Well….

I have been avoiding porn for the past three months. I just went on youporn.com for the first time in awhile, and perused some of the videos as well as their comments. People know that porn has gotten more extreme over the years, but it seems that the past three months have seen a noticeable increase in misogyny – in male consumers’ perception of women, as opposed to just the content of pornography. Accusations that anti-porn feminists pick and choose examples of the extreme fringes of pornography become laughable as I stare at a particularly brutal advertisement for Brazzers on the front page of YouPorn. I saved it for posterity, and will write more soon.

Where is the respect?

I came across this video of porn star Eva Angelina at Expo Sex & Entertainment Mexico 2007, the Mexican equivalent of the AVN Adult Entertainment Expo(AEE). For those who are not familiar with her, Angelina was one of the most popular and successful women in the industry in the past four years. She was the recipient of four AVN awards, but recently retired from the business.

Trigger warning – this post contains violent sexual language, sexual assault, and various horrible things.

From 0:54 onwards, she is giving an interview in which she talks about her experiences in the porn industry as well as her childhood. Angelina tells of some disconcerting facts such as getting wrapped up in drugs and that she started filming herself having sex at the age of 14. She also reveals that her mother suffered from mental illness and her boyfriend committed suicide. Unfortunately, a history of drugs or mental illness isn’t uncommon among porn stars, but that wasn’t what this post is about. Angelina expressed interest in writing a memoir, at the urging of her friends who described her life as being very interesting. One commenter had this to say about her potential endeavor:

“that book would be like : ya this one day i sucked a fat cock and this other day i got double teamed by two fat cocks and then i got fucked until my ass went numb for christmas i got to suck santas big fat fuckin dick and the day after i sucked another fat cock thats basically my life story (then it would have like a fact thing about the book in the back of it) facts on eva: sucked dick since 12 and also sucked over 38 dicks while making this book” (Because porn stars are not people with lives and hobbies, they can only be a set of holes for men to use.)

The top voted comments for this video are not much better:

“haha looks fade and her pussy cant stay tight forever but w/e might as well enjoy her until she becomes a total washed up whore”

“please honey no one cares about your life story…now take this cock and make it disappear..holla!!!!!!!!!!!!!”

“she looks better with a cock in her mouth”

“I read Eva Angelina’s blog thing, I forget where. It was a random posting on some site. But she’s fucking insane. I would love meet her.”

“I did some research into the suicide rate of female porn stars, its shocking how many have done themselves in. I went to the same school as Hannah Harper, pretty crazy when you see her brother in town, I wonder what he thinks about his mates seeing his sister with all those cocks in her ass. I would die of shame.” (This woman committed suicide, and all he cares about is how ashamed her brother would be.. Anyone wanna bet on whether this guy watches said videos anyway?)

“I love sick porn girls.”

“Eva Angelina is really cute,but I agree it is shameful to be the parent,boyfriend,sibling of a pornstar.I would also die of shame.” (Again, these guys look down on the women in porn, but still watch them getting degraded. Acting in it is shameful, but masturbating to it isn’t.)

“I hope she can stay in the industry in a capacity where she wont have to drink sperm and be urinated upon on camera, Like a directing role for G/G movies or just a makeup consultant. It’s fun to watch hardcore sex but it is a degrading environment.”

“Yeah, but how about her asshole?! Man, there’s more pink in that thing than a case of Bubble Yum. And the diameter on that thing is like the size of a tea saucer. She’s an absolute gem, and I too hope she remains in the industry. I just hope she’s able to keep inhaling cocks with her current rate of enthusiasm. Longevity is a rare commodity in this sordid industry.”

“I like seeing her get violated” (5 thumbs up, by the way)

“yeah, its a fact that most pornstars have an IQ of 23”

“Do you think she became a pornstar because her daddy told her to do so? lol, she’s dumb as fuck”

“She started having sex at 13…Sad, this is the life of most porn stars though” (But masturbating to gonzo porn at 13 is not sad?)

“dude she’s fuckin smart like wayyy smarter than me for example. she knows how to bong a beer faster than the average bear n shit” (A compliment..maybe?)

“Does anyone really think there aren’t millions of girls just as dumb as any porn star? Plus they’re all uptight about sex to boot…

Also, why is her story so sad? Clearly she’s always been more sexual than normal, and she managed to turn it into a successful career. It’s not like her life is affecting you.”

“is this at a MEXICAN adult sex expo? lol. how sad.” (?????)

“she wont know you are banging her eather shes so loose from all the porno”

“I wonder if she ever feels a little fat”

“She IS fat. FAT”

“home video when she was 14! is it online???”

“Ya sure, your life is interesting. Laying on your back with your ankels behind your ears. ENTHRALLING. Theres a war in the middle east!!! Fucking waiste.”

“Well, porn is a job. It’s a lot better than going out and raping someone without their consent, in less safe conditions. Besides, some pornstars – such as Tera Patrick for example – have gone on to lead their own distribution companies, and are now multi-millionaires.”  (Wait, what??)

