Everything Is Content - Porn - A Deep Dive (Part Two)

Episode Date: February 21, 2025

Happy Friday! Last week we dropped the first part of our EIC special on porn, looking at the creators and platforms taking over the industry. This week our (highly anticipated) second part looks at the people behind the screens: the consumers.First up, why is porn addiction such a divisive topic among academics? And does it even exist? We answer that question and look at the deeper issues contributing to widespread compulsive porn-use.Next, we look at the rise of non-consensual user-generated porn i.e. deepfakes and revenge porn, and the fact young people are accessing this content. Finally, ethical porn has promised to right the wrongs of an often exploitative, discriminatory industry. Just how true is this, and can porn ever ethically be consumed?In Production Partnership with Cue Podcasts-----------Psyche: If you think you’ve got a porn addiction, you probably haven’tBBC: Is 'porn addiction' a real thing?Children’s Commissioner: ‘A lot of it is actually just abuse’- Young people and pornographyChannel 4: My Deepfake PornThe Guardian: Vicky Pattison: My Deepfake Sex Tape review Girlguiding: Girls face a crisis of confidence in an unequal world  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

I'm Beth. I'm Richera. And I'm Anoni. And this is Everything Is Content, the podcast that delivers you the piping hot tea on any and every topic. From books to TikToks to the adult entertainment industry, we've got you. With a red sole on your patent platform shoes, stepping out into the world of content.

This week on the podcast, we're returning for the second part of our two-part porn deep dive. Last week, we spoke about the people who create adult content. This week, we're looking into the consumers and how porn consumption affects us and society more broadly.

Follow us on Instagram at everythingiscontentpod. And if you haven't already, make sure you hit follow on the show and your podcast player so you always know when there's a new episode. So until last year, I'd heard so many people use the term porn addiction really widely. I'd assumed it was a really accepted mainstream phenomenon. But a conversation with sexologist Gigi Engel was the first time I learned that a lot of people think it's bullshit.

Even today it's still a really divisive concept with a whole industry dedicated to offering treatment and guidance on porn addiction but crucially it's not a disorder listed in the latest edition of Diagnostic and Statistical Manual often thought of as the encyclopedia for psychiatry. Experts say that porn can be part of a compulsive behavioral issue but this is completely different to an addiction. Also there's no universal diagnostic criteria for what constitutes problematic porn use. A piece in Psyche titled If You Think You've Got Porn Addiction You Probably Haven't by Joshua Grubb who's an assistant professor at Ohio Uni said addiction means that the pursuit of the behavior has become so prevalent in a person's life

that it's causing severe problems in almost all areas of their functioning. People with addiction see their relationships, health, career fall apart as they relentlessly seek out the substance or behavior. The vast majority of people who watch porn don't remotely meet this definition. One study in the US found that when people who are devoutly religious use pornography, they're much more likely than their non-religious counterparts to describe themselves as addicted. Similarly, people who think that pornography is morally wrong but continue to use it anyway are more likely to report being addicted compared

with people who don't think porn is wrong. So what he says in the piece is essentially people report feeling addicted because they feel as if their behavior is out of sync with their values which I thought was so interesting. Still it's clear the fear and anxiety around porn and this idea of porn addiction reveals a disconnect between how universal and accessible porn is and whether we accept it or not as part of society. Still subreddits like NoFap described as a porn is and whether we accept it or not as part of society. Still subreddits like NoFap described as a porn addiction and compulsive sexual behavior recovery piss forum have 1.2 million subscribers so lots of people heavily believe in this idea of porn addiction. I mean millions of people subscribe to the fact that they are addicted to porn. What do you think is going on with this

whole picture and what was your belief around porn addiction before I went on this massive tangent? I think this is so fascinating because I just assumed much like you that, yeah, it's a thing, people get addicted to porn. The thing that really stuck out to me when you're talking, which makes so much sense is, and we spoke about this slightly last week in porn part one, is the shame element, which I think actually is such a big driver in people's actions. I think because sex, we live in such a weird world where on the one hand, sex is a dirty thing that we don't talk about and it's shrouded in secrecy and it's full of shame. And on the other hand, everyone does it,

which is the same. Everyone's seen porn, whether or not you watch it regularly, everyone's been exposed to porn at some point. But for a long time, it was like a no-go thing. And I actually think that ramps up people's consumption because it's done in secrecy and shame often is actually a really big driver for sexual activity as well. And that's why people love affairs. It's like that humiliation shame. They're all very much tied into arousal. And I found that really interesting. It completely makes sense to me that someone with Christian values then watching porn would tie that into a negative thing. So I think it's really interesting. And one other thing I want to say, which a friend of mine who is a psychologist was talking to me

about this, and she was saying that so often when you are anxious or when you're stressed, if you don't have good relievers or good access to means of protecting your mental health, one of the things people often turn to is masturbation because it's a really quick means of release you get oxytocin you get dopamine it's really good for your brain and that can increase like porn consumption as well and so it's a lot of things of like if someone's really stressed they're really anxious so then they're watching loads of porn then they feel loads of shame around it they think there's addiction there's lots of different reasons why people turn to porn and it might actually not be addiction. It might be just that their life's really stressful and then they need to find a

form of release. That's the quickest and easiest means that's also free for them to access it. And that's what we do. And I think that's why if we could pull conversations around sex, masturbation and pornography consumption out of that shrouded secrecy and shame, then people might be able to start having much more healthy relationships, understand their drivers as to why they're seeking it out. Obviously, there's other reasons too. And rather than just being like, oh, I have a porn addiction, it's the problem. I can't solve it. Yeah. I think there's a lot of logic in the discussions about labeling this as an addiction versus not, because it's not in a lot of ways in line with an addiction model that we rely on,

