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Authors: Melinda Tankard Reist,Abigail Bray
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Are the women in the porn you are watching still alive?
Bibliography
‘A Tribute to Dead Porn Stars’, <
http://www.pornstarcraze.com/
> (accessed 9 March, 2011).
Barry, Kathleen (1979)
Female Sexual Slavery
. New York University Press, New York.
Barss, Patchen (2010)
The Erotic Engine: How Pornography Has Powered Mass Communication from Gutenberg to Google
. University of Queensland Press, St. Lucia.
Bray, Abigail (2011) ‘Merciless Doctrines: Child Pornography, Censorship, and Late Capitalism’,
Signs
(Autumn, in press).
Dead Porn Stars Memorial, <
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r0q_VGacfNk
> (accessed 9 March, 2011).
Frances Farmer’s Revenge, <
http://www.francesfarmersrevenge.com/stuff/archive/oldnews/deadpornstars.htm
> (accessed 9 March, 2011).
Gogou, Katerina: Athens’ Anarchist Poetess, 1940–1993, <
http://libcom.org/history/katerinagogou-athens-anarchist-poetess-1940-1993
>.
Jeffreys, Sheila (2008)
The Idea of Prostitution
. Spinifex Press, North Melbourne.
Marx, Karl (1976)
Capital: A Critique of Political Economy, Volume 1
Trans. Ben Fawkes, Penguin, Harmondsworth. Originally published in 1867.
Russell, Diana (1993)
Against Pornography: The Evidence of Harm
. Russell Publications, Berkeley, California.
Tankard Reist, Melinda (2011) ‘One Wanted a Bigger Bum, One Wanted Bigger Breasts, Both Are Dead’, <
http://melindatankardreist.com/2011/02/one-wanted-a-bigger-bum-one-wanted-bigger-breasts-both-are-dead/
>.
Whisnant, Rebecca (2004) ‘Confronting Pornography: Some Conceptual Basics’ in
Not For Sale: Feminists Resisting Prostitution and Pornography
edited by Rebecca Whisnant and Christine Stark, Spinifex Press, North Melbourne, pp. 15–27.
___________________________
1
This is from the translation offered by Taxikipoli, <
http://libcom.org/history/katerinagogou-athens-anarchist-poetess-1940-1993
>.
2
See also Sheila Jeffreys (2008), Diana Russell (1993).
3
See Karl Marx,
Capital: A Critique of Political Economy
Vol. 1 where he writes “[c]apital is dead labour, that, vampire-like, only lives by sucking living labour, and lives the more, the more labour it sucks” (1976, p. 342).
4
See Melinda Tankard Reist’s blog on <
http://melindatankardreist.com/2011/02/one-wanted-a-bigger-bum-one-wanted-bigger-breasts-both-are-dead/
>.
5
See: <
http://www.francesfarmersrevenge.com/stuff/archive/oldnews/deadpornstars.htm
>.
6
See: <
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r0q_VGacfNk
>. The video mentions that one girl, Taylor Summers, was murdered during a bondage scene. Her death was filmed as pornography.
7
See: <
http://www.pornstarcraze.com
>.
Bibliography
‘A Tribute to Dead Porn Stars’, <
http://www.pornstarcraze.com/
> (accessed 9 March, 2011).
Barry, Kathleen (1979)
Female Sexual Slavery
. New York University Press, New York.
Barss, Patchen (2010)
The Erotic Engine: How Pornography Has Powered Mass Communication from Gutenberg to Google
. University of Queensland Press, St. Lucia.
Bray, Abigail (2011) ‘Merciless Doctrines: Child Pornography, Censorship, and Late Capitalism’,
Signs
(Autumn, in press).
Dead Porn Stars Memorial, <
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r0q_VGacfNk
> (accessed 9 March, 2011).
Frances Farmer’s Revenge, <
http://www.francesfarmersrevenge.com/stuff/archive/oldnews/deadpornstars.htm
> (accessed 9 March, 2011).
Gogou, Katerina: Athens’ Anarchist Poetess, 1940–1993, <
http://libcom.org/history/katerinagogou-athens-anarchist-poetess-1940-1993
>.
Jeffreys, Sheila (2008)
The Idea of Prostitution
. Spinifex Press, North Melbourne.
Marx, Karl (1976)
Capital: A Critique of Political Economy, Volume 1
Trans. Ben Fawkes, Penguin, Harmondsworth. Originally published in 1867.
Russell, Diana (1993)
Against Pornography: The Evidence of Harm
. Russell Publications, Berkeley, California.
Tankard Reist, Melinda (2011) ‘One Wanted a Bigger Bum, One Wanted Bigger Breasts, Both Are Dead’, <
http://melindatankardreist.com/2011/02/one-wanted-a-bigger-bum-one-wanted-bigger-breasts-both-are-dead/
>.
Whisnant, Rebecca (2004) ‘Confronting Pornography: Some Conceptual Basics’ in
Not For Sale: Feminists Resisting Prostitution and Pornography
edited by Rebecca Whisnant and Christine Stark, Spinifex Press, North Melbourne, pp. 15–27.
