The Dynamics of Women in Porn: A Review of the Literature
Rudy Sanchez University of Texas at El Paso
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Pornography is huge in the United States mainly because it is consumed and created at record levels. The adult entertainment industry grosses billions each year. 70% of American men watch pornography at least once a month, and 20% of men admit to watching it in the office. Porn is pervasive in American culture, yet there remains a huge stigma against porn performers. It may be acceptable to watch porn, but it's certainly not acceptable to make it. Pornography consists of images that sexually stimulate the viewer. Although there is a range from porn in magazines to video material, what the material has in common is that it takes the viewer out of reality. It is distinguished from erotica in that it is dehumanising, objectifying and completely removed from a context of mutual relationship. Despite our personal convictions regarding porn, the fact remains that the adult sex industry has a huge influence on Americans that spans a broad grasp over the media. This stigma created around porn has been due to careful advertising and planning on how it appeals to people in society. No one knows this better than the women who attempt to leave successful careers in the adult entertainment industry. Some performers retire when they reach a certain age, while others leave to pursue a career that is more stable. But there are also large numbers of women who stop working in the porn industry because of its systematic abuse of performers. I will be examining the dynamics of the industry through the womens perspective, but in order to learn more about its validity and changing aspects, four important questions need to be considered: 1. When was the Origin of Women in Pornography? 2. How popular is porn? 3. What is the content of porn doing to viewers? 4. Why cant women seem to leave the porn profession? The Dynamics of Women in Porn 3
When was the Origin of Women in Pornography? Pornography is often seen as one of the ills of today's society through evidence of modern moral decay brought on by video cameras and broadband access to the internet. In contrast to popular belief porn was alive way before the modern age. Pornography existed long before video or even photography which tells a story in itself. Whichever way you put it, the diversity of pornographic materials throughout history suggests that human beings have always been interested in images of sex. As Seth Prosterman, a clinical sexologist and licensed therapist in San Francisco, said Sex has always played a super-important role for human beings and their relationships," he later adds "What people do sexually has always been a curiosity, and of interest." Since the 1800s, the idea of porn for person pleasure began to shape as a very controversial idea that spread. Erotic novels had been in print since the mid-1600s in France, but the first full-length English-language pornographic novel was "Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure," also known as "Fanny Hill" by John Cleland being published in 1748. This was the first time people could this type of entertainment in the media. This drastically effected society in the U.S by opening a whole industry in adult entertainment. Although the reserved public attitudes toward sex at the time were a norm, pornographic novels held little back portraying a subject in a whole different perspective. Technology drove innovation in the porn genre. The invention of the daquerreotype, a primitive form of photography, by Louis Daquerre in 1839 opened up the technology to pornographers to use. Almost instantaneously, pornographers commandeered the new technology. The introduction of Video into pornography followed a similar path. By 1896, filmmakers in France were exploring the genre with short, silent clips like "Le Coucher de la The Dynamics of Women in Porn 4
Marie," in which an actress performed a strip tease. Hard-core sex started showing up after 1900. These "stag films" were usually shown at all-male gatherings drawn from the fact that they appealed more to a male audience. Women through the history pornography have taken part in the industry far before the modern day in age. How popular is Porn? For a long time, stag films remained consistant, both in content and in quality. Then, in the 1970s, changing social dynamics opened the door for public showing of explicit films. The Internet and the invention of the digital camera opened to window to porn-making so low that entire websites could now be devoted to non-professional videos. The shift from publically viewed stag films to privately viewed rentals and internet downloads encouraged changes in the types of acts shown on-screen. With privacy, men were more willing to watch fetish films depicting specific, sometimes odd, sexual behavior. A 1994 Carnegie Mellon study of early porn on computer Bulletin Board Systems, found that 48 percent of downloads were outside the sexual norm, depicting incest, bestiality and pedophilia. What was surprising was that less than 5 percent of downloads depicted vaginal sex. This could have resulted because magazines and pornographic films had traditional sex covered, and people began to seek images they couldn't find elsewhere from the privacy of their computers. In the modern age, porn is all over the internet, but the actual size of the industry is unknown. There is a lack of official records, and very few studies have made conclusions at the economics of porn. Adult Video News, a trade industry journal, made annual estimates of porn sales and rentals in the industry. In 2007, according to an AVN senior editor Mark Kernes, retail The Dynamics of Women in Porn 5
sales reached $6 billion a year, However, AVN's figures have been widely disputed based on its inability to take into account all of the free videos uploaded to sites. The growing popularity of the industry in the U.S is clearly building momentum as a recent study, conducted by Benjamin Edelman of Harvard Business School, depicted the amount of porn subscriptions nationwide within the states in the picture below.
