Pornography: Anything But Harmless

Kids, boys, girls, teenage innocence, puberty, youth, men, women, desire, passion, porn, sexual release, sexual frustration, objectification, loose culture, rape. Pornography is a topic of controversy among psychologists, philosophers and activists, an adopted social norm for the teenagers of the 21^st century, and a matter of heated debate.

Demand for porn has grown exponentially in recent decades since the Internet began providing universal and free access to it. Many believe, and research shows, that porn corrupts people’s minds and harms youth, while others claim it is harmless in moderate consumption.

The Internet has led to a cultural movement, desensitizing the population to sex and making people more accepting of pornographic content. The acceptance of porn culture has a caused a fundamental change in our moral code, specifically in western culture, creating a society where promiscuity is accepted and sex is always on display. This development is leading to a host of social problems.

Pornography is a stimulant for sexual desire, a tool for pleasure. But the fundamental “parts” to that tool are human beings, and specifically women’s bodies, since straight males as a group are the largest consumers of porn. This causes women to be objectified. According to Feminist Perspective, this involves one of the seven “features” of objectification, instrumentality, or “the treatment of a person as a tool for the objectifier’s purposes.”

TedxTalk author Ran Gavrieli describes the phenomenon: “If we were to ask porn, how does it define something as sexual, what qualifies, what defines something as sexual, porn would laugh at our face, ‘Whatever men find arousing!’ If men find it arousing to choke a woman, have brutal sex without one tender hug, kiss, or caress, then it is sexual. If it arouses men to see a woman or a child to cry, it is sexual. If it arouses men to rape a woman, then it is sexual.”

If pornography is an instrument, then the actors on a computer monitor become nothing more than tools. From the viewer’s perspective, they are not people to be interacted with — they are people with no story. A tool is just a tool, and for the viewer it becomes easier to desire a different form of that tool to gratify desire. Porn comes in many categories on websites, from blondes, Asians and Hispanics to humiliation and rape. Anything arousing to a consumer group becomes a product.

Some argue that pornographic objectification is not bad. For example, American philosopher Alan Soble, author of several books on the philosophy of sex, argues that pornography takes these actors, both men and women who are “good at sex,” and makes sure they do something with their lives. Philosopher Leslie Green argues that humans seek objectification, and that when they become less able due to old age, “they miss not only their diminished agency, but also their diminished objectivity…. They become…subjectified.”

According to Feminist Perspective, the problem ultimately lies when a person “is to treat a person as merely an object, merely as a means to one’s own ends.” Sexual objectification is also a problem in personal relationships, but personal relationships involve other factors such as affection or personal ties. Strangers, however, are only objects, and remain so, because of a lack of interpersonal interaction.

The problem is that the human brain has the tendency to generalize and stereotype, to simplify in order to comprehend. Because of that tendency, female porn actors become a representation of all women. Adult actors are not simply objectifying themselves, but rather their entire sex, serving to dehumanize half of the human population.

Tools are more easily treated as a “means to an end,” and because women are repeatedly represented as sexual objects in today’s tremendous proliferation of porn, it becomes easier to pass boundaries, to rape with less guilt.

According to Human Rights Watch, a 2008 report showed a 42 percent increase in reported domestic violence and a 25 percent increase in rape and sexual assault incidents over the previous two-year period. While the study doesn’t specifically point toward pornography, it does show that the boundaries in society may be shifting toward more violence.

While the rise may also be caused by an increase in reporting violence and sexual abuse, the National Criminal Justice Reference Service reports that “sexual assaults, particularly those that involve acquaintances, are less likely to be reported,” which suggests that the increase in violence or sexual abuse could mainly be stranger-to-stranger abuse.

Sexual objectification creates a problem of respect, an acceptance of being objectified, and inevitably self-objectification. Self-objectification has increased with the abandoning of what is today considered “conservative dress.” As revealing more skin and displaying sexual appeal has became more common, a trend exploded by the media because of its profitability, people are often left feeling insecure because of their lack of “sex appeal.” This conforming to become a sex object is the same as giving up one’s humanity.

Men and women alike objectify themselves, dressing to be sexually attractive, wearing less to be appealing. Revealing sexual body parts in order to achieve the standard, they position themselves to be objects, and pornography strengthens that to create a social rift — not an acceptance of rape and violence, but a decrease in the outrage over it and a desensitization to it in general.

American culture is “sex culture,” surrounded by an overwhelming pressure for sexual appeal. Pornography strengthens and reinforces that culture, opening paths to more sexual and physical abuse. Porn displays sex as a rigid, passionless display of animalistic lust, and it only maintains those boundaries because the chances of two porn stars exposing their non-existent affection is about as probable as two strangers hooking up and loving each other: they’re only objects to each other.