3 things you might not have noticed about porn
I don’t ever want to condemn porn. Young people don’t need to hear another “Don’t have sex, because you will get pregnant, and die!” and they especially don’t need to be shamed for thinking about, enjoying and watching (or filming) consenting adults doing the dirty.
However, a lot of shitty and negative things just emanate from the computer screen every time someone opens up their icognito’d RedTube window. This article is an attempt to point these things out, so that instead of mindlessly clicking ‘play’, we’re armed with tools to point out stuff that’s problematic. It’s okay to enjoy something that’s problematic, as long as you can understand and accept that it has issues.
1. It makes women a ‘product’.
You hear this all the time, that porn ‘objectifies’ women. But what does that even mean? Ultimately, porn is an industry and hetero men are their primary target. As such, porn is indexed by the ‘type’ of women it provides you – busty, teen, black, asian etc. They are often referred to as ‘whore’ or ‘slut’. This reduces the women in the films to some cluster of sex-related characteristics and not really a person.
2. The sex is unrealistic.
This isn’t as simple between knowing the difference between the screen and the real thing (clearly pizza delivery doesn’t always work like that). Porn can convey unrealistic things about how men’s and women’s bodies work, look, and what feels good to them. All the hairy, sticky, gross parts are literally edited out and can make people feel inadequate when their sex is hairy, sticky and/or gross.
3. It can get pretty violent.
We can all accept that sexual fantasy can vastly differ from what people are interested in doing in reality. That is, you might look for some really freaky shit on PornHub but be incredibly uncomfortable doing it in real life. However, watching violent porn does actually impact your thoughts and feelings (surprise, surprise). Meta-analyses of studies generally show correlation between pornography and sexual violence (especially amongst younger people). More insidiously, it shows connections between pornography and changes in beliefs, such as acceptance of the ‘rape myth’ (i.e. that women secretly are aroused by rape and aren’t really victims).
Ultimately, this is all just an exercise in mindful media intake, whether it be the evening news or something a little on the naughty side. Porn can be awesome or it can be damaging, it’s up to its consumers to use its powers wisely.
