As she describes in an anonymous blog post on Mamamia, one woman experienced what many of us might call the ultimate nightmare: she unknowingly watched a sex tape of her parents. Yep, horrifying. The worst, actually.
Fifteen at the time, this British teen woke up one day, decided to call in sick and ditch school. Unfortunately for her, her day off wasn’t the restful break she was looking for.
“I did what every teenager does when they are alone at home with no fear of being caught—they go through their family’s s—,” she writes. After finding some porn mags in her brother’s room, she entered her parents’ bedroom looking for some more interesting porn—unlabeled VHS tapes. It was the 90s, and this was as big-time as it got.
Taking a handful of untitled tapes to the living room, she played the first two with no success. Just static and a funeral recording. The third one, though, gave her more than she bargained for.
“The third started on a couch. It looked a lot like our couch, which was weird. It was shot on a tripod and was quite far away, but I could make out a naked woman on the couch.
Then a man, who was clearly fiddling with the camera controls walked away from the camera, naked bum in all its glory, towards the woman…”
About ten minutes ensued of what the woman calls “the least sensual porn I had seen.” Despite the lack of excitement in this amateur-style film, she was aroused. “My heart wasn’t in it, but I felt obliged, watching porn and all.”
It wasn’t until the end of the tape when the man got up and walked back towards the camera to turn it off that things spiraled downwards.
“He looked familiar. Really familiar.
He looks like my dad! How weird is that!
OMG that is our couch.
OMG it IS my dad.
OMG…that’s…my mum.
I have never run so fast to the VHS player to hit stop. But it took forever, my legs were jelly, the VHS player was so far away. I was screaming NOOOOOOOOOO but it came out all low pitched and slow.”
If you want to throw up at this point, we get it. So did she. She became legitimately sick and could barely make eye contact with her parents for weeks. She records that at this point, she blocked the memory from her mind for about 15 years until she finally confided in her brother and they could laugh and be shocked together.
The rest of porn is not that different
Metro online covered this woman’s post and came to the conclusion that her story should make us thankful that the internet porn revolution has brought us away from VHS tapes and into an online playhouse of content.
We think the story tells us something completely different.
It’s not a story about technological formatting. This story reveals the basic objectification of porn in any format.
Porn turns people into objects for personal consumption. The porn industry is all about presenting people through media as sexualized objects to be used for the consumer’s pleasure and discarded when interest is lost. Videos are often produced to specifically make the consumer forget about the performers’ humanity (for the most part—there are troubling genres such as webcamming and revenge porn that directly exploit performers’ humanity).
Related: How My Big Sister’s Porn Career Damaged Her Life And Hurt Our Family
When this girl faced the sudden and overwhelming realization that the people in the film were not distant sex characters but her living, breathing parents, she was confronted with the humanity of those behind the screen in a way that made her block the experience from her memory for 15 years.
Most of us don’t have to confront the humanity of people in porn the way this teen did. But if we stop and think about it, this woman’s experience sheds light on all porn consumption. You might not see your mom or dad in XXX vids, but the people in them are just as real. They are people with lives and families and stories. They deserve dignity and respect, not objectification.
Online porn is set up like an endless fast-food menu of everything you could ever want to order. Whatever excites you at the moment, you consume it in the name of instant gratification. But that’s the problem—these videos are of real people, not cheeseburgers.
Dehumanization is contagious
Porn’s dehumanizing effect doesn’t stop with the performers on-screen.
Research shows that porn consumption is associated with greater acceptance of the objectification of women. One study found that men who are frequently exposed to porn are more likely to view women as sex objects and even endorse violence against actual women.
Consuming porn can also lead to weakened feelings of compassion and humanity toward real people by desensitizing their brains to dehumanizing behavior. This neurological numbness can lead to or fuel existing relationship issues and even serious depression.
Related: VIDEO: 5 Popular Ex-Porn Performers Who Are Now Anti-Porn
This dehumanizing porn culture also warps the way women view themselves, leading to body shame and doubts about their unique personal worth in relationships. It can hurt men too, training their brains to see themselves and those they love as more one-dimensional, even to the point of causing erectile dysfunction in otherwise young, healthy men.
The point is, your lifelong perception of your parents is not the only thing to lose when it comes to porn. The effects of porn’s objectifying influence are endless and can touch every facet of human life. We believe in treating people as people, not objects. If you’re with us, spread the word and fight for love alongside us.
