In 2019, Pornhub was visited an average of 80,032 times every minute (Picture: Ella Byworth for Metro.co.uk)

Search ‘porn’ on Google and almost 2billion pages appear, with Pornhub the top search result.

Scroll through the site and you’ll discover titles such as ‘Meth wh**e f**ked so hard she cries’, ‘Passed out woman gets filmed without her knowing’, and ‘Scared teen cries while f**ked!’.

When questioned by the BBC as to why they continue to allow such videos on their platform, the company stated that they allow ‘all forms of sexual expression that follow our Terms of Use, and while some people may find these fantasies inappropriate, they do appeal to many people around the world’.



In a culture that is becoming increasingly desensitised to explicit sexual material, this kind of content is hard to ignore.


I have been aware of Pornhub’s existence for years, but I was ignorant to the extent of the abuse hosted on the site until I began researching pornography for my dissertation two years ago.

I was horrified to discover that it boasted countless videos of seemingly passed out, drugged, coerced, or abducted women and girls being abused.

Considering 4million Brits aged 16 to 59 experienced a sexual assault in 2016-17 (in the US, an individual is sexually assaulted every 73 seconds) Pornhub’s stance feels like a reckless refusal to take responsibility.

Over the last few years, Pornhub has been involved in a number of cases of sex trafficking and child rape, and it is impossible to know how many such videos are currently hosted on the site.

Rose Kalemba was raped aged 14. Months after her violent assault, she found several people from her school sharing a link online in which she was tagged. After clicking through, Rose was led to Pornhub and was horrified to find videos of her attack.

Over a period of six months, the teenager emailed Pornhub begging for the videos to be removed, but received no reply. They weren’t taken down until Rose threatened legal action.

Last October, a 15-year-old girl was found almost a year after she went missing when explicit photos of her were posted online. Further investigation found that the teenager had appeared in around 58 porn videos uploaded online.

Pornhub has been involved in a number of cases of sex trafficking and child rape, and it is impossible to know just how many such videos are currently hosted on the site

More recently, there was the case of 22 women who were coerced and manipulated by Michael Pratt, the owner of website GirlsDoPorn, into performing sexual acts on film that were later uploaded to Pornhub. (The victims in this case sued GirlsDoPorn.com and won a £9.8million lawsuit against the company).

Laila Mickelwait, Director of Abolition for Exodus Cry, is leading the campaign to close down Pornhub. Her petition, which began a couple of weeks ago, has already gathered over 250,000 signatures.

Shutting the site down would be a vital step in chipping away at the damage done by this industry. In 2019, Pornhub was visited an average of 80,032 times every minute, with over 115 million daily visits. Unfortunately, its violent content is indicative of a much greater issue: brutalised women are a hot commodity.



In his book, Striptease Culture, Brian McNair argues that porn must represent a violation of conventional values and sexual norms in order to maintain its erotic power. This illuminates how the porn landscape has changed, with it becoming steadily more brutal and violent, the boundaries are pushed further and further, and each production company scrabbles to produce the most brutal content possible.

Over 20 years ago, porn producer Bill Marigold said: ‘I’d like to show what I believe the men want to see: violence against women’. Regrettably, the situation does not appear to have improved since then, but rather porn has become more violent than ever before. In November 2019, after a woman from Hyderabad was gang-raped and her body set on fire, her name appeared as a search term on porn sites.

These types of videos normalise violence within relationships. An increasing number of studies have found an association between the consumption of violent pornography and the likelihood of intimate partner abuse.

Young women, meanwhile, are being taught that their desirability hinges on their willingness to tolerate pain and degradation

One, from the University of Arkansas and NYU, looked at 50 popular porn films and found that in 95 per cent of cases when a performer is physically hit by another, they respond with either pleasure or indifference. The message here is particularly troubling when we consider that an estimated 93 per cent of males under 18 have watched porn.

It implies that women not only expect to be hit but they enjoy it. Young women, meanwhile, are being taught that their desirability hinges on their willingness to tolerate pain and degradation.


There are women who claim to consent to such pain and degradation, of course. Many proponents of BDSM believe that it is a legitimate lifestyle choice.

However, the potential harms are worth examining: a 2015 survey conducted by the National Coalition for Sexual Freedom indicated that as many as 36 per cent of people have been touched at a BDSM club without their consent, and 29 per cent of respondents had experienced at least one violation of their negotiated limits, or disregard of their use of a safe-word.

The debate around BDSM – whether it is harmful and violent or consensual fun – remains contentious.

Research for BBC Radio 5 Live suggests that more than a third of UK women under the age of 40 have experienced unwanted slapping, choking, gagging or spitting during consensual sex, with 20 per cent saying that they had been left upset or frightened.

The Centre for Women’s Justice commented on the figures stating that there is a ‘growing pressure on young women to consent to violent, dangerous and demeaning acts.’ Last year, a 16-year-old girl needed a colostomy bag after suffering severe injuries due to attempting group anal sex. It is evident that, for many young women and girls, fitting a pornified mould of femininity takes precedence over their own wellbeing and pleasure.

So, what can be done about it? Closing down Pornhub won’t solve the issue entirely but it would be symbolic, signifying what is no longer tolerable in our society, and allowing one less platform for abusive porn.


The next step is to raise awareness about the harm caused by the industry. As Laila Mickelwait says: ‘One big way that we can begin to reduce the demand for this kind of content is to raise awareness about it… for many people, it loses its appeal when you imagine that those behind the camera are actually rape and trafficking victims.’

Educating children and teens about pornography is also crucial, as well as creating a more receptive environment for anyone struggling with porn addiction. The porn industry will continue to thrive until there is widespread understanding as to the negative impact of mass porn consumption, on both a personal and societal level.

Ultimately, one of the most effective things you can do to tackle this industry is to click off.

Click here to sign the petition and help shut down Pornhub.

MORE: Teachers are the ‘most searched for’ profession on porn sites

MORE: UK porn ban law won’t stop ‘determined teenagers’ accessing material

MORE: Girl, 8, dies after being ‘raped by 16 men’

Advertisement Advertisement