In the age of the internet, pornography is ubiquitous. Easily accessed and widely watched, adult sites accumulate tens of billions of views online every year. 

Dr. Fiona Vera-Gray, the deputy director of The Child and Woman Abuse Studies Unit at London Metropolitan University, describes pornography as a form of storytelling. 

“As human beings we storytell to make sense of our world – we always have, it’s part of our make-up,” Vera-Gray, who is also the author of upcoming book “Women on Porn,” said in an email. “Porn tells the story about what sex is – who does it, how they do it, what acts are pleasurable, etc.”  

But, what impact do the stories we tell about sex have on the real world?

Pornography, fetishization and the perpetuation of power

According to Vera-Gray, the type of porn consumed by most people on “mainstream free tube sites… reproduces the idea that sex is something done by men to women” for men’s pleasure. She continued that it “often eroticises inequalities based on gender, age and race.” 

Pornhub, one of the most popular of these free tube sites, published its 2022 insights featuring the year’s top searched terms. These terms included but were not limited to: Hentai, Japanese, Lesbian, Asian, Step mom, Black and Indian.

“Often, women are searchable ‘categories’; (i.e., Latina, Asian, Slavic, etc.). However, this Internet-borne, skin-deep outlook on womanhood pervades the three-dimensional world,” said UC Berkeley alum and TikTok creator, Clio Kolkey, in an email. “Coincidingly, mythic fairytales of ‘exotic’ women’s presumed submissiveness to men saturate incel forums.”

Kolkey has dedicated her platform to covering a variety of social justice issues, but her most popular videos discuss the fetishization of women across different racial and ethnic groups. The first video in this series focused on the fetishization of Slavic women.

The TikTok amassed more than half a million views and was flooded with thousands of comments. Some users left requests beneath the video such as “do East Asian women next,” and “cover the fetishization of Latina women please,” revealing the universality of racial fetishization against women.

“Depictions of Asian women as innocently sexy ‘lotus blossoms’ who idolize White men permeate the media,” Kolkey explained in the email. “Incels portray Slavic women as a breed of blonde, blue-eyed supermodels who exude hyper-femininity, are untainted by Western Feminism, and will gladly submit to a man.”

Regardless of geography, pornography’s impact is global.

Writing the ‘Sexual Script’: The relationship between porn and violence against women

According to Vera-Gray, the relationship between porn consumption and violence against women continues to be a contentious topic. 

Vera-Gray explained the stories we tell in porn — which largely depict violence against women — contribute to what researchers call a “sexual script.” 

An article by the National Center on Sexual Exploitation cited that aggressive acts against women are present in about 87% of pornographic scenes, and in 95% of those scenes, women respond with expressions of “pleasure or neutrality.”

“People can start to feel that violence should be arousing for them even if it isn’t already,” Vera-Gray said in an email. “We also know that perpetrators of violence have used porn in their pre-offending … it helps them to believe that what they are going to do is acceptable.”

Kolkey believes the fetishization of women is a “casualty of the pervasive Manosphere” on the internet.

Moving Forward: Porn alternatives and ending sexual violence 

Vera-Gray said there is no “silver bullet” to ending violence against women and curbing the harmful effects of pornography. Rather, she said, it will take a lot of work at different levels over a long time. 

In her opinion, society can tackle these issues by having challenging conversations and educating themselves. 

Vera-Gray emphasized that the harmful porn pervading the internet is not the only kind out there, adding that there are independent queer and feminist producers working to change the narrative.

“When the same stories are told in consistent ways across different platforms it can make them seem more legitimate,” Vera-Gray said. “It’s not just that they start to feel more real, they actually start to change the way that we see the world.”