PAN DISCUSSION GROUP 

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First what exactly is porn?

The author of a ‘Womans Right to Pornography’ makes an attempt

http://www.wendymcelroy.com/xxx/

 In January/February 1994, Ms. magazine, the following definitions were offered:

"Pornography is the use of sex to intimidate and/or control women and children.... It has to do with depicting something that is violent and possibly life threatening for entertainment." -Ntozake Shange

"Pornography is the graphic, sexually explicit subordination of women that includes one of a series of scenarios, from women being dehumanized-turned into objects and commodities-through women showing pleasure in being raped, through the dismemberment in a way that makes the dismemberment sexual." -Andrea Dworkin

 

PORNOGRAPHY VERSUS EROTICA

Part of the anti-porn attempt to control the debate has been the forced distinction they've drawn between pornography and erotica. Basically, pornography is nasty; erotica is healthy. What exactly constitutes erotica is never clearly expressed. It is merely described as life affirming, while pornography is decried as degrading.

In the book Confronting Pornography, Jill Ridington offers her dividing line between the two types of sexual expression:

"If the message is one that equates sex with domination, or with the infliction of pain, or one that denies sex as a means of human communication, the message is a pornographic one.... Erotica, in contrast, portrays mutual interaction."

]

Is there a real distinction between pornography and erotica? And why does it matter?

 

Let me draw a parallel. A friend and I have a pleasant disagreement about whether there is a distinction between science fiction and fantasy. These two types of writing are often lumped together, with many books combining elements of both. Although the debate may be fruitless, it is good-natured and of no great consequence.

Not so with the current mania for distinguishing between erotica and pornography. The debate over where to draw the line between these two forms of literature is anything but good-natured. When that line is drawn, those who fall on the wrong side of it may well be arrested and imprisoned by those who control the definitions.

 The entire process resembles a scene from Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland:

"When I use a word," Humpty Dumpty said, in a rather scornful tone, "it means just what I choose it to mean-neither more nor less."

"The question is," said Alice, "whether you can make words mean so many different things."

"The question is," said Humpty Dumpty, "which is to be master-that's all."

Humpty Dumpty was engaging in what has been called "stipulative definitions"-namely, the sort of definition which makes the word mean anything you want it to. For example, arbitrarily redefining pornography from common usage-"sex books and sex movies"-to the sexually correct meaning of "an act of rape."

Fortunately, some feminists, like Joanna Russ, are applying common sense rather than ideology to this distinction:

"Until recently I assumed ... that `art' is better than 'Pornography' just as `erotica' is one thing and `pornography' another; and just as `erotica' surpasses `pornography,' so `art' surpasses `erotica.' I think we ought to be very suspicious of these distinctions insofar as they are put forward as moral distinctions. " With such a Wonderland of definitions floating about, it is prudent to take a step backward and ask, What constitutes a proper definition of anything?

I propose a value-neutral definition: Pornography is the explicit artistic depiction of men and/or women as sexual beings. The modifier explicit excludes such gray areas as women's romance novels. The modifier artistic distinguishes pornography from psychological analyses of sex, such as those found in Freudian textbooks. The term depiction includes a wide range of expression, including paintings, literature, and videos. Thus, the genus of my definition of pornography is "the explicit artistic depiction.

The differentia is "of men and/or women as sexual beings." This means that pornography is the genre of art or literature that focuses on the sexual nature of human beings. This does not mean pornography cannot present people as full well rounded human beings. But, in order for the piece of art to be part of the "genre" of pornography, it must explicitly emphasize their sexuality.

Two things are missing from my definition of pornography, which are generally found elsewhere. It is common to refer to pornography as "material intended to sexually arouse"; I have excluded the intention of the author or producer. I have also excluded the reaction of the reader or viewer.

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 One attitude to porn…..

James McConvill: Let's educate, not regulate, on pornography

 The best thing to do these days when it comes to internet pornography is to educate. It is time for an informed debate about the influence of internet pornography in our community. Rather than regulation, what is needed is education.

If we were to stop for a moment and take the time to assess the community impact of internet pornography, it would soon become clear that internet pornography is not the height of evil which do-gooder parliamentarians and parent groups profess. Indeed, it is probably one of the main factors contributing to a notable reduction in violent crime over the past decade.

Our community is safer and more peaceful thanks to internet pornography. This may sound counter-intuitive, but there are figures to back up the argument.

In a paper released in the United States last year titled Porn Up, Rape Down, Northwestern University Law Professor Anthony Damato reaches the conclusion that: the incidence of rape in the United States has declined 85 per cent in the past 25 years while access to pornography has become freely available to teenagers and adults.

 The Nixon and Reagan administrations tried to show that exposure to pornographic materials produced social violence. The reverse may be true: that pornography has reduced social violence.

Professor Damato says the internet is now the predominant way in which people access pornography. He says purveyors of internet pornography in the US earn an annual income exceeding the worth of the major media networks in the country.

The main point that Professor Damato makes in his paper is that there is a positive correlation between the recent explosion of household internet access in the US, and a decline in incidents of rape (measured in different ways, including police reports and survey interviews) during the same period.

According to Professor Damato, the four US states with the lowest internet access had the highest increase in rape incidents (53 per cent increase) between 1980 and 2004, whereas the four states with the highest internet access, experienced the largest decrease in rape incidents (27 per cent decrease).

 Professor Damato suggests there are two predominant reasons why an increase in the availability of pornography has led to a reduction in rape.

First, using pornographic material provides an easy avenue for the sexually desirous to get it out of their system. Second, Damato points to the so-called Victorian effect. This dates back to the old Victorian era where people covered up their bodies with an immense amount of clothing, generating a greater mystery as to what they looked like naked.

Damato suggests that the free availability of pornography since the 1970s, and the recent bombardment of internet pornography, has de-mystified sex, thus satisfying the sexually curious.

Statistics in New Zealand present a similar positive correlation.

According to Statistics New Zealand, there has been a reduction in the number of victims of sexual assault since 1995, when the internet arrived. The Statistics New Zealand data covers both reported and non-reported incidents of sexual assault, which is important given that only one in five incidents of sexual assault are reported to police.

According to the data, between 1994 and 2000, there was a drop from 0.65 per cent to 0.55 per cent of persons aged 18 years and over who were victims of at least one sexual assault. That is close to a 20 per cent reduction. Moreover, according to Statistics New Zealand, the number of sexual offences reported or discovered by police nationwide dropped from 3650 for 1995-1996 to 3187 for 2004-2005.

In a 2004 Statistics New Zealand study, it was found that New Zealand has the eighth highest rate of internet access in the OECD. In 2001, 37 per cent of households had internet access and the rate continues to climb each year.

Thus, access to internet pornography has become much easier for a much greater number of New Zealanders since 1995. Accordingly, the porn up, rape down phenomenon also rings true in New Zealand.

Rather than thinking about ways to make households internet porn-free zones, maybe politicians and parents should take the opposite approach and make internet pornography freely available not only in homes, but also in schools and public libraries.

