As a 70-year-old man I guess I have to comment on this one also. I remember when I was 9 years old and seen Emma Peel (Dame Diana Rigg) on the Avengers and she always wore leather catsuits and would always get tied up and rescued, I was instantly a bondage lover, from that point on I knew I wanted to tie up a damsel in distress. It was awesome for me growing up in the era of the damsel in distress all the old shows, Tarzan, The Lone Ranger and many more. I would watch as many programs as possible that I thought would have a woman being tied up. To this day I love watching women in any kind of leather outfit tied up and gagged. I was lucky enough to find a couple of play partners, and it never went past more than what we called "love bondage" or fantastic foreplay. They let me be kinky, they knew I wanted to pleasure them not hurt them. Now at 70 I still love pics and videos of women tied up (the internet is so awesome), my fetish is still the same as when I was 9 watching Mrs. Peel bound and gagged. You don't escalate; you just get excited by different things (gagged mouth, tied hands, or watching a spanking) which is what is so cool about being kinky. Thanks Marlon
I have found my “taste” in porn has grown softer and softer.
I don’t get off on the “wilder stuff”.
I AM a Dominant. Have been for over 30 years.
But i still don’t like to watch BDSM videos.
Nor underage sex.
Or fetish.
I think the current double morale, “nakedness is bad”, has destroyed many peoples view on nudity and sex.
There is no natural “mental filter” to view porn as something normal. You want the rush of horniness.
In my mind, if you HAVE been exposed to nudity, have an understanding that intimacy is a GOOD thing, it will help you construct a healthy view on erotica/porn.
I have met people whose upbringing was filled with taboos. And many of them have a skewed view on sex.
The ones that were “exposed” to healthy nudity, when there was no stigma or taboos about the discussion of it have, in my experience, a more healthy look on it all.
Ofcourse there are those who fall outside those “norms”.
But in general, i have found that openness around, and exposure to healthy views about the human body, intimacy and behaviour, prevents people from “going bad “…
I've never bought into the escalation theory - it's too glib and easy - like the "gateway drug" theory. There are so many other factors. But reading your post just now gave me pause. Didn't I start with the Kays catalogue, move on to nudist mags, then top-shelf, then moving images (tit-spotting in BBC2 plays and the like), then porn? Well, yes; but it was because I was a teenager in the late 60s and 70s - a period when attitudes to sex and related matters were becoming more relaxed and material was becoming more accessible.
I had to go to Germany to see my first hardcore porn . . . no, let me rephrase that: while spending time resident in Germany as part of my university course, I first encountered hardcore porn - at the Beate Uhse Sex-Kino in Hannover, actually. Erect penises and penetrative intercourse. And blowjobs. Wow! I had no idea . . . This did not fry my brain or make me want to rush out and shove my penis into any passing woman's mouth: rather, it told me that the Germans had a more relaxed and realistic attitude to letting their citizens watch films of things that most of them were doing every night in real life anyway.
Truth to tell, I had already discovered my deepest sexual instincts without any external stimulus whatever - in my own teenage bed with whatever restraints and implements I could improvise. Porn played no part. It was only years later, when I understood, that I was actually able to confirm what I had always suspected when I visited a domme and knew this is who I was.
Please forgive me for having wittered on. A very long-winded way of saying "You're right."
Actually, it was the Gamages catalogue, not Kays. How middle-class is that?
My teenage years were in the 1960s and it was then I developed my interest in “porn.” Much as you describe, my taste was to see women dressed up then getting undressed and 50 years later it’s much the same. I’m living proof that my interests have not escalated. I want more of what I like but that’s true of anything we enjoy, isn’t it?
Despite what is suggested by the anti-brigade I don’t believe the story that things have gotten worse. As a teenager I saw just as much violent content as we see today but in the form of still photographs and blue films that circulated everywhere, including at the school I attended. They did not particularly interest me. One thing I do remember is the interest in monomania i.e. women who had suffered an amputation of the leg. Weirdly this was heavily discussed in magazines such as Penthouse at the time. This didn’t interest me either and I did not find myself looking for opportunities to attack women’s legs. Yes things are more instantly accessible via the internet but it’s still the same stuff that was always there underground.
Being of a scientific mind I am always reminded that correlation is not the same as causation. Seeing something does not mean that inevitably I need to act it out. If that was the case I would have escalated into killing Native Americans after all those cowboy films I watched or I would have become a serial killer after watching horror films.
What’s funny is historically how much sex children were exposed to. Whole tribes living in communal areas, anyone who has ever dealt with animals, and that's not even getting into the various fertility symbols/rituals cultures openly practiced. In Western civilization sexual prudishry was the provenance of the upper classes. Peasants might not be able to afford a wedding not in the “big event” kind of way but in the priest wouldn’t do it without money and they were the only game in town. As the middle class became a thing they adopted all the trappings of the nobility but lacking the “inherit quality” of a noble lineage they grasped hard to the concept of “respectability”, it was ok that they had risen above their “god given station” because they were respectable which meant conservative enough to not upset with the upper crust. The poor were seen as brutish and slaves to their passion and so the middle class became about “virtue”. It became a way to carve out their own niche as being morally better than the poor, a new version of divine right. Instead of being born of “noble” blood they could use money as a measure of divine favor, which made them more conservative as a way to maintain that status.