___________________________
1
This is from the translation offered by Taxikipoli, <
http://libcom.org/history/katerinagogou-athens-anarchist-poetess-1940-1993
>.
2
See also Sheila Jeffreys (2008), Diana Russell (1993).
3
See Karl Marx,
Capital: A Critique of Political Economy
Vol. 1 where he writes “[c]apital is dead labour, that, vampire-like, only lives by sucking living labour, and lives the more, the more labour it sucks” (1976, p. 342).
4
See Melinda Tankard Reist’s blog on <
http://melindatankardreist.com/2011/02/one-wanted-a-bigger-bum-one-wanted-bigger-breasts-both-are-dead/
>.
5
See: <
http://www.francesfarmersrevenge.com/stuff/archive/oldnews/deadpornstars.htm
>.
6
See: <
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r0q_VGacfNk
>. The video mentions that one girl, Taylor Summers, was murdered during a bondage scene. Her death was filmed as pornography.
7
See: <
http://www.pornstarcraze.com
>.
Hiroshi Nakasatomi
1
When Rape Becomes a Game:
RapeLay
and the Pornification of Crime
2
The animated computer game
RapeLay
3
contains content based on brutally misogynistic attitudes towards women and the normalisation of the sexual enslavement of women and girls. The game features scenes that depict women and girls being subjected to commuter train groping, stalking, forceful confinement, rape and gang rape until they succumb to the assaults, even up to the point where a victim is shown begging her rapist to abuse her.
The concern of critics of pornography has been that men who watch rape scenes in pornography might emulate them like a game and perpetrate rape in real life. Ironically,
RapeLay
has now made rape an actual ‘game’. In fact,
RapeLay
stands for ‘rape play’, and the game has turned rape into a recreational activity.
RapeLay’s
aim is to turn women into sexual slaves by taming them through sexual assault.
RapeLay
portrays the male player as a tamer who is in a position of power and control over women. It is important to note that inflicting rape and controlling the women in the game gives a sense of pleasure and entertainment to the male player and instils in him a rapist mind-set.
RapeLay
inflicts a severe blow on the reproductive autonomy of women
One of the notable aspects of
RapeLay
is its brutal attack on, and attempt to control, the reproductive functioning of women. One of the main scenes of
RapeLay
depicts a mother and her two daughters being raped and made pregnant and then forced to have abortions. Failing to make the victims get abortions
results in the game player being stabbed to death by one of the victims. Pregnant women are depicted as demons in this segment which also confirms the misogyny of the game.
Another criminal aspect of
RapeLay
is its plot which contains a scene in which a mother and her two daughters are raped out of revenge to punish an older sister who, after witnessing a rapist sexually assaulting a woman on a commuter train, reported the incident to police.
RapeLay
conveys the idea that reporting sexual assault to authorities is a betrayal of men and men’s sexual privilege. Reporting is portrayed as a treacherous act, and this is a further indication of the male-dominant ideals that permeate the game.
RapeLay
as a form of child pornography
The Komeito Party and parts of Japan’s media see
RapeLay
as a problem confined to the issue of child pornography. Indeed,
RapeLay
does contain child pornography – of the 3 female victims depicted in the game, 2 are children below the age of 18. However, it is common knowledge that under Japan’s
Act on Punishment of Activities Relating to Child Prostitution and Child Pornography and the Protection of Children
, only materials containing images of
real
children are legally defined as child pornography. Under this definition, computer games such as
RapeLay
which use graphically animated images do not count as child pornography. At present, there are 2 laws in Japan that govern the sexual depiction of a person. The first is Article 175 of the Penal Code: ‘Distribution of Obscene Objects’. The article applies to any person who distributes, sells or displays in public an obscene document, drawing, or other item. The second is the
Child Prostitution and Child Pornography Act
, which regulates the sexually explicit depiction of persons under 18 years. The scope of Article 175 is limited because the law applies only to the public display of genitals and sexual intercourse. On the other hand, the
Child Prostitution and Child Pornography Act
can be more widely applied. However, while images in comic, animation and computer graphics are subject to regulation under Article 175, they are not covered in the
Child Prostitution and Child Pornography Act
, and this makes the
Act
even more limited with regard to child pornography offences than Article 175.
As a result, children are endlessly subjected to abuse, torture, and exploitation in a sexually explicit way in the animated world in a fairly open manner in Japan. These materials circulate more or less freely on the Internet. Animated depictions portray children in a sexually explicit way which makes the material child pornography. Nonetheless, people in Japan argue that animated depictions cannot constitute child pornography because, they say, in the animated world
children cannot have their rights violated. As a result, the animated depiction of sexually explicit images of children continues in an unregulated state in Japan. The legal regulation of pornography, including rape simulation computer games, is strongly opposed by many factions in Japan. Opposition to the regulation of pornographic computer games is stronger than opposition to the regulation of child pornography, but only because the number of gaming enthusiasts – including the majority of male left-wing intellectuals – is larger than the number of child pornography users.
