Pornified
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“I’ve heard people say that looking at pornography could be considered cheating,” Dave says, “but it strikes me as silly.” Cheating is an emotional betrayal, not a physical one. “If a married man were to spend a night in deep, heartfelt conversation with a woman who was not his wife, that’s probably more a case of cheating than for him to have meaningless sex with some prostitute.” Ascribing emotional meaning to pornography strikes him as a stretch.
Over the course of his thirty-four years, Dave has had a total of eighteen sexual partners. He and his last serious girlfriend—a woman he dated for six months—broke up about seven months ago. Some of Dave’s girlfriends have known that he looks at pornography. “Sharing my porn with a girlfriend is a very intimate thing,” he explains. Usually he keeps his favorite Web sites to himself. “I’ve only done it with a couple of girlfriends I really trusted. I was opening up to them. Both were interested in seeing the porn that I had and we looked at it together. Both women said that they liked it, and I liked that they liked it. With the others, I never told them, and the subject never came up.” The woman Dave is dating now is one of those he’s opened up to. They’ve been seeing each other for a few months, and Dave thinks it could become serious. “It was pillow talk,” he recalls dreamily. “She wanted to know about what I liked and disliked.” She’s seen some of the Web sites Dave likes to visit. They haven’t watched an actual pornographic movie together yet, however. “I think that would be … a pretty serious step,” Dave says hesitantly.
Not all their fantasies line up. The new girlfriend has confessed her interest in seeing pornography that depicts anal and group sex. “She’s wanted to have anal sex, but I can’t do that, I’m not comfortable with it at all.” She’s also discussed her rape fantasies with Dave, told him how she fantasizes about getting beaten, about women being beaten in general, and about getting raped herself. “Of course, she knows and I know that that doesn’t mean she wants to be raped,” Dave says. “She knows it’s wrong. It’s just a daydream.” Pornography that depicts rape scenes isn’t a turn-on for Dave personally, but he understands why it might be appealing to some people, “as long as they can clearly identify what’s reality and what’s fantasy.” In other ways, he and his new girlfriend are remarkably compatible. “She likes sex rough, she likes it to hurt—even in real life,” he says appreciatively. He can get into that.
The Supply: Porn.com
According to a major study of pornography across various media, with each iteration in technological advancement, pornography has become increasingly violent and nonconsensual. For example, in one study, a random selection of pornographic material, 25 percent of pornographic magazines showed some form of violence, ranging from verbal aggression to torture and mutilation, compared with 27 percent of pornographic videos. Usenet groups on the Internet depicted violence 42 percent of the time.15 “We might expect that just as individual consumers of pornography tend to tire of a certain level of explicitness and need more, so, too, would the market, acting as an individual,” noted the study’s authors. “The more pornography is consumed at one level, the less arousing this material becomes, as the consumer becomes used to—satiated with—the material. This satiation leads the consumer to seek out newer, more explicit, and more violent forms of sexual material that will again arouse him/her.”16 The authors then concluded that as new pornographic technologies emerged, pornography would become increasingly violent—both to satisfy earlier, upgraded demand and to bring the viewer to the next level. That research was conducted in the late 1990s, still the early days in Internet time.
Doubtless, the Internet has been a major driving force—perhaps the greatest force ever—behind the proliferation of porn. The kickoff may have been with a certain inadvertent combination of professionalism, celebrity, and amateurism: the landmark pornographic home video featuring Pamela Anderson and then-husband Tommy Lee, which is credited with bringing more users online than any other single event. Pornography has not only brought in new subscribers, it helped pioneer online payment systems, encouraged the use of streaming media, and sped the adoption of broadband. Pornography pushed the usage of Usenet and then peer-to-peer sharing networks like Kazaa, Brokester, and Bit Torrent as users learned to download, copy, and pass along their porn.
