Big Porn Inc: Exposing the Harms of the Global Pornography Industry
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Pornography increases suffering
Pornography influences the kinds of intimate relationships people have. Pornography has deleterious effects not only on the individuals in those relationships but also on the extended family and on later generations. Trauma is not restricted to the generation in which it occurs (Atkinson, 2002).
The making of pornography is itself harmful to those involved in its production: to the women portrayed in porn shoots and the men making those films. While the upshot may not be lung cancer, it does have detrimental effects on health and it is highly likely that the impact of pornography results in the death of some of its players.
Some say that pornography is freedom of expression. Whose expression is free? The women with cum on their faces? The young girls and boys penetrated anally? Get real. This is not about freedom of expression, it is about endorsing men’s violence against the feminised other: women, children and animals as well as men who are poor, gay or from a despised ethnic group.
Pornography is an industry, just like tobacco is an industry. It is intended to make large profits for a small number of individuals and corporations. There is no greater social good to be found in pornography. Instead, it has negative effects on the developing brains of young men exposed to endless streams of porn culture (Doidge, 2009, pp. 102–112). Those young men (from age 11 according to Dines, 2010) are not engaging in instinctual behaviour, but a learned behaviour that requires ever more stimulation. It leads to an escalation of ‘learned need’ on the part of men, and suggests that the more pornography there is, the greater the damage (Doidge, 2009, pp. 104–106). And further, that porn causes erectile dysfunction in men (Murphy, 2010). Rather than enhancing the sexual experience, pornography requires a bigger and bigger fix to the point where only the most gratuitously violent images have any effect.
“Porn is bad for your health” says Linda Thompson (2010). It’s bad for women’s health because of the increase in sexually transmitted diseases and physical injury by those engaged in the production of pornography. Add to that the post-traumatic stress disorders and psychological effects of abuse. These, however, are not restricted to the makers of porn, but also to the watchers of pornography. They lose their capacity to form intimate relationships with others. “The consumers become the consumed” (Murphy, 2010).
Pornography has many defenders including those on the left who want to dismantle capitalism but leave the pornography industry intact. But if we want a society in which justice is at the centre, then we cannot justify supporting pornography. Porn is about injustice and hatred.
Who is porn good for? It’s good for capitalists. It’s good for organised crime. It’s good for the purveyors of violence, such as those in the military who give porn to soldiers in training (Caputi, 1992). It’s good for those engaged in genocide who film the rape and torture of prisoners and then distribute this as porn (Clarke, 2004). It’s good for a handful of corporate exploiters. It’s good for patriarchy.
Strategies to Quit Porn
Identify the reasons why you want to Quit Porn. Reflect on when you first used porn. Your age, the social setting in which it occurred. Think about whether the things that were important to you then are now. Ask yourself whether you were pressured to use porn? What made you continue after the pressure ceased? Do any of those things still matter? Reflect on what you thought was good about porn. Did that good feeling always continue? Did you experience any negative feelings? Try to identify them. How did using porn affect your partner? Did you ask? What affect did porn have on your relationship? Are any of them strong enough reasons to help you Quit Porn?
Reflect on your politics. Are you in favour of social justice? Do you think racism is a bad thing? Do you put ecological issues high on your list of priorities? Do you think women should be treated with respect? Do you think that people in poverty should get more equitable access to resources? Do you think it’s a good thing that slavery is illegal? If you answer yes to any of these and you use porn, how do you justify that to yourself? How do you justify it to others? What do you think of your justifications after pondering these issues?
Create a plan to Quit Porn. It might include changing some social settings that make it hard for you to refuse using porn. Work out how you might change these. It might include changing habits and routines. Try to replace these with something active, something that will give your mind and body energy. It might involve some quite strong emotions. Finding a supportive person or group might be helpful in dealing with your emotions.
In the plan you create to Quit Porn, try to work out whether you feel more comfortable with your politics now? Does that help you to Quit Porn?
