnect but one of many possible expressions of it. All the handwringing in the world about porn won't do anything to address the alleged disconnect, just as all the moralising about drugs hasn't done anything to reduce trafficking and addiction.

Yet the anti porn campaigners stubbornly resist any deeper analysis of the issues. One has to wonder why.