TEXT-PORN INSIGHTS RESOURCES II
There are people out there in the commercial sex industry who say they love performing in porn. But there are also many individuals who have been sex trafficked into the porn industry, as well as established consenting performers who have been abused on set.
However, even if porn could be exploitation-free and every performer was there 100% willingly, this argument still wouldn’t cancel out the research proving porn’s harmful effects nor the fundamental issues with what mainstream porn normalizes.
Sometimes, human trafficking can happen to willing performers
It’s important to know that even those exploited in porn can appear to enjoy it, and even tell consumers that they absolutely love their job. Take it from former performer, Jessica, who faked a smile and a giggle every time she was approached by a fan.
Many are forced to put on a happy face than reveal what really can happen behind the scenes after leaving the industry.
On the other hand, the belief that because someone entered the industry willingly means they can never be a victim of exploitation is also a dangerous misconception. Even someone who voluntarily entered the porn industry can be exploited and abused.
It might sound crazy, but even performers who started in porn willingly can be sex trafficked.
Related: Is “Exploitation-Free” Porn Possible, And Would It Be Harm-Free For Consumers?
By definition, “sex trafficking is the recruitment, harboring, transportation, provision, obtaining, patronizing, or soliciting of a person for the purposes of a commercial sex act, in which the commercial sex act is induced by force, fraud, or coercion, or in which the person induced to perform such an act has not attained 18 years of age.”
In other words, all it takes is force, fraud, or coercion in a commercial sex situation and boom—you’ve got a trafficking situation. See the difference between the actual definition of sex trafficking and only what the movie Taken portrays?
Related: This Porn Performer’s Online Confession About The Industry Is Going Viral (Must Read)
Although trafficking can look like what happens in action-packed Hollywood films, a trafficking victim doesn’t have to be someone who was kidnapped or smuggled into a trafficking ring. It could simply be a porn performer who agreed to a scene and was later forced or coerced into doing a more extreme act in order to be paid.
Force, fraud, and coercion can happen at any time and in any scene or situation—whether someone has been in the porn industry for 5 minutes or 5 years. And it happens more often than you might think, willing performer or not.
Those who say they love their job in porn can endure some form of coercion and dismiss it as something that “just happens” in the industry, not realizing the crimes that have been committed against them. They may even negate the fact that by definition, sex trafficking situations are a normalized reality for many in their industry.
Questionable porn themes, even with consenting performers
Let’s consider an alternate—and impossible—reality where 100% of porn on any given site is completely consensual. Everyone in porn is over the age of 18. No one in porn is exploited or pushed past their limits. Everyone is there by the freedom of choice rather than the need to survive.
Let’s pretend for a minute that children aren’t exposed to porn every day, there’s no addictive potential to porn, and it has no impact on the brain or relationships.
Of course, all of those things are actually the harsh realities of porn. But putting all of that aside, for the moment, let’s just look at the common themes in mainstream porn.
Related: 5 Marginalized Groups Of People Porn Has No Problem Fetishizing
How many consenting performers have acted as an underage girl or boy in a porn scene? How many have participated in a scene that fantasizes incest between siblings, step-siblings, parents or step-parents? How many have been in a scene where gangbangs, abuse, rape, or force were fantasized? How many performers have been in scenes where sexual manipulation was involved, or even with racially stereotyped and gender-stereotyped themes or roles?
It’s likely that most—if not all—mainstream and amateur performers have engaged with this kind of content, given that those are some of the most searched for themes on major porn sites year after year.
Related: The Most Viewed Porn Categories Of 2019 Are Pretty Messed Up
What can glamorizing and eroticizing these behaviors do to society? Think of how one major porn site alone gets about 115 million daily average visits. Would it be safe to say that society could accept the idea that sex with a family member could be normal? Or that young teens are easily manipulated sex objects? That there are little to no consequences for the perpetrator of forced sex or rape? That racist or sexist sexual fantasies are acceptable and healthy?
While words can more easily be interpreted as opinion, the brain is significantly more likely to process images as fact. And because porn affects sexual tastes, it can influence what people fantasize about, and even have a potential impact on behavior in real life.
Does performer consent negate porn’s negative effects?
We’re all about healthy sexuality, and the porn industry claims to be, too.
Here’s the kicker, though: consenting performers or not, porn actually reinforces themes that are damaging to real relationships, like cheating, unequal gender dynamics, and degrading sex acts—things that have the opposite impact of promoting healthy sex in committed relationships.