“I love pornstars, they are so messed up mentally, just like me”

“poor washed up whore 😦

but hey i’m not complaining”  (Wink, wink. Get it?)

And as a bonus, a comment on this video of a woman doing a striptease:

“This stripper is defective. Where can I buy one that strips like it should? =D” (Women are objects. Just kidding!….but not really.)

The same guy also commented on a video of police officers groping and photographing a drunk woman in the police station:

“She was waiting for a ride. She REALLY should have gotten one….from 3 guys lol XD

Slut…..”

And I will end the post with this gem from the same video.

“Sir, that was not sexual assault. That was Reality Pornography.”

Why Do You Hate Porn – Part 1

This blog is written with many different people in mind; for young girls who are struggling to find themselves amidst an increasingly hostile sexual environment as well as grown women who have just had enough.  It’s for women who are just starting to sense that something isn’t right about the world we live in and radical feminists who can already articulate what that something is. It’s also for skeptics; men who don’t understand what all the fuss is about and women identifying as sex-positive feminists who think accusations of misogyny in porn are exaggerated.

Trigger Warning: Descriptions of sexual situations and rape.

It took two years for me to transform from an anti-feminist to an anti-porn feminist. At the time of writing this post, May 29th, 2011, I am 18 years old. The first time I saw porn, I was about 7 years old. It was an accident – I had stumbled onto a softcore website and instead of exiting the page, I explored. I was always a really curious kid, and still am. Most of it wasn’t horrifying, thankfully. There were lots of naked women, categorized according to hair color, age, weight, etc. They were objectified, but my 7 year old self could not yet understand that concept. I was never uncomfortable with nudity or sexuality. Some would say I was a little too comfortable with them.  The next part of this story still leaves me mortified. I saved the website to “Favorites”, so I could look more at a later time. Immediately, I regretted having done so, but I didn’t know how to remove it. I knew that it was illegal and highly inappropriate for a  7 year old to be looking at porn. Panicking, I found my brother’s friend who was good with computers and spun some story about popups and accidentally saving this “weird” website, so that he’d tell me how to get rid of it. When he saw what I had “accidentally” bookmarked, he gave me this funny look I’ll never forget. I was really embarrassed and continued trying to play dumb. Over the next few years, I ran into pornography several more times.  I was fascinated with sexuality, and I actively learned about the different aspects of it. If you were to have called me overexposed, well, I wouldn’t disagree.

Morbid curiosity. That’s the best excuse I can come up with for some of the things I looked up. By the time I was 11, I was familiar with BDSM as well as many fetishes and paraphilias. It seemed like nothing could surprise me anymore. One day, I went too far. I searched for “rape porn”. I knew it existed because…why wouldn’t it exist? It seemed obvious.  That was morbid curiosity, but it was also concern. I was worried that some of the women might not be paid actresses who were just pretending they were in agony. I felt like I had a duty to go and make sure it was all “fake”. Some of the scenes and websites were so realistic. It really tore me up inside to think that men could film a real rape to slip in alongside those films and no one would ever know. No one would ever ask, because hey, the girls are supposed to be crying right? And that blood? Fake. What if there was a girl out there who was assaulted and she had no idea that her rape was on the internet being used as masturbation material for some perverts? It killed me that I couldn’t know for sure – that no one could know for sure unless one specifically asked the women in those films. I thought checking out the sites would clarify things. Looking at those sites did not assuage those fears, however.

I knew about “rape” fantasies among women, but they were nothing like what I saw in porn. The violence and brutality and degradation exceeded any expectations I had. I remember thinking to myself, “This is what rape looks like. This is what happens to women.” I just knew deep in my gut, as if by some instinct. I felt hollow inside. It disturbed me that there was no….difference. I knew that if there was a double blind test, and I had to watch one of these videos and one confiscated from a rapist, I would not be able to tell which was the porno. As I clicked around, that emptiness was replaced with an increasing amount of nausea. At this point in the story, I left the room, but a “friend” has recounted to me what happened next.

A pop-up of child pornography appeared. There were little dark-skinned Asian girls standing in front of fat, old white men whose faces were blurred out.These kids were must have been between four and nine years old. That was real blood. That was really a man’s penis inside an 8 year old. That was real pedophilia. That was real, undeniable rape. She could not escape that fact no matter how hard she tried. And she really wanted to. She realized this was something she had never wanted to see, and wished she could undo it. It couldn’t be undone, though. It was stuck with her forever. It was stuck with those kids forever, who she desperately wanted to save. She wanted to make it so that none of that had ever happened to them, but she couldn’t. It haunted her. It really tore her up inside. She couldn’t tell her parents, tell anyone, because she was afraid legal action would be taken against her or her family. It took all her strength to not just vomit on the floor. She had to forget about it and move on, for everyone’s sake. It took her two days to get the sick feeling out of the pit of her stomach.

Surprisingly, none of this had an impact on my opinion of pornography. I still thought pornography was harmless. What I saw was just the “fringe” and had no bearing on mainstream porn. It was an insignificant piece of the porno pie.  At least, that’s what I thought back then.

To be continued in part two….