RICHARD POULIN INTERVIEW
By Claudette Vaughan
Richard Poulin is a French Canadian academic and well-respected author of several books on child sex abuse, child trafficking, anti-prostitution and the exploitation of women and girls. He has published several books on the world system on this subjects that have appeared in French, in Italian, in Portuguese but not yet in English. Here he critiques prostitution as both an instrument of oppression and as a trade act and has an expert opinion on PeTA’s exploitation of women and animals.
 Why prostitution? How did you get involved in the first place with studying prostitution?
One of my motivations to analyze the explosion of the prostitution industry at a worldwide scale is the fact that the studies on globalization rarely take into account this fundamental aspect in the dynamics of the current capitalistic system. There exist very few analyses integrated into the dynamics of the capitalist globalization dynamic with the development of the sex industries and their impact on women and children (mostly girls) and, in general, on society. In globalization we find one of the worst forms of embodiment of prostitution. The victory of the neoliberalism keeps pace not only with an acceleration of the submission to social commodification particularly in the sex industries, but also with a greater legitimization of the alienability of the bodies.
Why prostitution? Because this industry (it generates revenues amounting to billions of dollars, estimated in my last book on child prostitution at 1000 billion US dollars each year), reveals the current tendencies of the neoliberal globalization agenda. It allows us to have a better understanding of the commodification of the alive and of human beings, the ethnic discrimination, the sex oppression and the submission of women and girls to the male pleasure syndrome.
Beyond this reason, I began the analysis of the globalized liberal procurer system following feminist friends' pressing demands which knew my studies on pornography. They believed that I could bring a different and stimulating light to the subject.
For people not familiar with your work can you draw your overarching philosophy and approach to pornography and prostitution please?
Whether it is feminine — girls, women of any ages — or male — boys, teenagers and young men, travestites and transsexuals —, prostitution is a social institution to the almost exclusive domain of men. It is an industry essentially dedicated to the pleasure of men and to the demonstration of their presumed superiority. For these men, women “engaged " into prostitution, they are "loose women", "comfort women", a leisure, a recreation, etc. They are persons dominated by their sex, who "choose" to be what they are and who they like to be in prostitution. Obviously, the heart of the analysis must frontally attack the problem.
As decline services to the population grows and social disparities exist in the west, it assists a bigger financing of the repressive infrastructures — army, police and prison — and, at the same time promotes the normalisation of the confinement of women and girls to brothels, an other type of a prison universe. It is one of the main effects of the regulation of prostitution and of the legalization of pimping.
The prostitution system strengthens the sexist and social relationships of power and legitimizes submission and commodification. It bases itself on exploitation, violence and dominion of a sex by another one.
The human body is inalienable, in all or in part. It can not in any way be commodified. Tempestuous growth at the world level of an industry which exploits the prostitution of millions of persons, getting more and more younger by the year, whose development was accelerated with the capitalist globalization and the liberal regulation of prostitution, places us in front of a choice of civilisation. Consequently, it obliges us to develop collectively an humanist policy link to ethical concerns as the non-commodification of the human body, in all or in part. The commodification of the bodies and sexes touches above all the most vulnerable in societies. It has sharply a class and/or ethnic character. Prostitution raises first questions on poverty, social inequality, exclusion, violence, notably sexual violence, racism, relationships between countries in the centre of the world capitalism and those in the "suburb" and, especially, women’s oppression.
The fight for the abolition of the liberal procurer system and of what ensues from it (the trafficking in women and children, rampant sex tourism, etc.), is to work to put an end to the subjection of one sex by the other and an end to the process of sexual commodification under all its forms.
If it was possible to abolish slavery, which was one of the foundations, during four hundred years, of the Occidental economy, it is realistic to believe that we can abolish prostitution.
Pornography, an industry of " sexual fantasy ", invaded the public sphere and colonized advertisements, media, including woman's magazines, fashion, literature, etc. Its codes and its ideology are socially trivialized and seem to have the affect of transforming not only sexual practices, but also the relationship to the body. In a broad outline, pornography is a representation, in words or in images, of the sexual subordination of women. Pornography reproduces and strengthens the old misogynous, patriarchal and alienating schemes.
