Feminist Issues in the Modern Pornographic Industry

Feminist Issues in the Modern Pornographic Industry

Pornography is a medium that appeals strictly to the most animal of instincts. Lust, desire, conquest, reward. It is sex devoid of humanity, devoid of emotional complexity, distilled from the homogeneous mystery of human experience to a potent moonshine that inebriates easily. But what is the effect of this pure stimulation on those that ingest it? With porn now more prevalent than at any other point in history, with men as the main audience, how does the necessarily increasing extremity of modern porn influence these men's perspective of women? And what is the feminist movement's perspective on the sex industry? Are the women in these videos empowered or victims, and what part should the porn industry play in our culture's collective sexual consciousness?

Does porn drive men to rape?

One constant critique of any pornographic images for as long as there has been pornography is the demoralization of those that participate in it. The idea that consumption of porn can lead to anti social, unpleasant or dangerous behavior.

The porn industry is one of growth, it has developed from back allies, to seedy shops to adult book stores. It made the jump to hotels and cable tv, and finally came into everyone's homes in the world with the internet. In modern times porn has become incredibly common place, with 80 percent of teens having been exposed to hard core porn more than once by the age of 17, and 90 percent of kids aged 8-16 having viewed porn online at some point in their lives(Ropelato 2009).

The porn industry thrives on the desires of men, but over exposure to porn has had an ill effect on the arousal of men who go in search of more explicit, and more extreme forms of stimulation. Because of this the number of online porn websites catering to specialized, fetishistic themes has grown tremendously. Some of these themes can be as simple as a sexual gratification associated with feet. But there are many sites that continue to push the envelope of sexual depiction. Sites with simulated rape, extreme degradation of women, extreme penetration and fisting, even snuff sites where a the female actress is simulated being killed, are growing in popularity. And as the extreme nature of porn increases, it is important to know the effect that has on people's actual sexual behavior. Does watching simulated rape increase the likely hood that a man will commit rape?

In Diana E.H. Russell's 1988 article “Pornography and Rape: a causal model”, Russell describes a number of studies done at the time that suggested men's predisposition to rape (Russell, 2000). She reported that 25 to 30 percent of men admitted they would commit rape if they believed they could get away with it. She also cited studies that showed that as much as 60 percent of men would become aroused while watching a pornographic rape scene if the women showed some signs of pleasure from the experience by the end.

Russell then goes on to a study preformed on men who were exposed to non-violent porn. The study consisted of showing the men 10 minutes of non violent porn then having them sit down to an interview with a woman who would conduct a survey. The study concluded that the men were far more sexist towards the women interviewer after having been exposed to the pornography. Russell uses these studies together to claim that a significant percentage of men are predisposed to rape women, but they do not because of inhibitions of one sort or another. But because porn is shown to lower inhibitions, especially while interacting with women, that porn is likely to increase a man's likely hood of rape.

This conclusion is easy to punch holes through however. Especially considering the study done on the men who were exposed to porn then given the interview by the female interviewer. The claim made was that exposure to porn lead men to objectify women more. This was shown by the fact that men were more likely to sit closer to the interviewer, and that the men noticed more about the woman's body and appearance than did men who were not exposed tot he pornographic images. But I believe this is greatly influenced by the bias of the experimenters. If a man is aroused it seems only natural that they would be more likely to display sexual behavior. The claim that this is “objectification of women” I think is unfounded.

But by looking at statistical information I think I can make a clearly contrary claim that in fact porn does not increase the likely hood of a man to rape a woman, nor does the prevalence of porn in society increase the rate of rapes committed.

The porn industry has grown exponentially in recent years. Since Russell wrote her article, the proliferation of the internet and cable tv so dramatically increased the exposure of people to porn that from 2001-2008 the rate of individual people accessing adult websites online jumped from 18.75 million to 75 million people each month (Ropelato 2009). That same time period has been witness to the increasing violence and extreme nature of porn especially on the internet.

But despite this tremendous increase of porn saturation within our American culture, the rate of rape within the country has actually decreased tremendously. When compared to the population the percentage of forcible rapes in 1988 was at 37.8 percent, where as in 2007 the rate had dropped to 30 percent ("Crime in the," 2008). And this despite the fact that the likely hood of a rape being reported has actually increased in that time (Taylor 2006).

Objectification of Women

Even if porn does not entice a man to rape at the drop of a hat, I think it is more than worth looking at the general message of porn in regards to women. In most pornographic films or pictures, the women is displayed as a fantastic object of desire. A thing to be coveted by those people watching. In fact the theme of many of these pornographic depictions of women is the showing of women as being degraded by men. Even in porn with no men, the women are displayed simply, as two dimensional sex dolls who's only joy in life is sex.

Now it is only fair to mention that in porn men are not displayed accurately in anyway either. They are displayed as sexual predators who derive their entire life's purpose from having sex with a woman. They are equally flat characters who display no humanity.