Put your plan into action. Just as smokers have relapses, it’s possible that circumstances and a range of other events might create obstacles to giving up porn. It’s worth continuing through these difficult patches. If you need to make several attempts before you Quit Porn, think of your previous attempts as practice runs. Reflect on what helped you to stop and what encouraged you to use again. Think about the things you might do to get you through the next time.
Using porn is learned behaviour. If you learned it, it is possible to unlearn it. While the plasticity of the brain means that using porn affects the brain, it also means that by not using porn, you are creating new ways for the brain to operate. You are changing your behaviour. People have changed their behaviour over millennia. Feminism helped women changed their behaviour, and most reasonable people in this society have worked to stop themselves from expressing racist views. It is possible to change the way you live in the world. It is possible to change how you relate to others.
Reasons to Quit Porn
Why bother to Quit Porn? Just as smoking affects a person’s quality of life, using pornography does too. It reduces social interactions and the quality of that interaction. Relationships become disengaged and people are dehumanised.
Who do you support? The profiteers and purveyors of violence? Or those harmed by pornography?
Porn is bad for you. It’s bad for boys. It’s bad for girls. It’s bad for women. It’s bad for men. It’s bad for our relationships with one another.
It’s time to Quit Porn.
Bibliography
Atkinson, Judy (2002) Trauma Trails, Recreating Song Lines: The Transgenerational Effects of Trauma in Indigenous Australia. Spinifex Press, North Melbourne.
Caputi, Jane (1992) The Age of Sex Crime. The Women’s Press, London.
Clarke, D. A. (2004) ‘Prostitution for everyone: Feminism, globalisation and the “sex” industry’ in Starke, Christine and Rebecca Whisnant (Eds) Not For Sale: Feminists Resisting Prostitution and Pornography. Spinifex Press, North Melbourne, pp. 149–205.
Dines, Gail (2010) Pornland: How Porn Has Hijacked Our Sexuality. Beacon Press, Boston; Spinifex Press, North Melbourne.
Doidge, Norman (2009) The Brain That Changes Itself. Scribe, Melbourne.
Dworkin, Andrea and Catharine A. MacKinnon (1988) Pornography and Civil Rights: A New Day for Women’s Equality. Organizing Against Pornography, Minneapolis.
Hamilton, Maggie (2010) What’s Happening to Our Boys? Viking, Camberwell.
Jensen, Robert (2007) Getting Off: Pornography and the End of Masculinity. South End Press, Cambridge, MA.
MacKinnon, Catharine A. and Andrea Dworkin (1997) In Harm’s Way: The Pornography Civil Rights Hearings. Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA.
Murphy, Cameron (11 June, 2010) ‘Working with Men to Stop Pornography’ Workshop presentation given at Stop Porn Culture Conference, Wheelock College, Boston.
Stark, Christine and Rebecca Whisnant (Eds) (2004) Not For Sale: Feminists Resisting Prostitution and Pornography. Spinifex Press, North Melbourne.
Tankard Reist, Melinda (2009) Getting Real: Challenging the Sexualisation of Girls. Spinifex Press, North Melbourne.
Thompson, Linda (12 June, 2010) ‘International Organizing against the Sex Industry’ Workshop presentation given at Stop Porn Culture Co
nference, Wheelock College, Boston.
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1 ‘Marlboro Man’, Wayne McLaren, died of lung cancer in 1992.
Author Biographical Notes
Asja Armanda is an ethnologist and philosopher. She is co-founder of the Kareta Feminist Group, the first feminist group in Croatia. She broke the story of the sexual atrocity dimension of genocide as a feminist issue. With Natalie Nenadic, she initiated the Kadic v. Karadzic case in New York against the head of the Bosnian Serbs which pioneered the claim for sexual atrocities as acts of genocide under international law.