Pornography is at present characterised by a fury of the opening on which linger close-up and which is penetrated violently everywhere, with everything and anything and no matter how. A camera literally enters the female body and searches the vagina and the anus, which is stretched to breaking point. Pornography is for the overbid, always more violent, dehumanizing, mechanical, organic. At the same time, it tries to conquer a market which still escapes it: women.
Magazines for women and for teenagers multiply accommodating reports on pornographic stars, on prostituted persons happy to be in the sex industry. Gadgets sold in sex shops are tested and are a object of promotion. To be well in its life, it resides in, it is necessary that the women and teenager adopt new sexual practices and use the products that the sex industry dictates. It is necessary for them to try everything and to learn to love sodomy, facial ejaculation, double or triple penetration, etc.
Pornography affects henceforth culture in depth. It is the main place where a large number of people, men, receive their sexual education. What is this doing to their minds? Pornography is an ideological crystallization which expresses itself in the philosophy of modern time. It reveals, translates and strengthens inequality between sexes and dedicates itself to male superiority. The men find their account there and industry is its profit.
You have published a Manifesto about the abolition of prostitution. As an abolitionist then, what is your position, who is your opposition and how has your abolitionist position been received?
Abolitionism represents a decisive human and ethical progress with regard to the other legal regimes regulating prostitution. Historically, feminist abolitionism opposed prostitution because it is an institution of oppression of women, of all women and not only those that are prostituted. The links between the abolitionist fight and political fight of women is strictly interlaced: yesterday, it was gain the vote for women and the shutdown of brothels, today, it is equality and parity, combined with the refusal of the legalization of the prostitution of others and the legalization of social inequality.
Abolitionism is the only position which, from the beginning, worried about prostituted persons and fought for the application of prevention policies and social reinstatement.
The capitalist globalization has amplified and accelerated the commodification of the alive and the prostitution of women and children. Current abolitionism has to be determinedly against sex commodification as well as the commodification of the social relationships by developing an overall policy which works both upstream targeting the procurers and the traffickers and downstream targeting the johns. It has to contest the commodified and sexist order and promote the idea that the sell of the custom of the body and/or the sex is a crime against humanity.
Equality among women and men will remain inaccessible as long as women and children continue to be bought, sold and prostituted, so a sex remains oppressed by the other one, and as long as prostitution will not be abolished as it was with slavery.
The conservatives (prohibitionists) and the liberals (regulationists) are opposed to the abolition of prostitution.
The conservatives think that the persons in the situation of prostitution chooses to live in the margins. They believe that they are essentially delinquents, deviants or criminals and that they are completely responsible for their fate. In fact, their point of view is, these persons are fundamentally perverts and so are guilty of the debauchery that one has to repress in society. Conservatives think that prostitutes know how to play too well their " sexual power” to succumb the most virtuous people in exchange for material advantages. The conservatives claim that the prostituted person is the instigator of all commercial sexual relations, which allows and clears the johns of any responsibility.
Regulationists and supporters of prostitution as "work" also consider that the prostituted person chooses their situation and that only a minority of them are victims of "forced" prostitution. They assert that the prostituted women exercises a "sexual" power and consequently, it makes them childish or victimizes the prostituted women.
Prostitution negates women’s "autonomy", denying their rights in personal self-determination. They accept that one does not question this feminine “power” in society. To analyse prostitution as an institution of women oppression means also, according to their opinion, denying the word (speech) of the prostituted women who decided rationally and with full knowledge of the facts to exercise this "work" for the advantages which it confers. Naturally, liberal regulationists ignores purely and simply the disturbing words of former prostituted persons who qualify themselves as "survivors" and who oppose prostitution.
Some of these lawyers expounding the "freedom” associated with prostitution, do not hesitate to agitate for the intensification of the repression against the prostituted person who refuses to register in the regulated system — "unfair competition", some of them dare to cry out! The " right to personal autonomy” of the prostituted person is valid only when it is subjected to the liberal procurer system, otherwise, it is reviled and denied.
Some years previously, speech favourable to the prostitution of others dominated completely the public sphere. This is not the case any longer. The Canadian abolitionists marked numerous points, have influenced the political decision-makers and public opinion. Abolitionist NGO were created and they are very active. My manifesto ensues from these activities. The reception was very good. Numerous groups (women, trade-unions, etc.) in Canada, France, Switzerland and Belgium are using it.
