Women and Pornography: Exactly Who is Being Exploited?

Pornography is a hot topic no matter how you present it. Not only is it one of the most lucrative businesses in this country - and others - but it remains one of the most controversial. The very nature of this industry makes it controversial on so many different levels, to so many different individuals and groups.

Even without the controversy, anyone who uses the Internet owes a degree of debt to the business of porn. Whether you realize it or not, pornography on the Internet has driven some of the biggest developments in Web-based technology as the people involved in it seek to deliver bigger, bolder, and badder content to an audience willing to pony up billions upon billions in fees each year. Enthusiasts don't simply want to read salacious text or view still images, they want to interact. As one Web pioneer has said, "The first group to bring us computer-based scratch and sniff capability will no doubt be the purveyors of porn."

Yet it is not only impossible to divorce the controversy from pornography, it would almost be counter-productive to do so. Part of the appeal, for those who enjoy this kind of material, is its taboo nature - something to engage in privately, furtively, with the full knowledge that others we care about like a spouse, a boss, or our parents would heartily disapprove. Common sense and every marketing study ever done shows us that we are much more willing to spend big dollars on secret, illicit, or outright illegal or unsanctioned vices than we will on common ones. The guiltier the pleasure, the bigger the price tag.

Of the hundreds of arguments against the prevalence of pornography in our society, one of the loudest and most frequently voiced is that any content of this nature demeans women. It is perhaps the only point upon which both feminists and Christian fundamentalists agree.

But is this argument legitimate?

Pornography on the Internet has driven some of the biggest developments in Web-based technology as the people involved in it seek to deliver bigger, bolder, and badder content to an audience willing to pony up billions upon billions in fees each year.

Credit: Bubbels

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