RapeLay
as a rape simulator
The main reason
RapeLay
has attracted international criticism is not because of its computer generated graphics or video imagery, but because it is a computer game. If
RapeLay
had been an animated movie containing pornography, its pornographic content might not have generated such international outrage, given the relatively common circulation of animated films containing this kind of content. International uproar over
RapeLay
arose because of the understanding that violent and pornographic computer games have a stronger impact on users than pornographic comics or animated films. People in Japan came to understand this dangerous effect of rape simulation games only once international campaigns emerged over
RapeLay
. There is a clear correlation between men using violent pornography to seek sexual gratification and the perpetration of rape against women. Graphically animated violent pornography is not currently banned in Japan because of the argument that a rights violation does not occur due to the absence of a victim. However, it can be clearly demonstrated that violent computer games do violate children’s rights.
In rape simulation computer games like
RapeLay
, the player can simulate rape which makes the impact of the violent pornography stronger. The impact is stronger because the player uses his hands (through a console) to move the on-screen victim in any direction he wants. He is able to manipulate the victim a full 360 degrees as if the victim were a puppet on a string. The game player is able to use the characters as objects for his sexual gratification, as things he can play around with. As a result, the player feels a sense of dominance and conquest over the female characters in the game.
The extent of the harmful impact of games like
RapeLay
, if the player acts out his experience in real life, is immeasurable. Accordingly, in the campaign to enact legislation to ban all forms of child pornography in Japan it is important that the harmful effect of animated pornography is recognised. With the spread of animated child pornography throughout the world via the Internet, more and
more countries will come to prohibit such material. This will increase pressure on countries like Japan that do not maintain a ban, and on countries like Japan from where the material originates.
4
Bibliography
Equality Now (2009) Information on Japan for consideration by the Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women at its 44th Session, <
http://www2.ohchr.org/english/bodies/cedaw/docs/ngos/Equality_Now_Japan_cedaw44.pdf
> (accessed 18 March, 2011).
Moses, Asher (10 March, 2010) ‘Rape simulator game goes viral amid calls for censorship’
Sydney Morning Herald
, <
http://www.smh.com.au/digital-life/games/rape-simulator-game-goes-viral-amid-calls-for-censorship-20100331-rcpz.html
> (accessed 19 March, 2011).
Nakasatomi, Hiroshi (2009) ‘Reipurei mondai no keii to hou kaisei no kadai’
Poruno/baishun mondai kenkyuu kai: Ronbun/shiryou shuu
Vol 9, pp. 21–43.
___________________________
1
Translated by Caroline Norma and R. Sanjeewa Weerasinghe.
2
This is an edited excerpt of an article about the Japanese animated computer game
RapeLay
(see Hiroshi Nakasatomi, 2009).
3
Women’s groups around the world protested this game’s release in 2009, and a complaint to the Australian Communications and Media Authority by Melinda Tankard Reist in that year prompted the Australian government to prohibit the downloading of the game, in spite of opposition from groups like Electronic Frontiers Australia (Moses, 2010). In the USA and the UK, Equality Now led the protest campaign, and received “vitriolic rape and death threats” as a result (Equality Now, 2009).
4
The Yokohama-based company, Illusion, also produces the games
Battle-raper
and
Oppai slider
, which include pornified and violent content.
1
When Rape Becomes a Game:
RapeLay
and the Pornification of Crime
2
The animated computer game
RapeLay
3
contains content based on brutally misogynistic attitudes towards women and the normalisation of the sexual enslavement of women and girls. The game features scenes that depict women and girls being subjected to commuter train groping, stalking, forceful confinement, rape and gang rape until they succumb to the assaults, even up to the point where a victim is shown begging her rapist to abuse her.
The concern of critics of pornography has been that men who watch rape scenes in pornography might emulate them like a game and perpetrate rape in real life. Ironically,
RapeLay
has now made rape an actual ‘game’. In fact,
RapeLay
stands for ‘rape play’, and the game has turned rape into a recreational activity.
RapeLay’s
aim is to turn women into sexual slaves by taming them through sexual assault.
RapeLay
portrays the male player as a tamer who is in a position of power and control over women. It is important to note that inflicting rape and controlling the women in the game gives a sense of pleasure and entertainment to the male player and instils in him a rapist mind-set.
RapeLay
inflicts a severe blow on the reproductive autonomy of women
One of the notable aspects of
RapeLay
is its brutal attack on, and attempt to control, the reproductive functioning of women. One of the main scenes of
RapeLay
depicts a mother and her two daughters being raped and made pregnant and then forced to have abortions. Failing to make the victims get abortions
results in the game player being stabbed to death by one of the victims. Pregnant women are depicted as demons in this segment which also confirms the misogyny of the game.
Another criminal aspect of
RapeLay
is its plot which contains a scene in which a mother and her two daughters are raped out of revenge to punish an older sister who, after witnessing a rapist sexually assaulting a woman on a commuter train, reported the incident to police.
RapeLay
conveys the idea that reporting sexual assault to authorities is a betrayal of men and men’s sexual privilege. Reporting is portrayed as a treacherous act, and this is a further indication of the male-dominant ideals that permeate the game.
