Quote:The vast majority of the mainstream content that feeds this market is live-actor porn: its production requires real people. Pornography is therefore not just a representation but also a practice and there is still precious little recognition of the hazards that performers face. From the significant risk of sexually transmitted infections to the threat of having “the shit kicked out of you” by a colleague on set.

That there is a danger of physical violence for performers should hardly be surprising given the content of modern commercial pornography. Those within the porn industry itself have, for almost a decade, been voicing concerns over the increasingly violent nature of mainstream porn. In Selling Sex Short, for example, I provide a number of insider perspectives from directors and performers worried about the physically and psychologically punishing nature of US-based porn in the early 2000s.

These industry-based concerns are supported by one of the most recent academic content analyses of bestselling pornography which found that almost 90% of scenes “contained physical aggression, principally spanking, gagging and slapping,” and that “perpetrators of aggression were usually male, whereas targets of aggression were overwhelmingly female.”

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There is also mounting evidence of the broader cultural effects of the proliferation of porn. The School of Advanced International Studies at John Hopkins recently published research which claims pornography can be linked to increases in sex trafficking. Not to mention the growing reports from psychologists and sex therapists about the damaging nature of pornography use in many relationships. And teachers worried about the changing sexual expectations of a generation who have routinely accessed hard-core imagery before even reaching adolescence.