What’s Wrong With Pornography
Pornography harms women.
Pornography is not fantasy. Pornography happens in the real world, to real women; everything you see in pornography happened somewhere to a real woman.
The pornography industry is a multi-billion dollar global industry.
Pornography exists to make money. It is an industry that chews women up and spits them out; it is an industry where exposure to violence, harassment, injury and infection are seen as normal and acceptable.
Pornography doesn’t expand our sexuality – it stunts it.
Mainstream heterosexual pornography dictates a narrow and limited idea of human sexuality. In pornography, male sexuality is predicated on cruelty, coercion and degradation; female sexuality is predicated on submitting to or appearing to enjoy being subjected to cruel, coercive and degrading treatment. Pornography eradicates women’s sexual agency, and makes it harder for women to find out about their own bodies and their own sexuality.
Pornography portrays sexual violence against women as normal, natural and an inevitable part of male sexuality.
Sexual desire does not develop in a vacuum. The prurient attitude we have to sex in this country, combined with a lack of decent sex education, means that many people use pornography as their primary source of information on what sex is supposed to be like. Mainstream heterosexual pornography tells men that the sexual abuse of women is exciting, and that women enjoy being abused. It tells women that in order to do sex properly, they have to put up with and enjoy such abuse.
Pornography reinforces male supremacy, and the idea that men are entitled to sexual access to women’s bodies.
Men define themselves as being whatever is not a woman, in order to be a man it is necessary for there to be a subordinate group of women for men to compare themselves to and feel superior to. In mainstream heterosexual pornography men are always the active agents and women are always the passive objects. No man in pornography ever fails to get what he wants; the women in pornography exist solely to satisfy men’s desires, they have no will or desire of their own except to service men’s needs.
Pornography portrays sex and women as disgusting.
The words used to describe women and women’s bodies in pornography betray the fact that women and sex are seen as dirty and disgusting by the men who use it: ‘bitch’ ‘cunt’ ‘slut’ ‘fuck toy’ ‘fuck hole’ ‘dirty’ ‘filthy’ etc etc.
Pornography promotes misogynistic beauty standards.
In mainstream heterosexual pornography women are interchangeable, it trains women and men to see a natural female body – one with pubic hair, or small breasts, or any fat – as unnatural and disgusting.
Pornography affects you.
Even if you are not a pornography consumer, a significant number of the men you interact with every day will be. It’s difficult to imagine that a man can spend a lot of time viewing and masturbating to degrading images of women without that pornographic ideology having a negative effect on his view of women.
Pornography and sex are not the same thing!
Pro-sex, Anti-porn: Free your sexuality from pornography
Pro-sex, Anti-porn: Free your sexuality from pornography
Well-said! I feel a lot more free without having patriarchal and capitalist images controlling me.
p.s. Great blog! I just linked you…
Cool, thanks. I can see we’re getting traffic through already!
I’m a man but I’m pro-feminist and anti-porn, and I must say, I’m really happy to have found a blog on this topic. It’s great to see that people are organising against porn. If I didn’t live in France I’d be delighted to join your demonstrations !
It’s probably the same in the UK as over here : if you speak to people about the matter, they think you’re asexual or some sort of religious fundamentalist. It just shows you how far things have gone. “If you don’t like porn, you don’t like sex”… That’s what people seem to think. That’s why I like your “Pro-sex anti-porn” catchphrase.
People don’t realise that porn is sexist, alienating and deeply patriarcal. It’s not liberating : it’s anti-libertarian in its very nature. But porn has pervaded culture to such an extent that people don’t realise it anymore. We live in a porn culture. Not only are women’s bodies used to sell everything from soap to cars (or even yoghurts here in France), but porn has found a mainstream acceptance : it’s referenced constantly in TV shows. (I just heard “MILF” in a Scrubs’ show last night : one of the most patriarcal acronyms out there?)
And that suits business very well – it goes hand in hand with the capitalist structure. “As long as it sells, who cares who/what is hurt, degraded, exploited ?”