RapeLay
as a form of child pornography
The Komeito Party and parts of Japan’s media see
RapeLay
as a problem confined to the issue of child pornography. Indeed,
RapeLay
does contain child pornography – of the 3 female victims depicted in the game, 2 are children below the age of 18. However, it is common knowledge that under Japan’s
Act on Punishment of Activities Relating to Child Prostitution and Child Pornography and the Protection of Children
, only materials containing images of
real
children are legally defined as child pornography. Under this definition, computer games such as
RapeLay
which use graphically animated images do not count as child pornography. At present, there are 2 laws in Japan that govern the sexual depiction of a person. The first is Article 175 of the Penal Code: ‘Distribution of Obscene Objects’. The article applies to any person who distributes, sells or displays in public an obscene document, drawing, or other item. The second is the
Child Prostitution and Child Pornography Act
, which regulates the sexually explicit depiction of persons under 18 years. The scope of Article 175 is limited because the law applies only to the public display of genitals and sexual intercourse. On the other hand, the
Child Prostitution and Child Pornography Act
can be more widely applied. However, while images in comic, animation and computer graphics are subject to regulation under Article 175, they are not covered in the
Child Prostitution and Child Pornography Act
, and this makes the
Act
even more limited with regard to child pornography offences than Article 175.
As a result, children are endlessly subjected to abuse, torture, and exploitation in a sexually explicit way in the animated world in a fairly open manner in Japan. These materials circulate more or less freely on the Internet. Animated depictions portray children in a sexually explicit way which makes the material child pornography. Nonetheless, people in Japan argue that animated depictions cannot constitute child pornography because, they say, in the animated world
children cannot have their rights violated. As a result, the animated depiction of sexually explicit images of children continues in an unregulated state in Japan. The legal regulation of pornography, including rape simulation computer games, is strongly opposed by many factions in Japan. Opposition to the regulation of pornographic computer games is stronger than opposition to the regulation of child pornography, but only because the number of gaming enthusiasts – including the majority of male left-wing intellectuals – is larger than the number of child pornography users.
RapeLay
as a rape simulator
The main reason
RapeLay
has attracted international criticism is not because of its computer generated graphics or video imagery, but because it is a computer game. If
RapeLay
had been an animated movie containing pornography, its pornographic content might not have generated such international outrage, given the relatively common circulation of animated films containing this kind of content. International uproar over
RapeLay
arose because of the understanding that violent and pornographic computer games have a stronger impact on users than pornographic comics or animated films. People in Japan came to understand this dangerous effect of rape simulation games only once international campaigns emerged over
RapeLay
. There is a clear correlation between men using violent pornography to seek sexual gratification and the perpetration of rape against women. Graphically animated violent pornography is not currently banned in Japan because of the argument that a rights violation does not occur due to the absence of a victim. However, it can be clearly demonstrated that violent computer games do violate children’s rights.
In rape simulation computer games like
RapeLay
, the player can simulate rape which makes the impact of the violent pornography stronger. The impact is stronger because the player uses his hands (through a console) to move the on-screen victim in any direction he wants. He is able to manipulate the victim a full 360 degrees as if the victim were a puppet on a string. The game player is able to use the characters as objects for his sexual gratification, as things he can play around with. As a result, the player feels a sense of dominance and conquest over the female characters in the game.
The extent of the harmful impact of games like
RapeLay
, if the player acts out his experience in real life, is immeasurable. Accordingly, in the campaign to enact legislation to ban all forms of child pornography in Japan it is important that the harmful effect of animated pornography is recognised. With the spread of animated child pornography throughout the world via the Internet, more and
more countries will come to prohibit such material. This will increase pressure on countries like Japan that do not maintain a ban, and on countries like Japan from where the material originates.
4
Bibliography
Equality Now (2009) Information on Japan for consideration by the Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women at its 44th Session, <
http://www2.ohchr.org/english/bodies/cedaw/docs/ngos/Equality_Now_Japan_cedaw44.pdf
> (accessed 18 March, 2011).
Moses, Asher (10 March, 2010) ‘Rape simulator game goes viral amid calls for censorship’
Sydney Morning Herald
, <
http://www.smh.com.au/digital-life/games/rape-simulator-game-goes-viral-amid-calls-for-censorship-20100331-rcpz.html
> (accessed 19 March, 2011).
Nakasatomi, Hiroshi (2009) ‘Reipurei mondai no keii to hou kaisei no kadai’
Poruno/baishun mondai kenkyuu kai: Ronbun/shiryou shuu
Vol 9, pp. 21–43.
___________________________
1
Translated by Caroline Norma and R. Sanjeewa Weerasinghe.
2
This is an edited excerpt of an article about the Japanese animated computer game
RapeLay
(see Hiroshi Nakasatomi, 2009).
3
Women’s groups around the world protested this game’s release in 2009, and a complaint to the Australian Communications and Media Authority by Melinda Tankard Reist in that year prompted the Australian government to prohibit the downloading of the game, in spite of opposition from groups like Electronic Frontiers Australia (Moses, 2010). In the USA and the UK, Equality Now led the protest campaign, and received “vitriolic rape and death threats” as a result (Equality Now, 2009).
4
The Yokohama-based company, Illusion, also produces the games
Battle-raper
and
Oppai slider
, which include pornified and violent content.
