FYI: Misogyny is real & Pornhub is a rape factory
(Russell Brand is just the tiny tip of a massive, nightmarish iceberg)
By now, you’ve all surely heard about Russell Brand and some of you have probably fallen neatly into one of a handful of clear categories of reflexive response.
Of course, we don’t exactly know yet what Brand did or didn’t do but when I heard the allegations, this was my instant reaction:
I may eventually say more about this. For now, I want to remind everyone (again) that what Brand is accused of doing is NOTHING NEW.
As I wrote recently: “Rape is almost exclusively a male-on-female crime spree (99.8 percent of those convicted of rape are male).”
More here:
To drive home the point, I’ll offer this bit of evidence (trigger warning):
Serena Fleites was just 14 when an older boy at her school manipulated her into sharing nude videos with him. He sent the videos to other boys. Someone uploaded them to the pornography ‘tube’ site Pornhub. Fleites’ life became a living nightmare as the videos were repeatedly downloaded and re-uploaded, with Pornhub forcing her through the same laborious process every time before taking it down, all while monetizing her images.
Fleites’ mental health plummeted. She dropped out of school and ended up addicted to drugs. Now sober, in 2021, Fleites became the lead plaintiff in a mass lawsuit against Mindgeek (now “Aylo”), Pornhub’s parent company. Along with 33 other Jane Does, Fleites alleges that MindGeek knowingly profited from videos depicting rape, child sexual exploitation, revenge porn, trafficking, and other nonconsensual sexual content.
If possible, read the full, powerful article from Mary Harrington below:
Let this sink in: The 24/7 worldwide reality of male pattern violence is far more entrenched and ubiquitous than recent phenomena like “me too” or individual cases like Russell Brand.
Male oppression of women transcends race, class, nationality, age, and geography — and it warrants serious, nuanced discussion.
Rather than willfully missing the point, when will we (especially the men) decide instead to stand up and relentlessly fight back against a very real and obvious pandemic of evil?
Coda: In case it’s not clear, this isn’t a post about Russell Brand. It’s about justice for females in a world that regularly marginalizes them and now wants to pretend they don’t even exist. Therefore, I challenge you to resist knee-jerk reactions — especially if you happen to believe the Brand allegations are nothing more than an attempt at silencing him.
As I trust you know, more than one thing can be true at the same time.
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Not being much into pop culture, I didn't know who Russell Brand was when he started his anti-establishment chats. I was disappointed, but not surprised when these allegations surfaced.
We need to stop being surprised. When a study on the effects of porn on boys couldn't find a control group among 14 year olds, we know this is systemic.
There's no will to stop it, or it would be gone already. As usual, it's all about money.
A beautiful young girl, a friend of my daughter, ended up being a top-ranked porn star. I didn't follow her career, but somehow when I saw a FB post to the effect of "You are gone too soon" I knew what it was about.
She had killed herself because she was being forced to do something, professionally, that she did not want.
The sexual abuse had never stopped.
That had a deep effect on me, even though I didn't know her at that point.
And now they're trying to erase women altogether
I'm astonished and disappointed that only ONE commenter (not counting Alicen's retorts) focused on the incredibly important point of this post. I can see that only 22 people even bothered to click on the Pornhub-related link. Who knows how many actually read it?
(I'm far less surprised that so many commenters opted to interpret my wording as an indictment of Brand.)