If we are ditching regulation, perhaps it is time to explore whether content ratings on pornographic films, magazines and other materials should also be removed. There should only be regulation if benefits exceed costs.

Professor Damato makes the important point in his paper that there is no evidence establishing a causal connection between a student's exposure to pornography and any tendency to commit anti-social acts. So, if the only effect of consuming pornography is positive rather than negative, regulation has no place and should go away.

Potter Stewart, a former US Supreme Court Justice, once said: "Censorship reflects a society's lack of confidence in itself."

It is time to be confident about the benefits of pornography, in particular internet pornography, and move forward as a open-minded, mature, peaceful society.

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But others think differently as in this piece about Ireland and the UK

The Sunday Independent (Ireland) September 10, 2006 Sunday

 VIOLENT PORNOGRAPHY IS A 'GATEWAY TO REAL-LIFE CRIME AGAINST WOMEN'

 A DISTRAUGHT Irish woman called a rape crisis centre recently. She told counsellors that her husband had become  obsessed with watching violent porn on the internet. For years, he had been forcing her to perform lewd acts, thereby  realising his fantasies. He wanted her to "enjoy" being raped and forced her to have sex with other men while   he watched. Married with children, she was in fear for her life when she finally sought refuge.

   This is one of the many cases of rape and sexual assault reported in Ireland where the offender has been obsessed  with viewing pornography. "Violent pornography can play a significant role in giving the green light to a potential  sexual offender, and this is something we need to address urgently in this country," said the executive director of  Rape Crisis Network Ireland, Fiona Neary. Commenting on the announcement last week that the British government plans to   make possession of violent porn images punishable by three years in prison, she says, "The Irish Government needs  to follow this lead. Nobody has been looking at the role of violent pornography, and, worryingly, it has seeped into oursociety unchecked."

   The British announcement follows a campaign by Liz Longhurst whose 31-year-old daughter Jane, a Brighton  schoolteacher, was killed by Graham Coutts. Mrs Longhurst, a widow in her 70s, began the campaign, which was finally  backed by MPs and included a 50,000-signature petition, when she discovered the role that violent internet pornography  had played in the brutal rape and murder of her daughter. Jane was strangled with a pair of tights by Mr Coutts, the  boyfriend of a close friend. After inviting Jane for a swim, Coutts lured her to his flat, where he satisfied his  "bizarre and macabre" lifelong desire to rape, strangle and kill a woman.

   From the age of 15, Coutts developed an obsession with the idea of strangling a woman with a ligature. Using the  internet, he discovered that he was not the only one to harbour such a fantasy.

   "The internet normalised things for him," says Jane's mother, who believes that the internet lent some  legitimacy to Coutts's misogyny, sending out a powerful message to him that he was not alone in his perverse  impulses.

   Jane's sister Sue Barnett said: "These sites led to Jane losing her life."

   Viewing vile images of rape and sexual torture will now become a criminal offence in itself for the first time in  Britain, and possession of so-called "violent and extreme pornography" will lead to imprisonment.

   British Home Office Minister Vernon Coaker said the government would bring in new laws as soon as possible to ban  possession of porn depicting "scenes of extreme sexual violence" and other obscene material such as bestiality  and necrophilia. It would cover violence that is or appears to be life-threatening or is likely to result in  "serious and disabling injury".

   The ban has sparked furious debate about how one defines violent sexual content. A summary of a consultation on the  proposals which took place last year revealed fears by some people that their consensual sexual practices would be  targeted.

   One BDSM group, representing people who engage in bondage, domination and sado-masochism, wrote: "The theory  that people should be punished for viewing an image that simply involves the idea of sexuality with violence shows the  proposal being made is to introduce a form of 'thought crime'." In all, 241 respondents said the law  should not be changed and 143 said it should.

   On her website ifeminist.com, editor Wendy McElroy, author of XXX: A Woman's Right to Pornography, says:  "Images and words do not rape; human beings do. Censorship removes avenues for catharsis and drives  discussion/freedom of speech into the shadows. The crusader has made society less safe and less free."

   The complexity of the role that violent pornography plays in the execution of a sexual crime has long been debated.  The question is not whether it should or should not exist, but whether its non-existence would reduce the incidences of   sexual crime.

   In their studies which involved showing men massive amounts of violent and misogynistic pornography, researchers  Edward Donnerstein and Neil Malamuth found that regular viewing of violent sexual content makes men sexually aroused and  more aggressive and desensitises them to the effects of violence on victims. In addition, they found that education, not  censorship, is the best way to counteract any negative effects of violent pornography on adults. They conclude,  "Censorship is not the solution. Education, however, is a viable alternative."

   "It is high time this topic is up for national debate," says Rape Crisis Network Ireland chief Fiona Neary.  "We have teenagers calling us because their partners are expecting them to behave like porn stars, asking them for   anal sex and sex with more than one person. These young girls are confused and we are failing them by not providing the   appropriate education."

   She criticised the Government: "Sexual violence is not a priority for this Government. They like to look like  they're involved, but we are struggling to make ends meet financially in supporting the victims of sexual crime,  not to mention trying to tackle the issue of pornography and the highly sexualised world young people are living  in."

   A teacher said: "A boy in my class had a video clip on his mobile phone of a girl having sex with an animal -  all the boys were laughing about it."

   He added that although he took the appropriate disciplinary action, he was concerned that under the ban, such a boy  could be charged with a criminal offence.

   "It was a disgusting clip and a terrible thing to see a group of boys laughing about, but at the same time it  shows how we need to educate and not legislate. Those boys didn't really understand the sinister side of viewing  such a video." He went on to say that the boy also had a video of Paris Hilton having sex.

   "Unfortunately, pornography is a part of young people's lives and we can't sweep itall under the  carpet through censorship," he added.

   This October, the Greenhills Hotel in Limerick will host an International Conference on Pornography organised by the   Limerick Rape Crisis Centre. The keynote speaker will be Dr Diana EH Russell. Her theory is that porn, not specifically   violent porn, causes rape. She writes: "Many people share an opinion that men who consume porn but who have never  raped a woman disprove the theory that porn can cause rape. This is comparable toarguing that because some cigarette  smokers don't dieof lung cancer, there cannot be a causal relationshipbetween smoking and lung cancer."

   IN the Seventies, Robin Morgan stated, "Porn is the theory: rape is the practice," and Russell insists in  Against Pornography: the Evidence of Harm that porn causes rape and the sex industry brutalises women working within  it.

   Meanwhile, the debate for the protection and proliferation of the porn and sex industry continues and is  significantly led by women. The Playboy empire is run by Christie Hefner, Hugh Hefner's daughter, and a recent  report in Britain revealed that the number of women downloading internet porn has soared by 30 per cent in the last  year. Wendy McElroy, editor of ifeminist.com, goes so far as to say that pornography can benefit women.

