Yes Means No: Porn in the Modern Age
By Olivia McDermott
TW: Mentions of sexual assault and gender-based violence
The orgasm gap. Erectile dysfunction. Body image issues. The objectification and commodification of people. Violence towards women. Femicide. What do these topics have in common?
The short answer is the rising ease with which current generations can access free, online pornography. Discourse surrounding sexual violence can no longer ignore the effects of widespread pornography use, as it has permeated almost every area of culture.
The average age at which a boy will first view porn is as young as eleven years old, and 73% of boys aged between 13 and 17 have watched porn. As such, porn has become the most prominent way of introducing sex to adolescents. Such statistics are made much more worrying by the fact that 88.2% of porn scenes contained physical acts of violence, of which 97% of the violence (punching, gagging, choking etc.) is aimed at women. There is thus a harsh and undeniable disparity between the treatment of men and women within this industry.
A study by The Children’s Commissioner for England uncovered that while 23% of children who had viewed porn were disgusted by what they saw, 47% were simultaneously aroused, bringing to attention how sex and pleasure become conflated with violence. If the average person’s first encounter with porn was at the age of 18+, when most individuals have been socialised to view violence as unacceptable, perhaps the consequences of porn use would not be so damning. Witnessing filmed, sexual abuse at any age is distressing. But when boys from the age of eleven are learning that sex is synonymous with pain, suffering, and violence, the result is a generation of men who are not only desensitised to aggression towards women, but who have learned to be aroused by it. And it is not just porn that perpetuates this narrative— depictions of graphic violence can be found in almost all areas of our culture.
Highly sexualised language and images are frequent in films, books, magazines, video games, advertisements, and music videos. Modern consumers can watch a scene in which a chainsaw falls directly onto a woman, slicing her in half, or play a game in which one of the sole objectives is to purchase a woman, rape and murder her, all while tucking into their dinners, without the blink of an eye. Desensitisation, in any form, is dangerous, as it not only limits one’s ability to empathise with victims but even encourages violent behaviour. To dismiss porn as fiction disregards the hugely detrimental effects caused by the association of pleasure with the dehumanisation of other people—most often, women. Porn does not exist within a vacuum, but within a society that is already running low on empathy and accountability.
Gail Dines, Professor Emeritus of Sociology and Women's Studies at Wheelock College, makes use of the phrase ‘pornified culture’ in her 2010 book Pornland. The term speaks to the infiltration of problematic content and standards into mainstream culture. Admittedly, much of her research focuses on the male experience, as men are four times more likely than women to watch porn. What these studies fail to acknowledge is the impact that widespread porn usage is having on women.
At the most basic level, 62% of women feel negatively about their body image. In 2013, over 11,000 women underwent breast augmentation surgery, and each year, over 2,000 women undergo a cosmetic surgery known as labiaplasty to give them the ‘perfect vagina.’ In a survey of men and women under 30, 47% of women reported that they removed their pubic hair, compared with only 11% of men. This contrast seems astounding, until you remember the impossible standards for women’s bodies that are depicted in porn. Porn actresses often have tiny waists, immense curves, and no pubic hair; they are often white, have no visible disability, and, interestingly, never say the word ‘no’. What we are left with is a very narrow image of what female beauty and sexuality looks like. Some groups within the third wave feminist movement have chosen to celebrate this hyper sexualisation of the female body, but as Gale Dines puts it, ‘this is pseudo-empowerment is a poor substitute for what real power looks like – economic, social, sexual, and political equality.’
If porn is meant to accurately depict female pleasure, why do nearly all scenes contain penetration, when up to 90% of women are unable to orgasm in this way? Kath Woodward’s book, The Short Guide to Gender (2011), demonstrates how such a culture is responsible for the ways in which ‘patriarchal power operates in the field of gender representation.’ In other words, porn presents us with sexual relationships that favour men and which are founded upon exploitation, violence and dehumanisation. In these relationships, women have little choice but to conform to these standards if they do not wish to be labelled prudish, frigid, or vanilla.
In many cases, women are even encouraged to embrace these so-called ‘kinky sex moves’: magazines like Women’s Health even endorse choking. This pairing of violence with sex has exended into an endless list of kinks, including rape play, skin cutting, electrostimulation, erotic asphyxiation – some truly unbelievable stuff. And these euphemisms are having tragic consequences.
In 2016, a woman named Natalie Connolly was found dead at the bottom of the stairs of her home. She had suffered 40 separate injuries, including internal trauma, a fractured eye socket, and vaginal arterial bleeding. On a call with emergency services the morning after her death, Connolly’s partner, John Broadhurst, claimed that the injuries were from consensual ‘rough sex.’ Broadhurst received just under four years in prison for manslaughter. In October 2019, MPs proposed additions to the law, resulting in the Domestic Abuse Act 2021, which ensured that this could never happen again. Speaking in defence of these additions, MP Harriet Harman stated, ‘For years, men got away with murder, claiming, “She asked for it.” We have to shut down this modern version of the defence, and for Natalie: We will get justice for her in a change in the law.’
If the effects of porn are this grievous, why does porn still exist, and why is it becoming more and more widespread? We ban rape, murder, theft, and hateful types of speech— why can’t we ban porn? Feminist activists and educators, Andrea Dworkin and Sally Weale, suggest that the issue is a lack of care: Dworkin finds that dehumanisation plays a significant role in allowing sexual torture to occur unchallenged, and Weale suggests that bans would be possible if ‘we cared as much about misogyny as we say we do’.
It is also easy to forget about the structures that the porn industry rests upon, including sexism, racism, ableism, and exploitation motivated by a capitalist market. Yet, we must remain hopeful that through education and conversation, we can repair the deep rifts created by pornography. Indeed, Dines believes that such a recovery is possible: ‘what has been socially constructed can always be socially deconstructed.’