Chyng Sun
Investigating Pornography: The Journey of a Filmmaker and Researcher
I grew up in Taiwan and did not see a hardcore pornographic film until I was 31 years old, when I came to the United States as a graduate student in Boston in 1990. Unlike many women who are pushed to watch pornography by their boyfriends, mine was a shy one, and I was the one who sometimes rented porn videos. I would stand on my toes to reach the top shelf at the Video Smith in Brookline, a suburb of Boston, and then I went through the tortuous ritual of ignoring men peering at me out of the corner of their eyes, holding the extra-large video box with vivid pictures while I stood in a long check-out line, and then waiting for the clerk to slowly take the video out of its box and put it in a black box which everyone knew was for porn. There was something thrilling and daring about renting a porn video. I thought I was acting against the prohibition by both Chinese and American patriarchies of women pursuing sexual pleasure. I figured that if not being allowed to watch porn was part of sexual repression, then rebelling against it must be liberating and even feminist.
However, the act of renting the videos was for me more exciting than watching them. On-screen porn women seemed to be coy, infantilized, not caring who had sex with them, enjoying whatever was done to them, and wanting to be dominated. I asked myself: If these types of images appeared in a beer ad, wouldn’t I call them sexist? On the other hand, it was just so cool to be a girlfriend who was taboo-breaking and adventurous. Did I really want to ruin the fun? Although I felt unsettled, I did not have the knowledge and conceptual tools, or the willingness, to think it all through clearly.
I picked up my tangled thoughts 15 years later when I started making my documentary,
The Price of Pleasure: Pornography, Sexuality and Relationships
.
1 Approaches to the film
My film was aimed at exploring pornography as a media genre and an industry, through the examination of the 3 aspects of production, content and consumption.
I interviewed 130 people, including porn performers, producers, critics, social
workers, therapists, sex columnists, physicians, and users. My genuine curiosity, nonjudgmental attitude, and my respect for the interviewees, I believe, were felt by most of them. When I started making the film, I was most curious about pornographers: who are they, and what are their views of women, men, and sexuality? How do they justify the mistreatment of women?
Mark Kernes, editor of
Adult Video News
, the so-called bible of the pornography industry, provided me with contacts, including Ernest Greene, editor of
Hustler’s Taboo Magazine
, a prominent pornographer active in the BDSM community. Greene was eloquent and knowledgeable, with a tendency to exhibit his intellectual and cultural sophistication. After I asked him a few questions, such as “Why do male performers ejaculate on a woman’s face or in her eyes? Would it hurt?,” he became defensive and said: “I never experience a single moment of guilt or shame or anxiety over the prospect that the pictures that I make might inspire people to do things that would be evil. I believe evildoers do evil things and don’t need pictures to tell them how.” When asked if there were a certain trend in pornography, Greene replied:
I decided to focus on mainstream pornography for heterosexual audiences, the type of material that comprises the bulk of the market, has the widest viewership, and has the biggest potential impact. Not finding literature on what kind of pornography content people are really watching, my associate producer, Robert Wosnitzer, and I decided to design and conduct our own study, together with Erica Scharrer, Ana Bridges, and Rachael Liberman. With the support of Robert Jensen, we directed 3 female students to code films according to the scheme we developed, our focus being on sexual acts and sexual aggression. We randomly selected 50 out of 275 pornographic movies from
Adult Video News
’s best-selling and most-rented lists.
The full report has been published in the journal
Violence Against Women
(Bridges et al., 2010), so I only summarize the findings here. The popular pornographic movies depicted a world that mixed sexual excitement with aggression. Verbal aggression occurred in almost half of the scenes and almost all the expressions involved name-calling (e.g. ‘bitch’, ‘slut’). Physical aggression appeared in almost
90% of the scenes, with spanking being the most frequently observed physically aggressive act. Here there were drastic gender differences: women were spanked on 953 occasions, while men were spanked only 26 times, less than 3% of the total. Gagging, where male performers’ penises were inserted deeply inside a woman’s throat until they induced a gag reflex, had not been noted in previous content studies, but appeared in 28% of the scenes. Other types of aggression included open-hand slapping, hair-pulling, and choking. Most targets of the aggression were women who usually responded with expressions of pleasure (encouragement, sexual moans etc) or with no change at all in facial expression or interruption of action.
Apart from aggression, sexual acts causing pain or discomfort or those that may be interpreted as degrading, were frequently noted. For example, external male ejaculation (the ‘money shot’) occurred on women’s mouths or faces in over 60% of the scenes. Anal sex, rarely reported in previous studies, occurred in more than half of the scenes. Extreme sexual acts such as double penetration, where two men penetrate a woman anally and vaginally at the same time, occurred in 20% of the scenes. The ass-to-mouth (ATM) sequence, in which a man inserts his penis first in a woman’s anus and then in a woman’s mouth, was never recorded in previous content analyses. But this act was seen frequently in our study, occurring in about 40% of scenes. Compared to studies conducted in the 1980s and 1990s, our study revealed that pornography has become much more aggressive in both frequency and type of act.