   , Liz Longhurst, who has spent the last three years campaigning against violent pornography, says, "I don't  know if I necessarily want all pornography banned. A beautiful naked woman, I don't see any harm in that; but an  end to pornography that incites people to rape, maim or kill, yes. I think that is quite a reasonable thing to  want."

   While Vera O'Leary, director of the Kerry Rape and Sexual Abuse Centre, believes the debate about the role  pornography plays in cases of sexual assault is important, she says, "Ireland is nowhere near tackling that issue -  even the rape crisis centres of Ireland are in a crisis themselves."

   Recently Vera had to send a young woman, who reported being raped in Tralee, on an eight-hour journey to Waterford  because there was no forensic examiner available at the South Infirmary/Victoria in Cork, where Kerry assault victims  are usually treated. The sexual assault treatment unit at Kerry General Hospital closed three years ago due to lack of  funding.

   "I am so upset and angry that we have let down this girl. She was brave enough to report the crime but we  couldn't offer her the support she desperately needed." O'Leary is now planning a public demonstration:  "The people of Kerry won't tolerate this. We are battling for the basics right now and the only reaction we  can give is a 'fire brigade' one: just putting out the fire while it burns."

   It's clear that when it comes to sexual violence in Ireland, resources are severely curtailed. "We are  operating with a 50 per cent deficit since 2003. I think that shows the utter absence of the prioritisation of [dealing   with] sexual violence in Ireland. Next year, with such a lack of funding, we will be in serious trouble," warns  Fiona Neary (RCNI).

   In Britain, steps have been taken to address the issue of violent pornography. It has taken the heinous rape and  murder of a young woman and her mother's determination to change the circumstances that led to her daughter's   death to put the issue in the spotlight.

   Speaking about violent pornography, Jane's mother said, "It won't just disappear, I know that.  I'm no fool. But if we can just alter the climate of opinion, if we can save some other lovely woman, well, that  would be good."

   Meanwhile in Ireland, we are struggling with the fundamentals, the appropriate care of victims of sexual crime in our  country.

   Celine McGillycuddy

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 Maybe we shouldn’t take this all so seriously …..

http://www.theonion.com/content/node/29215

 and

 The 31 Axioms of Sexual Intercourse, as Evidenced in Porn

1. Women wear high heels to bed.

2. Men are never impotent.

3. When "going down" on a woman, 10 seconds is more than satisfactory.

4. If a woman gets caught masturbating by a strange man, she will not scream with embarrassment; instead she will insist he have sex with her.

5. Women smile appreciatively when men splat them in the face with sperm.

6. Women enjoy having sex with ugly, middle-aged men.

7. Women moan uncontrollably when giving a blowjob.

8. Women always orgasm when men do.

9. All women are noisy cummers; often they will announce when it is happening.

10. People in the 70's couldn't cum unless there was a wild guitar solo in the background.

11. Those tits are real. Period.

12. A common and enjoyable sexual practice for a man is to take his half-erect penis and slap it repeatedly on a woman's butt. Spanking is also a turn-on.

13. Men always groan "OH YEAH!" when they cum.

14. If there are two of Men present, they will "high five" each other. (and the girl won't be disgusted!)

15. Double penetration makes women smile.

16. Asian men don't exist.

17. If you come across a guy and his girlfriend having sex in the bushes, the boyfriend won't beat you to death if you shove your penis in his girlfriend's mouth.

18. There's never a plot.

19. When taking a woman from behind, a man can really excite her by giving her a gentle slap on the butt.

20. Nurses tend to suck patients' cocks as an exam method.

21. Men always pull out, and can hold until the money shot.

22. When your girlfriend busts you getting head from her best friend, she'll only be momentarily pissed off before joining both of you.

23. Women never have headaches... or periods.

24. When a woman is sucking off a man, it's important for him to remind her to "suck it".

25. Anuses are perpetually clean.

26. A man ejaculating on a womans butt is a satisfying result for all parties concerned.

27. Women always look pleasantly surprised when they open a man's trousers and find a penis there.

28. When standing during a blowjob, a man will always place one hand firmly on the back of the kneeling woman's head and the other proudly on his hip.

29. A Penis joke is an appropriate lead-in to the so-called "nasty".

30. Geeks never have to beg.

31. Every girl on the planet is bi

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A SOMEWHAT DATED VIEW of the financial and cultural aspects of internet porn , FROM SALON | Oct. 20, 1998 – edited

http://archive.salon.com/21st/feature/1998/10/cov_20feature.html

 Has the Web made porn respectable?

The Web professional next door just might be running an adult site. But it's probably not making him rich.

"I call it adult entertainment, not porn, because we're not sleazy guys walking around selling chicks," says Andrew Strauss, owner of WallStreetSex.com -- where "outrageous, gorgeous, luscious SexBrokers await your Margin Calls." He gestures vaguely and continues: "I mean, in one sense we are, but we're not in there watching it go on, we're not watching the girls."

Envision a porn producer and you'll probably come up with Burt Reynolds in "Boogie Nights" -- a shameless, smarmy lech with excessive hair and a bad mustache. Strauss, on the other hand, is a veteran of the South Park multimedia scene: With his button-down shirt and silver accessories, he oozes San Francisco tech hip, down to the goatee and the motorcycle parked out front.

The Web is changing the landscape of the pornography industry -- transforming what once was perceived as a pit of sleaze into something almost respectable and even cool.

 It's hard to gauge exactly how many nice-boy-next-door newcomers have taken up porn since the advent of the Web, but there are hints that the numbers are growing. Porn is almost hip in the Web world: The Net's "dirty little secret" has been the subject of glowing tributes in trade magazines and business magazines alike. Few other industries are making money online, which could explain why Upside and Wired and the Wall Street Journal are devoting so many pages to the wonders of Web porn profits. So it's not surprising that Web professionals who read those awe-struck reports in business journals might want to tap into the heralded riches.

 

The barriers to entry for Web porn are low: Anyone can put together a rudimentary adult site for under $1,000 by purchasing a CD-ROM of pornographic photos and slapping up a Web page. But the problem with this kind of a color-by-numbers site is, simply, that there are so many out there already.

 

Original content is crucial in the adult Web. -- wary porn surfers will quickly recognize that your Busty Babes are the same Busty Babes from the XXX Collection they saw a few pages back.

 Industry observers agree that most of the Web pornographers raking in the big bucks are those who already have connections in the industry: 900-number operators with staffs of hot-talking women, video producers who know porn actresses, magazines with portfolios of pictures. Not only can the offline porn industry leverage its X-rated resources, but it can leverage its brand name and revenues. In this saturated market, your average Web worker who tries to launch a site with a small investment is going to have a hard time competing with the porn professionals.

Would-be Playboy models cavort naked on Howard Stern's TV show; "The People vs. Larry Flynt" and "Boogie Nights" are box-office hits; women's magazines are chockablock with stories about "my life as a phone-sex worker." But does that mean that producing pornography has lost its stigma?

