We have quoted before from Robert Jensen’s essay, “A cruel edge”, published as “Cruel to be hard: Men and pornography,” in Sexual Assault Report, January/February 2004. We’ll revisit this article in a moment to explore what today’s porn is actually like. But first, let’s review some of the comments about porn made recently at Political Hotwire, an online discussion board.
Typical of porn defenders elsewhere, many commenters have a strong belief that porn can be compartmentalized from the rest of the viewer’s life and the rest of society. Porn has been around forever, they say, implying that today’s offerings are not meaningfully different in quality or quantity from the past. Porn performers are freely consenting adults, so there’s no need to be concerned about them. Since porn has no impact on the larger society, it is beyond criticism, existing purely in the realm of private choice. They also claim NoPornNorthampton wants to “ban” porn and impose a narrow ideology on everyone, as opposed to our actual approach, which is to reduce demand for porn through education and self-restraint, and to regulate adult enterprises with mild measures like zoning. The straw man of censorship is so much easier to knock down.
Selected comments from Political Hotwire
“if you don’t like porn don’t look at it”
“I happen to like it. It’s very entertaining. Like a violent movie is entertaining and those movies are cash cows.”
“There are 700 million sex video rentals in the US each year. That’s not a million perverts renting 700 films each. The porn industry is hugely popular, very profitable, and perfectly legal… Now take your morality and shove it.”
“So long as the “actors” are consenting adults, and the products are being sold to adults, it’s none of your business what they do… Buzz off and go read the First Amendment again.”
“I won’t watch porn, but could give a hoot if my neighbor does.”
“Is there a particular reason why anyone cares about my, your neighbors, or anyone else’s private viewing choices?”
“Because they are shameless meddlers that have to compensate for their own shitty lives by ruining the lives of others. Same goes for the people at the FCC.”
“If it doesn’t affect me, I’d not give two bullocks over it.”
“Porn is cool.”
“I think that the morality police have a problem with the concept of a free and open society. The distribution and sale of perfectly legitimate pieces of entertainment and art involving consenting adults cannot be limited by some faux moral pretext, and their creation and sale is directly protected under the American Constitution.”
“I am finding myself wondering why you focus on this issue when there are so many more important things to look into.”
“Deep Throat has brought joy into many lives in America. Not only is it art, but it is an instructional video. It should be required in public schools as instructional video in proper technique.”
“Yes I agree. Too many times in my high school youth was felletio a mediocre experience.”
“Everything you could pervert yourself to has been available for centuries. Making more pictures of it doesn’t affect an already saturated population.”
“I check out porn on occasion, I’m not a perv for it, I like the female form, fucking sue me. As for feeling sorry for some woman that was too much a coward to tell her husband off nope, I wont. Womens Liberation was when women said they were a force unto themsleves. I say let women have what they want, self reliance. It hasn’t worked for any of my ex’s yet but there is always hope!”
“Women control the porn industry – wake up.”
“Women choose whether to be in porn or not. Women choose who they will perform with and who they will not. Women choose what sex acts they will perform and what they will not. Women set the pay scales. Anybody could go on and on.”
“Porn is like any other business: there are good companies and bad companies. I dont mind eating a McDonald’s hamburger occasionally, but you couldnt pay me enough to eat a thing from a Jack in the Box. Some directors and production companies….well, suck. Many dont. Many provide insurance, health care, day care, etc. ANY movie set is a bit odd as far as work environments go, but many porn companies do their best to minimize the effect. Why? Simply because well paid, happy actors make a better product, and a better product sells better… And FYI: at this time the porn industry is nearly half owned by women. The time when men ‘used’ women is long past. Women control the industry, point blank.”
“Women volunteer to be a piece of meat. How do you stop it? Regardless of the Law?”
“Jesus H. tapdancing Christ, pornography has been around for millinea. It is nor going away. There are unfortunate cases of abuse within the industry. However, the majority of individuals performing in the porn industry are simply consenting adults who wish to make money. Having someone shove their own brand of morality down the rest of society’s throat is a hell of a lot more dangerous than dirty movies.”
