The pornography industry has rapidly grown from an eight-billion-dollar industry in 1996 to a whopping twelve-billion-dollar industry by 2005 according to adult video news (Bridges et al. 1065). It is quite clear from this statistic pornography has become a social norm Look at the case of Gabe Deem, recounted in CQ researcher, who at the age of 13 was already exposed to the online porn scene, but no sites were named specifically. His taste escalated to increasingly violent sexual imagery on porn sites. Ten years later, Gabe claims that he could not get aroused around his girlfriend and could only achieve arousal from watching porn in a phenomenon he calls the porn-induced erectile function. Deem didn’t even realize at first that porn was influencing his idea sex he just thought that rough sex was the norm. It wouldn’t be until Deem quit cold turkey on porn that his view of intimacy changed, and he now has a loving and healthy relationship with his girlfriend. Deem would go on to create a website for other men who suffered from similar performance issues stemming from an unhealthy relationship with online porn (Glazer,2016 867). Is the increasing amount of dehumanization of women in pornography a cause for more sexual violence towards women?
In 2017, Fight the New Drug, an organization that educates about the harmful social and psychological effects argued that web consuming porn can lead to violence. Additionally, FND included a research study listed the fifty of the most popular pornographic films, based on how often they were purchased along with how often they were rented, FND then analyzed the content of each of these films. Of the three hundred and four scenes contained within the fifty films, 88% contained forms of physical violence and another 49% depicted forms of verbal aggression between the performers. That leaves an average of one to ten scenes that didn’t contain a single form of aggression either verbally or physically. In fact, one disturbing scene managed to fit in one hundred and twenty-eight physical and or verbal attacks. Furthermore, the study also concluded that 95% of the victims were either neutral or appeared to respond with pleasure to the abuse (Fight the new drug, 2017).
Pornography is a widely accepted form of mainstream entertainment for society. Even a quick Google search can produce a handful of free pornography websites where anyone can click on a video and watch it without paying a dime. While not all porn depicts acts of violence, most of porn does show the male performer taking the dominant role leaving the female performer to play the submissive role scene after scene.
Pornhub, a highly popular pornographic domain on the internet for pornography, puts out an annual report on the data it has gathered from its users. A few of the many detailed analytics from the site contain information such as favorite porn stars, most popular search terms, and average time spent per visit. The 2018 analytics are quite disturbing. In that twelvemonth, Pornhub had 33,500,000,000 site visits which average out to more than four visits to the site per person. These numbers represent an increase of five billion visits from last year and 13.7 million more per day from the 2017 statistic. Furthermore, those 33.5 billion visits equate to 92 million visits average per day which is the populations of Canada, Poland, and Australia combined. If that isn’t proof that porn has become mainstream, Pornhub also broke down statistics for the whole year to per a minute to make the numbers semi-comprehensible. The numbers break down as the following, “207,405 videos viewed, 10,498 hours of videos watched, 57,750 searches, 12 videos uploaded & 2 hours of content, 13,962 user profiles viewed, 593 users followed, 167 friend request, 271 videos rated, 528 videos added to the playlist, 22 new video comments, 122 messages sent, 55 views of Kim K’s sex tape, 7708 GB of data transferred and 63,992 visitors.”(Fight the new drug, 2018)
If those numbers aren’t enough to convince the general public that the pornography industry is ubiquitous today, four of the most searched internet terms of 2018 were “lesbian”, “hentai”, “milf”, and “stepmom.” Other popular search terms playoff fantasies involving animated children, animals, and even incest that would be considered off-limits or unacceptable in society. To producers in the pornography industry, almost everything can be exploited and sold as a sexual fantasy. The greatest problem with all of this is that porn isn’t like a movie. Characters do not have genuine emotions for one another or learn anything through the script and storytelling. It is meant only to incite arousal and to be used for sexual entertainment (fight the new drug, 2018.)
Pornhub even reports a breakdown of its visitors according to sex and while the 2018 report shows an increase of three percent among female visitors, Women still only account for 28% of users within the United States leaving the other 72% of visitors male (Fight the new drug. 2018.). Based on the Pornhub reports stated so far, porn users are typically males who regularly view videos that depict females in a submissive role almost acting indifferent to downright enjoying being abused.
Today, pornography is just a quick Google search away on the internet and without any way to validate a viewer’s age, it can be accessed by just about anyone who can click the checkbox stating they are over eighteen. In a study conducted by the University of Arkansas clinical psychologist Ana J Bridges (Glazer, 2016 868), 487 college men were surveyed about their familiarity with porn. Nearly half of these men had been exposed to pornography at thirteen years old, which is an alarming increase from the fourteen percent in previous studies. This falls in line with another study conducted by the University of New Hampshire’s Crimes Against Children Research Center that states how children are increasingly learning about sex through pornography and that if their school is not providing sex education, porn becomes the only source of their sex. In fact, they even state that more than forty percent of children from the ages of eleven to seventeen have been exposed to porn either accidentally or by searching for it (Glazer, 2016 868).
Peggy Orenstein, a New York Times writer and author of Girls & Sex: Navigating the Complicated New Landscape, sat down with over one hundred adolescent and young adult females to get their take on sex in todays hypersexualized society Ornstein discovered that many of the women felt that they had to act out scenes from the pornographic films their boyfriends watched and compete with female porn stars. This often left the women feeling detached from their own bodies during sex. One 11th grade girl even went so far to say that she watches porn “because I’m a virgin and I want to find out how sex works” (Glazer, 2016 868).
