The Sex Myth: Why Everything We're Told Is Wrong (16 page)

The report focuses on the difference in rapes between 1999 and 2002. However, in its first paragraph, the report states that lap dancing
‘arrived in Britain in 1997
with the opening of Secrets in Hammersmith’. So why pick and choose statistics starting two years later? If the opening of lap-dancing clubs had an impact, wouldn’t you expect the
impact to be evident reasonably soon afterwards?

Actually you wouldn’t – not because someone has proved that the lag time between opening a strip club and increase in rape is two years, but because no one has conclusively proved
there is any link between the two at all. So, the choice of year can be completely arbitrary and it does not matter. Strip clubs are not correlated with rapes in any credible study.

While many people might be tempted to believe dodgy statistics because they sound like something that ‘should’ be true, the analysis shows no demonstrable link between adult
entertainment and crime. The idea that adult businesses have negative fallout for communities is a myth that should be put to bed for good.

5

W
hich came first: porn, or objection to porn?

Sexy images have been part of human culture even before written history. The squat, cartoonish figure of the Willendorf Venus with her pendulous breasts and detailed vulva is still naughty some
25,000 years after it was carved. Greek pottery and prints from the Middle Ages aroused and amused. Edo-era Japanese woodblock prints, known as
shunga
, explicitly depicted sex in a way that
titillates even today.

In some societies, explicit imagery was not considered offensive in and of itself. In others, it has been highly compartmentalised. Redefining these artefacts as potent agents of corruption,
however, coincided with one of the richest archaeological finds of the Victorian era: uncovering the city of Pompeii.

The excavations of Pompeii in the 1860s revealed the extent of the Roman Empire’s fascination with erotica. Penis-shaped oil lamps and figures of Priapus with his huge permanent erection
featured in many
Pompeiian houses. Nineteenth-century society was unaccustomed to such frank depictions of genitalia. It was, some felt, a potential scandal. So the artefacts
deemed most offensive were hidden away in the Gabinetto Segreto, or Secret Museum, in Naples so as to not corrupt women, children, and the working class. Admission was restricted solely to
‘people of mature age and respected morals’.

And thus was erotica consigned to dusty rooms, considered fit only for scholars and the educated rich. They, it was felt, had the mental robustness needed to avoid being corrupted by such
things. The Victorian era’s oversize concern with the harm it might cause was also reflected in the Obscene Publications Act of 1857. Also known as Lord Campbell’s Act, it was
Britain’s first law making the sale of obscene material a statutory offence.

The bill was controversial at the time, and received strong opposition from Parliament. It was passed on the assurance by the Lord Chief Justice that it was ‘intended to apply exclusively
to works written for the single purpose of corrupting the morals of youth and of a nature calculated to shock the common feelings of decency in any well-regulated mind’.

Prior to that period, erotic art and literature had enjoyed widespread success, particularly with the advent of cheap printing following the Renaissance. So-called ‘whore dialogues’,
popular in the Enlightenment, were tales of naïve young girls being ‘instructed’ on sex by older women. They included snippets of philosophy, herbal folklore, satire,
anti-clericalism, and oh yes – hot lesbian action. We’d call it pornography today, but the use of that word as a blanket term for all erotica was really a Victorian invention.

The word ‘pornography’ comes from Greek roots:
porno
-, related to prostitution;
graphos
, to write. Stories about hookers, in other words. But the term as we use it now
did not enter the lexicon until far later. People in the nineteenth century became more worried about drawing a line between what was art and what was obscene. Those worries helped shape the view
of what today is labelled ‘pornography’ versus what is labelled ‘erotica’ – even though few people, if any, can give a clear idea of the difference.

‘Obscenity’, meanwhile, comes from the Latin
obscenus
, meaning repulsive or detestable. Something obscene is something that is offensive
to the morality
of the time, something taboo. The definition of obscenity is different in different cultures, and even people in the same culture can disagree about what is obscene. Many laws have tried to define
obscenity. While erotic imagery can be defined as obscene, it isn’t always considered so, and some laws recognise this.

The Hicklin Test was one early attempt to distinguish between these concepts. Dating from a 1868 court case, it attempted to formally define the terms ‘pornography’ and
‘obscenity’. Unlike Lord Campbell’s Act, it extended its remit to include not only material intended to corrupt, but anything that could have that effect, regardless of
intent.

It considered ‘whether the tendency of the matter charged as obscenity is to deprave and corrupt those whose minds are open to such immoral influences’. These nineteenth-century
precedents were especially concerned with the supposedly dangerous effects of erotica on women. The gentler sex was considered so weak-minded that even novels were dangerous. This view that women
need extra protection from corruption persists even today.

You might be asking yourself, all this trouble over a bunch of fantasies? And pretty unrealistic ones at that. Most of today’s erotic pictures and films resemble everyday sex as much as
Casualty
does the real workings of a hospital. It’s less stories about hookers, and more soap operas with boobies. And yet pornography is a lightning rod for all kinds of accusations.
In general, these can be divided into two types: concern about the effects on the viewer – like with Lord Campbell’s Act and the Hicklin Test – and concern about the effects on
the participants.

It is often said that porn objectifies women and promotes sexual violence. Is this true? In porn, people dress sluttier, act bolder, and definitely spend less time negotiating sex than any
real-life equivalent (outside of prostitution). Porn is very different from the sexual experiences most of us have had. Because of this, it’s an easy target. Most of us have never met anyone
who’s been in porn, making what they do ripe for speculation.

For some people, the first time they see porn can be startling. This can colour opinions of all adult films. Read any writing that
criticises the adult industry, and you
are likely to encounter a depiction of porn as pneumatic California girls. A look that last had its heyday in the 1990s, but has changed drastically since. Only the critics haven’t noticed,
because they probably haven’t bothered to update their information.

