It is no secret that sex has been sold since the earliest of times; pornography became a method for people to enjoy sex without actually participating; however, pornography has transformed a lot since the Victorian era.
It has become one of the most demanding industry, with an estimated $3,075 spent on porn every second, surprised or shocked?
This porn culture has become increasingly risky because it objectifies women’s as well men’s bodies. By turning females into objects, pornography increases the chances of women being treated like items, not people.
Should porn be blamed for the immoral society and rape culture?
Let us walk you through the article regarding this topic.
What is Rape Culture?
Rape culture exists in a society or environment where common social beliefs, attitudes, and morals normalize sexual violence, encourage people to associate sex with violence, and minimize the seriousness of sexual violence. Within rape culture, sexual violence is accepted, justified, and not challenged enough by society.
The number of sexual assaults is high, but the rates of culprits being punished are low, and excuses are often made to justify why people commit sexual violence. Rape jokes are common ! Yes, both you and I come across this type of jokes very often.
The word “rape” gets casually thrown into conversations to describe things other than sex without consent.
Rape culture forces women to surrender their freedoms and prospects to stay safe because it puts the burden of safety on women’s shoulders and blames them when they fail.
As a result, specific options are left unavailable to women, and still, others are restricted by expensive safety precautions. When females give up sociable and financial prospects to stay safe, that affects their progress overall, affecting society’s progress overall.
Although rape culture originates in long-standing patriarchal power structures designed to benefit men, today’s rape culture burdens men too, for instance, by ignoring the fact that men can be victims of rape and sexual assault.
That suggests that male sufferers are also departed without legal safeguards and social help.
The aim of speaking about rape culture is about much more than just diminishing the frequency with which sexual assault occurs or the immunity that permits it to succeed. The problems at the core of rape culture are much more oversized than that.
Examples of Rape Culture :
- Blaming the victim
- Sexually graphic jokes
- Toleration of sexual harassment
- Increasing deceitful rape report statistics
- Publicly examining a victim’s dress, cognitive state, explanations, and history
- Gratuitous gendered brutality in films and television
- Characterizing manhood as predominant and sexually feisty
- Representing womanhood as submissive and sexually inactive
- Coercion on men to score
- The strain on women to not seem cold
- Accepting only promiscuous women get raped
- Considering that men don’t get raped or that only frail men get raped
- Declining to take rape charges seriously
- Preparing women to evade getting raped
Impacts of Rape culture
Rape culture harms survivors, serving as a silencing process for those who desire to communicate their chronology. This atmosphere fosters a culture of victim-blaming where individuals are considered and sensed accountable for what has occurred to them.
Precise statements such as “they invited for it,” “it wasn’t honestly rape,” “they didn’t imply to,” or “they enjoyed it” are common beliefs that are reproduced within our society to support blame toward the victim.
Individuals who agree to these rape myths are more likely to consider responsibility for the victim of the rape and may sense that the concussion associated with the rape is less agonizing or reasonable.
Based on this phenomenon, our society alienates survivors, making them less likely to come forward, share their stories, or report to law enforcement or academic institutions for fear of being held responsible.
Rape culture also enforces the unhelpful belief that men cannot be victims of sexual violence. Because of this, survivors cannot register their assaults because they are afraid of not being believed, which can slow down the healing process, and the perpetrator is not held responsible for the crime.
Normalization of Pornography?
Pornography’s ever-increasing popularity is as well-documented as it is self-evident. With this popularity comes normalcy. Never has pornography been easier to access or, it would seem, so uncontroversial to view, and we note the especially worrisome rise of violent porn
One study published in CyberPsychology and Behavior found that 39 percent of college-aged males and 23 percent of college-aged females said they had viewed bondage porn as teens, and 18 percent and 10 percent said they had considered rape porn.
While their bodies and minds are in critical developmental stages, kids view images that portray women as objects to be used in whatever way a male desires.
