Is It Problematic To Watch Porn? (ShortList)

Read the full article by Harvey Day at ShortList.com

In 2018, anyone can now access limitless amounts porn for free on multiple devices at any time of the day.

But porn is also prolific on social media sites such as Twitter and Tumblr - and also on Reddit, which has pages and pages devoted to it.

So post-#metoo, is it still okay to watch online porn in 2018, even though we’re not always entirely sure where our porn comes from? Or should we all be a bit more conscious before getting off?

How safe are the people who perform in the porn we watch?

“I don’t think it’s particularly hard to be an ethical consumer – just as it’s not difficult to buy fair trade coffee or clothes that were produced in factories which pay workers fair wages,” [Jiz Lee, 38, is a gender non-binary porn performer and producer]“Absolutely porn has problems with racism, transphobia, femmephobia and fatphobia,” says Dr Lucy [Neville, a lecturer at University of Leicester who writes about porn, erotica and sex work]. “But so does pretty much every media product you can buy or consume.“

But I think the current explosion of ‘free’ porn in the age of the internet has really democratised access to sexual imagery – porn is no longer the arena of straight white cis men like it was in the days of Penthouse and Playboy.

“Women, people of colour and people with different body shapes can all access images of people like them having sex easily and privately. This can be really empowering for previously sexually marginalised groups.”

“It’s also really opened up the discussion of sex and sexually explicit media, which I also think is a good thing. Our culture around sex can’t change for the better unless we start talking about it.”