 

"Pornography has acquired a certain pop-culture cachet, particularly in the last few years and especially with the rise of the Net," says Lisa Palac, the sex-positive author of "From the Edge of the Bed." "The old stereotype of someone who makes pornography as being a trench-coater, a dirty old man or a Larry Flynt, that's really changing. It started in the late '80s and '90s when women began getting involved with porn."

There certainly are plenty of sexually liberated women and academics who are attempting to change mainstream thinking about the porn industry. "I think what's changing that perception is money," says Pauline Albamar, who started the successful site Babes4U after receiving two master's degrees from NYU's Interactive Telecommunications Program. "Money is what defines things, and the fact that the sex business is making money online, the first industry to do so online, has really garnered a lot more attention and shift in attitude. Have people's ethics changed about sex? I think it helps if people like me, relatively young and intelligent women, have no problem making money off pornography -- then it does change people's perceptions."

 

But despite the ministrations of the young-women pornographers and pro-sex feminists, making pornography is still considered dirty by the vast majority of the population: Just look at the indignant anger that has pushed upcoming legislation restricting adult content online. And while women who produce pornography often portray their career choice as a political act of sexual liberation and are "forgiven," male pornographers still seem more motivated by money than sexual politics. Since male Web porn entrepreneurs rarely perform for their own product, their role often reeks more of exploitation than exploration.

More than half of the male pornographers I interviewed for this story were unwilling to use their real names. As most explained, they don't think pornography is wrong, but they don't want their future reputation to be tainted among those who do think pornography is sleazy. It may not be a shameful business, but they aren't proud of it either.

"I don't want to be remembered as one of those who made his success on Web pornography," says Russ. "I want to be remembered as someone who brought, say, a commercially viable new form of education to intercultural relations. That would make my mom proud."

 "As long as these guys say, 'Shh, don't tell anyone,' then we haven't elevated the role of the pornographer. They're still ashamed of it. If they're just doing it for money, they're just the latest in a long history of men who do it under a pseudonym and hide what they do from their family," says Palac. "Our perception of porn will change when people start admitting, 'Hey, I'm a writer and a journalist and I also operate an X-rated Web site and I'm proud of it.' When that happens we'll have reached a new level of how society accepts pornography."

For now -- even though online anonymity and accessibility have spurred more men and women both to produce and peep at pornography than ever before -- it seems that the Web's dirty little secret is still considered dirty. The "Boogie Nights" image, like it or not, still pervades.

"People just want to see each other naked doing stuff that's strange, and they'll pay to see it. It's been true for thousands of years, and will stay true for thousands more. And there will always be people who find it repulsive and have no tolerance for it," sighs Russ. He continues: "I wouldn't say my hands are clean, but I don't know anybody whose hands are."

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Not everyone is so happy about the cultural changes porn is causing  – edited

 A cruel edge: The painful truth about today's pornography -- and what men can do about it - Robert Jensen School of Journalism University of Texas

An abridged version of this appeared in MS magazine, Spring 2004,.

 After an intense three hours, the workshop on pornography is winding down. The 40 women all work at a center that serves battered women and rape survivors. These are the women on the front lines, the ones who answer the 24-hour hotline and work one-on-one with victims. They counsel women who have just been raped, help women who have been beaten, and nurture children who have been abused. These women have heard and seen it all. No matter how brutal a story might be, they have experienced or heard one even more brutal; there is no way to one-up them on stories of male violence. But after three hours of information, analysis, and discussion of the commercial heterosexual pornography industry, many of these women are drained. Sadness hangs over the room.

Near the end of the session, one women who had been quiet starts to speak. Throughout the workshop she had held herself in tightly, her arms wrapped around herself. She talks for some time, and then apologizes for rambling. There is no need to apologize; she is articulating what many seem to be feeling. She talks about her own life, about what she has learned in the session and about how it has made her feel, about her anger and sadness.

Finally, she says: “This hurts. It just hurts so much.”

 Everyone is quiet as the words sink in. Slowly the conversation restarts, and the women talk more about how they feel, how they will use the information, what it will mean to their work and in their lives. The session ends, but her words hang in the air.

It hurts.

It hurts to know that no matter who you are as a woman you can be reduced to a thing to be penetrated, and that men will buy movies about that, and that in many of those movies your humiliation will be the central theme. It hurts to know that so much of the pornography that men are buying fuses sexual desire with cruelty.It hurts women, and men like it, and it hurts just to know that.

Even these women, who have found ways to cope with the injuries from male violence in other places, struggle with that. It is one thing to deal with acts, even extremely violent acts. It is another to know the thoughts, ideas, and fantasies lie behind those acts.

People routinely assume that pornography is such a difficult and divisive issue because it’s about sex. I think that’s wrong. This culture struggles unsuccessfully with pornography because it is about men’s cruelty to women, and the pleasure men sometimes take in that cruelty. And that is much more difficult for people -- men and women -- to face.

 Mainstream pornography

Pornographic movies tells stories about sex. The question is, what kind of stories? For whom? From whose point of view?

There are different pornographic genres telling different stories, but I am concerned here with the story told in mainstream heterosexual pornography. What kind of story about sex does such pornography tell the all-American boy, and what does that mean for the girl next door?

Let’s start with that phrase. By mainstream heterosexual pornography I mean the videos and DVDs that are widely available in the United States today, marketed as sexually explicit (what is commonly called “hardcore”), rented and purchased primarily by men, depicting sex primarily between men and women. The sexual activity is not simulated; these videos are a record of sex between the performers. What happens on the screen happened in the world.

This analysis is based primarily on three qualitative studies of pornographic videos I have conducted since 1996. I use the term “mainstream” to describe the tapes because I excluded what many would consider the non-representative fringe of the pornography market -- bondage and sadomasochistic tapes; any tape that advertised explicit violence, urination, or defecation; and child pornography (the only material clearly illegal everywhere in the United States). There is no shortage of such material in this country -- in shops, through the mail, on the internet, or underground (in the case of child pornography) -- but I passed over all of that. Instead, I visited stores that sold “adult product” (the industry’s preferred term) and asked clerks and managers to help me select the most commonly rented and purchased tapes. I wanted to avoid the common accusation that feminist critics of pornography pick out the worst examples, the most violent material, to critique. In one of the stores I visited, the section from which I rented tapes is actually labeled “mainstream.”

What I describe here is not an aberration. These tapes are broadly representative of the 11,303 new hardcore titles that were released in 2002, according to the Adult Video News, the industry’s trade magazine. They are the mainstream of a pornography industry with an estimated $10 billion in annual sales. They are what brothers and fathers and uncles are watching, what boyfriends and husbands are watching. And, in many cases, what boy children are watching.

Here is a sample from my 2003 research, starting with the so-called “couples market,” the tapes the industry says it makes to appeal not just to men but to women. These films, sometimes called “features,” typically have a minimal plot line and make attempts, no matter how badly executed, at character development. From there, I’ll move to “gonzo,” films that have no pretense of narrative and simply present sexual activity, sometimes shot “POV” (from the point of view of the man engaging in sex).

