Viewpoint by Marcelo Colussi*
Users of pornography users only watch a well-edited video. They do not see what goes on behind the scenes, the girls who are crying and sent out of the recording studio because they cannot stand the violent sexual acts they are asked to take part in. (Shelley Lubben, former porn actress)
GUATEMALA CITY (IDN) – Sexuality is the Achilles heel of human beings. There is no “normal” sexuality; it is always problematic. Why should we hide the external genital organs if not? Why the prohibition of incest? It is quite obvious that sexuality, unlike what happens in the animal order, does not correspond to reproduction.
There is a “plus” beyond what is biological-instinctive that inaugurates a new order. As Jean Laplanche said: “Instinct is ‘perverted’ by the social”. Hence, in psychoanalysis, for designating these complex and erratic frameworks, we speak of drive (Trieb), as strength, energy, desire that seeks an object which is forever evanescent, irremediably lost.
Sexuality is never “innocent”; it makes us blush, it makes us smile or be ashamed, it is a taboo subject, it is not “good taste” to speak about it in public … but it is never neutral.
Sexuality does not end in the anatomical-physiological knowledge of the genitourinary apparatus, far from it. It is something else. This is the “plus” being referred to; hence, we spend our lives talking about it, making jokes, puns with double meanings, writing “rude sexual phrases” in public toilets … in the end, venerating it.
There is no possibility of being asexual – whether or not the genital organs are used (vow of chastity, chronic singleness) – because, in short, everything that is human is sexual, while sexuality – like death – is the irrefutable reminder of our limits: we are all going to die (an insurmountable limit) and we are all “males” or “females” of the species, then socialised as gentlemen or ladies, with all possible intermediate combinations that occur to us: LGBTIQ (and some etceteras, so it may appear).
That is to say: we start from an insurmountable anatomical difference that we do not want to know anything about, that terrifies us (that is why we cover it) and that reminds us – with no recourse to appeal – that there are limits, that we are not “complete” (something is always missing, which is why we spend our lives wishing for that object that completes us … a search that always fails, by the way).
Pornography (“open and raw presentation of sex that seeks to produce excitement”) is eminently human (no animal has developed it). It is as old as the world. But something special has taken place: capitalism, which transforms everything into a profitable business, has also made it a fabulous industry.
With the primacy of audiovisual culture that has flooded everything – not to mention the Internet – in recent decades pornography has reached unprecedented levels. In fact, as an audiovisual industry, pornography today is a huge economic business, producing fabulous amounts of money, and while the production of porn movies and videos has been growing at a rapid pace, Internet has come to stoke both production and consumption.
However, given that pornography – like everything linked to the field of sexuality – involves a certain halo of the “forbidden”, something that is stigmatised, there are no reliable data in its field. Nobody talks openly about it, as is done in other commercial sectors. Very few people openly admit to being a user of these materials, but evidently if it is a growing business (like illegal drugs) it is because there is a huge mass of consumers (remaining in the shadows, in most cases).
There are no reliable official records of the business, although some socio-statistical approximations do exist. From these, it can be calculated that the entire commercial sector of pornography in the audiovisual media currently turns over about 50,000 million dollars a year, placing it among the major businesses such as weapons, oil, illegal drugs and pharmaceuticals.
The United States is the main producer of pornographic audiovisual material, basically in the state of California (“the other Hollywood”, as it is often colloquially called). However, as of 2014 there has been a legal regulation in Los Angeles making the use of condoms by porn actors compulsory, and this has generated rejection among producers, many of whom have decided to move production to Las Vegas in Nevada and Miami in Florida, given that similar legislation does not apply in these states.
According to data available today, 12 percent of the websites offered on the Internet are pornographic. A 2015 study by the Spanish University of Navarre reported that “currently, there are more than 500 million web pages giving access to pornographic material”. More or less reliable estimates indicate that 25 percent of all search engine requests are related to pornography. Every second, some 30 million people are watching porn on the Internet.
Consumption is more inclined towards men, but pornography is also accessed by women: between 25 and 30 percent of visits to porn pages are made by women. These visits mainly occur in homes, but also in the workplace: 20 percent of men admit that they watch some porn in their workplace.
There is production of porn material for all tastes, presenting the most audacious, esoteric, agreeable or bizarre combinations. In reality, none of this material shows anything that does not happen in real life; or, in any case, it shows the putting into practice of fantasies that all human beings (men and women) appear to have to a greater or lesser extent.
Pornography also includes production that falls within the scope of criminality, such as torture, rape and use of minors. But leaving aside these illegal and criminal practices (with which capitalist industry does business, as it does with any human sphere), all that is offered to the eyes are things that can happen in privacy, those that are not spoken about but which take place (paraphernalia of erotic toys, unusual positions, sadomasochistic practices, bisexual practices, various obscenities and a lengthy, interminable etcetera).
This takes us back to the question of what normal sexuality is. Where can it be read about: in a book on psychiatry, in some document of the Vatican? Psychoanalysis teaches us that enjoyment has no “normal” form.
