Pornland
Page 1
Table of Contents
Title
Dedication
Contents
Preface
Introduction. Porn and the Industrialization of Sex
Chapter 1. Playboy, Penthouse, and Hustler
Chapter 2. Pop Goes the Porn Culture
Chapter 3. From the Backstreet to Wall Street
Chapter 4. Grooming for Gonzo
Chapter 5. Leaky Images
Chapter 6. Visible or Invisible
Chapter 7. Racy Sex, Sexy Racism
Chapter 8. Children
Conclusion. Fighting Back
Acknowledgments
Notes
Index
Copyright
PORNLAND
How Porn Has Hijacked Our Sexuality
Gail Dines
Beacon Press
Boston
For David and T, the loves of my life
Contents
Preface
Introduction. Porn and the Industrialization of Sex
Chapter 1. Playboy, Penthouse, and Hustler
Paving the Way for Today’s Porn Industry
Chapter 2. Pop Goes the Porn Culture
Mainstreaming Porn
Chapter 3. From the Backstreet to Wall Street
The Big Business of Porn
Chapter 4. Grooming for Gonzo
Becoming a Man in a Porn Culture
Chapter 5. Leaky Images
How Porn Seeps into Men’s Lives
Chapter 6. Visible or Invisible
Growing Up Female in a Porn Culture
Chapter 7. Racy Sex, Sexy Racism
Porn from the Dark Side
Chapter 8. Children
The Final Taboo
Conclusion. Fighting Back
Acknowledgments
Notes
Index
Preface
Howard Stern regularly features porn on his show, and for this he was the second-highest paid celebrity in the world in 2006; Hugh Hefner’s life, with his blonde, young, and embarrassingly naive “girlfriends,” is the topic of the hugely popular The Girls Next Door on E! Entertainment; retired mega–porn star Jenna Jameson has written a best-selling book and appears in numerous popular celebrity magazines, and Sasha Grey, the new, more hard-core Jenna Jameson, is featured in a four-page article in Rolling Stone in May 2009 and appears in a Steven Soderbergh movie. Kevin Smith’s movie Zack and Miri Make a Porno is warmly received by movie critics; pole dancing is a widely popular form of exercise; students at the University of Maryland show a porn movie on campus; and Indiana University invites pornographer Joanna Angel to address a human sexuality class. I could go on, but these examples illustrate how porn has seeped into our everyday world and is fast becoming such a normal part of our lives that it barely warrants a mention. The big question is, What are the consequences of this saturation for our culture, sexuality, gender identity, and relationships? The answer is that we don’t know for sure. One thing is certain: we are in the midst of a massive social experiment, only the laboratory here is our world and the effects will be played out on people who never agreed to participate.
The architects of the experiment are the pornographers, a group of (mostly) men who are out to maximize their profits: to create markets, find products that sell, invest in R & D, and develop long-term business plans. In short, and as this book will show, they are businessmen from start to finish, not innovators committed to our sexual freedom.
Porn is now so deeply embedded in our culture that it has become synonymous with sex to such a point that to criticize porn is to get slapped with the label anti-sex. As I travel the country giving lectures on the effects of porn, the insults thrown at me by some people are telling: they range from uptight prude to uncool, old-time man-hating, sex-policing feminist—the type of feminist who supposedly screams rape every time a woman and man have sex, the kind of feminist who has been derisively referred to as a “victim-feminist” because she supposedly sees all women as sexual victims incapable of enjoying sex.
But what if you are a feminist who is pro-sex in the real sense of the word, pro that wonderful, fun, and deliciously creative force that bathes the body in delight and pleasure, and what you are actually against is porn sex? A kind of sex that is debased, dehumanized, formulaic, and generic, a kind of sex based not on individual fantasy, play, or imagination, but one that is the result of an industrial product created by those who get excited not by bodily contact but by market penetration and profits. Where, then, do you fit in the pro-sex, anti-sex dichotomy when pro-porn equals pro-sex?
To appreciate just how bizarre it is to collapse a critique of pornography into a critique of sex, think for a minute if this were a book that criticizes McDonald’s for its exploitive labor practices, its destruction of the environment, and its impact on our diet and health. Would anyone accuse the author of being anti-eating or anti-food? I suspect that most readers would separate the industry (McDonald’s) and the industrial product (hamburgers) from the act of eating, understanding that the critique was focused on the large-scale impact of the fast-food industry and not the human need to eat and the pleasure the experience of eating yields. So, why, when I talk about pornography, is it difficult for some to understand that one can be a feminist who is unabashedly pro-sex but against the commodification and industrialization of a human desire? The answer, of course, is that pornographers have done an incredible job of selling their product as being all about sex, and not about a particular constructed version of sex that is developed within a profit-driven setting.
