Trick or Treat! It's the Main Week MiM Lies to You About Porn!

JESUSLAND IN CYBERSPACE—In case you missed it (and hopefully you did), it's Morality in Media's annual "White Ribbon Against Pornography" (WRAP) week, and in keeping with the season's tradition of deception—hey, kids don't walk around soliciting candy in those costumes every day!—MiM is doing daily emailings about how horrible pornography is, and today's selection is called "Porn's Links to Sex Trafficking." The email touts the experiences of Anna Malika, who was born in India but grew up with foster parents in North Carolina, home to Adam & Eve, host to Duke University porn star Belle Knox and, we're guessing, home to uncounted numbers of perverts just waiting to get their sex-trafficking hands on ... unwary college students? Malika's dream was "to be an American model and feature in US magazines so that I could feel valuable," according to a profile of her published in the Malta Independent. "But her life took another nasty turn when she bumped into the cinema projectionist after she started working part time at the theatre while she was at college." (Another part of the article notes she was 18, an adult, when she met the projectionist.) But after Malika got thrown out of her parents' home for "bad behavior," the projectionist, who was roughly twice Malika's age, asked her to move in with him and participate in an "art project"—which, of course, involved "asking her to commit explicit sexual acts while he captured images of her," but "little did she know he was mass producing these images, as she discovered after it had dawned on her exactly what the 'art project' had all been about." We're guessing, since genuine sex education doesn't happen in North Carolina schools—it's abstinence-only, plus a few words about contraceptives and STDs which the kids will never need because, after all, they'll be abstinent—it might have taken Malika a little longer than most to realize the guy was shooting porn ... but then, "One day I came across an article of a woman who had met an older guy and had been deceived into participating in an art project," she told the Independent. "My first reaction was that this was my story; and it was what really led me to realize I had been trafficked." Really? You mean, it wasn't when he tied you to the bed with handcuffs "for hours at a time," or when you were "hospitalized for extreme vaginal bleeding" and never told the doctor the cause (but expected them to investigate on their own) (in North Carolina!), or when he "fed [you] drugs without [your] knowing" and withheld your paychecks from the theater? Eventually, Malika "plucked up courage" and moved into an apartment with another girl, and though the old guy asked her friends where she was, she never saw him again (though somehow she found out that he died recently). End of "trafficking" story—except, of course, that she's now an anti-trafficking crusader despite never actually having been trafficked (as opposed to having made several bad life decisions). Anyway, MiM has a video of Malika for its followers to watch, but for those who don't want to waste the half-hour, their email summarizes some of the major "lessons" to be drawn from Malika's story: • "Porn users do not and cannot distinguish between trafficked women, prostitutes, and porn stars. Pornography fuels the global sex trade by driving demand into the mainstream of society." Well, aside from the fact that MiM doesn't usually distinguish between porn stars and prostitutes, the simple fact is, if the porn that people are looking at is made by established adult studios and directors, there are no trafficked women in it—and if they're looking at any other porn, probably because no one was bright or savvy enough to tell them that there's a distinction to be made, that the porn they're looking at is probably illegal to begin with, so it's hardly surprising that trafficked women may appear in it. So the problem isn't being a "porn user" in general; it's the source of the porn they're using, and that is a law enforcement problem—just not the one MiM claims it is. • "Pornography is used as a 'tool' to train young children and women so that they will 'know' what to do in performing sex acts." Um ... you know how your buddies at the NRA are always saying, "Guns don't kill people; people kill people"? Guess what? The same applies to porn: Porn doesn't create sex trafficking; people create sex traffiicking—and it's not anywhere near as prevalent as MiM and other right-wing religious organizations would have us think. The numbers the wingers usually quote for trafficked minors is in the hundreds of thousands if not millions—there's a big disparity in the numbers, and it all depends on which organization is releasing the figure—but in fact, between 2008 and 2012, FBI statistics show that just 4,420 minors have been arrested in the U.S. for "prostitution and commercialized vice offenses." Obviously, that's not all the kids that have been sexually trafficked—but it's a far cry from the numbers cited by the anti-trafficking activists. • "Often, the forced sexual acts between the prostituted woman/child and the John will be filmed and photographed and then shared elsewhere. A regular user of Internet pornography will no doubt also view images of forced acts." "Often"? Really? Of course, when a minor is involved, we call that "child pornography," and these days, the Justice Department is devoting a lot of resources to finding and catching its makers and viewers—and they've been pretty successful of late. And again, of the porn on the internet that does involved trafficked adults, none of that is made by the established adult entertainment industry. So give it a rest, will ya, MiM? (Fat chance!) • "Studies show that pornography users often seek to act out what they have viewed in porn. Their partners will usually not engage in such acts, so they seek it elsewhere—increasing the demand for prostituted and trafficked women and children." Well, we're not about to deny that there are plenty of women (and men) out there whose sexual educations have been incredibly screwed up, one aspect of which is that apparently no one ever told them that "adult entertainment" is just that: entertainment. It's not "real life." That said, there are apparently also a fair number of couples whose sex lives stink, either from boredom or sexual hang-ups or whatever, and who, surveys say, have used porn as inspiration to try something new to spice up their couplings. But yes, when couples are too incompatible sexually, one or the other partner sometimes does turn to prostitution, and since prostitution is illegal everywhere in the U.S. except most counties in Nevada, the "johns" may not know whether they're getting a trafficked woman or child. But that's an argument for legalizing and regulating prostitution, not for getting rid of porn. • "Pimps are operating more and more online as it becomes easier to connect with potential buyers and to remain anonymous. Popular websites like Craigslist and Facebook have become 'virtual brothels' where one can quickly find prostituted women and children to engage in sex acts." Again, that's an argument for legalizing prostitution and licensing prostitutes, not for getting rid of porn. • And lastly, "As addictions to pornography increase, users seek harder and harder material. There is a recent boom in the availability of 'live' porn as trafficked children and women are forced to perform 'on-demand' sex acts in front of web cameras as 'Johns' or porn users watch." Leaving aside the fact that there's no such thing as "porn addiction," we've seen the "users seek harder and harder material" claim before, but there's nothing to back it up except MiM's own biased anecdotal "studies" that no reputable sociologist will have any part of. But what's perhaps more interesting is the "recent boom in the availability of 'live' porn"—if one defines "recent" as "more than a decade ago." AVN was publishing articles on webcamming before the turn of the century, and none of the established cam sites use trafficked women or children, though we're sure that if one went searching the "dark net," one would find a few. But again, that's a law enforcement issue because established adult entertainment companies don't use trafficked women or children! So with "White Ribbon Against Porn" Week only one-third along, the lies are already cascading across right-wing and even some mainstream news sites—and if any of the rest of the week's MiM screeds are worth commenting on, AVN will deliver the goods.