The Link Between Pornography And Rape Culture
As society keeps changing drastically, so does the evolution of pornography and rape culture. Pornography itself has had many changes throughout time which has had lead to increase one of the most common crisis interventions that a victim can go through rape culture and psychological addiction on the pornography consumers. Pornography in many ways contributes to the rape culture and the impacts rapists as well as victims.
Porn is erotic behavior that many times are portrayed in pictures or writing purposely to cause sexual excitement”. The term ‘‘pornography’’ refers to sexually explicit materials intended to create sexual arousal in the consumer. Pornography is an oppressive system in which it manifests of workers who act according to a specific category so that the consumer can satisfy their desires as they like. Pornography varies in forms and categories; from photos, erotic literature and comics, to the more commonly viewed video format all across sites and even on social media. Pornography in terms of erotic art has been around for centuries, but the first pornographic motion picture was created in 1895 featuring a striptease that contained no actual nudity, yet it still became controversial at the time.
Pornography consists of three types of graphics such as non-violent pornography, violent pornography, and rape-oriented pornography. The non-violent pornography is an “explicit materials without any overt coercive content, but it may sometimes imply acts of submission and/or coercion by the positioning of the models, use of props or display of unequal power relationships. ” Violent pornography is sexually explicit materials in which nonconsensual, coercive, and/or violent sexual relations are explicitly portrayed. Lastly, rape-oriented pornography is the depiction of sexual assault or forced sexual intercourse.
Porn was always a booming industry that supported production companies and actors equally. Yet pornography has had drastically changed, systematically as well as economically. Before people would have to buy a DVD or a magazine to a seller in the streets to be able to watch pornography at home. Now with the evolution of technology and the ongoing progress of new features on devices, it has become easier to get access to pornography for free. Due to these advances, actors are facing an economic decrease, since they do not get paid by the number of sells like they use to, because there is free porn available on supported streaming sites such as PornHub, RedTube, Youporn, etc. Instead, their sources of income rely more on the number of views that the video and categories get by making the company becoming richer rather than the actors. There are many categories in pornography; “brutal” is one of them which is now becoming increasingly popular, so does the number of views and demand. Porn is viewed roughly 64 million times a day, and with increasing interest in violence related categories of porn. These forms of pornography contribute to Rape Oriented Porn.
Rape-oriented pornography videos are shown in the perspective in which only the women are shown and the camera is positioned to show the man’s perspective in the act of sex. This category portrays male perpetrators who are largely invisible to the viewer, as the aggressor is rarely focused, noticed, or highlighted in any identifiable manner. These categories perhaps are the meant to make the consumer is essentially viewing the videos “through the eyes of a rapist”. Unfortunately, these types of videos portray the act of sexual assault due to the levels of physical and verbal aggression and the access that allows the consumer to view it by the position of the cameras and the actors. In other words, anyone viewing the material, regardless of social status, physical presence, or demeanor, could see himself or herself as the perpetrator of sexual assault.
Moreover, pornography tent to not show what happens behind the scenes to the audiences therefore not many people are aware that actresses are typically recorded giving their consent to all acts that occur, and they are given safety words/breaks when needed. However, this footage is only ever shown in original content in the films distributed directly from their production companies. In other words, any third party stream sites or people downloading the videos typically edit and remove certain content like interviews and additional dialogues re-upload the edited version back onto the sites for views to satisfy the consumer. This leads the videos, in fact, an entirely fictional yet original and edited versions, to portray the acts of violence against the actress for sexual pleasure, alluding to a violation and lack of consent. These acts of violence include slapping, hitting, spitting, beating, forced penetration and verbal insults and abuse. Being that pornography mainly objectifies women, often demonstrating men to be in control, it is interpreted as if women deserve the abuse as well as the necessity for her to be dominated. This objectification towards women is not the biggest concern the industry is causing as it only satisfies men’s fantasies and perhaps illustrates the act of masculinity in the most bias ways.
The term sexual assault refers to sexual contact or behavior that occurs without the explicit consent of the victim. For example, a sexual assault can occur in a form of sexual harassment when a person is touching another in an uncomfortable to almost an inappropriate way. Another example would be forcing a victim to perform sexual acts, such as oral sex or penetrating the perpetrator’s body. Rape culture is a concept that links sexual assaults to a culture where prevalent attitudes and practices normalize, excuse, tolerate, and even condone rape. Rape culture is perpetuated through the use of misogynistic language, the objectification of women’s bodies, and the glamorization of sexual violence, thereby creating a society that disregards women’s rights and safety.
Rape, in fact, has many myths defined as attitudes, typically used to justify an offender’s actions and male sexual aggression against women. These myths are beliefs that are meant to predict the victims' behavior as to either blame them or to confirm that the victim experienced a sexual assault. An article named Myths and Facts by unknown authors has many examples of the common myths that people believe in. For example: “People that have been sexually assaulted will be hysterical and crying. ”, is one of the people believes in to confirm that if the victim is acting this way then is true that they experienced a sexual assault? However, as the authors (2016) explained that this myth does not count that different people react differently to certain situations and that this is one of them. People also have many other beliefs although are not necessary myths, in fact, is victim blaming. Victim blaming is the devaluation of an act to hold the victim responsible for the crime(s) that have been committed against them. One of the most common victims blaming phrases that people use is, “Maybe if you would have not drunk you would have not been raped” or “Maybe you should have not been outside so late. ”
These myths and victim blaming are part of gender microaggression where people reflects choices and actions (or inactions) taken in our daily lives, which promote and reinforce harm, subordination, exploitation, and disrespect of women. Microaggression many times manifests on teaching people how to behave according to their sex. For example, people teach boys to be a man to according to society is to be acquisitive, to be competitive, to be aggressive. Society makes the image of masculinity cruel, so people discipline boys to ignore the feelings of others, and to be more violent. Men who are prone to socialize as a traditional masculine are more likely to view women as subordinates on a good day, and as objects to satisfy their most violent sexual desires on a bad day. In other words, masculinity has a lot to do with sexual assault since society feeds a lot into proving that pornography impacts the consumer as it creates a variety of psychological fantasies that those acts are the correct way to act during intercourse. Besides pornography being a material to arouse sexual excitement, it has a lot of violent contexts that it indirectly stimulates people to believe that these things do happens in the real world.
Pornography is a material that can easily make consumers addicted to it and for the worst part act accordingly. For many reasons many categories and acts of pornography consequently contributes in many ways to the rape culture. As society’s gender microaggressions contribute to victim blaming, the rape culture is far from progressing. People who watch pornography often are more likely to believe that pornography does not have negative consequences on society, therefore these people often may believe that it is an okay and normal activity. Indeed, these activities lead men to objectify women and in many cases in which a man needs to prove his masculinity, might sexually assault women for personal desires.
