The history of porn as we know it today is a small one. Before the internet, the vast majority of porn was images, whether postcards, glossy mags, underground zines or erotic literature. Only “porn theatres” (most widely seen in the US) and porn shops screened and rented out the videos, complete with the inevitable and tedious “money shot” that perhaps were designed to make masturbation more closely mimic the act of sex. Internet porn started as almost exclusively paid sites, allegedly because high traffic levels meant servers were expensive. There is an alternative explanation, however: like porn theatres, sites charged, because they knew sex sold. Like many other growth industries, porn created its market – it produced something everybody had previously been fine without, but once created, couldn’t seemingly live without, and charged for it. It’s been shown to be easy to bring in punters with the same cheap combinations of promises and nudity.
Nowadays, there is a huge variety of “free” porn, on sites like youporn, redtube, etc. I put “free” in quotes because although no money leaves your wallet to access the content, these sites still have great swathes of advertising to make it profitable. This further strengthens the theory of market creation: as in-home, readily accessible pornography has become “necessary”, sites have successively undercut each other until one offers porn that you don’t need to lose any money for, and thus access even more.
If pornography did not create its own market, there is a simple analogy to make. If we need video pornography, why not porn theatres on every street corner? Why not live porn? Live porn does exist, of course, it’s better known as the peep show. Otherwise identical to filmed porn in that the performers cannot see the audience or feed off their reaction as in most live shows, peep shows have a tiny fraction of the audience internet pornography does. Now, when we have free porn, perhaps that makes sense, as peep shows charge entry. And I don’t think it’s the shame of being seen entering such an establishment that puts people off – after all, many men openly talk about porn and masturbation, even watch it together on occasion. Many men are also often defiant about their “need” to watch it to their partners.
This, incidentally, does beg the question- why is porn not considered infidelity? If I were to walk into a room and find my partner masturbating because s/he was so aroused by the sight of someone else, I’d be pretty upset. In a technological age where phone sex, webcam sex and naked picture messages are common between partners the world divides physically, why is exactly the same stimulus from a sex worker considered acceptable?
Perhaps we should see the seemingly inexorable rise in internet porn and – we must assume – masturbation to it as a form of sensation seeking. Consider the Mitchell and Webb sketch about home working (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KGg1567fzTY), where it’s supposed that it’s impossible to spend time at home alone without furiously masturbating. Scanning the comments below, most are admissions of the exact behaviour joked about in the video.
This idea of rising-wanking-levels (a study I feel will never make the BBC, if it is ever commissioned!) I tie, partly because of my own experiences, to the idea of masturbation-as-happiness. Masturbation is not happiness; it’s great, but it won’t change your life. People trapped in mines or lifts or earthquake wreckage together for weeks stagger out dying of thirst and hunger, not because they haven’t had a wank for a bit.
Where I think this has come from is a particular form of capitalist media-driven dissent control. To quote the psychologist Oliver James: “the Beatles hit ’All you need is love’ really showed how warped our thinking had become by the end of the 60s”. This is a message we see throughout the media – if your life is bad, find love, and nothing else will matter. Consider for a moment how many falling-in-love films there are. Thousands? Now, how many seizing-the-means-of-production films are there? Alright, in a less Marxist idiom, how many films show a just society and eradication of poverty as the plot’s climax. Ten? Less? How often have the messages of the romantic films been, “lots of things are not going well but none of them matter now because I have the girl/guy”?
But it’s not as simple as that. If uppity trade-unionists’ credentials were handed to dating agencies if they made a nuisance of themselves to bosses, I think we’d be a bit better off. Instead, we’re not given love to shut us up. We’re given sex, dressed as love. Love, in capitalism, means sex, because only sex in capitalism is a transaction and thus marketable. Everything from the Beach Boys’ “Wouldn’t It Be Nice” to “American Pie” tells us this. Sex in capitalism, like sex in porn, is very basic and formulaic – it has a beginning (foreplay), a middle (penetration), and an end (the man ejaculates). As Nina Power points out, pornography is clearly work, as in reality, “sex isn’t just a succession of grim orgasms and the parading of physical prowess, but something closer to slapstick and vaudeville”. Pornography has helped make sex into work in more than just the San Fernando Valley. Pornography is always on younger women, done harder, done more brutally, more painfully. It is rarely more than an expression of violence.
Power’s point is particularly illuminated by a scanning of faces in porn. Nobody smiles. Nobody ever laughs. If sex, and therefore love, in a capitalist idiom, is the pinnacle of wonder, why the hell isn’t anybody looking happy when they do it? It isn’t because sex is intrinsically unpleasant. It’s because what we see in porn isn’t really sex, it’s violence. Much as sex does not require penile penetration to be sex, penetration does not imply sex. What we see in pornography is not really sex, it’s violence, often committed against women whose consent is frequently coerced, if given at all. It’s an open secret that orgasms are faked, or indeed that the women enjoy it on any level other than that it pays the bills.