You have just published a book about the sexual exploitation of children. This is indeed a rare subject. Could you tell us at length what it is you wrote about and your critique on why sexual abuse of children is so prevalent in the global economy as part of that economy, and who’s doing it?
“At 10 years of age, you are a young adult, at 20 years of age, an old woman and at 30 years of age, you are dead ", says a proverb circulating among the young prostituted girls in Patpong, the main "red" light district of Bangkok.
Since 1980-1990 we have witnessed a rejuvenation of the prostituted person in the global economy. Various researchers and international organisations underlined this aspect. The prostituted persons are recruited very young - at the average age of 14 years in Canada, in the United States, in Germany and doubtless so in other Occidental countries. They are recruited even younger in Third World countries.
The more the sex industries increase their activities, the more the people who are exploited by them, these young people who are recruited abroad, are victims of trafficking for purposes of prostitution and pornography. Various factors explain this noticed rejuvenation. One of the characteristics of the sex industry is the infantilisation of women and sexualization of children, two strictly interdependent occurrences. Another reason explains the sex exploitation of children: they cost much less than adults and, consequently, the profits are sharply superior. The problem of violence and the sexual aggression committed by adults against children is so international and its dimension is strictly connected to the globalization of the sex industries, to the commodification of women and children and to the possibilities offered by new technologies.
Among the most common examples of the international dimension of the sexual subjection of children is sex tourism, children's cross-border and internal trafficking for purposes of prostitution, pornography implying children and the use of the Web by way of a new vector of the proliferation of these forms of violence and sexual aggressions.
On a world scale, 92 % of the victims of trafficking are for purposes of prostitution; 48 % of the victims of this trafficking are children.
In this last decade, the number of street children has increased in a dramatic way in the world. More than 100 million children live on the streets. The cuts in social services and health services, the increase of social inequalities, etc., have deep social consequences which are reflected, among others, in the increasing number of the children on the streets. About 65 % of the children on the streets are in Latin America cities are prostituted in a coincidental or regular way. The are 50 million children there, living in the streets.
The children and the women are among the big losers of the neoliberal globalization plan and of the correlative growth of the sex industries. Every year, millions of women and children fall into the trap of the sex industries. The increasing necessity of girls and boys for the sex industries is one of the reasons for the seemingly unquenchable need for international trafficking. The feminization of international migrations is due partially to the growth of the sex industries.
The Third World Congress against commercial sexual exploitation of children, which took place in July, 2005 in Ljubljana, in Slovenia, estimates at more than a million the number of minors who are, every year, enrolled into prostitution.
My book studies the scope of child prostitution today, the historical and contemporary organization of child prostitution, child prostitution in the dominant capitalist countries, child prostitution in Canada, child sex tourism, child prostitution systems in Asia, the industrialization and legitimization of prostitution (in touch with the children) and the violence in and of prostitution itself.
From your research which countries are sexually exploiting children the most and in what form? E.g., child sex trafficking, the internet, films etc.
Because the age of recruiting in prostitution is very young and because about 80 % of the prostituted person was recruited at a minor age, all the countries are affected by child prostitution. Obviously, the countries where there is a booming prostitution industry are also the countries where child prostitution is thriving. Obviously it’s the countries which regulate prostitution and legalized procuring where you see the most growth. There are also the countries of the Third World where sex tourism is booming and where the prostitution industry is considered vital for the economic "development" of the country. The trafficking in women and children for purposes of prostitution (which constitutes 90 % of the trafficking) is big where the prostitution industry is developed. By the way, between the prostitution industry and the pornographic production links are often very narrow. Children are sexually exploited by the procurers' networks as well as in prostitution as in pornography.
Hundreds of thousands of children (200,000 to 600,000, according to various researches) are prostituted in Thailand, 100,000 in Philippines and Taïwan, 30,000 in Sri Lanka, 15,000 in Netherlands, 500,000 in Brazil, 300,000 in United States, 25,000 in Santo Domingo, etc. In 2004, UNICEF estimated that 1.2 million children annually are victims of sex trafficking. In certain countries, such as the Ukraine, Moldavia and Romania, complete groups of young women and girls are victims of trafficking and prostitution abroad. In Korea, a fifth of women from between the ages of 16 to 29 years old have been prostituted, which touches approximately 1,2 - 1,5 million women.
