Porn and abuse.

http://www.thefword.org.uk/blog/2008/04/porn_and_abuse

By Laura Woodhouse | 12 April 2008, 18:13

Disclaimer: I’ve had to focus on heterosexual relations and sex here,

as I have little experience of anything else.

It’s always seemed logical to me that porn use could affect the
sexual behaviour of the user. After all, there’s a reason companies
spend billions on advertising. We learn about the world, about
standards of behavour, about norms and values, through what we
see and hear as we grow up, and if someone grows up using porn,
that is where they are going to gain much of their understanding of
sex from. If, like me, you grow up without directly accessing porn,
you may well learn a lot about sex from experiences with someone
who did. And in today’s culture, even if both partners grow up
without watching porn, the porn industry’s influence is growing: the
images of women on lads’ mags covers in your local newsagent, the
trend in ripping out all your pubic hair, thongs for tweenies, women
performing stripper moves in music videos, the list goes on.

If it wasn’t for porn, would this guy** (and many more, if you read the
comments thread) think it was fine and dandy to shoot off in a
woman’s face without so much as a by your leave? Would some
guys think ejaculating on a woman’s body is similarly bog standard,
no-need-to-ask-first behaviour? Would so many young women think
sex with a guy requires preremoval of all body hair? Or fake orgasm
noises?

Yes, many of the messages mainstream porn sends out have been
around for centuries: the dominant male/passive female motif being
a prime example. Porn has not necessarily singlehandedly created
these messages. But it does a mighty fine job of disseminating
them. So, to say that porn has no influence whatsoever on our
sexualities, the expectations we have of sex and of our sexual
partners, seems pretty naive to me.

Which brings me to this***. A seventeen year old Australian girl gang

raped in a style which clearly imitates a certain strand of
pornography. The rape was probably planned, the men took photos,
threatened to kill her if she reported it. The writer of the article
concludes that “pornography has made it very sexy to hurt and
humiliate women”. Rape is often about power and control, but this
particular crime also certainly seems to be about sex. Porno style
sex.

Yes, rape and abuse and the hurting and humiliation of women are
not necessarily a product of porn use. Not all porn users will rape
and abuse women, and those that do may not do so as a direct
consequence of porn use, or by reenacting what they see in porn. (I
think many will hurt and humiliate women, intentionally or not,
because of the way in which sex and gender roles are portrayed in
much porn - see that thread at Jezebel).

But, in the light of cases like the one above, I really don’t think it’s so
crazy to suggest that porn use in our patriarchal society - a society
where women are portrayed as sexual objects for male pleasure,
where rape can’t happen if she was wearing that, or said yes to that,
or drank that, where men have a biological “need” to access
women’s bodies - can in some cases encourage and lead to the
abuse and rape of women. It sadly makes a lot of sense.

Hat tip to sparkle*matrix for the article.

**http://jezebel.com/gossip/how-porn-ruined-sex/how-about-you-
dont-ask-to-come-on-my-face-on-the-first-date-333148.php
***http://www.onlineopinion.com.au/view.asp?article=7114&page=0

http://www.onlineopinion.com.au/view.asp?article=7032

The digital age becomes a dark age for women

We might estimate that more than half of the Australian population

now has access to the Internet. Internet usage rates boomed from
the year 2000. There are large class and regional differences in
access, but age tends to be the main factor deciding whether you
use the Internet or not. Children in Australia born in 1995 and
turning five in 2000 are likely to have now, by 2008, had the Internet
play a big role in their school, home, or social lives. These kids will
be 13 this year.

The Australian Institute in 2003 reported that two in five boys in

Australia had sought out pornography on the Internet. Just under
three quarters had seen an x-rated video. A survey taken in the US
in 2005 found that 38 per cent of 16 to 17-year-old boys had sought
out pornography on the Internet.

Even excluding file sharing and credit card sites, these boys would
have encountered no problems in finding the pornography they were
looking for. In fact, they might have been surprised at the range of
things they could see men doing to women. For free they could have
seen pictures of men pulling women’s hair while anally penetrating
them, grabbing women around their necks while orally penetrating
them, or ejaculating on women’s faces while slapping them. Or they
could have seen a whole group of men clawing a lone naked
woman.
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Looking at the pornography that’s on offer on the Internet at the

moment would probably be a scary experience for most women. The
days of polite dinner party debate over “erotica” are long over. It’s
difficult to describe it as anything but pure woman hatred. You might
think the worst part is when the pornography shows women
pretending to enjoy being hurt and humiliated by men. Until you see
the pornography that openly shows women crying. The thought of
men and boys masturbating and “enjoying” themselves while they
look at these pictures is almost too much to contemplate.

The 2007 medical journal finding that “high pornography

consumption added significantly to the prediction of sexual
aggression” makes sense when you see the pornography of the
Internet. Holding onto the idea that women are human with human
feelings must become more and more difficult for men as they watch
pornography. Developing a sexuality that’s not connected to the
humiliation of women is surely a difficult task under these
circumstances. Leaving this view of women behind in the bedroom
must also be a challenge for men encountering women in their
workplaces, schools, and families. Surely it would be tempting for
men to think about these women on the Internet whenever a “real
life” woman annoyed them, rejected them, or stood in their way.

This is what the 2007 study’s finding linking pornography to male

sexual aggression is talking about. When the day comes that a
woman - either inside or outside a man’s bedroom - objects to
something that he wants, pornography is right there in the man’s
head as a resource. He has learnt from pornography what women
are, and what rights he has in relation to them. It doesn’t matter
whether or not a woman is keen, he will go ahead and exercise his
“rights” regardless. The estimated 1,000 cases of drink spiking
involving sexual assault in Australia in 2003 is a symptom of this
training men are currently receiving through pornography.
Where do women fit in a society where large numbers of men are
looking at pictures of women being brutalised and sexually
humiliated?

What are women to think of the fact that our male leaders over the
next decades might have had significant exposure to pornography
from a young age?

Will these men be able to perceive of women as human beings with

feelings? What if they don’t?

The coming decades are unchartered territory for women. We don’t

know what the “social experiment” of mass pornography
consumption by males will mean for us. Will the idea that women
don’t relish everything men do to them become unthinkable? What if
the word “rape” slips out of popular usage? Will mass porn
consuming countries like Australia become uninhabitable for women
and girls?

Fortunately or unfortunately, there are women around who know and

can tell us exactly what the future for women under mass
pornography consumption will be like. Women, who men have used
in pornography; girls who have been raped as part of men using
pornography; and wives who have had their husbands “ask” them to
act out scenes from pornography already know.

Listening to these women and their stories is key to understanding

what is at stake for women as we enter the new era. More than a
vaccine for women’s cervixes, women’s lives will be saved through a
campaign to fight the sex industry and stop the digital age turning
into a dark age for women.