© By: Chelsea Perkins
Sex: Bought and Sold
Diamond Adult World is a place where a large variety of erotic merchandise is displayed openly for customers to purchase and experience, but I mostly resonated with the pornographic video selection and how it depicted women in a stereotypical and dehumanizing way. Sexuality is part of human nature; however, society is still not comfortable with sex: talking about sex, seeing sex, public displays of sexual behavior, male and female masturbation, and pornography. I, myself even feel indifferent about Adult Sex Stores and pornographic videos in particular. At first, I wasn’t sure why I felt this way, but after giving it some thought; I realized it is because dehumanization, objectification, and depersonalization are major components of pornographic videos. What bothered me most was that these three aspects were demonstrated on women more than men. Pornography is a commodity designed to fulfil peoples’ desired wants and needs; however, it is geared more towards men consumers.
As I walked in to Diamond Adult World, there was an overload of magazines, toys, lubricant, videos, role-play outfits, etc. but what really caught my eye were the images of the women on the DVD cases. While browsing the huge section of porn videos that are all organized by category, made by Penthouse, Playboy, and Hustler to name a few, I noticed that majority of the men and women all fit into a certain category of appearance, an appearance that we have culturally determined as “sexy,” the contemporary standards of beauty, especially the women. “To the pornographic mind, then, women become trophies awarded to the victor. For women to serve this purpose of achieving male social validation, a woman “conquered” by one must be a woman deemed desirable by others. Hence pornography both produces and reproduces uniform standards of female beauty” (Brod, 2). It’s sickening to think that pornography defines how women look according to how they can be sexually used for male consumption. Doesn’t the media do this enough? The women were skinny, tan, had big boobs, a perfect butt, with an innocent face. I found myself questioning my boyfriend, is this what men are attracted to? Is being sexy and sexual the only thing that matters to men? As a woman who works very hard to obtain a higher education and values intelligence and all the beautiful things knowledge and life has to offer, I wish to live in a society that values and judges people on their intelligence, skills, and personality rather than their appearance/attractiveness.
It then dawned on me that attractiveness is dependent on time and with time it has become more important and taken to higher standards. Take for instance what was considered attractive for men and women in the 1950’s and compare that to today. Many of the cultural shifts that we’ve seen over the last 60 years were driven by the increased prevalence of visual media (increase in technology) such as TV, Internet, and movies, which simultaneously reflect and construct our ideas and expectations around sex, desire, and beauty. As a society, we cannot help but link the idea of sexual pleasure with sexual attractiveness. “We know from sources outside the magazine that it is not coincidental that the woman in the picture is young, slim, white, and helpless-looking. We know from our own experience that the photo was created for a male audience and that when a man looks at it he will react in certain specified ways.” (Valverde, 2) Therefore, pornography has the ability to construct women and sex. These dangerous expectations for female beauty and sexuality suggest that the value of women lies in their “use.” It also demonstrates the power pornography has on it’s consumers in a negative way. “If we can recognize that female pleasure in porn (and consequently, society) is marginalized, we can understand how our culture has reduced the identity of women to that of an object.” (Cottle) In pornography, this is called objectification. Porn functions this way, in fact, pornography can influence many different areas of one’s life.
By partaking in the porn industry, consuming it, or by supporting it, we are being complicit in the objectification of persons and of body parts. That’s what the porn industry is, making persons and their body parts into objects. Porn is only meant to arouse its viewers by participating in sexual acts on film, and it is only sex. Some of the images were of women’s tongues sticking out, face up as a man is ejaculating on her face and in her mouth or of a man slapping a woman’s ass as she is bent over. Objectification occurs when the individuality of a person is not acknowledged; the person is purely an object of desire and has only one purpose (serving another’s sexual pleasure). It is obvious how this can affect one’s life, by objectifying someone can make a person expect a particular body type, leaving them disappointed if their partner looks different from the idealized images they’re used to. Additionally, it can also give them a false sense of what sex should be like and feel like. It can also affect relationships: a construed expectation of what a relationship is supposed to be like and a loss of intimacy. While I was looking around the store, I noticed two other customers both male around my same age. I looked at them and thought about how young they were. They are probably still learning how to treat women and what a real relationship is like. I hope that watching pornography doesn’t negatively influence those two important aspects of their sexuality. Love is not part of the equation, which is why porn is so depersonalizing.
Porn displaces love with lust. With lust, the subjectivity of the person gives way to the objectivity of the body. In other words, lust prefers the experience of pleasure to the good of the person. Porn gives men and women a misconceived perception of sex, it is not reality; it is a fantasy. When I was looking at the porn video’s graphics on the cases, I could feel the difference between raw sex and making love. I realized that the people who film the porn, the “actors and actresses” who partake in the porn and those who consume the porn are all guilty of allowing a person to be objectified in one way or another. It is one thing to be sexual and another to be publicly display and make money off one’s sexuality. I almost felt bad for those women, although they chose to this lifestyle and career, I could not help but wonder if they liked doing it. I wondered about their background and how they were raised. I wondered if they were married or had children. It is hard to imagine someone liking this kind of career, the porn-star life.
I’d like to dispute what a freshman and porn-star at Duke University has to say while she justifies her reasons for being a “sex worker”, “I find it interesting that porn (a billion-dollar industry) is consumed by millions of people — men and women (and all other equally wonderful genders) alike — yet no one is willing to consider the lives and individuality of the people behind the camera.” (Duke) She is affirming my belief that, in fact, consumers do not consider the individual, only the sexual act, and the pleasure linked with that act. This goes to show that pornography is objectifying. When objectification occurs so does depersonalization. She knows that her individuality is the least of the consumers concerns as well as the person who is fucking her. Yet, she pleads for people to acknowledge her humanity while consuming the pornography, when in fact I think she is doing just the opposite, she is diminishing her humanity by being porn-star.
Overall, dehumanization is the depersonalization and objectification demonstrated in pornography. A person is turned into a commodity: bought and sold. Pornography is a business, a billion dollar business, and it creates a product to be consumed, whether it be videos or magazines, or people. I then asked myself: What are people consuming when they are viewing pornography? They are consuming people. Pornography passes a certain message on to its consumers that women are object-like. Money can buy sex but not love. I chose not to condone this behavior, I am a sexual human being but I’d rather be sexually aroused by human touch and bond rather than watching a video.
Works Cited:
A., Lauren. “I’M THE DUKE UNIVERSITY FRESHMAN PORN STAR AND FOR THE FIRST TIME I’M TELLING THE STORY IN MY WORDS.” XoJanecom RSS. XoJane, 21 Feb. 2014. Web. 23 Feb. 2014. <http://www.xojane.com/sex/duke-university- freshman-porn-star>.
Brod, Harry. “Pornography and the Alienation of Male Sexuality.” Ed. Margaret Dancy, Victoria Costa, and Joshua Gert. Social Theory and Practice 14.3 (1988): 265-84. Print.
Cottle, Kaitlin, and Gayle Tyree. “American Humanist Association.” American Humanist Association. N.p., n.d. Web. 02 Mar. 2014. <http://americanhumanist.org/HNN/details/2012-04-a-humanist-argument-against-pornography>.
Valverde, Mariana. “Pornography: Not for Men Only.” (n.d.): 467-76. Web.
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