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.
Conclusion: Fighting Back
Ironically, pornography has become almost invisible by virtue of its very ubiquity. It seeps into our lives, identities, and relationships. We are so steeped in the pornographic mindset that it is difficult to imagine what a world without porn would look like. It is affecting our girls and boys, as both are growing up with porn encoded into their gender and sexual identities. I opened this book by stating that we are in the midst of a massive social experiment, and nobody really knows how living in Pornland will shape our culture. What we do know is that we are surrounded by images that degrade and debase women and that for this the entire culture pays a price.
What can we do about the porning of our culture? I wish I had a magic bullet but I don’t; we are up against an economic juggernaut. Fighting the porn industry demands that we resist both as individuals and as part of a collective movement. At the moment, most resistance happens at the individual level, and this is a promising start. I meet young women who refuse to date men who are users of porn, parents who teach their children media literacy skills, teachers who develop sophisticated sex-education programs, and men who boycott porn because of the ways
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.
Conclusion: Fighting Back
Ironically, pornography has become almost invisible by virtue of its very ubiquity. It seeps into our lives, identities, and relationships. We are so steeped in the pornographic mindset that it is difficult to imagine what a world without porn would look like. It is affecting our girls and boys, as both are growing up with porn encoded into their gender and sexual identities. I opened this book by stating that we are in the midst of a massive social experiment, and nobody really knows how living in Pornland will shape our culture. What we do know is that we are surrounded by images that degrade and debase women and that for this the entire culture pays a price.
What can we do about the porning of our culture? I wish I had a magic bullet but I don’t; we are up against an economic juggernaut. Fighting the porn industry demands that we resist both as individuals and as part of a collective movement. At the moment, most resistance happens at the individual level, and this is a promising start. I meet young women who refuse to date men who are users of porn, parents who teach their children media literacy skills, teachers who develop sophisticated sex-education programs, and men who boycott porn because of the ways
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