Deconstructing Woman

One hesitates to enter a discussion on porn. It’s been hashed out numerous times before with both sides firmly rooted in their arguments. On the one side, supporters of the constitution advocate for the right to free speech at all costs. On the other, feminists fight for the rights of girls and women who feel that pornography degrades and harms them, and perhaps even encroaches upon their right to freedom of expression. But, alas, there is little that remains black and white in the porn debate, and you will also find constitution defenders who fight porn and feminists who earn their living making pornographic films. Needless to say, the issue is messy.

In the mid-nineties, it got a whole lot messier. With the evolution of popular television cinema into the voyeuristic spectacle now known as reality television, pornography developed its own brand of “reality TV.” Reality Porn, or gonzo porn, appears to feature real people in real time having real sex. The name “gonzo” refers to “gonzo journalism,” a type of journalism that posits the journalist into the middle of the story. Likewise, in gonzo porn the camera is often part of the scene, with the person holding the camera performing many of the sex acts in the film. But what really sets gonzo porn apart from the realness that can also be found in amateur pornography, is its emphasis on nonconsensual and humiliating sex acts.¹

In the Fall 2004 issue of Bitch Magazine, Shauna Swartz wrote: “Reality porn features some of the most violent and demeaning scenes to hit the mainstream, what some call ‘humilitainment’ … [and while] degradation in porn movies is certainly nothing new, the presentation of it as real rather than performed is a more recent innovation.” ²

What is different about reality porn? Let’s take the popular site Backroom Facials where “some girls will do ANYTHING for a job, even take bathroom facials!” One such film features Faith, a young girl who has been hired as a call girl. Before she is allowed to work, however, she must let her new boss “test the merchandise.” While holding a video camera, he forces her to take down his pants and fellate him. Faith is obviously in discomfort and appears on the verge of tears more than once. At first, she resists. “You’re not serious,” she says, her face scrunching in distaste. She tries to pull away several times. She looks nauseated. Her boss then orders her to bend over a bench and “spread her ass.” Holding the camera, he penetrates her and orders her to “spread them” several more times. While watching this exchange, the viewer is not cognizant that they are watching a film. The camera is hand held; the people don’t appear to be acting; the scene feels, looks and acts real.

In another Backroom Facials film, Mary is also in the backroom with her new boss as he tests the merchandise yet again (this scene is described as “Married Slut Mary Whimpers From the Ass Abuse as She’s Bent and Fucked Anally”). The “boss” coaxes Mary into letting him penetrate her anally as she can “make lots of money” by performing anal sex with her potential customers. She does indeed begin to whimper (at which point he orders her to “stop it” and to “be quiet”). The scene winds down as Mary begins to push him away with her hand, apparently unable to take any more.

On the equally popular website BangBus, two men ride around in a van and offer women money to have sex with them. The parting shot often features the recently fucked woman kicked out of the bus amidst a tirade of insults. The ultimate humiliation: they don’t even pay her.

Now, predictably, the producers and creators of gonzo porn are the first to remind us that although gonzo porn appears to be real it is still staged entertainment. They reiterate time and time again that it is only about fantasy. In fine print, they instruct their viewers of the same. But one is left to wonder how many viewers of this new reality porn believe it to be just fantasy. The two Backroom Facials episodes mentioned above were found using a popular P2P software program. Upon viewing the short segments, and with no frame of reference, it is not difficult to imagine that a viewer might believe the scene to be real. In fact, when I myself first witnessed the scene I did not know if it was real or performed. It was not until I conducted my own online research that I realized what I had witnessed. “Disturbed” hardly begins to describe my state of mind when I first watched Faith raped on camera.

What is perhaps more disturbing than the simulated rape scene, however, is thinking about the many viewers who don’t just happen upon these degrading scenes but rather seek them out. When searching for videos on the same P2P file-sharing program using the search term “sex” many files were available for free download, several of them described as if they were real sex scenes with real people:

• Young Really Sexy 12 Year Old Girl Gets Fucked
• Rape Fantasy – Mother & Daughter Gang Raped by 4 Guys
• Young 13 Year Old Pre-teen Lolita Bounces on a Much Older Man’s Love Muscle
• Camcorder Bar Slut
• My 13 Year Old Sister Satisfying Herself on My 27 Year Old Massive Cock
• Sex Fucking in Car Dad & His Blonde Daughter Incest Anal Rape XXX
• 13 Year Old Fucks her Dad MUST SEE
• Girl 15 Yr Old Sucks & Fucks Two Guys in Woods
• Sexy Secretary Takes a Bonus of Sexy in her Wet Teen Pussy
• Real Child Porn!!! (Illegal preteen…)
• Two Guys Bang a Ghetto Ho
• Pretty Slut Gets Screwed in DP Style Sex
• Drunk Sister Strips – Anal – Oral – Pussy
• Schoolgirl Fucks her Teacher (cartoon)
• Nastiest Cumshot EVER! Preteen Blonde Girl Can’t Handle my Load
• Woman Gets Firmly Fucked by Dog Several Times
• Drunk College Sluts
• Rape Fantasy – German 17 Yr Old Girl Wants the Job – Reluctantly She Excepts [sic] 25 Minutes of Brutal Anal Sex Before He Cums Inside Her Mouth and All Over Her Face
• Tiny Virgin Daughter @ 13 Has Trouble Taking her Father’s Cock All In
• My Pregnant Wife Brings her Young Friend Home so I Can Have Some Teen Anal Sex
• BDSM, SM, Rape, Fisting & Rough Sex – A German Girl is Attacked, Bound & Tied to a Rack & Tortured & Fucked by 3 Guys

If the list above is any indication, it would appear that the trend of reality porn is indeed popular. And not just reality porn, but degrading, incestuous, illegal reality porn. But for most porn advocates, there is nothing more inherently heinous about reality porn than any other form of pornography. To them, all porn features consenting adults having consensual sex. But herein lies the problem. For although reality porn may in fact be consensual sex, it often does not appear to be consensual.

And in September 2007, at least one man took the fantasy of gonzo porn too far. Accepting the “real” sexual exploitation of women against their will as permissible male behaviour, Christopher Jack Reid, more commonly known as gonzo porn star “Jack Venice” was arrested and charged with attempted rape after breaking into a sorority house and sexually assaulting a young woman at Washington State University. What is perhaps most unsettling about this case is that of all men, it should be the star of gonzo porn who understands that it is all just fantasy, right?

But, then, that’s the thing about fantasy: At some point, there will always be those who long to make their fantasies real. And if the fantasy it to force women to have sex against their will and then to humiliate them, the consequences won’t be a matter of free speech; they will be criminal.

Copyright © 2007, C. C. Ley

References

1 In her article “XXX Offender: Reality Porn & the Rise of Humilitainment,” Shauna Swartz details the humiliating and nonconsensual aspects of reality porn. This article can be found in the book Bitchfest, edited by Bitch Magazine editors Lisa Jervis and Andi Zeisler (Farrar, Straus and Giroux; New York, 2006). The article originally appeared in the Fall 2004 edition of Bitch Magazine.

2 As above.