Porn and Ethics: Sexual Pleasure or a Commercial Industry?

Modern porn, thanks to the internet, has insinuated itself into human life more than ever before. From stickers to channels and groups on social media and Telegram, the notion that one can remain safe from porn is misplaced. The prevalence of porn has even influenced the literature and imagination of publications like Yalasarat, and young people are familiar with the faces, names, and characteristics of porn stars; the idea that porn stars might in the future be celebrities who influence political processes such as voting is not at all far-fetched.

In liberalism, what you do with yourself is nobody else's business, and a porn film is also on the internet, so it seems there is no problem if someone watches a porn film, because individuals have made the porn film based on agreement and consent, and you are watching them, enjoying yourself without harming anyone—what could be more ethical than that?!

In order to enjoy porn, certain presuppositions are necessary. For instance, that its actors are genuinely enjoying themselves, that sexual desire led them to this profession and not other factors, and that there is no systematic oppression in this industry. You may not agree with me on all three of these, and you might point to other presuppositions. But let me say why such presuppositions at least seem necessary. The psychological structure of us humans is such that certain concepts are intertwined. For example, when we speak of blaming, we presuppose responsibility. For you to be able to enjoy porn, certain presuppositions must also hold sway. Therefore, familiarity with the dimensions of the porn industry and awareness of what goes on in this industry can help you see whether knowing these facts aligns with the presuppositions necessary for enjoying porn.

Watching porn and masturbating or deriving sexual pleasure from it is not merely a biological and physical event; it has far broader socio-cultural dimensions, attention to which is essential for an ethical examination of watching porn films. In the modern world, we do not witness the production process of the products we consume, but this should not lead us into naivety, making us assume that whatever reaches us is desirable. Whether this product is a news report, a bottle of drink, or a porn film. In what follows, I want to address what the book Pornland: How Porn Has Hijacked Our Sexuality (published in 2010) has raised on this subject, a book that provides a history of how porn entered popular culture and also offers interesting material about the porn industry itself.

Porn films are shaping our sexual tastes and appetites as humans. The physical, verbal, and psychological violence in porn films can easily become a model for the sexual behavior of the viewers of these films. Excessive exposure to porn films takes away your personal taste and individual interests and attempts to homogenize the interests of all viewers. In a study conducted on fifty of the most popular porn films, physical and verbal violence against women was present in all of them. Acts such as hitting, attempted choking, and slapping were present in 88% of the scenes in these films, and verbal violence and profanity were present in 48% of the scenes. This volume of violence is extraordinary. Naturally, an important question is where, when, and how this volume of violence emerged in the porn industry. Has it been this way from the beginning? In the words of Holly Randall, a figure in the porn industry, the audience at the porn Olympics, which was initially launched in an amateur form and depicted conventional sexual relations, has gradually turned into an arena of creativity, and to attract audiences, more violent, complex, and unconventional acts are being depicted in these films. Through this process, whatever is considered abnormal is first employed in porn films and then normalized.

Contrary to what many think, a porn film is not merely the product of filming a sexual act; their design and production, like any other industry or business, promote certain values and norms. For example, in these films women are always and everywhere thirsty for sex and are ready to do whatever men ask of them, no matter how painful, humiliating, or harmful those acts may be. The word "no" is the great absentee in porn films. While women in these films are thirsty for sex, it is as if they also lack a mind or brain and consequently have no desires or fantasies of their own; they are merely followers of men's desires, and it seems the more humiliation and insult they receive, the more pleasure they experience. In porn films, the women we see are not worried about getting pregnant, sexually transmitted diseases, or sexual injuries; they have no concerns about equal pay, insurance, or a good school for their children. Women in porn films are one-dimensional beings; they are merely a collection of orifices waiting to be filled. Men in porn films are also simple creatures, individuals without affection or emotion who, like robots, are searching for orifices. They do not understand love, affection, kindness, and respect, nor do they display the necessary intelligence to connect with another human being. It is no wonder, then, that in porn films, instead of sex being accompanied by love, affection, care, and altruism, it is accompanied by hatred, anger, and humiliation. This type of behavior is seen more in a style called gonzo, which has become increasingly prevalent.

Why do these films become popular among men? A naive answer is that men are naturally savage creatures who enjoy harming women, but a proper answer requires an examination of culture. Instead of individually reproaching every man and condemning his undesirable "nature," we can look at the culture we live in and examine what causes this level of savagery and aggression in these films to become people's fantasy.