What are your views on child sex trafficking? How did it get so out of hand? What is the solution?
One cannot fight against child trafficking for purposes of prostitution without fighting the cause of this trafficking: prostitution itself. Fight against the slavery factor first. If one wants to fight against trafficking without questioning slavery, it will fail. It is when one fights against slavery first that the trafficking can then be stopped. Today, international organizations opposing the prostitution of children, because they are children, do so without opposing prostitution.
Sex tourism is condemned because it exploits children, but what limits are set to fight against sex tourism in the main? It doubtless explains the failure of the fight against child sex tourism. Who is a child? Laws in that case propose very variable ages. Furthermore, to limit the fight against “the commercial sexual exploitation of the child” at the notion of the age of consent makes the game of the regulationists for whom this notion is fundamental in legitimizing prostitution.
The child victims of the sex industry reach a age, the regulationists say, when they stop legally “being sexually exploited ": they are henceforth, for number of States, persons who do prostitution in a willing way, quite freely, with full knowledge of the facts. The age would matter little if the purpose of laws was to fight prostitution and pornography. "The commercial sexual exploitation of children” by these industries would be only an aggravating circumstance. Now, new abolitionism, which attacks all the profiteers of the prostitution of others, procurers and johns, and refuses the criminalization of the persons in situations of prostitution, is a more realistic alternative to fight " the commercial sexual exploitation " of children than awareness campaigns of tourists visiting these countries or just raising the age of the sexual consent
Why did the experiment in legalizing prostitution fail?
In past years, several countries have regulated prostitution and legalized procurement: states in Australia, the majority of the Austrian Länder, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Netherlands, New Zealand and Switzerland. In some countries, brothels are state institutions (Turkey, Indonesia). Else where, the prostitution industry is often considered as a vital sector for the development of the country (Philippines, Thailand, etc.). The impact on trafficking in women and children are considerable.
The example of the Netherlands is a good indicator of the expansion of the sex industries: 2,500 prostitutes in 1981, 10,000 in 1985, 20,000 in 1989 and 30,000 in 1997. The Netherlands has become a key destination for world sex tourists. In Amsterdam, where there are 250 brothels, 80 % of the prostitutes are of foreign origin “and 70 % of them lack papers”, strongly suggesting that they have been the victims of trafficking. In 1960, 95 % of the prostitutes of the Netherlands were Dutch; in 1999 only 20 %. To say that foreigners are being prostituted is to say that they are being made an object of trafficking, which obviously implies the organization of it. It is the procurement organization, which makes possible the supply of roughly 700 sex-clubs and brothels in the Netherlands, where prostitution has been legal since October 1st, 2000. This legalization, which was supposed to help the prostitutes, is a failure; only 4 % of the prostitutes registered themselves, which allows them to benefit from certain rights.
In Austria, 90 % of prostituted persons are originally from other countries. In Greece, in 2003, the number of victims of trafficking for the purposes of prostitution was estimated at 20,000 annually, compared to 2,100 annually at the start of the previous decade. As the experience in the Netherlands, Greece and Austria shows, the number of "legal" prostituted persons, those who are natives of the country, is gradually dropping (in relative or absolute terms) and the number of prostituted persons who are victims of trafficking is increasing. The regulation of prostitution has thus not improved the fate of prostituted persons, in contrast to the claims of activists who are in favour of such a policy. But legalization does represent a goldmine for the pimps, whose activity is now legal: the first year after the legalization of the brothels, the activities of the sex industry in the Netherlands have increased by 25%. The Dutch government takes 1,2 billion USD annually in taxes, thereby becoming one of Europe's largest pimps.
