2014 is not a good year to be a teenage girl. The last of the 90’s kids are growing up and we are starting to see the effects of being raised with the Internet. For generations before us, hormonal teenage boys looking for sexy images of women had limited options; they could brave the embarrassment of going to the counter and buying Playboy, they could look through their sister’s Cosmo or they could use their imagination. Porn today has rid itself of the embarrassment-factor by embracing the anonymity of the World Wide Web; Playboy isn’t really considered to be porn anymore, the real stuff lives in your phone, on your laptop, your tablet; it is available anywhere, anytime at the touch of a button. In fact this very website receives a steady stream of hits that result from someone googling some combination of ‘housekeeping porn’ + ‘sex’, ‘lesbian’ and/or ‘rape’. As you read this, somewhere there is an eleven-year-old boy curiously typing ‘porn’ into Google, probably hoping to see some big boobies. Fast forward a couple of years and he is masturbating to a video of a crying woman who is being tied down, simultaneously penetrated by three men, spanked, and being called a whore. Young boys are being de-sensitized to violence and the more they consume, the more abusive, the more graphic the porn has to be to excite them.
The most popular type of porn is called ‘Gonzo’ which is essentially wall-to-wall abusive sex. There is no foreplay or romance; it is literally hardcore sex from the first to the last frame. The sex is almost always violent; spanking, gagging, anal fisting and choking are commonplace. A very popular image is a close-up of the woman’s face with tears streaming down caused by her being choked whilst performing oral sex, directors like to make this obvious by making her wear lots of mascara; for dramatic effect. There is no way that this could not have a profound effect on the consumer’s psyche specifically on their attitude towards women. Most boys make no secret of the fact that they watch and enjoy such porn, watching it in groups in the presence of girls or brashly and explicitly describing their fantasies. Girls know boys watch porn and girls know what porn stars are; they are hairless, they have hourglass figures and they never say no. And so a massive amount of pressure is placed on girls to live up to this. Shaving pubic hair is painful and unsanitary (it leaves hundreds of minute cuts which increases the risk of STDs). And yet girls as young as 11 are doing it. The porn industry is the primary source of sex ed for the boys who will grow up to be the decision-makers, thinkers, writers, husbands and fathers of tomorrow. A brief overview of what they are being taught/brainwashed to believe;
That it is their birthright as males to have sex with whichever female they want when they want regardless of consent or age.
That the only way to have good sex and the only way to be masculine is to be aggressive, forceful and violent
That they must always be in control and always want to be in control
That their pleasure comes first and foremost
It hardly needs stating what kind of pressures and expectations this puts on girls and women. They have to be living breathing sex dolls and they have to love it. The porn industry is women abuse.
Reprinted with permission. Original post here.
Clara Bennathan is a 17-year-old student at South Hampstead High School where she is the co-organiser of FemSoc. She is currently involved in anti-porn work with the Stop Porn Culture campaign.
9 Responses
It’s so hard to believe this is going on – in fact people my age with small children have their head in the sand and are living in denial on this issue and sadly I believe it’s because that’s what middle class folk do when there’s something uncomfortable to deal with – pretend it doesnt exist and get on with being polite middle class folk! Please keep publishing this stuff and getting it media attention because this is serious and we are going to have a huge Medicare blowout on psychologists in about 5-10yrs if we don’t fix how messed up our teenagers are becoming…
In an extremely general way this article has some good points. But it fails to mention that this is far from the overall truth about everyone. You must know some reeeaaallly shit guys. I feel sorry for you about that. I only hang around nice people and I don’t know anyone like this.
Soooo Eldiablo… despite the fact that we know that over 90% of boys have viewed pornography by age 18, if a teenage girl makes sure to hang around “nice” boys she won’t be at risk of their porn expectations being put on her? Good to know, I’ll tell my daughters.
I actually think the examples she mentions are a fairly good representation of young people in general. Sure, there are exceptions, and there are of course some young guys (and girls) around that have been taught better ways, and protected from some of the influence of porn and other sexualised media, but sadly, the majority are as described above. It saddens me deeply to say it, but it’s true. I work with young people in high schools, primary schools and in the community. And I would have to agree, that the common factor across all of them seems to be unlimited, unrestricted and unmonitored access to any media content they wish to access. Parents (patricularly of teens and pre-teens) really need to get better informed and be pro-active in their kids lives.
The central problem is that mens’ pornography industry is now mainstream which means pornography is everywhere. This is precisely what we Radical Feminists predicted would happen when men decided pornography was (mens’) free speech not systemic filmed male sexual violence against women and girls. Is it not astonishing that if mens’ malestream pornography industry routinely depicted males being subjected to female sexual violence and routinely dehumanised, then men en mass would be calling for a ban on female pornography. But because it is men who created pornography and it is men who are the ones operating their pornography industry it isn’t systemic male sexual violence against women and girls but merely ‘fantasy!’
Blaming parents (which means blaming mothers) neatly depoliticises this issue into one of supposedly ‘individual responsibility’ rather than seeing the bigger picture. We are now living in a society wherein male hatred and male contempt for women and girl is promoted as ‘free speech’ (meaning mens’ free speech) and filmed male sexual violence against women and girls is supposedly ‘just mens’ sexualised fantasies’ not images of real males subjecting real women and girls to sadistic male sexual violence.