The Marquis de Sade is known for describing some of the most shocking works of sexual fiction known in the 1700's. And even today his works are often considered the outer extreme of pornographic works. In Sade's writings women were always the victims of sever abuse, mental physical and emotional. Stories in which women were viciously abused then murdered were not uncommon. Sade's propensity to practice what he preached landed him in prison many times in his life and he eventually died in an asylum. But his joy at causing people, especially women, harm led his name to be used in the creation of the word and concept of sadism, the derivation of sexual pleasure from inflicting harm.

Today online one can find writings, and even pictures and videos depicting almost everything that Sade ever wrote about, though the legality of those sites are still up for debate. But even if not hardcore sites, women are generally viewed as sexual objects and often abused in the pursuit of sex in many videos and websites. Men are almost always dominant over women who are displayed as willing or unwilling participants depending on the extremity of the website or video.

While in the 80's it seemed the feminist agenda had been on the possibility of porn to excite violence against women, in the modern age those feminists who have a problem with porn more readily cite the increasing expectations of women as sex objects as a result of their boyfriends and husbands being exposed to porn.

But this is not an argument leveled soley at the traditional porn industry. Modern media is increasingly sexually oriented. Magazines, models, tv, and advertisements have all long been the target of the feminist moment who decried the objectification of women. Saying that using women simply as things be desired dehumanized them, and harkened back to the days that women were property to be owned by men.

Pro Porn

This however leads to the very argument put forth by some staunch feminists who believe porn is, or could be used in service of, the very movement they support. With the sexualization of the American culture, with shows like “Sex in the City” and “Desperate Housewives” there are often simultaneous cries of protest and support coming form opposite wings of the feminist house.

As the con side of the argument exclaims that such shows depict an unreasonable model for women to live up to, that it is unhealthy mentally and physically. The idea of women who care mostly only for sex, for shoes and makeup is offensive. Women in these roles are seen as continued models of sexual objects, but even more so because of the fact that they are displaying themselves to other women as sexual objects creating a culture of women who believe that this is what women are supposed to be, objects of desire.

The other side of the argument though is that women have been sexually suppressed for hundreds of years. They have been denied their sexual selves. In these shows it is believed that a women is free to explore her own sexuality, and given license to be sexual. In shows like “Sex in the City” they will say that strong women are taking responsibility for their own sexuality and not letting it be controlled by men, instead these women are becoming the formulators of their own sexual identity, and in that creating an environment in which all women are free to cast off the shrouds of the Victorian era and be self actualized sexual creatures.

Danni Ashe , a porn model who owns her own website and makes a reported 8 million dollars a year and holds the world record for the “most downloaded woman in the world” was asked whether she thought that the porn she produced was derogatory to the models.

“Absolutely not, no. I think what I'm doing is helping to reverse some of the sexual repression that we have in this country about nudity and about sex. And I'm not a psychiatrist, but it seems to me, the more you repress your sexual feelings, the more they're going to pop up somewhere else in a really unhealthy way. In our culture, we repress a lot of sex, and we repress our anger, and what you see coming out is a lot of violent pornography. And, you know, it's my theory that that's a direct result of our culture's repression(Ashe 2002).”

Conclusion

In the end I think that Pornography in it's present form is rightly very offensive to the feminist ideal. The degradation of women and the presentation of them as sex objects is not in holding with the idea of women being free. But I think it is not the answer for porn to be limited, as Danni Ashe says:
“I think all media, including pornography, is a mirror of what's going on in our collective subconscious. It's something that's surfacing in us, in our culture, otherwise it wouldn't be there. And I think it has a lot to do, as I was saying before, about repressing sexual desires and anger. You repress them both, and all of a sudden it bounces back and in kind of ugly ways (Ashe 2002).”

I believe that at the moment porn represents a very flat view of sex, creating myths and misconceptions about how sex is actually. But I think porn it's self can be the answer, I think people, especially kids, who go in search of porn do so because they are curious about sex, they want to see it, understand it. I think that the answer would be production of sexually explicit materials that rather than simplifying the realm of sexuality, went on to describe it in full would draw a strong audience but more importantly would serve to educate and grow our culture towards healthy sexuality. I offer this web site as a model of that ideal http://the-clitoris.com/
















Works Cited

Ropelato, J. (2009, october 30). Internet pornography statistics. Retrieved from http://internet-filter- review.toptenreviews.com/internet-pornography-statistics.html

Taylor, L.R. (2006). Has Rape reporting increased over time?. National Institute of Justice, Retrieved from http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/nij/journals/254/rape_reporting.html

(2008, September). Crime in the united states. Retrieved from http://www.fbi.gov/ucr/cius2007/data/table_01.html

Russell, D.E.H. (Ed.). (2000). Pornography and rape: a causal model. New York NY: Oxford University Press.

Kirk, M. (Producer). (2002). American porn [Web]. Retrieved from http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/porn/
Ashe, Danni. (2002). Interview with danni ashe. Retrieved from http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/porn/interviews/ashe.html