In Germany, the legislation that entered into force on January 1st 2002 abolished the concept of "immoral activity". The prostituted person who is German (or married to Germans) now has a status of "independent or salaried workers with a work contract" with the "bosses" of the Eros centres and brothels. Prostitution has to some extent become classified as a "profession like any other". In addition, all businesses with 15 or more employees, including brothels, are obligated to hire apprentices on pain of financial penalties if they fail to do so. What thinking person would encourage any girl to become an apprentice in an “Eros” centre? The Internationale Organization for Migrations estimates that almost half of the women who are victims of trafficking for the purpose of prostitution in Germany have entered the country legally.
Failure is clear at the level of the rights of the prostituted person: 1 % only of the 400,000 prostituted persons in Germany have signed a contract with the brothels owners.
As these experiences show, trafficking and prostitution has increased dramatically over the past decade in the countries trivializing the prostitution industry.
The main effect is the “prostitutionlization” of society.
In Thailand, prostitution has been normalized for 40 years. It allows us better to analyze the effects of its normalization.
The development of prostitution in Thailand began really with the Vietnam war. In 1957, there were 20,000 persons prostituted in the country; in 1964, after the establishment of seven American bases in Thailand, the number of prostitutes reached the figure of 400,000. During the Vietnam war, the World Bank recommended to the Thailand authorities to adopt, as economic strategy, the development of the tourism and the entertainment industry. Since, prostitution is a mass industry: in 1993, the number of prostituted persons was estimated at two millions, a third being children. The prostitutionlization of Thailand is also characterized by a large growth in the number of local johns: in the middle of the 90s, for 5,4 million sex tourists each year in Thailand, one counted 450 000 local johns a day. Henceforth, 75 % of Thais are johns. In the Northern part of the country, where women and the girls of the ethnic minorities are victims of the internal trafficking for purposes of prostitution in the South, this prostitutionalization entails a valuation of feminine births, because the birth of a girl is promise, for the family, of supplementary incomes. The percentage of women and girls HIV-positive of the North part of Thailand is estimated at 34 %.
With the economic liberalization, the transition to capitalism and the opening in the international tourism, Cambodia knew an explosion of the prostitution industry. The World Health Organization explains that, in the years to come, the epidemic of AIDS will make more victims in Cambodia than the Red Khmers genocide.
What do you think of the term “sex workers”?
The average age of recruitment into prostitution in the United States, Germany and in Canada is 14 years old. Given such conditions, it is hard to understand why so-called “sex work” is a simply freely chosen activity.
Governments legalize the procurement and the exploitation of the prostitution of others, above all, young women, allegedly in the name of the prostituted persons, transformed for the occasion as " sex workers” or as " persons receiving benefits of sexual services.” Never are the real reasons of this rule exposed: to guarantee men access to the prostituted persons, to feed virile pleasure, to reinforce male power and to assure substantial incomes for the State and the other procurers.
Whatever is the variety of the arguments of the ideologists favourable to the prostitution of others, their quibbles in the name of the freedom (of whom really?), only have for function to normalize the exploitation of the prostitution of women. These ideologists appeared when neoliberalism triumphed and prostitution globalized. If they defend the legalization of the prostitution industry in the name of the autonomy of the prostituted persons, they refuse to see one of the main consequences of their demand: regulated prostitution rivets the prostituted person to the procurer.
This legalization encourages the accumulation of the profits of the procurers, transformed in honourable businessmen, and the individual and monetary perusal of the prostituted persons. The accumulation of the wealth in a pole implies the accumulation of suffering, alienation, physical and psychological diseases, suicide and murder in the opposite pole.
Arisen from the ascendancy of the man on the woman, prostitution aggravates ceaselessly under the influence of neoliberal globalization. The offer of young women, children or "feminized" persons as instruments of pleasure becomes intensified. More and more numerous men consider the custom of the prostituted persons as a "right". The human rights of the women and the children do not stop moving back, except one, who is "new" and "revolutionary", the "right" to “prostitute " itself and to prostitute others! That is called “sex work”.
Why are western countries gathering this year to celebrate the end to black slavery – so-called – while 40 million women worldwide are trapped in sex slavery through prostitution?
It is an important question but difficult to answer. Historically, prostitution and slavery were strictly interlaced. Slaves' ownership is now considered as a crime. It is not the case of the ownership of women, because countries regulationists legalized procuring and to give impunity to johns. In our civilisation why is ownership of women still not yet considered a crime? The answer to this question obliges us to examine the particular oppression of women in societies, including the current ones.