Is it any surprise that boys being enlightened about sex by pornographers evolve into men who associate sex with the rape and bondage pornography that disregards the humanity of females?
This ever-increasing consumption of violent pornography correlates with the judgment-free mainstreaming of pornography in public discourse.
Whether through the blockbuster success of the book/ movie 50 Shades of Grey or the frequent references to porn on ESPN’s website Grantland, a cursory glance at any form of media will reveal nonchalant acceptance of porn in pop culture.
Let’s look at a few ways the normalization of pornography contributes to rape culture. These points are certainly not new, but they bear repeating as often as this topic is addressed.
Effects of Pornography
Pornography presents women as inferior Feminist Andrea Dworkin once said equality could not co-exist with rape, and it cannot co-exist with pornography because implicit in [both] is the inferiority of women.
At its core, most pornography implicitly or explicitly degrades women, and in pornography, women are only valid as they bring satisfaction to men.
Pornography objectifies women. Most pornography objectifies women; their bodies are critical for their role as an ingredient in sexual gratification.
But their hearts, minds, opinions, experiences, feelings, and everything else that makes them self-consciously who they are is entirely irrelevant. They are different from a sex toy only in degree, not kind.
The attitude that the women involved in porn voluntarily participate further perpetuates the cowardly and absurd excuse in the minds of men and boys who tell themselves this is what she wants.
According to MacKinnon, pornography is responsible for both men’s and women’s conception of women as objects available for men’s consumption.
Pornography treats sexual gratification as an end to itself. Pornography leads to the harmful notion that sex is everything; it’s an end to itself.
The value of things like consent, the perspective of others, relationship, love, conversation, covenant, interaction, more profound meaning? Unimportant. Just exit out and move along.
Pornography encourages male aggression Not only is pornography continuing to expand, but formerly fringe forms of pornography that encourage male aggression are becoming more mainstream (i.e., bondage porn, rape porn, BDSM).
There is a logical reason for its growth; scientists have found that people who watch a lot of porn will need increasingly graphic material to achieve the same sexual stimulation.
Despite claims that pornography decreases rates of sexual violence, dozens and dozens of studies show the opposite. For example, studies from seven countries found that the consumption of pornography was significantly associated with increases in actual acts of male aggression internationally.
How Porn Is Contributing To The Rape Culture ?
For ages, it has been argued whether pornography promotes sexual violence and rape, and several arguments suggest that may help it may be true.
According to the National Crime Records Bureau data, a woman is raped every 6 hours in India, and statistically, it is the 4th most common crime against women in India. In the National Capital alone, as many as 5 women were raped, and 8 were molested daily on an average.
The way the country deals with rape is inefficient on many levels, with poor conviction, weak systems, and social stereotypes all playing a part.
However, what is even more challenging to understand is what prompts a person to commit such a heinous crime as rape.
While there can be several situational and psychological causes, and those are thoroughly debated on live TV debates and news reports, one reason is conveniently left out of the limelight: Pornography.
The role of Pornography in Promoting Rape Culture
You might argue how a single video can influence someone to commit rape and how not everyone who watches porn can be termed a rapist; let me make a point of discussion very clear.
Not everyone who watches porn is a rapist. But the majority of the offenders of sexual crimes against women tend to be influenced by pornography.
The Michigan State Police Department found that pornography is used or imitated in 41% of the sex crimes. Not only this, the University of New Hampshire did a study that showed that the states with the highest readership of pornographic magazines like Playboy and Penthouse also had the highest rape rates.
Simply put, porn promotes rape culture. While from the outside, watching pornography may merely seem like a harmless activity people do out of fun, curiosity, or to release sexual tension but look closer, and you’ll come to realize the various problems that it poses. Oh, and it poses problems on multiple levels.
Rape Porn
First is the porn video in itself. While the porn industry revolves around producing videos consumed by millions for pleasure, sadly, the content it creates also fosters gender stereotypes, rape culture, and sexual violence in general.
