citizens give testimony that men viewing porn causes rape

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citizens give testimony that men viewing porn causes rape

Postby sam » Mon Aug 31, 2009 8:58 am

Nothing millions of women, men and children who live in prostitution neighborhoods (aka "red light districts") haven't said a million times before, but here it is again.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree ... ping-world

Africa goes hardcore

The porn industry must take responsibility for the impact of its work on the developing world

I used to think porn was tremendously good fun. The adolescent thrill of sneaking a copy of Fiesta home inside the Manchester Evening News. Crowding around a PC at university as a smutty picture revealed itself pixel by pixel. Even the equine VHS shown during my first job at GQ gave everyone a good, if not queasy, lads-mag laugh.

Any anti-porn voices felt like killjoy whines echoing from the outskirts of Greenham Common. By the time I'd left the lads-mag cocoon, porn was almost part of the mainstream furniture. But the proliferation of free and utterly hardcore websites visited by kids in their global droves did spark an interest in investigating the industry.

The moment porn truly stopped being fun came in a remote Ghanaian village – mud huts, barefoot kids, no electricity. The BBC series I was making about the impact of porn had led me via LA to Ghana. One of the unforeseen consequences of globalisation is the shocking effect that western porn is having in parts of the developing world.

The village has no electricity, but that doesn't stop a generator from being wheeled in, turning a mud hut into an impromptu porn cinema – and turning some young men into rapists, with villagers relating chilling stories of assaults taking place straight after the film's end. In the nearest city, other young men are buying bootlegs copies of the almost always condom-free LA-made porn – copying directly what they see and contracting HIV. The head of the country's Aids commission says porn risks destroying all the achievements they've made. It's a timebomb, he says.

The concerns aren't theoretical – I met young fathers with HIV whose only sex education came from LA, women living in the villages subject to post-screening abuse, and even a shy teenage virgin who has written to a porn outfit in California asking to star in their films (his return address was care of the local church in Accra).

The porn producers aren't deliberately pushing their products into Africa. But the tide of black market DVDs on sale at street markets and hardcore clips viewable at internet cafes is almost unstoppable. Surely this multibillion-dollar industry needs to take some responsibility for the human costs?

Since the only sex education some people in places such as Ghana are getting is via porn films, there is a decent argument for the porn industry to produce more films where performers use condoms. In LA, where the majority of the world's porn is still shot, only one company routinely makes such films. The condom-only policy adopted following an industry HIV outbreak five years ago lasted just months.

If the ambition is to put more condom-using porn into circulation, which will then more likely end up in those street markets or cafes, some serious multinationals could throw their corporate weight behind this. Hotel chains – among the biggest broadcasters of adult material – have not used their immense clout to insist on greater condom use – much to the dismay of the porn-star STD-testing clinic in LA.

Mobile phone firms are also surreptitiously making jaw-dropping amounts of money from showing adult content on their handsets. Could their ideas of corporate responsibility take on a latex dimension? Might it actually be that ridiculous for the porn industry itself to adopt a spot of corporate responsibility? These are, after all, major businesses replete with HR departments and plush offices nestling next to mainstream film companies. Bankroll sex safe campaigns, harness the allure of their top stars, maybe even make bespoke films for the developing world which educate as well as titillate. Doing nothing, and leaving western porn to march untrammelled into Africa and other places, is a deeply unattractive prospect.

Tim Samuels's series, Hardcore Profits, starts tonight on BBC2
"Your orgasm can no longer dictate my oppression"

Trisha Baptie
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Re: citizens give testimony that men viewing porn causes rape

Postby phio gistic » Mon Aug 31, 2009 11:58 am

"The porn industry must take responsibility for the impact of its work on the developing world"


Why not the entire world?

While it's nice to see someone acknowledge the horrible things porn users do, and how porn producers do not give a single shit, it would be nice if they could come up with a better conclusion than "MORE PORN, with condoms and some educational material thrown in." :(
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Re: citizens give testimony that men viewing porn causes rape

Postby StuartM » Tue Sep 01, 2009 10:09 am

I agree, the conclusion's really annoying - as were both the programme and its presenter much of the time. It hopefully will make people think a bit more about porn though and was probably about as critical as you're likely to get from the mainstream media. He went to LA and visited several porn shoots where he focussed on the lack of contraception, praising Wicked for being the exception (as if that immediately makes everything all right). In the first non-condom shoot you hear the completely repulsive director asking the woman if she's ok with being slapped and choked to which she replies she's fine with as long as nothing goes up her ass. Then afterwards when the presenter comments that she didn't look like she was enjoying it she admits to having been in pain for much of the scene and still being very sore from the day before. The programme also pursues the enormous amounts of money that hotel chains and mobile phone companies contribute to porn and the bit on Africa referred to in the article is really concerning and thought-provoking, seeing how much influence porn can have on people's lives especially as their communities become inundated for the first time by one of the west's most disgusting cultural imports.

There's another programme next week I think which will talk about how porn's becoming more violent and extreme, catholic investment funds which are supporting the porn industry and (from what I gathered) how Amazon uk are profitting from Max Hardcore. I thought they only sold 'soft' porn (and were only allowed to under UK laws) so I'm not sure how that can be the case but it's certainly shocking and appalling if true.
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