To do this, we must first pay attention to the formation of Playboy magazine, which itself paved the way for porn's entry into popular culture. This magazine was created in the 1950s; paying attention to the cultural and economic conditions in which this magazine was produced is also essential. Playboy magazine is, in a way, the mother of the current porn industry.

The fifties inherited economic development and a baby boom, and pressure to marry at a young age formed a significant part of the culture and economic conditions of that era. The head of Playboy magazine, Mr. Hefner, began producing the magazine in such an atmosphere and explicitly stated that his magazine's audience was men between 18 and 80 years old. He specifically stated that this was not a family magazine, which at that time meant that women were not the target audience. At that time, the family was the most important institution in American society, and mainstream media always portrayed women as wives and/or mothers. Playboy magazine wanted to create a new image. The magazine claimed that men were working all the time, devoting themselves to their families, and were in a way slaves to women, and to counter women's power, it proposed opposing the family. However, the problem was that at that time, men who did not marry and start a family were considered sick or homosexual, and these two characteristics were synonymous with not being a man. Therefore, the magazine had to present an image of men who were manly but not family men. A man who is hardworking, earns money, but spends that money on himself, not his family; buys stylish clothes and expensive watches, and gets hold of many beautiful women. This man is a professional womanizer because he does not even become emotionally involved with these women. Consequently, men had to become professional consumers who were not in the service of an institution like the family but were solely pursuing their own personal pleasure.

At the time Playboy was launched, porn magazines already existed—cheap, typically underground publications that had no access to the mainstream market. But Playboy was not merely a porn magazine; it was offering a lifestyle, and it made every effort to avoid being known as a porn magazine. Because porn magazines were undesirable in that era, and the common belief at the time was that the primary audience for such magazines was the lower classes. Playboy, however, sought to pass itself off as a model for the middle and affluent classes. To this end, they employed various methods, such as hiring Comte Spectorsky from The New Yorker, a move that helped bring literary figures to contribute to the magazine's "literary" section. The image of the man presented in Playboy was that of a pleasure-seeker in pursuit of enjoyment and happiness. But men of the 1950s had very different tastes and sensibilities, were unaccustomed to this level of consumerism, and needed a new teacher—a task the magazine itself undertook! In addition to sexual instruction, the magazine taught men that large desks, new and stylish ties, and expensive clothes played a key role in womanizing. Through various methods, the magazine told its audience what to wear, where to eat, what to buy, which clubs to go to, which films to watch, and so on... all of this meant: you can get very beautiful women. In this way, consumerism became intertwined with sex. Until the 1960s, each issue of the magazine sold 4.5 million copies.

The magazine later found rivals such as Penthouse and Hustler. This caused these magazines to compete, and their competition played a significant role in promoting sexy and pornographic images in popular culture and everyday life.

With the advent of the internet, these magazines could no longer generate the revenue they once did, so they launched a collection of websites, television channels, and other merchandise within the porn industry. For example, Penthouse currently owns the site Adultfriendfinder, which has 22 million members, and Hustler, in addition to a site of the same name, has launched sex shops and casinos. Playboy itself, besides its website, television network, and so on, also produces products such as sunglasses, watches, and pens. Porn gradually entered everyday life and popular culture, and now, thanks to the internet, this industry has become a part of our daily routine.

Jenna Jameson was the first porn actress who managed to enter mainstream media like other celebrities. She has been interviewed extensively, and not just about porn. The image the media presents of her is a selective one that portrays the porn industry as sexy, chic, and full of pleasure, suggesting that the women who enter this industry possess tremendous sexual power and that the porn industry has, in fact, provided them with a field in which to flourish. But the media does not tell us that Jameson lost her mother at the age of two, that her father neglected her, that she was gang-raped and severely beaten as a teenager, and was later raped by her boyfriend's uncle, and that at sixteen her father threw her out of the house, leading her to move in with her boyfriend, who then encouraged her to get into stripping. This is not the image the porn industry promotes, because when you watch a porn film, your presupposition is that the person moaning and groaning from sheer pleasure is a human being immersed in delight, not a wretched creature whom various institutions of society have treated unkindly and wronged, and that these factors play a role in that person's entry into porn. Jameson paved the way for other actresses to enter popular culture and mainstream media, and currently Sasha Grey has taken her place. The increasing entry of porn into popular culture has caused it to impose its own standards on us. For instance, when Britney Spears wants to release a music album, she must lie down and pose like porn actresses who have (must have) a sexual thirst, in order to produce the cover image for her album. Or breast and buttock augmentation surgeries have multiplied several times over and, in some parts of the world, have become a norm. This image of women as sexual objects is being reproduced in every dimension of popular culture—a culture that represents men as savage hunters, with women placed alongside other objects within his consumerist outlook.

