What girls think about sex?
Home Secretary Jacqui Smith’s husband Richard Timney caused a storm by putting X-rated sex films on her expenses. jane hardy finds out how these women feel about pornography…Trudy Smyth (30) is anchor of Citybeat’s flagship news programme, Belfast Tonight (Mon-Fri 6pm to 7pm). Single, Trudy lives in Belfast. She says:
“I have to say I don’t really think porn is necessarily wrong, although it can be used in the wrong way. If porn movies or magazines are used by two consenting adults in the privacy of their own home, without anybody else involved, that’s all right in the 21st century.
“If we stuck with the old attitudes, that it’s totally wrong and it doesn’t happen, that won’t get us anywhere. Let’s look at adult material in the right way and encourage a more tolerant attitude.
“I wasn’t particularly shocked by the fact that Richard Timney (Jacqui Smith’s husband) put these movies on her expenses; it was the fact that she didn’t know he had done it. Because adults do watch these films.
“I don’t think their marriage is at risk as a result, nor is her career. People who look at porn or know people who do, are still able to do their job.”
Mary Johnston (60) writer, Sunday Life consumer champion and married mother of four, lives in Belfast. She says:
“I’m not interested in Jacqui Smith’s husband’ s viewing habits and I neither condone nor condemn them.
“I am, however, outraged by his wife claiming for them alongside everything else.
“I realise there are experts and psychologists who will tell us that porn is actually good in that some people can get their rocks off through viewing it rather than going out and |attacking people. I’m not sure I buy into this. Watching porn would surely be more likely to encourage evil people to act out their fantasies after intensive viewing.
“I would have imagined that it was more of a young guy’s hobby rather than a man his age. It makes me regard him as a sad old so-and-so.
“I am actually not that open-minded when it comes to porn. I absolutely abhor it and couldn’t possibly watch it but that’s just me. I’d feel utterly sickened and degraded but everybody is different and I hate to be judgemental as a rule.
“I could see this very public revelation affecting Ms Smith’s marriage as well as her career, but I have no idea about the state of her marriage anyway. I don’t think her career will be adversely affected by the porn thing so much as by the claiming.
“It strikes me that lots of those MPs are at it, cheating and claiming expenses for absolutely everything.
“It wouldn’t surprise me if a few of them charge for visits to hookers on their expenses and they probably get away with that too.”
Anne Dunlop (40) and originally from Magherafelt, is a married novelist with four children now living in Bahrain. Her title Enchanting Alice (Poolbeg, ??10.99) will soon appear in paperback. She says:
“Well, I want to see the videos! More seriously, I think we as a nation are obsessed with sex. Magazines are full of people with sexual hang-ups that they want to share.
“Isn’t porn rather a broad term? I remember when I was growing up, a pornographic magazine was brought out for girls. It was called Playgirl and I was expecting titillation but got nothing from it. Men don’t do anything for me aesthetically.
“But Samantha’s boyfriend in Sex and the City, Smith, he could have taken his clothes off and danced in front of me, and I wouldn’t have classed it as porn but art … also, he has a nice personality.
“I have no moral qualms about soft porn but if you go to the other extreme, with women in dvds getting smacked around, there’s nothing appealing about that.
“It’s horrible, yet it all comes under the same umbrella. That involves cruelty and pain.
“With Jacqui Smith and her husband, there’s more of a problem if she’s refusing to watch the dvds. Of course, everyone wants privacy. But is he hiding it from her, and up in his room with the dvds?
“In a long marriage, the thought of having sex once a week on Saturday night after your bath would make you scream. So dressing up, role playing or watching something together that you could tastefully call an aphrodisiac is fine.
Nuala McKeever is a single writer and actress living in Belfast. She says:
“I was a bit shocked by people’s reaction to the idea that this man, the Home Secretary’s husband, had watched adult movies.
“And shocked at the coyness of the media, with reporters constantly referring to ‘adult dvds’. Nobody wants to say the word pornography. Of course, I draw the line between what’s legal and illegal, consensual and not. But in the UK and Ireland, we have childish laws and we push sexuality into a dark corner.
“If you’re brought up religiously and taught that sex outside marriage is a sin, as I was, then you’re going to think that anything is wrong and bad. As somebody who has stepped away from that, I think our attitude to something very natural is repressive.
“To me, it’s worse to see my five-year-old nephew playing with a Nintendo and ‘killing’ people. That’s obscene. Nobody ever died watching people having sex.”
Taken from belfasttelegraph.co.uk
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