Should Porn Be A Public Health Issue?

It gets more viewers than the biggest box sets combined and the industry is doing all it can to appeal to women like you. But a growing volume of voices is putting porn under closer scrutiny, not on moral grounds, but for the sake of our collective well-being...

- Sophie Wilkinson and Nikki Osman

Where consumers were traditionally stereotyped as teenage boys thumbing through mags behind a locked bedroom door, the porn industry has spread its consumerist tentacles far wider and shed much of its stigma in the meantime. Audio erotica is in the iTunes Store (see: Dipsea), porn is in your inbox via the newsletters of glossy women’s websites (“How to watch porn with your partner”) and – if recent data on the uptake among women is anything to go by – in your own browsing history. It’s also, according to the companies that make it, far more progressive than it was in the past. “Ethical” porn is that which is made legally and respects the rights of performers, and more mainstream sites, like PornHub, have adopted values in line with broader moral trends, like giving a nod to diversity by adding captions for deaf viewers and taking up socially aware causes, such as eradicating single-use plastic. They’re seemingly unlikely steps taken by an industry more often accused of inciting violence against women via violent videos, promoting pornographic “deepfakes” (where someone’s image is superimposed on to another’s using sophisticated software) and platforming revenge crimes. These days, porn is coming under scrutiny for reasons other than questionable ethics.