In turn, the Internet’s impact on pornography is practically a category unto itself. The Internet has thoroughly internationalized the world of pornography so that to speak of international borders with regard to production and tastes is increasingly meaningless. Americans consume Japanese manga (cartoon) pornography and gaze at nude photos of Dutch women. Russian women are virtually exported around the world, complicating the dimensions of international sex trafficking. Child pornography is pumped into Australia from across the globe. Men in Canada can visit the brothels of Bangkok from the comfort of their home offices. The impact on market growth is astounding. You can pump out one statistic after another; the bulging numbers are almost mind-numbing. According to the Internet content filtering company N2H2, there are 260 million pages of pornography online, an increase of 1,800 percent since 1998. In April 2004, Websense, a provider of employee Internet management software, revealed that the number of pornography Web sites in their URL database had grown seventeenfold in four years, from 88,000 in 2000 to nearly 1.6 million in 2004.17
Since the dawn in the 1980s of Usenet, a popular bulletin board service among techies and academics, pornography has been one of the most widely traded commodities online, becoming increasingly popular as the graphics capacity of computer software allowed. A 2001 federal study found more than 25,000 pornography files on file-sharing programs.18 Today, on peer-to-peer networks like Kazaa, 73 percent of all movie searches are for pornography (24 percent of all image searches were for child pornography specifically).19 And an estimated 22 million children regularly use these peer-to-peer networks. The amount of free pornography traded keeps rising. Another study, conducted by Big Champagne, a Los Angeles-based measurement firm, found that in March 2004, 51 percent of all video files being shared on peer-to-peer networks were pornographic, up from 42 percent in September 2003.20
Fueled by a combination of access, anonymity, and affordability, the Internet has propelled pornography consumption—bringing in new viewers (including children), encouraging more use from existing fans, escalating consumers from softcore to harder-core material, and propelling some over the edge into sexual compulsivity. Type “XXX” into Google and 106 million pages arise, up from 76 million six months ago. A 2004 study found that pornographic sites are visited three times more often than Google, Yahoo!, and MSN Search combined.21 Pornography even has its own Googlesque search engine, Booble.com (“Play with our boobles!”), which attracts more than a million visitors a day.22 Academics and psychologists have generated an entire field of cybersex sociology. The Computer Addiction Center at McLean Hospital has identified cyberaddiction, a syndrome often tied to pornography, and titles such as Infidelity on the Internet: Virtual Relationships and Real Betrayal and Cybersex Exposed: Simple Fantasy or Obsession? have hit bookstores in recent years.
“Here’s Where Things Changed”
Around 1996, Dave, who often uses a computer for work, started to look at pornography online. He began by viewing still photos and then—especially after he got broadband at home about four years ago—started watching video clips. Nowadays, it’s almost all always video. “And it’s always free—I’ve never paid for anything.”
“I guess, well, here’s where things changed,” he begins, a bit hesitant. First he was happy looking at magazines, which he kept around for a long time. So when he started with Internet porn, he also started with still photos, usually of naked women. But soon he discovered moving images, and once he saw what was available, his interest was piqued. “I found that I wanted to see actual sex acts, hardcore stuff, and especially group sex,” he says. It was always available, with so much more to be uncovered. The Internet offered endless exploration, voyeurism, and discovery.<
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Dave calls his preferences in terms of sex acts carnal: vivid, direct, hardcore are words he uses to describe the close-up images he enjoys. “The idea of anal and oral and vaginal sex all at the same time is very appealing to me.” His main focus is group sex. “I especially like multiple guys on one woman or multiple women on one guy,” he says. Dave was surprised to find out how much he likes “the money shot”—ejaculation images, which usually show the man ejaculating outside of a woman’s body. The Japanese style of pornography called bukkake, which typically features images of young Japanese women being ejaculated on by multiple men, and usually depicts the woman as upset or even crying, is surprisingly exciting. “I had never seen that before the Internet,” he confesses. “I guess there’s a slippery slope from naked women to something like bukkake.”