where it's a chronic medical condition involving certain receptors in the brain, certain kind of social behaviors, certain pleasure seeking or sort of sensation seeking. So I think it's fascinating to look at. And it doesn't mean that we take it any less seriously as this kind of life limiting state of affairs to say, we don't have to call it an addiction to discuss the framework around treating it. And I'm fascinated by it. I'm fascinated by why we find ourselves here. And I think my theories have always been around, yeah, modern life being quite stressful, modern life being quite lonely, us already being drip fed an extreme amount of technological dopamine pickups, things like that. And I think it's easy to speculate on and guess that has something to do with that. But actually, I just

don't think we know because it's this ancient thing of sex and pleasure, masturbation versus like a modern set of circumstances. And I read something quite interesting, actually. I read an article from 2018. So it's not recent, even though even though my brain was like oh just a couple of years ago in reason magazine and in it they cite a man called david lay who wrote a paper about the pseudoscience of i think it's about the pseudoscience behind public health crisis legislation and in this case porn and the way that it's been framed as you know addiction sweeping the nation and he's quite anti the label of porn addict and he writes in his own paper the label of porn addiction is commonly thrown individuals in a manner which feeds moral panic diverts attention and resources from effective evidence-based strategies to support these individuals

and he says it pathologizes otherwise benign behaviors which porn actually can be and he sort of describes it as not porn addiction but problems integrating porn use which if you are fine with porn existing if you don't find it kind of a moral ill and a sin to use it then that's a really sensible way of looking at it versus pathologizing the people or any person that uses porn his suggestion for how to deal with it is sex education, understanding what the origins are in your own psyche of a compulsive or problematic or painful use of porn. And a point he makes is we also need to assist people in evaluating their moral beliefs and sexual behaviours, and as well as learning how to communicate them and enhancing their empathy control.

It is very much about how porn exists in the kind of cultural mind as something shameful, readdressing that and then seeing actually maybe your compulsive need to watch it, your shame, your returning to this again and again, even as it harms you, becomes a lot easier to manage and maybe even alleviates just from reframing it as not something incredibly deviant. Yeah, this idea that porn addiction has encouraged a moral panic is something as soon as I read it in researching this, I could completely identify. And just to make clear, as I said, until a year ago, I completely bought into the idea of porn addiction I bought into the idea that young men specifically are having real problem use across the board and in researching

this it just doesn't seem to be the case in the way that people are reporting and then when I started started to think about it in a more I guess abstract way I thought about even on say the receipts podcast when they have listener dilemmas where girlfriends are reporting that they can tell that their partners are watching porn and they aren't having conversations around it and they feel betrayed. And I think one aspect of this, and there are many aspects in this dilemma, is that we don't really have frameworks to talk about porn use. And a lot of it is done in shame in secrecy and it's very easy in a situation like that to say oh well he obviously has a problem the fact that he's doing it say after you have sex and he's not talking about it the fact that he's not quote-unquote

being open about it that feels like secretive behavior on the surface but also if we zoom out in relationships I think many people would say that they don't have a conversation they don't have communication around porn use I think that's probably something in this too and no wonder it's easy to blanket term this as a problem when a lot of people just wouldn't feel comfortable talking about it a lot of people would feel shame around their use because even though it's widely accessible, even though all of us are, you know, going on porn sites, a lot of us just aren't really talking about it, even to the people closest to us. So it would be very, very easy for it to feel like a problem. It would feel very, very easy to label it as a problem automatically by virtue of just that.

I completely, I think it's just that. And I think it's also that labeling as an addiction slightly somewhat takes away the person's agency because it's like, well, it's not my fault. I can't help it. It's a compulsion. But even with true addictions, with things like alcohol and drugs and smoking, people always say the only real way that someone will ever stop an addict is if they choose to. It has to come from a place of genuine desire to want to be able to stop, then you take the steps to stop. So even in cases where you are having a genuine withdrawal and you are dealing with going through all the processes, the very real disease of addiction, there is still an element of agency in terms of, right, I'm going to try and break this addiction. With porn, I think it is literally this, in vertical commas,

dirty habit. And as as i said it's such an immediate dopamine release it's such a quick fire feel good thing but there is also the phenomenon of like inverted commas post-nut clarity which is when someone watches a video they climax or have an orgasm and then immediately feel this sense of shame and dirt and whatever because i don't know why that is, but whatever, that is a thing. So I think that that's also what feeds into the cycle at this high, this massive high, this literally crescendo, you know, huge surge of pleasure, then this massive drop, and then this feeling of shame. It is, I guess, in that sense, kind of like a drug,

you come up and then you have a come down. And I think that what we've got to remember is that we have a lot of control over our habits and it's very easy to open up your phone go on a website with millions and millions of videos and get this hit and I definitely don't want to make anyone have any shame around porn and we will come on to ways like later on that you know you can ethically consume porn but I think that we also need to have agency in understanding that it's probably not the best habit. It's probably like eating fast food every day. You know, there's ways of having an active sex life and having a sexual imagination and be in relation with your body and pornography and that be healthy and okay. But much like anything else, if you're doing it constantly, if you're doing it too much, it's probably not good and it's probably not good for your brain and it's probably not good in lots of different ways. And I think that again the fact that it's that people don't talk about

it and it's really only in the last however many years that I think you know me and my friends would talk about it that was so especially as women whereas with men there is that different element of it kind of like a funny thing to talk about you know what porn videos you've watched I'm really glad we're talking about it I think it's really important And there would have been a time maybe five years ago where I would have just said, no, I can't have this conversation. Sorry, because I'd find it too embarrassing. My head's fallen off. I'm so embarrassed. I think, well, I agree with all of that. I think it's a very smart way of looking at it because I think we remove a lot of our agency in a lot of things and it harms us to do that that even as we admit that we need help.

