Bernadette Barton, a Professor of Sociology, provides plenty of data that pornography in the United States (and elsewhere) is pervasive. Barton traces the evolution of porno from black & white photographs, to color magazines like Playboy and Hustler, to porno theaters, to porno VHS tapes, to DVDs, to the explosion of pornography on the Internet, to people watching porno on their cell phones.
As Barton points out, pornography isn’t sexy, it’s sexist. The trend of men sending “dick pics” (aka, “penis selfies”) to women–like Anthony Weiner did as “Carlos Danger”–continues to increase. According to Barton’s research, watching hours and hours of porno tends to warp men’s expectations of relationships with women.
Our country has so many social problems, rampant pornography seems like a minor issue. Bernadette Barton’s research shows it isn’t. GRADE: B+
TABLE OF CONTENTS:
Introduction: Welcome to Rauch Culture, USA — 1
- What Men See, What Men Want — 29
- How Internet Pornography Ruins Sex — 55
- “Be the Man That Treats Her Like a Lady, but Still Grabs Her Ass” — 81
- Dick Pics — 108
- Trump’s Raunch Culture Administration — 125
- Transforming Rauch Culture — 149
Acknowlegements — 171
Notes — 175
References — 191
Index — 207
About the Author — 217
I think this would be an incredibly sad, rage-inducing, and exhausting book to read. To me, the endless proliferation of pornography is a symptom of end-stage capitalism where absolutely everything has a price and, with enough money, you can buy anything and anyone. I have not looked at pornography since the 1970s (when going to see movies like “The Devil in Miss Jones” was considered trendy), but I assume someone is always making money from it—and that someone rarely includes the people in front of the camera.
Deb, THE PORNIFICATION OF AMERICA was an exhausting book to read. So many people addicted to porn! Like you, I saw DEEP THROAT and THE DEVIL IN MISS JONES back in the 1970s. Those movies made tons of money. In the 1980s and 1990s, VHS tapes and DVDs filled with porn dominated the market. Then, the Internet took over. I find the whole situation troubling.
The weird thing was, in the 80s when we had VCRs, my father in law seemed to be addicted to porn! He would rent a movie, connect two VCRs, and make an illegal copy! My mother in law used to talk about the “story” or which actress she thought was “pretty” (Annette Haven, as I remember) or the cinematography, and we would roll our eyes. Very strange.
Seems like pretty bad timing for this. Maybe after we’ve conquered the plague, climate change, and incipient Fascism in the US, maybe we can schedule some time to worry about rampant porn.
Michael, I’m sure the Pandemic caused even more porn addiction as people were stuck in their homes with nothing much to do. The Stock Market was down 500 points this morning on fears we have NOT conquered the Covid-19 plague.
I’m of two minds here. While I strongly object to sexual objectification and exploitation, I oppose censorship even more strongly. Does Barton address that thorny issue? Does a work of erotic art present a menace to society in his opinion?
Dan, Bernadette Barton address the censorship issues tangentially. Like you, I hate the obvious abuse of women, children, and men in the porn business. In general, I’m opposed to censorship but this porn industry is a cancer on our society.
I have been sort of shocked at how much shows from particularly the UK deal almost exclusively with women and sex. I am thinking of This Way Up with Sharon Horgan and Flack with Anna Paquin.
Patti, some European countries show explicit sex on their cable channels. I’m not sure the EU has the same awareness of the Women’s Movement as the U.S.
Not all feminism is puritanical. And certainly not all feminism is against erotica, with the usual proviso, My erotica, your smut, their criminal offense.
Sorry, but I’m with Michael here. 1,000 year weather events nearly every year – flooding, “heat domes,” etc. – plus codifying voter suppression laws and gerrymandering, the whole Trump/MAGA thing, a worldwide pandemic that is not going away because for some reason (as Deb suggested about porn, it’s almost surely about money too) the right wing has turned it into a “freedom” issue, ad infinitum.
Personally, I’ve looked at porn over the years and while I am appalled by some of it, I am equally astonished by seemingly amateur couples willing to put it all out there online for ANYONE (including their parents and children) to see.
So, no, this comes way, way down my list of things that are “ruining our society.”
Jeff, I’m with you on the appalling amount of amateur porn online. You have to wonder what these people are thinking making intimate moments available to everybody. I’m guessing they’re going to regret those choices in the Future.
A woman I worked with was going through her parents things after her mother died, her father dying a year or so earlier, and found hundreds of explicit photos and videos of her parents having sex with others. They had been swingers for years and their daughter never had a clue.
Yikes! Steve’s comment below is not surprising, but undoubtedly disturbing. That woman must have been shocked. Chris Offutt wrote “My Father, The Pornographer” when he discovered his late father Andrew J. Offutt wrote hundreds of porn books. I think he later expanded the article into a memoir.
Offutt did so. His father’s porn novel business eventually was devoted mostly to writing port novels to order for individuals who would commission them from him.
Somehow, reading or writing pornography/erotica seems different than watching (or, Heaven forfend, participating in) it. Perhaps because individual imagination has to be part of the reading/writing process. I mean, things can get pretty steamy in some romance novels—but no one is being exploited in order to present an explicit scene…on paper!
