The hypocrisy of porn
Matthew Melnyk
Issue date: 1/29/08 Section: Opinion
In public we cringe at the thought of pornography. We turn our noses up to this supposed perverse form of entertainment and present ourselves as being somehow above the low lifes and creeps who view that stuff.
Unfortunately for our mythologized public image, it is more likely than not that we have at some time viewed pornography.
Perhaps more interestingly, it is likely that the person beside you, the professor at the front of the class, your parents or maybe even your girlfriend or boyfriend are avid consumers of pornography.
There are numerous disconnects between the realities of the market for adult entertainment and how people discuss it. It would be hard to find someone who would publicly admit to viewing porn on a regular basis, yet all statistics show that it is popular beyond the scope that most of us realize.
The amount of money people pay to see others frolicking in the nude is staggering. Canadians spend about a billion dollars on pornography a year. Worldwide it is almost a $98 billion dollar industry. To put that in perspective; that is more money than the top technology based companies combined (eBay, Microsoft, Amazon, Yahoo!, Google, Apple, Netflix). For an industry that nobody seems to be consumers of, it seems to be doing well for itself.
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People often decry the pornography industry as exploitative, and there are often concerns raised about children and contact with this industry. What people rarely realize is that our own repressiveness is what allows for the industry to be that way it is.
We live in a society that has an identity crisis. In the public sphere people are expected to live by some abstract and impossible moral standard. This expectation comes with certain assumptions about their sexuality that are usually fairly repressive. We aren't comfortable imagining other people as sexual beings, nor are we comfortable with others thinking of us that way. Despite this tension it seems undeniable that the cliché "sex sells" is fairly accurate.
Products of all kinds are sold to us using sexual imagery. Every major form of entertainment emphasizes sexuality, regardless of its relevance to the medium. Businesses do this because it works. As the popularity of pornography shows, people are interested in sex.
Our public denial of this creates the conditions where salacious advertising is both pervasive and effective. It is also why people are driven to seek out sexual entertainment and are willing to pay billions of dollars for it.
I think that before we stand on our soapboxes and denounce the adult entertainment industry for all of its problems we need to take some responsibility.
First, we need to be honest about how we may have directly contributed to it. Secondly, as well as realize that by being sexually repressive we are creating a demand for pornography that rivals or surpasses almost every other form of entertainment.
I agree with Mr. Melnyk up to a point. It's amusing that on the surface, nobody says they consume pornography, but SOMEBODY'S gotta be doing it. As hard as I try, I can't hit all those porn websites that number hits in the millions.
The problem I have with Mr. Melnyk's analysis is that despite his acknowledgment most people are hypocrites when it comes to porn, he seems to fall back on the old stereotype that porn is automatically bad.
I don't quite agree. I've posted here on several occasions about the possible social benefits of porn, (reduced crime rates, empowerment of otherwise sexually repressed segments of society), not to mention the fact that every single consumer or producer of porn is a stand-up supporter of freedom of speech and expression. Not sure what else to say except that more people ought to talk about porn a lot more often.
Just my opinion. I could be wrong.
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