Sadly, there are specific sites that exclusively deal with rape porn. The libraries of these websites consist of videos whose storylines revolve around outright rape, coercing women into non-consensual sex and even videos of actual acts of rape in some horrific cases.
Not only this, even mainstream porn contributes to projecting women as creatures that need to be punished with sex for any of their misdoings.
They’re shown to be people craving sex, looking to get it at every possible opportunity, trading it for something as trivial as non-payment of cab fare, getting a new house, and escaping a fine and whatnot.
While this makes for a fun story, to the uneducated mind, it reinforces that women can be used as sex objects by men at will, which is essentially the basic plotline of every porn movie ever. Porn supports the notion that men enjoy physical and sexual superiority over women, which can never be good.
The legal angle
Another issue with pornography is that it conveniently shows acts to be simply sexual when actually, they come under the umbrella of rape in the legal context.
Several videos show a boss asking for sexual favors from an employee in return for a promotion and a teacher looking to trade between sex and an A grade.
The issue with these storylines is that while they’re used as realistic and enchant the viewer, these videos normalize the actions that amount to rape in the real world.
Take Indian law, for example. Sexual harassment is restricted under Section 354 A of the IPC as a male executing any of the following acts:
(i) physical connection and advancements involving unpleasant and explicit sexual preludes
(ii) an injunction or request for sexual turns
(iii) steering pornography against the resolve of a woman
(iv) creating sexually colored comments
Now think of all the porn videos you’ve watched over the years. For you, the act of someone asking for sex in return for a good grade may be hot and sexy, and in an Indian court, that can serve as an act of rape.
Do you think that when one watches these acts or practices happen in movies, it won’t affect their subconscious and contribute to normalizing such illegal actions?
Porn as a Means of Sex Education – A strict NO
One of the main factors overlooked in the debate of pornography’s role in promoting rape. In a country like India, where sex before marriage is a big no-no and sex education is considered taboo, many people resort to porn to understand more about sex.
What this curiosity eventually does is that it paints a very unrealistic and false image of sexual interactions. We all know that sex in real life is nothing like it is shown in porn videos and using porn as a barometer of how sex works are inaccurate.
So when a young person watches porn and uses it to understand more about how sex works, what it does is that it makes them believe that all the acts shown in a porn video are the correct way to go forward.
Several porn videos are guilty of being regressive, showing non-consensual sex and unrealistic sexual practices.
It eventually leads to a false depiction and understanding of consent, boundaries, and even sex, ultimately leading to incorrect interpretations of sex and its intricacies.
Therefore, rather than normalizing pornography, it makes sense to accept that porn, in one way or the other, promotes rape culture.
The fact that pornography promotes acts of sexual violence reinforces incorrect gender stereotypes and paints a false image of sexual acts all contribute to the argument of how porn promotes rape.
The Connection Between Porn and Rape Culture
While each of these cases is deeply disturbing and tragic, they sadly point to a broader belief system in society. A sinister culture of normalized rape and violence, where women are treated as disposable commodities, is disguised as a casual hookup culture where nobody gets hurt.
And it has been incubated and fueled by the 24-hour access to violent porn that generations have been raised.
Porn culture permeates almost every area of life. More than just glorifying an incredibly disposable view of sex, violent porn creates predators out of young men and exalts rape and abuse.
Porn presents a world in which women are often humiliated, subjugated, and degraded, while men embody power and dominance.
Males get what they enjoy when they desire, and women allow it or even welcome it as a false sense of empowered choice. But according to rape porn, even if they say no, they mean yes, so anything goes.
According to a 2011 longitudinal study, 10-15 year-olds consuming violent pornography are five times more likely to be sexually aggressive than non-viewers of violent porn.
In males as young as 14, a correlation was confirmed by the analysts in several studies between frequent pornography viewing and an accepting stance toward raping a girl.