Let’s investigate with Robert Jensen what passes for “entertainment”, “art” and “happy actors” in today’s mainstream porn industry:
This analysis is based primarily on three qualitative studies of pornographic videos I have conducted since 1996. I use the term “mainstream” to describe the tapes because I excluded what many would consider the non-representative fringe of the pornography market — bondage and sadomasochistic tapes; any tape that advertised explicit violence, urination, or defecation; and child pornography (the only material clearly illegal everywhere in the United States)… I visited stores that sold “adult product” (the industry’s preferred term) and asked clerks and managers to help me select the most commonly rented and purchased tapes. I wanted to avoid the common accusation that feminist critics of pornography pick out the worst examples, the most violent material, to critique. In one of the stores I visited, the section from which I rented tapes is actually labeled “mainstream…”
“Two in the Seat #3” is a 2003 release from Red Light District… The two men who…enter the scene begin a steady stream of insults, calling her “a dirty, nasty girl,” “a little fucking cunt,” “a little slut.” After the standard progression of oral and vaginal sex, she asks one to “Please put your cock in my ass.” During the double-penetration on the floor, her vocalizations sound pained. She’s braced against the couch, moving very little. The men spank her, and her buttock is visibly red. One man asks, “Are you crying?” which leads to this exchange:
Claire: “No, I’m enjoying it.”
Man: “Damn, I thought you were crying. It was turning me on when I thought you were crying.”
Claire: “Would you like me to?”
Man: “Yea, give me a fucking tear. Oh, there’s a fucking tear…”
“Gag Factor #10” is a 2002 release from J.M. Productions. The company’s web site notes the Gag Factor tapes’ awards as “best oral series” and answers the question, “What makes Gag Factor different than all other blowjob tapes out there?”…
…Every girl gets throatfucked until she gags and almost pukes!…
One of the 10 scenes in the film begins with a woman and man having a picnic in a park. He jokes about wanting to use the romantic moment to make love to her mouth, and then stands and thrusts into her mouth while she sits on the blanket. Two other men who walk by join in. Saying things such as “Pump that face, pump that fucking face,” “All the way down, choke, choke,” and “That’s real face fucking,” they hold her head and push harder. One man grabs her hair and pulls her head into his penis in what his friend calls “the jackhammer.” At this point she is grimacing and seems in pain. She then lies on the ground, and the men approach her from behind. “Eat that whole fucking dick. … You little whore, you like getting hurt,” one says, as her face is covered with saliva. “Do you like getting your face fucked?” one asks. She can’t answer. “Open your mouth if you like it,” he says, and she opens her mouth. After they all ejaculate into her mouth, the semen flows out onto her body. After the final ejaculation, she reaches quickly for the wine glass, takes a large drink, and looks up at her boyfriend, and says, “God, I love you baby.” Her smile fades to a pained look of shame and despair…
…Given the ease with which video can be edited, why did the producers not edit out those expressions? There are two possible answers. One, they may view these kinds of expressions of pain by the women as of no consequence to the viewers’ interest, and hence of no consequence to the goal of maximizing sales; women’s pain is neutral. The second possibility is that the producers have reason to believe that viewers like the expressions of pain; women’s pain helps sales…
…from my research, both through these content analysis projects and my reading of material from the industry, it seems clear that mainstream heterosexual pornography is getting more, not less, cruel…
Sex…has an emotional component, and emotions are infinitely variable. There are only so many ways people can rub bodies together, but endless are they ways different people can feel about rubbing bodies together in different times, places, and contexts. When most non-pornographic films, such as a typical Hollywood romance, deal with sex they draw on the emotions most commonly connected with sex, love and affection. But pornography doesn’t, because films that exist to provide sexual stimulation for men in this culture wouldn’t work if the sex were presented in the context of loving and affectionate relationships. Men typically consume pornography specifically to avoid love and affection.
That means pornography has a problem. When all emotion is drained from sex it becomes repetitive and uninteresting, even to men who are watching primarily to facilitate masturbation. So, pornography needs an edge. Pornography has to draw on some emotion, hence the cruelty.
