There is more to porn than sexual liberation
Opinion
Image Source: www.shethepeople.tv
Discussions around porn reduce the issue to one of personal choice without understanding how problematic the industry is as it stands today. It is imperative that those who advocate equality take note of this. Feminism is not only about exercising personal choice– it is about understanding and making amends in institutions where a certain section of people are left without a choice.
How is the world viewing porn?
Data suggests that 35% of all internet downloads relate to pornography and that 28,258 users are watching porn every second. $3,075.64 is spent on porn every second on the Internet. 88% of scenes in porn films contain acts of physical aggression, and 49% of scenes contain verbal aggression.
How do porn sites make money?
Most Porn sites serve as aggregators– this means that they are not directly responsible for the content on their site but rather allow anyone to upload a video from any part of the world– the traffic to the site, the re-directed traffic and the views brings in money for free porn sites.
To support the business model, they are constantly promoting content that sells and have no obligation to regulate or trace the content source. Therefore, categories that are exploitative, violent and non-consensual have rapidly increasing views.
The looming question of consent
It is fully possible that we might be viewing someone who has not consented to the sexual acts they are performing in front of our screens.
Not every performer in the porn industry consents to be part of the video. Consent is often violated before the shoot, during it (by forcing them to perform specific sexual acts that they did not consent to) or after (through distribution of the porn to places that the performers do not consent to).
In the recent past, victims have identified videos of their rape and assault on porn sites. There has been massive campaigning against this targeting some well-known free porn sites.
Human trafficking
The porn industry is often hand-in-glove with the trafficking racket that is plaguing the world. Rising demand in the porn industry is said to fuel trafficking. Not only this, as more and more of violent sex is normalized on-screen, the plight of victims in the flesh trade, in the hands of their perpetuators only gets worse.
Is porn empowering?
Porn has been painted as empowering by some people- however, what they refer to is the individual choice and sexual liberation which ignores the blatant reality that many women who are in the industry today are neither in it for the choice nor are they treated remotely right even if they are.
Would a porn ban solve the problem?
Given that banning porn would only give rise to a black-market with even little regulation and no control what-so-ever, this cannot be a solution to the problem.
Ethical porn, even though not completely problem-free, has been presented as an alternative to this- Ethical porn is porn which is made with the consent of those involved, regulated and the content is also meant to mirror real-life to the best possible extent without degradation, violence and abuse. There are very few free ethical porn sites and most ethical porn has to be paid for.
However, paying for porn is not immediately going to regulate the industry- because the issues of consent, trafficking and being 100% sure that the person in the video has given full consent is still going to be impossible.
Stricter regulation in place for porn aggregators or allowing for porn only to be distributed by the producers can help regulate content to a larger extent.
A large extent of porn regulation is only going to happen when the demand is controlled- are we demanding for cheaper, violent and degrading porn with no concern about where it comes from? Then, the industry is probably going to supply exactly that.