And I think that's, on the one hand, that is a great point that actually who do you turn to for help when the thing that you are struggling with is a behaviour that is related to sex? You can't really tell your mother, you can't really tell your partner because that's a thorny issue. That could then become a fight. They could take it very personally. The relationship could end.

Could you tell your blokey mates, I'm struggling with watching too much porn? Would they take it seriously? Would you feel embarrassed? Could you sit your parents down and go, I'm in trouble, and it's to do with wanking? I think it's just immediately a very vulnerable position because of that fear of social isolation and humiliation. You're not left with that many avenues. And so it is great, I think, to have these conversations and to have these wide open resources. And another thing that I think about is the problem with overconsumption of porn is that it does look so different for each person. And when you cross that threshold, you might again be able to deny that you've done it because again, we've normalized the use of porn because it is very normal. And it might not

even be obvious it's happening again because of the plausible deniability of, well, I'm not spending money, because you might not be. Obviously, you can spend a great deal of money on porn and sexual services, especially, and go and listen to our OnlyFans episode, the amount of money certain men are spending is enormous. But the financial aspect may never, ever come into it. That's something I was thinking about. Because of the availability of millions of videos of free porn you could never spend a dime and so you could go well it's not problematic it's not like i'm you know eating into my finances it's not like i'm i'm spending my paycheck on this it's just maybe the quantity is increasing the

relative extremity is increasing maybe Maybe it's affecting my mood, but because you're not spending a lot of money on it, you're still able to keep your job, whatever else. You might be able to fool yourself into thinking that is no issue. Do people even know in themselves, I guess, is what I'm asking, that there's an issue or does it take until they're quote unquote found out or until it does stray into the financial. It's such a good point. It's such a good point. It makes me think that that's where shame comes in. And it's so funny because we've just spoken about how shame can be really detrimental to this conversation. But I think that's where shame comes in, in terms of people applying and projecting

onto you what is normal. And we have individually all our own concept of what is normal porn behavior, what is too much, what is unacceptable. And we have that with loads of things. We have it with alcohol, with drugs, with whoever you date, we all have these judgments and perceptions of what is acceptable and unacceptable. And say you had a friend who was engaging in what you deem as problem porn behavior because they either spoke to you about it or it came up because maybe they broke away from a Nando's meal you're having and then went to the toilet and then was watching a video and came back and you saw it on their phone it is it is just that's where we kind of apply these boundaries

to each other because I don't think you would do it for yourself. You could just go unchecked and you could think it's perfectly normal. But it's only when you feel that shame from other people or you in your mind have reached your point of shame. That's when you start to deem it as a problem behavior. I think in the lack of guidance and in the issue around what constitutes problem behaviour, it relies on that to kind of fill in the gaps. There's no doctor saying, oh, a healthy balance is this, this, this, or there's no World Health Organisation guidance on how to use porn appropriately. So that's kind of left a gap where shame comes in, I guess. So it's one thing to talk about how much porn we're consuming,

but what about the types of porn we're consuming? What happens when real lives are irrevocably changed by the ubiquity of hardcore content that makes people search for ever more extreme titillation? And the Children's Commissioner for England said in a 2023 report that, and I quote, I will never forget the girl who told me about her first kiss with her boyfriend, age 12, who strangled her. He had seen it in pornography and thought it was normal. Young people told me in unequivocal terms that harmful behavior is directly influenced by violent

pornography, she said. And the statistics on young people's consumption of porn are damning. One in 10 children have watched pornography by the time they're nine years old. So with porn consumption starting ever younger, what happens when you can't get enough gratification from what's already available? In a recent interview on Louis Theroux's podcast, Armie Hammer, who's been accused of rape, violent and threatening messages, among other things, even used this as an explanation for why his interactions with his previous sexual partners were extreme. And he denies all allegation of abuse to the women who came forward. But he said, so okay, probably the first time that you looked at pornography, a picture of a woman in a brassiere was enough to make you go, whoa, you got that dopamine hit, you got that rush. But then maybe the next time you wanted a little more,

maybe the next time you wanted a little more. And maybe there's a period in your life at some point when you didn't have much to do and you spent an hour straight looking at pornography on the internet, where you start that hour and where you end that hour are usually very different places which I thought was pretty damning. So what about when the general public also decided to enter into porn creation and not as like amateur stars but in recent years there have been high profile cases of revenge porn which is the sharing of private sexual materials either photos or videos of another person without their consent with the purpose of causing embarrassment or distress, such as Georgia Harrison, whose ex-partner Bear was jailed for 21 months. And she said that she continues to

really struggle with how a sexually explicit video of her remains readily available online. The 30-year-old is actually fronting a two-part series with ITV where she looks into the issue of deepfakes and image-based sexual abuse titled Georgia Harrison Porn Power and Profit but at the time of recording that hasn't aired although it is available to watch now. But there was a recent Channel 4 documentary called My Deep Fake Sex Tape with Vicky Pattinson which looked at how AI is making porn even more dangerous for women. In response to the documentary Zoe Williams for The Guardian said you need two consenting porn actors to film the scene and fake the presenter's face onto it but But guys, if Vicky consents and the fella consents

and the Vicky alike other actor consents, and they all have agency, this is as near as damage the opposite of what a deepfake porn is. And the documentaries also received backlash online from image abuse survivors, such as 23-year-old Jodie, who advised against airing the video, and she told The Guardian that the decision to use the deepfake footage of Patterson lacked compassion and was in poor taste. So I wanted to start off, first of all, with the first part about children consuming content, because it says in a poll by Girl Guide of 2,000 youngsters aged 13 to 18, they found that 26% had seen content online and more than a quarter of teenagers have seen sexualized deep fakes of a celebrity friend or teacher. So much like social media, we're perhaps the last generation to grow up without total and

