How Porn Harms Women and Girls

“We oppose pornography because we recognise it as a form of violence against women and a highly effective form of misogynistic propaganda that seeks to maintain female subordination through sexualisation. Porn is a patriarchal institution that is based on male sexual entitlement and the objectification, abuse, exploitation of women and is therefore fundamentally anti-feminist”

– Sinéad, Radicailín

How is porn harmful to women and girls?

Pornography is harmful to the women in the videos as well as to all women and girls in society in a variety of ways. Many people like to delude themselves into believing that women in porn are in the position they’re in because they’re sex-loving nymphomaniacs who just can’t get enough. This is not in line with reality. First of all it is impossible to know whether the woman in the video you’re watching is even there at her own will. Pornography and sex trafficking are inextricably linked as we have seen in several cases that have come to light as of late. 

Girls Do Porn which was one of Pornhub’s most popular partnered channels and graced its front page practically daily. Girls Do Porn was also a sex-trafficking organisation. Although Pornhub eventually removed the channel after the owners of the GDP were found guilty of sex trafficking – the pleads from the women abused in the videos weren’t enough – these videos are still uploaded all over Pornhub and other tubing sites, a vast majority of which are owned by Mindgeek. We also saw the case of Rose Kalemba who had to impersonate a lawyer to have videos of her rape at age 14 removed from Pornhub and the missing 15-year-old girl who had videos of her being raped uploaded to a verified Pornhub account. Jenna Jameson, Queen of Porn, has also come forward to tell her story of being trafficked into the sex industry.

Women do not need to be trafficked to be abused in porn.  Brazzers, another Mindgeek owned website that is deemed “legit” has also been accused of rape by Nikki Benz and August Ames. August’s friend released the text messages she had sent her shortly after her suicide detailing the abuse, showing injuries, and also stating that she had to say everything was fine in the sign-off video because “You don’t get paid if you say you were uncomfortable”. Several more pornstars have come forward with their stories too.

Bang Bros is another “legit” Mindgeek owned company who has been found guilty of tricking, coercing and raping a 15 year old girl. What I found most interesting about Bang Bros’ case was not the fact that she was 15 but rather how they lured her into shooting the porn.

 “At first, she was told she would be in a music video, then that she’d be an extra in a strip scene. Sit in the background and smile, she recalls being told. All for an easy $100. Instead, the teen beauty queen soon found herself having sex on camera with a man nearly twice her age — a man who would be accused of murder.”

It’s clear that this girl was deceived, coerced, and pressured. Are we to believe that this case is the only case in which they’ve used these manipulative and predatory tactics? It just so happens that the one time they decided to engage in coercive sexual abuse was also the one time they engaged in statutory rape? All the other women in their videos were there to express their sexuality by having painful, degrading, unarousing sex with unattractive men? We don’t buy it. 

It shouldn’t come as a surprise that this illegal content is so frequently found on hub sites. After all, rape, child abuse, racism, humiliation, and coercion are all themes that are fetishised and eroticised in pornography. In fact, the Free Speech Coalition, fought tooth and nail to prevent laws that would prohibit the fetishisation of child sex abuse in pornography (it’s not uncommon for the porn industry to funnel millions of dollars into fighting laws that would protect their “workers” either) One short stroll through any of the sites that appear upon entering ‘porn’ into Google will see you greeted with titles such as “Korean babe cries during painful anal f*cking” (6.1m views) , “Young girl swallows p*ss for everyone on the internet to see”(1.7m views), “cum in the ass I record without her knowing it” (679k views). These videos offer sexual excitement in the form of white supremacy, humiliation, deception, and the infliction of pain. It’s clear that the turn-on here is female suffering and the lack of consent.

88% of porn videos depict violence against women. Real violence.

There is now over 100 studies linking porn use to an increased likelihood to be to be sexually aggressive, to believe rape myths, to hold sexist attitudes as well as a decreased likelihood to intervene in sexual assault. A study by the BBC found that 71% of men under 40 admit they have spat on, slapped, strangled or gagged a partner during sex. Over 50% of the men confessed that pornography was responsible for inspiring their actions.

This study done on women found that 38% have experienced unwanted spitting, slapping, strangling, and gagging during sex. Another 31% said they had no experience or preferred not to say. 20% of women who had been on the receiving end of these acts said they were left feeling upset and frightened.

