Instead of shaming porn actors and sex workers, Matthew Facciani says we should have open conversations about sexuality and sexual education.
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I’m not a social conservative and I think expressing one’s sexuality is healthy and no one should be looked down upon for engaging in erotic art or sex work. However, I’m still against mainstream pornography because of the harm it can cause those producing and consuming porn.
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The Western world has a long history of having repressive views towards sexuality. This continues today and many people are anti-pornography because they are against sexual acts outside of marriage and find publicly expressing sexuality to be perverse. While there are some non-partisan anti-pornography organizations, most of the vocal people against porn tend to be social conservatives that portray porn and sex work as immoral. In stark contrast of this, the most conservative parts of the United States also have the highest rates of porn consumption. I’m not a social conservative and I think expressing one’s sexuality is healthy and no one should be looked down upon for engaging in erotic art or sex work. However, I’m still against mainstream pornography because of the harm it can cause those producing and consuming porn.
A friend of mine who worked in porn shared with me a horrifying story of her being raped on stage after the cameras went off. I was sickened to read about similar stories of sexual assault, abuse, and coercion from other women in porn. The new documentary Hot Girls Wanted illustrates how the porn industry seeks out young women moving away from their hometown for the first time who may be easily coerced to do things they do not want to do. Former porn star Aurora Snow reveals how women in the porn business may feel like they can’t complain about sexual assault in fear of being labeled “hard to work with” and goes on to discuss how porn actresses have even more difficulties when reporting sexual assault. Beyond the abuse of women, pornography still has serious issues with the spread of STDs and HIV, but the industry is becoming better regulated.
Sociologist Jennifer Johnson has found men who regularly watch porn prefer pornography to real-life sexual encounters, need to think about porn in order to maintain arousal during sex, and that porn shapes how they think they should engage in intimate behaviors.
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Not only does porn culture have harmful effects on women, porn use can be harmful for men who watch it as well. Almost all young men watch pornography as it is often a form of sexual education for them. Ran Gavrieli discusses how mainstream porn removes mutuality and sensuality from sex, provides unrealistic expectations of what sex is like, and promotes violence and domination over women. Sociologist Jennifer Johnson has found that men who regularly watch porn prefer pornography to real-life sexual encounters, need to think about porn in order to maintain arousal during sex, and that porn shapes how they think they should engage in intimate behaviors. Perhaps some of these negative effects could be avoided if we could expose young men to sex in a healthy, realistic, and positive way that also doesn’t support a larger culture which is harmful to women.
I’d like to explicitly state again that I’m not against sexuality, the concept of sex work, or even erotic art! I think it is great there are feminist porn sites and it is awesome that there are porn actresses and actors who are safe and happy. I am simply opposed to the harmful aspects of porn culture for women and how it creates unrealistic ideas of sex for young men. Importantly, both of these issues could be resolved if our society evolved past its antiquated views about sexuality. Instead of avoiding the discussion of sexuality, we could have open and healthy conversations about sexuality and also provide much better sexual education. Instead of shaming porn actors and sex workers, we could have open conversations with them and try to reform the system. I’m definitely not campaigning to ban erotic art, but I would like more people to be aware of some of these issues in order have honest conversations about them and ultimately promote positive social change.
Photo: Robert Anthony Provost/Flickr
I agree! And moreover prostitution should be legal. No matter what reasons of sex workers for involving in such activity, whether it’s for the money or pleasure, we don’t have the right to question or stop them. It’s their choice, and according to law, everyone has free choice of employment. My friend is working in sex industry in http://uk.worldescortmap.com/ and I support her decision.
Matthew may I ask you why you are pro prostitution? I mean WHY? I have reread your article and do not find any other argument than the one when you say we must not shame prostitutes. But why do you want to live in a society with institutionalised prostituion.(excuse my spelling) Why is that a good thing ? To me sound like living in the past in times when double moral about sex was even higher than today. And WHO are the human being you expect to carry this burden for the rest of us? Are you,your wife and children… Read more »
@ silke I know how you feel. There was a study done that suggested that the accessibility of child pornography was linked to a reduction in child sexual assaults. When we discussed it. Some people said great, let’s make porn with young looking 18 year old actors. The pedophiles don’;t need to know that they are of age. I still found it repugnant. I was still against it even though it wasn’t child pornography. The fact that it would be marketed as such made it wrong in my mind. On the other hand, if it spared actual children trauma, wouldn’t… Read more »
thank your for saying this!
We have just been through a terribe case of child sexual abuse in my country,where babies, new borns were raped,and a women became pregnant and gave birth just to give the baby to a man to use for sex.
