How the Porn Industry Destroys Lives / Shannon Ball

← Back to portfolio

Published on 10th October 2020

How the Porn Industry Destroys Lives

CAUTION: THIS ARTICLE CONTAINS STORIES AND STATISTICS WHICH ARE GRAPHIC, AND MAY BE TRIGGERING TO SOME READERS.

Pornography: the printed or visual material containing the explicit description or display of sexual organs or activity, intended to stimulate sexual excitement.

Pornography has been around since motion picture was invented in 1895 and has since grown into a billion-dollar industry. While pro-pornography advocates like to defend the industry by saying it provides jobs, is a place for people to safely explore fantasy, and doesn’t hurt anyone, the reality is vastly different.

As journalist Tom Farr wrote in his article on Medium, the father of famous porn actress Stoya was extremely unhappy when his daughter started to sell sex toys because he found it distracting when he wanted to watch porn. “Presumably because he realised that porn stars are actual human women, and not just holes to be abused”, Farr strongly stated.

Research has now discovered that boys, on average, are viewing sexual material online as young as 9-years-old. It has also been discovered that in 2016 alone, the website PornHub had a whopping 23-billion visits, which equates to roughly 64-million people visiting the website each day.

Since pornography has become a mainstream service which is easily accessible over the internet, United States sexual assault centres have said that more women are coming in and reporting anal rape, and experts are linking the offences to a rising number of pornography films which feature this act.

Pornography does not just affect people in the outside world, as the people within the industry also suffer. Rape, exploitation, and abuse are astonishingly common in videos, and as viewers search for more explicit material, producers feel the need to create new content to satisfy this growing demand.

The sad reality is when people watch porn frequently, they slowly become desensitised to the videos they choose to watch, and the result is that they search for more graphic content.

Maybe a man watches videos of a man and women having sex to give himself sexual satisfaction. However, as he continues to watch the same videos over and over again, he becomes numb to them and they do not give him the same gratification they once did. He then searches for more extreme videos, which could be a rape fantasy or abuse against a woman. As he, once again, becomes dull to these videos, he begins his search for more intense and severe videos to try and continue receiving that same sexual fulfilment he got when he first began watching pornography.

And just like that, an addiction to pornography is formed.

Gail Dines is an author who wrote a book called Pornland: How Porn Has Hijacked Our Sexuality, which explores not only the porn industry, but also scientific research which examined how pornography affects people mentally and emotionally.

Dines stated in a Guardian article, “I have found that the earlier men use porn, the more likely they are to have trouble developing close, intimate relationships with real women … they are bewildered, even angry, when real women don't want or enjoy porn sex”.

Not only this but Dines also believes that pornography is a driving force which encourages men to commit certain violent acts against women, like rape or abuse, as they believe they will enjoy it because the females in the videos they watch give the impression it is something women will like.

Numerous studies have shown that the consumption rate of pornography continues to rise, with Dr Gert Martin Hald finding that 50%-99% of males and 30%-86% of females view pornographic material regularly. With the internet on our computers and smartphones, it means that accessing pornography can be done anywhere at any time, which Dr Alvin Cooper called the ‘triple-A engine”. This engine consists of accessibility, affordability, and anonymity.

This is an excellent way of understanding why people are watching porn more often than they used to. The internet, as mentioned, makes it so simple to access and view the material one may desire. The fact that websites are free means consumers are not turned away from the content, instead they are able to easily find any material they want. Finally, the fact that you can view the material and remain concealed means people don't have to feel guilty when they choose to access the pornographic websites, as it is very difficult for others to discover what they are doing. Additionally, the fact that viewing pornography is becoming such a common thing means that people don't necessarily feel the need to remain as anonymous as they previously did.

While pornography may be a normalised stream in society, there are still consequences when people watch it.

Dr Dawn Szymanski and Dr Destin Stewart of the University of Tennessee found that women with boyfriends that regularly viewed pornography had poor self-esteem, low relationship quality and less sexual satisfaction. This is primarily due to the fact that the women felt as though they could not compare to the actresses in the films that their partners were watching.

Kirsten Weir of the American Psychological Association gave a simple example of why people might begin watching pornography. “If a couple goes through a dry spell, the man may watch more porn to fill the void. Some women may feel threatened or confused by that response. They often report feeling less attractive, like they could never measure up to the X-rated actresses. The result: even less sex, even more porn and a relationship that continues to falter”, Weir wrote.

But it doesn’t stop there.

