[Added by mods- Content Warning: Sensitive Topic] What do you think about pornography from Autistic perspective?

content removed by moderator at the user's request

Elfilis said:

From my personal view, as a female in her 20s I find all this stuff to be super disturbing.

Have you analised what it was that made it disturbing for you?

I can understand the cross species thing being unpalatable but why does cartoon characters (of adults I assume) doing adult things cause such a response? 

When you think about it, Homer and Marge Simpson must have got it on to make Bart, Lisa and Maggie and I assume these cartoons were not being shown on a kids site, so why should adults not be able to watch cartoons in a way they want?

If you think of the violence, abuse and sexual content of many songs now then the cartoon seems rather tame by comparison, especially as its format makes it clear it is complete fantasy while the song lyrics are much more likely to be seen as lifestyle advocacy.

Do you consider the songs as objectionable? 

I'm not trying to have a go by the way, this is more to try to understand your response.

content removed by moderator at the user's request

How sad that so many women have such trauma about sex, but it's hardly surprising when between 1 in 5 according to one estimate and 1 in 3 women will have experienced sexual violence of one sort or another. I'm not sure that it's just a generational thing, maybe 10 or 20 years down the line these now young women will say they were deeply uncomfortable and did it for approveval from a partner and now see that there was a level of cohersion?

From my own experience, of doing something because my partner wanted to try it, is the pressure to keep doing it and do it everytime. It's like having xmas dinner everyday, it's xmas dinner because it's special, everyday is more egg and chips and I think it's the same with sex. 

Stuart333 said:

I wonder how much money is really in it.

The online market will be worth about US$78 Billion now and  US$118 Billion by the end of this decade according to this article:

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/online-adult-entertainment-market-exceed-100000487.html

Stuart333 said:

Do people pay for much,

Yes. There are a lot of people who pay for, often, speciality interests. These can be down to the subject matter, genre or even the people themselves.

Only Fans had a $8 Billion turnover for 2024 for exampe.

Typically they work by releasing teaser videos to the larger free sites (the hub ones) in the hope of persuading people to subscribe to get more content focussed on their area of specialisation.

I believe almost a third of all internet traffic is for this subject material and it is the driver for most internet development over the last few decades so it is a pretty important subject.

When you say 'market'. Do people pay for much, or just look online for free?

I wonder how much money is really in it.

Stuart333 said:

Porn is primarily a visual experience. There is no romance, cuddling, or emotional content

There is some content, mostly aimed at the female or couples market that includes romance and emotional conent. As this audience is a minority then there is correspondingly less content of that nature.

It is all demand / supply driven and the market now is massivly diverse so there is no easy labelling any more.

Porn is primarily a visual experience. There is no romance, cuddling, or emotional content.

This primarily appeals to men who are more visually aroused. Women normally need more.

Sex for men has fewer consequences, so can be more impulse driven.

We are talking about averages, there's a great spread among individuals of course.

So there is a gender difference.

Most art focuses on the female form, because smooth compound curves are attractive to the eye. It is no coincidence that attractive car designs have a waisted look and compound curves. This seems a male thing.

The focus of attention in porn is normally the female nether regions, which women don't seem to find attractive. I don't know about lesbian, or bi people. Men, I think do find it attractive, they are hard wired to do so.

I also think porn is used for information. For what to do to each other for pleasure, albeit there is a lot of acting, which some may not fully realise. I think the problem is if people start doing things they don't want because they think it has somehow become normalised.

TheCatWoman said:

Is there a gender difference, are women more likely to be turned off by porn as a gut reaction, but feel they have to engage with it and act it out to please their partners? Is this a hetronormative thing? How do LGBTQTI people feel about it, do they feel respresented or excluded?

These are really good points.

I find the differences are largely generational as I know consumption by primarily hetero females is much higher amongst younger women that it ever used to be, but this could be a function of availability and social acceptability.

There are a load of interesting stats (some quite worrying too) on this site: https://worldmetrics.org/porn-usage-statistics/

Hopefully the spam filter here lets this through.

The stats relevant here are:

• Approximately 64% of men and 18% of women watch porn at least once a week
• 87% of young men and 31% of young women report watching porn in the past year

I know quite a lot of gay men through my wifes work (fashion designer) including one who was a gay porn star and they are quite open about their consumption of porn which seems quite a lot higher than hetero males.

I don't know any of the other letter groups well enough to discuss this subject so that is where my personal experience ends.

The hetero women I know and who have talked about doing things for their partners all seem to my untrained eye to have degrees of trauma around sex. These conversations are typically after a few glasses of wine at a party or dinner when inhibitions slip but there is a lot of shame around many aspects of sex for the older generations that I just don't see with younger people.

The autistic teenagers I help are quite open about the subject but they are autistic so are not as representative of the wider population as my other friends groups.

Do we see it differently or are we more able to be honest about what we see? Looking at porn through an autistic lens could mean we're more able to express disgust without judgement or pleasure which may be seen as problematic and in need of management as we're often seen as not knowing when to stop, not knowing boundaries etc. Are we comparing how ASC people and NT's view porn and what the norms of the different groups are?