Another thing I can’t understand : how can men prefer cyber onanism, this getting off watching acts of this new slavery in front of a cold computer screen, to the closeness, intimacy and warmth of another human being ?
Anyway I’m rambling here… And all I initially set out to say was : “Bravo!” Great work, and I wish you all the best in your struggle! =)
Thank you for the words of encouragement!
guys like Gallic Hibernian brighten my days up
I recently purchased a book that I think other people that think about these issues might like too; ´transforming a rape culture´. it is a collection of different articles written on the rape culture (porn is one of its features).
I feel that everyone who feels like this should make their message known to the world in a direct and confronting way, otherwise how will we ever change this culture? it will never change if we keep silence.
I found a site were you could buy antiporn t-shirts,(http://www.oneangrygirl.net/) but I didn´t like these much so I found a site were you could put your own messages on shirts. I for example created this line ´dead hearts need porn to become aroused´.
becuase the ones with the porn-watcher and rapist mentality, if they accidentaly land on a blog like this or other blogs about this, I don´t think they´ll read it or try to comprehend it. since they´re always trying to justify what they´re doing.
if you wear a t-shirt on the street with a text like that, maybe it will actually make them think…I hope.
viva la revolucion!
I cannot tell you how much this blog has helped me. For years I had people making me believe that I was not a true feminist because I am anti-porn. I am deeply bothered by porn and feel that it is more degrading than it is empowering. After dealing with multiple, porn-obsessed partners, I became extremely self-conscious of my body, developing body dysmorphic disorder and lived a very lonely existence for a long time. I was ashamed of myself, believing that I was unworthy of any kind of attention since I did not fit the stereotype. This bothered me, I felt that I was not being true to my feminist beliefs, to myself and just failing in general. This blog really helped me to see that I am not the only feminist out there who is anti-porn and that I am not letting down anybody by being so.
I want to say that I am very glad for what you are doing. This is very important work.
It is frustrating to me that close to nobody I know – and most of my friends are activists – seems to be able to recognize pornography as oppression and brave enough to name it as such. The fact that so many of my fellow leftist men can’t or won’t extend their own criticisms of commodification/exploitation to the products that they masturbate over is endlessly sad. I must keep believing, though, that minds can be reached and I thank you for your efforts.
“Free your sexuality from pornography!” That is perfect. I’d like to put it on a T-shirt.
Hello Travis, and thank you for the words of support. If you do get round to making a t-shirt, please send us a pic to put up!
Hi and thanks for all the hard work and thoughtfulness on this site from everyone who is contributing. I just wanted to add a couple of things to the “what’s wrong with pornography” section, not so much new as emphasising some of what is already there.
The conditions in which pornography is created hurt women and rely on women who have often already been hurt and abused, either as children or as adults, or who have been trafficked into prostitution or forced into it through economic or social deprivation and from there found themselves forced into appearing in porn.
When anyone watches a porn movie they have no idea if they are watching someone getting raped or sexually assaulted. It’s a safe assumption that a lot of the time they will be watching rape or sexual assault. At the very least they will be watching someone getting hurt. That’s all implicit in your first point, but I wanted to make it as clear as possible, in case anyone was in in any doubt.
Another argument made by some feminists who support porn on the grounds of “choice” and women’s liberation from traditional roles in sex is that women and men get enjoyment from it and those of us who are against it are against women’s enjoyment. This gets reinforced by individual reactions: some men and women who have found themselves getting turned on by porn and whose physical reactions are therefore confusing have difficulties articulating honestly how they feel and being clear and honest with themselves and others. Don’t be afraid! Porn is so mainstreamed and dominant and plays such an influential role in our developing minds and emotions as adolescents, it would be surprising if you didn’t have some physical reactions. That doesn’t make you a bad person BUT it doesn’t make porn OK. It may take you a while to stop having a physical reaction – but once you consciously accept and identify that what you are watching is almost certainly not a willing woman and that what she is being made to do is not pleasurable for any woman, you will start to lose that reaction.
