Pornography usage is increasing all over the world. It is estimated that 79.5% of women and 98% of men have watched porn.
But why is this an issue, one might ask? Pornographers are just sexually liberated people, right? Unfortunately, many people featured in porn are being sex-trafficked, and viewers are unaware that the people they are lusting over are being brutally tortured.
These torture videos are not simply found on the dark web, but have been featured on mainstream porn websites such as Pornhub, which has racked in nearly $3 billion off its content.
Recently, this tragedy has been brought to the surface after Mastercard, Visa, and Discover cut ties with Pornhub following journalists’ shedding a light on the problem of child sexual abuse material.
Just a few months ago, several videos on Pornhub were found to be videos of women and children being sex-trafficked and raped. Fifty-eight of the videos involved a 15-year-old missing child. The sex trafficker was eventually caught.
Rose Kalemba, a 14-year-old girl, was kidnapped and raped for hours. After being stabbed, she was able to escape by reasoning with her kidnappers. Months after her escape, she found out videos of her rape were posted on Pornhub and students at her school were watching them.
In an interview with the nonprofit Fight the New Drug, she told her story, saying, “My assault itself put me in a mental prison, but Pornhub gave me a life sentence. Millions of men watched the six videos of my assault. I have no way of knowing how many of those millions downloaded them and still have access to them even after Pornhub finally removed them from its site after I pretended to be a lawyer.”
She added:
The porn industry made it so that my rape didn’t just end that horrible night, and my fears weren’t just that—they quickly became reality. Because of the porn industry, I was harassed, stalked, threatened, and so much more for years and years after my attack. I was followed multiple times when I was walking around, spit on, and groped, and touched against my will—by complete strangers and also some boys and grown men I knew.
Other videos were uploaded to Pornhub after 22 women were coerced into performing sexual acts on Michael Pratt, CEO of GirlsDoPorn. The women sued and won the $12.7 million lawsuit.
Last month, Pornhub removed nearly 10 million videos from the website after the problem of child sexual abuse material had been brought to light. The company stated that the current content is from verified uploaders.
Though the removal of nearly 10 million unverified videos is a victory, it is important to continue to fight against porn on all platforms.
There are still millions of pornographic videos on the internet and they have gotten increasingly violent and demeaning toward women—making it nearly impossible for a consumer to determine if what they are watching is consensual or brutal torture.
Pornography is inherently anti-feminist. The University of Surrey and Middlesex University conducted a study in which they asked people to determine if a line of dialogue about a woman was taken from porn scenes or convicted rapists. Most of the people could not distinguish quotes featured in porn versus those from convicted rapists.
In 2007, researchers analyzed the top porn DVDs and found that 88% of the scenes had physical aggression, including gagging, slapping, and spanking.
In 73% of the scenes, men were being aggressive toward women and women, for the most part, were perceived as liking the abuse. Every minute and a half, an act of physical or verbal aggression was found—and this was 13 years ago.
The industry has only gotten worse. In a culture comfortable with “50 Shades of Grey” and other erotica, more and more people are finding nothing wrong with porn.
So how should we respond to all of this? First, people need to stop watching porn. Pope John Paul II said, “The opposite of love is not hate, it is use.”
Pornography fuels human trafficking by contributing to a culture of use and abuse. Porn warps human love and sexuality. Author and podcaster Matt Fradd explained that instead of saying, “This is my body given up for you,” lust says, “this is your body taken by me.”
It doesn’t matter where the person is getting the porn from or if they are paying for it or not, because by viewing porn and giving the websites traffic, people are contributing to its demand.
If you are struggling with pornography, get the help you need to combat it and don’t look back. Embrace a culture of love instead of a culture of use. Educate others you know who believe pornography is OK, and explain to them that pornography fuels human trafficking and hurts women.
Know that no matter what you have done, you can always turn your life around and educate others about the dangers of pornography.
Though this is a dark situation, all darkness will be brought to light and made new. There is always hope as long as we are alive.
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