In post 11 of 100, I looked at an article in the BBC about their investigation into the prevalence of choking (or Non-Fatal Strangulation, NFS) in pornography and how it has effect it has had on the general attitude and ideas that people, especially young men, have about what constitutes “normal” sexual behavior. It seems, at least in England, that one of the more common ideas about how to challenge and change this situation is to make the depiction of NFS illegal. I was a little dismissive of that idea in post 11, and I am still skeptical about whether making it illegal will really stop it, or necessarily change the behaviors of young men who might really be struggling a larger influence about how they are supposed to depict themselves as dominant alpha males.
But the dilemma sat with me over the last few days and made me think about the attempt back in 2012 to require condoms to be used in all vaginal and anal pornographic productions filmed in LA, and the back lash that law met. On its surface, it seems like a very reasonable idea for a law, as Sexually Transmitted Infections are a common health risk in the industry and it is probably very difficult as an individual actor or actress to advocate for yourself effectively in the work place without risking your job. It received a lot of support from people within the industry and from the AIDS Healthcare Foundation, and it passed in LA county with almost 57% of the vote (this is all information you can find about 2012 Los Angeles Measure B on Wikipedia). Apparently the primary effect of the legislation is that most of the industry moved from LA to Las Vegas and that there has been a 95% reduction in permits for pornographic productions to be filed in LA. Attempts to pass similar laws at the state and federal level have all failed to materialize or be voted down at the polls. So practically, the idea of passing this kind of law appears to be about impossible, because the US is generally very squeamish about talking about sex, and as long as laws pass piecemeal around the country, then the industry will just keep moving, especially as the nature of pornographic media production has changed so radically over the last decade since these laws were even being considered.
Then, additionally, there were opponents to the bill within the industry because the bill was created without consultation with performers in the industry and that using condoms for the kind of sexual encounters being filmed in pornography (that can go on for hours) can actually make the the shoots longer and increase the risk of immediate injury to the performers from chafing and abrasions that can increase the risk of infection for performers. It makes a lot of sense to me that politicians do a really bad job of consulting with actual sex workers and performers before drafting up laws like this or thinking through how they are going to be implemented.
At the same time, it is pretty clear that people all over the world are turning to pornographic media as a primary source of sexual education, and that the World Health Organization is reporting that condom use among sexually active adolescents has declined significantly since 2014 around the world. So yeah, yikes! Like it is true that HIV/AIDs is not the death sentence it was for generations before me, and that the stigmatization of people with STIs that happened when I was a kid (because of people’s absolute terror about AIDs, even as the government was doing nothing to stop its spread or research it) was incredibly problematic, but we are kind of reentering a time period in the US where there will be no federal organizations doing any kind of sexual education research or promotion, and access to birth control and abortion is not looking good in the US ( worse in many ways than in my youth, better in some of the technological developments since then).
So kids have better access to an almost infinite supply of pornographic media (including the rapid spreading of AI generated content, a subject for a different post); that content is nearly impossible to regulate as much of it has been decentralized through social media type platforms like Only Fans; and it is clearly shaping attitudes and ideas about sexuality around the planet. The marketability of the content and its ability to use that content not just to sell itself, but to sell a whole host of insecurities that can generate sales for things like diet pills, sexual performance enhancing products and medications, Beauty products, clothes, etc…and it is pretty obvious to me that it was only a matter of time before the culture this has created in the minds of young men was going to spill over into the political sphere, like it has in the form of Trumpism today.
What can we do about it?
Regulation doesn’t really seem practically feasible to me, although I am sure a lot of folks are going to try to go that route, even ones I like and respect. I have already talked about it enough above, unless I someone points out something that has really been working on the state or national regulation level and then I will have to come back to this topic in a future post. Attempts to ban pornography have almost always ended up hurting poor and marginalized communities the most, while the barely-underground sex work industry being created for the wealthiest of people in society is left to create its Jeffery Epstein’s and P. Diddy’s regardless of its legality. Trying to regulate the specific behaviors of sex work industries like pornographic media production works a little bit around specific social norms that are incredibly dominant throughout society (like child pornography and depictions of hyper violent acts are bad) but also tend to push those parts of the industry into dark networks of power brokers who tend to be exceptionally good at exploiting chaotic political environments like the whole world is experiencing right now. As words like “grooming” become political battle grounds, and states consider having adults examine the genitalia of children participating in sports or even just trying to use the bathroom, these social norms are going to fall apart and regulation is going to be much less capable of protection and be used much more heavily as a political and social weapon.
