Big Porn Inc: Exposing the Harms of the Global Pornography Industry by Melinda Tankard Reist, Abigail Bray Read Free Book Online Page B

violence with a sexual theme. In public lectures on these issues, I often tell the audience that I have completed an extensive scientific study on the subject and determined that the percentage of women in the United States who have experienced sexual intrusion is exactly 100%. Women understand the dark humor; no study is necessary to describe their routine collective experience.
The Ideology of Hierarchy and the Role of Propaganda
No society would let happen what happens to women, and children, if at some level it did not have contempt for them. A rape culture is a woman-hating culture. But most people’s stated philosophical and theological systems are rooted in ideas of justice, equality, and the inherent dignity of all people. So, how do we explain all the violence, exploitation, and oppression? Only a small percentage of people in any given society are truly sociopaths, those incapable of empathy who engage in cruel and oppressive behavior openly and with relish.
Maintaining a claim to naturalness is essential for the maintenance of unjust hierarchies, and the illegitimate authority that is exercised in them. Oppressive systems work hard to make it appear that the hierarchies – and the disparities in power and resources that flow from hierarchies – are natural and, therefore, beyond change. If men are naturally smarter and stronger than women, then patriarchy is inevitable and justifiable. If white people are naturally smarter and more virtuous than people of color, then white supremacy is inevitable and justifiable. If rich people are naturally smarter and harder working than poor people, then economic injustice is inevitable and justifiable.
One of the key functions of propaganda is the naturalizing of hierarchy and authority in the minds of people at all places in the hierarchy. For elites at the top of the hierarchy, propaganda reinforces a sense of natural superiority and justifies a sense of entitlement. For those in the middle, propaganda promotes identification with the goals of elites above and discourages solidarity with oppressed people below. And propaganda also tries to persuade those on the bottom of the hierarchies that they deserve their fate, which can create a sense of futility about the prospects for change.
The Ideology of Pornography
Pornography is one of the dominant sexual-exploitation industries in the contemporary world, along with prostitution and stripping. These are the primary ways in which objectified female bodies are presented to men for sexual pleasure, typically for profit. The vast majority of people used in these industries are girls and women.
While women in prostitution and stripping tell stories in the course of their interactions with men, it is in pornography – the mass-mediated sexual-exploitation industry – that we see the ideology of sexual exploitation most fully developed. My analysis is that pornography (used to describe the genre of sexually explicit mass media) is routinely pornographic (used in a feminist sense, to describe the naturalizing of the social subordination of women).
Any discussion of the ideology of pornography should start with a sketch of the industry. The 2 main categories in today’s pornographic movie industry (whatever its form or outlet) are ‘features’ and ‘wall-to-wall/gonzo’. Features most resemble a Hollywood movie, with plot and characters. Wall-to-wall movies are all-sex productions with no pretense of plot or dialogue. Many of these movies are shot gonzo style, in which performers acknowledge the camera and often speak directly to the audience. In addition, there are specialty titles – movies that feature sadomasochism and bondage, fetish material, transsexuals – that fill niche markets. Heterosexual material dominates the pornography industry, with a thriving gay male pornography market and a smaller lesbian pornography market (much of it for a heterosexual male audience).
The majority of hardcore movies include oral,