“Sopornos IV” is a 2003 release from VCA Pictures, one of the “high-end” companies that produces for what the industry calls the “couples market.” The plot is a takeoff on the popular HBO series about mobsters. In #4, mob boss Bobby Soporno is obsessed with the thought that everyone in his life is always having sex, including his crew and his daughter. In the final sex scene his wife has sex with two of his men. After the standard progression through oral and vaginal sex, one of the men prepares to penetrate her anally. She tells him: “That fucking cock is so fucking huge. … Spread [my] fucking ass. … Spread it open.” He penetrates her. Then she says, in a slightly lower tone, “Don’t go any deeper,” and she seems to be in pain. At the end of the scene, she begs for their semen (“Two cocks jacking off in my face. I want it.”), opens her mouth, and the men ejaculate onto her at the same time.

“Two in the Seat #3” is a 2003 release from Red Light District that consists of six separate scenes in which two men have sex with one woman, culminating in double-penetration (d.p.), in which the woman is penetrated vaginally and anally at the same time. In one scene, 20-year-old Claire, her hair in pigtails, says she has been in the industry for three months. Asked by the off-camera interviewer what will happen in the scene, she replies, “I’m here to get pounded.” The two men who then enter the scene begin a steady stream of insults, calling her “a dirty, nasty girl,” “a little fucking cunt,” “a little slut.” After the standard progression of oral and vaginal sex, she asks one to “Please put your cock in my ass.” During the double-penetration on the floor, her vocalizations sound pained. She’s braced against the couch, moving very little. The men spank her, and her buttock is visibly red. One man asks, “Are you crying?” which leads to this exchange:

Claire: “No, I’m enjoying it.”

Man: “Damn, I thought you were crying. It was turning me on when I thought you were crying.”

Claire: “Would you like me to?”

Man: “Yea, give me a fucking tear. Oh, there’s a fucking tear.”

As the first man prepares to ejaculate into her mouth, she says, “Feed me your cum” and then displays it in her mouth for the camera. “Swallowed,” she says. The second man tells her to “spit all over my dick, bitch.” After he ejaculates she wipes the semen off her face with her fingers and eats it. The interviewer asks how her asshole feels. “Feels great. A little raw, but that’s good,” she says.

“Gag Factor #10” is a 2002 release from J.M. Productions. The company’s web site notes the Gag Factor tapes’ awards as “best oral series” and answers the question, “What makes Gag Factor different than all other blowjob tapes out there?”

1. Every girl must swallow the load of cum!

2. Every girl gets throatfucked until she gags and almost pukes!

3. Gag Factor has more stroke value than all other blowjob tapes combined!

One of the 10 scenes in the film begins with a woman and man having a picnic in a park. He jokes about wanting to use the romantic moment to make love to her mouth, and then stands and thrusts into her mouth while she sits on the blanket. Two other men who walk by join in. Saying things such as “Pump that face, pump that fucking face,” “All the way down, choke, choke,” and “That’s real face fucking,” they hold her head and push harder. One man grabs her hair and pulls her head into his penis in what his friend calls “the jackhammer.” At this point she is grimacing and seems in pain. She then lies on the ground, and the men approach her from behind. “Eat that whole fucking dick. … You little whore, you like getting hurt,” one says, as her face is covered with saliva. “Do you like getting your face fucked?” one asks. She can’t answer. “Open your mouth if you like it,” he says, and she opens her mouth. After they all ejaculate into her mouth, the semen flows out onto her body. After the final ejaculation, she reaches quickly for the wine glass, takes a large drink, and looks up at her boyfriend, and says, “God, I love you baby.” Her smile fades to a pained look of shame and despair.

 

What pornography says about men and women

These three descriptions cover much of the range of the mainstream video and DVD market, of which the gonzo style is the fastest growing segment. Analysis of these scenes could go in many different directions, but what I want to focus on here is the expressions of pain.

I am not suggesting that in every scene in mainstream pornography such expressions of pain are evident. And I acknowledge that I cannot know exactly what the women in these films were feeling, physically or emotionally. I do not presume to speak for them, or for women in pornography, or for women in general. But her is what Belladonna, one of the women who appeared in “Two in the Seat #3,” told a television interviewer about such scenes: “You have to really prepare physically and mentally for it. I mean, I go through a process from the night before. I stop eating at 5:00. I do, you know, like two enemas. The next morning I don’t eat anything. It’s so draining on your body.” Women’s experiences no doubt vary, but Belladonna’s experience hardly seems idiosyncratic.

However, it is not necessary to reach definitive conclusions about the degree of pain women experience in such scenes to make one important observation. In these scenes, all three women at some point clearly appeared to a viewer to be in pain. Their facial expressions and voices conveyed that what was being done to them was causing physical discomfort and/or fear and/or distress. Given the ease with which video can be edited, why did the producers not edit out those expressions? There are two possible answers. One, they may view these kinds of expressions of pain by the women as of no consequence to the viewers’ interest, and hence of no consequence to the goal of maximizing sales; women’s pain is neutral. The second possibility is that the producers have reason to believe that viewers like the expressions of pain; women’s pain helps sales.

Given that the vast majority of those who will rent or buy these tapes are men, from that we can derive this question: Why do some men find the infliction of pain on women during sexual activity either (1) not an obstacle to their ability to achieve sexual pleasure or (2) a factor that can enhance their sexual pleasure? Phrased differently: Why are some men so callous and cruel sexually?

By that, I don’t mean to ask why are men capable of being cruel in some general sense. All humans have the capacity to be cruel toward other humans and other living things, and we all have done cruel things in our lives, myself included. Contemporary mainstream heterosexual pornography raises the question: Why do some men find cruelty to women either sexually neutral or sexually pleasurable?

Feminist research into, and women’s reflection upon, experiences of sexual violence long ago established that rape involves the sexualization of power, the fusing in men’s imaginations of sexual pleasure with domination and control. The common phrase “rape is about power, not sex” misleads; rape is about the fusion of sex and domination, about the eroticization of control. And in this culture, rape is normal. That is, in a culture where the dominant definition of sex is the taking of pleasure from women by men, rape is an expression of the sexual norms of the culture, not violations of those norms. Sex is a sphere in which men are trained to see themselves as naturally dominant and women naturally passive. Rape is both nominally illegal and completely normal at the same time.

So, there’s nothing surprising in the observation that some pornography includes explicit images of women in pain. But a healthy society would want to deal with that, wouldn’t it? And from my research, both through these content analysis projects and my reading of material from the industry, it seems clear that mainstream heterosexual pornography is getting more, not less, cruel. A healthy society would take such things seriously, wouldn’t it?

  Infinite are the ways we can be cruel

There are only so many ways human beings can, in mechanical terms, have sex. There are a limited number of body parts and openings, a limited number of ways to create the friction that produces the stimulation and sensations, a limited number of positions from which the friction can be produced. Sexual variation, in this sense, is finite because of these physical limits.