Related: What Actually Would Happen If These 10 Porn Scenarios Happened In Real Life
Porn actually fuels sexual dysfunction in a lot of young people, too. It puts in place unattainable expectations for how partners should look, act, desire, and sexually perform. It cultivates comparison and sells exaggerated fantasies that consumers can’t replicate in their relationships. It can influence some individuals to prefer the unattainable and two-dimensional fantasy of porn rather than the work of a real partner connected with sexual gratification. And this is all true whether performers are exploited or not.
Pornographers want consumers to be aroused by someone else’s scripted, fake experience and keep them coming back for more, whatever it takes—extreme acts, taboo topics, or unattainable fantasies.
So even if some porn performers say they’re having the time of their lives, does their willingness justify producing a toxic product that takes such a toll on the sexual wellness of its consumers? Does performer consent completely negate the untold amount of negative impacts their product has in our sex-obsessed society?
Let’s relate this back to another issue you’ve probably thought about.
Not every performer, but some of them
Since 1964, tobacco has killed more than 20 million Americans. That’s 15 times the number of Americans who have lost their lives in all the wars combined that the U.S. has participated in.
Smoking is one of the most preventable causes of death in the U.S. today. It accounts for 30% of all cancer deaths and 87% of lung cancer deaths. According to the American Lung Association, lung cancer is the most common cancer worldwide.
In a 50-year landmark study, physicians in England found that about half of all smokers will die from a smoking-related disease—many before or around the age of 50.
Related: The Surprising Similarities Between Smokers And Porn Performers
So if research clearly shows that smoking is harmful, the tobacco industry has probably fessed up and made attempts to right their wrongs, haven’t they?
Sadly, no.
Tobacco industry leaders continue contesting the oceans of research and scientific consensus proving its harm. Check out what one judge wrote after listening to 84 witnesses and perusing tens of thousands of exhibits in discovery tobacco companies’ elaborate strategies to deny the harmful effects of smoking:
“In short, [the companies] have marketed and sold their lethal product with zeal, with deception, with a single-minded focus on their financial success, and without regard for the human tragedy or social costs that success exacted,” Kessler wrote in United States of America v. Philip Morris USA.
Sound familiar? Seemingly trustworthy industry insiders reporting that something is acceptable and that there are very little if any risks involved—even when science proves the opposite?
The vast world of internet porn is completely new in the scope of human history. There’s a lot of research already on porn’s harmful effects, and it will only increase as the years continue. Those who profess that porn is harmless, including some porn performers, will eventually see the facts speak for themselves.
While not every porn performer is exploited, many are. While it might not happen to everyone, it happens to someone. And even if none were, the pornographic product produced glorifies unacceptable and risky behavior and issues, and actively harms relationships and consumers. And that’s enough for us to raise our voices.
After all, we believe everyone deserves to know the real risks of the products they consume, whether occasionally or casually.
The lasting negative influences of porn
We want to make something clear: we’re in no way pointing fingers at porn performers who vocally claim to love their jobs. We’re anti-shame on all fronts, no matter who it’s directed toward.
Related: Why Shaming And Victim-Blaming Porn Performers Adds To Their Mistreatment
What we are saying is that the argument of, “Porn is produced with performers’ consent, so what’s the problem it?” turns a blind eye to so many harmful ramifications of this toxic product in our society that cannot be ignored.
The negative effects of porn don’t simply disappear with the claim that even some porn performers love what they do.
People who learn about sex from porn suffer, and society suffers, too. We’re pro-sex and pro-healthy relationships, which is precisely why we’re anti-porn.
Your favorite non-Netflix TV show has you on the edge of your seat. The show’s hero has five minutes to disable the missile launch codes before all chaos breaks loose. But in order to see whether the hero is able to save the city, you must first confront the rare but inevitable and annoying commercial break that follows your show’s cliff-hanger.
The first commercial you see, however, is different from the rest. It makes your stomach drop and your heartbreak at the same time. A 51-year-old woman, Terrie, with a hole in her throat shows up on screen. In a raspy, barely audible voice, Terrie describes what it is like to live as a former smoker: the oral cancer, throat cancer, and more.
The graphic anti-smoking commercials of this generation, such as the one described above, have provided would-be smokers everywhere with insight into the dangers of life as a smoker. This valuable information runs counter to the 1900’s perception that a life of smoking is glamorous and even healthy.