Dr Abigail Bray is a Research Fellow at the Social Justice Research Centre at Edith Cowan University. She has published widely in leading international academic journals on anorexia, child sexual abuse, moral panics, and child pornography. She is the author of Hélène Cixous: Writing and Sexual Difference (2004) and Body Talk: A Power Guide for Girls with Elizabeth Reid Boyd (2005). She was an inaugural inductee into the Western Australian Women’s Hall of Fame in 2011. Her forthcoming book Misogyny Re-Loaded will be published by Spinifex. She is a member of Socialist Alliance and the Marxist collective Das Argument.
Caroline is a health educator in Scotland who requested anonymity.
Gail Dines is a Professor of Sociology and Women’s Studies at Wheelock College in Boston. A long time radical feminist activist, Dines is a founding member of Stop Porn Culture. Her latest book is Pornland: How Porn Has Hijacked Our Sexuality (2010).
At non-profit Prostitution Research & Education in San Francisco, Dr Melissa Farley addresses the connections between prostitution, racism, sexism and poverty. The PRE Website is a widely used resource
Nina Funnell is a sexual ethics researcher and opinion writer who has written extensively on issues connected with violence against women. Nina also works as a victim’s rights advocate and was awarded the Australian Human Rights Commission Community (Individual) Award in 2010 for this work. Nina is currently completing her first book on sexting and sexual ethics education.
Ruchira Gupta was inspired to found Apne Aap (
Writer and social researcher Maggie Hamilton gives frequent talks and lectures, is a regular media commentator and a keen observer of social trends. Her many books include What Men Don’t Talk About, as well as What’s Happening to Our Girls? and What’s Happening to Our Boys? which look at the 21st century challenges that our boys and girls are facing.
Dr Susan Hawthorne has been involved in the Women’s Liberation Movement for around 40 years and writes fiction, non-fiction and poetry. She is Adjunct Professor in the School of Arts and Social Sciences at James Cook University, Townsville. She received her PhD in Political Science and Women’s Studies at the University of Melbourne and is the author of numerous books including Wild Politics (2002) and Cow (2011).
Professor Sheila Jeffreys is a lesbian feminist who has been an activist against violence against women and the sex industry since the early 1970s in London. She is a founding member of the Coalition Against Trafficking in Women Australia. Dr Jeffreys teaches sexual politics and international feminist politics at the University of Melbourne. The Idea of Prostitution (1997/2008) is one of her 7 books on the history and politics of sexuality, with The Industrial Vagina: The political economy of the global sex trade the most recent (2009). Her next books are Man’s Dominion: The rise of religion and the eclipse of women’s rights and a new edition of Anticlimax: A Feminist Perspective on the Sexual Revolution (both 2011).
Robert Jensen is a Journalism Professor at the University of Texas at Austin, USA. He is the author of All My Bones Shake: Seeking a Progressive Path to the Prophetic Voice (Soft Skull Press, 2009); Getting Off: Pornography and the End of Masculinity (South End Press, 2007), The Heart of Whiteness: Confronting Race, Racism and White Privilege (City Lights, 2005); Citizens of the Empire: The Struggle to Claim Our Humanity (City Lights, 2004); and Writing Dissent: Taking Radical Ideas from the Margins to the Mainstream (Peter Lang, 2002).
Originally from Canada, Christopher N. Kendall now practices as a Barrister at John Toohey Chambers in Perth, Western Australia. Formerly he was the Dean of Law at Murdoch University. Chris has published and lectured throughout North America and Australia on the harms of gay male pornography, sexual violence and gay male domestic abuse. In 2004, he published Gay Male Pornography: An Issue of Sex Discrimination (University of British Columbia Press, Vancouver).
Dr Renate Klein is a long-term women’s health researcher and has written extensively on reproductive technologies and feminist theory. A biologist and social scientist, she was Associate Professor in Women’s Studies at Deakin University in Melbourne until 2006 and a founder of FINRRAGE (Feminist International Network of Resistance to Reproductive and Genetic Engineering). She wrote on the dangers of premature medicalisation of girls in Melinda Tankard Reist’s Getting Real: Challenging the Sexualisation of Girls (2009).
