I’ve boycotted porn for seven years, and you need to as well

When I was fifteen I used to watch porn regularly. It was still at the age where a girl watching porn would be a revolutionary idea to her male classmates, and it was still pretty novel to me – I had only started when I was 13. I remember clicking on my first porn video and carefully choosing a woman alone, because I was so scared to watch the couples videos. I remember being scared because I didn’t want to see a woman being hurt. That should have said it all from the beginning.

Regardless, I got into it, watched porn a few times a week. Got off to it. Usually pretty safe stuff, nothing crazy. That fear of seeing a woman get hurt or be forced into some deep S&M shit against her will was still fresh in my mind. Then a few years later I was watching a relatively calm video, something about an Irish barmaid shagging one of her customers if I recall correctly, and the female porn star began giving a blowjob. She stopped, briefly, but the male porn star forced her head back down and she screamed a little. For the rest of the oral section of the video, she was crying.

That was enough to turn me off porn for life. I couldn’t shake the feeling that once the camera turns on, the women in these videos have no real control over their bodies and what is done to them. For seven years I’ve been leading a one woman boycott against porn, which is a hard boycott to win – the porn industry is worth between six and 97 billion dollars. Once you find porn disgusting, it’s very hard to go back. That one blowjob scene combined with a couple of Louis Theroux documentaries had me dissuading anyone I could from watching and contributing to the porn industry. A one woman crusade.

But then, three days ago, I saw someone else was fighting for the same cause. Laila Mickelwait set up a whole campaign to bring down PornHub, called #TraffickingHub. A video produced for the campaign accuses PornHub of lacing a vetting process for the porn films uploaded to its site. This means, in theory, that videos of underage girls can be uploaded at any point. There is also no vetting in terms of consent. The user can upload a video of someone who didn’t know they were being filmed, who didn’t consent to the sex or who had no idea it would be uploaded to the internet. This lack of filter could allow for rape, child pornography and revenge porn to be posted and accessed on the site. Since the #TraffickingHub campaign started three days ago its petition (to shut down PornHub) has amassed over a million signatures. The petition alleges: “Pornhub, the world’s largest and most popular porn site, has been repeatedly caught enabling, hosting, and profiting from videos of child rape, sex trafficking, and other forms of non-consensual content exploiting women and minors. We’re calling for Pornhub to be shut down and its executives held accountable for these crimes.”

Right now you might be thinking “fine, but how do I wank now? I’ve been getting off to porn my whole life!” But don’t worry – not all porn is bad. Some of the most easily accessible porn is the worst, but there are sites out there which produce feminist or ethical porn which is vetted i.e much more likely to be safe, healthy and consensual.

But that’s the other side to porn: As much as the sites are unhealthy in themselves, the user experience is also unhealthy. Another reason I boycotted porn is because I saw what it did to the men who watched it. I have known so many men become addicted to porn. Not necessarily in the way you’re addicted to alcohol or drugs, but much the same. It’s a dependency like anything else. If you feel like you can’t come without porn – or worse, can’t live without porn, you should take a second to step back and process that.

The more we normalise watching porn, the further its reach. Boys watching porn are getting younger and younger. A study commissioned for the British Board of Film Classification showed that boys as young as seven are now watching porn. If porn is considered acceptable, so are the things in it. This means young men are watching, learning and internalising what they see on screens. Hitting women, forcing their heads down, choking them, making them cry, calling them sluts. All of this is completely commonplace in porn. Imagine if a boy aged seven had seen the video I watched, at age 15, but being so young and maleable just passed it off as okay. Imagine thinking that is how you have sex with women.

The less we normalise porn the better. The only way to boycott something is to cut off its demand. Porn is a multi billion dollar industry, but even making a dent in that industry can force companies to change and review their processes. I don’t want porn to end, I just want everyone to force the companies running these sites to see that these processes are harmful, not just to the people being filmed and watching the videos but to the companies’ profits. They need to feel threatened. So the next time you go to open that incognito browser, have a think about what your click on that video or that site means. And who it’s hurting. If the knowledge that the person you’re watching get fucked on that porn site could not only be underage but could be unconsenting doesn’t make you sick to your stomach… you need to check yourself.

Photo by Charles Deluvio on Unsplash

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