American political discourse is divided along party lines when it comes to just about any issue. Abortion access. Separation of church and state. Palestine.
But one issue seems to unify the Left, Right, and otherwise disaffected: Online porn.
In these discussions of online porn, Pornhub seems to be the straw man for every criticism. And these critiques are not without merit. It鈥檚 way too easy for minors to view free Pornhub videos.
The real issue is once again a lack of media literacy on behalf of people who say they are concerned about children. Instead of maligning all venues for online porn, why not introduce federal standards for compliance?
Some adult content sites do require not only payment, but age verification. QueerCrush, the brainchild of courtesan and adult performer Electra Rayne, requires facial recognition and an ID to even become a customer. OnlyFans also requires an ID. Other sites like Bellesa.co have disabled their free offerings in states like Texas, which require age verification. A pop-up on the site reads:
At Bellesa, the safety of our community is of top priority. We believe that device-based age verification is the only safe and effective solution to protect both our users, as well as minors attempting to access explicit content. This method would allow for users to access age-restricted websites only by those who are verified, ensuring a safer online environment.
While Texas law regarding age verification has the intent to protect children, the current approach is flawed and inadvertently hinders content creators from legally sharing their adult content and freedom of artistic expression. It is unfortunately no longer possible for us to remain compliant to Texas law while providing access to our content here, and have made the difficult decision to disable Bellesa.co in Texas.
Why are age and identity verification measures not enough to satisfy anti-porn feminists, Manosphere content creators, and religious conservatives who oppose free expression?
Despite their differences, each camp seems to share the belief that widespread porn consumption is bad for society.
However, critics of online porn treat 鈥減ornography鈥 as a monolith. Little attention is paid to who creates it, who distributes it, who stars in it, and whose sexual pleasure is centered. Critics of online porn don鈥檛 care to differentiate between independently produced amateur content on OnlyFans, revenge porn or other illegal and coercive content models, or studio porn. Almost universally, these groups are centering their discussions of porn around free, heterosexual, commercially produced videos that depict violence and objectification of women for a man鈥檚 sexual pleasure. Queer people, amateur erotica, and female-friendly audio porn are missing from the conversation.
Clearly, heterosex men drive the demand for the violent and exploitative content at the center of the controversy. The real question is: Why are these groups targeting performers, and not the customers whose demand they seek to satisfy?