CounterPunch Exclusives

CounterPunch Exclusives

Photograph Source: Sobsz – Public Domain

When was the last time you watched a porn flick?  It doesn’t matter whether you are a woman or man, whether straight or gay, whether you watched it alone or with another, or whether it is a romantic, feminist or “gonzo” video.  Want to bet you saw it in the privacy of your home, on a digital TV, computer or mobile device like a smartphone or tablet, and that you accessed it via an internet connection?

Over the last half-century, pornography has been increasingly “democratized” and, in the process, transformed.   Once upon a time men (and some women), often dubbed “the raincoat crowd,” slinked into shops in down-market parts of town to purchase print porn magazines, 8-mm and 16-mm films, and assorted sex toys.  Those days are over.

Nothing contributed more to the “mainstreaming” of explicit sexual materials than home video.  By the 1980s, it became a consumer-electronics industry “truism” that no new major programming-driven new-media entertainment product could be introduced without a strong “adult” component.  This applied equally to cable TV, DBS, computer software, CD-ROM titles and online services.

No one knows the real size of today’s porn market. The true financial goings-on of the commercial porn industry are like an old Sally Rand fan dance; nothing is really exposed.  Estimates as the size of the business range across the board. BedBible estimates the U.S. porn industry revenue for........

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