Another Swedish study found that 70% of high school boys who were frequent viewers of pornography, including violence and the sexual abuse of children and animals, reported that porn made them want to try out what they had seen.
We know that not everyone who watches violent porn becomes a physical and sexual abuse perpetrator. However, studies show that most people who commit sexual abuse watch porn.
The author of So Sexy So Soon, Jean Kilbourne, sums it up well when she says, “Most porn ends up with women being not only presented as the victims of violence but often presented as the victims of violence who love it.
So girls are learning to be compliant, and they’re learning that what’s most important is to be desirable to the boys – not that their sexual agency or sexual pleasure is essential.”
A report states that about 20%–30% of female students in anonymous surveys report being raped or sexually assaulted (including attempts), usually by a male student they knew beforehand.
According to a magazine, among undergraduate students, 26.4% of females experience rape or sexual assault through physical force, violence, or incapacitation, and that’s 1 out of every 4 women.
Meanwhile, violent porn has become one of the most popular genres of porn on the internet, and millions of hours of “rape porn” are accessible on-demand, even on mainstream porn sites.
We recently searched on Google using the term “rape porn.” We found 494 million results, revealing page after page of websites advertising not just violent but racist, underage, and incestuous rape porn.
Some of the first titles and descriptions to be displayed in our search included: “Real rape videos,” “Cruel rapes,” “Paralyzed girl abused and forced,” “Girl ambushed and gang-raped,” “Helpless teen rape,” and “Young girls get raped hard.”
You could put these rape porn titles next to the spring break headlines and not know which was porn and “real life.”
Children discover porn at earlier ages with unhindered access from any device they can use. We must cut off the normalization of sexual abuse and rape at its root.
While we rightfully abhor rape when it happens to a young girl during spring break, we cannot neglect to put more significant restrictions in place that protect children from stumbling across violent porn in the first place.
What can we do about rape culture?
- Consent education in schools and alternative education spaces
- Calling people out when they make rape jokes or use the word ‘rape’ to describe anything other than sex without consent – don’t let these comments and jokes slide.
- Be aware of the negative impacts pornography can have.
Victim Blaming : The brutal impact
People accuse victims of alienating themselves from an undesirable occurrence, ensuring their invulnerability to the chance. By marking or blaming the prey, others can see the victim as separate from themselves.
People comfort themselves by thinking, “Because I am not like her, this would never happen to me because I do not do that.” We ought to help people comprehend that this is not a beneficial reaction.
What is Victim-Blaming?
An instance of Victim-Blaming Perspective: “She must have encouraged him into being offensive. They both need to modify.”
Reality: This statement believes that the victim is equally condemned for the abuse when abuse is a deliberate choice made by the abuser. Abusers have an intention in how they react to their partner’s activities.
Options besides abuse include: walking out, speaking at the moment, respectfully demonstrating why an effort is frustrating, breaking up, etc. Further, abuse is not about personal actions that provoke the abuser to harm his partner but rather about the abuser’s feelings of entitlement to do whatever he enjoys to his mate.
When friends and family remain apathetic about the abuse and say that both people need to modify, they conspire with and support the abusive partner, making it less likely that the survivor will seek approval.
Why is it Dangerous?
Victim-blaming mindsets marginalize the victim and drive it more challenging to come along and convey the abuse. If the survivor understands that you or the community blames her for the abuse, s/he will not feel secure or comfortable coming ahead and speaking to you.
Victims’ victim-blaming perspectives also support what the abuser has been saying; it is the victim’s fault this is transpiring. It is not the target’s fault or obligation to improve the situation; it is the abuser’s intention.
Society permits the abuser to commit relationship abuse or sexual assault while evading accountability for their efforts by employing victim-blaming philosophies.
Media and Pornography
The media (newspapers, TV, movies, social media, etc.) recreates a critical role in rape culture. It can desensitize people to the gravity of sexual brutality, sexualizes and objectifies female bodies, and often empathizes with perpetrators instead of survivors.