complete access to porn from a very young age. And whenever I read articles about more young women saying that strangling is normal during sex or that they're having anal sex before vaginal sex lots ending up with injuries or problems because of it it really terrifies me and so I wanted to ask you both what was your relationship to porn as a teenager and how do you think that impacted your relationship with sex if at all so to talk about the first bit that's definitely where the problem comes in for me we spoke about you know the fact that porn addiction is very divisive subject scientifically there's not backing for it the issue for me is both when people use it compulsively that's obviously damaging for them but also I guess the impacts the social ills that come from the fact that

only certain types of porn made by certain types of people presenting very unrealistic depictions of sex are normalized. That's the problem for me. I think what you said about children accessing that content at a really young age, that does really scare me. And that doesn't come from a moral panic or outrage. It comes from the sheer fact that there are figures to back up very young children seeing, you know, even non-consensual depictions of porn, the fact they're seeing deep fakes is really, really grotesque. It's just the normalization of sexualizing people without consent to people who are still learning about the world, learning about themselves, learning about boundaries. I think that is really concerning. My relationship to porn growing up, I didn't have one

at all. I went to an all-girls school, was super innocent, didn't really, I don't up I didn't have one at all I went to an all-girls school was super innocent didn't really I don't know I didn't really I had I might have been curious about it but I might have just had really intense parental locks on the computer or I think I might have just shared a laptop so I was like yeah I'll just leave this I won't bother trying and I guess the impact for me is that just I never accessed those really horrible violent depictions of sex at all so it just wasn't part of my understanding of what a healthy relationship or healthy sexual relationship looked like so yeah I guess I retained some innocence for a while. My is quite similar actually and I think firstly so many of the facts that you just said there honestly made my heart sink and I think listeners will feel the same like just so shocking and just feels like it is certain things are escalating in line with advances in technology.

I feel quite lucky, as unlucky as I feel that sex was quite shamed in women or in teenagers, when I was a teenager, masturbation was denied at all costs. Porn was very much like a pursuit for boys that I didn't even think about it for a very long time. I feel maybe quite glad about that when I look at a longer picture and a kind of broader picture, because it meant that maybe I missed out on consuming things that would have been catnip to my body issues, my self-consciousness about sex, my curiosity and my confusion about sex, because it is what you're watching is a performance of sex designed to titillate. It's not sex education. And I likely would have misunderstood it. My exposure, and it's very sad, it was to boys sending videos

of quite extreme porn or what I would consider quite extreme porn. And I won't mention what it was, but it was like viral dark web sort of stuff, really disgusting. And it puts you off. And it, in my mind, I sort of categorize porn as this quite upsetting thing for a few years. And then of course, you know, I was an adult and you type in those magic three letters and you're in a whole, you know, a whole new world. And so I think I feel quite lucky that I came to it a little bit later, but just the idea that porn is being watched and then it's being applied in these like adolescent experimental ways, like the sort of the choking, because you'd seen it in porn at age 12 that sentence just leaves me a bit cold very cold this idea that porn is for boys it rings so true for my experience it was something that

lasted for ages just this concept that as you say masturbation and porn is a guy's thing women you know girls and women we don't do that and even in pop culture I remember it just it felt like so normalized on the other side and that lasted ages for me so yeah when you said that I just thought ding ding ding that definitely that definitely rang true for me I had this exact same experience where slut shaming was so pervasive and and exactly the same as you Beth I feel actually weirdly grateful for that because I didn't really see porn. Again, every now and then videos would circulate, like two girls, one cup. I didn't even watch it, even though that was like going around. I didn't know for years what it was, which I think is they do a poo in a cup, isn't it?

It is, yeah. It's Copra, Lalia, Ophelia. I can't remember which one it is. I believe for years that that was like a porn, like a sexualized porn video, which is why I actually I actually didn't watch it because I was like I cannot be known to watch it and so on the one hand I'm really actually weirdly grateful for that but I'm not grateful for the fact that women's desires were shut down because I think that that element of women not having sexual agency freedom and desires is the other side of the consent coin so on the one hand where I wasn't exposed to porn even though we knew the boys were watching, but much less than they would be now because, well, I was at a boarding school. So the boys wouldn't have been able to access it on their computers because it all would have been locked.

And none of us had smartphones till we were like 16, 17, even then I don't really know if you would have been able to see porn. So if they did have it, it would have been like on a DVD that someone had burnt onto from their home laptop. I don't know. But the thing that was quite rife was non-consensual intimacy between peer-to-peer age groups. And I don't want to call it rape in that sense because I know, because it was more innocent than that. But it would be, for instance, girls and boys being in situations at parties where neither of us really understood the dynamics of sexuality and that a woman's desires could be important and often acts of sex were being performed in a really muddled way where girls were like well I guess guys want this and boys were like I guess girls want this and so consent was not something we were taught there were kind

of like I guess innocent still not great but the boys I don't think were acting on it in that way it was just like we didn't really know how to say no so there's all of this markiness basically around that that came from a place of slut shaming and women being seen as vessels for rather than independent agents with sexual wants and this is where it gets so confusing because I think it's important to teach young girls about masturbation about pleasure about desire so that they're able to like communicate their own wants and needs but I also want to retain the level of innocence that we were able to have because I really did and my all of my ideas around sex were from like books and films like the Titanic or like things I'd read in a book that were kind of vague like I didn't even really know what it was I was imagining

it was like a feeling it was sort of like a blurred image of a woman on a chaise longue but I didn't know what was happening there like there was that's and that's kind of really lovely so yeah I we all have the same thing but it does scare me so much I didn't even know anal was a thing I remember someone mentioning that and I was like well no one's doing that like I just I was like well that's just a lie I think I had the same thing about blowjobs I was like as is yes me too I remember my next door neighbor told me she was she told me what sex was when I was like 11 and I screamed and my mom was like how are you screaming on this from my neighbor's garden she's like what you scream about I couldn't tell her and then my

friend went and then if you want to have twins you have to put it in your mouth and I was like no way and then every twin I saw I was like I was like your parents are disgusting I got my brother and sister are twins well there you go that's how it works oh my god uh but so that's all really really damning but I guess to come on to the second part, because you were saying, you know, this all ramping up in the digital age, the next part is then this deep fake AI thing. And the conversation around this is gladly ramping up.

