This last December, Cosmopolitan published an article about how to know if the porn are watching is “ethical.” This isn’t the first time that Cosmo has promoted pornography, but its attempt to label porn as “ethical” reaches a new level of social irresponsibility.
Let’s get one thing straight: no industry based on an individual being sexually exploited, objectified, and often assaulted, for another individual’s pleasure can be rightly considered “ethical.”
The recent Cosmo article, “9 Ways to Know You’re Watching Ethical Porn” offers noxious advice such as: “Be aware of the performer’s age if possible,” and “Don’t make snap judgments about the content,” and even “BDSM porn can be the most ethical porn out there.”
Cosmo links to various pornography sites at the bottom of the article, and the magazine praises a popular torture sex (BDSM) company, Kink. Cosmo claims Kink is extremely ethical because “Kink.com has performers fill out an extensive questionnaire about everything they are willing and not willing to do.”
What Cosmo fails to mention is the fact that Kink has faced four lawsuits this past year claiming unsafe working conditions. Three of the lawsuits claimed that they contracted HIV through the company’s negligence on set, and another lawsuit claimed that the company didn’t protect an actor from being assaulted.
Further, Lily LaBeau, a porn performer has claimed that the now infamous James Deen assaulted her while actually on set at Kink.
In an interview with BuzzFeed News, LaBeau discussed that one night in 2012 she began filming with Deen for Kink and:
…he would have known from working with her previously that she doesn’t work with cattle prods. But she recalled he brandished a cattle prod at her, and she panicked. “I started screaming, ‘It’s on my no list,’” LaBeau said…Some time after he put the cattle prod down, LaBeau said Deen “grabs my no list, and he goes down from the first thing, and he starts doing everything I didn’t mark ‘no’ on, one by one,” she continued…
When reached by email, a publicist for Kink noted the company was still collecting information, but wrote, “… According to the accounts, [Deen] did review LeBeau’s no list, then decided to use it against her, going as far as he could without actually violating a ‘no.’
Yes, you read that right. Kink, the supposedly “ethical” porn company, is quite comfortable with the grey area of consent.
Cosmo lists “Try to find the performer consent policy” as one way to ensure you are watching “ethical” porn. But what use is a policy when, in reality, performers can be coerced or pressured by a multitude of factors on set?
Cosmopolitan is blatantly encouraging pornography use, and it is attempting to normalize pornography without any attempt to verify whether the material or production process is harmful or not.
One thing is for sure, both pornography and Cosmopolitan magazine are far from “ethical.”