2 What I’ve learned from pornographers
Scholars have observed 2 paradoxical trends in current pornography: on the one hand, it has become more acceptable, and on the other hand, its content has become more violent and degrading (Jensen, 2007; Dines, 2010). These researchers refer to the popularity of gonzo pornography where there are non-stop, aggressive sexual acts, in scenarios meant to degrade female characters. Max Hardcore – some call him ‘the father of Gonzo’ – wrote on his Website:
Gag Factor
, in which the women choke and cry because men’s penises are inserted in their throat deeply, thrusting in very fast and aggressive movements. Stewart stated, “We also started the American Bukkake craze. American Bukkake is … a group of men that ejaculate on a woman’s face. There’s no sex. It’s just like just gallons of cum being drenched on a girl.”
Sex has been endlessly explored in art, literature, and film, but what makes those depictions stand out are the emotions the characters experience when they connect with one another in different circumstances. Pornography has much less variability. As one pornographer said bluntly: “There’s only so many ways to have sex. They’ve all been shot. All you can try to do is make it a little more sensational, but it’s been so sensationalized, what can you – how many dicks can you stick in a girl at one time?” He answered himself: “At one time, three. Well, I guess you could make it four, one in her mouth, two in her ass, one in her pussy, maybe.” So where else can pornographers go to make pornography more exciting? Sam Benjamin, the author of
Confessions of an Ivy League Pornographer
, reflected on his experiences as a gonzo pornographer:
Adult Video News
, the leading trade journal. The AVN Awards Show, the porn Oscars, has been broadcast on Showtime to an audience of millions since 2008. Titles such as
All New Beaver Hunt, Innocent Until Proven Filthy, Fresh Meat, Daddy’s Lil’ Whore, Teens for Cash
, and
Deep Anal Drilling
also enter the lexicon to be articulated to the masses. Gonzo pornographers such as Max Hardcore, Jeff Stewart and John Stagliano are rich men, who have made their money from verbal degradation and physical humiliation.
Even pornographer Joe Gallant said: “I hate to say, but I think the future of American porn is violence. I see the signs of it already … the culture will become much more accepting of gang rape movies and abuse movies.” What illustrates his
sentiment most vividly is the popular S/M Website
kink.com
, where women are tied up, chained, gagged, whipped, electrified, immersed in water, and penetrated by machines. Even though my film concerns mainstream pornography, and does not include BDSM materials, I included clips from
kink.com
because this type of image has become popular, even mainstream.
Kink.com
has been featured in
The New York Times
as innovative, technologically savvy, and profitable, and is touted as a company just like any other company, but in some ways better (it gives its employees good benefits and retirement plans).
3 Porn performers: Beyond choice
When discussing issues related to
Gag Factor
or
kink.com
, the conversation often drifts into the question of choice: did the woman who was gagged or whipped freely choose to go into the industry? Such questions concern the autonomy and agency of women in pornography. Christine Stark, a writer and anti-porn activist who has worked with hundreds of women in porn and prostitution, problematized the focus on choice to me:
Diane Defoe, a black woman from Hawaii, entered the porn industry in 1999, first as a performer and then later as a director. She has seen many performers come and go:
dollars in the bank account – to my name. I really want to get in bad.” Both Cruz and Defoe observe that there are many women who do pornography for emergency reasons, such as paying off credit card debts or back-up rent, and then get out. Defoe also reports:
In mainstream porn, men perform acts on women, while women have acts done to them, so it is mostly women who bear the brunt of pain and discomfort, physically and psychologically. Annie Cruz matter-of-factly gives the price list for each sexual act:
Investigating Pornography: The Journey of a Filmmaker and Researcher
I grew up in Taiwan and did not see a hardcore pornographic film until I was 31 years old, when I came to the United States as a graduate student in Boston in 1990. Unlike many women who are pushed to watch pornography by their boyfriends, mine was a shy one, and I was the one who sometimes rented porn videos. I would stand on my toes to reach the top shelf at the Video Smith in Brookline, a suburb of Boston, and then I went through the tortuous ritual of ignoring men peering at me out of the corner of their eyes, holding the extra-large video box with vivid pictures while I stood in a long check-out line, and then waiting for the clerk to slowly take the video out of its box and put it in a black box which everyone knew was for porn. There was something thrilling and daring about renting a porn video. I thought I was acting against the prohibition by both Chinese and American patriarchies of women pursuing sexual pleasure. I figured that if not being allowed to watch porn was part of sexual repression, then rebelling against it must be liberating and even feminist.
However, the act of renting the videos was for me more exciting than watching them. On-screen porn women seemed to be coy, infantilized, not caring who had sex with them, enjoying whatever was done to them, and wanting to be dominated. I asked myself: If these types of images appeared in a beer ad, wouldn’t I call them sexist? On the other hand, it was just so cool to be a girlfriend who was taboo-breaking and adventurous. Did I really want to ruin the fun? Although I felt unsettled, I did not have the knowledge and conceptual tools, or the willingness, to think it all through clearly.
I picked up my tangled thoughts 15 years later when I started making my documentary,
The Price of Pleasure: Pornography, Sexuality and Relationships
.
1 Approaches to the film
My film was aimed at exploring pornography as a media genre and an industry, through the examination of the 3 aspects of production, content and consumption.