As a 70-year-old man I guess I have to comment on this one also. I remember when I was 9 years old and seen Emma Peel (Dame Diana Rigg) on the Avengers and she always wore leather catsuits and would always get tied up and rescued, I was instantly a bondage lover, from that point on I knew I wanted to tie up a damsel in distress. It was awesome for me growing up in the era of the damsel in distress all the old shows, Tarzan, The Lone Ranger and many more. I would watch as many programs as possible that I thought would have a woman being tied up. To this day I love watching women in any kind of leather outfit tied up and gagged. I was lucky enough to find a couple of play partners, and it never went past more than what we called "love bondage" or fantastic foreplay. They let me be kinky, they knew I wanted to pleasure them not hurt them. Now at 70 I still love pics and videos of women tied up (the internet is so awesome), my fetish is still the same as when I was 9 watching Mrs. Peel bound and gagged. You don't escalate; you just get excited by different things (gagged mouth, tied hands, or watching a spanking) which is what is so cool about being kinky. Thanks Marlon
I have found my “taste” in porn has grown softer and softer.
I don’t get off on the “wilder stuff”.
I AM a Dominant. Have been for over 30 years.
But i still don’t like to watch BDSM videos.
Nor underage sex.
Or fetish.
I think the current double morale, “nakedness is bad”, has destroyed many peoples view on nudity and sex.
There is no natural “mental filter” to view porn as something normal. You want the rush of horniness.
In my mind, if you HAVE been exposed to nudity, have an understanding that intimacy is a GOOD thing, it will help you construct a healthy view on erotica/porn.
I have met people whose upbringing was filled with taboos. And many of them have a skewed view on sex.
The ones that were “exposed” to healthy nudity, when there was no stigma or taboos about the discussion of it have, in my experience, a more healthy look on it all.
Ofcourse there are those who fall outside those “norms”.
But in general, i have found that openness around, and exposure to healthy views about the human body, intimacy and behaviour, prevents people from “going bad “…
As so often, you have your finger on the pulse.
I've never bought into the escalation theory - it's too glib and easy - like the "gateway drug" theory. There are so many other factors. But reading your post just now gave me pause. Didn't I start with the Kays catalogue, move on to nudist mags, then top-shelf, then moving images (tit-spotting in BBC2 plays and the like), then porn? Well, yes; but it was because I was a teenager in the late 60s and 70s - a period when attitudes to sex and related matters were becoming more relaxed and material was becoming more accessible.
I had to go to Germany to see my first hardcore porn . . . no, let me rephrase that: while spending time resident in Germany as part of my university course, I first encountered hardcore porn - at the Beate Uhse Sex-Kino in Hannover, actually. Erect penises and penetrative intercourse. And blowjobs. Wow! I had no idea . . . This did not fry my brain or make me want to rush out and shove my penis into any passing woman's mouth: rather, it told me that the Germans had a more relaxed and realistic attitude to letting their citizens watch films of things that most of them were doing every night in real life anyway.
Truth to tell, I had already discovered my deepest sexual instincts without any external stimulus whatever - in my own teenage bed with whatever restraints and implements I could improvise. Porn played no part. It was only years later, when I understood, that I was actually able to confirm what I had always suspected when I visited a domme and knew this is who I was.
Please forgive me for having wittered on. A very long-winded way of saying "You're right."
Actually, it was the Gamages catalogue, not Kays. How middle-class is that?
The way you ended was very funny.
My teenage years were in the 1960s and it was then I developed my interest in “porn.” Much as you describe, my taste was to see women dressed up then getting undressed and 50 years later it’s much the same. I’m living proof that my interests have not escalated. I want more of what I like but that’s true of anything we enjoy, isn’t it?
Despite what is suggested by the anti-brigade I don’t believe the story that things have gotten worse. As a teenager I saw just as much violent content as we see today but in the form of still photographs and blue films that circulated everywhere, including at the school I attended. They did not particularly interest me. One thing I do remember is the interest in monomania i.e. women who had suffered an amputation of the leg. Weirdly this was heavily discussed in magazines such as Penthouse at the time. This didn’t interest me either and I did not find myself looking for opportunities to attack women’s legs. Yes things are more instantly accessible via the internet but it’s still the same stuff that was always there underground.
Being of a scientific mind I am always reminded that correlation is not the same as causation. Seeing something does not mean that inevitably I need to act it out. If that was the case I would have escalated into killing Native Americans after all those cowboy films I watched or I would have become a serial killer after watching horror films.
What’s funny is historically how much sex children were exposed to. Whole tribes living in communal areas, anyone who has ever dealt with animals, and that's not even getting into the various fertility symbols/rituals cultures openly practiced. In Western civilization sexual prudishry was the provenance of the upper classes. Peasants might not be able to afford a wedding not in the “big event” kind of way but in the priest wouldn’t do it without money and they were the only game in town. As the middle class became a thing they adopted all the trappings of the nobility but lacking the “inherit quality” of a noble lineage they grasped hard to the concept of “respectability”, it was ok that they had risen above their “god given station” because they were respectable which meant conservative enough to not upset with the upper crust. The poor were seen as brutish and slaves to their passion and so the middle class became about “virtue”. It became a way to carve out their own niche as being morally better than the poor, a new version of divine right. Instead of being born of “noble” blood they could use money as a measure of divine favor, which made them more conservative as a way to maintain that status.