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(U-WIRE) FULLERTON, Calif. -- Porn features beautiful women with perfect bodies engaged in sexual play, but this idealized eroticism is little more than treating women as objects to be degraded, some scholars say.
"While some porn shows women as sexual subjects, that is, as persons who take the action and initiative to enjoy sexual pleasure, a great deal of porn shows women as mere objects to be abused, harmed and injured," said California State University Fullerton Philosophy Professor Mitchell E. Avila in an e-mail interview.
Pornography has become mainstream. The estimated revenues of the industry -- at $12 billion a year, according to Forbes -- prove how integrated porn has become in our sex-starved, image-based society.
It draws public ire from political and religious groups, as well as fascination from a pop culture that pedestals sex stars as the gold standard of sex appeal for others to follow.
The actresses are a motley crew of attractive sirens who form a subculture celebrity faction representing a hedonistic element of these times.
"Pornography used to be something we swept under the carpet -- that is, nice men and women didn't use porn, or at least didn't admit it," said CSUF Communication Professor Genelle Belmas in an e-mail interview.
The farm system of talent the industry cultivates presents an enigmatic paradox of innocence and corruption. Pretty young debutantes fresh off the bus from Podunk enter a trade where youth and beauty are valued at a premium.
No little girls grow up aspiring to be porn stars, but so many find themselves knee deep in.
It is a venture of extremes, with the high risk of disease and degradation or the high reward of fame and riches personified by porn superstars such as Jenna Jameson and Tera Patrick.
Both parlayed acting careers into multi-million dollar production companies. But for every Jameson or Patrick, there are literally thousands of women identified only through cheesy pseudonyms. They roll the dice in an avaricious workplace which pulls some into a netherworld where they are used, abused and objectified, not just in black-market snuff films, but rather in mainstream DVDs that ship in the millions.
Belmas said social concerns about the porn industry have evolved from the time silicon was only used in computer chips.
"Once upon a time, like in the 1970s, men were thought to be the victims of porn," Belmas said. "In other words, show a man a porn video or magazine, and he could not control his base impulses.
He had to go get some, and porn made him do it, whatever crime or deed he did."
Belmas drew upon her expertise of law and society, explaining how the public's attention has refocused on the landmines women face in the industry, "Somewhere along the line, in the 1980s and beyond, we started to recognize that it is women who are more likely to be victimized -- through coercion, rape, and worse. That's still true today."
Avila pointed to the commercial marketing of porn as a chief indicator that women are objectified in the most culpable ways.
"This is readily evident from Internet porn where even "straight sex" is portrayed as describe as 'defiling,' 'injurious,' 'harming,' and so on," Avila said. "So it's not just that women are shown having sex, but rather that the sex act is described as 'ripping them open,' 'f---ing them to death,' 'leaving them bloody,' and 'raped and abused.' On top of this, there are several porn genres which specialize in abusing women, including making them vomit, abusing them on toilets, urinating on them and so forth. Anyone with a computer can verify this in under two minutes."
A poster boy for the type of porn that egregiously depicts women in a humiliating manner is Rocco Siffredi, an actor nicknamed "The Italian Stallion."
Siffredi has gained status in the industry with his hard-line antics over the years. Co-stars in his films have been subject to stiff slaps in the face, getting their hair pulled and having their head dunked in a toilet. Siffredi has been honored with 40 awards in the past 15 years from the Adult Video News, porn's equivalent to the academy awards.
The consensus view of the insiders (under their stage names) at the Erotica L.A. convention on June 24 at the L.A. Convention center was that the performers are not overtly forced into things they are unwilling to do, but often placed in an inauspicious one-way business negotiation.
The compromise is essentially doing exactly what the producers command, or risk blackballing throughout the industry. Many of these women are ripe for exploitation due to their naive inexperience.
"You can't take an 18 year old and expect them to survive in this business without good representation," said Lori Lust, a 27-year-old porn actress in an interview at the Erotica L.A. convention. "The agents and producers will eat you up and spit you out."
Some of the actresses explained how they have to mentally detach themselves from what is happening to get though the shoots.
"You get grossed out working with men you wouldn't have sex with normally," said Ms. Panther, a voluptuous black porn actress in an interview at the Erotica L.A. convention. The 20 year old is using her porn earnings to finance her education, as she is an economics major at Cal State Long Beach. She spoke with droopy dark eyes that conveyed a sense of disenchantment.
"I feel objectified at times; they can be old, fat and sweaty; sometimes you just have to shut it down," she said.
Savannah Stern is a 20-year-old Portland native who specializes in interracial films. The brunette explained how she had trudged through unsavory sexual experiences to get a paycheck.
"When I go to work, it's work, different from when you have emotions involved," Stern said. "I've had my share of bad partners, guys that couldn't keep their dick hard or girls with nasty smells."
Not all women readily concurred that their profession is one of objectification.
Naomi, a 22-year-old starlet who appears in films for Platinum X, is so breathtakingly gorgeous it seemed she was in the wrong place.
When asked if she believed women were objectified in adult films, she responded that she didn't believe that was the case.
"I wanted to do it, and did," Naomi said. "I love being able to enjoy hot and kinky sex."
Belmas, an expert on Constitutional and Media Law, expressed a sense of tolerance towards further regulation of the industry, assuming certain standards are upheld.
"I would protect it but I would punish any creators who harm anyone for the sake of the pornography, or any who use underage actors in the creation of the work," Belmas said. "If it can be demonstrated that a person entered into the project without coercion and was sufficiently compensated for the work, I cannot see punishing either the actors or the creators. If anyone's forced, raped, harmed in any way, or defrauded, then go after the perpetrator with the full force of the law."
All in all, at the heart of this issue lies an enigmatic dichotomy between two publics, one decrying the retrograded manner in which women are depicted in porn, and another consuming it in large doses complete with expiration dates and three digit identification numbers.
Within legality, the industry will continue toe the line of objectifying women all the way to the bank.
(C) 2006 Daily Titan via U-WIRE