I interviewed 130 people, including porn performers, producers, critics, social
workers, therapists, sex columnists, physicians, and users. My genuine curiosity, nonjudgmental attitude, and my respect for the interviewees, I believe, were felt by most of them. When I started making the film, I was most curious about pornographers: who are they, and what are their views of women, men, and sexuality? How do they justify the mistreatment of women?
Mark Kernes, editor of
Adult Video News
, the so-called bible of the pornography industry, provided me with contacts, including Ernest Greene, editor of
Hustler’s Taboo Magazine
, a prominent pornographer active in the BDSM community. Greene was eloquent and knowledgeable, with a tendency to exhibit his intellectual and cultural sophistication. After I asked him a few questions, such as “Why do male performers ejaculate on a woman’s face or in her eyes? Would it hurt?,” he became defensive and said: “I never experience a single moment of guilt or shame or anxiety over the prospect that the pictures that I make might inspire people to do things that would be evil. I believe evildoers do evil things and don’t need pictures to tell them how.” When asked if there were a certain trend in pornography, Greene replied:
There’s all kinds of porn, there’s everything for everybody who likes any kind of erotic depiction … It’s very easy for outsiders, particularly those who have a hostile agenda towards porn of some kind [it was clear he included me in this group], to seize on ugly porn or mean porn, or porn where the object seems to … where the purpose seems to be to inflict some kind of abusive sexuality on one or another party involved.
Greene led me to ask the question of exactly what is the pornography that I was analyzing and how I could justify my choice.I decided to focus on mainstream pornography for heterosexual audiences, the type of material that comprises the bulk of the market, has the widest viewership, and has the biggest potential impact. Not finding literature on what kind of pornography content people are really watching, my associate producer, Robert Wosnitzer, and I decided to design and conduct our own study, together with Erica Scharrer, Ana Bridges, and Rachael Liberman. With the support of Robert Jensen, we directed 3 female students to code films according to the scheme we developed, our focus being on sexual acts and sexual aggression. We randomly selected 50 out of 275 pornographic movies from
Adult Video News
’s best-selling and most-rented lists.
The full report has been published in the journal
Violence Against Women
(Bridges et al., 2010), so I only summarize the findings here. The popular pornographic movies depicted a world that mixed sexual excitement with aggression. Verbal aggression occurred in almost half of the scenes and almost all the expressions involved name-calling (e.g. ‘bitch’, ‘slut’). Physical aggression appeared in almost
90% of the scenes, with spanking being the most frequently observed physically aggressive act. Here there were drastic gender differences: women were spanked on 953 occasions, while men were spanked only 26 times, less than 3% of the total. Gagging, where male performers’ penises were inserted deeply inside a woman’s throat until they induced a gag reflex, had not been noted in previous content studies, but appeared in 28% of the scenes. Other types of aggression included open-hand slapping, hair-pulling, and choking. Most targets of the aggression were women who usually responded with expressions of pleasure (encouragement, sexual moans etc) or with no change at all in facial expression or interruption of action.
Apart from aggression, sexual acts causing pain or discomfort or those that may be interpreted as degrading, were frequently noted. For example, external male ejaculation (the ‘money shot’) occurred on women’s mouths or faces in over 60% of the scenes. Anal sex, rarely reported in previous studies, occurred in more than half of the scenes. Extreme sexual acts such as double penetration, where two men penetrate a woman anally and vaginally at the same time, occurred in 20% of the scenes. The ass-to-mouth (ATM) sequence, in which a man inserts his penis first in a woman’s anus and then in a woman’s mouth, was never recorded in previous content analyses. But this act was seen frequently in our study, occurring in about 40% of scenes. Compared to studies conducted in the 1980s and 1990s, our study revealed that pornography has become much more aggressive in both frequency and type of act.
2 What I’ve learned from pornographers
Scholars have observed 2 paradoxical trends in current pornography: on the one hand, it has become more acceptable, and on the other hand, its content has become more violent and degrading (Jensen, 2007; Dines, 2010). These researchers refer to the popularity of gonzo pornography where there are non-stop, aggressive sexual acts, in scenarios meant to degrade female characters. Max Hardcore – some call him ‘the father of Gonzo’ – wrote on his Website:
Everyone knows that Max Hardcore is the undisputed KING of Filthy Fucking! He takes these luscious ladies and turns them into cum drooling, anal gaping sluts just begging for his piss! Max really knows how to turn tight assholes into massive, gaping fuck tubes. Using speculums he stretches these holes nice and wide so he can get a full load of piss squirted in without missing a drop. Then watch them slurp up every drop through a tube!
Some pornographers, like Jeff Stewart, have described Max Hardcore as their inspiration, and Stewart has in turn inspired others. Stewart said:Before the scene starts, [Hardcore] does basically violent, throat-fucking before he does ass-fucking. I used to approach him and tell him, ‘Look, you know, you should probably just do – just a movie with just the gagging.’ And he wasn’t interested. So after six months, I decided to do it myself. We’ve won Best Oral Series [
Adult Video News
Awards] three years in a row. There’s like, twenty-five other companies that are copying our
Gag Factor
series.
