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Giggling, gawping, and a lot of shielding our eyes. I was 15 the first time I watched porn, courtesy of a friend’s older sister who’d hidden a videotape – I know! – behind the sofa when a group of us were having a sleepover. Most of us hadn’t lost our virginity. And after watching that tape, which was packed with scenes far too explicit and violent to detail here, all of us were terrified.
I distinctly remember one friend despairing: “Wait, that’s sex?” For a while afterwards, we sat in silence, contemplating our bleak new reality, one in which we were expected to be slapped and spat on. “And we’re meant to enjoy that?” another friend finally asked.
“It’s not as bad as it looks,” replied one of the few girls among us who’d had sex. “It only hurts the first few times; eventually, you get used to it.”
I was reminded of this somewhat formative experience earlier this week when an independent government review called for a ban on pornography depicting strangulation alongside other forms of violent sexual material.
“The evidence is overwhelming that allowing people to view legal but harmful pornography like choking sex, violent and degrading acts, and even content that could encourage child sexual abuse, is having a damaging impact on children and society,” said Conservative peer Gabby Bertin, who was commissioned to conduct the review by Rishi Sunak when he was prime minister. She added: “The law needs to be tightened with more proactive regulation of online platforms.”
Frankly, I don’t think Bertin’s recommendations are good enough when the average age that most children see porn for the first time is 13. In almost every instance, they won’t have paid to watch it – the majority of porn is consumed via so-called “Tube” websites that don’t charge users a penny. It’s here where the most violent porn tends to percolate – and it goes far beyond strangulation to depictions of sexual assault, incest, and child abuse. This content can exist on these websites because they’re legal and, for the most part, entirely unmoderated.
The problem is not so much the content itself – you can find all sorts of horrifying things online – but how its ubiquity has shaped our sexual culture. It’s the fetishisation of young girls and the normalisation of violence against women that I’m worried about. Consider how common choking has become in sex; for example, in 2019, a BBC Five Live survey found that nearly four in 10 women aged 18-39 had experienced it. Whether or not the women enjoy it (as so many people like to posit whenever the issue comes up) is irrelevant.
The point is that many people now view sex through a pornified lens that is informed by the degradation of women. Because of that, a man might choke a woman without asking for her consent, thinking this is what she wants. And the woman might feel pressured to pretend she’s enjoying it, even when she isn’t. That’s the best-case scenario. As for the worst case, well, I don’t need to spell this out to you; just google “rough sex murder defence”.
I’m not suggesting we ban porn altogether; there will always be demand for it and denying that will only push it into deeper and darker depths, resulting in even more dangerous and unethically produced content. What we should consider, however, is banning free porn, or at least finding ways to moderate it. While it wouldn’t necessarily eradicate the aforementioned problems, it would certainly ameliorate them. Paying for porn legitimises the industry, giving it a set of standards to abide by that moderate what can and cannot be shown.
Many adult filmmakers have already had great success in this area. Consider Erika Lust, the Swedish filmmaker and pioneer of so-called feminist porn. Lust produces sex-positive porn that champions consent and female pleasure. The only catch is that it isn’t free. But nothing of quality ever really is. At least, not in the world of porn. And when you consider the ramifications of violent porn being so widely accessible, well, in the grand scheme of things, perhaps it’s a small price. And it’s one all of us should be paying.