The booming demand for trafficked women and children in recent years is due in part to the proliferation of pornography. It is time that we stop thinking pornography is victimless and free from consequence. We must recognize that all forms of sexual exploitation are seamlessly intertwined.
Porn Changes the Brain: First, we must understand the effect that porn has on the user. Porn is like a drug. It acts the same as a drug in your system. It tricks your brain into releasing the same pleasure chemicals drugs release, like cocaine, and then it alters the reward pathways in the brain.[1] This is why users can spend countless hours watching porn without regard to their other responsibilities and commitments. Research shows that users of porn also begin to alter their beliefs and understanding about sexuality and intimacy. Exposure to pornographic media is connected to[2]:
- Believing that women are always ready for sex and are enthusiastic to do whatever men want, irrespective of how painful, humiliating or harmful the act is
- Believing women suffer less and generally enjoy rape
- Believing a rape victim experienced pleasure and “got what she wanted”
- More acceptance of violence against women
- More self-reported likelihood of forcing a woman sexually
- Engaging in more sexual harassment behaviors
- Using physical or verbal coercion to have sex
- Increasing their estimates of how often people pay for sex
Porn as a Driver for Demand: Over time, users become bored and desensitized and will often crave harder and more deviant materials in order to satisfy their urges. Evidence of this is in the progression of mainstream pornography over the years from topless women to extreme sexual violence and misogynistic degradation. It is also illustrated, sadly, in the booming supply of child pornography, which is increasing in demand. Users of pornography will often deviate to using more fetishized materials—like child-themed, incest-themed, or sexual torture-themed (BDSM) porn. These fetishes are the most common topics in today’s mainstream porn. The top-searched theme for porn in 2013 was “teen.”
Pornographers and pimps are keenly aware of the deviant demands of their customers and go to extreme measures to make sure they can supply the requested material. Pimps have moved from the street corner to the safety and anonymity of the Internet. More reports indicate that johns and pimps are recording sex acts with prostituted and trafficked women, and then uploading to the Internet for more money, bragging rights, or to use as advertising. Porn performers in “professional” films report that force, fraud and coercion are sometimes used to get them to fulfill uncomfortable or unsafe requests. Sex trafficking is a sad reality in the production of pornography.[3]
Some porn users will seek to act out what they are viewing in pornography. In The Projection Project: Journal of Human Rights and Civil Society, a study conducted interviewed 854 prostituted women from 9 countries and found that 47% were upset by customers trying to make them perform what the customer had seen in porn.[4] Given the humiliating and violent nature of mainstream porn, many porn users’ wives and girlfriends refuse to consent to “porn star” sex. The users will then sometimes seek to act out their fantasy elsewhere. This drives demand for trafficking as men pay prostituted or trafficked women and children to perform the specific acts seen in porn. Remember how “teen” was the top porn search in 2013? It’s no coincidence that girls now enter prostitution at the average age of 13. There’s a market for these young girls, which pimps are happy to supply, and porn is the reason.
Recognize the Links: There is a continuum of sexual exploitation and porn is a major factor, fueling all of it. Pornography, sexually oriented businesses, strip clubs, prostitution and sex trafficking, sexual violence, and child sexual abuse all are connected. We must recognize that unless something is done to curb porn and its use, we will never solve the problems of sexual exploitation, specifically sex trafficking. Learn more about the links between pornography and sex trafficking at http://stoptraffickingdemand.com/.
[1] Learn more about the effects pornography has on the brain at these websites: http://pornharmsresearch.com/ http://www.fightthenewdrug.org/get-the-facts#porn-is-like-a-drug http://yourbrainonporn.com
[2] All points are backed up by research listed here: http://pornharmsresearch.com/2013/12/talking-points-porn-sexual-violence-research/
[3] http://stoptraffickingdemand.com/trafficking-within-the-industry/
[4] http://stoptraffickingdemand.com/johns-acting-out/
