RitaLynn a question similar to the one you asked me here came up on the porn documentary thread. I'm going to c&p my post here if you don't mind because it goes some way to answering your question. The original question was about my referring to a gang bang scene in a documentary on porn as rape - the presumption was that the woman in the scene had consented and yet I referred to it as rape. Another poster asked me why.
For the record I think all porn is harmful - I think it is intrinsically harmful to a woman to have sex with strangers for money. I think this due to reading I have done about prostitution. Let's remember, porn is filmed prostitution.
Anyway, this is what I said on the other thread;
"Your question is interesting because it is looking at consent.
If we take the example of the woman in the gang bang scene in the documentary, we could say that we know almost nothing about this woman, right? We don't see her or hear her views. We can only assume that she had agreed to be filmed in this way because generally in most porn, the women have at some point agreed to be filmed and have those images distributed.
It is my understanding that the 'consent' documents in porn are about the right of the producer to film and distribute the images.
The women do also tend to fill out that hideous form with the list of acts that they agree to submit to.
For some people, the above means that the woman has consented.
For a lot of feminists, the above doesn't mean shit. These are the reasons why;
The woman is being coerced, thereby consent is not freely given and is null. Women in porn are coerced by money, emotional blackmail and abuse, force, violence, drugs, etc.
Women are often told that certain things will happen in a scene and then when they get there, this is changed. It is difficult for the woman to back out - we saw evidence of this in the documentary. The woman is no longer freely consenting however.
Women may 'consent' to do a gang bang - then once they start doing it, they may wish to stop - it is almost impossible for a woman to stop what is happening. Do you ever see a man asking a woman if she is still consenting to dick/slap/verbal abuse/painful penetration/ number X in a porn film?
A lot of woman go into the state of dissociation during a scene - they separate from themselves and go numb - they are in a state of shock and separating from their bodies in order to get through the ordeal. Women in this state are no longer consenting but they are unable to do anything about it.
Then we have the issue that so many (nearly all) women in porn are damaged by past abuse and/or abandonment issues. Porn merchants purposely seek out women like this in order to exploit them. One could say that these women are 'coerced' by their emotional damage to act in self destructive ways. These are certainly women who are very vulnerable to coercion.
On the basis of the above, I take the view that women do not give meaningful consent to the acts in porn. This view is expressed by many of the men who work in porn - they speak about how 'you can get some whores to do anything by using method x, y or z'. They are perfectly aware that there is not meaningful consent for what they are doing.
Therefore I think that the vast vast majority of porn is made without meaningful consent from the women, therefore it is rape. I have exactly the same thoughts about prostitution. Indeed, for me porn is filmed prostitution.
On this thinking the woman in the gang bang scene is being raped.
A lot of women who are out of porn say exactly the above and they are able to look back and say that they were being raped. I think what I do from listening to those women."