When the legal restrictions on pornography slowly receded through the 1970s and ‘80s, and the presentation of sex on the screen was by itself no longer quite so illicit, anal sex became a standard feature. Anal sex was seen as something most women don’t want; it had an edge to it. When anal sex became routine in pornography, the gonzo genre started pushing the boundaries into things like double-penetrations and gag-inducing oral sex – again, acts that men believe women generally will not want. The more pornography becomes normalized and mainstreamed, the more pornography has to search for that edge. And that edge most commonly is cruelty…
“A Cum Sucking Whore Named Kimberly” is a 2003 release from Anabolic Video Productions… [the last scene is] “Gang Bang Girl #32.” In this scene a frustrated football coach berates his players after practice, asking them whether they are “football players or fags.” He says they will lose the game the next day, which he wouldn’t mind if his players were men — he just hates to lose with fags. He turns to the assistant coach and says, “prove to me they’re not fags” before walking away. The proof will be in the 13 players having sex with Kimberly, one of the cheerleaders in the stands…
The last man ejaculates inside her vagina, and then she stands and catches his semen in her hand. She moves forward to face the camera and starts to lick it off her hand. At first she can’t quite bring herself to do it, but then she does, making a pained face and gagging slightly. The scene ends with the men dumping the water from a large jug on her…
As I write this, “Gang Bang Girl” is on videotape number 34 and World Sex Tour is on number 27. There are 10 tapes in the “Cum Sucking Whore Named…” series…
The pornographers want to label any collective discussion of the meaning of intimacy and sexuality as repression. They want to derail any talk about a sexual ethic. They, of course, have a sexual ethic: Anything goes. On the surface that seems to be freedom: Consenting adults should be free to choose. I agree they should. But in a society in which power is not equally distributed, “anything goes” translates into “anything goes for men, and some women and children will suffer for it…”
See also:
Video Presentation: A Content Analysis of 50 of Today’s Top Selling Porn Films (explicit language)
Porn actress: “…I think he saw the opportunity to kind of take
advantage that…I wasn’t really going to say much, I wasn’t going to
stop the scene altogether because I’m still new and I don’t want to be
blacklisted…”
Ana Bridges: “…I’m going to begin to talk about what it is that we
found after looking at these 304 scenes in these 50 top selling
pornographic films. In total in the 304 scenes we coded a total of
3,376 acts of aggression. That ends up averaging…to an aggressive act
every minute and a half. The scenes on average contained eleven and a
half acts of verbal or physical aggression…”
Bridges: “We also coded for, what…we’re calling loosely in this talk,
‘extreme acts’ (of sex acts). The only sexual sequence that we coded,
which is…when one thing follows another, was something called
ATM…’ass-to-mouth’. This literally involves anal penetration followed
by oral sex…she is literally eating her own shit. That occurred in
41% of the scenes that we coded…”
Bridges: “So how many scenes didn’t contain aggression? About 10%…”
Bridges: “And we’re actually going to get back to one of the issues
that was brought up earlier today, which is, ‘Well, you know, maybe we
just go out and make ‘fem-porn’, we get more females to direct it. And
then, it’ll be more egalitarian, it’ll be the kind of thing that we can
all embrace and say, ‘Yes, this is what we want.’
“Well, of the
popular films that we coded, less than 7% were directed by females. It
is still dominated by very male-directed films. And we are now in the
process of writing our second article from this study [where] we look
at female-directed films specifically. And guess what. They’re not
different. Not the bestselling popular ones. They’re on the whole just
as violent, just as aggressive… One difference we’ve noted
consistently is that they tend to show much more female to female
aggression.”
Pornoland’s unwritten law: “if we tell the truth about what’s really going on here, the fan will get turned off”
At conventions and other public events, the adult industry tends to
portray itself as a happy family promoting shame-free sexual enjoyment.
But privately, many performers say the reality is very different.
“There’s some unwritten law or agenda out here in Pornoland that…if
we tell the truth about what’s really going on here, the fan will get
turned off,” said Ona Zee, a former performer who is now an advocate
for reform.
Los Angeles Times: “In
California’s Unregulated Porn Film Industry, an Alarming Number of
Performers Are Infected With HIV and Other Sexually Transmitted
Diseases. And Nobody Seems to Care.”
…California regulators and political officials don’t believe the public
is worried about protecting the porn stars themselves–despite the
enormous popularity of the films they produce. As David Gurley, staff
attorney for the California Labor Commissioner’s office, says: “Porn
stars–people think they’re not worth the time. The public sees these
people as disposable…”
Actress Anne Marie Ballowe is a former porn star
who flourished in the burgeoning business… Legal and medical records
show she walked away from the business in 1998 with chlamydia, which
could make her sterile; cytomegalovirus, which could eventually make
her blind; hepatitis C, which has damaged her liver; and HIV, which
could cause AIDS and probably kill her. According to medical records,
her liver is too damaged–in part because of the hepatitis–to allow
her to take the anti-viral drugs that could delay the onset of AIDS…
“I know people hate what we do,” she says. “But porn stars make a lot
of money for other people. If farmworkers have rights, so should we.