As I say in my Manifesto, the history of civilization, to this day, is the history of the merchant subordination of women and children for the benefit of male sexual pleasure. Societies without writing did not know prostitution, which developed only in a relatively recent time. In ancient Greece, where the free woman is not worth more than the slave women, are created dicterion, the State brothels. The brothel boarders, who belong to the world of the slaves, and who are subjected to laws governing slavery, can be men as well as women but are especially young children. In ancient Rome, where the free women do not enjoy any rights, the licencia stupri established sexual slavery by delivering the person prostituted to the leno, the manager procurer of the brothel. As in Greece, prostitution passes necessarily by slavery, and the children are the first victims. Relation is so narrow between the development of slavery, that of women and children prostitution and the very lower status of "free" women. Historically, Christianity brought an active help to prostitution of the women. The prostituted women is “a benign pain “for the public maintenance of law and order. In the Middle Ages, prostitution become institutionalised and, during three centuries, the regulated brothels were part of the townscape. In feudal societies, where the status of the women is widely lower than that of the men and where the women are "properties" of those whom possess power, it is common "to protect" by the domestic confinement the virtue of women and their daughters and to give men women whom are confined in brothels.
The society, which relegates woman and girls to confinement, whether it is domestic or in brothels, gets organized so that feminine sexuality is mastered and subjected to males.
The modern bourgeois society did not abolish the dominion of women by men; it substituted only new conditions of oppression. The distinctive character of bourgeois time is to have made the "free" market the foundation of society, what is not ineffective on prostitution of women and girls. All the men possessing money, in spite of their place in the social hierarchy, have access to the women bodies. Those that have the biggest fortune have an unlimited access. They gained from it a satisfaction that, far from being strictly sexual, confers them feelings of impunity and superiority.
The subjection of women took various historic forms, of which that of slavery. The prostitution of women and girls exists in all merchant societies and class societies. The abolition of the slavery did not oppose to the capitalist society, who is based on the "freedom" of the working force. Is it the case with women oppression? And prostitution is one of the measures of the state of this oppression.
What do you think of the fact that some feminists seem to be okay with pornography as long as it is “egalitarian”.
Some feminists promote pornography. They say it would be beneficial to the women, in other words, by informing them about their sexuality. They claim it would break sexual taboos as well as various cultural and political stereotypes. The woman could as a consequence choose to live her sexuality as seen to her, in the same way as a man does (equality being so realised). Pornography would be a so-called liberator for women. For the other feminists — they are the majority — pornography is a serious threat to the freedom and dignity of the women; it promotes the inequality between women and men and it damages women.
Can pornography be considered as a symbol of sexual liberation, a contesting of social order, with, among others, today, its appropriation by women? Aesthetics of sexual violence, pornography is not only an explicit and hyper realistic representation of the sex act; it concerns also a normative speech on the sexuality and on the body. In this speech are put in place relationships which transform the human being into things to be mastered. Lowered to a means, the women serve of instruments of enjoyment. It is the commodified sex, a sort of " prostitutionnalization " of the fantasies, its spectacle.
New sexual order translates, at the dawn of the XXIth century, the paradoxes of an ambiguous sexual liberation. If the scenes of nudity and sexual couplings up invade the medias, apparently, these images do not participate to the sexual liberation, but rather in a confinement of the sexuality in relationships of subjection. One believed that sexual revolution would make decrease prostitution. On the contrary, the recovery commodification, modelled by the pervading media — notably the pornography one — strengthened male domination.
The feminists’ pro-pornography stance receives good press, but they deceive themselves if they believe that equalitarian pornography can exist.
What about others who are promoting pornography as “harmless pleasure”. What are your views?
There are numerous arguments in favour of pornography. It would allow the men to control their sexual necessities by masturbation; it would avoid appeal extramarital relations; it would divert fantasies towards non dangerous activities for others; pornography would inhibit, by masturbation, a "possible" sexual violence of men; it would be a tool which possesses an educational and medical value (because it allows some sex therapists to “treat” their patients); it would even be a source of sexual liberation and of women empowerment.
