Porn tends to be a sensitive topic in culture today. When you bring it up people will either not admit to watching it, or they will say that there is nothing wrong with it. Whether we admit it or not, porn has become a big player in the culture we live in today and it is ruining sex!

The average first viewing age for boys in the United States is 11 years old. 11! At this age boys are exploring, they are discovering their sexuality; learning what they like and do not like. However, porn is telling them what the should like and what they should expect from sex. This is taking all the exploration out of sex and when sex does not live up to their expectations they are disappointed and then often turn to porn to fulfill those now unrealistic needs that no average woman can satisfy. Everyone enjoys different things during sex and porn is ruining the normal and natural exploration of the needs of one's partner.

Porn does not only distort sexual expectation, it is inherently racist. Today the porn industry had been revolutionized from naked women in magazines to an endless cornucopia of internet porn; mainly made up of the hardcore “gonzo” porn. Without being fully aware of the shift, society has become more and more accustomed to hardcore porn and this occurrence has harmful effects of people’s lives. People who watch this type of porn may often be unaware of how it changes their expectation of sex or how the perceive other individuals, especially people of different race and ethnicity. Porn reinforces racism and racial stereotypes through its many categories that are dedicated specifically to different types of races.

In in the 1960s, thanks to the Civil Rights Movement, racial slurs that were commonplace before, began to become less accepted by society. Today racial slurs are no longer apart of normal conversation and people who use them are often scorned harshly for their ignorance.

However, in the porn industry the shamefulness of racism does not exist. The porn industry has no restraint when it comes to any form of racism. As Gail & Dine's
Pornland: How Porn Has Hijacked our Sexuality" points out porn with black male performers are often titles things like, “Hot Black Thug, Black Poles in White Holes, Huge Black Cock on White Pussy” . In porn that features black men the male performers are depicted as animalistic or monsterous who only want a white girls “pussy.” These types of films are not far from the now unacceptable movies that once depicted black males who could not control themselves and wanted to rape white women. These types of porn films are inherently racist. Porn like this brings back stereotypes, that were thought to be long since disproved and forgotten, and resurfaces them with a new force and intensity.

Black female performers also experience extreme racism in the porn industry. On the production and business side of porn the majority of the people in charge are white males and the porn stars who are idolized in pop culture are most often white, blonde, blue-eyed girls. Therefore black females performers, “are generally regulated to gonzo, a genre that has little glamour, security or chic status”.

Black female performers are given the lower jobs in the porn industry. They are not idolized but instead pushed into the lower genre of mass production as many companies such as Vivid, who are trying to infuse the porn industry into mainstream pop culture, “mostly does not hire African American women, who are still the lowest level of the porn industry”. This is clearly discrimination against black female performers and is therefore harmful to society because when they see black women in porn it is always at a lower status than white women. These black women are forced into a lower status genres and therefore are forced to perform the more harmful and violent sex acts. This enforces stereotypes of white supremacy and the lower status of African Americans.

Porn depicts women of different ethnicity as no more than sexual objects, not a human beings with emotions and intelligence. The process of dehumanization, “is not something the porn producers invented. It has been a tried and trusted method adopted by many oppressors”. The porn industry often shows women or any ethnicity, whether they are Black, Asian, or Latino, as no more than their orifices that can be used for sexual purposes. Descriptions of videos often include something along the lines of Hot Asian Gets it Hard in Her Tiny Pussy, Dirty Latino Babe Likes it Dirty in Her Tan Pussy, and Black Slut Gets Cum on Her Big Tits. If it is not already clear, titles like these reduces women, and women of color to nothing but sexual objects. Porn therefore reinforces the notion that by simply being an ethnic woman they will then like to have hardcore and often violent sex.

Porn perpetuates racism in a shockingly effective way. In porn logic, by depicting women, especially women of color and ethnicity, as lesser it is then okay to preform violent and harmful sexual acts with them. People who watch this type of porn, many without even knowing, internalize the ideal that women of different races are dirty and deserve to be treated as thus. Porn is harmful to society in many ways but the blatant racism is depicts is one of the most harmful. Porn depicts both men and women of color in a way that sexualize their race. They are no longer just men and women who have sex but the fact that they are Black, Latino, or Asian adds another layer of the ways porn can sexualize them.