For decades, porn industry executives and their lobbyists have been claiming that “adult content” is a human right and that it is not only harmless but beneficial. One of their key claims has been that violent porn does not groom people for violence but provides a harm-free outlet for those who might otherwise act out physically on their disordered lusts. That claim has always been false due to the fact that the women being assaulted and degraded in porn videos are, in fact, being harmed — but as I’ve written many times in this space, a growing mountain of data is leading to a new consensus among experts that violent porn does not provide a “harm-free outlet” but rather encourages and cultivates these desires.
A U.K. charity working to prevent child abuse, the Lucy Faithfull Foundation, is reporting that pornography is inspiring a wave of sex crimes — among minors. According to the charity, there has been “a 30% increase in under-18s contacting them and a 26% rise in adults contacting them because they were concerned about the behaviour of a young person.” The foundation runs a “Stop It Now!” helpline, and senior practitioner Rachel Haynes recently told The Guardian that they have received a surge of calls from teens during lockdown, leading them to launch a website called “Shore” specifically for U.K. teens.
According to The Guardian, the site “is the first of its kind in Europe and one of only three in the world” with a “chat and email service for teenagers aged 13 to 18 who can get in touch anonymously.” Teenagers worried about their own sexual behavior or inclinations can get in touch, and The Guardian noted that one “of the most alarming developments for the charity and for police has been the rise in minors watching or sharing illegal child abuse material.” A staggering two-thirds of minors who have contacted the helpline since 2020 have discussed “indecent images of children.”
“A large proportion of the young people we work with have downloaded child sex abuse material — the pathways they reach that by are complex,” Haynes said. “Porn is a contributing factor — teenagers become desensitised to what they are seeing. Sometimes they have been groomed by adults or have been sent illegal images during sexualised chats online.” DCI Tony Garner, the head of an online sexual exploitation team at West Mercia police, concurred, telling The Guardian: “Quite often when we go through a door following intelligence on someone watching or sharing child sexual abuse, we find a teenager. There is a crisis here and it’s being driven by young people having access to very extreme pornography that is changing their brains.”
A report by France’s government-nominated equality watchdog recently published similar findings last month, noting that up to 90% of online porn content “features verbal, physical and sexual violence towards women.” The report was a culmination of over 18 months of hearings and a review of millions of videos on the world’s largest porn sites, noting that “women, caricatured with the worst sexist and racist stereotypes, are humiliated, objectified, dehumanised, assaulted, tortured, subjected to treatment that is contrary to both human dignity and French law. The women are real, the sexual acts and the violence is real, the suffering is often perfectly visible and at the same time eroticised.”
The council recommended that the government pass legislation enabling the prosecution of pornographers and forcing the removal of content, noting that the French state prosecutor has previously stated that the majority of online porn content “contained verbal and physical violence that contravened French law.” The report went even further, noting that any contract signed between the porn producers and performers was “void in legal terms because a person could not consent to torture and sexual exploitation and trafficking” and called for prosecution of the acts of violence featured in pornography. Until now, the report stated, French authorities have allowed the industry to act with “total impunity” while responding to these horrors with “blindness and denial” as porn lobbyists insisted that their content was protected by freedom of speech.
According to the French audiovisual regulator Arcom, 51% of 12-year-old boys view porn at least monthly — I suspect that number is far higher — and the report noted that this “massive consumption from a young age reinforces rape culture.” Sylvie Pierre-Brossolette, the head of the equality watchdog, stated in one interview that there is “no reason in 2023 to tolerate these illegal acts of unbearable torture” and that online pornography has become “a school for sexual violence.” This report follows on the heels of another report out of the U.K. last month that noted that U.K. universities are tackling “a rising tide of sexual assaults” including “choking and rape,” once again inspired by hardcore pornography.
For decades, the porn industry has pulled the cloak of freedom of speech around the rampant production and perpetration of sexual torture, marketed to the masses and viewed by the vast majority of children. A decade ago, the assertion that pornography fueled rape culture was the view of a small minority. Now, it is becoming consensus — and perhaps a reckoning is finally coming for this vile industry.
