/Big Mouth/ Warp factor 10
29/10/2008 | Filed under Discover > Big Mouth
Pay a journalist to write a feature about porn and you open a Pandora’s box. Gary Marshall raises concerns of what’s out there
I’ve been thinking about online porn quite a lot recently, after writing a feature about it in issue 174. As the song goes, the internet is for porn. And you know what? It is. It really is.
I appreciate ‘internet contains porn’ isn’t exactly front-page news. Nor is the fact that if you can imagine it, there’s a porn site devoted to it – although I have to admit my surprise at ‘brown bagging’, where sites feature videos of people having sex with brown bags over their heads. The bags have eyeholes cut in them so the woman (it’s always a woman) can see, and crucially the bags have been drawn on, so the eyeholes are surrounded by Amy Winehouse-style lashes, while the hole cut for the model’s mouth is framed by a big cartoony smile. It’s like Spongebob Squarepants after a few unwise career choices.
Elsewhere, people are choking chickens. That’s not a euphemism: you can download videos of people stuffing the Sunday dinner with neither sage nor onion. I read the tabloids so I know this stuff goes on, but I didn’t realise there was money in filming it, flogging the clips and quite possibly selling the chicken afterwards.
Who’s watching?
What worries me about online porn isn’t the niche stuff, though. It’s the low-budget, ‘reality’ stuff. There’s always been a seam of misogyny in pornography, and in new genres such as ‘gonzo’, it’s become overt. Women are “stupid bitches” and worse, and the emphasis is on degradation. I’ll leave the ‘are the actresses being exploited?’ argument aside, because I have a personal concern: as the father of a daughter, it scares me silly that teenage boys can access this stuff.
Pre-internet, the first porn you saw was likely to be a discarded magazine in a park (which may have been viral marketing; the thought of porn publishers deliberately seeding public parks with grumble mags amuses me immensely), or one nicked from another kid’s older brother. Similarly, videos were temporarily liberated from someone’s dad’s secret stash. It was all pretty innocuous stuff, and left most of us with the impression that the best way to get sex was to be a TV repairman or a plumber. And German. Now, though, teenage boys can access the most vicious, degrading and humiliating pornography, and I’m sure many of them do.
My worry is this. Unless they’re exceptionally lucky, teenage boys view pornography long before teenage girls will even look at them, let alone have sex with them. So what they see on their monitors is bound to have an effect on their expectations, and possibly their attitudes. What effect is easy access to this stuff going to have on their expectations of the teenage girls they go on to date?
I don’t know the answer, but it’s better to be safe than sorry. So when my daughter grows up and brings boyfriends home, I’ll ask if they’ve ever used the internet. And if they say yes, I’ll shoot them.
Gary was writing for .net in the Stone Age. He’s a journo and software expert. www.bigmouthstrikesagain.com
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Comments
Ehab / 29/10/2008 / 19:01 / http://ehab.cc
Thank you for writing in this topic. I am a new reader here and this article is something I would like to talk about, here and further more with people I know - online and offline.
Although the Internet is not porn, porn is - the Internet - for many people. I turned 20 in September and I have friends here with Internet, Rapidshare premium account and a terabyte of free storage for all they can download. As you mentioned in your post, the pre-Internet age was a much accountable age. It was difficult to get hold of pornography. A friends brother, the corner dvd-rental shop and older kids at school - they always had them.
But now, with the widespread use of the Internet, almost everyone has Limewire or other p2p programs. Perhaps you should ask one of these networks to send you a copy of their search analytics :)
On the first lines, you talked about the content of the pornography. While high end studios like Digital Playground (oops :P) produces high quality, "safe" pornography movie - the ameteur ones tend to divulge from the mainstream of straight sex and move on to all sorts of "queer" ideas that exposes our age to a much higher level of threat.
I have noticed an increasing amount of decrease in the respect of women in Pornography. As you say, the actresses are being exploited.
I might take some time down tonight and write a post on my blog on how to protect our families from being attacked by these sort of malcontent. OpenDNS and M$ Family Safety are on top - along with a few hours of prep talk with our children every weekend or so, regarding these matters.
Thank you for the post Gary :)
Ehab - Bangladesh
Suzanne / 03/11/2008 / 15:25 / http://www.selectaskip.co.uk
The internet has become more and more visable with sexual side of life than anything else, i think it is now harder to manage. It seems to be easier for "anyone" to get to as well, my nephew has managed to get it at age 11 online...until we stopped him!
I think alot of hosting sites similar to you tube also contain images and video footage of things they should not do. but the way of the world nowadays sex is being known to younger age groups alot quicker.
Gary thanks for the post, it sure does make you think what the future of the internet holds
Ali Reid / 09/11/2008 / 19:52 / http://www.turtle-media.com
What you say is very true, and to risk sounding prudish, something really should be done about the increasing misogyny in porno. Although it should be understood that pornography is not sex, its an altogether different beast. What one likes to see is not necessarily what one like to do?
Milosh / 11/11/2008 / 15:37
@Suzanne
the future of the Internet holds just more of it, I'd guess. It is beyond any sort of "repair", except in the sense that one could use family safety software, of the kind mentioned by Ehab.
What this leaves us with, being that nothing made by men cannot be undone by men (especially inquisitive, highly intelligent and oh so young men), is the fact that people just need to start talking to their kids already. It's no good hiding from the fact that kids are growing up any more. It's bloody ridiculous to expect them to grow up and form properly by letting them learn stuff on their own. The silent parent who waits for the street, or the sex ed class to teach his little darling the ways of adults is in for a potentially horrible result. 20th century is over and so far behind us in this regard that it seems more like the 17th.
Talk to your children. Spend quality time with them. If necessary (however impalpable it may seem), talk to them about porn, when they start using the internet. It's obligatory. I see no alternative.
Gary Marshall / 18/11/2008 / 15:55
Milosh, Ehab, I think you're right - it's not going to be uninvented any time soon, so the best approach I think is what you've both suggested: software as a first line of defence (depending on the age of your kids) and trying to be a good parent.
Martin / 30/04/2010 / 00:14 / http://www.compareskiphire.co.uk
I can only agree with everything you are saying, but actually, I would like to take it a step further and make a general statement regarding the youth today.
I know our parents said the same thing about us, but I truly believe that the youth today is off the rails. The general attitude has changed dramatically over the past 15 years: The drugs, the fighting, knife crime, the lack of want to achieve, youngsters creating havoc abroad etc. The list is endless. It is a western phenomenon which is not limited to the UK, and apparently it is a screw without an end.
I have yet to have kids myself, but like you, I sure as hell dread having a girl. It is not a nice place out there.
