Number 34 in the list of Rules Of The Internet, a loose collection of rules and aphorisms created by the infamous 4Chan Image Board states the following- If it exists, then there is porn of it. No exceptions.
The growing demand for porn in the digital age makes the above sentence a self fulfilling prophecy, with porn categories ranging from the bizarre to the downright disturbing. For most of us who grew up in the age of the Internet, porn happens to be our first encounter with sex or anything related to the same. It is undoubtedly not the best sex educator a 12 year old can hope for, but considering the dismal and horrid state of sex education in schools and educational institutions, it is probably the only viable option available to them. And the harm that it is capable of doing to the mind and perceptions of an impressionable child, outweighs the good by a very, very large margin.
With the advent of the digital age, pornography has become increasingly accessible. With free porn websites, a growing number of mobile apps, platforms for privately sharing media, and faster internet connection, watching porn has never been easier. No longer does one have to sneak in adult magazines and hide them under the bed in order to enjoy some ‘alone time’ when everyone else in the house is either asleep or not at home. If you’re a creep, you might even get an opportunity to do that whilst being surrounded by people in public places. Who cares about personal space and public decency anyway, right? Like any industry in the free market economy, as the demand for the product increases, so does its supply. And considering the competitive nature of all businesses today, the need for constant ‘innovation’ and maintaining uniqueness also increases simultaneously with the increase in demand. Because in the digital age, it is painfully easy to move on from one product to the next with just a click of your finger.
One of the oldest debates surrounding porn is the question of consent. This debate has possibly been around since the 1860s, when pornography was first invented, right about the same time as movies came into being as well. Consent in porn is a murky concept, and one that has been confusing feminists and apologists of patriarchy with the same degree. Does porn amount to coerced sex, which is basically just a fancy way of saying rape? Is consent of the women always present in porn or does it simply glorify gender violence and abuse of women?
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Believe it or not, but the porn industry, allegedly having a net worth of close to $90 billion dollars, has been selling abuse and violence in the name of sexual empowerment, freedom of expression and the flawed concept of “choice” in the capitalist society. A common, oft- cited argument we hear in favor of porn is that a lot of women go into the porn industry for their own sexual liberation. It is said to empower them and help them regain their confidence and autonomy over their bodies. While a certain type of pornography might actually fulfill those claims, the kind that is prevalent and popular today does quite the opposite for a woman’s bodily agency and her sexual liberty.
Pornography makes the degradation, objectification and violation of women and girls appear sexually arousing and attractive. Not only does it help to normalize and legitimise violence against women, pornography itself is a multi- billion dollar worth industry that thrives on gender violence and even sex trafficking. A quick search through popular porn websites will tell you exactly what I’m talking about. You don’t even have to watch the videos, just read the names.
A very popular category in such websites is the Casting category. For those of us who have been aware of the #MeToo movement in Hollywood and in India, know very well how men in the media and entertainment industry have sexually exploited women or attempted the same by taking advantage of their positions of power. Pornography has successfully made a fetish out of this specific case of sexual harassment faced by women. The storylines for videos belonging to this category include a faceless casting director and a young girl who is ‘unaware’ of what she is about to go through. For many of these women, both in the videos and in real life, their aspirations of making it big remain unfilled and they’re discarded after they have been used as nothing more than objects of sexual desire. The viewer gets a sick, twisted pleasure due to the fact that they are already in on this scam and know what is about to happen to the girl.
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Another category of porn that has recently become popular, especially in the west, is refugee porn. Common storylines, if you can even call it that, include poor, starved refugee women who offer to have themselves pounded by men in exchange for food and money. According to nonprofit organisation Fight The New Drug,out of the 65 million displaced persons in the world, more than half of them are women and children who are often forced into performing sexual acts by the men smuggling them out of the borders to safety. They are forced to provide sexual favors to acquire food, false documentations for entering a country, and are even sold off to pimps and brothels. These victims who lie at the intersections of race, gender and ethnicity are dehumanised by the porn industry which uses the argument of “harmless fantasy” to get away with its contributions to cultural violence.
