As we worked on Big Porn Inc, it was difficult to be confronted with hardcore violence on a daily basis. In 1980, Andrea Dworkin wrote: “The visceral experience of a hatred of women [in pornography] that literally knows no bounds has put me beyond anger and beyond tears; I can only speak to you from grief (p. 287).” She continued: “And how can it go on like this, senseless, entirely brutal, inane, day after day and year after year, these images and ideas and values pouring out, packaged, bought and sold, promoted, enduring on and on, and no one stops it” (1980, p. 290).
We found ourselves relating to Andrea Dworkin’s words many times as we put this book together. We had to negotiate our own distress, but we also discovered that speaking out in opposition to pornography brings a deluge of online bile and e-hate (Jackman, 2011). Ironically, defenders of pornography who claim to be in favour of freedom of speech often engage in answering critiques of the pornography industry with personal attacks.
As we discussed what we wanted to include in Big Porn Inc, we questioned whether it was ethically appropriate to publish some of the content. The chapters on child-rape and ‘incest’-themed pornography were especially disturbing. Other opponents of pornography have faced a similar dilemma. For example, Robert Wosnitzer and Chyng Sun (a contributor to this volume), included disturbing images in their film, The Price of Pleasure. Wosnitzer (n.d.) justified their use in this way:
To not include these images would have distorted the reality of what is being actively consumed by viewers – a distorted version of reality that, interestingly, benefits the porn industry, enabling the industry to continue to construct an image of pornography that is harmless, sexual representations of consensual sexual activity, and masks the ideological world that pornography depicts.
We share this rationale in deciding to include descriptions and written representations of pornography and harm here.[9]
We also wanted to correct the pornography industry’s distorted version of reality by clearly saying: Here is why you shouldn’t believe the myths about pornography being simply ‘naughty pictures’ and ‘sex between consenting adults’. Here is how pornography creates and shapes appetites and demands. Here is how it operates to acclimatise and condition boys and men to demand the ‘Porn Star Experience’ from women and girls. Here is how men and boys have come to see the ‘money shot’ on a woman’s face as the climax to sex. Here is how boys develop a sexual taste for coercion. Here is how they learn predatory sexual attitudes. Here are some possible factors contributing to sex crimes committed by younger men (Malamuth and Pitpitan, 2007, p. 139; see also Nakasatomi, this volume).[10] Here is how men are socialised into eroticising and sexualising children through Pseudo Child Pornography (Dines, 2010). Here is why demand for child sexual assault images – including of babies – is increasing.[11] Here is how women have been turned into ‘human toilet bowls’. Here is how pornography and torture often look the same (see Dines 2010; and Kendall, Masson, Hawthorne, Farley, this volume).[12] As Rebecca Whisnant observed: “In today’s mainstream pornography, aggression against women is the rule rather than the exception… hostile, aggressive content is so prevalent in contemporary pornography that it would be hard for a regular consumer to avoid it” (2007, p. 115).
In Big Porn Inc we illustrate Whisnant’s claim.
Pornography’s training ground
We also wanted to explore how sex industry themes and messages have come to infiltrate the world of girls and boys. In toys and games, clothing, music videos, in the billboards wallpapering their daily lives, children are growing up in the shadow cast by pornography (see Hamilton, this volume). The globalisation of sexual imagery means that children become “valid participants in a public culture of sex” (Durham, 2008, p. 115). Little girls read in girls’ magazines where American pop singer Lady Gaga will be appearing next. When they go, they see her perform simulated sex acts on stage. Children’s cartoon characters are appropriated and turned into porn sites.
Children and young people are exposed to pornography at increasingly early ages. Pornography has become a global sex education handbook for many boys, with an estimated 70% of boys in Australia having seen pornography by the age of 12, and 100% by the age of 15 (Sauers, in Scobie 2007; see also Bryant, 2009).[13] In Michael Flood’s study of 16 and 17-year-old teenagers in Australia, 73% of boys had watched an X-rated video, with 1 in 20 watching on a weekly basis, and more than 1 in 5 watching at least once a month (Flood, 2010, p. 165). Girls are also exposed to pornographic images; Joan Sauers found that 53.5% of Australian girls aged 12 and under have seen pornography, with the figure rising to 97% by the age of 16 (2007, p. 80).
Michael Flood describes the potential harms to young people of these patterns of pornography use:
What are the effects of showing sexual violence without negative consequences?… [I]t is possible that such depictions result in beliefs that people like to be slapped or insulted during sex; that double penetrations and gagging are erotic, and that treating a partner as a sexual object is arousing… [Y]outh may expect that these behaviours should feel erotic and arousing and, if they hurt, may choose to ignore that or avoid saying something to a partner, for fear of being seen as prudish or inexperienced (2010, p. 47).
Gail Dines (2011) similarly notes the impact of pornography use on a boy’s developing sexuality:
Porn is actually being encoded into a boy’s sexual identity so that an authentic sexuality – one that develops organically out of life experiences, one’s peer group, personality traits, family and community affiliations – is replaced by a generic porn sexuality limited in creativity and lacking any sense of love, respect or connection to another human being.
Children are being transformed into living advertisements for the global pornography industry. Branded by Playboy and other sexed-up corporations, they are taught that consumer obedience is a form of rebellion, and that the only authority worth following and imitating is the very corporate culture that creates and feeds off their hopes, fears and desires while repackaging their feelings as hypersexualised consumer products (see also Quart, 2004). We should oppose this industrialisation of children’s bodies and minds by a pornified corporate culture just as we continue to campaign against the exploitation of children everywhere, whether in the mines and chimneys of yesteryear or the sweatshops, carpet factories and garbage heaps of today.
For many girls, naming and expressing emotional or physical pain is the new taboo because it transgresses the fake porn script of the continually up-for-it girl who takes it with a smile. The message is that men and boys must be able to get sexual release whenever they need to, and that women should accept men’s need for porn.
A 20-year-old university student expresses her misgivings on an Australian blog, but makes herself accept that even though she has sex with her boyfriend 5–7 times a week, she just cannot meet his ‘needs’:
I found some porn on my bf’s laptop a while ago and i hit the roof….i spoke to girl and guy friends about whether i overeacted and every guy i spoke to said that i had and that is normal and i would never find a guy who doesnt do it, where as all the girls agreed with me and said since he has a girlfriend and we have a very active sex-life then he shouldnt need to. I felt like if i was serving his needs and he was still watchn porn then obviously i wasnt enough or good enough….all the girls i discussed this with said this was the same reason they hated their boyfriends watchn porn.
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9 We did, however, exclude some of the most extreme porn Websites so as not to promote them.
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10 Exposure to porn has been linked to sexual crimes among young people in Japan. “Japan’s sex crime victims are predominantly teenagers. Of all indecent assault victims, 41 percent are aged 13 to 19, while a further 21 percent are of elementary school age or younger. The 13–19 age group also accounts for 44 percent of rape victims, a figure far higher than for any other demographic group. At 23 percent, nearly a quarter of all Japan’s convicted rapists are aged 19 or under” (Malamuth and Pitpitan 2007, p. 139).
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11 Detectives from Britain’s Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre (CEOP) are uncovering evidence that paedophiles are focusing on ‘pre-verbal’ victims whose inability to describe their abuse makes them attractive targets (Townsend, 2008).
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12 See also anti-pornography activist Nikki Craft’s collection of pornography and torture from
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13 See Ropelato (n.d.) for compelling 2005/2006 global Internet pornography statistics, http://internet-filter-review.toptenreviews.com/internet-pornography-statistics.html.