Jen writes 12/29/05 from Australia:

Like many of my friends, male and female, I actually love nasty and degrading porn, so I'm not complaining about it. I also agree that you won't get anywhere pretending it doesn't exist. Even in "mainstream" porn, there is just so much objectification and degradation. Our whole society is replete with it, why not porn? It's not going away, either.

Questioner writes:

Check out this statement:

"Recently-produced mainstream pornographic tapes do not show women being abused; the narrative trope of a woman learning to enjoy her own rape has vanished from mainstream pornography."

So get that? He flat out says that "recently produced mainstream porn tapes do not show women being abused."

Then in the very next paragraph, he writes:

"Of the sample's 16 violent scenes, nine occured in videos marketed to women; four were set in explicit fantasy environments."

16 violent scenes? I thought he just said that mainstream porn no longer shows women being abused? All sorts of blatant contradictions show up in studies, but this one is particularly obvious. He continues:

"These points may be related: much popular women's fiction is set in melodramatic, or explicitly fantastic situations. This may be a gendered address in pornography, where it is material aimed at women that is more likely to include violence."

Yeah, so? There are women who enjoy seeing women abused. I have always known that. But Dr. McKee just got through telling us that newer mainstream pornography does NOT contain abuse! WTF? He continues:

"Rocco Siffredi, whose videos are responsible for three of the seven physically violent moments, is the most popular male porn star with female audiences (Albury, 2002b)."

From the Wikipedia article on Rocco Siffredi:

"Rocco's films are widely varied in content and tone. He has appeared in romantic adventures and comedies in the Vivid style, but his later work with John Stagliano's Evil Angel Video is informed by the artistic philosophy and vision of Max Hardcore. In these later films, Rocco spits on women, slaps them, performs irrumatio and watersports (censored in U.S. versions), makes his co-stars gag during deepthroat, and pulls hair to the point of causing tears."

Now, that doesn't sound abusive at all!

More:

"Shocking climaxes often involve such activities as Rocco focusing the camera on the distended anus of one of his female co-stars, spitting into it, ejaculating into it, and then, in scenes meant to imply breaking the fourth wall, demanding that other co-stars clean the woman's anus with their tongues. Another hallmark of Rocco's films is allowing male fans, picked up by the production crew, to ejaculate onto the faces of his female costars; Rocco took this tradition one step further when directing Never Say Never To Rocco Siffredi, when, filming in a park, Rocco grabbed passing strangers and then requested that his female co-stars perform oral sex on them...."

"Rocco - Animal Trainer is Siffredi's roughest line and the one which has garnered him the most fame in America...There is a heavy emphasis on rougher, more sadistic sex, with hard facial slapping, violent hair-pulling and scenes of extremely abusive anal sex. (Rumours persist in many online forums of the availability of 'uncut' versions of this line through assorted vendors within Europe, with the various scenes of abuse all reportedly extended, more detailed, and more brutal). In Animal Trainer 15, Siffredi engages in rough anal sex with American porn actress Jewel De'Nyle, and forces her head into a toilet during the final scene, a technique that seems to help him achieve climax. (The image of Siffredi dunking a gasping female performer's head into and out of a water-filled toilet bowl has become a key graphic in the promotional artwork for many of his European releases)."

So.... since Dr. McKee tells us that newer mainstream porn no longer shows abuse toward women, Rocco's videos must be quite old, right? Wrong!

According to the Adult Film Database, the first installment of Rocco: Animal Trainer was published in 2002. This is well AFTER many of the "recent" videos cited by Dr. McKee. The most recent installment of this series was published in 2005.

Movies like Rocco's are mainstream, AND are recent, AND show extremely violent and degrading abuse of women. So it is very odd that McKee would tell us a blatant whopper that "recently-produced mainstream pornographic tapes do not show women being abused," and then go on to contradict himself in the very next paragraph!

Weird!

Now, as soon as I heard about McKee's study, I knew it was nonsense. No objectification and degradation in popular porn? Yeah right; popular porn is full of this stuff! Look up Max Hardcore, Backroom Facials, Steve Sweet, Khan Tusion, etc., etc. This is some of the best selling stuff out there, and it's full of degradation of women. So I'm not surprised he was wrong in his statements; I'm just shocked that he so openly contradicted himself, right in the text of the study, apparently without even knowing it. How could he possibly have watched scenes like Rocco's and then conclude that mainstream porn is no longer abusive toward women?

