Myth: To Be Anti-Porn Is to Be Anti-Sex

It is not uncommon today to hear people say they are for pornography, not necessarily because they consume it or like it themselves, but because it’s a free expression of sexuality. In some way, to discourage it or speak against it is to be anti-sex.

Several decades ago the term “sex-positive feminism” was coined. Many feminists at the time were saying pornography was an example of violence against women, but the so-called sex-positive feminists replied saying, “When porn portrays a woman who enjoys sex, why is this a bad thing? Don’t get trapped in this Victorian idea that sex is just a man’s thing. Women enjoy sex too, and pornography a positive expression of this reality.”

A great example of this mentality is the so-called Duke University porn star, Belle Knox. Ms. Knox has actually said that to be against porn is sex-negative, but she says, “sexual liberation is paramount to achieving progress and equality.”

Related: Becoming Belle Knox–Behind-the-Scenes Life of a Porn Star

Here’s the problem with all of this. The problem is not Ms. Knox personal sexual tastes vs. mine vs. anyone else’s. The debate is whether someone can rightly speak out against pornography and not be anti-sex, and I think the more you actually look at the nature of modern pornography, the answer is clear.

Are so-called sex-positive feminists fighting against a sexually repressive patriarchy by endorsing millions of men masturbating to films of men treating women as objects? No, of course not.

Saying we need porn to avoid sexual repression is like saying we need obesity to avoid anorexia. Pornography is as much a celebration of sex as gluttony is a celebration of food.

By ripping sex out of the context of genuine intimacy and putting it on screen, we are not celebrating sex, we are producing industrialized, commercialized, commodified sex. This does not celebrate sex at all. It cheapens it.

A study was done looking at the top-selling pornography in the world: the stuff the makes the biggest splash, the biggest bucks. Researchers actually sat down and watched, scene by scene, the top-selling adult films. After analyzing 304 distinct scenes…

• They found more than 3300 acts of verbal and physical aggression—that’s an act of aggression every 90 seconds, on average.
• About 90% of the scenes contained at least one act of physical aggression, and in 73% of the scenarios, men were the aggressors.
• Moreover, when women were the aggressors, by in large they were aggressive to other women.

So what makes the big bucks in porn? Scenes where women are called names, slapped, hit, punched, and choked.

Related: Should porn be used to spice up the bedroom?

This goes to show: pornography as a commercial product is going to follow the consumer’s dollars, and when the consumers are demanding more misogynist, violent, women-hurting porn, we’re right to stand against it and say, “Something isn’t right about this.”

Don’t be fooled. To be against porn is not to be anti-sex anymore than being against fast food is anti-eating. Real sex positivity is one that celebrates the human person as someone to be cherished, not a thing to be used.