Pornography Degrades Women - Essay Example

?Pornography degrades women because they are being treated as sexual products for commercial purposes in pornography. Pornography, as defined by the Cambridge Advanced Learner’s Dictionary, is books, magazines, and films with no artistic value that describe or show sexual acts or naked people in a way that is intended to be sexually exciting, but would be deemed unpleasant or offensive by the majority of the population. The problem with pornography is that it seems like it is all about a woman’s body. The function of pornography appears to be for sexual excitement; however, the chief purpose of producing it ultimately comes down to money. Pornography is marketed to a specific segment of society—men young and old. Marketing is defined as a job that involves encouraging people to buy a product or service. In this case, it is a service and the person providing the service is usually a woman. Pornography is multi-billion dollar industry and this is where the problem lies. There is no motivation to crack down on it because there are financial incentives keep the industry open. Pornography has become completely commercialized—it is not a public service and additionally, its participants or actors do not usually volunteer their services. Therefore, obtaining a profit by using a woman’s physical features definitely dishonors women. We cannot conclude that pornography degrades women just because some of their physical features are used as an object for gaining profit. In terms of making money, pornography is not the only industry that treats women and their bodies as objects. There are a wide range of commercials, such as beer, perfume, and cigarette commercials, that use a woman’s body in order to seduce a customer. The purpose of commercials is to make as much money as possible. The recent Perrier commercial, which Dita Von Teese starred in, is great example of this. It is a blatant sexual commercial where Von Teese was used as a sexual object, showing off her body in the video. The commercial was advertising water; yet it shows a sexy female stripping off while pouring water over herself. She doesn’t even drink the water. The fact that she was a sexy woman had nothing to do with the need to drink water. This type of advertising is called “sexual marketing.” This form marketing is more effective in reaching men, and this is why there are more commercials emphasizing women and their bodies than the other way around. This is a clever way of marketing a product to a male customer; instead of focusing on the actual product, men pay more attention to the person displaying the product. This is in one sense false advertising because the thing that attracts the customer does not come with the product. Although, this way of marketing proves successful because men think that if they use that product then they will get the woman too. However, this is not at all the case. When compared to other methods of marketing, pornography does not degrade women because the only reason for the use of women as a sexual product is to obtain a profit and more industries than the pornography industry take advantage of this. It is true that there is sexual marketing that treats women as sexual objects. In addition, sexual marketing also gives women less dignity because a woman’s physical features are used only to lure male customers, as was mentioned earlier. Also, the general purpose and issue of how women are treated is similar in both sexual marketing and pornography. However, there is a difference between them. Commercials are typically not extremely vulgar as pornography, and are perceived as suitable viewing for all ages. On the other hand, the content of pornography is usually hardcore; men are raping women or women are having sex with a group of men. Sexual marketing may have a grey area when determining if it is appropriate of not, but pornography is clearly degrading of women. Therefore, sexual marketing and pornography cannot be compared regarding the issue of degrading women because they are two separate issues. It is unfair to say that only women are being treated as sexual products in pornography because there are certain genres of pornography that only contain men, such as gay porn. The numbers of female customers of pornography is rising all the time and this brings about a need for more male actors. Hence, it’s very difficult to say that pornography is degrading only to women. The argument that pornography degrades women is false because there is pornography that only contains men as actors. This form of pornography shows sexual activity where men are the ones being taken advantage of and it does not show females in a derogatory way at all. Thus, pornography degrades everyone. If we look at this from another point of view, then pornography does not degrade anyone. In male pornography there are differences in the roles that men play. However, in mainstream pornography, women are always perceived as a vulnerable object and are used by a dominant man. Women are always shown as an innocent victim but never get to take pleasure in pornography themselves. On the other hand, men can be an actor in pornography or a participant. Therefore, even though gay porn is small in comparison, we cannot say that pornography does not degrade women because women are overwhelmingly used as sexual objects more than men are. The truth is that males first created pornography and thus use it as a tool to glorify their desires. These desires are often at the expense of women. The reason why the majority of pornography is produced for men simply comes down to money once again. Men on average earn more money working than women do and therefore can afford to spend more on pornographic films. Using mild forms of pornography in different forms of advertising is just as bad as the real thing because of the suggestions that it makes. Gay pornography cannot be compared to regular pornography because gay pornography involves two men. This is for a different market completely and does not involve women so it cannot be used to try and justify the use of women in pornography. The word pornography originates from Greek. The Greek word ????? (Porone) means prostitute while ????? (grapho) means record. These two words can be combined to form the word “pornography,” the meaning of which will be the recording of a prostitute. Men are typically the ones doing the recording while women are the ones being recorded. To sum up, the majority of people who watch pornography are men while women are the ones being objectified in pornography. Pornography describes women’s physical features in a hardcore way. Also, women are always submissive while men are always dominant. The purpose of producing pornography is simply for making money. In other words, women are being used as commercial products. Therefore, it is indisputable to say that using a woman’s body in an extremely hardcore way to make money degrades women. Read More