I want to make clear that when I talk about “porn,” I am referring mainly to “gonzo”—that genre which is all over the Internet and is today one of the biggest moneymakers for the industry—which depicts hard-core, body-punishing sex in which women are demeaned and debased. As someone who has lectured on college campuses for over twenty years, I have witnessed a seismic change in the way porn has come to shape young adults’ sexuality. Before the advent of the Internet, it used to be that some men sporadically “used” porn when growing up; it was the more soft-core type of porn, and they often had to steal it from older males, most likely their fathers. Increasingly, what I hear from students is that men today regularly (often daily) use the gonzo type of porn, and many have now become accustomed to its hard-core scenes. What seems contradictory is that for all their increased porn use, men today are also generally more responsive and interested in engaging in thoughtful discussion and reflection after my lectures.
In these conversations, I hear something I never used to—concern and anxiety from young men. These guys have just heard a lecture on the effects of porn, complete with an explicit slide show, and they are beginning to recognize how porn has shaped how they think about sex. While past generations of men who used porn had limited access to the material, this generation has unlimited access to gonzo porn. Nowadays the average age for first viewing porn is just eleven years. This means that, unlike before, porn is actually being encoded into a boy’s sexual identity so that an authentic sexuality—one that develops organically out of life experiences, one’s peer group, personality traits, family and community affiliations—is replaced by a generic porn sexuality limited in creativity and lacking any sense of love, respect, or connection to another human being. Many times I feel profoundly sad after speaking to these young men.
I have a college-aged son, and I couldn’t stand for the pornographers to set up camp in his sexual identity. When he was entering his teenage years, we talked candidly about the use of porn and its potential effects. I told him that as he was getting older, he would most likely come across some porn, and he had a choice to look or not to look. I said that should he decide to use porn, then he was going to hand over his sexuality—a sexuality tha
t he had yet to grow into, that made sense for who he was and who he was going to be—to someone else. Why, I asked him, would you give anyone something so valuable and precious, something that ultimately is yours, not theirs? When I look out at the men in the lecture hall, they remind me of my son, and I feel outraged that they are caught in the crosshairs of this predatory industry, one that has a huge financial stake in habituating them to a product that dehumanizes all involved.
While men tell me their stories of porn use, women have stories of their own. Most college-aged women I speak with have never seen gonzo, but their sexuality is increasingly shaped by it as the men they partner with want to play out porn sex on their bodies. Whether their sexual partners pressure them into anal sex, want to ejaculate on their face, or use porn as a sex aid, these women are on the frontlines of the porn culture. Some capitulate, some negotiate, and many are confused as to why the men they hook up with, date, or marry are always trying to push the sexual envelope.
But even if a woman stays away from men who use porn—no easy task given its widespread usage—she can’t insulate herself from it. Women’s magazines, fashion ads, TV, music videos, and box office movies bombard women with images that would have, a decade ago, been defined as soft-core porn. Whether the case is Britney Spears writhing around almost naked or Cosmopolitan magazine informing readers that porn could spice up their lives, women are increasingly being socialized in a culture that is hypersexualized, and at the center of this is the image of the young, toned, hairless, (often) blonde white woman gazing seductively at the camera.
This hypersexualization has put pressure on women to look and act like they just tumbled out of the pages of Maxim or Cosmopolitan. Whether it be thongs peeping out of low-slung jeans, revealing their “tramp stamp,” their waxed pubic area, or their desire to give the best blow job ever to the latest hookup, young women and girls, it seems, are increasingly celebrating their “empowering” sexual freedom by trying to look and act the part of a porn star.
While such a shift is toasted by mainstream magazines, the porn industry, and even some feminists as an indicator of society becoming more sexually free, many female students I speak to aren’t joining in the celebration. They feel pressured, manipulated, and coerced into conformity. Men they hook up with expect porn sex: anonymous, disconnected, and devoid of intimacy, and if they don’t get it, then they move on. And even if the women deliver, the men still move on because in a porn culture, one woman is much the same as the next, as long as she meets, to some degree, the conventional standards of “hotness.”
Although I have been studying the porn industry for over two decades, nothing prepared me for how quickly hard-core, cruel porn would come to dominate the Internet. I could see the images getting harder and harder core over the years, but they were still a long way from the brutality that is now commonplace in gonzo. The Internet caused a revolution in porn, but in my travels across the country, I find that there are many people, especially women and older generations, who are completely unaware of what is going on. This is why I’ve decided to include in this book at times detailed and explicit descriptions of what is now considered mainstream porn. In some cases it is simply not possible to describe the images without using the language of porn. Such language is used sparingly and only when it is necessary to convey the harsh reality of the images and their messages.
It is impossible to do the work I do and not be deeply affected. I am affected as a mother, a feminist, a teacher, and an activist. This is my attempt to invite you into the dialogue and to bring to public consciousness a problem that, I believe, is a serious public health issue. I hope you’ll consider and debate what I’ve found and, by the final chapter, perhaps you’ll understand why I believe that pornographers have hijacked our sexuality, and why it’s about time we wrested it back.