I think it's really important we talk about it. I think it's so scary, so new, again, so unregulated. But having watched the Vicky Patterson doc, because there does seem to be a lot of internet celebrity, social media celebrity kind of people coming out with these documentaries who don't necessarily have a lived experience and as I said there was a bit of backlash from people have experienced it what did you make of the documentary and did you think it was helpful or harmful I haven't watched it so I will let you

guys take a front seat but I will say having read around it I just I don't really understand what it contributes to the conversation and I don't understand the purpose of getting her to front it I we've spoken before about celeb docs and the fact that from a cynical point of view it's a good way to get eyes on a project because their inbuilt audiences will watch something so from a cynical point of view I guess Vicky Patterson's audience people who know who she is might watch something like this and learn from it but also I just I don't particularly think it's contributing in a overall positive way to the conversation especially when it was quite a superficial

concept to begin with yeah we have had those conversations before and there is often a disconnect between the chosen celebrity and the issue I do think she did a good job and is obviously very passionate, very, very passionate about this. She gets very upset in parts of it, not just about what she finds out about her own images and the vulnerability of putting on the internet. I mean, she's the one that hits post for this deepfake that she's created. I think it will get eyes on the issue. And I think that is commendable. I thought the ending of the documentary was a little bit abrupt, but it's solid. As I say, I thought it was a good watch. I do have reservations, the same reservations that she talks about that a lot of charities express to her. I mean, there's an interview she does, I forget who, with one woman and the woman's like, don't do it. And I think I felt the same. I think it is, as you mentioned, Anoni, she has consent at every point of this. She has time to discuss it with her loved ones. She has time to consider the fallout, weigh up the implications, have all the facts, and

then protect herself ahead of time, and is also making money from this documentary. No victim has any of those things. And I understand why, as a victim, you would feel that this is trivializing or just kind of missing the point. And maybe, you know, to invite this thing into your life willingly, this thing that ruins lives or can certainly make it feel like your life has been ruined, have ruined your relationships, your ability to trust, end your life in many cases, especially for really young women, the death, the suicides, just absolutely unbelievable. To invite that into your life willingly, perhaps does feel like it belittles it somewhat. So having watched it, that was my takeaway. What did you think, Anoni? I had the same reaction. It just felt kind of like, I think it's a really important thing to talk about. And I actually think Georgia Harrison's's because she has been a victim of revenge porn I think she's really well placed to create something about this and obviously you know her ex-partner was in the end prosecuted

and I think that celebrity voices in those instances are really powerful because as you said Richa they bring more eyeballs with this Vicky Patterson documentary I just felt really quite uncomfortable as well because like her partner is so uncomfortable with it and I was just thinking why are you going through this and also I guess there's an element too of like they kind of show how easy it is to make it which is good but it kind of makes me feel weird like is this going to like encourage people actually almost to kind of go out and see if they can make it for themselves and there are points where she's laughing because it is absurd but I think tonally I really like Vicky Patterson but it just felt a bit rushed a bit misguided and I think the investigation into it could have been

more thorough and I don't think it was broad enough for me really it kind of felt like a bit of a cheap shot at a very deep and dark conversation and I don't know how helpful it was again I really like her but I do just think sometimes these streaming services and these platforms are and we've spoken about in other episodes about journalistic integrity sometimes journalists I think we need to have a bit more integrity with the things that we're making these are really important really big topics and handled correctly I think they can have incredible power for change. But like that documentary, I don't know if it's going to spur any sort of real differences. And I think that's what we need to be thinking about when handling these conversations. Another criticism of the documentary is that she's essentially providing

a roadmap for people to do this, to make, she's kind of saying, this is how easy it is and gives a step by step, which I understand the fear, this is how easy it is and gives a step-by-step, which I understand the fear, but also the technology is not hard to find. You'll have to take my word for it. I don't look at anything weird on TikTok. I watch funny celebrity videos. I watch cooking videos. I watch makeup routines. And yet every few days I will get an advert for something, a technology where you can make celebrities kiss each other. I promise nothing I'm watching on my phone would indicate to the kind of SEO that I would like to see this. I mean, I don't even watch porn on my phone. I've tried, I don't know how it works. So it must be that this technology is just, they're just advertising this quite broadly. And

that really horrifies me, just this normalization of something which is kind of, it's so deviant, it's so wrong. It's such an invasion of privacy. It's such an awful technology. And I think that, and this is mentioned in the documentary, that Instagram has not divested from these kinds of ads. TikTok obviously hasn't either because they're making so much money on it. And the hope is maybe this spotlight and using shame and kind of putting that pressure on would at least encourage these giants not to put it out in front of the faces of often it's it's quite young users because that worries me just the normalization of it that it's coming up under a video of of someone doing a stupid little dance so we can't have a conversation about porn without talking about so-called ethical porn and though porn and pornographic images and writing has existed in the public consciousness and realm

for a very long time the writing about the sexual act vases covered in grecian phalluses erotic video games and smarty books, this idea of ethical pornography has entered the chat only recently in a big way. As discussions about porn have veered into feminist territory, into what it means to be a porn performer, to be paid properly for your sexual performances, to be protected as a worker, more and more conversations are happening about how we can enjoy porn without worrying and wondering about whether what we're watching was made under fair conditions, whether it was consensual and whether it promotes harmful and outdated ideas about sex, women, race and power.