The laws need to change…”
Los Angeles Times: “Clinic Offers Aid, Haven to Region’s Sex Workers”
“[M]ost porn stars receive extra money–as little as $50 per sex act–if they forgo condoms.”
Testimony in Los Angeles: Pornographers Place Recruitment Ads for “Models” in Newspapers
Our opponents chant ‘consenting adults’ like a magic formula to ward off all criticism, yet time and again we see pornographers making a mockery of the idea of informed consent, let alone informed consent from people unpressured by money troubles…
“…she proceeded to tell me her friend, who’s on welfare, has three
children, saw an ad in the newspaper. It said, ‘Girls, Girls, Girls.’
And she brought it in and showed it to me, and it’s very typical in all
the newspapers: Modeling, $300 a day.
“…when the woman I know did not get involved, the young woman who was
involved in all of this was given ‘punishment’ for not having the
friend come along. She was then, began to be threatened. The young
woman came home with welts on her arms and the young woman I know kept
saying, ‘they’re beating you.’ And she’s saying, ‘No, no, it’s all
right. It’s all right.’ She pulled her shirt up quickly and saw there’s
welts all over her back. There’s track marks on her arm, and then she
confessed to her that she was told there would be harm to her children
if she didn’t cooperate.”
Testimony
in Minneapolis: Likeness of TV Star “Rhoda” Misappropriated by
Pornographers; Aspiring Actresses Vulnerable to Being Enticed into Porn
As a young dancer-actress-singer in New York City, I experienced
first-hand (and have heard countless accounts from many other women in
these fields and modeling) continual attempts to convince, that
pornography, photography, films, et cetera were a stepping stone to
stardom. Young people and children are particularly vulnerable to this
kind of enticement in New York City and Los Angeles as they are show
business centers. A common statement was, and may still be, “Marilyn
Monroe did that calendar and look what she became.”
Interview with Ex-Porn Star Traci Lords: Abused as a Child; High on the Set; Power, Not Arousal; Bad Pay
I was looking for a job [in Hollywood], and I answered this ad for
models. And the boyfriend, my mother’s ex-boyfriend, actually took me
there and convinced me that, Hey, Marilyn Monroe started out doing
nudes. This is the way it works.
The Science Behind Pornography Addiction
[Performers in the sex industry] have high rates of substance abuse,
typically alcohol and cocaine, depression, borderline personality
disorder which is a particularly serious disorder and dissociative
identity disorder which used to be called multiple personality
disorder. The experience I find most common among the performers is
that they have to be drunk, high or dissociated in order to go to work.
Capital Video’s Magazine Rack: Bondage, Racism and More
Porn advocates say it celebrates the beauty of the female form, that it
is not violent or racist. Let us now celebrate women with a tour
through Capital Video’s Wethersfield (CT) porn shop, where NPN bought a
large batch of magazines in September…
Magazine: World of Black Bondage
Article: ONCE A Slave…
“Because this babe has a submissive personality and a
heart-shaped behind, she makes the perfect slave. Be that as it may,
she got the notion into her pretty head that she wanted to play dom.“Well, her man quickly disabused her of the idea that she could
dominate him. He got rough, took away her leather paddle, threw her
onto the bed and tied her into a series of strict positions.”
Photo Caption: “The look in her eyes tells us that she would like this bondage session to end pretty soon. Forget it, girl!”
Photo Caption: “Her Master has told her, ‘Don’t you dare move.’ She’s finding that immobility is in itself a form of torture.'”
Photo Caption: “Because her body is beginning to ache, she writhes on the carpet. It makes watching her even more arousing.”
Photo Caption: “Tied to the post, Tracy takes a fearful whipping.
Punishment Porn: “Whether-She-Wants-It-Or-Not” (explicit)
Here are some of our concerns about this material:
- Consent is lacking
- Gives permission to abusers to abuse
- Trains abusers to ignore a woman’s protests by suggesting women ultimately come to accept and enjoy their abuse
- A woman reports experiencing a psychotic break during her abuse
- The abuser reinforces psychological control by alternating abuse
with affection–a classic characteristic of an abusive relationship - The victims feel they are to blame for the abuse
- The wrestling shows an assertive woman being cowed by violence
The Psychology of Porn for Men
Bill Margold, one of the industry’s longest-serving film performers,
was interviewed in 1991 by psychoanalyst Robert Stoller for his book Porn: Myths For The Twentieth Century.
