Smart women
should watch porn
I probably should not title a blog post like this. After all, both my parents and maybe even some of my friends parents and who knows, maybe their parents parents read my blog.
However, with the news of Laurence Fishburne’s daughter, Montana Fishburne (aka Chippy D), deciding to go into the porn industry at 19yrs, I felt I wanted to write this post.
For those of you that don’t know, Montana Fishburne, who wishes to become an actress has decided to follow the footsteps of Kim Kardashian and become a porn star to boost her career.
Now Laurence Fishburne is a role model. If one could look up ‘proud black man’ in an encyclopedia, his image might pop up. He is wealthy, good looking (enough), smart and outspoken. Not the kind of man whose daughter one might think would end up a porn star, especially given that he himself was a virgin when he started his acting career. Yet any man’s daughter can end up a porn star, and many do every day.
Basically, I’m concerned by the overbearing online reaction being that because Montana is who she is it’s somehow worse. Every young girl going into porn is a sad story.
Smart women should watch porn, and by watch I mean observe
One reason it’s always a sad story is because violent and abusive porn is becoming so popular that even the porn industry is shocked over the demand for it. As a smart woman it’s important to be aware of porn trends to understand where intimacy problems and violence can stem from. The average age a boy starts watching porn at nowadays is 11, and researchers in the sex arena agree that the earlier a man starts watching abusive porn the more difficult it will be for him to be in an intimate relationship with a woman who does not like extreme porn type of sex.
Did you know there are sites where men can rate the violence in porn tapes, and sites where prostitutes too are rated based on how obscene they are willing to act? Smart women should observe that we are now bringing up a generation of boys on cruel porn, and that whilst porn is becoming more mainstream, with even pop stars getting naked in videos, it is simultaneously becoming more savage with videos of women being dragged on their faces, having their mouths clamped for penetration etc. easily accessible.
We need for our brothers and fathers to take a stand against this kind of porn, because otherwise we cannot blame anyone but ourselves for our daughters going into the industry.
Beware though, if you oppose violent porn, many will wrongly label you as a woman who doesn’t like sex, or men, or both combined. Re-educate them, let them know that there is a porn industry which is more ‘ethical’, whether or not you oppose that one as well, it does exist.
Porn in Africa
Africans have not gravitated towards violently pornographic websites the way other continents have. There could be many reasons for this; cultural values as well as bandwidth issues seem to play a role. Some statistics say that extreme porn is more largely a white problem than a hispanic or black one in general. Could this be true and why?
If it is, then I really and truly hope that we can maybe even lead by example in this particular area. Violence towards young girls is not OK on TV, online or in real life.
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MsAfropolitan is the blog of Minna Salami, Writer and Commentator on Africa & Diaspora Art & Culture, Feminism & Race. Subscribe to MsAfropolitan by Email or RSS . Keep up to date with MsAfropolitan on Tumblr, Facebook and Twitter and the MsAfropolitan Boutique