It looks like there is a conflict of interest between the sexes here. It also looks like men are well aware of this conflict of interest at least when it comes to another act popularised by pornography, heterosexual anal sex. A study carried out by the British Medical Journal examining the increased normalisation of anal sex among young people found that men fully understand they will need to coerce the woman into the act and they also understand that it will be unpleasant and painful for her. This does not seem to affect their desire to take actions towards engaging in it

“… narratives suggested that mutuality and consent for anal sex were not always a priority for them. Interviewees often spoke casually about penetration where women were likely to be hurt or coerced (“you can rip ’em if you try and force anal sex”; “you just keep going till they get fed up and let you do it anyway”), suggesting that not only do they expect coercion to be part of anal sex, but that many of them accept or at least do not explicitly challenge it”.

The damage that men cause to women’s bodies through pornified sex, like vaginal and anal prolapse,  is not only reserved for the women on the screen. There are increasing numbers of young girls reporting to GPs with sexual injuries sustained during “rough sex” acts, popularised by pornography. This is not the only porn-induced issue girls are approaching doctors with. Girls as young as nine are now going to doctors with feelings of disgust towards their bodies, requesting labiaplasty, a form of cosmetic FGM dubbed “Barbie Pussy”. 

Porn is harmful to women and girls because it trafficks us, rapes us, physically and verbally abuses us, sexualises male domination and female subordination and negatively influences how men view and treat us in society and relationships. 

“Porn is just fantasy!”

Porn is not fantasy. Porn does not happen in a man’s head. It happens to women. Pornographers push the idea of porn as a fantasy to hide the despicable acts and behaviours that are really inflicted on real women in the real world. When you have porn videos such as “Ebony slave girls gets whipped and DPed by white masters” — you have a real black woman, really being called a slave, whipped and penetrated by two white men at once. To suggest porn is nothing more than a thought in a man’s head only serves to deny the lived experience of these women and to dehumanise them even further than they already have been. Not to mention the impact that mass consumption of this material has on women off of the screen as detailed above.

“Porn is more than just fantasy; It’s cultural violence”- Julia Long

What about women who find porn empowering?

The illusion of individual empowerment does not negate the fact that this is a patriarchal institution based on male sexual entitlement and the commodification of women as fuck objects. It does not negate the fact that this industry profits off of and fuels sex-trafficking, rape and child sex abuse. It does not negate the fact that the consumption of this material, including soft-core, leads to an increase in unegaletarian views and an increased likelihood to believe rape myths and to sexually offend. 

For women in porn, saying they are empowered or that they love what they do is a requirement for the job. To admit anything to the contrary would put them out of a job but many women, after leaving the industry, reveal that while they claimed to be empowered nothing could be further from the truth.  

To be empowered is to hold power. Women used in the creation of porn or sex workers are not in a position of power. In order to be paid in porn, the woman must do exactly what men tell her and want her to do. The power lies with the people who have the money and create the demand. The men. A woman having her livelihood dependent on the misogyny of men is the antithesis to female liberation, let alone empowerment. 

“It’s fantasy that we can reclaim violating images of ourselves. That’s what Audre Lorde meant by the master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house. You’re not going to destroy white supremacist, capitalist patriarchy by creating your own version of it. Even if it serves to make you lots of money. You’re colluding in the construction of yourself as a slave.- Bell Hooks

“Women watch porn too!”

The number of women who watch porn is low, significantly lower than the number of men who watch porn. We also know that the porn women watch is not the same gonzo, violent mainstream porn that is enjoyed by men. Regardless, so what? A few women watching porn does not change the fact that it is made by men for men. It doesn’t change the fact that this industry is based on misogyny, sexual abuse and violence against women. A woman watching porn does not change the experience of the 18 year old girl who will be used and abused and then thrown out after 3-18 months when her body can no longer handle the brutality. 

And closely related to what sort of porn women watch, it’s important to understand how major online porn purveyor Pornhub skews the data to imply that women are somehow ‘driving the demand’ for brutal sex acts. What better way to justify violence against women than claiming we endorse it?

Ultimately, women who participate in female oppression, choosing collaboration with patriarchy over female solidarity, do not make it any less oppressive.

“Pornography as propaganda, according to feminist analysis, represents women as objects who love to be abused and teaches men practices of degradation to carry out on women”– Sheila Jeffreys

What about ethical/feminist porn?

There is no such thing as ethical or feminist porn unless your feminism involves objectifying and dehumanising human beings.

