“Pornography is central in creating and maintaining the civil inequality of the sexes. Pornography is a systematic practice of exploitation and subordination based on sex which differentially harms women..." Andrea Dworkin and Catharine A. MacKinnon

Pornography is an industry growing at a rapid rate. As its audience expands its consumers are getting younger and younger. I have always been against pornography for a variety of reasons. I now have one new reason. My nine-year-old cousin just got the internet on his computer. The first website he went to was Hooters.com. I had to listen to him talk about the “hot babes” in bikinis on the site and how he can’t wait until he is old enough to go to Hooters. He wants to marry a Hooters girl because she is a hot babe. If this isn’t testimony to the damage that pornography has on young minds I don’t know what is. Several of these bikini-clad women were printed out on his new color printer. His father commented on the quality of the color. I was appalled. I waited for my aunt to take his computer privileges away or at least shut down the site. She didn’t. How do I explain to this nine year old wrongs of his actions, and is it

· Women are passive, willing partners in their own victimization, and exploitation.

3. Sports Illustrated disrespects women by exhibiting women to men as the "other"--as if women were a different species from the "real" athletes who are men.

The above described abusive/degrading behaviors are all present in various pornographic films and illustrations. Such behaviors objectify women. Sexual objectification is another common characteristic of pornography. It portrays women as depersonalized sexual things. If a young child grows up watching men defecate on, forcibly rape, or refer to women’s body parts as “tits, cunt, or ass” he is going to grow up on the notion that women are inferior to men. These body parts become the words used to define a woman. Women will be seen merely as objects used for male gratification. According to Susan Brownmiller as cited by Diana E.H. Russell,

“Violent pornography is like an advertisement for rape…Men are not born thinking women enjoy rape and torture…they learn it from pornography” (Sexual Violence, 1997, p. 21)

I hope that my aunt takes a stand against her son viewing such demeaning websites. I hope that she teaches him that women are equal to men and not just there for sexual gratification. If she doesn’t, he certainly won’t learn this anywhere else living in a society that puts women’s bodies on display. There needs to be a stop to this idea that women are mere sexual beings. It is so wide spread in the media that I fear it is not possible.

A study of sex offenders reported that 56 percent of the rapists and 42 percent of the child molesters in the sample said that pornography played a role in their offenses. A study of video pornography (“adult” videos and highly restricted, or triple-X, videos) found that 13 percent of all scenes involved sexual violence, including rape (53 percent), sexual harassment (35 percent), sadomasochism (17.5 percent), and sexual mutilation (6 percent). This study also indicated that “adult” videos had more portrayals of sexual aggression per movie than triple-x videos. In an experiment on desensitization, researchers showed men 10 hours of R-rated movies with sexual violence over a five-day period. On the last day, the men watched a documentary re-enacting a real rape trial. The men blamed the rape victim more for the rape, rated her as significantly more worthless,

1. The Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue disrespects women by directly contradicting Time-Warner's corporate hype, which claims the magazine stands for serious sports journalism and respects the ability and dignity of women and girls in athletics.

It would be unfair to say that pornography is the sole cause of rape. However, as stated above pornography predisposes men to rape. Many men are aroused by watching a women being forced to have sex. A key component to the danger of pornography is its ability to cause men to want to imitate the actions it displays. Being exposed to violent pornography changes men who are not originally force oriented. The find themselves having rape fantasies they previously didn’t have. (Violence against Women, 1999, p.87) In addition to this violence, pornography undermines the inhibitions of men who may already have the desire to rape.

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