These days, there is a wide variety of erotica catering to many tastes. Just because one film doesn’t press your buttons doesn’t make all of them terrible. Anyone who judged, say,
all television shows on the basis of having once seen
Baywatch
would be mocked mercilessly in the media. But for some reason, it’s okay to make these generalisations with porn.

Like a lot of things, it all comes down to personal taste. I don’t happen to like beetroot. That doesn’t mean that I object to other root vegetables. I’m okay with people
having beets in their salads . . . I just don’t want them in mine. Avoiding beetroot and taking a ‘live and let live’ stance is one thing. Pursuing the total abolition of beetroot
from restaurants and supermarkets might be a little over the top.

The same is true of beetroot and
Baywatch
as porn. As it turns out there is research to show that contrary to what we may assume, the reality of porn is a lot different to how it’s
been portrayed, both for performers and consumers.

June 2010. Adult film actor Stephen Clancy Hill picked up a Samurai sword from the prop department at Ultima Studios and went on what was later reported as a violent rampage.
By the time he jumped from a cliff to his death four days later, one man was dead, three people were injured, and the Los Angeles Police Department negotiators who spent the previous day trying to
talk Hill down from the precipice were at a loss to understand what had happened to the star of
Cum Fart Tsunami 2
, or why.

Much has been assumed about how porn victimises women, but it’s an open secret that inside adult film studios, it’s the female performers and not the men who have the status on set.
The women’s pay is higher, particularly in mainstream porn, with women earning perhaps $1000 to $1500 a scene and performing in as many as twenty to thirty scenes a month. The men, by
contrast, earn less than half, even as little as a tenth, per scene.

The women in porn also have more potential opportunities to get work making personal appearances. Of the men in porn, it’s only a very few, such as Ron Jeremy, who
have anything like a public profile sufficient to attract personal appearance fees, and he has only achieved this because he has been a reliable performer for so many years.

When you look at the men in porn, the ‘woodsmen’ are living props performing sex acts more suited to a Rampant Rabbit than mere mortals. And in the final product the men are cropped
and edited down to faceless entities, defined solely by the size and ability of their organs.

In such an environment, it’s hardly surprising Stephen Clancy Hill became so disillusioned and frustrated. ‘I can see how a guy like him would live in a fantasy world where he thinks
he is a ninja. He really had nothing going for himself,’ said porn actress Charley Chase, who worked with Hill on
Tea Baggin’ Party.
‘He’s the quiet guy who finally
lost it.’
⁶⁸

As a business, porn is surprisingly hard on the men. If the female stars don’t turn up to the set, it’s a disaster; if the men don’t, it’s easy to substitute any other
cock. They are afforded no leeway at all. Many men think they would like to give it a go until they find out what the job actually entails. Rather than an endless supply of pleasure, it’s
full-on work, with stops and starts, the demands of the director taking precedence over any physical satisfaction, not to mention the need to remain consistently and predictably erect, something a
lot of people can’t do. Even in the age of Viagra.

For someone like Clancy Hill – Steve Driver to colleagues and aficionados – there may be bragging rights associated with being in porn, but only to those on the outside of the
business. There’s little else. Recently fired, on the cusp of homelessness, and with a criminal record, Hill’s final act was a sad waste of life. Hardly the triumphant battle cry of a
man exercising his dominion over women. Hardly what opponents of pornography would have you believe.

When it comes to the adult industry, many assume that women, not men, are at greater risk of being corrupted and used. The women in porn films are regarded as victims, damaged or abused, while
the men are hardly given a second thought. When it comes to the men in
gay porn, almost no concern is extended at all (apart from the occasional panic about condom use and
HIV). The women in gay porn might as well not even exist. Outspoken opponents of porn such as Andrea Dworkin and Catharine MacKinnon, once on the fringes of the feminist movement, through large
amounts of publicity – and a general public distaste for the topic – helped to frame the terms of the debate today. By and large, the discussion focuses exclusively on the presumed
effects on female performers in heterosexual porn. What happens to the men isn’t on the agenda.

Women, in fact, turn out to have the upper hand not just in pay for on-set work, but also (perhaps unexpectedly) in how they are portrayed on screen. An extensive survey of adult films measured
male and female roles in porn. It looked in detail at how both men and women were depicted.
⁶⁹
A total of 838 scenes from popular porn films in Australia
were assessed by three separate researchers, to minimise bias. The results may just surprise you.

One of the study’s main concerns was how characters were identified: do they act like real people, and are they treated that way? Reciprocity was another question: when it comes to the
sex, are women pleased as often and in as many ways as the men? And, of course, violence was important: are the women victimised in the films?

The research found that, overall, women in the films talk to other characters more frequently than their male counterparts and spend more time doing it. They have more time talking to the
camera, and spend longer looking at the camera. They are not only the focus, but also the central characters in the films. The men are one-dimensional by comparison.

This makes sense for films for which the presumed audience is heterosexual men. After all, with the films serving as part of their sexual fantasies, why would they want the men to be
personalised? The men are there as a standin for themselves. It’s the responses, the interaction, of the women that would be of more interest.

When it came to sexual reciprocity (orgasms, in other words), the women did less well than the men, but not altogether badly and certainly better than you might assume.

Women orgasmed less frequently than men. But that’s hardly a
shock since in videos the ‘money shot’ has more visual impact than the less physically
obvious female orgasm. The causes of female orgasm in the films reflected a wide range of realistically arousing activities. Masturbation, dildo use, and oral sex accounted for the vast majority of
female orgasms, almost four times more frequently than simple vaginal or anal penetration. They may be fantasy, but the fantasy proves surprisingly close to the reality of most women’s sexual
satisfaction.