Melinda Liszewski is a co-founder of Collective Shout and manages its Websites and campaigns.
Dr Julia Long is a radical feminist activist and campaigner, particularly involved with the London Feminist Network and OBJECT. She recently completed her PhD on the re-emergence of feminist anti-porn activism at London South Bank University. Julia is a firm advocate of women-only organising, and prefers marching and chanting to emails and online activism! Her professional background is in education, the voluntary sector and gender equality policy. Julia’s book on the resurgence of anti-porn feminism will be published by Zed Books in 2012.
Catharine A. MacKinnon, who worked closely with Andrea Dworkin until her death in 2005, including in originating the human rights approach to pornography, is Elizabeth A. Long Professor of Law at the University of Michigan, The James Barr Ames Visiting Professor of Law (long term) at Harvard Law School, and Special Gender Adviser to the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (The Hague).
Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson is the author of 26 books, among them: The Assault on Truth; A Dark Science: Women, Sexuality and Psychiatry in the 19th Century; Final Analysis; Against Therapy; When Elephants Weep; The Pig Who Sang to the Moon; The Face on Your Plate; and The Dog Who Couldn’t Stop Loving. He lives on a beach in Auckland with his golden lab Benjy, 3 cats, 2 sons, Manu and Ilan, and his wife Leila, a pediatrician.
Anne Mayne is a long-time activist against violence against women. She was the co-founder of Cape Town Feminists (1973) and Rape Crisis Cape Town (1976). Anne is the current vice-chairperson of Embrace Dignity, an organisation that campaigns against trafficking in women and girls.
Matt McCormack Evans was born in 1988 and is a feminist campaigner and activist. He is the co-founder and Project Coordinator of The Anti Porn Men Project. He has also worked for OBJECT, a leading human rights organisation that challenges the sexual objectification of women, and volunteered for UK Feminista, a new feminist activist organisation. He is currently in postgraduate education studying Philosophy at Durham University in the UK.
Dr Betty McLellan is a feminist ethicist, author, psychotherapist and committed activist of long standing. She is Adjunct Associate Professor in the Department of Social Work and Community Welfare and the Centre for Wom
en’s Studies at James Cook University, Townsville, and the author of Overcoming Anxiety (1991), Beyond Psychoppression (1995), Help! I’m Living with a (Man) Boy (1999, 2006) and Unspeakable: A feminist ethic of speech (2010).
Hiroshi Nakasatomi is a co-founding member of the Anti-Pornography and Prostitution Research Group. He is an Associate Professor of Law at Fukushima University in Japan where he teaches constitutional law, law and gender and peace studies. He has published Pornography and Sex Violence: In Search of New Approaches to Legal Regulation (Akashi Shoten, 2007) and co-authored Evidences: Sex Violence and Harms of Pornography Today (ShakaifukushiKyougikai, 2010).
Natalie Nenadic is an Assistant Professor of Philosophy at the University of Kentucky, USA. She teaches in the history of philosophy (especially Arendt, Heidegger, and Hegel), ethics, social and political philosophy, and philosophy of law, especially international justice. She has lectured widely on these topics in North America, Europe, and Australasia. With Asja Armanda, she initiated the Kadic v Karadzic case in New York against the head of the Bosnian Serbs which pioneered the claim for sexual atrocities as acts of genocide under international law.
Dr Caroline Norma is a Lecturer in the School of Global Studies, Social Science, and Planning at RMIT University, and a member of the Coalition Against Trafficking in Women Australia (CATWA).
Dr Helen Pringle is in the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences at the University of New South Wales. Her research has been widely recognised by awards from Princeton University, the Fulbright Foundation, the Australian Federation of University Women, and the Universities of Adelaide, Wollongong and NSW. Her main fields of expertise are human rights, ethics in public life, and political theory.