Some things that are Not Okay about porn

Trigger warnings for rape, paedophilia, sexual harassment.

BradMillersHero @ "Nobody" has reported on the disturbing adverts that appear on the popular free porn sharing website Pornhub (link probably illegal in the UK due to images potentially prohibited by anti child porn laws - that's how disturbing the stuff under discussion is). On the link from Feministe's "Shameless Self-Promotion Sunday", BMH writes, "I’m no prude, but porn culture sickens and scares me." Normally when I see "I'm no prude, but..." I think of "I'm not a racist but..." However, here I am inclined to agree with some of what BMH has to say.

First up, some declarations of interest. I am a porn-using man, and I have occasionally downloaded videos from Pornhub. I have even downloaded videos of a type criticised directly by BMH in the piece linked above (more on that in a minute). I am into BDSM and related kinks.

BMH reports that some of the ads displayed by Pornhub are for "barely legal" fetish websites, which are sites that advertise as displaying porn featuring women (girls) who are 18 years old (that is, only just legal to appear in pornographic materials, hence "barely legal"). However, they might claim to be just-turned-18; as BMH points out, the visual age-signifiers in the girls' faces and presentation project the impression of being barely pubescent. That is, some of them look as though they are as young as 12 or 13.

Now, I am in favour of lowering the age of consent to 13, and not shaming young people out of exploring their sexuality (although I would want some protections about coercion due to age and authority - but this isn't the place where I want to discuss the details of my position on that). However, I do think that economic exploitation of young people's sexuality is a big problem and Not Okay. I also think that there is something deeply troubling about the fetish for youth. I've seen the magazine Barely Legal (the girls do at least look 18 on the cover!) on the top shelf in newsagents, and never really got the appeal of it then. But more importantly, what troubles me is the implication that girls are sexually desirable because they are young. "Young" here signifying in particular, not sexually mature in a physical/physiological sense (i.e. not completed puberty yet). There is a link to the also highly troubling matter of the virgin fetish, with its Patriarchal implications of ownership, but that can be taken at any age; this seems to be specifically about wanting youthfulness, in the sense just outlined.

Now, another statement of interest here. One of my kinks is for "adult schoolgirl" scenarios, particularly in the context of corporal punishment scenes. That's because I'm into BDSM, and I seem to be hardwired that way. But the emphasis is on "adult" here: although they may be dressed up (and sometimes hair and makeup) to play the role of "schoolgirl", the apparent age is not the thing (they usually look to my eyes anyway like adults playing a role - I click away from anything that looks too much like real teens). What that kink is about is the power-relationship roleplay (teacher has power - and cane! - student not so much). It's basically a game being played.

So the next question is, is this paedophilia, as BMH describes it? Ultimately, I think the answer is "yes", although I think there is an element of "if all social norms were suspended" - my guess is that the people who watch these "18 but pretending to be 12" stuff are people who have a sense of social boundaries, but if you put them in a situation where society wasn't watching, I would be scared. (Reasoning on the grounds that the people who don't have the social boundaries would either go out and do it for real, or else make/watch porn using actual children, not adults pretending to be.) Now, I have met women in their mid to late twenties who look just like some of the women in the examples at BMH's post, and in person it was pretty clear how old they were. But that doesn't change the overall effect and reason why those performers appear to have been selected, and it certainly doesn't change the fact that they are advertised as exemplifying youth (website names like "18 & Abused" and "Babysitter Pass" prove that). And once you've said "young is, by definition, desirable", then how do you draw the line to say "that's too young"?

One final remark on this section: I am actually opposed to the UK law that makes the images criticised by BMH illegal (that is, in UK law, it's enough if the image could be taken by a reasonable person as depicting a girl under the age of 18 - I'll need to shred my browser cache after logging off today). However, "legal" doesn't equate to "ethical" (or even "acceptable" - I find the BNP unacceptable but I still don't think we can ban political parties like that), and certainly I would like to see the world change to make such things no longer viable as businesses.