Men are aware of this, consciously or otherwise. Studies as far back as Zillmann ’86 showed lower self-report life satisfaction and happiness in all areas in porn-exposed groups. It’s well known that prostitutes make up a large proportion of porn actors, and that men are more likely to accept rape myths and commit violence against women if they’re regular porn users. The effect of over-frequent masturbation on paraphilia can damage relationships (that ‘need’ to masturbate and consume pornography). Others can list better than me the numerous studies on the impact of pornography in society. What concerns me is the inability of men to resist it. If Zillmann’s study shows us that porn users are less happy, why use it? The answer, of course, because it’s sold to you, very very effectively – you rarely even realise you’re paying.
This manufacturing of desire is a fundamental principle of western media. Consider X Factor. It’s awful, you know it’s awful, you know you don’t want to watch it, but then you do. Having watched it, you agree it was awful. But you watch it next week too -like a car crash, you know you ought to look away but you can’t stop yourself staring. X Factor is one of the biggest selling TV shows in the country, but it’s not because it’s the best, the one that’s life-changing, or different, stimulating or awe-inspiring. It’s merely the one with the biggest budget. The problem with porn lies here, in the marketing, because enjoyment is irrelevant; the world’s easiest thing to sell, sex, is being sold, on a huge global scale, to the detriment of everyone everywhere, and there doesn’t seem to be any way to stop it.
No related posts.
"Instead, we’re not given love to shut us up. We’re given sex, dressed as love. Love, in capitalism, means sex,… http://fb.me/PmjvWlzf
Absolutely brilliant piece!
wee antiporn thing've mine published: http://www.antipornmen.org/2010/12/06/the-marketisation-of-sexuality/
The Marketisation of Sexuality – http://www.antipornmen.org/2010/12/06/the-marketisation-of-sexuality/ This site is so right on, so often.
“Pornography has helped make sex into work in more than just the San Fernando Valley.”
Sad if true, judging by what’s out there. The obvious mix of nude models and pornography made using women from foreign countries, I would have to agree, porn is being made everywhere, but behind it is sex trafficking and prostitution, and lots of scummy criminals.
“…why use it? … because it’s sold to you, very very effectively.”
I doubt that’s the reason, if you literally mean sell. Availability precedes use, but sales do not precede availability. Sales follow availability. The product sells itself before ,during, and afterward.
Even if you mean “…because it’s marketed to you”, the product creates its own market.
What shocks me is how much crime is permitted in order to make the stuff. The faked orgasms is one thing, the forced sex, or even coerced sex, is another.
Generally it’s the pimps who seal the deal and force the prostitutes to work, so it might be true to say that porn is pimped, and the women in it are coerced, though more accurately, in gay porn, I believe some of the men are coerced, and furthermore, in straight porn, the men do the work like a job, and not necessarily a likable one. PEOPLE put aside their preferences and likes for money.
I’m not sure male porn performers are having that much fun, injecting their penis to get it hard and so on, or popping viagra, to get through their day and pay the bills or buy their drugs or for some other reason, maybe pay their child support?
It’s a little unclear to me that the pimps are all men and the prostitutes are all women, given how much stress is being eroticized by porn.
The ickiest women are doing to men in straight porn appears to be pissing on them (on the men). Men also lick women’s buttholes, that’s something I would demand some drugs for too.
The “violence and humiliation” of felatio, with women choking and obviously NOT liking it, is horrible. Snuffling on a (herpetitic) women’s clit while it oozes is not nice either.
One thing is clear to me, and that is that if the industry could turn men into victims reliably and sell porn to women with it, they would do it. Maybe they’re working on it! From what I’ve read, they’re doing it to the men of gay porn.
Also, the gender relations in some types of lesbian porn seem to imitate the one-up one-down thing, maybe to the point of rape, though I think that’s not mainstream yet, and I don’t know the stats on lesbian women’s porn consumption. Regardless, aggression is not an exclusively male trait.
Again, all to say I’m not concerned about people resisting porn as I am about the criminal nature of all of it. If it were really OK for porn performers to make porn, and all the criminality that’s out there were a good time had by all, then cool. But what people like is a show, and porn is a show.
If I look around, women like a show, too. Some like blood and guts, they get off on it. So I’m glad most women are not getting off on porn, but I doubt it’s a permanent condition, and the more obvious question will be:
What’s so appealing about watching something, and how is using a computer making that a new experience for people?
I think of the kids sexting each other, the teenagers growing up on video of each other, the adults who consume relationships and porn through the same channel, turning “non-penetrative” sex into a media product. It’s one way the porn criminals are piggybacking into mainstream culture, providing sexts along with the real bad stuff, encouraging college students to buy and sell each other’s porn, or just post it free like a trophy or humiliation. Now that is marketing, providing humiliation videos made by angry ex-girlfriends right next to videos of women getting tortured.
