A recently released study from British researchers found that sexually violent content featured prominently on the homepages of Pornhub and various other leading pornography platforms.
One of the authors of the analysis, Fiona Vera-Gray, an assistant professor at the Department of Sociology for Durham University in the U.K., told the BBC that the eroticizing of “non-consent” has distorted “the boundary between sexual pleasure and sexual violence.”
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“For your average viewer, it can be hard to tell what is real and what is fantasy,” she explained. “Porn performers can make things look convincing, they can depict harm, but, actually, the actors are enjoying it, because that’s their [interest].”
Over the course of six months, according to Vice, researchers were tasked with taking screenshots of the front pages of the three most popular pornography websites every hour. In total, they surveyed 131,738 videos between 2017 and 2018.
The findings, published in The British Journal of Criminology, discovered 12% of the videos they surveyed had titles that “described sexual activity that constitutes sexual violence.” Among those, the most common sexual violence theme was “relating to sexual activity between family members.”
According to the data, in addition to incestuous content, the next most common pornographic theme centered on non-consensual activity, including videos in which the subjects were described as having been “drugged,” “unconscious,” or “very young,” each of which indicates an inability to consent.
On each of the three websites, the researchers found descriptions of “forced sexual activity that may meet the criteria of extreme pornography,” the report states.
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“This material may be deemed obscene and, therefore, its distribution possibly subject to criminal sanctions under the Obscene Publications Act 1959,” the study continues. “It is also possible that some of the material analyzed is evidence of real sexual assaults, as well as voyeurism and non-consensual distribution of sexual image offenses.”
The authors of the study ultimately concluded their findings offer “new and compelling evidence that the boundary between what is and is not sexual violence is distorted by mainstream online pornography platforms.”
“Using the largest sample of online pornographic content collected to date, we have found that one in eight titles on the front page of mainstream pornography sites describe acts that would fall under the most widely used policy definition of sexual violence,” the authors wrote. “The frequency of pornography titled in this way, given its prohibition in the site’s terms and conditions, is notable in itself.”
The analysis went on to note that these videos depicting sexual violence — many of which described aggression in plain terms — were “not found by users of their own volition.” Instead, they were present on the homepage, prior to the use of any search terms.
Dawn Hawkins, CEO of the National Center on Sexual Exploitation, headquartered in Washington, D.C., said in a statement Tuesday the study, the largest research sample of online pornography titles every compiled and reviewed, “reveals that online pornography companies like Pornhub and XVideos cannot ever be ‘safe’ enough.”
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“These websites cannot do enough to prevent sexually violent, non-consensual pornography or child sexual abuse material from being on their sites and they cannot halt the negative impact of normalizing sexual violent acts has the sexual scripts and attitudes of users.”
Ultimately, Hawkins argued, the only “real solution” to the problem of sexual violence on these platforms is for pornography companies like Pornhub — and its parent company MindGeek — “to be prosecuted … and to be shut down.”
As Faithwire has previously reported, there is currently an effort underway to have Pornhub taken off the internet. The petition for the cause, Traffickinghub, has garnered more than two million signatures.