“This is the first time I have worked on a subject on which there are no institutional documents, no report, nothing.” And according to Laurence Rossignol, Socialist vice president of the French Sénat and rapporteur, along with three other members of the chamber’s women’s rights delegation (senators Annick Billon, Alexandra Borchio-Fontimp and Laurence Cohen) of the first parliamentary report on the porn industry, the lack of interest in the subject is no coincidence. “There is a lot of male resistance to making these kinds of topics political issues.”
The four rapporteurs, from different points on the political spectrum, present a united front in the document, which will be published on Wednesday, September 28 after six months of work and dozens of hearings. As they point out in their foreword, their aim is “to finally open everyone’s eyes to this system of violence,” as exemplified by the far-reaching “French Bukkake” scandal, named after a website owned by Pascal Ollitrault. A judicial investigation was opened into the website in October 2020, for “aggravated trafficking in human beings, gang rape and aggravated pimping.” The rapporteurs also want “to initiate a public debate on the practices of the porn industry and on its very existence.”
Pornography has long since spread beyond the confines of movie theaters, and is no longer seen as a symbol of the liberalization of morals. The internet has profoundly transformed both production and consumption, which has become as massive as it is precocious: “Two thirds of children under 15 and one third of those under 12 have already been exposed to pornographic images, voluntarily or involuntarily. Nearly a third of boys under 15 years old visit a porn site at least once a month,” the report noted. This has profound consequences on mental health and on how sexuality and women are perceived.
‘Stop looking away’
“What we want to say,” summarized Ms. Rossignol, “is that the porn industry is toxic in the way it is manufactured as well as in its consumption. It colonizes minds.” The authors of the report said, “We must realize that this is a public policy problem. We have to stop looking the other way.” In France, the audiovisual and digital communication regulation authority (ARCOM) estimates that 19.3 million people (a third of internet users) watch porn online, with minors accounting for 12% of this audience. While this opening up of the market has benefited a few large companies – primarily the Canadian giant MindGeek, which owns Pornhub, Redtube and YouPorn, and in France, the Ares group (behind website Jacquie et Michel) and Dorcel – it has also led to a massive increase in the precariousness of the industry’s other stakeholders, first and foremost the actresses.
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