Slutsky & Bitchin' | Ethical porn in the times of lockdown
Slutsky: Even as we fight the coronavirus by staying home, lockdown is creating the perfect breeding ground for the darker aspects of society. I have just been reading about the spike in abuse cases at homes with the United Nations calling for urgent action to combat the worldwide surge in domestic violence. “I urge all governments to put women’s safety first as they respond to the pandemic,” Secretary General António Guterres wrote on Twitter.
Bitchin': I see that the COVID-19 crisis is playing on your mind. But what does this have to do with popular culture?
Slutsky: I was thinking about porn sites actually, where recordings of sexual abuse and rape can be uploaded. There is nothing wrong with watching porn and it is helping a lot of people cope with #socialdistancing or being away from their partners. But at the same time, because we know how vulnerable women and children are while quarantine measures are being enforced, it is time to think about the ethics of watching porn under lockdown.
Bitchin': The ethics? Are you serious? Who is going to think about that? Porn will always be an exploitative industry.
Slutsky: Sure, but if consumers can collectively create change by boycotting certain companies, as we have already seen in the beauty industry, why can't the porn industry be reformed? So if Pornhub, for instance, is uploading exploitative videos without verification of the consent of the participants, boycotting can create the company running Pornhub to change how they function.
Bitchin': I don't know about that. Porn is a particularly dark intersection of desires and availability that is also getting a lot weirder because of the lockdown. How many people will turn down free porn?
Slutsky: Don't forget, women watch porn too. And as a demographic, that is growing.
Bitchin': Sure, but I don't think that is going to affect traffic significantly unless there is sustained campaigning about the horrors of exploitative, consent-less and underage sex work. A sort of 'Blackfish' type documentary to shake people out of their apathy.
Slutsky: I think part of the problem is that there are so few alternatives. I think people would opt for more ethical models if they were out there, you know? For instance, I read a piece on how cam girls, who can produce content on their own, while maintaining social distance, are seeing a spike in their earnings. These are independent sex workers and people are willing to pay them directly rather than access content via Pornhub or other sites like that.
Bitchin': If there is anyone who can get ethics into porn, it is you! But yes, I agree, there are ways to get ethical porn. But given that current models in the porn industry encourage sex trafficking, even before asking consumers to jump in and take charge of their choice of porn, shouldn't we be looking at legal recourse?
Slutsky: Absolutely. But legislation already exists around sex trafficking and punishment for those profiting from it. But what we need for real change is a society-level re-think about porn, especially since it is now so much part of mainstream culture than any decade before this. We are way past the more "innocent" days of Playboy magazines. So we need stock-taking of an industry that has grown, almost unsupervised, to its current ubiquity. We need to analyze not only the sources of our porn but also what is being filmed and how it is affecting a whole generation of youth who are growing up with porn at their fingertips. If abuse porn is so popular, does it mean that abuse within real relationships will also see a spike? How is porn rewiring our brains to think about love and intimacy? What kind of abusive or exploitative behaviors is it normalizing? Do you see what I mean?
Bitchin': Well, one positive effect of the lockdown is that the interest in porn is bringing up all these questions about the porn industry to the surface, giving us a chance to lance the boil, so to speak. I think most people would be horrified to know that a "verified sex worker" is actually a trafficked sex slave. And I think that is what will help us usher in the era of ethical porn.
Slutsky & Bitchin’ is a weekly column that will examine the highs and lows of pop culture and media from a feminist POV. The column is published every Saturday.