My opposition in the pornography leans, among others, on studies based on the “vicariant” learning, the conditioning or the cognitive processes, to put in evidence the influence of the pornography on fantasies and behaviour of the consumers, including their difficulties entering relation with the women. In that case, I have just led a search on young people, their consumption of pornography, their report to the body and to the sexuality. This inquiry shows, among others, that the more the age of the consumption is young, the more the referees' proportion having a tattoo or a piercing is high.
Some claim that "nobody can give evidence of links between violence and pornography ". Obviously, they do not give evidence of the opposite. Their assertion is nevertheless contradicted by numerous researches. A recent inquiry with 233 old women between 15 years and 69 years in one region of Quebec, reveals that 13 % of the referees assert having undergone on behalf of their husband a pressure in direct link with the consumption of pornography and 8 % tell to have had to do sexual acts against their will. In grips with sexual aggressors younger than before (the study is on 15 years), social workers make a link between the consumption of pornography (that is more younger then before) and the sexual aggression. A recent inquiry on the consumers of child pornography arrested in Quebec concludes that the persons accused of a crime connected to child pornography are more at risk, than the population, to have violent sexual behaviour.
Pornography influences desires and fantasies of men and strengthens specific sexual behaviour, of which aggressiveness and violence. It presents an erroneous and simplistic image of the sexuality and the relationship between women and men. It is a particular mode of exploitation, oppression and dominion of men.
What about pornography being promoted as the essence of free speech and left-wing liberal thinking and in another view as a form of “feminism”. Who is promoting this viewpoint and what are your views?
Many “progressives” evoke the argument of the free speech to promote the right to pornography but pornography is not a question of free speech, it is a question of free trade. The free speech is the freedom of opinions or ideas different from those of power. Pornography is a part of power (economic, social and political). But, now, the so-called left wing, when it forms the government, promote free trade and neoliberal policies.
The feminists against pornography do not try to forbid any explicit demonstrations of sexual behaviour, but opposes to the structures of power and dominion which are represented in pornography. The argument calling upon the right for free speech serves for hiding real stakes, namely the pornographers freedom.
There are laws against racism the anti-Semitism propaganda which limit free speech. Why no laws against hate propaganda towards women?
Snuff movies - are they still around?
If snuff movies is defined by real wounds or harms at the screen (and not only by murders), then snuff movies is rapidly expanding. Pornography is more and more violent. From 1990's, the contents of the pornography evolves towards sadomasochism, bondage and torture, collective rapes, double or triple penetration, etc. The fisting or fist fucking is rapidly expanding. It is a question of penetrating into an opening of the human body, the anus or the vagina, by the hand, the fist or even the foot, and of pushing it farthest possible. Tendency is in the gang bang, where a woman is delivered to several men. The gonzo (demolition and/or destruction) is in full development; the women, who are often qualified of " Good girls ", would like undergoing ill treatment and suffering. The "rape" or " collective rape” Web pornographic sites abound.
And the women are wounded during shootings. Some have sex and their anus is destroyed.
Testimonies are few, but are beginning to multiply. Regrettably, they receive less public visibility than that of the pornographic starlets are supposedly happy to be in that industry.
Bestiality and pornography. Your views please?
It is not a question in which I have thought about for a long time. My first reaction is to say that the pornography draws a line of equality between women and animals. Women are Bunnies (Playboy) or Pet (Penthouse). Parts of the feminine body receive animal names.
In pornography, they portray women seemingly mad with sex and ready to seduce everything and anything, including animals. Pornographic bestiality is a stake in relation of women with their counterpart (a subject on which PeTA bases its advertising). In pornography, women as well animals are instruments of pleasure for men.
In conclusion
Neoliberal capitalism finds its complete expression in the field of the sex industries. This regime of capital accumulation strengthens in a considerable way the system of the women oppression. By reducing women to goods to be bought, to be sold, to be rented, to be exchanged or acquired, prostitution affects women as a group of human beings. It strengthens archaic and male chauvinist equation between woman and sex, reducing women to a lesser humanity and contributes to maintain them in a lower status all around the world.
Resisting or struggling against the commodification of women and children in the sex industry becomes a central element in the struggle against neoliberal globalization. Anything less is complicity.
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