What’s Porn Really Like?

“Rule #34: If You Can Imagine It, It Exists As Internet Porn”¹

Porn has come a long way since Playboy. It’s almost possible to feel nostalgia for the days when pornography meant magazines featuring soft-lit, bare-breasted models or films of ‘lovey dovey’ love-making on a bed.

“The internet is really really great… FOR PORN!
I’ve got a fast connection so I don’t have to wait… FOR PORN!
There’s always some new site… FOR PORN!
I browse all day and night… FOR PORN!
It’s like I’m surfing at the speed of light… FOR PORN!
The internet is for porn!
The internet is for porn!
Why do you think the net was born?
Porn! Porn! PORN!”
Avenue Q musical²

The internet changed everything, just as the porn industry suspected it would. It conceived of a where porn images and videos could be streamed directly into every single home, bypassing the awkwardness and inconvenience of having to buy top-shelf magazines, videos or DVDs from sex shops, or late-night satellite channel subscriptions. Analogue porn was “hushed, hidden and private. It was something you did in secret.”³

The porn industry didn’t just fuel the innovation of internet technology, it drove its wide-scale adoption. As Professor Gail Dines of the non-profit organisation Culture Reframed observes, the explosion of the porn industry has to do with the fact that, thanks to the internet, porn is suddenly ‘affordable, accessible and anonymous.’ Today, anyone with an internet connection has access to a free buffet of limitless porn.⁴

But the problem with watching other people having sex is that, thrilling as it may seem at first, ennui kicks in and, after a while, it starts to seem dull; after all, the thing that actually makes sex engage our whole self is the emotional connection it gives us to another actual person. The thing that initially gives us a strong hit of sexual arousal eventually loses the power to turn us on; so we find ourselves seeking out something else, something more novel, perhaps, or more extreme.

And when that happens, we find the online porn industry is very obliging: the combination of fiercely competitive market forces and virtually no regulation means that niche fetishes and violent, hardcore themes have gone more mainstream.

“As more and more pornographic images become readily available, it takes much more to scratch one’s sexual itch… that leads to the necessity for extremism.”
Mark Shrayber, Jezebel⁵

There are only so many ways to have sex – you would have thought. But online pornography has pushed the boundaries of possibility to the limit. Extreme, hard core, violent material which would once have been banned, refused classification or relegated to niche genres, are now commonplace in mainstream pornography.

Today, virtually anything goes. Many of the social norms and taboos that once ringfenced our behaviour have been unended and our deepest, darkest fantasies are laid bare. Women are slapped about, choked, gagged, strangled, ejaculated on by multiple men (or made to drink a cup of their semen), tortured, penetrated by three men at once, gang raped, and generally subjected to every kind of insult and humiliation.

Alongside the commonplace and popular themes of violence, sadism and masicism, online pornography also serves up themes centred on coercion and non-consent, sexual activity with children, leaked sex tapes, incest, racism and paedophilia. There’s sex that involves urination, defecation, vomit and menstrual blood.

“Porno services the ‘polymorphous perverse’: the near-infinite chaos of human desire. If you harbour a perversity, then sooner or later porno will identify it.”
Martin Amis, Rough Trade⁶

You name it, it’s out there. Not all of it is legal, and much of it goes against porn sites’ own terms and conditions – but the porn industry knows that it’s essentially unregulated; the sheer volume of online child abuse material means law enforcement is stretched to breaking point and doesn’t have the resources to go after anything else.

The kind of extreme, violent sex frequently depicted in porn obviously wouldn’t be acceptable in real life. But that’s the point: many of us imagine that porn isn’t “real.” We enjoy it as a form of escapism, a way to indulge our fantasies and shrug off the constraints of social acceptability and ‘political correctness’ in order to connect with our deepest, darkest desires.

We dive into this dark water and believe that we can come back out again, untouched; that we know the difference between fact and fiction, and we would never actually act these things out ourselves. Porn gives us a hit of illicit sexual pleasure, the thrill of crossing boundaries but with no harm done in the real world. Pure, guilt-free arousal.

Except that it’s not. Even though we see it as pixels on the screen, pornography isn’t simply make believe. It’s acted out by real men and women. What’s more, when we watch this stuff, it doesn’t just stay in a separate ‘porn box’ in our brain. Research shows that the images impact us deeply and affect our most intimate relationships. With tens of millions of hits per day, porn’s influence spills out to our communities, enforcing deeply harmful social prejudices and cultural practices.