Regardless of how much money is being made, porn is growing market appealing to more and more audiences. A 2008 study of 813 American university students found that 87 percent of men and 31 percent of women reported viewing pornography. Not only do men participate in the viewing of pornography but also women despite being contrary to popular belief that men solely indulge in adult entertainment. This speaks to the impact that porn has had and will continue to have across all different audiences. Women in the porn industry have greatly promoted the popularity due to the changing technologies by which pornography utilizes. What is the content of porn doing to viewers? The Dynamics of Women in Porn 6
One question that is infrequently asked is So what is all that porn doing to us? Due to the massive online industry, critics argue that competition between pornographers has led to a rise in dominance and verbal abuse of women depicted in films made for men. This mainstream of competition is creating a need for more intense films and drawn from the need to do something more edgy. As Chyng Sun, a professor of media studies at New York University and director of the film "The Price of Pleasure: Pornography, Sexuality and Relationships," said to LiveScience magazine They need to always put out something new, something enticing, to attract people," he also added "The degradation, the aggression levels, that is something you can create, something a little bit new to offer to the audience." This attitude towards making films is inevitably creating an image for women that is highly unrealistic and out right inappropriate. By reviewing best-selling pornography films, Sun has found that physical and verbal aggression are present in 90 percent of mainstream porn scenes. Moreover, films directed by women are no less likely to contain aggression than films directed by men which comes so slight surprise being that the viewer would think that women would help get rid of this trend and not facilitate it. Sun argues that these aggressive images are damaging to people's sex lives and that they help cement negative perceptions of women. These men that participate in the viewing of this kind of porn pick up the conception that is it socially acceptable to treat women in this manner. Psychologists have speculated that this frequent porn viewing is potentially damaging to a mans health in that is dulls arousal. There are other points of view on this subject as Prosterman, the San Francisco sexologist, points out that research has failed to draw a clear link between porn and criminal sexual behavior. And he later added, Porn is one way for people to explore their own sexual desires. It is clear that there are many different opinions on the subject The Dynamics of Women in Porn 7
of whether pornography is damaging not only to societal perceptions of women but also mens psychological health in terms of what he believes is the sexually arousing. According to the site Fight the New Drug, Thanks to the Internet, porn now mixes the most powerful natural dopamine release the body can produce with a cocktail of other elementsendless novelty, shock, and surpriseall of which increase the dopamine surge. And because Internet porn offers an endless stream of variety, users can flip to a new image every time their high starts to fade, keeping dopamine levels elevated for hours. Porn is being referred to as the new silent drug drawn from its proven scientific evidence to release hormones in your brain in the same manner as drugs do. Drawn from this evidence it is clear that porn is indeed changing how women are viewed in society, perhaps for the worst. Why cant women seem to leave the porn profession? While the common conception may be that it is acceptable to watch porn, it is not acceptable to make it. No one knows this better than the women who attempt to leave their careers in the adult entertainment industry. Most performers retire when they reach a specific age, while others leave to pursue careers with more stability. But the majority of women who stop working in the porn industry leave because of its systematic abuse its performers. There have been many ex-porn stars that have recounted stories of not only physical but psychological abuse. The physical abuse has many forms that may include forced sodomy, assault, and transmissions of sexually transmitted diseases. On top of this abuse, women recount being ignored while yelling for help. One woman fighting againt porn is Ex-porn star Shelley Lubben who is an anti-pornography activist who works with the Pink Cross, a nonprofit organization that The Dynamics of Women in Porn 8
promotes healing from porn. In a 2012 interview Lubbin stated the industry "does not care about performers' health." Her statements shined a light on the harsh realities of the porn industry as she sought to reveal the abuse that takes place against women behind the camera. On the topic of these allegations of abuse, it is particularly disturbing that ex-porn performers face major difficulties reentering the workforce. Comparable to the difficulties faced by felons after leaving prison, ex-porn stars are always struggling to leave their past behind. One example of this difficulty is addressed by Gauge, a well-known performer who entered the business at 18, who spoke openly about her struggle to work outside the industry. After she stopped performing, she tried several careers, but they all ended the same failure. She described, "Every single time I was discriminated against, somebody would recognize me, it'd be a big fit thrown." Gauge was forced to change jobs multiple times as a result. Her story is very common and is one of the reasons that so many porn stars stick with or return to porn. Employment law in most states does not outlaw termination on the basis of moral character or employment history, however, is it quite evident that there is some level of discrimination taking place due to the difficulty of ex porn stars acquiring a job in a different field. As a result, porn has become a one- way ticket with no options to return to the life you once had. It is an unfortunate enigma that women in the porn industry must pay this price in a culture sexualizes youth and prizes young naked bodies. Conclusion Evidence drawn from the dynamics of the porn industry provides validity of the types of problems women face in society. This stigma created around porn has been due to careful The Dynamics of Women in Porn 9
advertising and planning on how it appeals to people in society. No one knows this better than the women who participate the adult entertainment industry. I examined the dynamics of the industry through the womens perspective by asking four key questions that provide validity to the argument that women indeed are affected by the ever growing industry that is porn.
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