Of course the women in porn are being punished by men. Gail Dines' research for 'Pornland' found that 88% of porn videos contain violence against women. I believe she is in the process of updating these statistics and will show there has been an increase.
The wife of Neil Parish, the MP accused of viewing porn in the House Of Commons, told the press that, "It’s degrading. It’s demeaning. But on the other hand it takes two to tango. There must be women posing for all this,”
"It’s degrading. It’s demeaning. But on the other hand it takes two to tango. There must be women posing for all this.”
Mrs Parish "others" the women exploited in porn movies, and by the porn industry. She distances them from "ordinary women" like her, who are not violently exploited by the porn industry. She sees them as complicit. They have agreed to "pose". I wonder if she has seen the extreme violence of any of these videos or that she thinks it is the digital version of a wrinkled Playboy stuffed at the back of the cupboard which she imagines Neil is viewing on his phone. She seems to have an outdated view of the porn industry. And yet, even then, even in that magazine stuffed under a bed in the late seventies, there was an implicit punishment for women. That punishment is meted out by men to the women she thinks are "posing", but also to women like her and women like me; you; all of us. Being demeaned, diminished and exploited to produce sexual pleasure for men is a punishment for being born female in a patriarchal world. Being female in a world where men buy, physically and sexually harm, film and degrade other women, or where other men buy the "product" of those men, is how other women are also punished as a lesser side effect. No woman escapes the effect of porn. If your husband is using porn in the House of Commons you are one of the women being humiliated even if you aren't the one being anally gang raped. If you are a woman being governed by men who would watch other women being raped on camera you are also being humiliated and degraded.
Women are punished in porn, and this is far worse, but they are also punished with porn, and in many different ways.
Women are punished in porn, and this is far worse, but they are also punished with porn, and in many different ways. Let me tell you how porn was used to punish me once. Past life. I'm not looking for sympathy.
Abused women often do not want sex with the man abusing them. Your body doesn't feel aroused by a body that sometimes hurts you. Your mind can't connect with a mind that sometimes emotionally twists yours in pain.
I didn't. He was vile. His body repulsed me. His face repulsed me. His advances made me scream inside. Yet I smiled, because I had to and I acted because I had to. I evaded; made excuses; feigned being sick; menstruating; backache; all sorts of attempts to escape him and his demands. Of course this led to accusations of being "frigid" or "shit in bed", and it didn't always work in any case. Sometimes I thought "well I'd better get on with it, pretend I'm somewhere else and make it as fast as possible". Because this is what many women face in marriages, even though rape in marriage was made illegal in 1991 in the UK after R v R [1991] UKHR 12 . Even with such law at our disposal we know that coerced sex in a relationship would be very difficult to prove and a conviction today almost impossible. At the time many of us wouldn't be able to name it as such in any case.
So how does porn feature in this abuse? For me it was used against me very deliberately. He would come home most evenings from work via the pub. I would bath and put our daughter to bed, cook, deliver him more beer on demand and hope he passed out quickly. Sometimes he did, sometimes I would fall asleep waiting. If I fell asleep on the sofa, the thing it is comfortable and normal to do in your own home, or should be, I would waken to find him watching porn. Just sitting there with it on the television, on one of the sky channels he had purchased. He wouldn't be doing anything sexual, just watching with a horrible leer on his face, almost drooling. I would feel sick. On the screen was a woman or women, being violated and raped in the most horrific of ways and him watching it in front of me. Deliberately to hurt and humiliate me. I never knew how long it had been on before I woke up or whether I had woken as soon as it was put on. But he would meet my eyes. He would let me know that this was my punishment for getting too comfortable. For taking my eye off the ball. For neglecting his needs. Then the implication would be very clear. "I do this because of you, so I do this to you. This is what you get if you fall asleep." Can you imagine ever being comfortable again? The anxiety? If I went up to bed early he would watch porn and then come up to bed drunk. Expecting and demanding. Or a mixture of threatening, cajoling, manipulating.
One morning he began an argument just before I was due to take my daughter to her Ju Jitsu lesson. He commenced berating me for being a shit mother but also being "shit in bed you frigid cow". I remember sitting at the bottom of the stairs crying, pleading with him not to be unkind. I pulled myself together, as I always did, and got my daughter to her lesson. I don't know to this day how much of all this she ever heard. The walls and floors of a modern town house did not mask much noise. When I got to the gym I tried calling him to sort things out. To appease him. To fix it. He hung up. Your gut is so tense at these times. You know you have to go back and you don't know what you're going back to.
On this occasion I went back to "punishment by porn". Bearing in mind my daughter was about 7 (I can't remember exactly) she and I entered the house and it was quiet. We went into the lounge. She went to put the television on. He was sat on the sofa so I went to sit next to him to try to "make friends". He had his laptop open on his knee which was odd. He didn't use it much in the house. He didn't close it as I approached. I looked at the screen. Page after page was open to hardcore porn. He simply looked at me. Didn't slam the screen. I was meant to see this. It was punishment. He clicked down each page slowly, with his child in the room and me shaking and feeling sick. Most of them were "Sexy secretary bent over desk and drilled" type searches. He didn't speak. Just kept clicking, so I saw each one. I couldn't really say much because my daughter was there. I couldn't shout or scream as I wanted to. I held back my tears. Then he stood up. Said he was going out and went on a drinking bender coming back in the early hours.
On another occasion he went drinking in the day on his way home from work. I had no idea where he was but he came home steaming drunk mid afternoon. My daughter was upstairs playing in her room. He stumbled in to the lounge, stared at me, then threw a DVD onto the television cabinet. He slumped onto the sofa and passed out immediately. The video was a "dogging" video. The one where people go to lonely locations and watch each other having sex. I don't know if he ever did this. He did visit brothels and massage parlours.
So I don't think watching porn is something men do "accidentally". I don't think it is a harmless "tango" danced by complicit women who "pose" for men who produce it. I think it is produced deliberately to harm women both in it and not in it. I think it is consumed by men deliberately to enjoy the physical and sexual harm done to the women in it and to enjoy the humiliation of women more widely by their using it. I think men feel power over women when they use porn. I think some men feel that porn is a right they have as men, but also that they are able to "put women in their place" when they use it. I think some men use porn because they want to experience the humiliation of women, including the women in their own lives.
I think Neil Parish is one of the worst of these men. Using porn whilst in government and in a position of power over the women of the country and surrounded by female colleagues is an act of supreme arrogance and I believe it was considered and deliberate. I see him in much the way I now see my abusive ex. Using porn is punishment of women.
Men who use porn have no place around women. At all. They have shown their contempt for us and we should show them nothing but contempt in return.