The pornography industry
A few years ago, the actor Terry Cruz opened up about having to go to rehab to overcome his porn addiction, which seriously affected his marriage and social life. When I read about this, it reminded me of a University friend who told me that his flat mate would watch pornography all day long even in communal areas as if it were a TV show. I had not heard about porn addiction before or how extreme this problem could be.
Since then I have heard more tales of people watching porn compulsively, of marriages being torn apart and young people who think extreme practices showcased in porn are the norm during sex. A couple of years ago, allegations have revealed how many streaming websites host illegal footage and how hard it was for the people present in the footage to remove the videos from the platforms. Allegations of girls in the industry being exploited, how half way through footage they are told to perform an act and if they disagree they are told they will not be paid for the project. And how porn websites are purposely manipulating sexual preferences in order to keep viewers hooked.
History
Pornography has evolved over time, but the concept has existed for millennia via drawings and texts. The erotic is part of human life and human nature and has been depicted in different ways in different cultures throughout time — often not for its arousing value but as political statements. Much of the art we consider erotic was actually religious expression, for example. The first pornographic film as we know it was the 1986 French production Le Coucher de la Marie. Some versions of erotic prints existed before, but when Hugh Hefner launched Playboy there was an incredible amount of investment to make it work, including having Marilyn Monroe as centrefold, but there was a clear attempt at making it look like it was hustler young man syndrome. Trying to copy the shock value, a new magazine with more explicit content than Playboy was launched in the UK. From then on, it was a competition to see who could shock more and win over that market with magazines, VHS tapes, cable TV, etc — in the early 90s the profits of this market went from $54 million to $367 million by the late 90s in the US alone due to introduction of internet access. Pornography is thought to have been one of the driving forces behind the expansion of the internet.
Normalisation
Pornography as we perceive it today, is not the artistic depiction of nudity, which was the most common throughout human history, but rather explicit imagery of body parts to cause sexual arousal. The competition to create shock value and novelty still exists and has gone to incredible lengths. The pornographic industry nowadays is a monopoly by the company MindGeek who own the main streaming sites as well as main production studios at present.
By 2010s pornography was largely part of pop culture but less than 2% of viewers were women. By 2020 33% of women under the age of 25 were searching for porn once a month.
Due to the easy availability of internet sexual experiences, different forms of cybersex began to replace real life experiences. As a new generation of people who did not experience the world without internet started to grow up, cybersex became normalised. Most if not all the people in my generation who I have spoken to about sexual experiences have had access to pornography before they were sexually active and looked at porn as a reference to what to do. It goes without saying that the presence of pornography has had a significant impact on relationships and how sex is perceived.
According to statistics presented by Fight The New Drug (a charity for people to recover from porn addiction), most kids have watched porn by the age of 13.
Dangers
Adult films have been outdoing themselves in producing more and more extreme content. In getting their audience hooked with content that is so extreme and niche that the only place they can watch is in the host’s website, they create a lifetime consumer. It is not accidental that on the front pages of adult websites you will often find situations that are taboo, of violence or extreme in anyway — in consuming that, the industry creates a need that can only be satisfied again by returning to their websites.
There seems to be a conscious effort by pop media not to talk about its side effects and the terrible influence it has had on young adults. The fear of not being accepting enough has completely hindered the fight against the giant side effects we are facing, which the coming generations will be struggling even harder with. Any talks of regulating porn turn into an argument about how it needs to be ‘dirty’ to serve its purpose.
When it comes to sex workers involved in the industry, talks of abuse and exploitation are often dismissed as being part of the risks associated with the job. Marginalised women or girls who have just turned 18 are the ones who are at most risk of exploitation in these jobs. A very common reason for women to turn to sex work is when they find themselves in set of unfortunate circumstances or to pay off crippling debt.
Addiction
Time after time research shows that porn is addictive, creating a compulsive behaviour that can go on to affect people’s health and social life. Porn addiction is considered a form of sex addiction or compulsive behaviour but often has an artificial root — whereas most sex addiction happens due to past trauma, porn addiction can often occur without reasonable explanation but simply a habit build up. Lack of admission and recognition to being addicted to porn is one reason why this problem is severely overlooked, and with every overlooked problem it just grows. There is an incredible urge to dismiss porn addiction as just a “normal habit”.
