The Internet is the dumping ground for everything we find immoral or disgusting: extreme ideologies, strange obsessions, unspeakable regrets, and, especially, porn. Your prurient desires can’t stain you when they’re hidden in some server far from you and your perfectly normal life. Sometimes, in moments of transgression, behind a locked door and an incognito tab, blue-light bodies fuck on your screen before disappearing with a single tap. They are immaterial and placeless. They don’t know you, and you don’t know them. The little peep show you held in your hand is quickly gone. Your phone, in an instant, has transfigured back into a sexless productivity machine. Bring it to lunch, bring it to class, bring it everywhere you go. All that dirty stuff is somewhere else now.
Internet pornography thrives on being accessible everywhere but everywhere hidden. It feeds on our need for sexual satisfaction—and for no one to know that we need such satisfaction. But this privacy is an illusion. We know deep down the data is stored somewhere and that our online behavior can never be completely concealed. Still, any threat to the illusion is distressing. And a gargantuan threat has just arrived.
19 US states have now passed laws requiring age verification to access porn sites. In these states, porn sites require the user to make an account with a government-issued ID. For residents of those states, their pornography consumption is tethered to their legal identities. Porn sites, once a breeding ground for taboo fantasies, are now asking the same questions as the DMV.
There are plenty of problems with this kind of legislation. One worry is that users, spurned from sites complying with the law, will seek more fringe sites that pose a greater threat to their online safety. Another is that Republican lawmakers will use these laws to label perfectly tame LGBTQ+ content as pornography and restrict it from access. This legislation is ultimately an imperfect and partial fix to a far greater problem.
Porn sites have long thrived on underage consumption, yet the minors who have accounted for a large portion of their audience should not have unchecked access to confusing and potentially traumatic material. It is and has always been impossible to keep minors from what they shouldn’t have—porn, alcohol, vapes, weed. However, the barriers to entry that exist for substances don’t exist for porn. With porn, you don’t need to look old or buy a fake ID or know a guy. You just need any device that has access to the Internet, and such devices are being pressed into the hands of children at increasingly younger ages. While it’s easy for a curious child to accidentally stumble upon porn, it would be very hard for the same child to accidentally buy a handle of Jack. Age verification laws will only ever be able to restrict some platforms, not the entire vast jungle of internet pornography. So, how do we effectively minimize minors’ exposure to this material? The solution lies in the past, when porn was held in the safety of brick-and-mortar stores and theaters, exposed under the light of public discourse.
In the 1970s, before the big screens and superstores, Times Square was lined with peep shows, nudie bars, and pornographic bookstores. It was a “Little Sodom” in the heart of the big city, an implacable reminder of the sexual desires that simmer under everyday life. At that time, pornography didn’t just take up real estate. It took up space in the American public’s consciousness.
The first blockbuster porn film, Deep Throat (1972), debuted in Times Square. It went on to be screened in theatres across the country and reviewed by mainstream critics like Roger Ebert, This feels like an unusual trajectory for a pornographic film now, but in this “Golden Age of Porn,” pornography was shown in regular theatres to normal audiences and serious critics. It wasn’t just for fringe creators, but prominent artists. In fact, it was Andy Warhol who announced the Golden Age with his Blue Movie (1969).
It’s not the artistic merit of these movies I’m concerned with, but their social and dialectical surroundings. These were movies consumed in a public space and required a viewer to acknowledge their own desire before a jury of their peers. Pornographic movies were discussed in public, among friends and in the Reviews section of the New York Times. This open atmosphere surrounding porn actively supported healthy behaviors surrounding sex: the ability to articulate one’s sexual preferences, understand boundaries, and discuss them with others.
It also allowed one’s sexual attitudes to be criticized. Private porn consumption informs social sexual behavior, but it’s easy to ignore this reality when porn is hidden away. Insisting that porn is just fun fiction ignores the question of whether certain behaviors should be represented with more discretion or at all. It further ignores the role porn has played in perpetuating dangerous stereotypes about women and women’s sexuality. While public discourse is no panacea for all the toxic traits ingrained in porn, it at least provides a chance to discuss, criticize, and, hopefully, improve.
Critical discourse around porn helped situate it in a strictly adult context. Porn was something for adults who read newspapers and could sit through long movies. When adults aren’t afraid of their porn consumption, the illicit nature of porn dissolves—and with it, part of its allure to audiences who can’t handle such material but desperately want to see what everyone won’t mention. Of course, some allure will always remain. Adolescents will find ways to break into that adult context. In the past, though, the conditions of pornographic exposure were far different. A teenage boy would find a copy of Hustler under their Dad’s mattress or watch a VHS the older boys brought to a sleepover. In these cases, exposure is gradual. In these cases, the teenager is initiated into sexual subjecthood within a pre-existing social context. There are, of course, problems inherent to this form of exposure. For one, the sexual attitudes portrayed by the discovered porn are tied to older male role models and the conceptions of masculinity they embody, immediately endorsing such attitudes as “good” and “manly.” Still, this is better than the alternative, where porn appears on a screen decontextualized, entirely separated from one’s social reality. When not embedded in a social context, one is alone in their desire and shame. They are left with no way to understand or discuss this material and how such material interacts with broader social norms surrounding sex.
The porn industry is and has always been fraught with abuse and exploitation: problems that should motivate serious ethical qualms in anyone who consumes its content. While the open atmosphere of the Golden Age was not able to curb these problems, the present situation provides even fewer opportunities for reform. After all, it’s difficult to discuss such problems when consumers deny their consumption and feign ignorance of the industry’s very existence. Returning porn to the public eye can only aid discussion. It’s possible to learn from the Golden Age without making the same mistakes.
As it stands, porn performers are underpaid and given little bargaining power, despite some performers attaining recognition on par with celebrities and influencers. Not only are porn performers at an increased risk of being trafficked, but mainstream porn sites, like Pornhub, have been found to work actively with traffickers. In light of these facts, boycotting the industry entirely seems the only logical option. While I think boycotting is the best decision on an individual level, the porn industry taps into too fundamental of a demand for any boycott to make a serious impact on the industry’s bottom line. We need a more nuanced approach that acknowledges both the implacability of the porn industry and its desperate need for change. Bringing porn back into daily life and public discussion is the necessary precondition for such an approach. If the general public, including both those who do and do not watch porn, can see the porn industry as a matter of general concern and are no longer embarrassed to discuss its inner workings, solidarity with performers and collective action becomes possible.
Porn shouldn’t have to hide. When it hides, it becomes unaccountable. When it hides, it only spreads, reaching those who shouldn’t have it. The dream of returning all porn to theatres and stores, where it’s both in public and kept from prying eyes, will never be achieved. The total regulation of internet pornography is equally impossible. In light of these facts, the best option—the only real option—is to bring porn into the public eye, discussing, criticizing, and documenting it. It must have a cultural relevance befitting the size of its audience. Porn shouldn’t be allowed to escape the conditions of its production or the effects it has on sexual behavior. This won’t significantly change who has access to porn, it would just ensure that, before someone seeks out this material, they know the full story. We must make room for porn, for it will always be with us.
The last remaining theater in New Haven, the Fairmount, is a porn theater.