Mens’ pornography industry is everywhere – it is promoted in mens’ malestream media; male controlled music industry; male controlled magazines and yet individual parents are supposed to magically control what their boys are accessing as if boys live in a vacuum wherein they do not see malestream pornography. Why one doesn’t even need to venture outside one’s home to discover mens’ pornography is being promoted everywhere but because it is everywhere it is invisible because it is normalised.
As I said above, mens’ pornography is promoted via malestream media; advertising; popular culture and not forgetting mens’ music industry.
So it is not surprising boys are learning it is okay for them to subject their female peers and even older females to sadistic male sexual violence because males have the right to demand sexual gratification of any female any time anywhere. Boys are learning they alone have rights and they alone have right to demand sexual access to any female because she isn’t human.
The issue is one of systemic male dehumanisation of women and girls and because mens’ pornography not only eroticises male sexual violence against women and girls it also reinforces and normalises existing male hatred/male contempt for women. Refusing to recognise this is all about maintenance of male domination and male control over all women ensures that mens’ pornography industry will continue to flourish because mens’ pornography industry is ‘just adult entertainment not systemic sadistic filmed male sexual violence against women and girls.’
Men collectively have rightly condemned the Nazi Holocaust because it was systemic dehumanisation of certain groups of women and men which the Nazis believed were non-human and because men were included in this Nazi dehumanisation process, other men were outraged. However, because mens’ pornography industry is one wherein it is women and girls who are the ones being routinely dehumanised by men, this magically becomes a non-issue because males en mass are not the ones being systematically dehumanised and sexually degraded for other male viewers’ sexual pleasure.
Boys are being systematically desensitised to systemic filmed male sexual violence against women and girls and yes these boys will grow up and continue to enact their male pseudo sex right to sexually prey on women and girls because ‘it is normal male sexual behaviour’ not sadistic male sexual violence against women and girls.
Mens’ pornography industry is not only immensely profitable for the male pornographers, it also reinforces male beliefs that only males are human and have certain inalienable male human rights whereas all women and girls are merely males’ interchangeable dehumanised masturbatory objects.’ What males term ‘sex’ is not ‘sex’ it is males masturbating into/using female bodies in order to experience male sexual pleasure and male sexual domination over those supposedly disposable/interchangeable non-human beings called females.
And yet individual parents are expected to be the ones preventing their sons from accessing pornography because the issue is one of individual accountability not a political issue whereby men are accorded the right to access/film other males systemically sexually degrading women and girls because no human is harmed in the making of these male created women-hating films.
There are some really insightful comments here. If any of you would be interested in contributing to Bad Housekeeping in the future, please feel free to email us at editor@bad-housekeeping.com
Yours,
The Bad Housekeeping Team
I think Hecuba’s rant is somewhat OTT and represents the female analogue of what men are being accused of. I think Hecuba will find the porn industry is about making money, not hating women. I’ve seen some of the porn described and find it utterly distasteful. I do pity the future of young males who think its somehow normal. But the flip side is that girls must also be watching and getting the same messages. So, as ever, pretending that women are hapless and powerless victims of an organised female-hating male conspiracy is a one-dimensional and unhelpful stance.
My husband used to tell me I was un-sexy because I didn’t want to participate in acts he saw on porn sites. He is a very intelligent middle-age guy and yet was convinced that because girls did it in porn they enjoyed it and therefore I should enjoy it. After him forcing me into some of these situations, I went into a severe depression that has taken me 3 years to overcome since leaving him. To anyone who knows him within his healthcare profession, he would be labeled a ‘nice guy’. I shudder to think what teenage boys are thinking is normal and sexy behaviour and what they will insist their girlfriends/wives do one day.
This stuff is so damaging and way too accessible – I don’t know what can be done other than what brave women like MTR are doing – despite the ridicule and scorn and insults they get.
Trevor, yes, girls are getting the same messages – that men have the right to control them and that it is their lot in life to be attractive for men and to please them sexually. The porn industry exists to make money – you are right. That the producers are prepared to do this when the fallout is so devastating and detrimental to both men and women is disgusting. That is the whole point being raised here – highlighting the fallout for society if we continue down this path and allow the nonsensical opinion that this stuff is ok and normal, to spread.
Thank you for writing this. It is really good to hear ‘your voice’ as a young woman. I suspect it would resonate totally with mine if I were also 17.
I am a 43 year old mother of two boys (so I grew up with boys before the internet therefore perhaps a little innocent of the reality of teenagers’ lives today). I am truly worried about how to bring up my boys so that they do not ‘buy into’ this culture. I don’t want to deny them their sexuality, but that is exactly it – I want them to have a ‘sensuality’, for that not be drowned, swamped by the violent and de-humanised images of women that they will encounter through pornography.
Any suggestions? Do you have brothers? How are they? How does your mother or other significant women in your life deal with this issue? Your father? My cousin has three boys, all becoming teenagers, she talks to them often about ‘consent’ and what this means, but is this enough? I’d be very happy to hear more from you. Good luck to you with your work here, at your school and in the world – do not give up!