Posts tagged Porn

I was having a discussion with several people on Twitter (mostly men and a few women) on how porn is not just dedicated to sexual gratification but a lot more than that. Little do viewers realize that the porn industry is notorious for its power in reinforcing ethnic stereotypes. A specific ethnic identity is limited and chained to a set of ‘traits’ and ‘characteristics.’ Asian women are shown as weak, easily dominated while Latina women are shown in roles of ‘spicy’ women with little control over their libido. In some clips, I have also seen Latina women portrayed typically as “illegal immigrants” in jail, indulging in sex with white police officers.

For an average man, the porn industry is simply about getting off to a few minutes of romping around in bed. For him, it is never about a women’s identity or control over her sexuality. It is never about ethnic stereotypes and reinforcement of racial images. But if you look closer, you’ll find financed racism in the porn industry where identities are toyed with and abused.

I remember viewing a clip shared by a friend once on how a white producer created a plot for a porn clip in which an “Iraqi” girl (read: a Latina girl wrapped in a hijab) had to “give her body” to a “brave” American soldier. It was beyond sickening.

You should read Darrell Hamamoto’s strong take on ethnic stereotyping in the porn industry. Here are excerpts of racial identities depicted typically in porn flicks:

Latinos and Hispanics

Pornography tends to stereotype Hispanic women as feisty, “hot and spicy Latinas”, sexy Señoritas, with a high sex drive and low impulse control. Many are portrayed as maids, illegal immigrants to the United States, or unfaithful wives. Since Latinos and Hispanics can be of any race (many are white Hispanic Americans, Mestizos etc.), cultural characteristics are sometimes portrayed via iconic items like South and Central American national costumes, sombreros, maracas, or Mexican dresses.

Asian women

Are viewed as sexually willing or submissive. Asian men are hardly portrayed in pairing with white women and not as common compared to white men with asian women porn. Asian women are mainly portrayed as the: “Dragon Ladies”, as servile “Lotus Blossom Babies”, “Innocent School Girls” in private school uniforms, “China dolls”, “Geisha girls”, war brides, or prostitutes. Japanese media have also at times sensationalistically promoted the stereotype of Japanese women overseas as “yellow cabs”. 

Black performers

Large penis size in Black men is consistently emphasized in pornography, often by exclusively casting actors with larger than average penises such as Lexington Steele, Kid Bengala, Jack Napier and Mandingo. Men are often treated to stereotypes of gang affiliation, working class labor, and are overrepresented in gang rape fetish films. Also, they are represented as overly aggressive and demanding, and are performing with white women. Similarly, black women are often portrayed with large breast and buttocks, or ‘booty’. They normally play a submissive role while performing with a white male.

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Homi Bhabha refers to this phenomena as racial fetishism as a fixation on other races being not different, but lesser or “mutilated” versions of the white male. Similarly, in her book “Racy Sex, Sexy Racism”, Gail Dines argues that “women of color are generally relegated to gonzo–a porn genre lacking any plot–which provides little glamour, security or status.”

First screened on Channel 4 in 2001, it follows Felicity, a 25-year-old single mother living in the UK, who is desperate to make money to improve her daughter’s opportunities. She is invited by a porn agent to meet movers and shakers in the so-called US ‘adult industry’. The audience watches as she goes from a bright, sparky, pretty woman to a cynical and emotionally exhausted shell.

Her agent introduces her to performer Max Hardcore, notorious for abusing and humiliating women during filming. Aware of his reputation for choking women during oral sex – and that he often asks his co-stars to wear little girls’ clothes – Felicity did not want to meet him, let alone work with him, yet she is pressured by her agent until she agrees.

When Hardcore chokes her she breaks down in tears, but he insists on her continuing, calling her a “fucking loser” and she is almost persuaded to continue until the documentary crew steps in for fear of being complicit in her rape.

Behold: Reasons why I remain against porn. Objectifying and dehumanizing women by using their economic position to one own’s advantage is not only immoral but terribly brutal. Pro-porn feminists and thinkers argue that if the woman shows consent in being degraded or “roughed up” then it isn’t ‘coercion’ or ‘rape’ exactly because she’s essentially agreed to being treated in that particular manner.

