How p*rn turns women into masochists

Porn is teaching people how to have sex, and the education women are getting is that they better like getting hurt.

The average age kids find pornography for the first time is 12-years-old, well before the first time they would have had a sexual experience, let alone a romantic one. Finding this material during some of their most sensitive formative years means the images are uncritically absorbed and end up functioning as educational material on how sex is had.

The vast majority of pornography is violent sexual acts being done by men to women, with one of the most famous tropes being incest. As one of the first exposures to the concept of sex, these violent acts and depraved fetishes work as a blueprint to tell the viewers not only what their role in sex is, but also other peoples.

Porn tells boys to behave violently during sex and it informs girls to receive that violence. When boys and girls get older, boys approach girls expecting them to behave like the women they watch in porn. For a myriad of reasons, girls often feel cornered into embodying the sexual expectation men have.

As young people, these girls are in the early days of experiencing sexual and romantic desires for the opposite gender. When the guys that they like want them to be okay with getting choked in bed, they might feel like they have to let it happen if they want to be able to have a sexual experience with the person they like.

Men, even when they’re boys, are physically stronger than their female peers. There is a legitimate concern that if you say no to a man's sexual request then you’ll wind up forced or physically hurt. Additionally, women are already trained by our patriarchal society to be palatable and appealing to men. Saying no feels scary and scandalous.

All of this leads girls and women to feel like they have to accept the violent sexual practices done in porn. To go against it would be to potentially risk your physical safety, forgo sexual intimacy and go against the teachings you received your whole life to never tell a man no.

There also seems to be a misunderstanding from the pro-porn crowd that porn functions solely as entertainment, and that the audience understands that as well, but when the viewers are children, they have no way of knowing that what they're watching is not accurate to what “real” sex is.

People often defend violent sexual acts, kink and BDSM by saying it’s an innate unchanging aspect of peoples sexuality, we shouldn’t shame these things because peoples sexual desires are natural and uncontrollable. But how can that be the case when people are being exposed to violent sexual material before they even have a sexuality? There was no chance for them to evolve an independent sexuality separate from porns influence.

Of course, girls watch porn to, they are learning along with boys what their role in sex is. When women are being taught that sex involves them tolerating violence then it can lead to them genuinely desiring violence.

This is often the defense for violent sexual acts being done to women, “well what if that is what the girl genuinely wants!” The sexual acts that we normalize can not be based on what individual people like, but instead what is best for society. Women do not deserve violence during sex. Hurting them, regardless of if they want it, is wrong.

Rape, domestic violence, sexual assault, femicide, the subjugation of women through politics is all supported by porn. Normalizing women as the receivers of violent sexual acts encourages the idea that women enjoy violence and men are entitled to women’s bodies and actualizing their sexual interest. Regardless of anyone's genuine interests in violent sexual practices, this is not something that should be engaged with and encouraged.

If you were never exposed to violent sexual acts, either from porn or in conversation or music, these practices would seem completely bizarre. Why would someone be choked, slapped, hit, spit on, verbally degraded, tied up and whipped? All of these acts would be considered assault when not put in a sexual context, so what about it being done during sex makes it different? Nothing, other than that we’ve normalized it. To the un-pornified brain, this was never made normal. Let’s get back to that sanity and finally stop saying women should be masochists if they want to have sex.