At first I was a bit shocked – Andrew J. Offutt I know only as a Science Fiction writer, but wiki says it’s the same person who wrote several hundred porn books!
Wolf, yes Andy Offutt wrote a number of porno books. I have the SF SPACEWAYS series.
I like looking at ladies, naked or otherwise. Can’t say the same about looking at men. What I don’t like looking at is sadness, desperation, and poor acting — all of which is found in much porn. I especially dislike the demeaning of women and the Trump-like nudge-nudge, wink-wink attitude that is becoming incfreasingly present today. My daughters and granddaughters deserve better.
I also agee that there are bigger, looming threats out there. I’m not one to ban porn but I’d feel much better if people are taught, both at home and at school, the importance of respectand boundaries for all, of both sexes.
Jerry, Bernadette Barton focuses on the problems porn causes in our culture. We have so many mental health issues. Porn feeds many of the worst impulses in a lot of people already dealing with mental issues.
Most porn is viewed by men. Women would rather read romance novels. Both give the consumer a false sense of expectations.
Does she talk about “ethical pornography” at all? This is mostly (but not exclusively) women-driven, getting away from the male-dominated industry but still filming people having sex. Does she cover that in her last chapter, or is it just about getting away from pornography completely?
Jeff, Bernadette Barton does discuss erotic films made by women for women. But that is a very small part of the porn market. The porn industry focuses on males who seemingly have a vast capacity (and funds) to consume raunchy videos. The last chapter sums up the current situation and makes some predictions about the Future if we stay on the present course.
If it’s so rampant, I wonder why I don’t see it, or hear about it, unless you’re including many disgusting underwear commercials on TV.
What I wonder about is, with only a few days to go and Coronavirus spreading through the Olympic Village, will the Olympics even be successful? Or matter.
The dick pics and nude photos are mind-blowing.
Their parents must be so proud.
I suspect if one obsessively views porn, the obsessiveness was likely already waiting to happen. I also suspect that most porn viewing (and listening) is free these years, a sort parasitic industry on the amateurs and porn professionals.
Sadly, Trumpian wink/nudges are Not new, and if anything the behavior that goes with them is less tolerated now than they were resignedly and resentfully expected in the years that creep was being taught what was acceptable.
A lot of porn is certainly meanspirited, and even some that isn’t is unappealing. I’m not sure how we parse what it “appropriate” porn, since the trade in it has always been with us, at least since the mass-production of literature began.
I think I read somewhere that every single advancement in communications technology (going back to woodcut prints and the Gutenberg press) ended up being used for pornographic/erotic purposes within a few years of its introduction. I think today the problem is one of both amplification and duplication. What was once someone’s hidden box of Polaroids or stash of Hustlers is now a billion-dollar on-demand industry—and that has to have implications for the content producers AND content consumers.
It was already a hundreds of millions of dollars industry by the ’70s…inflation will take its toll. Ease of access is greater, it’s true…for those with phone or other access to the net. And HUSTLER pretty much always was a crass and hostile as it could be, eve as PLAYBOY and PENTHOUSE were smartly condescending. I still think there’s a place for ON OUR BACKS (Susie Bright’s lesbian skin magazine) or such mostly literary magazines as YELLOW SILK and PARAMOUR.
Sadly, to squelch pornography is to make it easier to ultimately squelch all sorts of speech and production. Because the adversaries of free speech are usually among the first to try to tar all sorts of material obscene, as well as attempt to drum up support by showing ugly and shocking examples to the innocent.
Crime fiction will almost certainly be a target. And crime drama. Again.
I typed, I thought, “smarmily condescending” about PLAYBOY and PENTHOUSE, but perhaps the blog has a spell-checker?
A sort of parasitic industry (since the free sites will sell ads and “premium services”…and at least someone tends to find a given example of the works sexy. Though I imagine there are a lot of examples that can disappoint any given intended audience.
The swinger parents do rather suggest that we don’t know what’s in others’ libidos, and that there are always a degree of question as to what causes what damages. There are very few people who are going to try to justify violent abuse in production of the videos and more, but, fwiw, most of them involve performance between uncoerced performers, apparently. And the Trumps or the Gaetzes of the world don’t need porn to further their contempt for women.
I’m waiting for release of the film Putin has on Trump.
Steve, I’m curious about that film that Putin has too!
Naturally, it’s all Trump’s fault! We need to get back to the clean and moral days of Bill Clinton!
Bob, as some of my feminist associates tell me: Most men are slime.
Not all women are angels in this regard either, whether their prey is other women, children or sometimes men.
Here’s a more relevant document than we might like, from the frontlines of how the “puritans” and “free-lovers” can choose to ignore the damages their fantasies actually cause when allowed to be enacted:
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2021/07/26/the-german-experiment-that-placed-foster-children-with-pedophiles/amp
Todd, you’re right. Sex is complicated.
Re the Berlin experiment:
I only read about this creature a few months ago:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helmut_Kentler
That people in Berlin tolerated this I find unbelievable, horrible!
Wolf, I agree with you. Horrible, indeed.
It is possible to not admire Trump nor Clinton. At all, but particularly in this regard in both cases.