Sex, of course, also has an emotional component, and emotions are infinitely variable. There are only so many ways people can rub bodies together, but endless are they ways different people can feel about rubbing bodies together in different times, places, and contexts. When most non-pornographic films, such as a typical Hollywood romance, deal with sex they draw on the emotions most commonly connected with sex, love and affection. But pornography doesn’t, because films that exist to provide sexual stimulation for men in this culture wouldn’t work if the sex were presented in the context of loving and affectionate relationships. Men typically consume pornography specifically to avoid love and affection.

That means pornography has a problem. When all emotion is drained from sex it becomes repetitive and uninteresting, even to men who are watching primarily to facilitate masturbation. So, pornography needs an edge. Pornography has to draw on some emotion, hence the cruelty.

When the legal restrictions on pornography slowly receded through the 1970s and ‘80s, and the presentation of sex on the screen was by itself no longer quite so illicit, anal sex became a standard feature. Anal sex was seen as something most women don’t want; it had an edge to it. When anal sex became routine in pornography, the gonzo genre started pushing the boundaries into things like double-penetrations and gag-inducing oral sex – again, acts that men believe women generally will not want. The more pornography becomes normalized and mainstreamed, the more pornography has to search for that edge. And that edge most commonly is cruelty, which emotionally is the easiest place to go for men, given that the dynamic of male domination and female submission is already in place in patriarchy.

--
Director Mitchell Spinelli, interviewed while filming the first video (“Give Me Gape”) for a series for his new Acid Rain company, seemed clear where it was heading: “People want more. They want to know how many dicks you can shove up an ass,” he says with a shrug. “It’s like Fear Factor meets Jackass. Make it more hard, make it more nasty, make it more relentless. The guys make the difference. You need a good guy, who’s been around and can give a good scene, fuckin’ ‘em hard. I did my homework. These guys are intense.”

We live in a culture in which rape and battery continue at epidemic levels. And in this culture, men are masturbating to orgasm in front of television and computer screens that present them sex with increasing levels of callousness and cruelty toward women. And no one seems to be terribly concerned about this. Right-wing opponents of pornography offer a moralistic critique that cannot help us find solutions, because typically they endorse male dominance, albeit not these manifestations of it. Some segments of the feminist movement, particularly the high-theory crowd in academic life, want us to believe that the growing acceptance of pornography is a sign of expanding sexual equality and freedom. Meanwhile, feminist critics of pornography have been marginalized in political and intellectual arenas. And all the while, the pornographers are trudging off to the bank with bags of money.

 I think this helps explain why even the toughest women -- women who at rape crisis centers routinely deal with sexual violence -- find the reality of pornography so difficult to cope with. No matter how hard it may be to face the reality of a rape culture, at least the culture still brands rape as a crime. Pornography, however, is not only widely accepted but sold to us as liberation.

The struggle for men of conscience is to define ourselves and our sexuality differently, outside (to the degree possible) the domination/submission dynamic. It is not an easy task; like everyone, we are products of our culture and have to struggle against it. But as a man, I have considerable control over the conditions in which I live and the situations I am in. Women do not have that control. Women are vulnerable in a different way. Women are not just at risk of sexual violence but also have to deal with how men, who disproportionately hold positions of power in this society, view them. Women do not, and cannot, control that in the short term.

 When a female student has a meeting about a research project with a male college professor who the night before was watching “Gag Factor #10,” who is she to him? What is she to him? When a woman walks into a bank to apply for a loan from a male loan officer who the night before was watching “Two in the Seat #3,” what is he thinking?When a woman goes in front of a male judge who the night before was watching “Sopornos #4,” does she want to throw herself on the mercy of the court?

 But some will argue: How can you assume that just because men watch such things they will act in a callous and cruel manner, sexually or otherwise? It is true that the connection between mass-media exposure and human behavior is complex and not well understood. Social scientists, like most experts, argue both sides. I think the evidence clearly shows that in some cases pornography influences men’s sexual behavior. But whatever one’s view on that, this fact is not in question: Lots of men -- including professors, bankers, and judges -- pay money to watch those images and masturbate to orgasm watching those images. And they aren’t simply images of sex. Often they are images of men being sexually cruel toward women.

If you are a woman, ask this: Do you want to seek out such a man as a partner?

If you are a man, ask this: When seeking a woman as a partner, would you advertise that you enjoy these images? Why not?

I am not suggesting all men use pornography, or that all men who use pornography want material in which women are hurt and humiliated, or that all men who use pornography are bound to then want to hurt and humiliate women. I am simply saying that much of the pornography in the United States records scenes of women being hurt and humiliated; that men masturbate to orgasm to those images; and that those men are not deviants but are acting on the cultural norms that are widely taught. And I am suggesting that these facts should matter to us; they should scare us.

 There is no way to say this that isn’t harsh

I am sorry for what I am about to write, because it is harsh, and it may not be fair for a man to write this. But this is the truth, and I am more afraid of what will happen if we don’t face the truth than of being harsh or unfair.

Men spend $10 billion on pornography a year. 11,000 new pornographic films are made every year. And in those films, women are not people. In pornography, women are three holes and two hands.

Women in pornography have no hopes and no dreams and no value apart from the friction those holes and hands can produce on a man’s penis. If anyone doubts that, let me describe one more video from my research, one more video from the mainstream section of a store that carries adult product, where men rent and buy films to help them masturbate.

The only resistance is collective, and the pornographers want to squash it

When I critique pornography, I often am told to lighten up; sex is just sex, people say, and I should stop trying to politicize pornography. But pornography obviously is political. Telling men stories about sex in which women are three holes and two hands, not people, is political. It offers men a politics of sex and gender. And that politics is patriarchal and reactionary.

As with any political issue, successful strategies of resistance to injustice and oppression must be collective. There cannot be personal solutions to political problems. When we criticize pornography, we typically are told we are either sexually dysfunctional prudes who are scared of sex, or people who hate freedom, or both. That works to keep many people quiet. The pornographers desperately want to keep people from asking the simple question: What kind of society would turn the injury and degradation of some into sexual pleasure for others?

But there should be nothing controversial about this: To criticize pornography is not repressive. To speak about what one knows and feels and dreams is, in fact, liberating. We are not free if we aren’t free to talk about our desire for an egalitarian intimacy and sexuality that would reject pain and humiliation.

That is not prudishness or censorship. It is at attempt to claim the best parts of our common humanity -- love, caring, empathy, solidarity. To do that is not to limit anyone. It is to say that people matter more than the profits of pornographers and the pleasure of pornography consumers. It is to say, simply, that women count as much as men.

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What about prostitution – good or bad? Some quick facts from that supposed home of the happy – legal – whore  Netherlands ( or is that Ho’land )

 

Factbook on Global Sexual Exploitation-The Netherlands

 Trafficking

In Amsterdam, Netherlands, 80% of prostitutes are foreigners, and 70% have no immigration papers, suggesting that they were trafficked. In the Netherlands, 33% of the prostitutes come from countries outside of the European Union, this increases to 50% in the larger cities

Since 1990 in the Netherlands, the number of trafficked women from Central and Eastern European Countries has tripled. In 1994 in the Netherlands, 69% of 168 trafficked victims were from Central and Eastern European Countries. There are at least 1,000 trafficked women in the Netherlands.

