What's wrong with porn?

Anti Pornhub activist Rose Kalemba just revealed that her pet kitten was murdered and mutilated and left on her back porch.

Rose Kalemba is a survivor of childhood gang rape and sexual trafficking. Unfortunately her trauma never ended that day as the perpetrators of this crime recorded it and uploaded it onto the largest porn website on the internet, Pornhub.

During its time on Pornhub, the video of the kidnap and rape of her as a 14 year old child garnered millions of views and downloads while Pornhub made money with ads placed on the video. Furthermore, her personal information was shared on Pornhub too and she faced, as a minor, men and women stalking her and contacting her to perform sex acts in person or on video. It took her months and repeated attempts for Pornhub to finally take the video down, only after she had to pretend to be a lawyer.

Because Rose has bravely chosen to go public with her story, she has faced increased harassment and stalking from porn addicted misogynist men AND harassment and slander from so called "sex workers" for calling out the evils of Pornhub.

Its women freaking out on drugs, babbling, while still getting fucked and laughed at. Its women “going psycho” on a director or male pornstar for changing what was supposed to be done that day and suprising them with something they didn’t agree to (usually anal). Its women curled up in a fetal position sobbing while the men in room mock her or tell her to get back into position. Its young women, teenagers, nervously asking if they really have to do that with that many men. Its women clearly passed out from drugs or alcohol still getting fucked. Its women clearly unstable, speaking nonsense, still getting fucked. Its women talking about childhood molestation on set, and men in the background jokingly yelling out “that’s why you’re here now!” and “that’s hot!” at her expense.

Guy puts his girlfriend in a headlock until she passes out and continues to rape her, under the guise of BDSM.

Stop normalizing BDSM. This woman actually questioned if being choked until she passed out was normal.

Choking especially is never safe but it's so glorified. I see teenagers, and lesbians in particular, on tiktok make jokes about choking or wanting to be choked constantly and I really hope they're not actually doing it. It has become so commonplace and it's really sad. One of the comments from the reddit post:

BDSM AND ESPECIALLY CHOKING ARE NOT SAFE.

- 95% of those in prostitution experienced sexual harassment that would be legally actionable in another job setting (2) - 70% to 95% were physically assaulted in prostitution (2) - 60% to 75% were raped in prostitution (2); 80% of those were raped in prostitution (7) - 8 to 10 times per year on average is how much prostituted women are raped (7) - 75% of those in prostitution have been homeless at some point in their lives (2) - 65% to 95% of those in prostitution were sexually assaulted as children (2); 93% were sexually abused prior to prostitution (11) - 85% of those were abused prior to being prostituted (11) - 80% to 90% of those in prostitution experience verbal abuse and social contempt which adversely affect them (2) - 68% of 854 people in strip club, massage, and street prostitution in 9 countries met criteria for post-traumatic stress disorder or PTSD (2) - 71% of the women interviewed in a study had significant symptoms of dissociation (6) - 90% of prostituted women interviewed by WHISPER had pimps (21) - 100% of those said “they didn’t want anyone they loved to ever have to prostitute their bodies for survival” (8) - 85% to 95% of those in prostitution want to escape it, but have no other options for survival (2) - 92% of those in prostitution of a 5-country study who wanted out of prostitution immediately and considered it slavery, not work (8) - 89% of 854 people in prostitution from 9 countries told us that they wanted to escape prostitution (9)        -75% needed a home or safe place        -76% needed job training        -61% needed health care        -56% needed individual counseling        -51% needed peer support        -51% needed legal assistance        -47% needed drug/alcohol treatment - Prostituted women are the number one victims of serial killers (11) - Prostituted women have a 200% greater chance to die (11) - Out of 218 “johns” who were warned that the women they were looking at online were actually minors, 42% still wanted the underage girl (10)

Catherine Mackinnon popularised the term sexual harassment and fought to have it legally recognised for what it is.

Andrea Dworkin fought her whole life against pornography and prostitution. She was prostituted and raped by police after protesting. She is now passed on and is still derided and scorned for standing up for what she believed in and not looking the way society wanted her to. She isn’t even alive to tell them to fuck off.

Gail Dines is a professor and is an expert in media and sociology at Wheellock university who has spent her career advocating against pornography and researching the porn industry. She wrote Pornland a book exposing the porn industry’s mechanisms and practices which has been published around the world.

All these women are intelligent and amazing. They all contributed so much to feminism and have helped countless women but that doesn’t count for shit to sex pozzies.

Guy puts his girlfriend in a headlock until she passes out and continues to rape her, under the guise of BDSM.

Stop normalizing BDSM. This woman actually questioned if being choked until she passed out was normal.

Choking especially is never safe but it's so glorified. I see teenagers, and lesbians in particular, on tiktok make jokes about choking or wanting to be choked constantly and I really hope they're not actually doing it. It has become so commonplace and it's really sad. One of the comments from the reddit post:

BDSM AND ESPECIALLY CHOKING ARE NOT SAFE.