In the porn industry, the only difference required for porn to be deemed more “ethical” than hardcore mainstream porn is to have people pay for it. ManyVids is one of the sites that is considered to be ethical but unless you’re only using money as an indicator of ethics, this couldn’t be further from the truth. “Sexy teen schoolgirl f’s big cock”, “Annoying bitches get diapered”, “cute corpse” … How can this content be considered any better than the misogynistic mainstream porn, inspiring young boys and men to view women as beneath them and to perform sexually abusive acts on their partners? It’s identical. 

Onlyfans is often mentioned as a less hardcore ethical version of many ManyVids but this is yet again, completely false. Onlyfans functions as an online pimp, taking 20% of the profits from the “creators” and even implementing a recruitment scheme, where the top earning women on the site are sent off to recruit other young women, receiving a percentage of the recruit’s earnings. A sort of MLM scheme with the added aspect of sexual exploitation.

Young women, and sometimes underage girls go into this thinking that they will make large amounts of money. For most, this does not happen and they end up having to cater to more degrading demands made by the men who subscribe to them in order to keep making any money and staying afloat. Financial coercion into unwanted sex acts is a form of sexual abuse. Even the women who feel they make enough money doing this (often privileged women will engage in it as side hustle) without doing anything degrading or hardcore are still contributing to negative perceptions of women as fuck objects that exist for male consumption. Studies show that even soft-core porn results in an increased likelihood to believe rape myths. We do not believe there is an ethical means of creating sexist propaganda.

People will often cite amateur porn as a form of ethical porn, especially when the people in the video appear to be a couple. This comes from a place of either wilful ignorance or naivety given the sheer volume of revenge porn uploaded all over the internet. It’s impossible to if these videos are uploaded consensually or not. 

There is also the reality that non-misogynistic, non-violent porn is not what porn consumers are interested in. There are some sites that try to make porn of this nature but the fact remains that they are largely unpopular and unprofitable. To think this could take over hardcore porn is a fantasy that neglects the reality of the effects porn use has on the brain, driving the user to escalate to more extreme content once they have become acclimated to more benign porn.

The existence of porn in itself also serves to create the demand for more of it which it turn contributes to sex trafficking.

“Only when women are seen as full human beings will it seem strange that anyone would require an explanation as to why feminists are against porn”- Gail Dines

“By rejecting porn you stigmatize the women!”

I would like to refute the accusation that radical feminists stigmatise women in porn with an excerpt from Andrea Dworkin’s Pornography: Men Possessing women

“The word pornography, derived from the ancient Greek porne and graphos, means “writing about whores. ” Porne means “whore ” specifically and exclusively the lowest class of whore, which in ancient Greece was the brothel slut available to all male citizens. The porne was the cheapest (in the literal sense), least regarded, least protected of all women, including slaves. She was, simply and clearly and absolutely, a sexual slave. Graphos means “writing, etching, or drawing. ” 

The word pornography does not mean “writing about sex” or “depictions of the erotic” or “depictions of sexual acts” or “depictions of nude bodies” or “sexual representations” or any other such euphemism. It means the graphic depiction of women as vile whores. In ancient Greece, not all prostitutes were considered vile: only the pormeia. Contemporary pornography strictly and literally conforms to the word’s root meaning: the graphic depiction of vile whores, or, in our language, sluts, cows (as in: sexual cattle, sexual chattel), cunts. The word has not changed its meaning and the genre is not misnamed. The only change in the meaning of the word is with respect to its second part, graphos: now there are cameras—there is still photography, film, video. The methods of graphic depiction have increased in number and in kind: the content is the same; the meaning is the same; the purpose is the same; the status of the women depicted is the same; the sexuality of the women depicted is the same; the value of the women depicted is the same. With the technologically advanced methods of graphic depiction, real women are required for the depiction as such to exist. 

The word pornography does not have any other meaning than the one cited here, the graphic depiction of the lowest whores. Whores exist to serve men sexually. Whores exist only within a framework of male sexual domination. Indeed, outside that framework the notion of whores would be absurd and the usage of women as whores would be impossible. The word whore is incomprehensible unless one is immersed in the lexicon of male domination.”

Porn is not stigmatised in our society. Porn is the stigma. The pornographers stigmatise women as the porneia, the vile lowly whores. This is what they call them in the videos and this is exactly how the men who watch these videos view them and this is exactly how they treat them. Men who harass, stalk, insult and assault women in porn are not doing so after sitting down to listen to a Gail Dines’ lecture.

So long as the stigma of porn is placed on women and girls, female liberation is a mere illusion. An impossibility. That is why to be feminist, one must oppose pornography.

Sinead

Student, 25, Radical Feminist. If you enjoyed her work, donate to this writer.