Dear Pynch and Severin,

Pornography today is a billion-a-year dollar industry,
whose products can be seen
in cities throughout the world. The material
ranges from the "soft-core" type, consisting
essentially of nude woman in various poses, to
the "hard-core" variety, which shows women in
various sexual acts and often depicts them being
stripped, bound, assaulted, tortured, and otherwise
humiliated and degraded.

The flood of newer, "hard-core" and sadomasochistic
material - much of it now available in the form
of DVDs has reopened the whole question of the
impact pornography may have on behaviour.

Women have every right to be concerned.

Just to jog a few memories before I go - from my understanding
"Playboy," wasn't the only magazine around that gained
popularity with men - there were more explicit
ones like - "Hustler," and "Penthouse," I can't think
of the others...

Then again, women might represent the new customer base. However that might have more to do with the new raunch culture than the very earnest fighters for freedom of the Sixties.

I was good that someone mentioned Hustler. See here from Oprah:

"In the first three months of 2007, according to Nielsen/NetRatings, approximately one in three visitors to adult entertainment Web sites was female; during the same period, nearly 13 million American women were checking out porn online at least once each month.

Theresa Flynt, vice president of marketing for Hustler video, says that women account for 56 percent of business at her company's video stores. "And the female audience is increasing," she adds. "Women are buying more porn." (They're creating more of it, too: Female director Candida Royalle's hard-core erotic videos, made expressly for women viewers, sell at the rate of approximately 10,000 copies a month.)"

http://www.cnn.com/2009/LIVING/personal/07/24/o.women.watching.porn/

More stories of the increasing demand from women for porn:

http://www.metro.co.uk/lifestyle/52811-women-who-love-to-watch-porn

http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/features/article2355510.ece

What is desperately needed is a new wowerism to counteract it all.

Think of the boys!! If only one boy is saved from a sex-crazed Cougar who got her ideas from pornography the bans will all be worth it. I blame the slide into depravity on Germaine Greer who authored her own perve book on boys and lusted after teenage boys whose “sperm runs like tap water”.

Distracted again . Pornography is , I suggest, like the fighting , like the impotence, a sign of sexual frustration - not liberation
Is anyone still interested in discussing Cornflowers post from Bel mooney .http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-1232485/My-generation-created-sexual-revolution--wrecking-lives-women-since.html

If there IS any women on line willing to defend the sexual revolution they better speak now or we shall declare its a no contest .Susie where are you ?
The idea is a curse . Tina Turner is right and no amount of tired old anti wowser fanfare is going to stop many young people from making the choice their mothers or grandmothers made before them. Whose really telling them what's good them here ? Whose really giving them a choice ? I'd rather be called a wowser than woose !

In actual fact Hanrahan, I am still watching this thread, but until now, haven't seen anything I wished to comment on!

I read that link from Cornflower and what a load of rubbish most of it was. Was the author Bel Mooney male or female? Bel could be short for Bellamy too!

I especially laughed at the statement <" ... the writer and feminist pioneer Rosie Boycott has said: 'What was insidious about the underground was that it pretended to be alternative. But it wasn't providing an alternative for women. It was providing an alternative for men in that there were no problems about screwing around." '

Yeah right! Men were 'screwing around' before, during and after the sexual revolution. It is just that during and after the sexual revolution, their female partners were mostly NOT left holding the baby and taking the lion's share of the shame in having a children out of wedlock.

For goodness sake, isn't it obvious? Those women who choose to wait until marriage to have sex can still choose this path if they wish.
Those of us who may wish to enjoy sex before marriage can also choose this path with much less chance of unplanned pregnancy than before the 'pill'.

Men had both these choices before the pill was invented. Now women have that choice too.
Amen to that.

In general phenomena that were once considered
scandalous, such as open cohabitation by unmarried
couples, X-rated movies, or nudity on the stage,
now stir up less concern.

Permissive attitudes correlate strongly
with youth, education,
older and less educated people tend to take a more
conservative stand.

Increasingly, there is substantial tolerance today
for diversity in sexual behaviour, and judgements
about right and wrong in sexual matters seem to be
based on the attitude that moral behaviour is that
which involves mutual affection and respect and does
no physical or psychological harm to those involved.

One interesting effect, as I've pointed out
earlier, of the changing relationships of the sexes
is that the responsibility for a successful sexual
encounter has been largely shifted from the female
to the male partner. A common "problem" until the
1960s was female "frigidity", the inability of
a woman to achieve orgasm or even enjoy sex.

Today, "frigidity" has all but disappeared; instead,
the same problem is more likely to be labeled as one
of poor "performance" by the male.

I wonder if porn mags play a role in that somewhere?

Foxy, 'Today, "frigidity" has all but disappeared; instead, the same problem is more likely to be labeled as one of poor "performance" by the male.'

Typical, few learn from the lessons of history and unfortunately, many think that scientific research is all heads in the clouds stuff and irrelevant to them.

Good news
The vibrator was invented before the vacuum cleaner and the electric iron and I dare say too, the electric washing machine.

The vibrator was invented by male doctors who were suffering from fatigue and repetitive strain injury from giving women relief from hysteria, which was sexual frustration. Not all women could spend all day on Neddy it appears:

http://www.nhne.org/news/NewsArticlesArchive/tabid/400/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/4180/language/en-US/The-Astonishing-History-Of-Vibrators.aspx

So there you go, all that needs to happen now is to share a common interest in erotica, have a little talk between the sheets, ensure a bit of sharing and caring and delegate someone to pay the power bill. Had the sexual revolution become a titch more widespread than university students, all might have been capable of nutting that one out.