Before I begin this reflection, I want to warn you that there is nothing click-baity about this title or funny about this video. What you are about to watch approaches a very serious topic that may not be appropriate for all viewers. No graphic images will appear, but the content of this reflection may be unsuitable for children or triggering to those who have experienced abuse.
Just so you know. Like many people in the age of the internet, I used to have a fairly laissez-faire approach to pornography. Sure, its content was clearly obscene, something that people should probably avoid, but what grounds does anyone have to censor it?
If an adult wants to watch consenting adults perform sexual acts on one another, it may be weird, it may be against our Christian values, but it’s not criminal. It’s just obscene free speech. Ultimately, no one is getting hurt by watching smut in the privacy of their homes.
Or so I thought. The more that pornography and its effects are being studied, the more people are realizing that this could not be further than the truth. Many, many people are hurt by this industry.
This starts with the psychological effects on the viewer. While everyone knows that pornography presents a fantasy world, that it creates scenes that are far from the way things work, greatly distorting one’s approach to sex and relationships with others. In one study, a review was done of some of the most popular pornographic videos.
88% of them contained violence against women. Even worse, in 95% of the those videos, the women responded in a neutral or positive manner, subtly linking arousal and violence in the viewer’s brain. That… is a problem that hurts people.
As you can imagine, this creates a major problem for many men finding loving, lasting relationships with women—as their view of women is largely distorted—but is also the cause of tremendous pain in women as well. The more that women are seen as objects of one’s sexual desire, rather than real human beings, the more women are forced to live up to fantastical expectations that are demeaning or unrealistic, marriages are destroyed, and worst of all, sexual assaults are committed. The Minnesota Human Trafficking Task Force found 46 published research studies suggesting that prolonged pornographic exposure leaves someone at a higher risk of committing a sexual offense, sometimes seeking out prostitution to do so.
In one study, 80% of survivors of prostitution say that clients showed them pornography to illustrate what they wanted. While pornography as a single factor doesn’t cause people to become more violent or seek out prostitution, it is certainly a catalyst in some. But this is not the case for everyone, you say.
Just because some people aren’t mature enough to process what they are watching doesn’t mean that the content itself should be banned. What’s the often quoted line from Mark Twain? “Censorship is telling a man he can't have a steak just because a baby can't chew it.
” Regardless of how people may abuse it themselves, pornography is nothing more than freely consenting actors playing a role. They are free to choose what they want to do, and clearly they enjoy what they’re doing. Right?
Sadly… this is not always the case. Search for testimonials of people who got in and out of the business freely, and you will find the same sorts of statements over and over again. “It was often painful.
” “I was pressured to do things I didn’t feel comfortable doing. ” “I often felt degraded or abused. ” “What you were watching on that video was me being raped.
” Even for those women who freely choose to be a part of this line of work, who sign up to be filmed having sex, the experience is not always pleasurable. Some shoots may be glamorous, some even romantic… but in order to get those gigs, you have to submit to other ones that are highly abusive. Ultimately, very few get the nice roles; most of the rest are left to be degraded and dominated on camera.
But they chose this, didn’t they? And they can choose to leave. No one is forcing them to do anything they want, and on top of that, they’re getting paid to do this.
Right? Not always. One of the biggest fantasies in the pornography industry is that everyone appearing on camera is a freely consenting adult adult that chooses to be there.
This… unfortunately, is not the case, and truly where things get awful. Stories abound of women who began doing pornography, not because of a free choice they made, but because force, fraud, or coercion. Some are filmed against their knowledge or will, having their image exposed to the internet without any consent or renumeration.
In more than a few cases, women answer calls for modeling jobs, are secretly drugged during the shoot, and are raped on camera. If the producer likes the woman and wants more from her, he can hold onto the video, threatening her with blackmail to get more scenes. In cases where the model is an immigrant, especially when they do not have proper documentation, their identification can be withheld or proper citizenship promised in order to get them to keep working.
In many cases, the women that appear in pornographic films are not freely-consenting actors, they are prostitutes, forced by their pimps to perform sexual acts on camera, essentially making double the profit for the pimps. Given its secretive and illegal nature, it’s impossible to know how often this occurs, but one study found that approximately one-third of the victims of prostitution at a recovery house had been used in the production of pornography. One.
Third. And here’s the thing: they all look just the same as any other freely consenting “actor,” don’t they? They put on a good face, laughing and smiling in the video, not because they want to be there, but because they are being forced to and know that they will face punishment if they don’t perform well.
From the outside and simply looking on the surface, it appears like consent. But really, it's just fraud and entrapment. They are not entirely free to say no.
They consent out of fear. Think about that when you hear that 88% of those videos included violence. It’s one thing to think that they’re just actors in a performance, but the fact of the matter is that many don’t want to be there.
Many are not pretending. They are ACTUALLY getting abused, ACTUALLY getting raped on camera. They do this while millions watch, and there’s no way to know what’s real or pretend.
And because literally millions of people watch this stuff, producing billions of dollars of revenue with essentially no overhead—it has become abundantly clear in recent years that pornography is more than a private act that doesn’t hurt anyone—pornography incentivizes human trafficking. If, as it has been shown, pornography makes one more susceptible to committing sexual offenses and prostitution, then there is an inherent benefit for human traffickers to play a role in both industries, driving demand by increasing the supply. And whenever there is a demand for trafficked young adult women, brace yourself, the demand for trafficked children is soon to follow.
In 2013, “teen porn” was searched roughly 500,000 times on google… every… single… day. That’s 182 million searches a year for what most certainly amounts to pornographic images of underage women. And that was 7 years ago, so the number is surely higher today.
Even more impossible than determining whether a video contains consensual or forced sex, there is a question in millions of videos of whether or not one is actually watching child pornography. Which is just utterly horrifying and devastating… but pimps don’t care. Traffickers aren’t bothered by this.
In fact all it does is incentivize them to do more, to keep up with demand, to seek out more and more women to feed the ever growing billion dollar industry. For now, and to groom for the future. Are there women who freely consent to this line of work, getting paid good money to do what they want and treated like celebrities?
No doubt. There is definitely a case to be made that there are some in the pornography industry that are just exercising their free speech, that are not getting hurt. In some cases, it is nothing more than a question of decency and personal morality.
Anything in moderation, right? But the more you dig into this industry, realizing how many of the women are treated, how they find themselves doing things against their will, how they are nothing more than trafficked slaves put on camera for entertainment, the more you realize that this is not simply an issue of obscenity. It has nothing to do with personal conduct or free speech—this is an issue of justice.
I cannot say it any other way: watching pornography is not a private matter that hurts no one—it is an act that directly promotes the abuse of women and incentivizes human trafficking. Plain and simple. The more people watch, regardless of their intention, the more women will be trafficked.
If you’re looking for a reason to kick this habit, something beyond yourself to think about when you’re tempted with this ugly vice, I beg you to remember that there are actual people on the other side of the computer screen. Even though they may be doing everything that we want them to do, smiling and laughing and acting like they want everything that happens to them, this is a fantasy. Remind yourself of that, over and over again This is a fantasy.
This is not real. These are real women, children of God, many of whom do not want to be there. Some of them are straight up slaves.
Remember that. Remember them. Remember that this sin is not simply about the lust that it is in your heart that affects you and you alone… it’s about feeding an industry that abuses, rapes, and even enslaves women for our benefit.
The porn industry hurts a lot of people. I say, no more.
