Porn again

It’s everywhere

64 million Views a day in 2016 on Pornhub, the world’s most popular porn site No. 20 South Africa’s global position on Pornhub

THERE was a time when pornography was a dirty, filthy word — and I don’t mean “dirty” in a naughty way. I’m talking about avert-your-eyes, hang-your-headin-shame, whisper-behind-yourhand-when-you-so-much-asmention-it dirty.

But, at 28 years old, I barely remember this time. I do remember looking at hardcore pornographic magazines with other kids in the neighbourhood (the magazines always belonged to someone’s uncle) when I was probably too young to be exposed to such explicit imagery.

I do remember how e.tv used to show soft porn late at night, and how Monday mornings in the bus to school would feature the boys talking about the various scenes in whatever instalment of Emmanuelle (the French soft-core porn franchise) they had just seen. We were all in primary school.

Of course porn isn’t a new thing — far from it — but it’s arguably at its biggest and most mainstream today. While the 1970s are known as the Golden Age of Porn (because of wider audiences embracing the productions more), the internet has been kinder to pornography than it has been to most industries.

While piracy initially threatened it, the porn industry adapted very quickly to changing times and used the web to not only grow its audience, but to service it better. With the web catering for every taste and interest, no matter how left-field, porn hasn’t died because of the internet — it’s risen with it.

In 2015, CNBC estimated the global porn industry to be worth $97-billion, with between $10billion and $12-billion of that being the value of the porn industry in the US alone.

WHILE sex has always been a hot business, the high level of accessibility of porn to anyone with an internet connection means that the industry is at its most influential. Porn is no longer something society pretends doesn’t exist.

One cannot ignore the rise of so-called “mommy porn”, notably led by EL James’s critically detested but insanely popular Fifty Shades book trilogy. While not featuring particularly explicit sex (it’s hardly something that would take off on very male-gazecatering websites like Brazzers.com or BangBros.com), the two films have grossed nearly $1-billion at the box office, while the books have sold more than 125 million copies worldwide (according to The Guardian in 2015).

According to Hot Girls Wanted, a documentary about amateur porn, more people visit porn sites each month than Netflix, Amazon and Twitter combined. But what does the rise and easy accessibility of porn mean for those who consume it, especially younger audiences?

Sexual health advocate and Sunday Times columnist Dr Tlaleng Mofokeng says ideally, pornography should be consumed by fully consenting adults rather than those who are too young to fully grasp the impact it might have on them. She says a 19-year-old, for example, might legally be an adult but that doesn’t always mean he or she is ready to consume hardcore pornography — and it’s not just about the physical act, but the kind of attitudes and beliefs it communicates. “[At that age] your brain doesn’t have the maturity to break down what it’s seeing,” she says. “What type of sexual education you received will determine how you will consume porn and how it will impact your relationships. A lot of young people get introduced to sexual education through porn and they end up forming lifelong ideas [from it] because there isn’t anything countering these ideas.” Mofokeng says if even adults can have a hard time distinguishing reality from the fantasy porn sells, the impact is often worse on younger viewers. “That’s why children have become hypersexualised, that’s why breasts have been sexualised [and] that’s why women can’t breastfeed in public. We have turned something that provides nutrition and nourishment into something [that is] purely sexual.

“Hypersexualising women’s bodies is not for the benefit of women but for the benefit of men.”

IN a Daily Beast article titled Dear Teenagers: Porn Sex Is Not “Real Sex”, former porn actress Aurora Snow writes: “Sure the sex is real, but the scenarios and behaviours are exaggerated for entertainment purposes. For example, slapping a girl on her bare ass and demanding the ‘bitch’ pleasure you is not appropriate foreplay.”

In the same article, adult actress Sarah Vandella says when it comes to porn, there is such a thing as too young. “I don’t think it’s healthy for a 13-year-old girl to be watching porn to explore her sexuality,” she says.

Another porn actress, Sunny Lane, is quoted as saying: “Just like the show Jackass has a warning at the beginning and end, ‘these are trained professionals and the stunts performed here should not be tried at home’, I believe adult productions should have a label like that, to help the viewer distinguish between a performance and reality.”

