[by Andrew Brown] This is a question that is on the surface about sex but actually it goes a lot deeper than that. That’s not to say that sex on its own is a small business. It’s difficult to get solid figures, but in 2009 the American industry was the size of the mainstream film business, which is to say, as large as professional sport and live music put together. Its consumption is almost entirely normalised in the west and among teenagers. Because of smartphones, it is accessible instantly everywhere.
The gaming industry is probably bigger, but it’s clear that when young men are online, if they’re not playing with their friends there’s a good chance they’ll be playing with themselves. It’s estimated that 30% of internet content is porn, most of it courtesy of one company, Mindgeek.
Some people deny that this industry does any harm, but that would make it entirely unique in human culture – and it isn’t. As a business it obviously makes winners and losers out of the producers, and some of the losers lose a very great deal. But what does it do to the customers? Conservatives usually argue that the damage is done by watching particular acts.
The pornification of politics is what gave us Donald Trump
The American writer Rod Dreher writes: “We are conducting a radical experiment that has never before in history been tried, because it has never been possible. What happens to individuals and societies when images – moving images – of the most bizarre and violent sex acts imaginable can be instantly accessed by anyone, anywhere, at any time? What does that do to our brains, our minds, and our hearts? What does it to do us as a people?”
As a conservative Christian influenced by Catholic moral theology, Dreher believes that there are some actions which are in themselves wrong, whatever the motives and intentions with which they are performed. I don’t. It seems to me that the wrongness of porn lies not in acts but in attitudes. Consenting adults do exist and may do whatever both freely consent to, even though both adulthood and consent are concepts easily abused and without any clear boundaries. What 15-year-olds can be pressured into, by each other and by their peers, can’t be defended by pretending they are either adults or freely consenting. Even so, it is pressure and the exploitation that is wrong. But this kind of bullying is intimately linked to porn.
The world of porn is one where every desire can be gratified; but the belief that all desire can and should be gratified is itself what is radically wrong; the wrongness of any particular desire is less important. The industry is built on the principle that the customer always comes first. Nothing and no one matters more than what the customer wants. This predictably leads to horrible damage to those who produce porn, and to the people who are their product. But there is also damage done to consumers who are offered their little holiday in a world of wish fulfilment. Some will want to emigrate there. Many more will demand free movement. This would be a bad and corrupting influence on society even if it were confined to sex, but of course it is not.
The pornification of everything is the business model of commercial television and the ad-supported internet. It’s not just about sex. The fantasies of control, domination and immediate gratification are now the ideal in all commercial transactions. They are what almost every advertisement promises. The frictionless and utterly convenient world of online shopping is much closer to porn than to offline trudging and bargaining.
The pornification of politics is what gave us Donald Trump: he established himself as a public figure through a “reality” show in which he acted the part of the omnipotent autocrat whose whim was law. The purpose of “reality” TV, and of advertising more generally, is to subvert our instincts about reality in the real world, something which is at least as damaging as sexual porn and is very closely related to it.
Like porn, it feeds an appetite which cannot long be sated, one which only grows on the phantoms that we feed to it. This is why the idea of fantasy as just a comfort for lonely people which would never be a danger to us real, well-balanced people, is so dangerous. Whether your frustration is sexual or political (and in both cases, perhaps, it’s actually personal) porn-ish fantasy offers a satisfaction which cannot be enjoyed in real life, and for which, therefore, real life cannot entirely substitute.
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