Racism and Pornography
This was originally published here for REST | Real Escape from the Sex Trade.
Content Warning: This blog discusses themes including racism, sexual assault, and violence. Please read with care.
It is 2021.
You can still find videos online that have titles and descriptions like, “Black Slave Punished by White Master”, “Black Slave Girl Brutalized”, and "Skanky N****r gives a Blowjob" on Pornhub (1). This level of overt and blatant racism would be widely condemned in most contexts within our society. One of the remaining contexts where overt, covert, and systemic racism are present, prevalent, and seemingly welcome and unchallenged is the pornography industry.
While pornography is a sexually exploitative industry that objectifies, commodifies, and degrades individuals from every walk of life, it is often uniquely degrading and reliant on centuries-old racist stereotypes for people of color. Eight of the top 25 Pornhub searches in 2019 were overtly race-based search terms, two more were directly tied to Asian culture, and a few more likely to yield racially charged search results (2). That means that at least 40% of the top searches on the world’s largest porn site are racially charged.
“Over the years, thanks in part to the civil rights activists, overt examples of racism that were once commonplace in mainstream media have become less acceptable. Yet, hidden behind the facade of fantasy and fun, porn delivers racist stereotypes that would be considered unacceptable were they in any form of mass-produced media” - Carolyn M. West, Professor of Clinical Psychology at University of Washington Tacoma
Pornography is exploitative regardless of race or gender, but, like all systems of oppression, it is subject to intersectionality—meaning that overlapping identities and experiences compound and create a complicated and unique form of oppression. For example, a white woman trading sex in pornography to pay off debts may be subject to classism and misogyny—but a Black woman in the same position may be subject to classism, misogyny, and racism.
Racism in pornography is by no means unique to Black and African American individuals— but the racism perpetrated against Black and African American individuals is uniquely tied to our country’s history of exploitative dehumanization of Black bodies, minds, and souls. We’ve written before on The marriage of racism and misogyny in the sex trade and Systemic Oppression, Inequity, & Sex Trafficking, taking a deeper dive into the history of sexual exploitation as it relates to chattel slavery and anti-Black racism in the United States. That same history has deeply problematic and extraordinarily harmful impacts in the porn industry today.
A 2019 study Gender, Race, and Aggression in Mainstream Pornography3 analyzed how aggression in sex acts in pornography correlated to race and gender. They found that Black and Latina women were more likely to experience aggression at the hands of their partner than white female performers and that Black and Latino men were more likely to be portrayed as aggressive than white male performers.
“Researchers have found that both white and Black women were sexually objectified in porn. However, findings suggest Black women are still more often the target of aggression when compared to white women. At the same time, Black women are less likely to be on the receiving end of displays of intimacy. In addition, Black men are more often portrayed as the perpetrators of aggression against women and are depicted as significantly less intimate with their partners in comparison to white men.” (From the article Worse Than Objects: The Depiction of Black Women and Men and Their Sexual Relationship in Pornography. (4))
“While white women are featured in most pornography... often ‘people of color fall into a special interest category, other examples of which are r*pe, bondage and sadomasochism, an*l s*ex, s*x with children, large breasted women, and s*x with animals.’” (From the article Racism in Pornography (5))
These findings point to a perpetuation of centuries-old racist stereotypes of the violent and animalistic Black man, and the hypersexualized Black woman, which find their roots in the dehumanizing justifications for slavery, Jim Crow, and generation upon generation of race-based oppression.
At the same time, these same stereotypes that dehumanize Black and brown bodies uphold eurocentric white beauty standards and purity culture.
Tracey Gardner explains in Racism in Pornography and the Women’s Movement6:
“Soft-core pornography is an extension of mass advertising and the beauty market; it is the Beauty Queen revealed. Until recently, the Beauty Queen was by definition white: fair complexion, straight hair, keen features, and round eyes. Soft-core pornography was the objectification of white purity, white beauty, and white innocence. To little Black, Asian, or Hispanic girls, growing up with dark skin, kinky hair, and African, Asian, or Latin features, everything around them—in storybooks and the media, in dolls in stores—announced that something was wrong with them. They could be whores but not beauty queens."
It is important to note the magnitude of the problem of pornography here. Different studies evaluate it in different ways, but what many studies agree upon is that likely over half of the adult population (of varying geographic locations) consume porn on at least a semi-regular basis7,8—and that number has been on the rise for at least the last two decades for both men and women. When over half of a society consumes pornography, and over 40% of porn consumers are looking for racially-charged content, it says something about what we value—and devalue—as a collective society.
At REST we believe that everyone deserves to be loved. Everyone deserves a life free from exploitation. And that certainly includes Black women, who are disproportionately exploited in the sex trade and pornography, and Black men, who are disproportionately portrayed as violent aggressors.
Pornography is by no means the last place in society where overt racism is welcome, but it is certainly a strong bastion of it. Racism in pornography is not an accident, either—it is produced because there is a high demand for content that features sexual violence against women of color, as demonstrated by the prevalence of racially-charged search terms mentioned earlier in this blog.
It doesn’t have to be that way.
We can choose to fight against the objectification and dehumanization of all individuals, made in the image of a beautiful Creator, by saying no to racism, no to misogyny, and no to sexual exploitation through pornography. We do not have to be part of the demand for racially-charged and sexually violent content.
We can choose to uphold human dignity, value, and worth—ultimately declaring that everyone is worthy of love, and everyone deserves a life free from exploitation.
Porn consumption and addiction is a sensitive subject. Our hope is that if you’re currently struggling with your own porn usage, that you, too, know that you deserve to be loved—and you deserve a life free from exploitation, too. Quitting porn isn’t easy—and it often comes wrapped up in shame and hopelessness—but it is worth it, and there is help.
If you want to learn more about the science behind why porn is unhealthy for the consumer, how it promotes sex trafficking, or how you can begin the journey of quitting, we encourage you to check out Fight The New Drug—a non-religious non-profit using science, data, and personal accounts to raise awareness of the harms of pornography.
Citations:
Fight the New Drug. [@FTND] 2020, June 1. https://twitter.com/FightTheNewDrug/status/1267494949219479552
2019, December 7. Pornhub’s Annual Report: Can You Guess 2019’S Top Searched Porn Terms? Retrieved from https://fightthenewdrug.org/2019-pornhub-annual-report/
Shor, E., Golriz, G. Gender, Race, and Aggression in Mainstream Pornography. Archive of Sexual Behavior 48, 739–751 (2019).
Fritz, N., Malic, V., Paul, B. et al. Worse Than Objects: The Depiction of Black Women and Men and Their Sexual Relationship in Pornography. Gend. Issues 38, 100–120 (2021).
Mayall, Alice, and Diana E.H. Russell. “Racism in Pornography.” Feminism & Psychology 3, no. 2 (June 1993): 275–81.
Gardner, Tracey A. “Racism in Pornography and the Women's Movement.” Living with Contradictions: Controversies in Feminist Social Ethics, by Alison M. Jaggar, Routledge, 2019, pp. 171–176.
2020, October 13. How Many People Are On Porn Sites Right Now? (Hint: It’s A Lot.). Retrieved from https://fightthenewdrug.org/by-the-numbers-see-how-many-people-are-watching-porn-today/
2014, April. Weir, Kristin. Is pornography addictive? Retrieved from https://www.apa.org/monitor/2014/04/pornography.
