Week 3 – a nutshell

I viewed lectures 5 and 6 and read the Hughes article “The Internet and Sex Industries: Partners in Sexual Exploitation.”  Hughes definitely is a feminists that sees pornography in a negative way.  I believe the almighty dollar is at work here.  It always was and always will be.  Pornography sells, as we see from what we learned so far.  They drive the innovations and carry them over the top.  Pornography promoted the need for online security, credit card payments, etc.  Most people, in my opinion would agree with Hughes and say that most pornography stimulates the trafficking of woman and children in that some men want to dominate over their mates like they see in the pornography industry.  In the US, there are many strong woman who would not tolerate this, therefore they look to mail order brides to fulfill their needs.

Now I say the almighty dollar rules because if this was not such a big money maker, I believe it would not be such a big problem and more people would speak out about it, AND the internet service providers would no longer carry their sites. Internet service providers support the pornography business in that it allows them to advertise and have websites. The pornography industry learned quickly that by typing in some keywords the search engines would forward the browser to their websites.  SNAP was one search engine that advertised it was child friendly and that it did not carry Pornography, however, 8 months later it sold out.  It admitted to having forwarded the user to another search engine if they were looking for pornography.  It is clear to see that if a child was searching online, and either accidentally or purposely typed in words to flag pornography, instead of getting an error it would forward to another search.  The children in the end were still able to access this indecent material.  SNAP sold out because it realized they were not making the money everyone else was and they wanted in on the game.

Hughes concludes that the pornography industry through the internet “intensifies harm to the victims” in that by having pornography so easily accessible to the world, with interaction, fast updates and virtual peep shows, etc, they have “normalized” this type of behavior.   People view this and think it must be acceptable.  The more you see this type of activity the less you are shocked by it and the more it seems socially acceptible.

Take for instance the polaroid and the video camcorder.  I used to look at these two items as useful family friendly innovations.  Immediate pictures and nice home videos were the benefits of these products.  I let it out that my husband and I own a Polaroid and my friends quickly laughed and made comments about knowing what we did with this camera!  They were not entirely wrong!  When we first bought our camcorder – for the birth of our son – we made G rated home videos.  My husband suggested we do a little less family friendly video and I thought he was nuts.  After Pamela and Tommy Lee’s escapade, I told him “That’s why not!” But here is just some proof that very average people not only own the products to produce but even if they didn’t produce any material, the thought certainly crossed their minds.  This making it seem all natural – some do – some don’t – who cares.  But when it desensitizes what it is doing to defenseless woman and children, that is when we should all start to care.