Of the 155 victims of trafficking assisted by STV in the Netherlands, at least 50 (37 of whom were from the Central and Eastern European Countries) were unemployed or had never worked before leaving their country of origin.

The Netherlands is one the most popular destinations in Europe of women trafficked from Ukraine and Russia. 80% of the women counseled were from the former Soviet bloc.

The definition of prostitution in the Netherlands is now based on whether there was any coercion. Dutch authorities have even proposed a new concept: "full consent to exploitation of the self." Dutch policy has been held up as an example at almost every international conference. The Hague played a crucial part in drawing up the European action plan in preparation for the Beijing conference in September 1995, where the concept of "forced prostitution" was established for the first time a European government level.

 Prostitution

There are 250 officially listed brothels in Amsterdam, Netherlands as of 1997.

Most of the prostituted women in shop windows in the Netherlands are migrants from the Dominican Republic, Colombia, Venezuela, Ghana, Benin, Poland, Russia, the Ukraine, Lithuania, Serbia, Croatia, and the Czech and Slovak Republics.

Prostituted women in shop windows in the Netherlands pay rent for the windows, about 150 florins (US$ 90) a day. The woman waits for male buyers in a room with a window that looks onto the street. The room contains the bed where she has sex and also lives and sleeps. In some establishments two women share a kitchen, a room for eating, a bathroom and toilet. At some sites the buildings comply with general sanitary and administrative rules for the municipality, men patrolling the streets assure security, rents are fixed, and neither minors nor victims of trafficking are officially allowed to work. In others, up to four women may use the same window room, share a single toilet, an improvised shower and no kitchen. In some cases, the women receive one towel and two sheets for use throughout the week. On the average, the women work between 12 and 17 hours a day, receiving from 10 to 24 clients, at a usual charge of 50 florins for 15 minutes sessions.

 The Association of Sexclub Owners has created an independent organization, Erotriker, which issues Amarks of quality (a grading system) to brothels who apply. The brothels are visited by inspectors who decide whether or not a brothel meets certain standards.There are an estimated 30,000 prostitutes in the Netherlands

Policy and Law

Prostitution is legal in the Netherlands, and has been defined as a form of work. 18 is the minimum age to work in the sex industry.

Parliament is expected to pass legislation to legalize and tax brothels giving the government a portion of the profits from the Dutch sex industry which, excluding the pornography sector, generates more than $500 million a year

 The Prostitution of Women and Girls in Metropolitan Chicago:

A Preliminary Prevalence Report from the Center for Impact Research

 Executive Summary

 This report represents the first ever research to determine the number of girls and women involved in prostitution in the Chicago metropolitan area. It marks the first phase of a project

designed to ascertain how many of these girls and women are being affected by problems of violence, abuse, substance abuse, and homelessness in an effort to better help them escape from prostitution and rebuild their lives. Between July 2000 and March 2001 the Center for Impact

Research (CIR) collected arrest statistics, conducted interviews with 124 social service providers in a range of fields, and investigated Internet and print source materials advertising prostitution services and online communication of men who solicit women and girls for prostitution to determine a conservative estimate of the prevalence of prostitution in the Chicago metropolitan area.

 Results

                           
Arrest Data   There were a total of 5,651 prostitution-related arrests in the City of Chicago in 1999. This number is not an accurate count of unduplicated individuals but only the number of arrests. The Cook County Sheriff Department_s Vice Unit made an additional 661 arrests. Law enforcement officials caution that arrest data do not present an accurate picture of prevalence. Limited resources make more arrests impossible, and, as it is difficult to prove acts of

prostitution, other charges may be used such as loitering and possession of drug paraphernalia against women they believed were exchanging sex for money.

 Street Prostitution   Reports from law enforcement officials and social services providers about the exact locations of street prostitution and the relative numbers of girls and women involved, when combined with arrest data, lead us to calculate that 800-1,000 women and girls are involved in street-level prostitution in any given year in the Chicago metropolitan area.

According to social service providers, many of these girls and women are homeless.

 Off-Street Prostitution Activities   Experts believe that street prostitution accounts for only 20-30% of all prostitution-related activities, and CIR_s findings substantiate these reports.

 Escort Services  Based on an assessment of online and print advertising materials and interviews with law enforcement officials and social service providers, CIR estimates that 1,000-2,000 women are involved in escort service prostitution in Chicago.

 Massage Parlors or Spas   Based on an assessment of online and print advertising

materials and interviews, CIR conservatively estimates that 170 women and girls are involved in prostitution through massage services in the Chicago metropolitan area.

 Exotic Dancing   On any given day in the Chicago Metropolitan area, 200-425 women and girls are involved in prostitution through exotic dance venues. The number jumps to 625-1275 when we include women and girls who are involved at some time during the year.

 Other Activities   Prostitution activities occur in day labor assignments, within the context of domestic violence, when intimate partners coerce their partners into prostitution, and within families when young girls are prostituted by family members for drugs and money. Due to the nature of these activities it is impossible to arrive at any accurate estimates of the number of girls  and women prostituted in this way.

 Sex for Drugs   Data obtained from surveys of approximately 60 Chicago area substance abuse treatment programs indicate that 60-100% of their women clients have regularly exchanged sex for drugs or money. When this percentage is applied to females in state-funded drug treatment programs in Cook County, a minimum of 11,500 females are involved in prostitution. Some of this number is duplicated in data for street-level prostitution and some off-street venues, but it

well exceeds the estimated amount of all the categories in this report. When the number of women who need but do not receive treatment in metropolitan Chicago is factored in, the number could greatly increase. 

 Total    CIR finds that a total of 1,800-4,000 girls and women are involved in off and on-street prostitution activities in the Chicago metropolitan area. However, when the number of girls and women who are regularly exchanging sex for drugs  (11,500) is added to this number, the total rises significantly. Although some of these women are included in earlier estimates, clearly the bulk are not.

 Conclusion 

 At this time we do not know how many of these girls and women are suffering from violence, the effects of violence, and other physical and mental health problems, including homelessness. However, the number of girls and women involved in prostitution activities in metropolitan Chicago is cause for serious concern. We need to learn a great deal more about the lives of these girls and women, their needs for service and support, and assets they bring in reclaiming their lives.

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Some interesting info on the Swedish experience ….

Why Hasn't Anyone Tried This Before?

 In a centuries deep sea of clichés despairing that 'prostitution will always be with us', one country's success stands out as a solitary beacon lighting the way. In just five years Sweden has dramatically reduced the number of its women in prostitution. In the capital city of Stockholm the number of women in street prostitution has been reduced by two thirds, and the number of johns has been reduced by 80%. There are other major Swedish cities where street prostitution has all but disappeared. Gone too, for the most part, are the renowned Swedish brothels and massage parlors which proliferated during the last three decades of the twentieth century when prostitution in Sweden was legal.