Thirdly, pornography is used to stimulate and justify violence against women. Now, that argument could be undermined, for example, it can seem similar to wanting to ban alcohol simply because some people become more violent when they have consumed it. HOwever, with pornography, the content itself is built on violence, coercion and control of women’s sexuality, so when the consequences match the content I think that we have to recognise that there are direct causal links between pornography and violence, in both directions, and do everything we can do stop it.
I have heard some say that violence against women exists even where there is no pornography, and had that argument used to say that it is pointless to ban pornography and that we should be focusing on other forms of sexist imagery or not bothering to challenge it at all, that abusive men will get their ideas no matter what we do. First, i am far from convinced that there is anywhere free from porn. Second, I believe that pornography is what creates the space for sexist and offensive images to exist in mainstream culture and the more we tolerate pornography the more we tolerate increasingly offensive images of women in magazines, adverts and TV.
There’s loads more I want to say but probably already this is too long. Please keep up the good work. Everyone reading this blog, try to encourage some of your friends to think about what pornography is doing to them and their own relationships. Ask them if they would be happy for their own daughter to be filmed in a porn movie. If it’s not good enough for your daughter it’s not good enough for anyone else’s. It’s hard work but it really does matter.
Thanks!
Keep up the good work. I pray your message against porn stays clear and strong. This is one of the things in the feminist movement that really cause me to wonder… Why aren’t more feminists anti-porn?
i’m not a feminist i don’t think, however, porn has been a damaging factor in my life for the past 10 years. just reading this blog has been so reassuring that i’m not the only one out there suffering because of it, or wanting to fight against it. I wish there was more i could do… i live in York, does anyone know if there is any anti-porn activists in the north of england? what can i do to make a difference?
“Men define themselves as being whatever is not a woman, in order to be a man it is necessary for there to be a subordinate group of women for men to compare themselves to and feel superior to.”
I’m a man and I don’t define myself that way. Your statement is too narrow. I’m intelligent and grounded in reality enough to know that I cannot have a successful relationship, an actual intimate relationship with a woman if I objectify her, or feel superior to her in any way.
Be specific, your statement regards a number of men, not all men. Give us a break! Statements like the one you made are just going to prevent progress if you dismiss men who treat women with respect, hate pornography and do their best to be present and EQUAL in a relationship.
Life isn’t just black & white. You sound like you’re on acid, which is not going to lead to a dialogue with reasonable men who are grounded in reality.
Good luck.
When we say ‘men’, we are referring to men as a social group, it doesn’t mean every single individual man in the whole wide world ever.
We do not dismiss men who treat women with respect; and intelligent, respectful comments by men have always been welcome on this blog.
You, though, despite your claims, are neither; “you sound like you’re on acid” is neither intelligent, nor respectful.
Your comment is, in fact, Nice Guy whining. You want women to listen to you, and approve of you, and be oh so grateful that you’re a Nice Guy, even though you spend your time attacking women for not qualifying every single statement they make to acknowledge what a Nice Guy you are.
A genuinely good man would not spend his time attacking women in this way, and expecting them to fall at his feet because he claims to not be a misogynist. A genuinely good man would not waste time picking pedantic petty holes in women’s arguments.
A genuinely good man would understand that it’s not women’s job to make him – or any man- feel good about himself.
Your entire comment is underhand misogyny. You’re a Nice Guy, and us uppity women, complaining all the time, rather than pandering to your Nice Guy ego, are hindering progress, because we’re being uppity and not making it easy for poor Nice Guys like you, who don’t actually want to listen any way, but only want to be congratulated for being such a Nice Guy.
Thanks for being specific. I didn’t call you uppity. I don’t expect you to fall at my feet.
I believe what you suffer from is ‘misandry’, or ‘cunts who hate men’
Good Luck!
Ladies and gentlemen, I give you, a misogynist and an MRA, who just has to tell us poor little women how we’re doing it all wrong, and how, because we don’t listen to him, we’re cunts and we hate men!
Needless to say, any further comments from him will be deleted unread.
I thought you were being a bit harsh in your dismissal of vanitytimes, but his second post does seem to confirm what you were saying. You should let him post though. I think it’s best to engage him in argument – maybe you can change the way he is feeling.