Amazing piece. Thank you for writing so frankly about this without any “sugarcoating.” If I may comment on this, the research showing decreased satisfaction was actually limited to sexual satisfaction/satisfaction with one’s partner/relationship satisfaction. That was really what made the study interesting, that porn really had no impact on anything but destroyed relationships.
Thanks very much folks
Just quickly, @Noah – when I said “porn has made sex into work in more than just the San Fernando valley” I didn’t mean the spread of pornographers, rather the spread of pornographic means into private sex. Consuming so much pornography defines the way we have sex ourselves, making our sex become more work, measured in units of orgasm, decibels and duration.
It’s not lost on me that the laws against filming sex changed in California just as everyone was getting a VCR in their home. Money and power are what really sells. The pornographers get the money and the users get the illusion of power. Orgasms are like the gateway drug. You go for the feel good wank but you stay for the ego boost. Maybe that’s a poor analogy, but it seems like that to me.
antiporn men have another excellent posting http://fb.me/z08rND52
Fantastic article. I hope that you will continue to contribute. It was a little freaky reading the part about why isn’t porn considered infidelity, because I have made that same argument time after time to my peers. (Same with strip clubs, etc) Glad to know I’m not alone.
@Kit: Woah, that’s creepy. However, I think it’s more pursuit of a rush, just as much as possible, not some well-measured result. The work required to get the rush, if that’s what you mean, is important, sure, but the only thing that made me sad in your article was mention of porn outside SFV. It’s bad there, sure, but overseas, or underground in SFV, it’s production is part of a crime somehow, not really acting at all. That’s what they say, anyway, and from what I’ve seen and read, it looks true.
BTW, Thanks for your article, it was well-presented. Please write again! I’ll try to respond with more restraint and brevity next time.
‘the world’s easiest thing to sell, sex, is being sold, on a huge global scale, to the detriment of everyone everywhere, and there doesn’t seem to be any way to stop it.’
No it is not ‘sex’ but female sexuality as defined by the male-centric perspective which is being sold and this means women are the ones being ‘sold’ in order to increase multi national corporations’ profits.
Men are not the ones portrayed as dehumanised sexualised commodities – it is women, girls and even female babies who are being deliberately reduced to men’s sexual service stations. Ah profit of course that is the new ‘god’ which is why pornography is so profitable because men want it and the pornographers supply it.
Because pornography is now mainstream this in itself means everything is reduced to a ponified aspect – meaning of course women are not human we are instead just men’s sexual service stations. Not forgetting of course male sexuality in pornography is the eroticisation of male sexual dominance and male sexual control over women which is why porn has to be increasingly sadistic in its lies concerning female sexuality. In porn women don’t exist – we are just objects for men to rape, sexually torture and yes murder because the eroticisation of male sexuality is what male buyers demand.
@Valerie: I think one of the more depressing aspects is that people get very little satisfaction from it in any sense.
@Gypsy: Thanks! Of course the converse of this is that the sexual media exchanged in long-distance relationships has less impact than intended as it is reduced to competing in porn’s terms.
@Noah: Thanks. When I talk about sex-as-work I’m not referring to the physical labour or exertion, but the philosophical aspect, in that it is a joyless pursuit of a rationally measurable target, a form of economic resource-maximisation activity. Whereas of course it should be considered as in Power’s terms “slapstick or vaudeville”. I certainly don’t intend to gloss over the production of pornography outside of SFV; I meant it as merely a way of referring to the people in front of the lens.
@Hecuba – I’m not sure how to respond to your comment. As I had mentioned in the article that it isn’t truly sex but violence, I’m not sure what you’re correcting me on. I am of course aware that men are not the victims in the majority of pornography, and I don’t say that they are. I certainly agree that many things have been “pornified”. I’m wondering if you ought to put your feelings into an article?
All these crimes against women- all the pain and humiliation…. just so men can wank?
ALL THIS, just so men can WANK?
Sort of puts women in their place, doesn’t it?
Great article.
In my opinion and the opinion of my ex boyfriend, porn is infedility.
@danielnobody yeah. read the context if you want. you're not anti porn tho are you? http://bit.ly/iOjtR3
Again a very nice and astute article. However admittedly I found some phrases to go over my head to the point i felt I was in geometry class all over again. Thats not to say I didnt get the gyst of it or well most of it. Its just it goes to prove a point…and one I would say needs to be a talked about statistic or at least one of those overblown rumours. Something to the tune of “guys who resist and go without porn in lieu of seeking meaningful relationships are actually smarter than the average guy” I definitly think you are a good example that would prove that point. However thats not to say your iq would suddenly plummit if you watched an x ratd movie. Im just saying there are so many statistics and rumors these days. Why not have one that is on the positive side