Warning: this article uses language that many readers may find shocking or offensive.
Most of the pornography discussed on this website and others like it is visual, generally video material or images in magazines and “newspapers”. As such, most of the analysis of this material and its effects is focussed on the visual impact of porn; the actual content of the images is what most of our debate and thought looks at. I want to look, however, at another aspect of pornography, which is often overlooked- the language which it uses. This involves the way that people in pornography talk to and about each other, but also the way that pornography is put across online. Language is a far more subtle than the extreme pictures that people who watch pornography are subjected to, and it seems likely that most people would presume that the biggest impact of porn on human thought and behaviour is not the result of the language that pornography used. Nonetheless, I intend to argue that it is a far more significant aspect of porn than has generally been presumed.
Language is important. It is everywhere; from where I am sat, I can see literally thousands of words, on the spines of books, on bits of paper on my desk, on the side of a stick of glue, on the cup which contains my almost cold tea, on the shopping list hanging up on the fridge, on the screen in front of me. Words are everywhere because they are, essentially, the most important form of communication that human beings have. More significantly, the careful use of words can change the way we think.
Don’t believe me? Elizabeth Loftus is a psychologist who is very interested in how our recall is altered by influences which come after the event. In an experiment, Loftus showed a group of people a collision between two cars, and afterwards asked each person separately to estimate the speed at which the cars were travelling when they hit each other. Loftus altered the verb in the question each time; she asked some groups to estimate the speed when the cars “hit” each other, others to estimate the speed when the cars “smashed” into each other and so on. Interestingly, the more “severe” the verb was, the higher the participant estimated the speed of the vehicles to be. If we had asked these people if they believed that the question they had been asked had made them answer in a certain way, I am sure that most of them would have argued that they came to these conclusions completely independently. They did not notice it happening, but Loftus’ use of words completely altered the perception of her participants.
You probably don’t notice it happening to you, either, but words are chosen carefully everywhere in order to influence us, and not always in the blatantly obvious tabloid style. Advertising, politicians and pretty much anybody who wants to influence you carefully choose their words in order to make you think in certain terms. It happens all the time.
So, what sort of language does pornography use? The titles of porn films which can be found easily on the internet often contain words which are offensive to women. The vast majority of these words focus on the sexuality and sexual availability of women. “Slut” and “whore”, for example, are two words which clearly relate to the idea that these women are promiscuous and sexually available, but in a definitely offensive and demeaning way. (As an interesting note, it is much harder to list words in the English language which are offensive about a promiscuous male that it is to list words about promiscuous women.) We do have to wonder why whoever writes these titles seems to have such aggression for women whose “sluttish” behaviour they are clearly gaining pleasure from. This undeniably negative language seeks to demean the woman, making it crystal clear that this is not a depiction of sex between two equals, but an example of treatment to a woman who can be described as a “whore”. The word “bitch”, which has no real sexual connotation, is used here to simply demean the woman, and for no clear reason other than hatred. I can not understand at all why such language is used; it is logical to presume that it is nothing more than hatred of women.
The words used to demean women are the standard nouns of pornographic language. Depictions of women in pornography are often as subordinates, and the language used reinforces this message. Women are hated for no apparent reason, with words applied to them which actually refer to them doing what the viewer wants them to do. The word “whore” is an insult about prostitution, but surely the viewer is aware that the “actress” in a porn film is, basically, a prostitute. It is as if such language is used because the viewer does not really want to be watching an act of prostitution at all; is the use of the word “whore” an attempt to deny that porn is a form of prostitution?
What about the verbs used on porn websites? Again, these focus on demeaning the woman. It is worth noting that the focus of this language is the female more often than the male, as the predominantly straight, male audience is not interested in the male at all. The words used to describe sex put forward a strongly pornographic image and we are left in no doubt that sex is something that men do to women, rather than being mutual, consensual and loving. The word “fuck” is used as a verb frequently, to put forward a pornographic idea of sex and sexuality. The word sex has a very different connotation to the word “fuck”, but it is not a connotation which fits in neatly with the pornographer’s perception of what he is creating.
So, the words used in porn are generally the sort of word you wouldn’t use in a job interview. More importantly, they are demeaning to women and put forward a pornographic interpretation of sex. But what does this matter if these words don’t actually have any effect on us?