Now, it isn’t black and white when it comes to debating the legitimate nature of porn. We discuss the ratio of consent-to-coercion in this industry and we find that majoriy of porn trivializes abuse, objectification and rape:

Zillmann and Bryant found that the male subjects who were exposed to the massive amounts of pornography considered rape a less serious crime than they did before they were exposed to it; they thought that prison sentences for rape should be shorter; and they perceived sexual aggression and abuse as causing less suffering for the victims, even in the case of an adult male having sexual intercourse with a 12-year-old girl (1984, p. 132).

Larry Flynt of Hustler is asked whether the tactics employed in Hustler’s porn are healthy or even acceptable:

I try to explain that I absolutely support his right to free speech – but find the way he has chosen to use his free speech in Hustler despicable. I describe some of Hustler’s most notorious photoshoots to him. “Dirty Pool” depicted a woman being gang-raped on a pool table. A few months after it was published, a woman was gang-raped on a pool table in a town called New Bedford – and Hustler responded to the criticism suggesting they may have inspired the assault by publishing postcards of another woman being gang-raped on a pool table with the greeting: “Greetings from New Bedford, Gang Rape Capital of America.”

Johann Hari.

Similarly the power of the R-rated movies in terms of violence also desensitizes viewers’ response to sexuality-based crimes. According to Donnerstein’s report:

[…] The subjects went to a law school where they saw a documentary re-enactment of a real rape trial. A control group of subjects who had never seen the films also participated in this part of the experiment. Subjects who had seen the R-rated movies: (1) rated the victim as significantly more worthless, (2) rated her injury as significantly less severe, and (3) assigned greater blame to her for being raped than did the subjects who had not seen the film. In contrast, these effects were not observed for the X-rated non-violent films [7]. However, the results were much the same for the violent X-rated films, despite the fact that the R-rated material was “much more graphically violent” (Donnerstein, 1985, pp. 12-13).

What’s worse about the majority of porn is that men tend to believe porn correctly depicts the average woman. And I’m not kidding. According to a survey held by PBS, 86% thinks that porn is educational. The respondents were 80% male.  An education that generalizes the very variable essence of being a woman is not education, it’s negative stereotyping.

Then there’s RapePlay, a hentai-based RPG game inspired by “RapePorn”, in which the player may virtually rape a young woman, her sister and her mother. Read more about it here.  CNN reports here.

And a lot more. Porn culture encourages conditioned behavior of disrespecting women, stereotyping them, viewing their sexual needs as secondary, disregarding their desire to be pleasured (majority of the porn is based on pleasing the male player), and trivializing callous, demeaning treatment.

Thus, the documentary makes a valid point: A culture that has won the war of brainwashing women into becoming sex toys for men is a culture incapable of bringing women to the level where they are viewed as human beings.

Read more here.

This book has only added more to my conviction in eradicating pornography and prostitution by replacing both with employments that are rewarding in terms of finances and respect. Don’t you see how patriarchy and sexism has embedded itself so powerfully in our economy and education system that opportunities for women are always cut down upon and replaced with demeaning jobs in which they are paid for being objectified and humiliated beyond limits. If you don’t agree with me, try reading what Andrea Dworkin, an ex-prostitute, has to say:

“I want to bring us back to basics. Prostitution: what is it? It is the use of a woman’s body for sex by a man, he pays money, he does what he wants. The minute you move away from what it really is, you move away from prostitution into the world of ideas. You will feel better; you will have a better time; it is more fun; there is plenty to discuss, but you will be discussing ideas, not prostitution. Prostitution is not an idea. It is the mouth, the vagina, the rectum, penetrated usually by a penis, sometimes hands, sometimes objects, by one man and then another and then another and then another and then another. That’s what it is.

…prostitution comes from male dominance…male domination needs to be ended, not simply reformed, not made a little nicer, and not made a little nicer for some women.

…Any man who has enough money to spend degrading a woman’s life in prostitution has too much money. He does not need what he’s got in his pocket. But there is a woman who does.”

Read more here.