And as this has happened, more and more self-branded ethical porn production companies and websites and performers have sprung up to meet that demand. So I want to talk about this because I think it's controversial to say the least. Some people are all for it, think it's a smashing idea and a bright spot in an industry with some fairly imperfect angles and skeletons in its closet. Other people though think it's a complete smoke and mirrors contradiction in terms, e.g. it literally couldn't and doesn't exist. So let's get into it. Can I ask, do you remember when you first started hearing about ethical porn as a concept? around the time of Me Too, I started seeing articles about Erika Lust and specifically the practices she has on set. Erika Lust is an ethical porn maker. I think she's at this point, probably the most famous ethical porn creator. And yeah, it was around that time that I guess

people started turning towards porn as an industry that had its own me too issues and then that's when her name started getting floating around in my periphery and specifically the news story that she had um wank breaks for stars on her sets and just kind of bits and pieces of how the onset creation of it was different to I guess your traditional porn makers the videos you see on Pornhub I remember watching a documentary and I agree I think maybe it was around the Me Too movement maybe oh there was one called Hot Girls Wanted I remember that yeah I remember that as well yeah and then there was another one which I can't remember now which is where a guy goes like a big porn fan goes and meets his like favorite porn, and they kind of show

him behind the scenes. And I remember just being really shocked because I'd never even considered the fact that porn was unethical. And I think it's in Hot Girls Wanted or another one of the documentary where you meet some of these porn stars, and they talk about, you know, the physical tiredness and the pain because these porn stars we shooting have many films a day. And they would say, look, like, I'm really sore, my vagina is like in so much pain and like this is the truth and then it just completely kind of demystified it and you suddenly realize how unsexy so much of porn is it's it's a lot of physical labor it's putting your body through stuff it's acting basically loads of the shots are kind of completely rejigged like and it was that that made me go oh my god because I had this

blinkered naive belief that porn is like a video of two people genuinely having really heightened sexual sex. And actually a lot of porn is cut, cut, go again. It's lubrication, it's editing, it's not real intimacy or arousal. And interestingly, there's actually loads of statistics that say that women are better at finding pornography that is actually, or looks at least feels more like real intimacy, whereas men are much more willing to watch pornography where it's quite obvious that the female participant is either not enjoying herself, not aroused or doesn't really want to be there. And that's something that when you look at the gendered categories of like who's watching what porn, men do tend to fall into the latter and women do tend to want to feel like at least there is a facsimile of like enjoyment happening anyway so that was my first thing and that really shocked me because I hadn't even considered so even porn that is made with consent is even if it's not

unethical it's not necessarily enjoyable and so that was the kind of my first turn then I learned about ethical porn and I think it's become more and more of a thing and actually with the conversation around only fans one of their entry points to it was that this was more ethical because the people were being paid and they had more agency obviously we spoke about in the last episode that is now the kind of kind of coming back down off that bell jar a bit I think because of it's getting so much bigger but I think it's the paywall thing I think that's the thing that always puts people off because we as a society have got so used to porn being free and also it's again similar to like journalism when anything goes behind a paywall even though we know we really should be paying for it and actually these things can't just exist

for free people are really anti it anyway so I went around the houses but that's that's my understanding of ethical porn you have to listen to john ronson's the butterfly effect which is a really good analysis yes build up yes of Pornhub and the creators of Pornhub and how they are profiting off all of this free content when the actual actors distributors film creators barely get a penny in comparison to this one guy in his bloody muck mansion profiting off all of this free content it will it will really shift your opinion if you haven't understood that concept already which I'm sure most people understand that now. But yeah, very good.

I never feel or have never felt like more of a party pooper than when you say, look, Pornhub and its equivalent sites are not ethical and you can't really use them in an ethical way. And that's never because porn is not ethical or because adult performers are all exploited, confused, hate themselves. It's not that at all, but it is the dysregulation of it. They have done such a shoddy job historically of removing content involving underage people and children. So by definition, hosting child sexual images, as well as images and videos of trafficking victims of people who are non-consenting. This has come to a head in the last few years i think in 2023 porn hubs parent company which is currently called ilo holdings admitted to receiving proceeds of sex trafficking which is hosting videos accepting payments from organizations who have coerced young women into performing sex acts and then uploading those

without their consent um there was also a really upsetting but very good piece in the New York Times, I believe in 2020, about how the site is, and this is their words, infested with rape videos. And there's a couple of horrible stories, one about how a 15 year old girl went missing in Florida, and her mum found her on Pornhub in 58 sex videos. There was also another filmed sexual assault of a 14 year old girl that was uploaded onto the site that was eventually taken down, not because they had flagged it, but because one of our classmates had seen it and had gone to the police. And even though in those two cases, an arrest was made of an offender, you know, in the video, Pornhub was not held responsible. And there are so many examples of this this one of them paying sort of lip surface

to regulation and things like that and they're not actually doing it but just hosting this content making kind of huge profits on it and I think you can think porn is fantastic and have a really healthy relationship with it alone with your partners whatever it is

while also understanding that this model of easy access, user uploaded porn sites is a haven for abuse and that even if there is this small chance of viewing and receiving pleasure from you know a system of trafficking it's just not worth that risk and so when i say this to people i'm kind of like but then i end with but you can pay for porn as though you know and i hope that they might with that knowledge. Cause it's, it's, it's when you realize that it's a real fuck, I can't unsee that. And it's, it is a bummer that that exists. And the porn is not as, it's not as kind of guilt-free

