A message from editor Madeleine Chapman to launch The Spinoff’s Porn Week.
There’s something about porn that makes people clam up. It’s not the porn itself – Pornhub gets more than 115 million views a day – it’s the talking about porn. Few things are so widely, and silently, engaged in. Which is why we at The Spinoff are committing a full week to pornography and New Zealanders’ relationship with it.
The week will run like any other themed week on the site (see: Rent Week, Pet Week, Sleep Week) with data visualisations, business stories, profiles, commentary, guidance, and a special edition of Toby Morris’s The Side Eye.
Something a little different: throughout the week our latest video series, Chris Parker and Eli’s Matthewson’s Porn Revolution, will have episodes released daily, following the two comedians on their mission to shed the stigma around pornography and bring some pretty big questions to the party. What is Aotearoa’s porn production history? Is free access to online pornography impacting our rangatahi? And can pornography be artful, ethical, even feminist?
Porn is no small subject and we won’t be able to cover everything in one week, but we’re hoping to give an introduction to the good, the bad and the concerning. Analysis of popular porn content from 2019 found that 35% of porn included non-consensual and coercive behaviour and 46% had incestual themes. One in four children aged 12 or younger had seen porn. A majority of young people have seen porn by age 14 and almost all have seen it by age 17.
There’s much to be critical about when it comes to pornography, but there’s also reason to celebrate. Porn Week will tell the stories of people who have porn to thank for helping them realise their own identities, and content creators who are taking back the power on user-led platforms like OnlyFans. We’ll speak to the producer building an ethical porn empire, and the groundbreaking team who made Aotearoa’s only feature length gay pornographic film in 2005.
The week will also serve as a survey of various platforms and how they each monitor, filter and sometimes outright ban content based on its themes. We deliberated over whether to call it something without the word “porn” for this reason, but decided that a week all about porn really can’t be called anything else. I’m sure we’ll encounter various hurdles around email filters, video blockers and the like, but I trust that those who read or watch something they find interesting, helpful, entertaining or all of the above, will pass the message on.
We’re doing all of this because of the need to talk about porn in a genuine way and without shame, but we’re also very aware that there are reasons these conversations haven’t happened yet. It’s awkward! It’s not considered appropriate to talk about in the office kitchen! It’s hard to talk to kids (and parents) about anything sex without embarrassing everyone!
Every culture and community and individual has a different relationship to porn, and most exist within a silo, with no awareness of what others are thinking or doing. Porn Week will be a first step in sharing stories and perspectives for those who (much like with porn) aren’t ready to talk but are happy to read and watch.
We’ll be treating porn with the seriousness and respect such a huge topic warrants, while finding humour in some of the shared experiences of many New Zealanders when it comes to watching and thinking about porn. Some of it will be confronting, some of it will be uncomfortable and all of it will be long overdue. I hope you’ll join us in starting this conversation.