Saturday, November 19, 2011

Is 80% of Internet porn misogynistic?

I got into a huge Facebook comments fight with Amanda Marcotte Wednesday night over her assertions in her Slate review of "Dirty! Dirty! Dirty!: Of Playboys, Pigs, and Penthouse Paupers—An American Tale of Sex and Wonder":
When these four men founded their magazines, pornography wasn’t a multibillion-dollar enterprise with corporate funding. It was a social stigmatized, semi-criminal industry, and it’s probably no accident that the men who entered it were broken people with serious sexual and emotional baggage.

It’s unfortunate that these men’s attitudes intertwined with their work until sexism became a standard feature of porn, one that outlived the feminist revolution. Just as file folder icons on computers will be around long after real life file folders disappear from offices, the demeaning portrayal of women these men brought to porn will outlive all of them. It’s not necessary to the experience, but without it, the user would now feel that something is off...

It’s interesting to consider what a porn industry started by an entirely different set of men, a set of men who loved women, might have looked like. Would different abbreviations now populate porn sites instead of such current favorites as DP (double penetration) and ATM (ass-to-mouth)? Would what we consider “alternative” porn now simply be the mainstream?


She provides no evidence that Flint, Guccione, Hefner and Goldstein made today's Internet porn anti-woman. Her argument is that those men were misogynists and they made porn, and since "mainstream" porn is also misogynist, it's due to the pornographers of yesteryear.

But there's an even bigger problem here - I have seen no evidence that most Internet porn is misogynistic.

This isn't the first time I've run into claims by some feminists that Internet porn is mostly sexist. Their argument seems to be that if some misogynist porn exists online, we can extrapolate from this that most online porn is misogynist.

There is lots of Internet porn - so much so that I bet that the amount of Internet porn online in a single day is more than all the porn produced in the history of the pre-Internet world - including the vase paintings of the ancient Greeks. Until you've seen a red-figure three-way, you just haven't seen porn.

So to actually do a thorough study of Internet porn would be extremely time-consuming.

But a less time consuming method is simply to do a search/spot check. I did a Google search on "porn." The top 2 hits were the sites pornhub and youporn. So I went to pornhub.

There sure was lots of free porn there - but does anybody on Earth pay for porn anymore? There is so much available for free. You don't even have to click on a video at pornhub - the video ad on the right-hand side of the screen shows explicit sex acts.

Anyway, a quick review of the six videos in the "being watched" category, which also include the user-voted positive ratings percentage.



Video #1 "Wake Up Sex Homemade Video" is just that - a man holding a camera - we see very little of him - enters a bedroom, the woman wakes up and smiles at him, masturbates and then they have vigorous vaginal, anal and oral sex (fellatio only.) It got a 93% positive rating.

Video #2 "Mature MILF steals daughter's boyfriend" is a preview of a full video on naughty america dot com. This one has dialog and an actual storyline and incredibly bad acting - which is the standard for porn. One of the most fun aspects of the movie Boogie Nights was watching good actors suddenly turning into bad actors for the porn film sequences. But back to the video - there is oral sex (fellatio and cunniligus) and vaginal sex. There might be other activities in the full video. In any case the preview got a 90% positive rating. The guy in this is pretty cute but once the sex begins you can't see his face at all, the entire focus is on the "MILF".

Video #3 "Sexy Massage" is girl-on-girl that starts with massage and a rudimentary storyline and then gets into masturbation, crotch grinding and cunnilingus. It got a 95% rating.

Video #4 "Black Compilaction" I assume this is a typo and should be "compilation" - the video shows different black people having vaginal sex and fellatio. Also quite a bit of female exhibitionism. This got a 93% rating. Some dialog but not much story.

Video #5 "Aleska Diamond & Lexington Steel" is named after the two porn stars who appear. This has a story - the woman - played by Aleska, has a Scandinavian-sounding accent. She appears to be living with a sort of hickish white guy. They have a brief conversation and then she goes over to their neighbor's house - played by the Lexington Steel and they have vaginal, anal and oral sex. According to Lexington's Wiki page: "an American award-winning pornographic actor, director and owner of Mercenary Motion Pictures and Black Viking Pictures Inc. He is the first actor to have won the AVN Male Performer of the Year Award three times" and I am not surprised - he is cute - and I usually don't like bald - and a much better actor by far than most. Which, admittedly is a low bar. I don't know why it only got a 91% positive rating. I was disappointed that the white guy didn't show up at the end and confront them, for some dramatic interest, but then interpersonal situational drama isn't what porn is all about.

Video #6 "3 on 1" shows three women taking turns fellating a penis and testicles. We never get to see anything more of the genitalia's owner than a hairy belly. The women are polite about taking turns, so no drama, and the dialog and storyline are minimal. This one was unusual for the close-up POV - since the camera didn't bother showing anything but the penis, the focus was on the three women's faces. So this was the most interesting, cinematically. This got a 93% rating.




And that's the survey of what was being watched when I visited pornhub. None of this strikes me as misogynistic - male-oriented yes, but that in itself isn't evidence of misogyny. Mostly though it was unimaginative and made sex kind of boring since the personal/emotional connection was slighted in favor of the standard mechanics of sex. And this might just be me, but except for ole Lexington Steel the people in these videos seem pretty stupid. I guess stupidity, even more than baldness is a huge turn-off for me.

But the fact that most porn is crap should surprise noone - why should porn alone be exempt from Sturgeon's Law? ("90% of everything is crap")