In addition, the number of foreign women now being trafficked into Sweden for sex is nil. The Swedish government estimates that in the last few years only 200 to 400 women and girls have been annually sex trafficked into Sweden, a figure that's negligible compared to the 15,000 to 17,000 females yearly sex trafficked into neighboring Finland. No other country, nor any other social experiment, has come anywhere near Sweden's promising results.

By what complex formula has Sweden managed this feat? Amazingly, Sweden's strategy isn't complex at all. It's tenets, in fact, seem so simple and so firmly anchored in common sense as to immediately spark the question, "Why hasn't anyone tried this before?"

 Sweden's Groundbreaking 1999 Legislation

In 1999, after years of research and study, Sweden passed legislation that a) criminalizes the buying of sex, and b) decriminalizes the selling of sex. The novel rationale behind this legislation is clearly stated in the government's literature on the law:

"In Sweden prostitution is regarded as an aspect of male violence against women and children. It is officially acknowledged as a form of exploitation of women and children and constitutes a significant social problem... gender equality will remain unattainable so long as men buy, sell and exploit women and children by prostituting them."

In addition to the two pronged legal strategy, a third and essential element of Sweden's prostitution legislation provides for ample and comprehensive social service funds aimed at helping any prostitute who wants to get out, and additional funds to educate the public. As such, Sweden's unique strategy treats prostitution as a form of violence against women in which the men who exploit by buying sex are criminalized, the mostly female prostitutes are treated as victims who need help, and the public is educated in order to counteract the historical male bias that has long stultified thinking on prostitution. To securely anchor their view in firm legal ground, Sweden's prostitution legislation was passed as part and parcel of the country's 1999 omnibus violence against women legislation.

An Early Obstacle in the Path

Interestingly, despite the country's extensive planning prior to passing the legislation, the first couple years into this novel project nothing much happened at all. Police made very few arrests of johns and prostitution in Sweden, which had previously been legalized, went on pretty much as it had gone on before. Naysayers the world over responded to the much publicized failure with raucous heckling, "See? Prostitution always has been, and it always will be."

But eminently secure in the thinking behind their plan, the Swedes paid no heed. They quickly identified, then solved the problem. The hang-up, the place where their best efforts had snagged, was that law enforcement wasn't doing it's part. The police themselves, it was determined, needed in-depth training and orientation to what the Swedish public and legislature already understood profoundly. Prostitution is a form of male violence against women. The exploiter/buyers need to be punished, and the victim/prostitutes need to be helped. The Swedish government put up extensive funds and the country's police and prosecutors, from the top ranks down to the officer on the beat, were given intensive training and a clear message that the country meant business. It was then that the country quickly began to see the unequaled results.

Today, not only do the Swedish people continue to overwhelming support their country's approach to prostitution (80% of people in favor according to national opinion polls), but the country's police and prosecutors have also come around to be among the legislation's staunchest supporters. Sweden's law enforcement has found that the prostitution legislation benefits them in dealing with all sex crimes, particularly in enabling them to virtually wipe out the organized crime element that plagues other countries where prostitution has been legalized or regulated.

The Failure of Legalization and/or Regulation Strategies

This Swedish experiment is the single, solitary example in a significant sized population of a prostitution policy that works. In 2003, the Scottish government in looking to revamp its own approach to prostitution enlisted the University of London to do a comprehensive analysis of outcomes of prostitution policies in other countries. In addition to reviewing Sweden's program, the researchers chose Australia, Ireland, and the Netherlands to represent various strategies of legalizing and/or regulating prostitution. The researchers did not review the situation where prostitution is criminalized across the board as it is in the US. The outcome of that approach is already well known. The failures and futility of the revolving door of arresting and rearresting prostitutes is all too familiar the world over.

But the outcomes, as revealed in the Univ. of London study, in the states under review that had legalized or regulated prostitution were found to be just as discouraging or even more discouraging than the traditional all round criminalization. In each case the results were dramatic in the negative.

Legalization and/or regulation of prostitution, according to the study, led to:

* A dramatic increase in all facets of the sex industry,

* A dramatic increase in the involvement of organized crime in the sex industry,

* A dramatic increase in child prostitution,

* An explosion in the number of foreign women and girls trafficked into the region, and

* Indications of an increase in violence against women.

In the state of Victoria, Australia, where a system of legalized, regulated brothels was established, there was such an explosion in the number of brothels that it immediately overwhelmed the system's ability to regulate them, and just as quickly these brothels became a mire of organized crime, corruption, and related crimes. In addition, surveys of the prostitutes working under systems of legalization and regulation find that the prostitutes themselves continue to feel coerced, forced, and unsafe in the business.

A survey of legal prostitutes under the showcase Netherlands legalization policy finds that 79% say they want to get out of the sex business. And though each of the legalization/regulation programs promised help for prostitutes who want to leave prostitution, that help never materialized to any meaningful degree. In contrast, in Sweden the government followed through with ample social services funds to help those prostitutes who wanted to get out. 60% of the prostitutes in Sweden took advantage of the well funded programs and succeeded in exiting prostitution.*

* The full Scottish government report on prostitution policies can be seen at www.scottish.parliament.uk

So Why Hasn't Anyone Tried This Before?

Why, then, with Sweden's success so clearly lighting the way, aren't others quickly adopting the plan? Well, some are. Both Finland and Norway are on the verge of making the move. And if Scotland takes the advise of its own study, it will go in that direction too. But, the answer to the question of why other countries aren't jumping to adopt Sweden's plan is probably the same as the answer to the question of why governments haven't tried Sweden's solution before.

In order to see prostitutes as victims of male coercion and violence it requires that a government first switch from seeing prostitution from the male point of view to the female point of view. And most, if not virtually all, countries of the world still see prostitution and every other issue from a predominantly male point of view.

Sweden, in contrast, has led the way in promoting equality for women for a very long time. In 1965, for example, Sweden criminalized rape in marriage. Even by the 1980's there were states in the United States that still hadn't made that fundamental recognition of women's rights to control her own body. The Swedish government also stands out in having the highest proportion of women at all levels of government. In 1999, when Sweden passed its groundbreaking prostitution legislation, the Swedish Parliament was composed of nearly 50% women.

Sweden's prostitution policy was first designed and lobbied for by Sweden's organization of women's shelters and was then fostered and fought for by a bipartisan effort of Sweden's uniquely powerful and numerous female parliamentarians. Nor has Sweden stopped there. In 2002, Sweden passed additional legislation bolstering the original prostitution legislation. The 2002 Act Prohibiting Human Trafficking for the Purpose of Sexual Exploitation closed some of the loopholes in the earlier legislation and further strengthened the government's ability to go after the network of persons that surround and support prostitution, such as the recruiters, the transporters, and the hosts.

And Why Can't We Copy Sweden's Success Here?

That’s all Folks

Colin