Consider how history may be repeating itself—not in the tobacco industry, but in the porn industry. In fact, the life of a porn performer today is surprisingly comparable in principle to the life of a smoker from the 1900’s.
Do smokers and performers “deserve what they get?”
Check out this comment from one of our Facebook posts:
Should we blame every porn performer for all the abuse, exploitation, and mistreatment they face by entering the industry?
We understand that people’s stories and backgrounds are unique, and this leads to a variety of different reasons that people may start smoking or enter into the porn industry. But we invite you to consider how performers and smokers alike do not deserve the physical and mental difficulties that often result because of their profession or habit, respectively.
Here’s an important fact: the rational part of a human’s brain isn’t fully developed until age 25 or so.
It’s a sad reality that performers generally get into the porn industry at ages when their brains are not yet fully developed, and thus they are unable to fully comprehend the toll that working in the porn industry may take on their bodies and mental health. The same could be said of smokers, who often start smoking at such young ages that they can’t understand the harm they’re doing from the start.
Related: Does The Porn Industry Use “Tobacco Industry Tactics” To Hide The Dark Truth?
The average porn performer begins performing at age 22 and the average smoker begins smoking well before age 18, yet, according to research we stated before, the brain isn’t fully developed until halfway through the third decade of life.
This means adolescents and young adults choosing to perform and smoke are often doing so with their amygdalae instead of their prefrontal cortexes. Or, in other words, they’re making these life-altering decisions with the emotional part of their brain rather than the rational, decision-making part of their brain.
That’s important because, as we suggested earlier, it points to the fact that someone at age 18, or even age 22, isn’t necessarily able to fully comprehend the physical and mental expense that performing in the porn industry or smoking may take on their body.
And what’s more than their incapability of understanding big life choices are these industries’ notorious agendas to hide the truth about their products.
The glamorous facade for porn and smoking
The porn and tobacco industries have done similarly masterful jobs of marketing themselves in a way that hides “the dark truth” for porn performers, porn consumers, and smokers. And, unfortunately, our culture has only served to further spread the lies these industries have promoted and are currently promoting.
Let’s go back in time for a moment. The 1900’s smoking culture marketed the smoker life as one that was glamorous and progressive in nature. Not only did the tobacco industry sell the smoking life as an American ideal, but the industry with the help of pop culture also marketed the activity of smoking as a sign of liberation for women—cigarettes were known as their “torches of freedom.”
Related: Why Internet Porn Is The New Tobacco
Today, you probably know that the smoking lifestyle is most definitely not glamorous, nor is it progressive. If anything, it’s been made to look pretty uncool because of what you know smoking can do to a person and how you know it can ruin their health.
The life of a porn performer today is likewise celebrated like smoking once was. Having exaggerated sex on tape is sold as an empowering career choice, even while sex trafficking is a regular issue in the industry and consumers often see women as nothing more than objects.
But that just isn’t true.
Related: XXX Warning: Like Cigarettes, Porn Needs A Health Warning Label
Not only are porn performers struggling to make money—labeled as the number one reason why women enter the industry by ResearchGate—but they also face increased risks of physical abuse, non-consensual violence, high likelihood of STIs because of lack of protection, drug usage to cope with the toxic lifestyle and pain of performing, and mental abuse or illness.
With little research, it becomes obvious how the glamorous, sexy perceptions being pushed by both the porn and tobacco industries draw in porn performers and consumers, as well as smokers in a way that blinds them from fully understanding what they are getting themselves into.
Life after smoking and performing
Porn performers and smokers alike often carry with them a multitude of unexpected—but inevitable—health repercussions that will follow and affect them for the rest of their lives.
Take it from Terrie, whose anti-smoking commercial we recounted earlier.
Take it from ex-porn performer, Shelley Lubben, who states that her life after porn included STDs, PTSD, in addition to “all kinds of disorders (and) serious traumas.”
Take it from ex-porn performer Jessica, who shared her story with us.
The smoking life is definitely not what it was once chalked up to be, and we’d like to suggest to you that the porn is no different—anything but glamorous, and definitely not worth the risks or your time.
Society has caught up with the truth about cigarettes, and would-be smokers have become more than aware of the risks. The same can’t be said of porn—yet. Science has caught up with the truth about porn, but society is still slowly but surely catching up with science.
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