Counter industries/“responsible” sexual media production already exist and are probably responsible for creating pockets of young people with much healthier ideas about themselves, their sexualities, and the how to be respectful and caring partners than in the general public. This has probably been a good thing for people with access to these media sources, but I don’t see it being the thing that is going to address the problem at a larger social level. Almost all the examples of this kind of media that I have ever heard about or seen tend to be fairly expensive in a world where (bad) pornographic media is essentially free, and much better about self-regulating in ways that conform to laws about age restrictions than the bad stuff, and thus will not become media sources that inform the general public about sex in the same way that the rest of the pornographic media industry has. It will just create “liberal bubbles” of alternative forms of gender and sexual expression that will generally be dismissed and blatantly attacked by the Manosphere and the enforcing branch of Patriarchal Misogyny. This isn’t to say that grown ass adults that want to view or engage with pornographic media shouldn’t try to be responsible with what they view (because attention is data, money and power in this post-information era we are living in), but expecting this kind of solution to address the issue of patriarchal misogyny and its spread through the porn industry is like expecting companies like Tesla to fix climate change.
I think the only real hope to counter the wide spread power that Patriarchal Misogyny has exerted through pornography is to de-stigmatize talking about sex and the depictions of sex that people see in their lives around them. I don’t think we can count on schools to do this for our children, not any more, at least in the US, although Europe is failing this really badly as well. I don’t think expecting it to happen through religious institutions is likely to work either, although religious institutions might be the best hope we have to be capable of protecting the kind of speech and knowledge that is necessary to have these kinds of conversations, even if most of them will not. It will be much harder for the right to attack religious institutions than nonprofits, and publicly funded educators on these topics. I think decentralized people just “flooding the box” and forcing the PM authoritarian weirdos like Vance and Trump and Musk and the Manosphere onto the back foot might be the only real practical strategy for most of us, we need to make them defend their terrible and pathetic ideas about sex in public discourse instead of the underground, “locker” room discourse where their sycophants just eat it up and make sure it is accessible to most of the kids that are looking for it.
Although the trolling and doxing and nastiness of these PM networks should not be underestimated. They are incredibly happy to attack women and LGBTQIAA2S+ folks and that is a big part of why I think male identified folk need to be stepping up and doing our part to make sure the box is being flooded. We need to keep making media like memes and videos that is accessible to youth (as opposed to stupid internet blogs on websites that get 20 views a week when they are busy, cough, cough) about how bad these losers are at being in meaningful and empowering relationships: sexual, romantic, familial, and even just at forming real friendships that are not about exploit each other and treating every interaction between two people as a power play or a financial transaction.
I don’t want my son to grow up in a world where anyone would look at a serial cheater and sexual predator and say “this is the shining beacon on a hill of masculinity that all men should emulate.” PM’s vision of masculinity is garbage. Not sexy hot mess trash, but shit-filled, toxic sludge garbage that is poisoning the world. Grown men in positions of authority who will quietly try to exploit PMs potential for personal power and privilege instead of stand up to it and call it out for what it is need to have the spot light turned into their faces, while the young men and boys that are trying to navigate a sense of self that is currently being lost to PM need to see positive examples of men doing the work to counter PM ideas in themselves and their communities.
I think I got too comfortable trusting that the work of confronting PM ideas was being done by the grown ups in the room at institutional levels like governments, Universities, and Departments of Education, but clearly the grown ups in those rooms were living in little bubbles and getting their information from sources that were not in touch with the real underworkings of how masculinity has been shaped by the changing cultural influencers. It is time to get back to work.