does it mention that the bulk of the company’s profits come from pornography. There are none of the images of women being “pounded” and “jackhammered” that one sees when pulling up any of the MindGeek-owned porn sites. There’s no sign of the “barely legal” girls who perform in the videos in Pornhub’s most popular category.
“When it comes to children,” Alliston says, “there’s really nothing to argue about. Kids are defined by our laws as not being able to consent to viewing porn. There are few protections against them seeing it, and some people take the attitude that it’s inevitable and benign. I think a lot of people who make this argument don’t realize what porn today really looks like in terms of how the women are treated.” She adds that in recent years there have been reports of kids watching porn at schools across the country. In 2014, school district officials in Los Angeles discovered that high-schoolers in its iPad program were bypassing the devices’ security settings in order to watch porn. In 2015, in Encinitas, California, parents were outraged to learn that second-graders were using school-issued iPads to watch it.
James City County, Virginia
Nudes. To have a social media account is to at some point see nudes or semi-nudes—“boob” and “butt” and body shots of teenage girls and women, many of whom work in porn. Whether or not a young person seeks out porn online, chances are she will see pornographic images popping up on her social media accounts, whether in circulated photos that appear on news feeds or as spam for porn sites. Or she can easily search social media for porn. On Twitter there are hashtags for “nudes” and “sluts.” On Tumblr and Instagram, searches for “porn” and “nudes” turn up multiple results. There are thousands of links on the Web to “leaked” nudes—screenshots taken and forwarded by those who received them, almost always without the senders’ knowledge or consent. You don’t even need to be on social media to see porn or nudes, graphic nudes; you can just Google them.
There are plenty of sex acts to be seen on social media as well. “It’s a thing to find that really outrageous thing and send it around,” said a thirteen-year-old girl in New York. “When I was in seventh grade, everybody was watching this viral video, ‘2 Girls, 1 Cup,’ of two [teenage] girls having sex and they’re eating one of them’s poop from a cup. It’s beyond disgusting. But if you don’t watch it, it’s like you’re afraid, or you missed out on what everybody’s talking about.”
“A girl I know was bragging to me about how she and her friends were watching porn of this girl they tied up and rammed in the butt,” said a thirteen-year-old girl in Los Angeles. “She was laughing about it. It really creeped me out.”
“Porn is not going away,” says Soraya Chemaly, a writer and the director of the WMC Speech Project, an initiative by the Women’s Media Center dedicated to fighting the online harassment of women and girls. “I don’t know if people are fooling themselves or burying their heads in the sand. I was talking to a high school principal and he said, Really, you think our kids are looking at porn? And I just didn’t even know what to say. Our kids are not only consuming porn, they’re producing porn”—by taking and sharing nudes. “I don’t really care if a person has a sex-positive view of pornography,” Chemaly adds, “but no one is talking about any of it to kids in terms of how it affects their behavior. Whether or not they’re looking at it, our culture is permeated by a porn aesthetic.”
So what is it like to be a girl growing up in a world inundated with nude and pornographic images of women and girls? How does it affect her conception of her body, her self, her self-worth? Her relationship to boys and other girls? In the spring of 2014, I went to James City County, Virginia (established in 1634 and
“When it comes to children,” Alliston says, “there’s really nothing to argue about. Kids are defined by our laws as not being able to consent to viewing porn. There are few protections against them seeing it, and some people take the attitude that it’s inevitable and benign. I think a lot of people who make this argument don’t realize what porn today really looks like in terms of how the women are treated.” She adds that in recent years there have been reports of kids watching porn at schools across the country. In 2014, school district officials in Los Angeles discovered that high-schoolers in its iPad program were bypassing the devices’ security settings in order to watch porn. In 2015, in Encinitas, California, parents were outraged to learn that second-graders were using school-issued iPads to watch it.
James City County, Virginia
Nudes. To have a social media account is to at some point see nudes or semi-nudes—“boob” and “butt” and body shots of teenage girls and women, many of whom work in porn. Whether or not a young person seeks out porn online, chances are she will see pornographic images popping up on her social media accounts, whether in circulated photos that appear on news feeds or as spam for porn sites. Or she can easily search social media for porn. On Twitter there are hashtags for “nudes” and “sluts.” On Tumblr and Instagram, searches for “porn” and “nudes” turn up multiple results. There are thousands of links on the Web to “leaked” nudes—screenshots taken and forwarded by those who received them, almost always without the senders’ knowledge or consent. You don’t even need to be on social media to see porn or nudes, graphic nudes; you can just Google them.
There are plenty of sex acts to be seen on social media as well. “It’s a thing to find that really outrageous thing and send it around,” said a thirteen-year-old girl in New York. “When I was in seventh grade, everybody was watching this viral video, ‘2 Girls, 1 Cup,’ of two [teenage] girls having sex and they’re eating one of them’s poop from a cup. It’s beyond disgusting. But if you don’t watch it, it’s like you’re afraid, or you missed out on what everybody’s talking about.”
“A girl I know was bragging to me about how she and her friends were watching porn of this girl they tied up and rammed in the butt,” said a thirteen-year-old girl in Los Angeles. “She was laughing about it. It really creeped me out.”
“Porn is not going away,” says Soraya Chemaly, a writer and the director of the WMC Speech Project, an initiative by the Women’s Media Center dedicated to fighting the online harassment of women and girls. “I don’t know if people are fooling themselves or burying their heads in the sand. I was talking to a high school principal and he said, Really, you think our kids are looking at porn? And I just didn’t even know what to say. Our kids are not only consuming porn, they’re producing porn”—by taking and sharing nudes. “I don’t really care if a person has a sex-positive view of pornography,” Chemaly adds, “but no one is talking about any of it to kids in terms of how it affects their behavior. Whether or not they’re looking at it, our culture is permeated by a porn aesthetic.”
So what is it like to be a girl growing up in a world inundated with nude and pornographic images of women and girls? How does it affect her conception of her body, her self, her self-worth? Her relationship to boys and other girls? In the spring of 2014, I went to James City County, Virginia (established in 1634 and
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