As an unholy alliance of big business and new technology push pornography into mainstream culture, new alliances are forming to resist the degradation of sexuality for profit. Melinda Tankard Reist, co-editor of Big Porn Inc, speaks to Anna Krohn about the battle lines.
Big Porn Inc: Exposing the Harms of the Global Pornography Industry is a sharp analysis of and protest against “colonisation” of the world’s markets, cultures and interpersonal relationships by exponentially violent, dehumanised and dehumanising pornography.
“The book idea evolved from a conversation with Dr Renate Klein of Spinifex Press about 1½ years ago,” says Melinda Tankard Reist, who co-edited the book with West Australian academic Abigail Bray. “We felt a new compilation and analysis of pornography was needed to confront the massive developments in online porn. We wanted to expose the true nature of pornography as not just about ‘naughty pictures’ but increasingly about violence, degradation, torture and suffering. We wanted to make known the commercialised, industrialised nature of modern porn and how it is colonising the world and shaping the sexuality of young people.”
Far from being passively depressed about the new technology, Collective Shout and some of the other activist groups mentioned in Big Porn Inc harness for anti-porn activism the very technologies which make hyper-pornification of culture possible.
“Collective Shout has been able to respond to the mainstreaming of violent and sexually exploitative advertising, products and images within a matter of minutes thanks to new forms of social media,” Tankard Reist says.
She feels “the website and Facebook contacts also act as virtual meeting points and enable instant brainstorming for action. Major corporations and organisations such as Bonds, Harvey Norman and others have been pressured to remove offending products or services because of Collective Shout-led protests.”
Collective Shout has also formed alliances in global anti-sexploitation campaigns such as that worldwide protest, initiated by CS and Adios Barbie to MTV against the American rap-musician’s Kanye West’s Monster music clip which simulates the lynching and decapitation of women.
“In Big Porn Inc, Susan Hawthorne calls this a dangerous morphing of the music industry’s imagery into sexualised torture and violence. She and others argue that video productions like this are not merely abstract or simulated artforms (or animations) but catalysts for the escalation of the desire to hurt real women,” Tankard Reist says.
This book brings together a diverse anti-porn critique with some notable national and international contributors. Different chapters are ordered into five different sections: one analyses the process of pornification of cultures; the second offers critiques of pornography as an industry fuelled by marketing paradigms; the third links the harm of pornography to the abuse of children; papers in the fourth identify the failures of state in relation to porn-ploitation and the last looks at successful strategies against pornography.
The book includes sociological, political and legal analysis along with moving narratives from women hurt by the porn industry.
Achieving editorial harmony in the book “was the easy part,” Tankard Reist says. “The contributors are all experts and replied to the project so willingly. Their work brings so much richness and credibility to the table, it made it all come together quite smoothly.”
“The premise of this project flowed logically from the research in Getting Real: Challenging the sexualisation of girls.”
“We get accused of creating ‘moral panics’ all the time,” laughed Melinda. “This is a tactic of those who prefer not to address the arguments, often those with vested interests. It’s a diversion, an attempt to try to paint us as moralising wowsers and prudes, hung up about sex, who want to put all women in chadors.
“The really disturbing thing, though, is how they gloss over the reality of the industry, the fact that child porn is now a $23 billion a year industry. The rape sites, torture pages, sites celebrating the degradation and humiliation of women. There are websites inciting crimes of violence against women and girls. I think what we are seeing is more a moral picnic than a moral panic.”
However, there has also been very constructive discussion and commentary to the collaboration, Tankard Reist says.
“I think many people who might disagree on other things are responding very positively to Big Porn Inc. They recognise the need to destroy the dominant idea that porn is a private and victimless hobby; to expose the reality of porn as a public health hazard affecting everyone in some way. They are united by the shared desire to see women and children treated with greater dignity and respect.
“Pornography draws everyone into its extremely callous and hate-filled version of masculinity; it damages women and girls with its hyper-plasticised, pain-filled and vapid images of female sexuality; it colonises and destroys real intimacy and human connection.”
Big Porn Inc provides its readers with valuable (though disturbing) data, some original but insightful political analyses and a vocabulary with which to join the resistance to globalised porn. It identifies, often with shattering evidence, the trail of damage and harm from prostitution to stripping to sexualised images of the girl-child.
As one of the book’s activists, Anna van Heeswijk expresses it: “…sexual objectification exists on a continuum, with images and messages stemming from pornography increasingly seeping into all aspects of popular culture.” There is growing evidence that children are being groomed at an early age to approach their own sexuality with the attitudes and behaviour of porn.
Tankard Reist says: “A study of Canadian boys with an average age of 14 found a correlation between their frequent consumption of porn and agreement with the idea that it is acceptable to hold a girl down and force her to have sex.
Another study of Italian adolescents 14-19 found an association between porn use and sexually harassing a peer and forcing someone into sex. Thirty three studies show increased aggression connected to viewing porn.”
Although all the contributors write with remarkable restraint, and the reader is spared the images of degradation and violence increasingly common in contemporary pornography, it is clear contributors have been exposed to some appalling instances of systematic misogyny and abuse.
Tankard Reist says she did not cope very well with the traumatising aspects of research of this kind and the awareness that so many “average” people are habituated to such images.
“Some days I had to drag myself to the computer … someone called it ‘a terrible knowledge’ and there is so much I wish I didn’t have to know.”
However, soul-destroying stories and data are countered by courage, insight and even humour that sustained the making of this book.
One of its goals is to invite everyone to be part of the resistance emerging around the world, to join growing networks of people effectively imagining and working against what Robert Jensen calls “the eroticising of oppression” so real justice is possible.
Big Porn Inc, published by Spinifex Press, is available from The Record Bookshop.