The other type of advert that BMH highlights is for rape porn. Now, a huge part of my BDSM kink is related to inducing extreme emotion, and in terms of my sadism that means things like pain, fear, humiliation and distress. In real life, these are only fun with a consenting partner - someone who kinks on experiencing those emotions (in a safe/risk-aware and consensual scenario). In fantasy, however, it leads to some very dark stuff. Such as, fantasies of rape. In BDSM there are whole fetishes of "forced sex roleplay" (pretending it's rape when it isn't) and consensual non-consent (I discussed consensual non-consent at my NSFW blog And You Thought I Was Sweet?).

So, in short, I have in the past downloaded porn depicting rape fantasy (I wouldn't dare have kept any after 26th Jan 2009, of course!). Because it deals with fantasy, and because I avoid/delete anything that looks like it might be real, I do not feel conflicted between this and my feminist ideals (remember - in real life, I want there to be enthusiastic, informed consent involved, even if that's a meta-consent of consensual non-consent, or a consent to the roleplay).

I do, however, feel very disturbed by some of the sites that carry it, and I definitely feel that it is wrong that rape porn sites should be advertised on vanilla/normal porn websites. As BMH writes:

Here is where the important part about the PornHub website being so big comes in- this isn't a fetish website. It isn't an obscure website. It is one of the most popular porn websites. This is normal.

Maybe it is our culture of extreme female suppression, humiliation, and torture that leads us to having rape porn on "normal" websites. And maybe it is our culture of radical female infantilization, fetishization, and trivialization that leads us to having pedophilic porn on "normal "websites.

Some of the pages I have seen which carry rape fantasy porn make these ideas explicit.

I don't have a problem with fantasies involving forced sex and other things that are totally Not Okay in real life. I do have a problem when those things, or at least the porn that includes them, are marketed as though it is normal and okay and not a problem.

Which leads me to a further set of adverts that I have seen, that BMH hasn't mentioned.

The site advertised appears to be called "Public Violations - LOL:P".

I've seen two adverts for the site. For those with strong stomachs for this sort of thing, this link will show you the .gif of one of them.

A description for those who didn't follow the link:

A girl or young woman (my best guess is late teens/early twenties) is standing at a bus stop, wearing a pink hooded top and pink shorts. A man dressed in black and wearing shades appears from behind a bench, pulls down her shorts revealing her knickers, and disappears down the street.

The second advert is similar. A woman in a tight top is waiting to cross a street. A man (similarly attired to the man in the first one) hurries up, tugs the front of her top down, revealing her breasts, and scarpers.

I'm sure my readers don't need me to point this out, but those are sexual assaults. And the presentation and name of the site suggest that these are not things by which we should be horrified - apparently, all us masculine man with penises and who watch porn should find this sort of assault funny. (Right up until someone does it to our girlfriend or sister, at which point we should go out and Defend Her Honour, because it's okay as long as it happens to someone we don't care about.) Seriously, I cannot think of a term of sufficient hatred to express what I feel about the company when I saw that ad appear. And the sickened sensation on realising that there must be a market for it if they're making it. People actually do think that behaviour is okay. (Also, seriously, with this evidence who can justify minimising street harassment in general?) And just in case anyone wants to point to my distinction between fantasy and reality, again - street harassment is a reality, folks, and there's plenty of evidence that there are enough people with enough disregard for women and enough lack of social boundaries, as to go out and actually do this shit for real (I'm only guessing that the women on LOL:P actually are actresses playing a role - if they're genuinely unsuspecting passers-by, then FFS why aren't the police arresting the producers and the guy(s) they paid to do this shit?) And, ultimately, the images appear to present it as actually happening to random passers-by, so I can't find a way to frame it in my mind as presenting a "fantasy" the way other porn is.

So, anyway. After all that, I think I can sum it up by saying that I like porn, even "extreme" porn, and I think in principle it can be okay - I even identify as "pro-porn"! However, I have a BIG problem with the culture surrounding the way it's presented. On that topic, I can only say, "I'm no prude, but porn culture sickens and scares me." Which is, of course, the phrase that originally I wanted to criticise. I shall also leave as the final word on the topic, the final words of BMH:

Maybe that is why we have so much rape in our culture. Maybe this is the reason why women are harassed so much on the street for existing.

Its a fucked up world.

ETA: I think that these ads appearing on porn sites are not the cause, but rather the culture that makes such ads, and their association with mainstream porn, acceptable is also the reason why there is so much rape and street harassment in our culture.