Look, he points out, it’s not like the images he likes to watch in pornography are necessarily things he would like to pursue in the real world. “It’s a turn-on for me to see group sex, but I’ve never done it in real life,” Dave explains. “If the conditions were right, I’d be open, but I’m highly skeptical that it would work out. In the real world, there are personal dynamics. It would probably end up being awkward or uncomfortable or result in some kind of relationship disaster.” The appeal is the fantasy. “It’s the complete carnality of it, the sensory overload. It’s just one hundred percent physical.”
A moment of silence passes. “I guess you could read into it as a psychologist that there’s some issue I have personally about getting too emotionally involved with women,” he says thoughtfully. “I’ve been accused of that by friends, ex-girlfriends. They say I’m reluctant to open up. But I don’t think porn is what makes me that way, or that my being that way drives my involvement with porn. I think it’s just that I’m a guy who is interested in and curious about seeing images of group sex.”
Recently, Dave has come across what he calls “disturbingly brutal images” of women and men with very large penises. His intense excitement surprised him. “Basically, the men are having sex with these women’s faces and the women are gagging on cum and on the dicks and they’re slobbering because it’s multiple guys, one right after the other,” he describes. “And these images are on sites where you know what you’re getting because the Web sites have names like Fuckerface and CockBrutality and Meatholes.” Dave lets out an abrupt laugh. “I know objectively that it’s horrid, but I have to admit that some of the images have been real sexual turn-ons.
“This is going to sound ridiculous,” he warns. “But I do prefer images where she’s lying on her back with her head bent back toward the floor and the guy is inserting his penis down her throat.” He also likes it when she’s getting stimulated at the same time and giving oral sex simultaneously. “I like the concept of pleasure and torture at the same time,” he explains. “I like the idea that her throat is just being used to get this guy off.” By comparison, a “pure image” of a guy “just getting off” while a woman closes her eyes and opens her mouth is “kind of boring.” It somehow seems too … plain. “But if the woman is having sex with one guy while the others are getting off on her, coming all over her—on her face, her breasts, her body—that’s really good.”
Still, his enjoyment bothers him in a way. “I know a lot of this violates the dignity of a woman,” he says. “When I realized how sexually turned on I was by stuff like bukkake, what I would do is force myself to stop and separate things in my head. I would make myself think, ‘Yes, that was an enjoyable fantasy, but no, that is not the way I want to be with anyone.’ I wish more people stopped and thought about it that way.”
The Supply: Porn Everywhere
Having conquered home and office, porn tech marches forward, now at a healthy sixty-miles-per-hour clip. The latest option is “dirty driving.” With built-in DVD players as the latest SUV accoutrement of choice, people can watch pornographic videos in the comfort and semiprivacy (depending on the tint of their car windows) of their automobiles. The number of cars equipped with DVD players and the number of passengers who use those players for pornographic purposes are unknown, because most people install players after they purchase their car. But entertainment systems are now available in 381 car models; nearly half of all buyers of the Nissan Quest minivan in 2004 said they want the DVD system.23 Such cars can be driven down highways and rural interstates where, increasingly, porn “superstores” are sprouting, to take advantage of low real estate costs and high profit margins, under banners like Lion’s Den Adult Superstore and X-Mart Adult SuperCenter—brightly lit and well-stocked emporiums just like their PG-rated mass retailer counterparts.
For those who would rather chat on the phone during their drives, the purveyors of porn have just the solution: cell-phone pornography. As of spring 2004, some fifty companies, carried by major telecom firms such as Vodafone and Hutchison, already provide such services in Europe. Cell-phone pornography in western Europe is estimated to reach $1.5 billion in 2005—about 5 percent of the total mobile data market.24 America is scrambling to catch up. A certain amount of adult material, mostly text-based stories or simple drawings, has been available via cell phone in the United States since the late 1990s. Now, with more cell phones featuring color display screens, digital cameras, and Web browsers, technology firms are offering more sophisticated ways to provide pornographic content. XTCMobile.com, for example, can transmit video clips of two to four minutes, pornographic screensavers, and “sexy” games, along with specialized rings that simulate groaning or moaning (you pick!)—all for $7.99 a month. “Turn me on—turn-on your phone” coaxes the company’s Web site, amid pulsing red animation and photos of porn stars. The company launched three phone channels in the spring of 2004. Another adult entertainment company, VTX, offers Pocketjoy, a device for downloading pornographic images to cell phones.