Is there a gender difference, are women more likely to be turned off by porn as a gut reaction, but feel they have to engage with it and act it out to please their partners? Is this a hetronormative thing? How do LGBTQTI people feel about it, do they feel respresented or excluded?

TheCatWoman said:

I'm unsure why we would need to look at porn through an autistic lens?

Is there any healthy porn?

With this being an autistic forum and many people here having complex relationship issues then it makes sense to look at any subject matter through an autistic lens.

We percieve things differently to NTs on the whole and we often have more extreme responses to things that would be less troubling to them.

Our traumas (through our autistic experiences) can influnce these responses and can make us judge all porn as horrible or it can be an emotional cushion for others who are unable to find someone to have a relationship with.

It becomes a complex and nuanced area which is why it is so interesting to me.

As for healthy, this is even more complex as the definition as to what makes something "porn" is a massively blurred line.

Is it full on explicit intercourse, is it Mr Darcy standing shirtless in a field in Pride and Prejudice? The Victorians would say the latter but we probably think differently.

Where does eroticism end and porn begin? Are the Mills and Boon books of old porn? There is lots of sex in them but they are self censored with appropriate wording to tittilate the readers in much the same way, but needing to use more imagination.

When does artistic nudity become porn? Defining these limits is as variable as the person doing the defining.

In the end it is a massively subjective field which makes any discussion pretty difficult and defining what is healthy equally as difficult.

I'm unsure why we would need to look at porn through an autistic lens?

Is there any healthy porn?

I agree Japan has very different values about women, sex and porn than we or a lot of the rest of the world does.

From what I hear in the news, more and more young men and boys are growing up with very warped ideas of relationships, and consent because of watching sexual assault porn, along with the likes of Andrew Tate, telling boys hateful, demeaning and dehumanising things about women. Young women and girls are growing up, still, wondering if no will be taken as no, or if theres an expectation that they will comply with whatever their boyfriend wants.

I think cartoon and AI porn will blur the boundaries even more, will parent's end up telling their children not to go to the house of a man who wants to watch cartoons with them, like they used to tell them not to go and see puppies?

I think on the whole we have a massive problem already with sexual abuse, rape, DV and sex trafficking, that so far society makes noises against, but seems unwilling or unable to deal with. One of the things so shocking about the testimony of survivors of grooming gangs has been the attitudes of police and the total lack of curiosity. Now it turns out many officers were complicit in the abuse of these women and girls...what a surprise.

Stuart333 said:

I thought that came about because such material with real people was not allowed

No, there is a thriving business for conventional porn there too, but you are right about the censorship - they choose to pixelate the offending parts of the "action" to work around the censorship laws.

Stuart333 said:

Japan also tolerates some dubious behaviours,

There is indeed some troubling history and practice there.It took them until 2008 to ban child porn for example and the law does not cover animation or drawn images (these will often use small bars drawn across intimate areas as a form of partial censorship).

Sexual assault imagery is a popular sub-genre which is deeply troubling.

Overall the approach to sexuality and porn in Japan is quite different to our UK views and not in a healthy way I feel.

Stuart333 said:

I thought that came about because such material with real people was not allowed

No, there is a thriving business for conventional porn there too, but you are right about the censorship - they choose to pixelate the offending parts of the "action" to work around the censorship laws.

Stuart333 said:

Japan also tolerates some dubious behaviours,

There is indeed some troubling history and practice there.It took them until 2008 to ban child porn for example and the law does not cover animation or drawn images (these will often use small bars drawn across intimate areas as a form of partial censorship).

Sexual assault imagery is a popular sub-genre which is deeply troubling.

Overall the approach to sexuality and porn in Japan is quite different to our UK views and not in a healthy way I feel.

How sad that so many women have such trauma about sex, but it's hardly surprising when between 1 in 5 according to one estimate and 1 in 3 women will have experienced sexual violence of one sort or another. I'm not sure that it's just a generational thing, maybe 10 or 20 years down the line these now young women will say they were deeply uncomfortable and did it for approveval from a partner and now see that there was a level of cohersion?

From my own experience, of doing something because my partner wanted to try it, is the pressure to keep doing it and do it everytime. It's like having xmas dinner everyday, it's xmas dinner because it's special, everyday is more egg and chips and I think it's the same with sex. 

Stuart333 said:

I wonder how much money is really in it.

The online market will be worth about US$78 Billion now and  US$118 Billion by the end of this decade according to this article:

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/online-adult-entertainment-market-exceed-100000487.html

Stuart333 said:

Do people pay for much,

Yes. There are a lot of people who pay for, often, speciality interests. These can be down to the subject matter, genre or even the people themselves.

Only Fans had a $8 Billion turnover for 2024 for exampe.

Typically they work by releasing teaser videos to the larger free sites (the hub ones) in the hope of persuading people to subscribe to get more content focussed on their area of specialisation.

I believe almost a third of all internet traffic is for this subject material and it is the driver for most internet development over the last few decades so it is a pretty important subject.

When you say 'market'. Do people pay for much, or just look online for free?

I wonder how much money is really in it.