A 2016 study by the UK’s National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children found that 53% of teenage boys surveyed (and 39% of teen girls) believed pornography was realistic. A 13-year-old boy quoted in the study says: “One of my friends has started treating women like he sees on the videos — not major — just a slap here or there.”

NOT all porn is violent, of course, but there seem to be more and more videos depicting sex acts that injure female participants in some way, with women required to do more and more extreme scenes — as depicted in Hot Girls Wanted. One of the rising trends the documentary highlights is forced-oral-sex fetish videos showing women who gag so much while giving blowjobs that they vomit. Mofokeng says: “All the violent porn we see is violent towards women’s bodies. But . . . it

mirrors what’s in society. If people were not watching [that kind of porn] they wouldn’t be making it. It feeds into our own mindsets and views on women’s bodies.”

When women are shown in dominant positions in porn, it’s often not as empowering as it seems, she says.

“When men are dominant and forceful [in porn] it’s always in a real sense, in a scenario depicted as reality, whereas when women are dominant it’s clear as a roleplaying fantasy,” says Mofokeng. “You never see women who are dominant and taking charge of their sexuality. Whenever women are dominant in porn it’s at the pleasure of men.”

When it comes to adult viewers, how porn impacts the viewer varies.

“That depends on the person consuming it, [and] their understanding of sexuality, sensuality and gender dynamics. Are there any issues or conditions that they are dealing with? These are things that need to be taken into consideration,” says Mofokeng.

WATCHING porn that depicts consenting adults isn’t something people should be ashamed of, especially if it helps them safely explore their sexuality. Sometimes you might discover a fetish or interest or turn-on you never knew you had. Other times porncan help viewers feel less ashamed of their sexuality and more in tune with it. But I have also heard a few complaints (and stories) from either women I know or women on the internet that the men of my generation just don’t know how to have sex — and that porn is to blame. On the other hand, a male colleague says he believes porn’s influence has made women more sexually adventurous. “You have people who use porn as a reference . . . Unfortunately sometimes they then take whatever they see and may form an idea of what a woman should do — or shouldn’t do — when they climax. They’ll use that as a form of judgment for their own sexual pleasure, and then put the burden on their partner to perform pleasure the way it’s done in porn,” says Mofokeng. “People don’t realise that porn is acting. There’s editing and post-editing. They can’t pressure themselves to achieve what is achieved in a porn video. You need to know that you are watching a production.” Another issue that heterosexual porn in particular never explores is that of consent. Just because a woman consents to one position, for instance, that doesn’t automatically mean she’s given consent for other positions. “You don’t see a clip where the woman says no and it ends there. Once they have consented to missionary position at the beginning of the clip, when they want to change, there’s never a discussion of consent,” says Mofokeng. The danger is that viewers will then take consent for granted in their everyday lives. “If your partner is uncomfortable you need to listen to their feedback. Don’t take it for granted that because you’re an adult you know what you’re doing,” she says. Ever one to keep up with hot topics, the porn industry is learning to accommodate more than just the heterosexual male gaze. There has been a steady rise in feminist and female-friendly porn over the past few years — Canadian adult shop Good For Her even held annual Feminist Porn Awards from 2006 until 2016.

THE main idea behind feminist porn is that it is intersectional and empowering (both to its performers and its viewers). It’s not only queer porn — it also features different body types and different races in a manner that is not fetishised or objectified.

It also goes hand-in-hand with ethical porn: productions where the performers have fair working conditions and get paid a fair wage.

Unlike a lot of mainstream porn where the aim seems to be the “money shot” (ejaculation), the main aim of feminist porn is the pleasure of both the performers and the viewers.

In an interview with The Telegraph, Dutch feminist porn filmmaker Yvette Luhrs explains: “I wanted to make porn that represented my daily sex life. Feminist porn is more diverse: diverse bodies, diverse genders, and sexual acts. There is definitely more care, consent and negotiation . . . It’s also more instructive, as girls direct their sexual preferences — they show guys how to do it.”

Clearly porn has a problematic side and a lot that should be improved upon — it’s great that there are people who are trying to do so, because clearly it’s not going away.

While people should never be chastised for what turns them on, perhaps you need to dig a little deeper into yourself if what floats your boat involves nonconsensual humiliation, degradation or mistreatment of someone else.