This work will feature discussions of pornography, sexual violence, and misogyny, and may be emotionally challenging for some readers. Reader discretion is advised.
Pornography. Some love it, some hate it, some make it, some sell it. Sometimes revered and eternally contested, the porn industry has long championed arguments in defense of the First Amendment right to free speech in its infant stages. However, in 2025, the debate of “free speech” has certainly decreased in its relevance; now, one can find porn anywhere they look, not just in the shady adult video store that reeks of Clorox-sprayed pleather and is chock-full of shady characters — it’s accessible with a simple one-word search, it’s on our streetcorners and billboards.
This rise in easy access to pornography, while a considerable win for the foot-soldiers of the First Amendment, raises significant ethical questions about pornography, outside of the legality of its accessibility. What began as video production companies attempting to push the narrative of what type of content is acceptable for consumption has now been greatly commercialized, no longer able to maintain its “taboo” status. Because of this, many directors and producers in the adult video industry are producing increasingly vulgar and degrading content to keep their “niche” and “experimental” label intact.
In a culture that still maintains sex as a highly controversial, “hush-hush” topic, it is important to consider what the rise in hardcore pornography teaches our youth. Many of today’s youth’s first encounter with sex is through pornography. The average age at which a child first encounters pornography is 13 years old.
Fifty years ago, a child’s first introduction to sex was a porno-mag depicting (albeit still degrading) images of naked women. Now, approximately 90% of pornography features violence and aggression towards women, depicting them in a way that is “caricatured with the worst sexist and racist stereotypes… [women] are humiliated, objectified, dehumanised, assaulted, tortured, subjected to treatment that is contrary both to human dignity and law.” Further research revealed that 49% of men have attempted to replicate behavior they have seen in pornography, and 36% of men say that porn is their primary source for learning about sex.
Considering these reports, it’s nearly impossible to separate pornography from our ever-changing and increasingly oppressive sexual-cultural norms. Children naturally have curiosity about sex and sexuality. When our culture teaches these kids that they are not supposed to ask about these things from trusted adults, they have no other option than to turn to the internet. When violence against women is eroticized and widespread for sexual consumption, it’s ignorant to assume that the behaviors exemplified in porn are not bleeding into the real, human sphere of sexuality.
This leads us to “kink culture.” Kinks are generally defined as non-conventional sexual practices. While I can agree that what goes on between two consenting adults in the bedroom is none of my business, at the same time, we must recognize the thin, blurry line between being conditioned to accept violence in the bedroom and genuinely enjoying it. Oftentimes, in online circles, when someone raises a concern about the impacts of hardcore pornography in conditioning women to accept violence in the name of “kinks,” one is met with extreme backlash from the kink community, accusing them of being “vanilla” or “not exciting” in their sexual desires.
When children and adolescents see hardcore pornography online, and see those who dissent against this genre of pornography shamed and teased for their lack of “adventure” in sex, we must consider the implications this has later down the line for the youth. Knowing that hardcore porn is creating a culture where hardcore sex is the norm, and often even expected, and knowing that one can be shamed for not enjoying being brutalized in the bedroom, it’s important to consider the loss of autonomy this can create in real-life sexual situations, particularly in the context of women. What are we telling women when we tease them for not submitting to male violence for sexual pleasure?
Women have been taught for centuries that their sole purpose in life is to marry and bear children. Though we have long dismissed these misogynistic sentiments, remnants of this patriarchal culture remain prevalent in our contemporary society. While the majority of porn is consumed by men, women still understand that rough sex is “in” right now. While a woman may “enjoy” rough sex, it’s important to consider whether or not one is enjoying this brutalization because it makes them feel good, or if they’re enjoying it because it is making their sexual partner happy. Can we ever truly separate the context of our patriarchal systems from kink culture? Is rough sex ever truly autonomous for the woman on the receiving end of physical violence from a male partner, or is this just the rebirth of sexual violence — an already incredibly prominent occurrence — thinly guised by the prospect of lukewarm consent?
A final consideration of this rise in hardcore pornography concerns the fetishization of certain nationalities, identities, and roles within society. If you look at any major porn website (and trust me, I did for this piece), you’ll notice the breakdown of “genres” of the site’s content. Some of the most searched terms on PornHub, an international champion of porn production and publication, are as follows: “Hentai,” “MILF,” “Anal,” “Lesbian,” “Stepmom,” “Trans,” and Gangbang. One would be naive to assume that the fetishization of identities as innocent as stepmothers is not directly harmful to the real living people who live as these “porn categories” every day. The categorical fetishization of real-life human beings seems to create a fantasy world for a porn viewer in which every secretary or school teacher is simply one smooth one-liner away from ripping all of their clothes off. The rise of violent porn categories exemplifies our cultural shift towards eroticizing and enjoying the suffering of women (see “Gangbang” for further evidence).
As violent porn continues to grow in popularity and accessibility, it’s integral to the psycho-sexual development of our youth that we consider what exactly porn is “teaching” people. Are we telling our youth that hurting people is acceptable so long as it’s for sexual pleasure? Are we teaching young women that “normal” sex includes being slapped, verbally degraded, and spit on? After all, the violence women face in pornography does not only exist behind the screen; these behaviors are repeated, replicated, and often enjoyed by those inflicting violence. We can all agree: violence is not love, and love is not violent. Why is it that we allow our cultural porn habits to directly negate this assertion?
“Everything in the world is about sex except sex. Sex is about power.”