Pornography enslaves many people.*
The term pornography has its historical roots in female prostitution. Pornography derives from the Greek word pornographos, which comes from porne, meaning prostitute or female captive, and graphein, which means to write – hence, writings about prostitution and prostitutes.
In modern times, the definition of pornography has widened to encompass the multitude of ever expanding ways in which sexually explicit material can be produced, including pornography literature, movies, videos, photographs, live shows and computer pornography (incl. the ever increasing internet pornography).
There is no universal definition of pornography, adding to the debate and sometimes confusions over its potential harm or harmlessness as free speech.
The dictionary defines pornography as “writings, pictures, films, or other materials that are meant to stimulate erotic feelings by describing or portraying sexual activity”. Pornography is often associated by definition with obscenity, which is defined as “something condemnatory, offensive, indecent, disgusting, or lewd to prevailing concepts of decency”. However, not everything that is obscene is pornographic; conversely, not all pornography is viewed as obscenity.
For some, pornography is defined as: the graphic sexually explicit subordination of women, whether in pictures, films or in words, that also includes one or more of the following:
· Women are presented as sexual objects for domination, conquest, violation, exploitation, possession, or use, or through postures or positions of servility or submission or display;
· Women are presented in scenarios of degradation, injury, torture, shown as filthy or inferior, bleeding, bruised or hurt in a context that makes these conditions sexual;
· Women are presented as sexual objects that enjoy pain or humiliation;
· Women are presented as sexual objects that experience sexual pleasure in being raped;
· Women are presented as sexual objects tied up or cut up or mutilated or bruised or physically hurt;
· Women are presented being penetrated by objects or animals.
Pornography and prostitution are typically viewed by many as two sides of the same coin – prostitution provides direct sexual gratification, while pornography provides the visuals by which the viewer can gratify himself. Both are deemed to be degrading to the women involved, because their bodies provide the entertainment value and everything beneath the surface is deemed superfluous.
Further, both are deemed to be harmful to all women because they supposedly reinforce the notion that women were put on this earth solely for man’s sexually amusement rather than as equal participants in society.
Pornography and violence against females are correlated.
No matter what documentation of the kind of influence pornography might have or not, there are many indications to the fact, that women are victimised because of pornography.
A detective from the Michigan State Police, once stated as being a speaker at a conference cited “numerous cases where the assailants had immersed themselves in pornographic films or pictures and then gone out and committed sex crimes.
These crimes included rape, sodomy, and even the bizarre erotic crime of piquerism (piercing with a knife till blood flows, a kind of sexual torture). In some cases the attacker admitted that the urge to rape or torture erotically came over him while reading an obscene picture magazine or attending a movie showing rape and erotic torture.
How does pornography enslave the female involved?
Some studies have shown a direct link between female prostitutes and pornography.
The Los Angeles Police Department found out, that there is a tripartite relationship between prostitution, pornography and substance abuse.
“The young actors in pornographic films often perform for drugs rather than for money, then are forced into prostitution” to support drug habits.
Female prostitution and the sexploitation industry incl. the activities of pornography have also shown to correlate with criminal activity, such as organised crime and drug dealing, sex trafficking to generate new models for porn films, as well as a correlation with sexually transmitted diseases, promiscuity and child sexual abuse.
First, making a porn film is easy money for the female involved, in the long term the young female gets addicted to either the making of the easy money and/or the drugs connected to the porn industry.
The male viewers can indeed also get addicted.
About pornography addiction**
Pornography addiction has its roots in the viewing and hording of magazine and video pornography, however these days; the porn addict has a new and frighteningly powerful and problematic enabler called the Internet.
Porn addicts can engage their Internet porn problem by viewing online still photos, by downloading porn films or with the use of webcam sex.
Some use the Internet to simply view images while others eventually end up using the Internet as a vehicle to meet with anonymous sexual partners or for one night stands.
By using a webcam porn addicts can engage in real-time sexual activity with anyone willing to provide it to them – some of these situations are paid – as in online prostitution, while others are engaged with whomever shows up.
What is porn addiction?
Similar to someone with a chemical or substance addiction, porn addicts tend to replace important relationships and commitments with Internet sex or other forms of porn.
Non-Internet porn addicts can be found in places like strip clubs and adult bookstores, but it is unlikely that they have a strip club addiction or an adult bookstore addiction, but rather that they have consistent and compulsive sexual problems that appear in a variety of settings.
Pornography addicts tend to isolate themselves when engaging in their sexual acting out. They can typically spend many hours or even days lost in online images and experiences. Some also lose time to Internet addictions such as online fantasy games and/or gambling sites.
Nonsexual Internet addiction can also be painfully isolating, causing real life consequences for the person addicted to online gambling or fantasy games, but Internet porn addiction also carries a moral stigma and the likelihood that important love and sex relationships will be negatively affected.
While some sex and porn addicts use compulsive masturbation as a part of their acting out, others engage only minimally in the sex act itself but nonetheless end up lose themselves to the endless sexual images and sites found online.
Some signs of porn addiction can include:
There are more signs than the above, and one can get treatment from the addiction. See link below.
Unfortunately, pornography consumers have an endless range of choices in the highly competitive and increasing marketplace for pornography with millions upon millions of dollars (and other currencies) at stake at any given time.
Hence, it is not likely that the pornography industry will go out of business anytime soon – nor will the controversy over its relationship to female prostitution, sex trafficking and male antisocial behaviour toward females.
* Texts are from the book “The prostitution of women and girls”, by R. Barri Flowers, MCFarland & Co., 1998 and the book; Prostitution and pornography, philosophical debate about the sex industry”, by Jessica Spector, Stanford University Press, 2006. To read more about pornography, please read these very good books.
** Please read more on the link: www.sexualrecovery.com (open in a new window).