The people in front of the camera

Americans watch porn — and lots of it. The web’s largest porn site, XVideos, receives 350 million unique visits every month, according to the Daily Mail. The same report estimated that 30 percent of all Internet traffic is devoted to
pornography.

However, only 25 percent of men admitted to watching online porn in a 2013 Pew Research Center survey.

While most porn is aimed at men, one in three porn watchers is a woman.
And it’s big money, too. Recent estimates place the revenues of the porn industry at about $10 billion.

This column is not about whether America should be watching porn. The fact of the matter is that many of us do. Rather, it is about the most important people involved with pornography — the performers.

Lauren A. is a college freshman at Duke University, and she’s also a porn star. She wrote about her experiences on the popular women’s website xoJane.
She began performing in porn to pay for her tuition at Duke.

“Doing pornography fulfills me,” she wrote. “In a world where women are so often robbed of their choice, I am completely in control of my sexuality.”

She did not shy away from writing about the darker sides of the pornography industry either.

“We need to give a voice to the women that are exploited and abused in the industry,” she wrote.

She talked about the harassment she received from her classmates after they discovered her profession.

Internet message boards were filled with insults about her. Lauren was “a huge fucking whore,” according to one anonymous commenter.

Despite the abuse, Lauren plans to continue her work in porn.

“I am going to graduate, I am going to pursue my dreams,” she wrote. “Just try to stop me.”

Denigrating porn performers furthers the oppression of women.

“Patriarchy fears female sexuality,” as Lauren succinctly put it.

Women are simultaneously encouraged to have and shamed for having sex — an unconscionable standard. And ironically, considering the number of people who consume pornography, some of the people insulting porn stars are probably the same people who watch them online every day.

Regardless of your opinions about pornography, voices like Lauren’s must be taken into consideration. We must realize that many of the people who perform in pornography are often trying to make a living, to further their ambitions.

Some even see the experience as liberating. Just the same, those people who are forced into the industry or have horrible, traumatic experiences are hurt even more by dismissing all performers as “whores.”

Porn stars are not just objects to be ogled at and insulted — they are complex human beings with a myriad of motivations and desires. They might want to be in their position, they might not. I’m not going to tell you what to think about porn.

But whatever you think, don’t forget there’s a real person in front of the camera.

estahr@indiana.edu