Margold made no attempt to gloss over the realities. “My whole reason
for being in this industry is to satisfy the desire of the men in the
world who basically don’t care much for women and want to see the men
in my industry getting even with the women they couldn’t have when they
were growing up. So we come on a woman’s face or brutalise her
sexually: we’re getting even for lost dreams…”
Gail Dines Presents: Pornography and Pop Culture (explicit)
The pornography industry’s revenue
Annual U.S. revenues
- Estimated revenue for pornography: $12 billion
- Box office for mainstream films: $9 billion
Annual worldwide revenues
- Estimated revenue for pornography: $57 billion
- Box office for mainstream films: $23 billion
…“Men
are willing to pay high prices for new technology if they can bring
their pornography closer to the home, because the closer to home you
bring it, the better the anonymity. And this is what helps increase the
use of pornography. The more anonymous you can make it, the better it
is.”
PBS Frontline: “Porn and Politics in a Digital Age”
Like
video, pay-per-view and satellite TV offered consumers a new way to watch a
wide variety of adult films on demand. Unlike video, though, you didn’t have to
leave your home at all. The Internet — especially as it got cheaper, faster,
and easier to use during the late 1990s — further expanded the variety of and
ease of access to porn. Both technologies were cheaper, safer, and even more
anonymous than video, continually shrinking the distance between producers and
consumers of adult material.
As with video, the porn industry quickly realized the possibilities. Firms that
had grown big and profitable off of video — Vivid Video, VCA Pictures, even
the Playboy empire — could repackage and resell their product almost
endlessly and distribute it, cheaply, via several media nationwide: rental and
mail-order video, home and hotel pay-per-view, websites, porn magazines, and
satellite TV. During the mid-1990s, they began to form partnerships with large
mainstream firms like AT&T, Marriott, and even General Motors (which owns
DirecTV, a satellite TV company). By the end of the 1990s, a Jenna Jameson
film produced by Vivid might be rented in a video store, bought through the
mail, watched on the AT&T-owned Hot Network, or ordered in a hotel room.
The ease of consumption made porn even more popular — and more profitable.
Between 1992 and 1999, according to research by Showtime Event Television,
pay-per-view revenues went from $54 million to $367 million. In 1998, the adult
content market earned roughly $1 billion, according to Forrester
Research. By 2001, the total was up to $14 billion — bigger, according to some
estimates, than football, baseball, and basketball combined. “What investors
and bigger corporations soon discovered,” according to The New York
Times, “was a vast audience for pornography — once the privacy barrier was
eliminated.”
Abuse and Threats Drive Women Out of Online Participation (explicit language)
A 2006 University of Maryland study on chat rooms found that female participants received 25 times as many sexually explicit and malicious messages as males. A 2005 study by the Pew Internet & American Life Project found that the proportion of Internet users who took part in chats and discussion groups plunged from 28 percent in 2000 to 17 percent in 2005, entirely because of the exodus of women. The study attributed the trend to “sensitivity to worrisome behavior in chat rooms…”
Testimony from Northampton Shelter for Battered Women: Half of Abusers Use Pornography as a Part of the Abuse (explicit)
Perhaps the most horrifying story of sexual abuse, linked to pornographic use I heard was from a woman who was repeatedly raped, handcuffed to the bed, raped with all kinds of objects by her husband who continually used pornographic material. After years of terrifying abuse she managed to flee her husband and come into our shelter. He pursued her, terrified her and her children, threatened to kill her. When he was finally arrested and incarcerated her children began to disclose sexual abuse. As the children began to feel safer and safer their disclosures became more and more horrifying, for their father, paternal grandparents and paternal uncle had persistently and consistently, sexually abused them, using pornographic videos as a constant part of the abuse. Not only had the children been forced to have sex with each other and several playmates, but the adults had used objects in their genitals, had killed animals in their presence, had made them engage sexually with animals, had hung them from rafters, had threatened to throw them off a cliff, all acts depicted in pornographic videos. The results was that after several years of these disclosures, we were
able to get the Commonwealth to bring him to trial and he was given
80-100 years in prison. However, these children are all in psychiatric
treatment, one child had to be placed in a residential facility because
he was actively suicidal, one child rarely talks, and walks through
life with a haunted look, one child acts out in school. The mother has
flashbacks of her own sexual abuse and lives, not only with her own
terror, but with her self-imposed guilt that she had not protected her
children. She cannot hear me say to her–“but he did this to them when
you were off working, working to support the family and he maintained
the secrecy by threatening that if they disclosed this horror he would
kill them and you, their mother.”