“You reap what you sow”.
When Kate Isaacs, founder of the campaign #NotYourPorn discussed the lack of regulation of the porn industry, and how commercialised porn websites are profiting from non-consensual content (otherwise known as ‘revenge porn’) this was the first response on Twitter.
The knee-jerk reaction to victim blaming feels all too familiar. The classic line of “if she didn’t wear such a short skirt she wouldn’t have been raped” has been repackaged and now takes the form of: “if she didn’t want it on a porn site, she shouldn’t have recorded it”. The same sentiment – but now being used to justify digital sexual abuse.
And although tweets pointed out that, “this happens to men too!” we know that revenge porn is a gendered issue, predominantly affecting women. The Metropolitan Police 2017 statistics on revenge porn reveal, out of the reported cases of revenge porn in the UK, there were almost five times the number of female victims than male victims. In 2018 PornHub saw 33.5 billion visits in 2018, with 60-80% of viewers being male. Why does this “genre” of porn continue to be popular on porn platforms? Because it’s fundamental appeal is that it subjugates women.
It is clear that revenge porn’s selling point is that it features women who have not given consent. And when we delve deeper, the situation becomes even more sinister.
The commercialised porn industry, and the users that upload them are those who ultimately profit from women’s shame. Pornhub, XHamster and Xvideos regularly feature non-consensual videos, under the guise of “Leaked sex tapes” or “stolen sex tapes” and in some instances, even as brazen as “Revenge Porn”. The search recommendations after looking at the aforementioned genres on Pornhub see the suggestions: “stolen teens snapchat” and “teens snapchat”. This leads a user down a rabbit hole where there is little evidence to tell whether a) these girls are of age or b) they’ve given consent for this to be on Pornhub.
The porn hosting sites do little to combat this. Pornhub’s army of just ‘a dozen’ human moderators in comparison to the 5 million uploads the site received in 2018, demonstrates how low non-consensual content is on their list of priorities. As far as PornHub is concerned, the person who uploaded the video also owns the video. For PornHub, it’s a copyright issue, not an ethical one.
The bottom line is: non-consensual sexual content sells. The porn industry and it’s advertisers profit from it.
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Kate Isaacs set up the #NotYourPorn campaign to hold the porn industry to account, after a friend of hers had her iCloud account hacked and her intimate videos and images uploaded on PornHub.
“As a campaign, we have a number of areas we are working to raise awareness and encourage legislative change.
Currently, we are working with the MP, Rosena Allin-Khan, who is preparing to introduce the issue of revenge porn featuring on commercialised porn websites. However, because of Brexit, this is being delayed.
We are working with the Law Commission as consultants on the UK governments Online Harms review to ensure that the regulation of the porn industry is featured.
Our main job at the moment is to raise awareness of the lack of regulation of the porn industry and the incredibly damaging effects that having revenge porn uploaded to these websites causes. This crucial dimension of the revenge porn discussion is so often not spoken about – with multi-million pound companies going unscathed whilst facilitating, hosting and profiting from image based sexual abuse.
We are a small three-woman team and we campaign around our day jobs. As you can imagine, especially in the current political climate, we are dependent on the support of the public to keep the spotlight on this issue. In the months we have been campaigning, we have learnt that there is a tendency to allow issues that predominantly affect women to fall by the wayside. Your actions matter, and you can make a difference. We know this because we feel the effect of your support.”
Support the #NotYourPorn campaign by writing to your MP or you can sign the petition. To keep up-to-date follow: @NotYourPorn or visit notyourporn.com.
If you’ve been affected by revenge porn, you can contact the Revenge Porn Helpline on 0345 6000 459 or go on their website. The project provides support and advice for cases of intimate image abuse and can help victims to remove the content. The call service is open from Monday to Friday, 10am – 4pm. For further suggestions of other services where you can find support, please look on the resources page of their website.