As I have already said, and as Elizabeth Loftus has shown time and time again, careful selection of words can certainly have a huge impact on our thoughts. The use of words can actually change our memories, the very things which most of us would consider to be fairly accurate and not open to manipulation. Spin-doctors and politicians know that they can influence our thoughts simply by using words. Look at the row about what words should be used by news broadcasters to describe the present Government; Labour spin-doctors have said that it should be referred to as the Conservative-led Government, whereas Tory and Lib Dem insiders clearly prefer the use of the word Coalition. This is more than an issue of semantics, because the connotation of these different words can change the way you perceive events, and can alter the way in which you think. And look at the last few sentences- did you even notice that I used the word spin-doctor and the word insider to describe identical groups of people, and did this have even the tiniest effect on the way in which you read the sentence? It probably did, even if you didn’t notice it.
Language is so essential to our thoughts because everything we do or think or feel has to be expressed in terms of language. Our thoughts are limited to a certain extent by our vocabulary. The Danish word “hygge”, for example, expresses something which most Danes understand the meaning of, but because there is no English translation we can not really understand the true meaning of the term. We translate it as “cosiness”, which is not an adequate description at all.
This is an area of pornography which has not been given a great deal of examination in the past, quite understandably. I don’t claim to have all the answers, nor do I claim that this has been an exhaustive analysis. My belief is that users of pornography are influenced by the use of words which are demeaning to women; these words frame their thoughts and define sex and sexuality in pornographic terms. My point is not that this is deliberate, I think it is far more likely that it is simply an expression of a culture amongst the people who create and share pornography, but the influence of these words is, in many ways, similar to the influence of words in political items such as propaganda. I hope that this article encourages debate and thought, and if it has made you consider something that you have not previously considered then I feel I will have achieved my goal in writing this. I would be very interested to hear your thoughts in the comment section below.
No related posts.
Good post! I was planning to write an article about this myself, it really is an area of pornography that hasn’t been discussed much. People usually only talk about the content of the images, though these days the language is far more brutal (and revealing of the nature of most pornography). Almost all porn titles and descriptions contain sexist, racist and violent language. A comprehensive analysis of the language of pornography is needed.
Very interesting. My suggestion is that we start to describe the male equivalent of a female “matress” as a “duvet”.
Comment from Facebook group:
This is a good discussion. The language used is very important, so is the language used by women themselves in porn and the lies they tell. The way they reinforce this between each other and portray this language as good. It does spill into normal life. Women who are not prostitutes get called sluts and whores, both by men and women. Yet a man is a stud and more recently a pimp (which has somehow become a good thing?!!) The sex trade is a sickness in many ways and does effect us all in more ways than we realise.
..P.s. It IS brainwashing. The images and language are brainwashing people. Repetition of degrading language, shots, acts, lies etc etc. They ARE brainwashing us and the nest generation (12 – 17 year old), who very sadly are the biggest consumer group of internet porn.
From Facebook:
On the subject of language, I can’t recommend highly enough the book “Language in Thought and Action” by Sam Hayakawa. It speaks about how language shapes our reality, and how language is used to influence thought.
Interesting post. But on the topic of language, it’s ‘from where I am sitting’ not ‘from where I am sat’.
Sorry about that Rachel! It’s embarrassingly ironic!
Very interesting article. One thing which I really find ironical is that, if we intend prostitution as “getting paid for money”, there is no better example than pornography where women AND men are equal, because in this case both of them are prostitutes. As you say in your article, women in pornography are prostitutes; if we want to see it like that, then, we should not forget (and unfortunately people do forget it and they do it quite often) that men are prostitutes as well in porn. They are also getting paid for sex and they are as promiscuous as those women. But, ironically, no one really seems to care about it and the attention is only focused on the women and their behaviour. This is what I mean when I say that porn is meant for men and some people dare say I am wrong! Thanks for this post.
The grotesque, cruel, and humiliating language accompanying most intros to videos on-line reflects a perspective that viewers use to consume these images of male and female prostitutes working. It’s also a certain type of theatre, in that the actors/actresses, who are not enjoying the sex, put on their skin, while the writing, or the talk that the actors and actresses give each other, is part of the screenplay.
The exception, and it is true for a lot of porn, is that the actresses or actors are sex-traffic victims or coerced by intimidation or the threat of withholding their drugs. In that case, the language reflects genuine contempt for the porn “stars”, most likely.
