Let’s Talk About Pornography
It’s a conversation we need to have with our kids
Photo by Charles Deluvio on Unsplash
Until recently, porn was not a subject of interest to me. I suppose that left me in the minority. And my birds and bees conversation with my kids, who are now in their late 20’s did not cover porn. In fairness to my parenting skills, the type of pornography available 10 -15 years ago was generally more vanilla.
Pornhub’s arrival on the scene 10 years ago was a game-changer. Thank you to Pulitzer prize-winning New York Times journalist Nicholas Kristof for shining a bright light on Pornhub and a dark and disturbing issue. His recent exposé, The Children of Pornhub, has left me deeply disturbed.
While his story about Pornhub is not news-breaking, his podium at The New York Times will ensure an intense spotlight remains on the world’s largest pornography site. The story has also prompted me to do some broader reading and share my thoughts on the issue.
3 shocking revelations
Read Nicolas Kristof’s feature story if you have a strong stomach. Three things shocked me.
Pornhub is owned by MindGeek, which is headed by two Canadians and has its headquarters in Montreal, Canada. The company is located in a shiny glass office tower and exists with little regulation.
Two, the site is infested with rape and incest videos, footage showing the sexualization of children, revenge pornography, spycam videos of women showering, racist and misogynistic content, and footage of women being asphyxiated in plastic bags, among other violent acts.
Three, the interest in this content is staggering, and the exponential growth has spawned a multi-billion dollar business. The numbers cited in the story indicate the shocking pervasiveness of pornography in our lives.
What’s wrong with pornography?
Pornography is a big part of our lives. The average age of first exposure to pornography is 11, and the largest consumers of internet pornography are aged 12–17.
The New York Times reports the website gets 3.5 billion visits per month — more than Amazon, Yahoo, and Netflix — has 3 billion ad impressions per day and is the 10th most visited website globally.
MindGeek owns approximately 100 similar websites — RedTube, YouPorn, Girls Do Porn — and while MindGeek might be the largest purveyor of pornography, they are not the only ones exploiting children and adults online.
According to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, Kristof reports that Google got 69.2 million searches related to child sexual exploitation in 2019 — up 10x in less than five years. The search for other violent and equally disturbing terms is just as prevalent. The numbers presented are eye-popping.
3.5 billion visits a month — that kind of intensity is changing brain cells.
Let’s say, for the moment, the issue is not pornography. Let’s presume the issue, and the problem is underage sex, non-consensual violence, and rape. Can we agree that sexually abusing children and violent, coercive sexual acts against women are vile and criminal? And filming, sharing, and profiting from such acts is also vile? What about watching such content? Is that any less reprehensible?
Millions are creating this content, uploading it, and even millions more are watching. What once existed somewhere on the fringes of the darknet has become mainstream. How did we even get here?
Sure, porn is a multi-billion dollar business driven by greed. But there is a social and human challenge to consider. Angela Volkov states the following in her well-researched article entitled, Pornography Is Neither Harmless Nor Fantasy:
Pornography is an escalating behaviour; it’s addictive so there are diminishing returns with its increased consumption. This prompts the consumer to seek ever more extreme and objectifying content in order to replicate that initial ‘high’, and the industry has certainly kept pace.
The vast majority of people are not innately attracted to violence, nor sexually to children, however pornography can reshape their sexuality so that they are.
You are not immune to classical conditioning, it is not a matter of will power or moral character. You can train dogs to salivate at the sound of bells, rats to prefer the stench of death, men to fetishize boots and high heels by association — why would masturbating to teen or violent content as makes up the majority of pornography be an exception to this?
To state it clearly, if you just skipped over the quote, the extreme pornography depicted is literally re-wiring brains. Pornography dehumanizes and desensitizes viewers, leaving the impression that degrading and violent sexual acts are normal or acceptable behaviour. Pornographers are uploading increasingly extreme content to feed addictions. Normalizing violence contributes to rape culture in many disturbing ways.
While extreme porn is damaging to the health of those who view it, it also traumatizes and kills children and women coerced by pornographers.
Keep the spotlight on
The spotlight The New York Times has shone on Pornhub has had results. Before the publication of Kristof’s exposé, PayPal had already cut off services to the company. Legislators in both Canada and the United States had called for investigations, but Kristof’s article sparked further action.
As a direct result of the article, VISA and MasterCard temporarily ended their card use on the site, pending investigations. VISA has subsequently reinstated use on certain MindGeek adult sites that comply with the law. In addition, a parliamentary committee in Canada passed a unanimous resolution requiring the two owners of the site to appear before them in the new year. This is a recognition of the irreparable harm caused by Pornhub.
For its part, Pornhub announced that only verified users will be able to upload videos. Up until now, the site operated much like YouTube, and anybody could upload a video. This is a small step, though, given that Pornhub operates without requiring proof of consent by those that appear in the videos or proof of age for those who watch.
Pornhub has also taken down 14 million videos — the majority of its content — because it featured underaged and sexually trafficked subjects. This, despite the company’s assertions that any claims they are permitting child videos are “irresponsible and flagrantly untrue.”
Pornhub, which has only 80 moderators to monitor 1.36 million hours of video uploaded annually, will probably hire more due to the spotlight of The New York Times article. A fine step, but I have no faith in the industry self-regulating.
What should the conversation be?
I found Kristof’s story to be a perfect segue into a dinner-time conversation. It facilitated a discussion on how to push our legislators to impose stricter regulations on the industry. Canada needs to step up to the plate; the laws in the United States on child pornography are stricter, and offences are punishable by long prison sentences.
But let’s not be naive to think that if we forced Pornhub and others to curate the videos and ensure there was nothing underage or coercive, it would fix the problem. The offensive content will move to the dark web or less regulated jurisdictions.
Child molesters and rapists are prosecuted and jailed. Let’s discuss why the owners of MindGeek, and other profiteers and purveyors of extreme pornographic content have escaped prosecution.
Let’s talk about the financial services and other companies and search engines that cooperate and do business with those that monetize sexual assault on children or unconscious women. Let’s discuss the complicity of job sites like Indeed.com and Glassdoor.com that post jobs and hundreds of job reviews for MindGeek and similar companies.
Let’s consider whether MindGeek should be allowed to have a permit to operate a business and within what parameters.
But the most pressing conversation is about being healthy teens and adults who don’t get manipulated and trapped into watching sexual violence and assaults and develop serious addictions and behaviours that are dehumanizing or violent. And about supporting exploited and traumatized children and adults, mostly women, and preventing their vulnerability in the first place?
We owe it to our kids and families to talk about pornography. It is an issue that merits as much attention as other health and environmental issues.
Kristof ends his article by stating, “With Pornhub, we have Jeffrey Epstein times 1000.” That is an underestimate. Keep the spotlight on. We have to talk about this.