I guess he is trying to protect porn from the censorship lobby. However, by denying the obvious - that abusive porn exists in the mainstream, and that it sells - and then disproving his own denial, he only shoots himself in the foot. Lots of mainstream porn still shows abuse of women; that there are women who enjoy watching this is irrelevant to the fact that it exists. So we should deal with this fact rather than lamely trying to sweep it under the rug.

Note that the reviewer is pro-porn and is clearly fascinated by McKee's work. S/he just realizes that denying the existence of objectification and degradation in mainstream porn will get us nowhere. It's part of the picture, it's definitely what many people want, male and female. Telling people it isn't really there won't work; all they have to do is look. It's all over the place. Rocco Siffredi, Max Hardcore, Extreme Associates, Khan Tusion, Bangbus, Backroom Facials, Meatholes.com, FacialHumiliation.com, IAmAToilet.com, Kinkythai.com, Pissmops.com...etc.

I love porn, but I know for a fact that exploitation and degradation go on in it. There are plenty of naive barely-legal women who have no clue what they are getting into. Why wouldn't there be? Exploitation and dehumanization happen in many jobs, and not just sex-related ones! "Relatively safe work?" In many cases, FAR FROM IT! McKee should check out sites like kinkythai.com, with movies where prostitutes are made to eat dog feces and tell me they are all enjoying that! Tell me that is kind, gentle and safe! He should look up the interview that Belladonna gave to Diane Sawyer.

"The show focused mainly on Belladonna, and strongly suggested that she had been pressured into performing certain scenes in adult films, including one in which she had sex with twelve men at once. It also presented Belladonna as unhappy with her job and with her life. In the most notorious part of the broadcast, the porn star—confronted onscreen with her devout Mormon mother—broke into tears."

Even Jenna Jameson, who "is determined to present herself as a woman who has set her own goals and made her own choices" does not exactly present her experience with the porn industry as non-abusive. From the same link:

"At 14, Jameson was beaten and gang-raped. At 16, she was raped by Preacher. Because of that, she stayed out past curfew, which caused her father to kick her out of the house. This led her to move in with her scumbag boyfriend, Jack. She became a stripper because that’s what the girlfriends of bikers did. Later, she did her first boy-girl sex onscreen in order to take revenge on Jack, who had been cheating on her."

"It’s a depressing and sordid tale. Nor is the life of a sex-worker as she describes it particularly attractive. For one thing, it’s physically demanding work. As Jameson describes in a charming illustrated section, common stripper injuries include chronic back pain from wearing high heels, chronic neck problems from whipping your hair around, abrasions from sliding around naked, and the occasional ruptured breast implant from landing on the floor wrong....

"There’s also immense psychological stress. Stars can lose respect for both money and sex; your “pussy will…change…from a pleasure center to a cash machine,” Jameson warns. Things can get even worse if you have a boyfriend. Jameson’s most wrenching experiences in the industry came not during her first scenes, but during some of her last ones in the book, when she was dating her future husband, who was dead set against her sleeping with other men. Already under contract for the film, she vomited in a trash can and then went through with the scene. Even without the massive social stigma, sex work hardly seems like an easy or pleasant way to make a living."

Despite the times when she says being in porn made her a stronger person, etc.:

"When a CNN interviewer asked whether Jameson would want her daughter to follow in her footsteps, she answered as most of us would: hell, no. '[T]his is such a hard industry for a woman to get ahead and get the respect that she deserves,' Jameson explained. 'I fought tooth and nail to get to where I am, and it's not something that I would want my daughter to go through…. For my child, hey, I want them to go to college and be a doctor.'"

And keep in mind that the porn Jameson has starred in is MUCH milder than, say, Max Hardcore's, let alone Hans Burger's (the kingpin behind KinkyThai, etc.)

As the reviewer points out, there are lots of women who enjoy seeing other women get abused. Or even participating in such abuse. I find this is especially the case if it's a kind of woman they dislike, i.e., younger and more beautiful. That there are women who enjoy seeing and/or participating in such abuse doesn't make it abuse any less!

Finally, 50 mostly LEGAL porn movies will not paint a clear picture of what Australians want to see. The degrading and violent stuff is ILLEGAL down under. So it's not typically going to be on any official Top 50 list. Obviously. (Though even with the law in the way, Rocco Siffredi showed up on the list; as mentioned before, he makes very abusive porn.) For the illegal stuff, Australians are going to use the 'net, a source of *billions* for pornographers that nonetheless did not show up on McKee's radar.

Anyway, I enjoyed McKee's study but many of his apparent conclusions just don't stand to the light of reality.