Even then, any mix of porn shows every type of porn available for consumption and some of it is obviously intended to be a recording of sex where one or both parties are not acting. Whether they’re enjoying themselves or not is a different story, and depends on how awful what is shown happens to be. For the most part, though, the most widely consumed porn is still the paid stuff, and the writing is part of the theatre. You can compare it to the writing for a horror film “Jason dismembers more innocent teenagers”, “SAW: torture everywhere!”, or a romance “True love at last” “Never leave me for another”.
Like other kinds of entertainment, porn seems to want to put viewers in the worst frame of mind possible. There are other perspectives a person could have while viewing sex than that women are “bitches” or “whores”, but it does shut down positive responses from viewers to their own tender/jealous/frustrated/lonely/angry/bored feelings that an imagined sex act might induce, and replaces it with some kind of calculated selfish cruelty on the part of the viewers. Then the viewers are led toward more variety, which means more money for the producers and distributors, IMO.
Shelley Lubben in one talk on youtube suggested that porn actresses utterly hate their male viewers, that those actresses love to wreck your marriage, addict you to porn, or leave you lonely and ashamed of yourself. She also explained, with searing honesty, why that was. Her explanation was calming, in a certain way.
Mrs. Lubben’s explanation portrayed something very different than the writing that goes with the videos, and that writing is there to help cover up the truth of the actresses (and actors) work. There’s also the horrible stuff that happens outside the edited video, which would truly be a turn-off for most, if can you imagine:
“Watch the beautiful and suicidal underage mom while she sits on the bloody feces rag pile waiting for the director to finish his piss. Her handler’s been slapping her, she’s drunk, and she needs money for her meth so she’s gonna do the 20th anal sex take of the day despite the flap of bloody flesh she’s gotta rip from her anus first” 46:37 minutes long
If we are talking free porn, which probably makes up the majority of porn viewing today, we can’t know that for sure. The language and content reflect what the pornographers think their viewers want, not what those viewers actually want. They might just be watching it because they can’t get anything better for free. (Has someone ever studied if paying for porn is a far higher moral threshold for most people than just watching free porn? It is after all the combination sex+money which is at the heart of the Puritan morality that drives the western World.)
BTW it would be extremely interesting to watch a hetero couple act out the script of a homosexual (lesbian or “androsexual”) porn movie, which often are far more playful.
My point was actually that the content producers are trying to lead the viewers with the choice of words, not a statement about who wants what.
Whether the scripts are playful or banal or simply evil, it’s the treatment of the actresses and actors involved that is the problem. In a hollywood film, everything’s special effects and faked, no animals, much less people, are harmed in the making of the film. In porn, though, the actresses and actors are severely mistreated, to make what you see, and only sometimes to show it on-screen.
Amateur porn can be even worse, involving sex traffick victims and other forms of abuse, so if your goal is to avoid watching genuine abuse, then hollywood porn is probably better than amateur porn.
“My point was actually that the content producers are trying to lead the viewers with the choice of words, not a statement about who wants what.”
They are trying, but are they succeeding? Into the equition one must include the fact that it’s mostly free.
“Whether the scripts are playful or banal or simply evil, it’s the treatment of the actresses and actors involved that is the problem.”
I have very little sympathy with able-bodied people with perfect bodies. (Well, at least they were perfect before they were so stupid as to ruin them doing porn!)
I worked in PR for 20 years and am the daughter of two Fleet St journalists. Language has been used throughout history to isolate and dehumanise groups of people in order to allow the dominant group to bully a subordinate or minority group and not feel bad about it, hence the use of words such as Yid, Paki, Wog, Bitch, Gash etc. If the insult wasn’t intended to women, they would call the male actors bastards and pricks … but they don’t. Porn makers know exactly what they’re doing with their chosen use of language … and exactly the same techniques were used in Rwanda, Nazi Germany and Bosnia to isolate and dehumanise one group of people from another. Extreme, but true. Russians did it p
”it is logical to presume that it is nothing more than hatred of women” is it? premise and logic fail
”“whore” is an insult about prostitution, but surely the viewer is aware that the “actress” in a porn film is ~ a prostitute. It is as if such language is used because the viewer does not really want to be watching an act of prostitution at all; is the use of ~ “whore” an attempt to deny that porn is a form of prostitution?” you lose your own argument against yourself…….