Pornhub profit from trafficking of women and girls.

[SmileEachDay]

I’m increasingly frustrated with attitudes to porn on MN - there seem to be 2 main ways people justify it:

1. The liberal feminism defence: “It’s empowering, women are allowed bodily autonomy.

2. I enjoy it, it’s all consensual.

This is obviously bullshit. If you watch porn on a mainstream platform it is very likely that the woman you are watching has been directly trafficked and is being raped. If she hasn’t been, the woman or girl in the next clip may have been. You’re getting your rocks off to the filmed abuse of women and girls.

And that’s before we even start looking at how the commodification of women affects us more generally.

Please read this - it’s really eye opening

Just because Company A in Industry X has shitty exploitative practices does not mean that you are a bad person for supporting Company B in Industry X if they do not

If your only argument is “But look at all the other areas where there is exploitation then, well, you have no argument.

Start a thread about child exploitation- it’s a terrible thing - I’ll join you on it.

What I won’t do, when you start that thread, is say “but women and girls are trafficked, raped and abused in the porn industry sooooo..”

Because I don’t think it’s alright to use the exploitation of people as a cheap gotcha.

My main concern with young girls getting into the porn industry is they are all deluded & believe they’re going to be famous like the top tier girls a actual “porn stars”

In reality they’re often Out of the industry in a relatively short amount of time, having not invested the money they made & nothing to show for it & are more likely to regret their choices & the video content they made.

I find it concerning that say in the case of Mia Khalifa that hijab video was viewed a billion times (estimate, I use this figure loosely) and due to their contract they don’t make a cent more, they don’t get any residuals based on views. So I take exception to that.

But arguably even Mia who regrets it has turned that infamy into a lucrative career - like Sasha grey or Christy Mack, Porn catapaulted them into celebrity. They are the lucky ones & lots of girls want to be just like them.

The women who have made it big, who are recognised names & winning AVNs are business savvy. Their websites & social media are professional, they often do feature club shows & exotic dance, or cam girl. They sell merch. They have their fingers in many pies, so to speak...

It’s a BUSINESS and people who are young & naive do get chewed up & spat out. This is unfortunate for them. But an 18 year old can vote, go to war, have sex, drive, shoot a gun... so this is the age society has deemed we are able to be consenting adults.

If they consented but were naive, is it not still their responsibility ? People need to take responsibility for their decisions & that includes women who decide to do porn. Unfortunately it doesn’t work out for many, it’s like with acting generally.

I think more open discussion about porn & not vilifying / demonising it but be realistic about it is arguably better for impressionable young women, to take the glamour of it away.

The movie by Rashida Jones “hot girls wanted” us a good insight into the dim reality for many who don’t make it.

And I would say porn also promotes all different body shapes & looks, so that is a positive - instead of seeing waif thin models only we can see a whole range of sizes / shapes / colours / cultures and not just be fed the notion that X body type is the ideal.

Thanks for that ~completely nonsensical~ valuable piece of analysis Jings

Care to share your thoughts on the filmed abuse of women and girls?

This reminds me of this thread about the Councillor, her support of pornhub, and her official children's role. She actively and vigorously defended her support for pornhub, despite residents' complaints to the Council's monitoring officer, blocked loads of people on Twitter including other Councillors, and was then given a role involving children which presumably had the backing of the Council's ruling Lib Dems.

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/3845099-Trans-activist-who-advertises-Pornhub-given-role-with-children-in-Portsmouth?pg=1

The same Councillor used to be Labour but went Independent after Labour started a disciplinary against her for an anti-semitic tweet.

www.portsmouth.co.uk/news/politics/labour-election-candidate-resigns-portsmouth-party-after-anti-semitism-row-and-says-politics-poison-1035225

The Lib Dems rely on her vote in the Council chamber, I believe. It's a funny old world.

You don’t appear to know the first thing about the evolution and history of feminism Jings. What a load of revisionist crap.

do you think all sex work should be illegal then?

@beautifulmonument

I've read too many stories now of women who have begged pornhub and other sites (including so called ethical sites) to take down videos in which they were raped or videos that they were coerced into making. I won't ever watch porn again.

Yes, there was an article on the BBC recently where pornhub refused to take down a video of a 14 yo girl's rape, where she was beaten until she lost consciousness.

Warning: horrific detail
www.bbc.co.uk/news/stories-51391981

Radical feminists always opposed porn, jings. Sometimes they (we) worked with conservatives who opposed it for different reasons, but you seem to have got two very disparate groups muddled up there (am assuming you are using T*RF in the form that makes some attempt to refer to feminism, there, which you might not have, I dare say).

Me, Viking?

I’m not sure blanket “illegal” would work.

I think the (mainly) men who pay for sex should be criminalised.

I think that lap dancing clubs should be illegal. It makes me incredible sad that they’re a relatively mainstream “entertainment” - I think the owners and the customers should be criminalised.

Internet porn - I honestly don’t know how this gets sorted out. It’s appalling that filmed abuse of women and girls is accessible to anyone in a couple of clicks.
It’s terrible that people are so naive about porn - although I don’t know if it’s naivety or wilful ignorance.
But how to stop it? I don’t know. The first step is forcing people to confront what goes on in the “porn industry”. There are some interesting campaigns on SM that are tackling this. I’ll find and link.

All of these things do so much harm to women - both individually and as a class.

YANBU means agree with you, right? Just to be sure.

Years ago I used to look at some of the main sites with DH.