Stuart333 said:

Porn is primarily a visual experience. There is no romance, cuddling, or emotional content

There is some content, mostly aimed at the female or couples market that includes romance and emotional conent. As this audience is a minority then there is correspondingly less content of that nature.

It is all demand / supply driven and the market now is massivly diverse so there is no easy labelling any more.

Porn is primarily a visual experience. There is no romance, cuddling, or emotional content.

This primarily appeals to men who are more visually aroused. Women normally need more.

Sex for men has fewer consequences, so can be more impulse driven.

We are talking about averages, there's a great spread among individuals of course.

So there is a gender difference.

Most art focuses on the female form, because smooth compound curves are attractive to the eye. It is no coincidence that attractive car designs have a waisted look and compound curves. This seems a male thing.

The focus of attention in porn is normally the female nether regions, which women don't seem to find attractive. I don't know about lesbian, or bi people. Men, I think do find it attractive, they are hard wired to do so.

I also think porn is used for information. For what to do to each other for pleasure, albeit there is a lot of acting, which some may not fully realise. I think the problem is if people start doing things they don't want because they think it has somehow become normalised.

TheCatWoman said:

Is there a gender difference, are women more likely to be turned off by porn as a gut reaction, but feel they have to engage with it and act it out to please their partners? Is this a hetronormative thing? How do LGBTQTI people feel about it, do they feel respresented or excluded?

These are really good points.

I find the differences are largely generational as I know consumption by primarily hetero females is much higher amongst younger women that it ever used to be, but this could be a function of availability and social acceptability.

There are a load of interesting stats (some quite worrying too) on this site: https://worldmetrics.org/porn-usage-statistics/

Hopefully the spam filter here lets this through.

The stats relevant here are:

• Approximately 64% of men and 18% of women watch porn at least once a week
• 87% of young men and 31% of young women report watching porn in the past year

I know quite a lot of gay men through my wifes work (fashion designer) including one who was a gay porn star and they are quite open about their consumption of porn which seems quite a lot higher than hetero males.

I don't know any of the other letter groups well enough to discuss this subject so that is where my personal experience ends.

The hetero women I know and who have talked about doing things for their partners all seem to my untrained eye to have degrees of trauma around sex. These conversations are typically after a few glasses of wine at a party or dinner when inhibitions slip but there is a lot of shame around many aspects of sex for the older generations that I just don't see with younger people.

The autistic teenagers I help are quite open about the subject but they are autistic so are not as representative of the wider population as my other friends groups.

Do we see it differently or are we more able to be honest about what we see? Looking at porn through an autistic lens could mean we're more able to express disgust without judgement or pleasure which may be seen as problematic and in need of management as we're often seen as not knowing when to stop, not knowing boundaries etc. Are we comparing how ASC people and NT's view porn and what the norms of the different groups are?

Is there a gender difference, are women more likely to be turned off by porn as a gut reaction, but feel they have to engage with it and act it out to please their partners? Is this a hetronormative thing? How do LGBTQTI people feel about it, do they feel respresented or excluded?

TheCatWoman said:

I'm unsure why we would need to look at porn through an autistic lens?

Is there any healthy porn?

With this being an autistic forum and many people here having complex relationship issues then it makes sense to look at any subject matter through an autistic lens.

We percieve things differently to NTs on the whole and we often have more extreme responses to things that would be less troubling to them.

Our traumas (through our autistic experiences) can influnce these responses and can make us judge all porn as horrible or it can be an emotional cushion for others who are unable to find someone to have a relationship with.

It becomes a complex and nuanced area which is why it is so interesting to me.

As for healthy, this is even more complex as the definition as to what makes something "porn" is a massively blurred line.

Is it full on explicit intercourse, is it Mr Darcy standing shirtless in a field in Pride and Prejudice? The Victorians would say the latter but we probably think differently.

Where does eroticism end and porn begin? Are the Mills and Boon books of old porn? There is lots of sex in them but they are self censored with appropriate wording to tittilate the readers in much the same way, but needing to use more imagination.

When does artistic nudity become porn? Defining these limits is as variable as the person doing the defining.

In the end it is a massively subjective field which makes any discussion pretty difficult and defining what is healthy equally as difficult.

I'm unsure why we would need to look at porn through an autistic lens?

Is there any healthy porn?

I agree Japan has very different values about women, sex and porn than we or a lot of the rest of the world does.

From what I hear in the news, more and more young men and boys are growing up with very warped ideas of relationships, and consent because of watching sexual assault porn, along with the likes of Andrew Tate, telling boys hateful, demeaning and dehumanising things about women. Young women and girls are growing up, still, wondering if no will be taken as no, or if theres an expectation that they will comply with whatever their boyfriend wants.

I think cartoon and AI porn will blur the boundaries even more, will parent's end up telling their children not to go to the house of a man who wants to watch cartoons with them, like they used to tell them not to go and see puppies?

I think on the whole we have a massive problem already with sexual abuse, rape, DV and sex trafficking, that so far society makes noises against, but seems unwilling or unable to deal with. One of the things so shocking about the testimony of survivors of grooming gangs has been the attitudes of police and the total lack of curiosity. Now it turns out many officers were complicit in the abuse of these women and girls...what a surprise.