and it's not like the guilt should be viewing of porn. It's just a viewing it in a way that might not prop up really, really crave craven disgusting industries which is why I'm very glad about this advent of ethical porn even though I think it's quite problematic in a lot of ways it's not it's kind of like fast fashion in that you can slap a label of ethical or sustainable on something without it actually being that but all of that to say I am glad it exists and I hope more and more people will see porn for what it is which is a luxury it is not a human right it's not shelter and food and water it is a pleasure a luxury we should be willing to pay for it and it's a lot better when it's ethical like the quality is better the cinematography

is better I promise you can find something that is really up your alley just in exchange for a little bit of money this is all making me think of as well, the recent change that Pornhub has made after the Giselle Pellicot case to remove any videos where they mentioned that the party member is sleeping, unconscious, whatever. And we know that kink and fantasy exist and can exist in a safe environment and that people have anything and everything can be a kink. The most wild thing you can ever imagine, the most specific, someone's got a kink for that. I think the problem with porn sites like Pornhub is, and I hate to keep quoting Armie Hammer,

but as he said, like when you're watching it, you can end up, you can start off watching a very innocent softcore pornography video and then you can end up in the deep dark depths of some very strange kink, which under safe practices is absolutely anyone's game. But I think it shouldn't be so accessible because people don't even know about. I honestly have no idea about so many things. I find out about them from a podcast that I listen to, or my sister who worked in accident and emergency in the hospital and will tell me the most

outrageous stories about things that people have done and that has ended them up in the hospital. So people can discover their own sexual proclivities in safe environments but i do think that because these videos are labeled and because people get these like dopamine rushes and then are seeking more and more ever greater higher because you could do i do think desensitization from porn is a real thing that like basic normal vanilla inverted comma sex becomes not enjoyable and then because you can keep searching because you can find more and more depraved one of a better word video people's tastes become that and I think that's what's also scary is that like younger people are having access to videos that are labeled and the the most common category they always

announce this every year but almost always it's some sort of like incest category. And then it's like violence, then it's non-consensual. And it's like, I can't think those things would never really have popped up into my head. And I'm not an avid porn user in that way. So it does worry me like the labels. And it's a shame that I didn't even know that there were videos where they were saying that people were asleep. But it's the fact that it took that awful trial in France for Pornhub to change their things like

how many more videos are there with these like really worrying labels that we don't even know about that people are watching day to day I think the space for ethical porn is really really important but I do think again like changing people's mindsets around paying for it when it's been free for so long is going to be really hard I agree with you and I had no idea about the sleeping videos that is so well it just makes me feel gross honestly I I do agree with you I think changing people's perceptions around paying for porn is going to be impossible now it is just the model that we see with everything where you can't really retract and contain after it's already been available also I don't know about this but do you guys know if

they moderate on Pornhub because my understanding is it is just like almost a server just to host all these videos obviously lots of them are user generated and user uploaded so my understanding is there is just no sense of moderation like you would have, say, on Instagram or X. I mean, obviously, dubious moderation these days, but is that right? So in 2020, they purged, this is after I think that they were kind of hauled in front of some kind of high court, they purged about 80% of the content appearing on the website, which was in practice about 10 million videos as part of their drive towards removing unverified content and then only allowing verified users to upload. And a verified user is someone

who has uploaded a clear government ID, who has done the biometric scan and put in payment info. So similar to if you're signing up for a bank online um so there's measures in place a lot of critics though are not happy with them even five years down the line they made these lofty pledges and i think i think it was only last year that they agreed to age verify everyone in their videos going forward and yeah so they've made an effort but there's so many loopholes i think it does feel like smoke and mirrors in that I think it's maybe even just the primary participant in the video that has to go through those checks so better certainly but you know all of these abuses are still as rife like they can still absolutely slip through the net so not great

yeah I guess just to add a note on ethical porn elements, not only is the issue of how workers are treated a part of it, and also the fact that they're paid fairly, given workers' rights, that is a huge part of it. And the fact that different body sizes different races ethnicities different depictions of sex consensual as we spoke about that's a huge part of the content that she puts out it's very clear that all of the kind of uh scenarios that are thrown up consent is a huge part of it you see it play out on screen and it's made really sexy and also just the kinds of people you see on screen are so diverse I went to a screening I've been to two screenings of Erica Luss in the last two years it's so funny watching lots of porn with like 500 people next to you very strange very fun and yeah it is just it is the most diverse example of porn that I've ever seen in my life. And I didn't even realize that I had not seen diverse

porn. It wasn't something that had even occurred to me because it felt so narrow, my understanding of it until she kind of opened the world out and just literally showed on screen what it can look like. So I thought that was really fascinating and very encouraging. Yeah. And as we were kind of talking about in the last segment, you know, porn can have real life consequences and the way that theizing. And the content that people are seeing most often is either bodies which fit a specific script of beauty, often a lot non-consensual, often about male pleasure, not really focusing on female pleasure at all. Or if it is people of more diverse identities, then it is dehumanizing or degrading. And again, thinking of going back to like the younger people having access to this so broadly, it's just constantly cemented and being

bombarded with these ideas around which people deserve to be treated well and which people don't. And it's just all so damning. I think that's a really good point. I think in a society where sex education is thorough and comprehensive, you don't need to worry so much that people will be getting their education via the videos they're watching. You don't have to worry. You don't have to add a disclaimer to every video that actually anal sex is not this easy. You need to prep. You're just not going to see it on screen or that strangling or choking must follow a conversation and also like an education about how to safely do that.