One time the whole home screen was filled of links where the pic was of women who looked like they were unconscious. I say looked like, I suspect many were. In ordinary looking houses, conked out on the sofa or a bed. The links would obviously show a pretend rape (my suspicion is many would have been real rapes).

I stopped looking completely at that point.

About a year later a major site said it would no longer host content that seemed to show rape. (With many actual rapes, no doubt).

They got loads of plaudits about how progressive they were, what a great site, great move etc etc.

That's where we're at. Where not hosting videos of pretend rapes (including many real rapes) gets you a round of applause. And hardly anyone saying, why the fuck did you allow that in the first place.

Exploitation happens everywhere.

The charity sector are doing it right now using 95% of the donations to line their own pockets. Your Jean's were were sewn by a slave halfway around the world and your coffee is the product of unethical child labour.

I don't see you complaining about everyday things in the west as a result of the exploitation of developing countries.

That's where we're at. Where not hosting videos of pretend rapes (including many real rapes) gets you a round of applause. And hardly anyone saying, why the fuck did you allow that in the first place

Absolutely.

And actually all many sites have changed is their terminology- they don’t say “rape” - they say “reluctant”/forced etc

On this thread I'm seeing quite a lot of the same phenomenon I often see on threads about prostitution - namely endless attempts to turn the focus away from the consumer and onto the prostitute/porn actor.

It's a form of deflection.

Once you know that some of the porn you watch (unless you spend an inordinate amount of time searching out "ethical porn" - and let's face it, people on here are talking about their use of pornhub, not of "ethical porn") involves footage of real rape, how can you continue to watch it?

There seems to be a bit of a "well they'll only be real rapes very very occasionally" attitude going on. How much is acceptable to you? 1 in 100 of your orgasms unwittingly taking place to a backdrop of a real woman, really being raped? 1 in 10? 1 in 5?

The percentage of women in the industry in it voluntarily (which I suspect is far lower than most porn apologists would ever admit) is entirely irrelevant to the morality of the end user. Once you've accepted that some of your orgasms may unwittingly be happening to a backdrop of a woman being raped - at that point you should stop.

Once you realise what's going on I just don't understand how you could continue to watch it. (I'm with NiceGerbil on this.)

There are other ways of enjoying sex, other ways of getting to orgasm.

I don't see you complaining about everyday things in the west as a result of the exploitation of developing countries

I addressed this upthread.

Those that have made careers out of it? Attend award shows? They definitely aren’t being forced

I bet if you look at their upbringing, there will be some damage somewhere along the way.

No well rounded woman, brought up in a healthy, loving family, would ever choose this as a career path.

But consumers of porn couldn't give a fuck. As long as they can have their wank and not have to use their imagination instead.

Pretty pathetic really.

Would you be OK with porn if hypothetically the industry had much strictrer regulations and all porn stars were registered and consenting? (I.e if there was 0 chance of watching exploitation)

I'm not into porn, and I'd rather be alone than date a guy who watches it.
I have problems with it for all the reasons listed in this thread, and more. I'm not in any way "anti-sex" or prudish, I just dont think porn is healthy.
I also think it has a huge part to play in the normalisation of sexual violence towards women. Porn has to get more and more extreme, so now we have girls expecting to get strangled during sex.

i. e. if there was 0 chance of watching exploitation)

I’d still have concerns about how watching porn is damaging for young teens - both in terms of their brain and their attitudes and perceptions of sex.

I’d still have concerns about the way women are often presented as passive, fearful vessels to take whatever is thrown at her. The way women are reviled - spat at, sworn at, choked...it does such damage to women as a class.

I’d be concerned about the injuries sustained by the women on film - who get paid more for agreeing to more extreme acts. Would that still happen in your hypothetical porn world?

But...this thread is about real life - and women being trafficked and abused. It’s not about me.

I watch amateur porn sometimes. The girls seem to be into it. Mostly I have switched over to reading erotica now as there is an abundance of explicit fiction and nobody is getting hurt from it. I tried watching animated porn but the voice acting bothers me.

I'd never heard of Mia Khalifa, and would not know any porn star names. I googled and found her interview on BBC . She is smart, beautiful, articulate, etc.

Then I did a quick search on name and porn videos. Even after her interesting interview, I'm really having a hard time to understand how she ended up being in those porn videos. Hard to know if she is enjoying herself in the videos? Or was partially forced? Or wanted the money? Or fame (of a sort)?

'top tier girls'

'the girls'

Why do consumers of porn do this, talk of the supposedly 'up for it' women in porn as girls?

I mean, if they were really girls that would be illegal. So why do it? Is it a further way to try to make it all sound like a harmless game?

OP you are not being unreasonable at all. I don't know what the solution is. All I can do as an individual is

1. not watch porn myself
2. let me DH know my issues with it. I can't decide for him but he knows how I feel and why.
3. protect and educate my children fully and frankly about porn and hope for the best.

Probably the best we could ever hope for is a much, much stricter industry but I don't think we're ever going to get that. Any moves towards regulations or laws that decrease profits and increase protections for women, children and the vulnerable are never going to happen. Even if some small changes could be introduced there would be loopholes and work-arounds.

People do not want to admit an inconvenient truth, especially when it is peddled as mainstream, normal and harmless to consume even extreme porn on a large scale. Those peddling that message don't want to give up massive profits. It's a win-win for consumers and the powerful in the industry, the collateral damage being the voiceless vulnerable actors and the silent destructive effect on society.