Introduction: Porn and the Industrialization of Sex Don’t Come Here Looking for Love
—Ad for Im Live, a porn Web site It is January 2008 and I am in a cavernous convention hall surrounded by hard-core porn images of women being anally, vaginally, and orally penetrated. I am trying to have a conversation with Patricia, a middle-aged African American woman who is a security guard working for slightly more than minimum wage, but we both have difficulty hearing as our voices are drowned out by the orgasmic sounds coming from the movies being shown all around us. Patricia is distinguished from the other women in the hall not only by her age and race but by the fact that she is fully clothed. Most other women here are wearing only thongs and pasties, in stark contrast to the thousands of dressed men milling around them. Some men stand in long lines waiting to have their picture taken with scantily clad women, while others wander from booth to booth, looking for the latest movie. I am at the Adult Entertainment Expo, the pornographers’ annual trade show in Las Vegas.
Patricia has a bad crick in her neck from trying to avoid looking at the porn that is being projected onto the screens. Needless to say, this is no easy feat. She expresses her frustration about being forced to work this detail, as she has never before seen porn. Divorced for many years, Patricia tells me that after doing this job for a few days, she now knows why she “can’t find a good man to settle down with.” As we talk, one of the very few African American porn performers in the hall walks past us, dressed in the usual porn garb of high-heeled shoes and not much more. Patricia taps me on the shoulder and says, “Go and tell her that it is not good for her to be doing this stuff.” At that very moment a fan goes over to the porn performer and puts his hand on her crotch; his friends take a picture. Patricia groans.
As someone who studies porn, I am accustomed to these kinds of images, but Patricia is new to them, and it is through her eyes that I see this situation for what it really is: a parallel universe where the complexity of humans, the multiple pleasures of life, and the deep connections that nourish and sustain us vanish. In their place are blow jobs, erect penises, shaved vulvae, surgically enhanced breasts, distended anuses, and a limitless supply of semen. Patricia and I are in the middle of a world that reduces humans to orifices and body parts, bled dry of soul, personality, history, and future, as life in the porn world is only about the here and now, where penetrating someone or being penetrated is all humans exist for. As I am writing notes for my book, Patricia starts to plot her future far away from Las Vegas.
As I wander around the hall, talking to pornographers, it becomes very clear that they are not particularly interested in sex. What turns these people on is making money. The only time they seem excited is when they are discussing market shares, niche products, or direct marketing versus bulk mailing in one of the many business seminars that accompany the trade show. Many of the porn producers I interview freely acknowledge that they are in the business to make money, not to further our sexual empowerment or creativity. They see themselves as caught up in a business that, thanks to the growth of the Internet, is like a runaway train. What they will admit is that porn is becoming more extreme, and their success depends on finding some new, edgy sex act that will draw in users always on the lookout for that extra bit of sexual charge. Not one of the men I talk to seems particularly interested in how these new extremes will be played out on real women’s bodies, bodies that are already being pushed to the brink of their physical limits. No, these men want their piece of the pie, and their single-minded focus on the bottom line is evident.
Making money in the porn industry is not as easy as it was during the early days of the Internet; the explosion in recent years of the number of films and Web sites has produced a glut of products. Paul Fishbein, founder of Adult Video News (AVN), an industry trade publication, has stated that “the laws of supply and demand have been turned upside down. We’re on par to put out 15,000 new releases this year, which is just insane.”1 The other problem Fishbein points to is the enormous amount of pirated or free material on the Internet. Everyone I spoke to at the Expo was worried about this highly competitive market, and many shared the feelings of one produce
r who told me that “this is an industry running out of ideas.” As we spoke, the latest film from this person’s company played on a screen in the booth; it featured a young woman being anally penetrated as she knelt in a coffin.
In fact, images today have now become so extreme that what used to be considered hard-core is now mainstream pornography. Acts that are now commonplace in much of online porn were almost nonexistent a couple of decades ago. As the market becomes saturated and consumers become increasingly bored and desensitized, pornographers are avidly searching for ways to differentiate their products from others.
This shift in both quantity and quality has had profound implications for the ways boys and men experience porn.2 To begin to understand the changes, consider how young men and boys were introduced to porn in pre-Internet days. Hormones raging, boys would most likely discover their father’s Playboy or Penthouse to masturbate to. These magazines, with their soft-core, soft-focus pictures of naked women, taught boys and men that women existed to be looked at, objectified, used, and put away until the next time. Their future supply of porn was dependent on what they or their friends could pilfer from their father’s stash or maybe from the local convenience store. The sexism of these images was bad enough, but compared to porn today, the porn of yesterday seems almost quaint.
Rather than sporadic trips into a world of coy smiles, provocative poses, and glimpses of semi-shaved female genitalia, youth today, especially boys, are catapulted into a never-ending universe of ravaged anuses, distended vaginas, and semen-smeared faces. When they masturbate to the stories, acts, and narratives of such porn in a heightened state of arousal, a cornucopia of messages about women, men, relationships, and sex are sent to the brain. The questions that need to be asked here are, What is the content of these images? and What do they say to ever-younger and more impressionable consumers about sex, love, and intimacy?