What We Watch Matters- Some Shocking Facts about the Porn Industry

So I recently watched the documentary and the docu-series Hot Girls Wanted and Turned On. Honestly, I recommend it to everybody, but be warned that while it does not show sex or much nudity, it is explicit in a lot of things. 

   The statistics surrounding porn are astounding, and this documentary goes through a lot of them. In 2018 alone, more than 5,517,000,000 hours of porn were consumed on the world’s largest porn site. (Ponhub Analytics). I’ve been shocked by the lack of and/or negative response to the documentary. The directors are not anti-porn but they force the viewer to question the reality of the porn industry in America, and the overall effects of this new social media world. It seems there is a lot of uncomfortable silence around these documentaries because, to quote from a guy in the show working in the industry, “everybody wants their porn.” The documentary reveals a lot of things, but I want to go into two of the most shocking things I learned, both of which have been met with a lot of silence or negativity. WARNING: This post talks about these things explicitly. 

 1. Racism in the porn industry. Their most controversial episode  in Turned On was called Money Shot. It features one of the managers and agents in porn and black male talent. They also interview Tyler Knight, a famous black male porn star. I don’t even know how to say it other than porn is OPENLY viciously racist, in fact in feeds on racism as a way that people get off. I have not been exposed to much pornography so this came to a big shock to me. Maybe it doesn’t to others, but the fact that it doesn’t makes it worse. Things that are said and parts that are played in porn by black, or latino people would NEVER be allowed elsewhere. It seems strange to me that we are living in a society that is saying racism is wrong and there is so much noise about it, and yet porn is being consumed by a great number of humans, gets more traffic than any other major site, and it is saying the opposite.Porn sites receive more regular traffic than Netflix, Amazon, & Twitter combined each month. (HuffPost). This episode focused on black men, and that they are being forced to play the role of the big scary thug raping young small white women, which is an image that goes back to Birth of Nation a racist silent film made after slavery was ended in order to encourage fear of black men in America. They reveal these things in this episode so well and let it speak for itself. And yet this was the episode that got the most pushback. I was shocked nobody was talking about it. I was utterly shocked by the things the camera guys would say to the black porn star Jax Slayer about what he was to do while shooting. I furthered research into the topic and found that it isn’t just that episode, but overall different racial groups such as African American are portrayed as erotic in a scary, or animalistic way. It is 2019….and interracial porn with this kinda role is one of the most popular for people to watch. My question is, how would we ever expect to overcome racism in America if what is being most consumed condones it? 

2. Facial Abuse. This is one of those things that really made my stomach hurt and I felt nauseous learning that this kind of thing exists and is a common job for most girls in the industry to take, in fact, if they don’t do it they are turned down from a lot of other jobs. This is a whole website where men spend the video insulting and degrading the women verbally, then attacking her, forcing sexual acts until she vomits and then makes her eat it. Women are crying in it, gagging and being abused. In the episode they interview a latino women who did one of these, and was called a “Punta” and that she should lick up her vomit because her people “like cleaning up”. Imagining the trauma a woman would endure from filming that is overwhelming. The fact that it is legal is overwhelming. 

    The worst part for me was a woman at Duke University, who openly was doing porn, was on this very website taking part of facial abuse, and defends porn saying it is the most empowering thing for her. It brought her confidence as a woman. Vomiting and being attacked sexually on camera made her feel great about herself.  This is what she wanted the world and essentially other young girls thinking about it to know. How is this feministic when men are watching it over and over fantasizing about abusing women this way. The lies women are telling themselves about working in this industry is shocking. Women are not in a position of power by being in this. In fact they feel bullied and expected to do a lot of degrading things in order to get paid or be noticed and make it in the industry. We are seeing a rise in sexual assault, in rape, and in degradation of women. That is because we have young boys being educated on sex by these videos…so to the Duke student who promotes it as being feministic, you are encouraging violence against the women you seek to empower. The documentary states that 40% of all porn depicts violence against women. This is a conversation that needs to be had. As the show portrays, everyday another girl turns 18 and is dying to be a part of the porn industry. It is becoming an attractive job for young girls, but they aren’t being told the whole truth, and are leaving it with trauma emotionally, physically and then stigmatized by videos on the internet the rest of their lives. 

The silence surrounding the topics addressed in this documentary really really shocked and upset me. We need to open this up, this is changing everybody in our society whether it’s the workers behind it, or the people obsessively viewing it. It is encouraging racist stereotypes. I’m completely anti-porn; I think it is destroying sex, intimacy and it is damaging the brain in ways we can’t even understand. But whether you are or not I really would give this documentary a watch. But i can’t help but wonder that the silence is because the addiction to this guilty pleasure goes so deep nobody wants to recognize what it truly is….a lie that is abusing all those involved. Nobody wants to stop. But seriously if your struggling with porn, watch this. It really will help turn you OFF completely. Also if you want more facts about the negative affects of porn go to www.fightthenewdrug.org this website is non-religious and research based.