The value of the porn industry in 2006 was estimated at around $96 billion, of which the United States' share was $13 billion. Approximately 13,000 films are produced each year, and despite the very low costs of these films, the revenue generated from them rivals that of all the major Hollywood studios. There are 420 million pornographic web pages and 4.2 million porn sites. Every day, 68 million internet searches are conducted for porn.

This industry is not merely providing a backdrop for masturbation in your privacy; it is influencing our identity, culture, and behavioral norms. Porn films are not equivalent to simply filming a sexual act; rather, banks, companies, designers, marketing, hotels, etc., are involved. That porn is, above all, an industry means its content is determined by market forces, technology, and competition. The competition to capture this market is incomparable to the days when Playboy and its other newly established rivals competed; this current dizzying competition has caused porn films to become increasingly unconventional, and genres such as sex with animals and children are moving toward normalization.

The porn industry is not an isolated industry either; investors from other industries have direct and indirect participation in it or derive economic benefit from it. From Rupert Murdoch to HBO, AOL, CNN, to Microsoft and many other companies and investors, they are tied to the porn industry and its revenues in various ways.

This industry, with this volume of investment, plays a very prominent role in shaping our image of masculinity and femininity. Masculinity is associated with violence and being unfeeling, and being a woman is associated with being a pleasure-seeking object. The behaviors of porn actors become a model for male and female sex. In these films, women are not addressed with affectionate or emotional terms but are always addressed with gendered slurs and sometimes insults like "stupid" and "dumb." The viewers of these films also believe that the women in these films consent and are even willing. The image presented of women in these films is that of brainless objects who desire humiliation and insult, and thus a completely dehumanized image of these women is presented, making empathy with them impossible. The myth being promoted by the porn industry is that women who enter the porn industry are lascivious and lustful and are never satiated by sex, and that is why they entered this industry. An attitude that conservatives are also very fond of accepting and promoting. Also, since the majority of investors in this industry are white men, racism is also noticeable in this industry. The income ceiling for Black women in this industry is the same as the income floor for white women. In these films, racist stereotypes are also promoted, such as that East Asian men have weak sexual potency and that East Asian women are therefore thirsty for relationships with white men. Non-white women are humiliated more than white women because of their race, their skin color, or a stereotype related to their culture.

This industry is also in the process of dictating a lifestyle to women. From cosmetic surgeries on breasts and buttocks to ways of dressing, vast segments of women's culture are determined by porn films. Women's independence in this culture is equated with the ability to consume. As long as women can pass themselves off as desirable sexual objects with nice clothes, good surgery, and desirable makeup, they are considered independent, and gender equality and systematic discrimination no longer matter. Magazines like Cosmopolitan promote this pseudo-independence. This magazine functions like Playboy for women, telling women they must be consumerist and attract well-dressed, consumerist men. In this image, women are taught to view men merely as passersby who come and go and to commit to no one. These images have become so pervasive and are being reproduced everywhere that they seem natural and normal. Consumerist women, to attract consumerist men, must undergo cosmetic surgery, follow strict diets, engage in heavy exercise, and all these efforts are solely to be accepted as a sexual object. In this culture, every woman's body is her greatest enemy. Instead of seeing women who immerse themselves in such a culture as unusual, we consider any woman who deviates somewhat from these norms as undesirable. The degree of women's adherence and submission to these norms is also not black and white but comes with varying degrees, and this itself depends on matters such as personal experiences, family relationships, the degree of attention to mainstream media, friends, economic class, and so on. The more the sexy woman, whose existence is nothing but for mating with men, is promoted as the norm, the more difficult resistance to this norm will become. The porn industry itself is the core of this objectification of women.

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Porn and Ethics: Sexual Pleasure or a Commercial Industry?

Author: Zohair Bagheri Noaparast

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