These above two examples (from the vast list of disturbing porn categories) just go on to show dangerous “harmless fantasizing” can be. We fantasize about the things that we desire. By habituating our bodies to feel sexually aroused by gender violence, pornography also creates that desire for violence in us which we then try to seek and imitate in real life relationships. This kind of porn teaches young boys that it’s perfectly okay to force a girl to have sex with them; that it is normal for a girl to experience immense pain during sex, and it is not good enough reason for him to stop. Pornography encourages rape culture. It reinforces the belief in older men that it is okay to have sex with women even in the absence of enthusiastic, active consent, that if she hasn’t said anything she probably means yes. The women in porn are hypersexualized objects of desire who solely exist to pleasure the man, by forsaking their own. Those who say that porn is enjoyable for women clearly have no idea about female sexual pleasure. Moreover, the fact that websites like Pornhub and Redtube have separate “Woman” categories with comparatively less violence and more of mutual fulfillment of pleasure is proof of the fact that conventional, mainstream pornography is scarring for women- the ones on screen and the ones watching it as well.
A lot of people refuse to believe it, but the pornography industry is closely related to the sex trafficking industry as well. We are told that a lot of the women working in the adult film industry are doing it by choice. This “choice” is often influenced by a host of other factors which nobody takes into account, such as- financial difficulties, inability of parents to provide for them, coercion; absence of proper role models, education facilities, vocational skills and job prospects, etc. Ruchira Gupta- activist, journalist, writer, NYU professor, and founder of Apne Aap Worldwide which is an NGO that provides rehabilitation to survivors of sex trafficking- has defined this choice as “an absence of choices”. The term sex worker is a paradoxical term because it offers none of basic facilities or rights that every workplace is supposed to provide according to ILO standards. For them, the workplace itself is the site of sexual harassment, loss of dignity and sexual objectification; having these issues redressed is well beyond reality for them.
There is no way to tell whether an “ebony” woman being coerced into having sex with her plumber is just “acting” or is a victim of commercial sex trafficking. Research has shown that traffickers, pimps, brothel owners often film the victims while they perform sexual acts, and then sell the footage to websites and production companies. The more we click on such videos, the greater is the demand for trafficked women and children.
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Moreover, pornstars who might have entered the profession willingly are also routinely harassed, not just by their employers but also by the people who seem to enjoy their work the most. It is almost impossible for a woman working in the adult film industry to transition into a different career, due to the constant moral judgements, slut shaming, rape threats, discrimination, and disrespect that she is subjected to by the same people who probably lock themselves up in their bathrooms to watch her videos while their wife and children are asleep. Tom Farr, in his article In 2018 Porn Is An Industry: And It’s Not Sex That’s Being Sold, It’s Abuse published on Medium, wrote- “ Just because the oppressed class (in this instance the porn stars) can profit off their own abuse, it does not make that abuse morally justified or suddenly non-existent. Abuse is abuse, calling it anything else just gives men the opportunity to have it justified for us without even having to think about it.”
But how do we combat this problem? The ideal solution would be to give up on pornography all together, although that might be a difficult goal to achieve. Knowledge is a powerful tool and a good sex education goes a long way in building a society that knows how to treat women. Porn today is less about pleasure and more about violence. This is not how sex works. A lot of people who are addicted to porn thus find it difficult to satisfy themselves in real life, and attempt to imitate what they see in these videos, which is just a recipe for disaster. Accurate, realistic depiction of sex in pornography can actually help teach boys what to expect from it and also a thing or two about how to actually treat a woman. An increasingly popular alternative to what passes for porn today is Feminist Porn, which is pornography created by self identified feminists with ethical working conditions for all employees, and depicting content which challenges norms of sexuality and genders. It encourages body positivity, and also reminds women that sex is not meant to be an unpleasant and painful experience for them, something that has also been normalized by porn today. As human beings, we are all entitled to work with dignity, feel pleasure, be respected, exercise agency over our bodies. Until and unless, the pornography industry grasps this idea there isn’t much we can do in real life, because sometimes life imitates porn.
Featured image source: Google, copyright-free image under Creative Commons License
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