Even fifteen seconds of pressure can cause cardiac arrest, and brain damage begins almost instantly after hypoxia–and is both cumulative and irreversible.

Furthermore, the xyphoid bone can be shattered, the trachea and esophagus can be crushed and the voice box can be bruised beyond repair.

It can also cause kidney, lung, liver and spinal damage, all of which present asymptomatically and can strike hours or days after the choking.

It is a BAD idea, medically speaking, to choke anyone. It is negligent and dangerous to do it at all, and can easily be lethal.

There is no such thing as a safe choke–any pressure that is strong enough to restrict breathing is strong enough to kill your partner.

And that’s not hyperbole, either, that’s:

-Bronze Star and Cross lifeguarding experience -CPR, St Johns Ambulance First Aid, and Black Rose BDSM first aid certifications -four years of forensic anthropology -almost a decade of kink experience -three years of full-contact martial arts

According to research collected by the campaign We Can’t Consent To This, set up by Fiona Mackenzie earlier this year, Reed is estimated to be the 52nd British woman to die in a purported “sex game gone wrong”. Thirty-two men who have claimed this controversial defense have been found guilty of murder, suggesting that this defense is often deemed to be false – an excuse increasingly used to explain the violent death of a sexual partner.

Fourteen cases resulted in manslaughter convictions, and five men either had charges against them dropped, not brought, or were found not guilty. Two thirds of the women and girls had been strangled.

Five male victims were also killed by men, and no women have killed men or women in these circumstances in the UK.

According to Mackenzie’s data, the number of men claiming that a woman has died in a sex game gone wrong in the UK has increased by 90% since 2010. Of all the cases collected by We Can’t Consent To This, 24 have taken place in the past nine years.

It was the 2016 death of Natalie Connolly that first brought the term “sex game gone wrong” to national attention. She had endured 40 separate injuries, including those sustained by a blunt object, and a fractured eye socket. Her partner, John Broadhurst, claimed the injuries were from consensual “rough” sex and was convicted of manslaughter by gross negligence in December 2018. He is now serving a custodial sentence of just under four years.

Broadhurst’s sentence prompted the Labor MP for Peckham and Camberwell Harriet Harman to speak out against this so-called “50 shades defense” : “we cannot have a situation where men kill women and blame them. No man will ever be accused of murder again if he can always say, ‘yes she’s injured, she wanted it’. She will never be able to say, ‘no I didn’t’ because he’s killed her and therefore she hasn’t got a voice.“

Legally, no one can consent to injury or death. This defense is not successful for men in the majority of cases, with 43 being convicted for murder. This would suggest that for many men, this defense is being used opportunistically to try and diminish their responsibility. 

However, if a man can convince the courts that a woman was accidentally killed during sex, then he can be convicted of manslaughter. This has been the case for six men jailed since 2010.

These include 20-year old Chloe Miazek. Two hours after meeting 32-year old Mark Bruce, she’d been strangled to death in his flat. He claimed it was an accident, although he accepted that he did not get Miazek’s consent to choke her. He was convicted of culpable homicide (the equivalent of manslaughter in Scottish law), and sentenced for six years.

Then there was Hannah Pearson, aged 16, who was killed in 2016 by James Morton. The court found that Morton was “obsessed with strangulation” and watched strangulation pornography. He claimed that he began to “lightly strangle” Pearson and, because she did not object, he strangled her more forcefully. He was convicted of manslaughter and sentenced to 12 years.

In 2011, 23 year old Anna Banks was killed by her “obsessive” boyfriend Daniel Lancaster. She was found 24 hours after her death with “dried blood on her face” having been strangled. Lancaster claimed that Banks “enjoyed being throttled during intercourse” and was sentenced to four years for manslaughter as “part of a sex game gone wrong.”

Broadhurst and at least three other men using the “50 Shades” defense have been convicted of “manslaughter by gross negligence” – where a person has failed in a duty of care that has led to another’s death. Mackenzie believes this sets a worrying precedent.

“By claiming that the act that led to the person’s death is consensual, it’s then not treated as unlawful,” she explained. “It makes it okay, for example, to hold a knife to a woman’s throat and cut her if you can then convince the judge that it was consensual and not an unlawful act that could be prosecuted.”

For Mackenzie, one explanation for the increased use of the 50 Shades defense is that these cases are attracting more and more media reports, and therefore more and more men know they can claim “sex game gone wrong” as part of their defense.

There is also an argument to be made that cultural changes rather than legal changes are having an influence.

For example, BDSM is becoming more mainstream, and more couples outside of the official community are experimenting with practices once confined to fetish clubs. This could be contributing to the rise in deaths – and the increasing acceptability of the 50 Shades defense.

Karen Ingala-Smith suggests another cultural influence: the mainstreaming of aggression in sex, and violent pornography. She told me the rise of the 50 Shades defense could relate to the “increased use of violent and degrading porn, and its normalization” that leads to both women and girls feeling coerced into consenting to potentially violent sex acts by their partners.

