We Need to Get Real About Porn

Last week I read this article from the New York Times about an upsurge in teenage girls requesting labiaplasty. Apparently teenage girls are requesting labiaplasty in such large numbers that the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists needed to produce guidelines to teach doctors how to talk to teenage girls want labiaplasty for genuine discomfort or cosmetic reasons. The physicians are “sort of baffled,” as to why they are getting so many requests for labiaplasty from girls barely out of puberty. The author of the article takes a stab at what’s causing the trend by suggesting that many girls and women now shave or wax which exposes the labia and makes them easier to see (any guesses as to where they got the idea to shave or wax in the first place?). Doctors also suggest that girls are “go[ing] online and look[ing] up images of the vulva.”

It’s like the author deliberately tried to avoid mentioning the obvious influence of porn on this trend, looking up pictures of vulvas on the internet? Like girls are typing “vulva” into Google Images? When I shared this article a friend of mine pointed out that if that is what girls are doing they’d probably find galleries of vulva pictures posted to present a spectrum of how vulva can vary. This one is in the top five results when you just google “vulva.”

We have to talk about porn. We have to be honest about what porn has done and is doing to women and girls, both in porn and not. It isn’t going to be easy, right now we basically have two groups talking about the problems with porn: the Christian right and radical feminists. It would be utterly ridiculous to equate the two like they have anywhere near the same amount of power, so it would be cool if we could all recognize that. Both groups have flaws.

The Christian right obviously does not give a shit about the abuse faced by women in the porn industry, their concern is porn’s effect on straight marriages and men’s erections. They don’t seem to be concerned with how porn use correlates (I know, I know, correlation is not causation) to sexual violence against women and girls or the horrific accounts of women who were abused in the porn industry. When they do try to mirror feminist anti-porn criticism it’s shallow because, hello, the Christian right does not actually care about women. It’s true that sometimes Christian anti-porn organizations get into contact with ex porn actresses and post their stories on the organization’s websites. You don’t have to agree with or support these organizations, but please do not dismiss a survivor’s story just because it happened to be told to a Christian website.

Radical feminists are generally not willing to meet other women where they’re at regarding porn, if you’re not ready to immediately devote yourself to the cause you’re a collaborator and desperate for male attention. It’s just not helpful or practical. Not everyone has the patience or stamina to endlessly explain the scary things about porn and that’s fine, it’s extremely difficult to talk about. However, belittling women who aren’t on board isn’t helping anyone or achieving anything other than making those women less likely to hear criticisms of porn. Many radical feminist anti-porn resources arrange testimonies of women who were abused in the porn industry in the most shocking way possible and to me feel a little exploitative.

So let’s look at some facts about porn:

• Self identified feminist porn star James Deen is a serial rapist, nine women have accused him of rape or sexual assault. Loudly self identified feminist/progressive men have a tendency to turn out to be disgusting, but this is pretty bad. James Deen’s feminist consciousness was as shallow as it gets to begin with (if there was any at all) but declaring oneself a feminist is usually all men have to do to earn feminist credibility.
• Girls and women increasingly report being pressured to send nude pictures, try anal sex*, and engage in BDSM by male partners who are inspired by the porn they watch. Besides a growing body of research to point to porn’s influence on heterosexual relationships, what woman on earth doesn’t at least have anecdata from friend about some asshole to tried to push her too far during sex, if not experienced it herself? Refusing to consider porn’s influence makes this a complete mystery. The only explanation being that men just must naturally be like this, which I don’t buy.
• The top searched category of porn is “teen.” Fingers crossed we don’t need to debate the fact that grown men actively searching out porn that looks like underage girls is disgusting.
• You couldn’t possibly ever finish reading all the testimonials out there from women who have been abused in the porn industry. If even one woman were raped on film that was then sold for men to masturbate to, that would warrant three times the current amount of attention feminism gives to porn.

This is where I stop being able to rely on numbers and proof: there have been at least hundreds of women who have been raped on camera and footage made available for men to get off to. The number of women in porn who have come forward to say that they were raped in the videos that made them famous is staggering. Knowing all of this, how can viewers be sure they aren’t watching someone being raped?

Even self labeled feminist porn isn’t necessarily safe*. One of the biggest feminist/queer porn studios is Crash Pad Series. When a viewer emailed Crash Pad to let them know that they had featured rapists on their website, Crash Pad responded saying that it was “unfortunate but inevitable” that some of their performers would go on to be rapists. This is an unacceptable response from any porn studio, much less one literally capitalizing on feminism. The videos should have been pulled and accompanied by a statement reaffirming commitment to doing whatever possible to avoid paying rapists to have sex.

Porn had never really interested me in the first place, but I remember reading about Linda Lovelace in college and how her boyfriend had a gun to her head the whole time she was filming Deep Throat. That was more than enough to swear me off of it forever. Millions of people have seen that movie and presumably couldn’t tell the gun was there (although IMO it would not be a stretch to think that a good chunk of men watching Deep Throat wouldn’t really care.) That is what it comes down to for me, you have no way of knowing you aren’t watching rape when you watch porn. You just don’t know.

I’m not at all sure what the solution to any of this is, but I know that it isn’t continuing to pretend that porn is “just fantasy” (women in porn are real) or above reproach. Feminists tend to believe that people’s sex lives are sacred and any criticism attached to anything to do with sex is immediately shouted down as prudeness, colluding with the right, or outright oppression. We need to stop putting our own orgasms before actual people.

*This piece was originally for xojane (who asked for it)but they never paid me or published it, so! Here we are. This disclaimer was supposed to be on that site but whatever it still works. In the comments if you’d like to argue that feminist porn is feminist because it calls itself feminist, I would direct you to this piece where the author describes her abusive relationship with a self proclaimed feminist man. Note the number of comments calling the author an idiot for believing that a man who called himself a feminist would not abuse her, because you can’t depend on labels to keep you safe. Can’t have it both ways.