I’m unsure about porn … I am a man, and I have occasionally looked at it. I don’t think, in itself, it’s necessarily woman-hating, but the language often used is pretty hateful. Horrible, in fact. And a lot of what’s depicted seems pretty extreme – seems focused on humiliation. From what I’ve read most of the women in it are not being coerced, at least consciously, and some are making good money from it; but this doesn’t mean it’s a good thing for society. What gets shown does portray a world in which women are sex-toys, and want to be the recipricants of quite aggressive action by the men. And it does portray a picture of women’s bodies which seems a bit wrong. Very wrong. A world in which pubic hair is seen as unattractive. Seems almost paedophilic to me.
Having said that – the men are also seen as objects. Just penises. The roles they take are just as narrow. Leering aggressive faces. It messes us all up, as it stands. I don’t imagine internet porn addicts are particularly happy people – trapped in cycles of estrangement from sex – always observing.
Anyway – I don’t think it has to be that way. Porn is essentially fiction. Fiction designed to thrill; to satisfy a ‘need’ created from a simplified fictional world. It’s maybe similar to action films in which a set of one dimensional criminals are vanquished by some incredibly tough and skillful ‘hero’. These films create, and satisfy a desire for violence on screen; most porn films create and satisfy a desire for sex. But the desires are skewed; simplistic and often malevolent.
I think it’s fine for men to find women attractive, and to find images of women attractive. It’s just that in porn these images are so charged with negative assumptions and ideologies. And the images are perhaps now prevailing over actual human relationships. Maybe…
I hope you don’t think I’m just trying to be ‘a nice guy’. I like your site.
Regarding women being coerced into pornography, women get trafficked into pornography the same way they get trafficked into prostitution, see:
The Demand for Victims of Sex Trafficking
and this article on the French porn industry.
Also, even if a woman doesn’t have a gun to her head (as Linda Lovelace did during the making of Deep Throat), poverty itself is a form of coercion, and even if a woman does choose to enter the porn industry, the choices she has once she’s in there, and once she’s on a porn set, can be severely limited, and her choices about leaving more limited still. See:
My fears for all Felicities
and, the sexual sadism of our culture.
For the treatment of women in the sex industry, see
A Rough Trade
As for making a lot of money, a very few women may do, but the IUSW (who, being essentially a lobby group for the sex industry, has no reason to exaggerate downwards) lists £400 as the most one will get paid, and that’s for a double anal.
Most women don’t last six months in the industry, it’s too physically gruelling
Maybe if attitudes towards sexuality weren’t so implicitly based on gender roles there would be less porn. What I mean to say is that anglo-saxon culture promotes and cultivates this idea that men need to act in a certain way to meet a woman. And in turn women come to expect that treatment, just look at a show like “the pick up artist” in the U.S., these guys are successful at getting these girls after using some crafty strategy, fitted to the idea that conversation is never just light-heartedly flirty and either doesn’t happen or is completely
over-sexualized (this crap is bought by both the sexes, and that’s why it works). This premise would make no sense in any other society. There needs to be a rapprochement between men and womens ideas about their interaction with each other. I’m not personally for or against porn, but until gender realtions aren’t strained to the point where women expect one thing and men don’t think that they can’t meet those expectations, porn will continue to thrive. The true culprit isn’t men, women, or porn even for that matter, it’s anglo-saxon society.
I get at what you’re trying to say and I agree about the gender roles problem. However:
“The true culprit isn’t men, women, or porn even for that matter, it’s anglo-saxon society.”
Well, in that case, why does France have one of the most thriving porn industries in the world? And I don’t think it’s just a Western problem—prostitution exists or has existed in every society.
And society isn’t just a vague entity, it’s made up of individuals (women and men). I mean you can’t say that Hefner isn’t (one of the many) culprits…
The crime amunghts porn users is they occationaly drift into an actual slave & pimp yes pre 1864ish SLAVERY very selfish indeed. Post 911 has seen a super increase of American kidnapings for porn & prostitution. These were once filled by Russian, Chineese, @ Mexican so sadly. The longer enslaved the less valuable the more desperate the porn sadly.