And I think that is the problem. It's the culture that we live in, one of shame, one of really problematic ideas about women, about sex, about sex workers. That is the backdrop that all of this is happening against. And to take a slight left turn, there's a conversation happening in ethical porn spaces, which I don't have the answer to and a lot of people are really grappling with which is the idea of consent and it gets quite philosophical almost because if we see consent as you know in very whole terms involving like ongoing and kind of total freedom to say no then how does that work in the production of porn because does that mean that a hired performer

would be free to pull distribution of a video at any point after it's been released does consent extend to that does it mean that someone's wages would be guaranteed even if they did not complete filming does you know it's questions like that that i don't have answers to and it does like i say get quite philosophical but it just shows how murky things can be and actually how complex this industry can be because it's their workers, they deserve workers' rights. But in the case of having sex, there's just another element there that isn't present in other industries that I just think it's fascinating, but it is quite confusing. That is such an interesting point. This is the other problem with the internet. Even if your video exists on an ethical website, even if it's behind a paywall, the likelihood

is that it probably will get leaked. And so many OnlyFans creators have complained about their videos ending up on other websites. And I believe that you can pay huge sums of money to have corporations basically scour the internet for your leaks and get the links taken down. But we've seen it with, as Georgia Harrison speaks about, she finds it really distressing. Kim Kardashian, every sex tape that's ever been leaked, every AI video, every porn video, once it makes its way onto the wider internet, it is almost impossible to retrieve it and get it back. And so that's an element where I guess, because it's so interesting when we talk about

porn that we immediately turn to videos of porn because porn I guess could mean erotica or audio porn or literature or you know like softcore porn and it's like it's it's a wonder isn't it whether or not actually can porn in a video say ever be ethical because of what you just said because of the fact that at some point if that person suddenly decides they don't want those videos out there that is whether or not they're allowed to ask for that, that is kind of an impossible ask. So yeah, it's kind of like, I don't think that anyone's sexual desires, wants or needs or that any form of masturbation or porn consumption should be shamed. But the more I think about porn, the more it is very odd. And I kind of now wish that I've read

into the history of this because, but I know I'm going to butcher something which I'm completely paraphrasing from a book I read about a decade ago, so it could be completely wrong. In Sapiens by Yuval Noah Harari, he talks about, I think, how humans, I'm going back forever ago, would have sex more like out in the open and kind of like it would be something not done behind closed doors and we wouldn't necessarily wear clothes. And actually, I love quoting this this but that women would have multiple sexual partners which is why we're able to orgasm multiple times so she'd have sex with one partner he would ejaculate then become quite tired the women the reason that women are more vocal in the bedroom is because this would call other males to come to her they could hear that she was aroused they would have sex with her all of the

sperm would compete this is like natural selection and then the best sperm would win so women would have sex with up to like five partners whatever and all the men just like drop off like flies and she keeps going it's apparently about our stamina again i could be butchering this but i remember finding this so interesting because it's all about how like the victorian era and just like religion and stuff completely confused actual like female desire and male pleasure and stuff because women actually have much more of a stamina when it comes to like a singular sexual activity whereas men get really tired anyway there is something to be said for like voyeurism and sex out in the open and people watching each other and i think that that has existed and there's a reason why we enjoy watching porn because it comes

from a very human evolutionary place of i guess arousal and desire but again as everything is coming back to once it's on the internet, it dehumanizes the people on the screen. It decentralizes it in a way that means it's kind of out of control. And there's very hard to put parameters around it. And I think so often, I mean, it's the idea of this podcast, everything is content. Now that we put everything into this digital universe, we kind of lose control of it. And it all comes from a place of Instagram and Facebook and stuff. It's about community, but all of it is just kind of a vague mirage of the thing that it's trying to emulate and it never quite gets there. And it just turns into actually always

in every case, something more insidious, something more capitalistic, something more degrading and something more dangerous. Yeah. It's performance based on the desires and fantasies of mostly men who created it in the first place it's all performance i got just one more thing to say one point i wanted to make which is we're seeing a lot of crackdowns at the moment on porn especially in america and i do think these kind of crackdowns as necessary as it is to have these conversations also to see them for what they are which is a canary in the coal mine for other oppressions, for kind of puritanical lawmaking, for attacks on sexuality and sexual existence and freedoms more broadly. And as icky as some people might find porn, and on the left, I think there is a lot of legitimate concerns with sex images and industry

as a whole, we can't close our eyes to what this might signal is coming in a place like America at the moment, with someone like Trump in power, with something like Project 25, which is in the news a lot at the moment. And it's that sort of policy wishlist for right-wingers, which Trump has distanced himself from. But a lot of what he is putting into practice now is spookily similar to what is in that enormous document. And it's this call for America to return to, return in quotes, it never really was like this, but return to a family-based, pure society, freedoms. There's a lot in there about limiting abortions. And it's very, very, very anti-porn, with mention specifically of how porn has manifested as propagation of a transgender

ideology and sexualization of children. And I'm taking that directly from Project 25. So lines are being drawn on the right, currently in this moment, between porn and between deviants and between deviants and between transgender people existing in the world. They want anyone who distributes porn to be classed as a sex offender, anyone who runs a business that trades in it to be you know for that business to be cut to be closed and so I think it matters very much to have the conversation that we've had but then also to have the conversation about justice and safety for trans people performers LGBTQ people more broadly actually um and

understand why these anti-porn pushes represent a lot more than just, you know, a worry about children or, you know, wanting to heal our sexual wounds. It's not that, it's not isolated. It definitely feels like a sort of dog whistle now for a lot of very sinister things. I love these deep dive episodes oh they're so fascinating i feel like i learned so much as well same thank you so much for listening remember as well as these friday episodes you can also listen to us every single wednesday which is when we release everything in conversation an extra dive into a topic or discussion with all of your opinions included do not forget that you can follow us on Instagram and TikTok at everything is content pod. And

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