Talk of sex, rape and violence
Porn in theory I have zero issues with, sex work is work. My issue is the content and the fact it’s not well regulated.
Content… there’s so much choking, violence, verbal abuse and sexual assault/incest. What really concerns me is I’ve never seen a film where they discuss boundaries and safewords at the start. It takes under a minute! “I’m so horny! Just fyi I don’t do ABC but love DEF. Safeword is pineapple. What about you?” Choking is a known danger flag in DA and its being normalised in porn with no safety net.
Then there’s the type of sex. People are fetishised a lot (“exotic”, trans etc) which is dangerous. Anal is everywhere, and IME a lot of young people think they HAVE to do it. So much porn is the man jack hammering away and I’ve NEVER known a woman that’s liked that start to finish in sex. Shaved or at least styled vaginas are expected, and theres rarely condoms. What kind of ideas are young people getting about what’s normal in sex?
The industry isn’t well regulated. You regularly see videos where people look at best uncomfortable, and they’re often really young. There’s a lot of abuse in the industry and it’s really not ok.
I do wonder, if it wasn’t young women at risk, would there be more action?
I don’t do ABC but love DEF.
I spent entirely too long trying to figure out what those acronyms stood for. 🤦♀️
On the anal subject, discovering bottoming (I’m a trans woman) was one of the best things to happen to me and I’m really shattered that I can’t really do it anymore. I would hate for anyone to feel pressured into thinking they have to, definitely not for everyone, but I’m glad it’s getting more normalized and is becoming less… fetishy and a bit stigmatized? I don’t know, it can be hard to sort out how I feel about sexual things like this and how it differs from how other people may because of my gender identity. Having a prostate definitely makes it more pleasurable but it’s still only part of the equation. Maybe I found it so much more fulfilling (ha) because I’m wired for being penetrated instead of penetrating? (Which ofc not necessarily a gender thing but it is generally related) I guess my rambly point is, I’m kind of glad it’s being seen less as some extreme thing and more people might discover that they really enjoy it too.
Good post! But damn, having the start of a porno beginning with a discussion about safewords and boundaries would probably be severely off putting
it does seem like there are a lot of problems with sex work - it poses a lot of risks to women, and serves men while catering to clearly misogynistic fantasies … it does make me think this is one of those topics I need to educate myself a lot more on. I got far enough to move past being sex-negative and sex-worker-exclusionary (radical) feminist (SWERF), I stand with sex workers and support them.
Staying focused on the well-being of women is important, and resorting to right-wing alliances and solutions like criminalization usually just hurt women more. The SWERF response of rationalizing women as somehow deserving the harm that comes to them seems like victim blaming and treats women as though they are never coerced and operate entirely independently of the social pressures applied to them that so often lead to becoming sex workers in the first place.
That said, I’m sure there are really educated and intelligent people focused on this exact problem who have much more nuanced and considered perspectives, so my impulse is to start there to inform my views. So I guess I feel I’m in a uncritical, pre-educated state on this topic, and in that case what is most likely to fill that void are uncritical thoughts and reactions, there is a lot of anger, misandry, victim-blaming, and feelings that are probably come from a reasonable place but go to unreasonable extremes. So probably I need to spend some time refining those views and rooting them in evidence and good reasoning.
Misogynistic fantasies is a really good way of putting it, they really are. What’s interesting is looking into legal brothels, they’re well maintained, staff and clients are treated well and nobody is at risk. As soon as something is underground it gets dangerous.
Criminalising sex work is bad for the reasons you said. Criminalising clients not providers is bad as well, cos clients are then unwilling to provide information for safety checks eg copy of passport. It’s definitely something that research could shed light onto