People like that are so disturbed that no porn will heal them and no porn will make them stay away from children. They want ” the real thing” and only well qualified experts in this field have to deal with them,
John Anderson, One more thing. You say the rate of sexual assult has gone done after porn online has become accessible. Maybe this is a fact in the US but in my country Norway we have more rape,MORE sexual assault,and more sexual harrasment than earlier. And 96% of the population in my country has access to the internet. Children have smartphones with the internet day and night, 80 % of children age 9-16 had their own smart phone in 2014. And here we do not see a fall in the rate of sexual assault! Last year a huge reseach project… Read more »
@ silke We discussed why the Nordic states some of the most liberal in the world had the highest incidence of reported rape in the world. Some in the MRM wanted to link it to feminism. The smarter ones told them they’re right, but it’s not feminism or liberalism causing the rapes. It’s causing the reporting. How many people would have said 20 years ago that 40% of young men would report having been coerced into sex by a woman (APA survey) with 20% saying the women used physical force. I think rape has always been around, but society has… Read more »
John I agree100% with you that our society should have wages a person and his or her children can live on. Living wages. And have schools and education systems that are good .really good.
Matthew
Here we see some of the problem
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2015/06/23/america-s-sexual-hypocrisy-addiction.html
I’ve been thinking about happiness lately. I was looking at how even feminism, which was supposed to liberate women and make them all they could be, has at least in some circumstances made women more miserable. In this light, I recognize that porn consumption could hurt men in that it interferes with their relationships with women and that might make them more miserable than the temporary fun they experience, but here are my thoughts. 1. Sexual assault rates have gone down since porn has become more accessible. I’m not sure you can conclusively say causation, but it does make a… Read more »
John If we want to reduce the rate of sexual assalt then we have to find more intelligent ways than to offer the kind of porn we find on line today. In my part of the world it usually friends that rape friends. Maybe you in US call it date rape, we do not call it that since we do not have the traditon of dating as you have, but rape here is most often between people that know each other. And we also have the rape where a strange attack somebody in the street or break into their home… Read more »
@ silke I remember this argument over gun control. Somebody mentioned why were there so many shootings in places like Chicago where there is strict gun control as opposed to other places where there isn’t. The argument went criminals will always get guns so it’s better to ensure that the “good guys” have them too. That makes criminals have a second thought about committing a crime. Here’s the thing. You look at places like Britain and there are very few gun related murders. Why? Most guns used in crimes in the United States were legally purchased where guns were legal… Read more »
John I must confess that I never read up on this issue and never gave it a deep thought. And when I say I am willing to accept it if nobody gets exploited is because I feel for certain people ,like the multi handicapped that live in institutions. At the time my country had free prostitution I had offers several times a day because my office was in the city center and in the exact streets where they stood.,I now talk about streets protitutes. My experience was that all those men that approched me during lunch hours were good looking,… Read more »
In the article I ask that we stop shaming sex workers and porn actors. I’m unsure how that means “the only way to have more sex is to pay for it.”
I have not seen shaming of porn actors among my friends and in news papers I read. But shaming seems to be something Americans do a lot? I my country it is not forbidden to sell sex only to buy it. In other word,the prostitute is not “shamed” but person that buy sex have to pay if caught. You use the word sex work,I prefer to use the word prostitution . And there one person buy sex from another person. Mattew,I agree with you that we should discouss both prostitution and porn. I find prostitution problematic, the way we see… Read more »
Piggybacking off the previous post and prostitution, I just read this article about 30 minutes ago and found it very interesting.
http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-33113238
Mattew I agree with you that better sex education is needed even if I do not know what people learn in school in the US(I am Scandinavian) but I do not think more prostitution is the answer. You will have no problem to find recent research that show there is a relationship between trafficking and prostitution. When a country makes it legal to buy sex then trafficking increases… I do not take part in the dicussion about porn,since I do never watch or use it. I know it harms me and my relationship with men , if I use porn.… Read more »
Around here we’ve largely stopped arresting prostitutes because they’re essentially the victims in all this. We focus on arresting the Johns and the pimps and largely leave the (mostly) women alone. I’m personally deeply skeptical of anybody that suggests that the norm is for prostitutes to be working because they want to.
The reality tends to be worse than what the author suggests of people producing porn. And because we’ve traditionally arrested women for prostitution, it made it really hard to get any cooperation against the people that are the bigger problem.
“Mattew I agree with you that better sex education is needed even if I do not know what people learn in school in the US(I am Scandinavian) but I do not think more prostitution is the answer. You will have no problem to find recent research that show there is a relationship between trafficking and prostitution. When a country makes it legal to buy sex then trafficking increases… ” So the answer to sex trafficking is to place limitations on what people can and cannot do with their own bodies? That approach seems deeply wrong to me bc it infringes… Read more »
What is your strategy to stop trafficking of children,men and women today Tony? The law that makes it illigal to buy sex does NOT say anything about what you can and can not do with your BODY Tony. It says something about what you can and cannot do to another human being (body and soul….) Just like we have laws that say we can not beat a child body,kill another body,etc. It is not perfect way to deal with trafficking and many disagree about this issue ,but please come up with some smarter ways to stop todays slavery! Each society… Read more »