Stewart is the creator ofAdult Video News
Awards] three years in a row. There’s like, twenty-five other companies that are copying our
Gag Factor
series.
Gag Factor
, in which the women choke and cry because men’s penises are inserted in their throat deeply, thrusting in very fast and aggressive movements. Stewart stated, “We also started the American Bukkake craze. American Bukkake is … a group of men that ejaculate on a woman’s face. There’s no sex. It’s just like just gallons of cum being drenched on a girl.”
Sex has been endlessly explored in art, literature, and film, but what makes those depictions stand out are the emotions the characters experience when they connect with one another in different circumstances. Pornography has much less variability. As one pornographer said bluntly: “There’s only so many ways to have sex. They’ve all been shot. All you can try to do is make it a little more sensational, but it’s been so sensationalized, what can you – how many dicks can you stick in a girl at one time?” He answered himself: “At one time, three. Well, I guess you could make it four, one in her mouth, two in her ass, one in her pussy, maybe.” So where else can pornographers go to make pornography more exciting? Sam Benjamin, the author of
Confessions of an Ivy League Pornographer
, reflected on his experiences as a gonzo pornographer:
While my overt task at hand was to make sure that the girls got naked, my true responsibility as the director was to make sure the girls got punished. Scenes that stuck out, and hence made more money, were those in which the female ‘targets’ were verbally degraded and sometimes physically humiliated.
The pornographers who punish girls in these ways are not marginalized outsiders. For example, Stewart has won awards sponsored byAdult Video News
, the leading trade journal. The AVN Awards Show, the porn Oscars, has been broadcast on Showtime to an audience of millions since 2008. Titles such as
All New Beaver Hunt, Innocent Until Proven Filthy, Fresh Meat, Daddy’s Lil’ Whore, Teens for Cash
, and
Deep Anal Drilling
also enter the lexicon to be articulated to the masses. Gonzo pornographers such as Max Hardcore, Jeff Stewart and John Stagliano are rich men, who have made their money from verbal degradation and physical humiliation.
Even pornographer Joe Gallant said: “I hate to say, but I think the future of American porn is violence. I see the signs of it already … the culture will become much more accepting of gang rape movies and abuse movies.” What illustrates his
sentiment most vividly is the popular S/M Website
kink.com
, where women are tied up, chained, gagged, whipped, electrified, immersed in water, and penetrated by machines. Even though my film concerns mainstream pornography, and does not include BDSM materials, I included clips from
kink.com
because this type of image has become popular, even mainstream.
Kink.com
has been featured in
The New York Times
as innovative, technologically savvy, and profitable, and is touted as a company just like any other company, but in some ways better (it gives its employees good benefits and retirement plans).
3 Porn performers: Beyond choice
When discussing issues related to
Gag Factor
or
kink.com
, the conversation often drifts into the question of choice: did the woman who was gagged or whipped freely choose to go into the industry? Such questions concern the autonomy and agency of women in pornography. Christine Stark, a writer and anti-porn activist who has worked with hundreds of women in porn and prostitution, problematized the focus on choice to me:
What difference does it make how someone gets into pornography? Why do you have to have this extreme amount of violence incurred in getting into pornography in order to make it matter, to make you matter? It’s like you have to prove that you’re a good victim. Do we sit and have endless conversations about domestic violence victims? ‘Did you choose to walk down the aisle with that man, because if you did, I’m not sure if this is really a form of sexual violence.’
Stark raises an important point regarding the need to shift the focus from the conditions that shape porn performers’ decisions to enter the porn industry and towards the conditions created by both the pornographers and the consumers, under which those performers work.Diane Defoe, a black woman from Hawaii, entered the porn industry in 1999, first as a performer and then later as a director. She has seen many performers come and go:
This industry definitely attracts a certain mindset. You normally have to be a little bit liberal … but you also have to be very young … eighteen, nineteen, twenty years old with little education, little business sense, little financial skills and they’re making ten, twenty times more than that seven dollars an hour they were making at Jack in the Box …
“Making ten, twenty times more” than in a low-wage job is indeed a strong allure for young women getting into the porn industry. For example, Annie Cruz started in pornography when she was 19; at the time of our interview she had worked for a year and already had appeared in 150 movies. She constantly receives emails from women seeking employment in the industry, who write, “I only got eightdollars in the bank account – to my name. I really want to get in bad.” Both Cruz and Defoe observe that there are many women who do pornography for emergency reasons, such as paying off credit card debts or back-up rent, and then get out. Defoe also reports:
People are entranced by the idea that you can go and make an entire month’s salary in a day, and they think that they’re going to be able to do it everyday, and you’re not going to be able to do it everyday. You may not be able to do it, you know, next week. No matter how smart you are, beautiful you are, how many people you know, if there’s a girl coming behind you … that’s better than you, you’re going to be out … It just has to do with who’s … going to do something cheaper than you.
4 Not Easy MoneyIn mainstream porn, men perform acts on women, while women have acts done to them, so it is mostly women who bear the brunt of pain and discomfort, physically and psychologically. Annie Cruz matter-of-factly gives the price list for each sexual act:
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