It’s Easy Out Here for a Pimp:
How a Porn Culture Grooms Kids for Sexual Exploitation
These notes are based on the final part of the “It’s Easy Out Here for a Pimp” slideshow and the accompanying script, both of which were written and produced by Dr. Rebecca Whisnant (University of Dayton) for Stop Porn Culture, with assistance and contributions from Cordelia Anderson, Gail Dines, Lierre Keith, Alexis Ladd, Jennifer Reed, and Gariné Roubinian.
What can we do?
It’s easy to feel overwhelmed and angry at the mess that profit-seeking corporate pimps are making of our public life, our culture, and our kids’ psyches. What can we do about it?
Adult confusion
Many of us grownups have questions of our own about how to distinguish healthy sexuality from unhealthy pornographic scripts. We may wonder: how can I talk to the kids in my life about these issues, when I hardly know which way is up?
- What is sexy?
- What is pornographic?
- What is healthy or unhealthy?
- For us?
- For kids/teens?
Sexual reality check
A good first step is to check in with ourselves, and see whether our own relationship to porn and the culture it creates is in line with our own deepest values. Kids are always watching what we do, not just what we say, and thinking through our own choices can help us clarify what we want to convey to the young people in our lives.
- Clarify our own beliefs and values, and make sure our actions are in line with them.
- Consider our own use of porn or pornified products, whether directly from the pornography industry or from mainstream pop culture.
- Kids are paying attention to what we do, not just what we say!
Educate ourselves
We need to educate ourselves, so that we can talk with the children and young people in our lives. There are resources available to help in this process, and educating ourselves will help us feel more confident in taking on these issues, whether in our own families or in the broader communities we move in. Here are some helpful books:
- Not for Sale: Feminists Resisting Prostitution and Pornography edited by C. Stark and Rebecca Whisnant
- Female Chauvinist Pigs: Women and the Rise of Raunch Culture by Ariel Levy
- The Industrial Vagina by Sheila Jeffreys
- The Idea of Prostitution by Sheila Jeffreys
- Pornography: Men Possessing Women by Andrea Dworkin
- Getting Off: Pornography and the End of Masculinity by Robert Jensen
- Bunny Tales by Izabella St James
Porn sex vs. healthy sex
For instance, in their recent book and on their website, sex therapists Larry and Wendy Maltz offer this list of differences between porn-related sex and healthy sexuality. In addition to stimulating our own thinking, such resources can serve as conversation-starters with a son, a daughter, or a high-school youth group.
| Porn-related sex is: | Healthy sex is: |
| Using someone | Caring for someone |
| Doing to someone | Sharing with a partner |
| Performance for others | Private experience |
| Public commodity | Personal treasure |
| Separate from love | An expression of love |
| Emotionally distant | Nurturing |
| Can be degrading | Requires certain conditions |
| Can be irresponsible | Approached responsibly |
| Involves deception | Requires honesty |
| Compromises values | Involves all the senses |
| Feels shameful | Enhances who you really are |
| Impulse gratification | Lasting satisfaction |
But what do I say?
Many adults feel tongue-tied around sexual issues—even talking to other adults, let alone to kids. Here are a few ideas for how to get a conversation going.
Use “teachable moments”: ad, video game, song, TV show, clothes in the store “I know a lot of people think ______ is funny [sexy, cute, OK], but I think _______ . What do you think?”
“Do you think she really likes posing/dancing like that?
Where do you think she might have learned it?”
“Some people are making a lot of money by telling lies about women [girls, boys, sex]. They’re making it seem like it’s OK to treat people like things [degrade people, use people], but I don’t think it is.”
”You can say, I understand how you can be very curious about these images, but we don’t support people who think of women in these ways. . . . We don’t welcome them into our house, not through your iPod, not through the radio, or the television, and not through the Internet.” Family therapist, Carleton Kendrick
Framing the issue
It’s important not to take a shaming tone, or to convey that sexuality is dirty or wrong. Rather the issue is our values, like the ones listed below, and how we express those values in relation to ourselves and others—including in sex. If we can get kids thinking and talking about what these values mean to them, and what they might look like in action, then we’re doing our job.
- It’s not about being naughty or nice, pure or dirty
- It’s about how we think about and approach sex, how we treat ourselves and other people
- Sex/nudity per se is not the problem—degradation and exploitation are the problems!
Hijacking . . .
Young people have the right to explore their sexuality on their own schedule and on their own terms, both alone and with age-appropriate partners, without a stew of hateful and toxic messages getting in the way. Desire and arousal are normal for people of all ages, but our commercialized porn culture hijacks kids’ development, robbing them of healthy pleasure and intimacy. As caring adults, we need to fight back.
Push back; build a “counterculture”
It seems daunting, but like almost everything, it’s easier when you join together with others. Start by finding at least one ally, like a parent of one of your kid’s friends. You can begin with a counterculture of two, and build from there!
- Talk with other parents/teachers/youth workers. Become each other’s allies in setting boundaries around consumption, problematic media, etc.
- Form a reading group and/or watch this presentation together
- Advocate for media literacy curricula in schools
- Advocate for full, comprehensive sex education in schools
Madison Avenue, pimps, etc.
We wouldn’t have such a difficult job if it weren’t for the advertisers, pornographers, and other powerful interests that continue to tighten their grip on our culture. As important as it is to effect change in our own families and local communities, we also have to join in organized resistance to these huge corporate interests. Those that are doing the damage and reaping the profits must be held accountable.
Some web resources
See the Resources page for a list of links to useful websites.
The goal . . .
We need to keep envisioning the kind of society we want to create. As one coalition opposing child sexual exploitation puts it, we must “keep prevention . . . in the front of people’s minds and hearts in such a powerful way that the normalization of such exploitation for individual or commercial gain becomes socially, economically, politically and spiritually unacceptable in our communities, nation, and the world.”
Make love not porn—stop porn culture
Together we can take back our culture, our relationships, and our kids’ future.