The main consumers of pornography are the United States, Great Britain, Canada, India, Japan, France, Germany, Australia, Italy and Brazil. Its consumption is widespread everywhere, in all socioeconomic strata, even in countries that still claim to be “socialist”: in Cuba, for example, although pornography is not legal, the population – mainly young people – has access to it in good measure through home videos made on the island, the so-called “UCI videos” made by students of the University of Information Science.
In China, the consumption of pornographic audiovisual material is punished with imprisonment, but the population still manages to obtain it. The same happens in North Korea, where consumption is punishable by the death penalty, but despite this people flout the law and there is access to audiovisual material of this type. It is the same way in Islamic countries, where sexuality is a highly taboo subject, and therefore also the production and consumption of pornography; but “for every law there is a loophole” because here too there is also a developed porn sector. In fact, some Muslim countries produce these types of movies and/or videos.
There is no doubt that sexuality, and its corresponding “open and raw presentation of sex that seeks to produce excitement” is a constant everywhere. There is no explicit prohibition to stop it. This indicates something: that the subject obviously attracts, catches … and perhaps hypnotises?
For a certain moralistic view of the matter, pornography constitutes “enthronement of lust, debasing those who practice it”. According to this point of view, it can be said that “those who are exposed to pornography are more likely to develop abnormal sexual tendencies”.
Victor Cline, a professor at the University of Utah, has said, for example: “If people come back again and again to expose themselves to material of a pornographic nature, little by little they will have a pornographic library in their mind, from which they cannot escape. It will be there, ready to be remembered, even when they do not want it. There is a great deal of evidence that suggests that the beginnings or origins of many sexual deviations and perversions are learned, and one of the ways of learning is exposing oneself to pornographic material”.
Undoubtedly, myths and prejudices prevail, they are very ingrained (“It is easier to smash an atom than a prejudice”, said Einstein). We continue to think – and therefore pontificate, giving directives and scolding – in the name of a normal sexuality.
If pornography exists, it should open up a comprehensive non-moralising analysis of why it repeats itself and tends to expand. It should be understood that pornography is not synonymous with sexual offence. The latter is clearly typified in the different national constitutions, there being a certain generalised consensus of what would be their hallmarks. Violation, practices that damage the integrity of the other and sexual exercise with minors are regulated as crimes. From then on, it is impossible to regulate what is done (or is fantasised about).
How should pornography be considered? Degeneration? Mental illness? Great business? Transgression in the private sphere?
Today there is a trend in psychopathology that speaks of an “addiction to pornography”, the insatiable consumption of audiovisual materials. Can that claim be upheld? The basic idea in such a view is that pornography is “harmful” – that is, those who are exposed to pornography are more likely to develop abnormal sexual tendencies.
In arguing against this view, Berl Kutchinsky, a criminologist at the University of Copenhagen, has asserted that pornography actually “fulfils a positive function by acting as an ‘escape valve’ for potential sexual offenders”. In 1970, he based his assertion on the fact that “when the Danish government lifted restrictions on pornography, the number of sex crimes fell”.
However, it seems that prejudices continue to hover around an alleged “normal” sexuality. Now: if people, men and women (and all the intermediate combinations that could be established), in all contexts, with or without financial means, even from a very early age – starting from genital awakening in puberty – access pornography (which is not exactly a sex crime!), we must look at the phenomenon critically. Is there anything questionable about it? If so, what is it?
Today, the entirety of audiovisual pornographic production ratifies male chauvinist-patriarchal patterns. The woman is always reified, placed as an object at the disposal of an alleged endless, insatiable male desire. Sexual relations have an exercise of masculine power bias: men “do” things to women, take them (“grab” them), while women do things through and for men (is there no hidden misogyny in that?).
In addition, as a hidden side of the supposed paradise offered by these audiovisual productions – in the best Hollywood manner – there is a frightening reality that is the real industry, the real business, with actors in many cases infected with HIV or sexually transmitted diseases through the non-use of protection, with a commercial mechanism that crushes individuals, with tricks and scams the order of the day (as is Hollywood, as is any business under capitalism, always managed with mafia-like, sordid criteria. I mean any business, including oil, pharmaceuticals, weapons and so on)
But even more, the frightening reality at stake is that the fantasy presented by the world of pornography is a pure media lie, which has people believe that all those spectacular sexual adventures (enthroning male virility in general) can be possible. And they are not!
* Born in Argentina, Marcelo Colussi studied psychology and philosophy and now lives in Guatemala, where he is a university professor and social researcher. He is a member of Utopia Rossa (Red Utopia), an international association working for the unity of revolutionary movements around the world in a new International: la Quinta (The Fifth). This is an edited version of an article that originally appeared in Spanish under the title La Industria Audiovisual del Porno in Utopia Rossa. Translated by Phil Harris. Views expressed in this article are those of the writer and not necessarily of IDN-INPS. [IDN-InDepthNews – 27 June 2018]
Photo: Marcelo Colussi. Credit: Plaza Pública
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