Is Porn Racist?

One only needs to look to the top categories and channels on Pornhub to find a certain trend. 2019 saw Japanese as the number one most viewed category, followed by ebony at six and Asian at eighteen. The second most popular channel was and still is Blacked. When it comes to porn, race matters.

Of course, people are bound to have their preferences. People will just as happily say that they have a thing for Japanese girls as they would say they have a thing for tall men. So what's the issue here?

Well, for one, we must consider what exactly one means when, for example, they claim to be interested in Japanese girls. Do they mean any woman with Japanese heritage? Or do they mean a very specific stereotype of what they believe the Japanese to be?

It's not much of a leap to suppose that actually what these people are looking for is a portrait of Japanese women as it has been painted by anime and fantasy - small bodies, big boobs, big eyes, high-pitched voices and school girl outfits.

But once again, can we really blame someone for having a preference?

Well, the issue lies in what is lost in this link. The real Japanese woman and the fetishised Japanese woman hold so little in common, and yet they are forced to share this same name. The porn classification system wilfully ignores their differences for the sake of clarity, and so too does the porn viewer.

Then, somewhere along the way, the term Japanese becomes synonymous with this unrealistic image. So too does the term 'ebony' become a very specific image of the black woman's body, and the channel 'Blacked' works to enforce a very specific image of the black man.

These images that are created are in themselves based on years of oppressive stereotypes. People of colour are reduced to their bodies. It has long been the case that white colonisers have created simple caricatures of other races to further justify their oppression.

Take, as an example, the white depiction of black men during the era of slavery: strong bodied, useful, but unintelligent and savage. How can this view be truly separate to the depiction of black men in modern pornography? The focus is on their bodies - the size and strength of them - and furthermore how these bodies present an apparent threat to the white man.

It is here that we notice there is no 'ivory' category. There is no image of the white woman or of the white man. They exist in a free space, whereby they can fulfil any sexual identity of their pleasing. Or none.

Whiteness is assumed until explicitly stated otherwise.

As such, we have an entire community that devoutly creates and reinforces stereotypes on every race and nationality, but leaves white people to roam free.

And then comes the moment where we must leave this fantasy world.

We come back to the real world and we take everything we have seen and experienced with us. These images do not exist in a vacuum. Your desire to see a specific and idealised version of an entire race projected onto a twenty minute video, does not leave you the moment you close your laptop.

These constantly reinforced stereotypes continue to exist within our minds. This is true regardless of your race or preferences.

These images are so deeply engrained throughout the world of pornography that they are both unavoidable and unignorable.

They put pressure on people to fulfil them. They put pressure on people to find them. And they leave us all miserable.