I Hate Porn
by DanZBar

It's the ultimate low of the free market. If you have nothing else, you are for sale. Your labor isn't worth much. Your mind knows a world we don't care to know, and that which is sacred to you is not sacred -or profitable- to us. It's your willingness to do what it takes to eat that we love to see, and we will exploit it unendingly. An almost universal commonality in run-down countries around the world is poor treatment of women. Your dependence fuels our hunger as we lust for dominance. We will hire your women and the willing among your men, and we will tear off their little strip of dignity until nothing remains. We will remove them from their world and sit them in factories, doing repetitive work until they can barely afford to do it for lack of strength to stand. But there is a universal low, another way that a woman can support herself...she can sell her body.

In 49 of the 50 US states, prostitution is illegal. It is only legal in (most parts of) Nevada. In case you haven't been there, Nevada is one part nuclear wasteland and one part human cesspool (and all desert). There is a unique blend of smoke and smut that seems to permeate every square foot of the air in Vegas. From one angle, it's ass. From another, it's ash. Bright racy ads flash everywhere, invading your personal space and whispering... "Your sex life is bland. Try ours..." or "You are a loser. Come to our casino, get lucky, and be a winner today." Which is all bullshit really, 100 percent unadulterated nonsense. In the long run, nobody wins in casinos (without cheating), and nobody improves their sex life by making it meaningless.

Smoke seems to fill every indoor room in Nevada (Vegas, at least), and exhaust seems to cover the few outdoor spots where someone isn't smoking. And since it's approximately hotter than fucking hell, the smoke has an especially thick and unpleasant quality.

Though Nevada is the only US state where prostitution is legal, pornography is legal (or effectively unenforceable) in every part of the United States. And I'm not saying it should be otherwise. Just look at how well they're doing with the "war on drugs." Ha! Telling people they can't do something often just doesn't work. Besides, freedom of expression is precious and blah blah blah blah...anyway, I don't necessarily think outlawing porn would do anything good. What we need is a good, solid, logical and educational foundation, and we will each make the correct individual decision.

So, since I'm too lazy to gather these myself, I took the following from the Antiporn Resource Center. Let's read the facts:

6,000 porn movies are released each year (New York Post, 2003)

Increase in porn releases since 1991: 500 percent (US News & World Report, 1997)

Porn rentals by men watching alone: 71 percent (George Magazine)

Porn rentals by hetero couples: 19 percent (Ibid.)

Porn rentals by lesbian couples: 1 percent (Ibid.)

1996 profits from porn video rentals and sales: $4.2 billion (Newsweek)

Hard-core porn outlets now outnumber McDonald's restaurants in America. (NCPCF)

Annual online porn revenue as of 2002: $1 billion (National Research Council)

25 million Americans spend 1 -10 hours per week with online porn. (MSNBC, 2000)

4.7 million spend more than 11 hours per week. (Ibid)

Number of strip clubs in the US in 1997: 2,500

Strip clubs doubled in number between 1987 and 1992 (US News & World Report)

A well-run strip club can earn $5 million a year. (Ibid.)

Average age of a male's first porn exposure in 1985: 11 years. (Bryant, 1985)

Today, 9 out of 10 children between the ages of 8 and 16 have seen Internet porn. (LSE)

In 1992, 29 percent of boys called porn their "most significant source" of sex education. (Check & Maxwell)

1 in 5 children in a chat-room has been contacted by an adult. (Detective K. Akerman, 2002)

20,000 images of child porn are posted online each week (NSPCC, 2003)

In 1998, America was the world's largest consumer of child pornography. (Bangkok Post, 1998)

87 percent of molesters of girls, and 77 percent of the molesters of boys regularly used hard-core porn. (Marshall, 1988.)

Percentage of male college students who said they might rape a woman "if they could be assured of getting away with it": 25 to 30 (Donnerstein, 1983)

Percentage of college students who said they might after watching 10 hours of rape porn: 57 (Ibid.)

In 1983, Alaska and Nevada had the highest rates of porn mag readership and the highest rape rate. (Baron & Strauss)

Rape in America has risen 500 percent since 1960. (National Victim Center/National Coalition for the Protection of Women and Families)

In New York City, murder rates dropped to 40-year lows, while rape rates have steadily increased. (NY Daily News, 2002)

81 percent of serial killers interviewed by the FBI named hard-core porn their "highest sexual interest." (Final Report of the Attorney General's Commission on Pornography, 1986)

A 1985 survey found that 50 to 66 percent of convicted rapists had used porn regularly. (Abel)

A similar survey done 3 years later found it was now 86 percent (Marshall). 56 percent of the rapists in the second study said they imitated favorite porn scenes during their crimes.

Porn was used before, or during, 41 percent of rapes in Michigan between 1956-1979. (Detective Darrell Pope)

In Phoenix, neighborhoods with a porn shop had 40 percent more property crime and 500 percent more sex offenses than neighborhoods without. (U.S. Department of Justice, 1988)

After 150 porn shops in Oklahoma City were closed, the city's rape rate declined 27 percent over 5 years. (NCSP website)

Elsewhere in Oklahoma, reported rapes were up 19 percent (Ibid.)

100 percent of strippers surveyed in 1999 said they'd experienced: physical abuse, sexual abuse, verbal harassment, and propositions for prostitution while on the job. (Holsopple)

The word pornography is derived from ancient Greek, meaning "writing about whores." (Dworkin)

Re-read that last one, please. It gets me every time. Greek roots: porni = whores, graphos = writing, etching, or drawing. So it is a practice of writing about those for whom sex is nothing (and everything). People like this have very possibly always existed. What seems unusual to me is that it has become such a casual part of our culture. It does not bother me that some people do this. It is inevitable. It bothers me that the average person I know is not put off by it, but rather thinks it's just fine. It isn't.

When you really stop and think about it, porn is not just sex. In order for porn to be made, someone has to go out and find people to pay to have sex. Now, you might ask, "Buying sex...isn't that prostitution?" And I would have to say, "Yep, that's exactly what it is...Good question." Go ahead and ask me. That's what I'll say. I would then add this formula: Prostitution + Camera = Porn

And, to check our work, Porn - Camera = Prostitution

Porn sucks. The very process of capturing something sacred on camera makes it less so (especially when packaging it to sell to people). That's why everyone involved in porn, from the producers, directors, and "writers," to the actors and viewers are disconnected...from one another and/or from themselves.

Fundamentally, porn is empty. There is no connection between people. There is no love, only self-reducing adulation or sadistic domination to fill the void where compassion ought to be. It is escapism. It is disconnection. Most of all, it is distraction. I am not suggesting you destroy your fantasy life. I am stating that for a fantasy life to be healthy, it needs to come from inside of you and not from the images you are given by a marketing company (whether they be marketing for Disney or Playboy). You gotta weed out the bullshit, cut out the fat, and get down to what makes us human.