In 2008 Carrol et al found that 50% of young men ages eighteen to twenty-six viewed pornography weekly with and additional 20% of young men watching pornography either daily or every other day. What’s worse, Wright and Tokunaga concluded that viewing objectifying media, i.e., hypersexualized commercials and pornography, causes men to be more likely to view women as objects which, in turn, gives a license to acts of violence against women. Carr and Vandeusen (Mikorski & Szymanski, 2016 259), also add that the higher the levels of consumption of pornographic materials the greater likelihood that the individual would rape a female if he knew he would not be caught. Men who already have a negative view of women and a positive view of violence eagerly consume the messages from porn that it is perfectly within their rights to ogle, touch, and use a women’s body whenever he so desires whether or not he has received consent (Mikorski & Szymanski, 2016 259).
Researchers are divided on whether violent acts in porn have a direct correlation to violence towards women. A study cited in Bridges article Sexual scripts and the sexual behavior of women and men and women who use pornography, of 1883 heterosexual men and women who watch porn confirmed that they have engaged in aggressive sexual acts. Some of the men slapped, choked, and roleplayed a rapist two-three times more than females according to Ana J. Bridges (Glazer, 2016 872). Bridges conducted another study in which she asked females if they enjoyed engaging in aggressive sexual acts that were depicted in porn. An overwhelmingly large amount of those asked replied that those acts were physically painful. As a result, Bridges expressed concern that porn is teaching young people that sex should hurt and that females are supposed to just take it without complaint (Glazer, 2016, p. 872).
Pro porn researches who disconnect the relationship between viewing porn and later acts of violence claim that many studies are conducted using artificial laboratories in which researchers decide what is shown to male college students. These men are not allowed to react physically to what they are witnessing unlike the general consumption of porn where the physical reaction is allowed. Weitzer believes that the participants in these studies may be expressing aggressive feelings due to the frustration of not being able to react to porn shown to them. He also points out that just because a person views violent porn doesn’t mean that he will necessarily act violently towards women. A meta-analysis of 22 population surveys across seven different counties shows the correlation of men physically and or verbally showing aggression towards women depending on the frequency of porn use. Weitzer disagrees with this analysis claiming that the population study does not consider any other factors or influences that could lead to more violent behavior to women. (Glazer, 2016 872). While that statement is true, the population study does show that pornography is at least one factor in why men are aggressive towards their female counterparts.
Paul J. Wright, lead author of the meta-analysis and professor of media psychology at Indiana University refutes that while there might be limitations in this one study, that these limitations could be addressed by other studies. He still concludes that even with these limitations the evidence can still point to the conclusion that pornography consumption is at least one factor of violence. Both sides can at least agree that there are just some men who have a predisposition of hostile attitudes towards women that that pornography just prepares these men to be violent towards women. Three decades of studies conducted by psychologist Neil Malamute, University of California have concluded that about 7 percent of men fall into a high-risk category. These men come from homes with a high degree of sexual abuse which may or may not be coupled with hostile attitudes. Some of these men believe that rape victims secretly desire rape play (Glazer, 2016 872).
Some sources point to decreasing numbers of date rapes as proof that does not lead to acts of violence against women. What isn’t addressed by these rape statistics is the grossly large amount of rapes that go unreported. There can be a numerous amount of reasons why rape is underreported, one main reason has to do with how rape cases have played out in the courts. To say that because more females are now reporting rape than in decades past is showing a decrease in rape is almost like saying that smartphones are making more people smart, it just doesn’t add up (Glazer, 2016 872).
The question at hand still is if pornography is a public health crisis. Dines, professor of sociology and women’s studies and author of Pornland: how porn has hijacked our sexuality (Glazer, 2016 872), believes it is. Dines states that pornography is an industrial product that is shaping the way our society thinks about gender, sexuality, sexual violence, intimacy, and many other social topics. She believes that we as a society should no longer sit back and allow the pornography industry to hijack the way we think about what sex should be and allow porn to dictate what we think real intimacy is. She believes we need to start putting public health above profits of the porn industry.
Dines’ opponent is Ronald Weitzer, a professor of sociology, who states that pornography has been turned into a scapegoat for a ton of other problems such as divorce and sexual dysfunction even going so far as to say that if masturbation is the end goal of watching pornography that it can’t possibly pose any health crisis at all. He argues that a lot of studies done ask to self-report their porn use and aggression to others or explore people who actively engage porn and how their experience towards porn is.
Finally, it may be concluded that the increasing amount of dehumanization of women is a cause of violence towards women because the pornography industry increasingly shows women being depicted as nothing other than objects to be used by their male counterparts who act indifferent or show pleasure in being physically and or verbally assaulted. Young people are being exposed to this through online free websites at a young age and may not be receiving formal education on sex through their schools. It has also been pointed out that if given a chance a male would rape a young female if there was a zero percent chance of them being caught doing it. Pro porn researches would also say that some men just have a predisposition depending on their home live to act violently towards women and that porn is not the only thing to be blamed. While pornography may not be the one and only cause of violence towards women, too many studies show that it is at least a factor to consider.