Wistrich agrees, based on anecdotal conversations going on among women. “There’s a normalization of violent porn and women feel compelled to participate in it. Obviously some people freely engage in S&M, but some feel compelled to do it rather than volunteer to do it. They see it as what they have to do. I guess the normalization of violent porn encourages people to participate in more and more dangerous type of sex. It gives men permission to do certain things to women, and because it’s normalized it makes it harder for women to refuse.”

Mackenzie also believes that the normalization of violence in pornography could be a factor. She has heard from women who have been “shamed” for being “boring” if they don’t accept strangulation as part of sex, and that increasingly “for men the expectation is that women will say yes to it. For women the expectation is that they can’t say no to it, so they go along with it.”

Mackenzie is also collecting data on men using the sex game gone wrong defense in cases of injury to women.

“Since 2010 there’s been a humongous increase in the numbers of women being injured and the man has claimed it’s a sex game gone wrong,” she explained. “Women go through the court process and the men often are found not guilty or receive a tiny sentence because they are able to convince the judge and jury and prosecutors that this was an accident.”

Part of the issue, she believes, is victim blaming. “I am almost certain that there is a view that the woman are responsible for what killed them and asked for it to be done. That is really scary.”

A number of politicians and law enforcers are now accepting that legalised prostitution has been an unmitigated disaster. There is currently a proposed law being considered by the Dutch Senate which, if passed, would result in punters being criminalised if they pay for sex with a trafficked, pimped or otherwise coerced woman.

These changes are the result of a vibrant sex trade abolitionist movement emerging in Holland.

The Dutch legalised their brothel industry in the year 2000. The government promised that this would result in safety for the women, and an end to trafficking. It claimed that everything would be above board, safe and clean. The opposite happened. Sex tourism is now a major industry, with British men being one group of Europeans visiting the city to pay for sex. A number of punters I have interviewed told me that they wouldn’t have dreamt of using prostituted women back home, but that being in Holland gave them permission to do it.

The illegal and unlicensed sex trade has boomed under legalisation, trafficking of women has risen dramatically, demand is on the rise and the women are certainly no safer than they were when pimping was illegal.

I have been visiting Holland over the course of 15 years, researching the consequences of legalisation.I have interviewed sex buyers (including one who told me he first paid for sex when he was 12 years old), women in brothels, pimps and pro-legalisation lobbyists that make a profit off the backs of prostituted women.

Xaviera Hollander is a big part of the propaganda machine that promotes the notion that prostituted women under legalisation are having a great time. Hollander is known for her memoir, The Happy Hooker: My Own Story, which sold by the millions. I visited her at her home in Amsterdam, to ask if she thinks the women are happy under legalisation. She admits to me that trafficking is on the rise, and that legalisation is far from effective in removing criminality from the sex trade. Coming from a former pimp, this is quite something.

There are large numbers of tour guides offering tours around Amsterdam’s red light areas. I took one of these tours last year, and was told that legalisation is a perfect model, that the women are safe and happy and the public accept the window brothels as part of the architecture. I asked the guide where he got his information from, and he told me that the Prostitution Information Centre (PIC) provide, for a fee, information for all of the tour companies. The PIC is run as a business by women who claim to be “sex workers”. In fact they appear to be nothing of the kind, being a company charging for this advice and therefore profiting from prostitution.

What once looked like a revolutionary approach to prostitution is now clearly seen as a disaster, by all except those who seek to make a profit from prostitution.

Jolanda Boer is a senior public prosecutor specialising in human trafficking. Over the past decade Boer has dealt with more than 100 such cases in Amsterdam. “There have been cases where the girl has been raped by their pimps and threatened into working behind the windows. The women are not in a position to freely tell people when something is going wrong. But of course they’re smiling because if you don’t you’re not going to get a client,” says Boer.

On Saturday I spoke to a packed room about my book on the global sex trade. The event was held in the red light district, in a building that had previously been a Chinese massage parlour offering “happy endings”. I had expected some kind of protest, or infiltration by the pro-prostitution lobby. But every person in the room was there because they recognised that prostitution is a human rights abuse, harmful to the women involved, and that legalisation has been disastrous.

The following day I was in Den Haag, home of the Dutch parliament, launching my book in front of dozens of concerned citizens, all of whom have had enough of Holland being held up as a perfect model in dealing with prostitution. After the launch, dozens of us marched along the local red light district, holding up banners and placards with slogans such as “Shut down the sex trade” and “Enough is enough”. It was the first ever public demonstration against legal brothels.

This was disturbing, but it does highlight some things that “sex positive” videos about porn ignore. The girl, clearly on drugs, saying she started to do porn to pay rent (and take care of a family of EIGHT) is a perfect example of what’s wrong with the porn industry. Not to mention the racism (seriously black king wtf?) and the girl with the childhood trauma  (”we had sex to a scene in titanic. We were in elementary school”)