Normal consumption already has an impact on people’s intimacy, addiction can impact it so much more severely — this can vary from starting extreme practices to completely abandoning real world interactions even when in relationships. People with porn addiction struggle to obtain pleasure from normal sexual interactions, they also report struggling with anxiety over their own performance.
The majority of porn watchers are men and therefore they are the people who are most affected by the addiction — however a bigger percentage of female viewers admit to being addicted, indicating that men are under reporting their addiction.
Pornography use causes increase male dissatisfaction during real sex, which has been widely studied and confirmed — this does not only affect relationships but general social and romantic interactions. Desensitization also creates a need for more extreme, with avid consumers becoming hypersexual and needing a fast paced dating life.
Societal Impacts
The large majority of porn users are men, therefore the videos are obviously tailored to this demographic. In trying to produce more more extreme and addictive content for men, the industry started leaning towards promoting domination over women. Scenes of humiliation or of practices supportive of violence against women became so normal that even in milder videos, extreme scenes were present. In 2021 there were multiple “kink trends” going on tiktok where teens talked about how their preferences in code language — things like strangulation of the woman during sex were seen as part of “not being boring in the bedroom”.
Pornography desensitises, this is a phenomenon observed over several studies and the data is concrete. Whether nonviolent or noncoercive, it exponentially increases male objectifying behaviour towards women.
A lot of the performers are lured in with the promise of life changing riches, which is also known as financial coercion — several women who participated in adult films have revealed how this illusion is sold to girls but only a select few actually make the promised fortune. Others end up in adult films due to a set of unfortunate circumstances which left them looking for options — sex work is often sold to these women and girls as the quickest way to get out of whatever situation they are in. Several performers have given their negative testimonies about how women in the industry go through abuse. But even in its most ethical scenario — when someone requires a financial incentive in order to partake in a sexual activity it is immediately a form of assault and one would still be watching the footage of abuse.
Problematic categories in the streaming sites are always a talking point, for example the main categories often include role playing minors or “barely legal” and often displayed upfront, introducing new visitors to these types of fantasies.
Illegal material
There have been several rounds of scrutiny streaming sites have received due to illegal footage being available and the website refusing as well as jumping through several hoops to keep such footage in their sites. Women have spoken out about footage of their rape, footage of themselves as minors, footage that was meant for private purposes only, etc being present in this sites, contacting the website but having to bring on legal action or sometimes having to rely on public pressure to get those removed. The streaming sites defend themselves claiming there are mechanisms to flag down videos, but tech firms have spoken out about how the length of this process is inadequate to say the least.
Some journalists, such as Jack Anderson, have spoken out about how they have seen how the industry is heavily tied with organised crime groups. This should not come as a surprise since for centuries sex work has been tied with crime networks and have heavily relied on trafficking and coercion.
I remember sometime back reading an article about a man who worked as a moderator in an adult streaming website, and he was in the department responsible for keeping the videos legal. For every video submitted he had to check photos of the actors holding their ID to confirm age. He described how often the girls would have their finger strategically placed on their birthdate, he would bring it up with they would just tell him to send the video to them and they would go ahead and publish the video anyway. Or times when the ID clearly does not belong to the girl and the same thing would happen, he would flag it but the higher ups would still release the video.
Empowerment
This wide spread of pornography came at the same times as third wave feminism, which incorporated an assimilation to values previously thought as patriarchal, like women’s sexualisation. This means that soft porn is everywhere on TV and social media, we are on a constant dose of sexuality. With social media tailoring the content they show to our preferences, many men are constantly shown a selection of women’s bodies. We see countless girlfriends and wives write about how their partner’s timelines were filled with nudity.
Normalisation of porn has created a society obsessed with hypersexualising women and turning their bodies into commodities where men are nothing but a (often excessively large) penis on a screen — seems like sex is no longer an act of connection but a spectator sport. Normalisation of pornography causes society to no longer see the women who fell for the lures of the industry as victims but more responsible for her own plight, it is an “empowering” job after all — so what’s the problem?
Hairless young girls, being strangled, slapped, unleashing all sorts of sounds and liquids. Gay women heavily fetishised and publicised — the showcasing of gay women created a wave of straight girls who watched so much of that they now believe they must bisexual. Or women who will have relations with other gay women as an act for male pleasure. So where do we draw the line between sexual liberation and porn overconsumption?
Empowerment should be about bringing on positive things for the individual and society — not about assimilating to a movement that is harmful from so many different angles.