Neuroscientist Valerie Voon, of the University of Cambridge, is one of the top researchers when it comes to the addictiveness of pornography. Voon states that the brain of a porn addict when viewing pornographic material looks just like the brain of an alcoholic when viewing an advert which has a drink in it. Further, Voon’s study called Neural Correlates of Sexual Cue Reactivity in Individuals with and without Compulsive Sexual Behaviours, “… found strong evidence of sensitisation in compulsive porn users”. Sensitisation, in regard to pornography use, is responsiveness to certain cues, such as a noise, that can lead to cravings for viewing a pornographic film which may have exhibited that noise, and this eventually results in the person watching the material they had a longing for.

The effects of pornography are clearly vast and deep, as they impact not only a person’s mental wellbeing, but their emotional and physical health as well.

Yet, it is still not just the viewer who suffers from pornography, but the actresses as well. While some of these people enter the industry because they enjoy sex and want to make a living out of it, some of them are coerced or blackmailed into joining the sex business.

The website Fight The New Drug is on a mission to provide people with the facts of how harmful pornography is, so they can raise awareness and help people make informed decisions about whether to watch pornography. They say that typically what happens is a woman is struggling financially and suddenly a stranger or an advert on the internet offers a ‘modelling gig’ or a ‘massage parlour job’. They proceed to travel to a new country or state to undertake the job, but once there, they realise they have been lied too and are forced into the pornography industry.

A reddit thread was created which started the conversation of asking porn stars why they got into the industry in the first place.

User Deepthroatdisposable did not say why she originally joined the industry but shared that there are women stuck in the industry because even though they do not enjoy what they do, they continue to do a lot of scenes to try and earn money. However, they are paid barely anything, but they don't leave the job because they need a roof over their heads and food on their tables.

Reddit user Doc-Psycho shared a story of his ex-girlfriend who was a porn actress, saying, “one fan of hers' figured out where we lived … he left her really sick notes on her door. One was the last straw for me. He pretty much promised he'd sneak in her house and make her rape fantasy come true”.

These are just a few examples of how the actresses from the porn industry suffer on a day-to-day basis. But yet again, it doesn’t stop there.

Research was undertaken regarding the 50 most popular porn films to establish some statistics on physical and verbal violence within the material. There were 304 scenes total, and 88% showcased physical assault, while 49% contained verbal hostility. This physical and verbal aggression was almost always being inflicted on the female actresses by the male actors in the videos.

Popular actress, Linda Lovelace, is one of the actresses who managed to leave the pornography industry but shared the appalling story of her introduction into the business. “My initiation…was a gang rape by five men… It was the turning point in my life. He threatened to shoot me with the pistol if I didn’t go through with it. I had never experienced anal sex before and it ripped me apart. They treated me like an inflatable plastic doll, picking me up and moving me here and there … I have never been so frightened and disgraced and humiliated in my life. I felt like garbage. I engaged in sex acts for pornography against my will to avoid being killed. The lives of my family were threatened”, Lovelace said.

Physical violence, and threats of physical violence, are not uncommon within the pornography business. From threatening remarks and blackmail, to choking and punching, the actresses are likely to experience these vicious actions at least once in their career.

Collective Shout published an article about porn stars speaking out about the abuse they underwent while working in the job.

Jersey Jaxin said, “guys are punching you in the face … You get ripped. Your insides can come out of you. It’s never ending”.

Regan Starr said, “I got the s**t kicked out of me … I couldn’t breathe. I was being hit and choked. I was really upset, and they didn’t stop. They kept filming. You can hear me say, ‘Turn the f**king camera off’, and they kept going”.

Jenna Presley said, “It was torture for seven years. I was miserable, I was lonely. I eventually turned to drugs and alcohol … to numb my pain and get me through … and attempted suicide. I knew I wanted out, but I didn’t know how to get out”.

Finally, Tamra Toryn said, “In 2006, not even 9 months in, I caught a moderate form of dysplasia of the cervix (a sexually transmitted disease) and later that day, I also found out I was pregnant. I had only one choice which was to abort the baby during my first month. It was extremely painful, emotionally and physically”.

While this article is graphic and perhaps confronting to read, it is a topic which is not always widely discussed, due to the fact that porn is now such a prevalent part of society.

When debating whether pornography is something which should be supported, consider the stories above and ask yourself if you would like people from your family taking part in the industry, because chances are, you’d be horrified if those things happened to somebody you know.

So, think twice before viewing pornography, because if you decide to watch the material, you’re contributing to the exploitation, abuse, and mental trauma of someone’s mother, wife, girlfriend, sister, or daughter.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

NOTE: The research conducted for the article was purely articles and websites. NO VIDEOS were watched, or have ever been watched, to obtain this information.

NOTE 2: If you decide to conduct your own additional research into this topic, I would like to stress you are very careful and very specific with what you search into the internet to avoid coming across triggering material you do not want to see