Julia’s boyfriend asked if he could ejaculate on her face. She said no. He asked a second time and she refused once more. Perhaps thinking that the third time’s a charm, he tried again. This time, Julia fed up with being pressured, dumped him.

The fact that he had asked in the first place was already a bit of a problem, Julia said. She reckoned that it meant he saw her not as a sexual partner but as a sex object. To make matters worse, she had clearly laid out the reasons for her refusal, the most important of which was that she felt it would be humiliating. His repeated requests meant that he wasn’t listening or simply didn’t care.
Telling us the sorry tale over a bottle of wine, Julia suggested that the problem was pornography, that watching sexually explicit material was giving men ideas and not all of these were positive.
Julia certainly isn’t the only one who thinks so. In the last few years I’ve had a number of friends voice similar concerns that the men in their lives seem influenced by porn in ways they find troubling. Is what was once the exclusive preserve of the screen migrating into the bedroom?
That is exactly what is happening, claims Gail Dines, a professor of sociology and women’s studies. In her book, Pornland: How Porn Has Hijacked Our Sexuality, Dines argues that sexually explicit content has shifted in recent years and that extreme and ‘violent’ porn has become mainstream. According to Dines, it is this kind of material that is particularly harmful and is reshaping the way men think about sex, relationships and intimacy. Unfortunately this seems to ignore the fact that a lot of women produce, watch and like porn too.
In the last few years the professional porn industry has been suffering. The proliferation of free and amateur content, peer-to-peer sharing and the recession means that even established producers are finding it hard to make money. What’s more, given the sheer amount of porn out there, it is increasingly difficult to attract customers without sufficiently differentiating your product. The producers interviewed by Dines apparently told her that in an adverse marketplace, making extreme adult content is one way to ensure repeat business and that even they are shocked by the current appetite for violent porn.
Predictably enough, Dines has come in for both a huge amount of support – and an even greater amount of disparagement. Critics argue that Dines’ claims are not supported by solid evidence, that she generalises about fans, producers and performers and that she hasn’t looked at gay, lesbian or alternative porn or porn made by women for women.
In fact, complaining about porn is like complaining about books or movies – there is so much variety that using the term as a monolithic category doesn’t work.
On the one hand, porn encompasses performers and directors like Candida Royalle, Annie Sprinkle, Nina Hartley, Tristan Taormino, Violet Blue and even Sasha Grey who try (successfully or not) to expand our sexual understanding and pleasure.
On the other hand there is plenty of stuff that is worrying, such as ex-girlfriend sites where people upload videos of exes without permission (needless to say, women have also engaged in similar breaches of trust) or the use of performers who are over 18 but certainly don’t look it.
Then, of course, there is the issue of violent porn. Just to be clear here, by violent porn I am not talking about spanking, S&M or consensual rough play, but rather porn where lack of consent is a key part of the scenario. In ‘reality porn’, the performance aspect is hidden and, at times, that makes it almost impossible to distinguish between fantasy and a real-life instance of rape or physical abuse.
Does it encourage sexual violence in the real world or is it merely an outlet for darker desires? The truth is, no-one can say with genuine authority.
There have been studies that have found that porn use corresponds with a decreasing incidence of rape. Unfortunately, other studies suggest that the current prevalence of violent porn is correlated with an increasing incidence of gang and anal rape.
Anti-porn activists and pro-porn campaigners all seem to be able to quote statistics and studies to prove their point, each side accusing the other of using flawed methodology, skewed logic and false premises.
What is undeniable is that a large amount of the anti-porn rhetoric is shot through with conservative or religious moralising about sex. Sexually explicit material is seen as inherently sinful, morally corrosive and damaging to society and relationships.
Pro-porn activists and producers argue that sexual content is a freedom of speech issue and in America, they tend to get a tad evangelical about this. Any criticism of porn is howled down as an attack on the First Amendment and the free market.
Because of this, some feminists are trying to have porn reclassified as hate speech against women. Where that leaves gay porn is anyone’s guess. Other feminists point out that societies where porn is banned tend to be less, not more, liberal regarding women’s rights.
Pro-porn feminists believe that porn is an important tool by which non-normative sexuality can be explored. Porn is not exclusively made and consumed by able-bodied heterosexual men. Evidence suggests that many people, especially those whose sexual expression is often restricted in some way by society, such as trans people, the disabled, the aged or obese (and indeed, aged obese disabled transpeople), find porn to be liberating.
Is there anything intrinsically wrong with wanting to look at other people having sex? No. I’d say that curiosity about what other people do sexually is completely normal, healthy even. Porn can be exciting, an outlet for frustrated desires, educational or just harmless fantasy material that gets you off. It’s hard to see anything wrong with that.
Then again, is there anything intrinsically right with wanting to look at five men multi-orifice gang-rape a woman, call her a dirty slut, beat her, piss on her and cum on her face? No. But I say that as a woman, not as an impartial observer, and I can’t help but feel uncomfortable with certain kinds of sexually explicit material.
Nor am I thrilled by less spectacular but no less important social trends such as the escalating popularity of boob jobs, designer vaginas and penis enlargement surgery, all of which is partly, but not wholly, influenced by porn. If anything, this suggests that porn may be making us enjoy our bodies and our sexuality less not more.
I don’t know if Julia’s boyfriend was influenced by porn. Maybe he was, maybe he wasn’t. She was perfectly right to break off the relationship if he was pressuring her to do things she didn’t want to do. But that’s not to say that no women want their partners ejaculating on their faces, ever, under any circumstances. Or that there is anything wrong with consenting to do so if you wish.
I don’t know if Gail Dines is correct that violent porn is changing men’s sexual desires. Do people watch violent or humiliating porn because they have a pre-existing desire for that kind of sex? Studies seem to indicate that this is the case. Or does the availability of certain kinds of porn help create the desire? Guess what? Some studies say yes to that too.
To claim that porn is wholly responsible for certain desires seems absurd. Sexuality is a complex process and all kinds of desires existed long before we had the ability to stream, download or even photograph them. It is possible to be influenced or inspired, and porn may give us tacit approval to explore our sexuality, but we don’t have a monkey-see, monkey-do relationship with the films we watch or the books we read. Think of all the murders you’ve seen on television or committed playing Grand Theft Auto.
Could it be that violent (there are all sorts of differences and gradations) porn has nothing to do with sex but offers an outlet for those who feel powerless in the face of corrupt governments, falling wages and neo-liberal free market politics that have fucked us all? I don’t know and from the amount of contradictory studies out there, it seems no-one else does either.
What I do know is that porn is here to stay and taking an entrenched position where all porn is sin or all porn is good doesn’t get us anywhere.
Here’s what I think: some porn is good; an unfortunate amount of it features fake orgasms; a surprising quantity is dull; some of it is beautifully shot; some porn lacks artistic merit but seems real, honest and at times even brave; a worrying amount seems misogynistic; and some of it, such as child porn, is most certainly harmful.
That’s my personal opinion and another thing I know is that my personal opinion doesn’t qualify as fact. I just wish more people, whether they are pro- or anti-porn, realised the same thing. If we are going to debate adult material, the very least we can do is be adult about it.