Pornography companies also use wireless cell-phone technology as a venue for advertising and promotion, using cells to announce adult films and Web sites, as well as related goods and services. Altogether, wireless pornography is expected to generate anywhere between $1 billion and $6.5 billion by 2007, according to telecom analysts.25 Technological advances occur every day. Next on the horizon are personal media centers, a Microsoft product that will allow people to download and watch videos from mobile video devices. Pornography is increasingly available on a range of mobile devices; just in time for holiday 2004, Playboy.com launched “iBod,” free pornography pics, for use on Apple’s iPod photo device. Altogether, The Yankee Group consulting firm estimates that the wireless pornography market will be worth $90 million within four years, with 500,000 consumers in the United States and 8 million users worldwide by 2008.26
Fueled by technological expansion over the past twenty years, the pornography business is raking in big bucks. The industry boasts its own annual trade show and trade publication; it employs lobbyists, lawyers, accountants, marketers, Internet gurus, and industry analysts. Pornography businesses trade on the NASDAQ and the New York Stock Exchange. Though estimates vary widely, in part a function of the still-clandestine nature and slippery business practices rampant in the industry, total annual revenues are likely $ 10 billion a year, and may be as high as $20 billion in America alone. (One reason it’s hard to pin down numbers is because the industry includes so many underground and private companies and because publicly held companies such as AT&T and Time Warner, which have substantial investments in pornography through their cable businesses, don’t break out their adult business figures.)
Pornography empires keep expanding their purview. Back in 1972, Larry Flynt entered the industry with the small-time launch of Hustler magazine, a hardcore expansion into full-body nudity and up-close genitalia shots, because, as Flynt put it disdainfully, “Playboy and Penthouse were parading their pornography as art with the air-brushing and the soft lens.”27 Today, Flynt’s domain extends from print (six magazines including Hustler, Beaver Hunt, and Barely Legal) to film (three production companies that create approxi
mately forty new titles a month), to Hustler retail stores, which include coffee bars and tasteful wooden details reminiscent of Borders bookstores. In 2004, Flynt opened his ninth strip club, the Hustler Club in New York City, and announced plans to expand his brand to television with Hustler TV On Demand. Perched atop his multimedia throne, Flynt is reportedly worth more than $750 million.
The Hustler Club empire is only one of many new “entertainment venues” for live pornography. Nationwide, the strip club business is flourishing. No longer are such clubs the shady front offices of mobsters; farewell to the mom-and-pop strip joint. The newest clubs belong to branded chains: the Penthouse Executive Club, for example, which in New York City cost $10 million to construct and features a chef who once worked at famed restaurants Le Cirque and Daniel.28 At these upscale clubs, businessmen gather after their workday, couples come in for mutual titillation, and people throw bachelor and bachelorette parties to celebrate impending marriages. Playboy Enterprises recently announced plans to revive the Playboy Clubs, the last of which closed in 1986. Soon, grown women will be “Bunny dipping” in their ears and tails in order to serve male customers drinks.
Multimedia conglomerates pop up all the time to fill in niche and growing categories. For example, Vivid Entertainment, a company boasting about $150 million in annual revenue, has marketed itself as high-quality pornography, with so-called Vivid Girls positioned to offer extra cachet compared with run-of-the-mill porn performers.29 The company claims double-digit growth in the past five years.30 New Frontier Media, Inc., with $43 million in annual revenues, operates a subscription/pay-per-view television unit and distributes branded programming through cable and direct broadcast satellite TV. Their Internet group sells content to monthly subscribers through its broadband Web site, partners with third-party gatekeepers for distribution, and wholesales content to other Web sites. New Frontier, traded on the NASDAQ, saw its stock price shoot up 775 percent between 2003 and 2004.