Pornography also plays a significant role in rape culture. Porn, sex, and violence are interconnected, training people to be aroused by violent sex, which sends the incorrect message to the viewer that this is what ‘normal sex’ is. Many porn is explicit ‘rape porn,’ which portrays the wrong message that people enjoy rape and that sexual violence is routine.
RAPE MYTHS
Myth #1
“Rape/sexual violence is something only done by a stranger in a dark alley.”
Fact: We know that almost all (92%) of survivors know or can identify the perpetrator(s)
Myth #2
“Rape/sexual violence is a one-off traumatic event.”
Fact: It is found in the study that only 11 out of 75 survivors had experienced a single incident of sexual violence as an adult, whereas 85% of survivors reported being sexually assaulted more than once.
Myth #3
“Survivors will always report sexual violence to the police.”
Fact: Reporting of sexual violence in Aotearoa, New Zealand, is deficient, with only an estimated 9% of incidents reported to police (Ministry of Women’s Affairs, 2009).
There are many understandable reasons why survivors don’t report, and it is totally up to them if they want to or not. Reasons may include:
The anxiety of not being acknowledged, fear of the effect on their family, feelings of shame, apprehension of the offender, blaming themselves, the nature of the relationship with the offender, fear of not trusting the legal system, don’t think or knowing that sexual violence is a crime.
Myth #4
“False complaints are common.”
Most sexual violence claims are valid, and research has shown that approximately only 8% of rape allegations are false (Ministry of Women’s Affairs, 2009). If you acknowledge someone when they confide in you, they are much more likely to get the support they need which is extremely important to evaluate someone if they tell you they have been sexually attacked.
Myth #5
“Being intoxicated, flirting, wearing a short skirt or dress, and walking alone at night is an invitation to be sexually assaulted.”
Fact: Nothing is an invitation to be sexually assaulted. People have the right to drink alcohol, be flirty, wear whatever they want, walk alone at night—and still be safe. It is eternal the accountability of the person doing the dangerous sexual behavior and never the survivor.
Myth #6
“Sexual violence only happens to women.”
Fact: Although most sexual violence happens to women (one in five by the age of 16), one in ten males will also be sexually assaulted by their 16th birthday. Offenders will sexually attack one in two transgender people at some point.
How Can Men and Women fight Rape Culture?
- Bypass using vocabulary that objectifies or devalues women.
- Express out if you hear someone else making an awful joke
- If a mate says they have been raped, take your friend thoughtfully and be supportive.
- Critically consider the media’s statements about women, men, relationships, and brutality.
- Be compliant with others’ physical freedom, even in simple situations.
- Let survivors comprehend that it is not their shortcoming.
- Hold abusers responsible for their activities: do not let them make justifications like blaming the target, alcohol, or drugs for their conduct.
- Always speak with sexual partners and do not assume consent.
- Determine your manhood or womanhood. Do not let stereotypes shape your activities.
- Be an Engaged Bystander.
Conclusion
Women are already facing discrimination on socioeconomic and political levels, and pornography largely contributes to this patriarchal paradigm. Women face inequality within society, and how sexuality is perceived and practiced reflects that.
Pornography is so engrained within a westernized culture that it is difficult to discern what a world without pornography would be. Pop culture, advertising, and pornography cater to the degradation of women.
These create cultural norms which allow women to be objectified and debased—allowing women to be seen as sexually inferior creates an unequal dynamic between the genders. Women are seen as entities rather than individuals.
In gonzo pornography, women are depicted as deserving of physical abuse and aggressive language. Men becoming stimulated to violent sexual acts against women constitute a message that harming women is normal and acceptable.
These notions violate the ethics of equality both socially and sexually; they contribute to a world where women are systematically oppressed and abused.
Pornography is a significant benefit in sexual violence against women and will continue to be so until both men and women are ready to subvert the patriarchal paradigm.
