Heffner: I'm Alexander Heffner, your host on The Open Mind.

I'm delighted to welcome our guest today, award-winning sociologist at the University of Nebraska, and author of the new book, The Pornography Wars: The Past, Present, and Future of America's Obscene Obsession.

Kelsey Burke, welcome to the program.

Burke: Thank you so much.

It's a pleasure to be here.

Heffner: Kelsey, you researched the porn industry, I don't know if it was exclusively in the US or internationally as well, for over five years in chronicling, as you say, the past, present, and future of the industry.

What was the most interesting or surprising thing you took away based on five years of research?

Burke: That's a great question.

I would say one of the most surprising things that I found over the course of my project.

So I look at not only the porn industry and those who work inside it, but also people who push back against the industry.

So the anti-pornography movement, and I think I entered into the project assuming that, um, religion, spirituality, ethics, all of those were sort of the domain of the anti-porn movement rather than folks within the porn industry itself.

But that assumption was really shattered over the course of my work, where I found that there really was an ethic motivating many people working within the industry.

Um, many were very spiritual, even religious.

So that was my own sort of stereotype that was challenged, um, as I got to know people, um, sex workers, activists, sex educators, um, all who were motivated, you know, in many ways by a real moral, ethical, political commitment, um, to sexual pleasure, sexual freedom, um, and sort of pushing the boundaries of what we can talk about and display in public life.

Heffner: One of the unsaid realities of the present, Kelsey, is that much of what occurs online would be illegal in the physical form.

That is to say prostitution in most municipalities and federally is still illegal, um, separate from the moral question of it.

Um, but the way you can engage with pornographic material online in a, in a user-friendly way, um, face-to-face with live individuals, that, that really it to me.

It's not distinct from prostitution.

It's one and the same.

It's just virtual and not a physical incarnation.

Burke: That's right.

I mean, sex work is a, a very broad industry.

I think for many people who work within, specifically the online sex industry, they would say that internet sex work is safer than many forms of face-to-face sex work.

So escorting or prostitution, that those are, um, types of work that carry with them greater risks than online forms of sex work.

And I think that's why it appeals to many sex workers to, um, make their own content to be able to interact with customers virtually, um, in a way that can be sort of satisfying and safe for both them and, and their customers.

Heffner: Is that something that is notable in the argument of the sex workers that this is basically protected under the First Amendment and through all the social media, all of the platforms of, of sharing images or video or text.

The precedent had been, has been established really since the Internet's advent that that's legal.

Burke: Pornography, so long as it has not been deemed obscene is a legal form of free speech.

Um, that's true.

Whether it's created in commercial videos or DVDs or online streaming websites.

The internet does really change the landscape though of sex work, of pornography.

And I think people within the industry and the industry's critics all agree that there should be some potential regulations of content that none of the sex workers that I've encountered over the course of my research think that their material should be viewed by children or minors, for example.

But there's a real dilemma in terms of how to regulate that content.

So, just a couple weeks ago, the state of Utah, um, you know, was blocked by the world's largest porn website, PornHub, any resident in Utah cannot access the site because Utah passed a law requiring websites like PornHub to set up age restrictions, um, age verification on the site, and PornHub executives said that they did not, um, set up an avenue through which they could actually do this effective, and so effectively.

And so their response was to just forbid anybody in the state of Utah from viewing their content, of course, for adults in the state of Utah, they say they have the legal right to access that material.

Um, but the state of Utah disagrees.

The governor has said that he's glad that nobody in the state can access that material, even though it, there's longstanding legal precedent that adults should, should be able to access it.

Heffner: Right.

And, and this is a move that came maybe over a year after, um, some credit card companies were disabling, um, or processing companies were disabling credit card transactions for, um, online sexual activity, again, in the, in legal consensual.

Um, this move by the governor of Utah seems to be in, in the same spirit as the, uh, credit card processing companies that want to institute a chill on the industry, if not outlaw it entirely.

And this gets me to your word, obscene, right?

Because in your subtitle, and I don't know if this was a marketing gimmick or you truly believe obscene defines the industry, uh, because I know that you're substantively a scholar and thinking about this through both a factual and moral lens.

But obscene, while it has a legal definition, right, it also has a pejorative connotation.

And so the Governor of Utah, governor Cox's argument is that, like you said, we're glad for the public wellbeing, the public welfare this is not accessible anymore.

But I, but I wanted to ask you about the word obscene and how you think of, uh, porn because, um, the visceral can just be, even if it's legal, can, can be disgusting to people if you're using the term obscenity as synonymous with a subjective definition of disgusting or repulsive rather than a legal term.

Which, which were you using in your subtitle?

Burke: Absolutely.

I think in the subtitle, it's a little bit of a play on words.

So the subtitle is America's Obscene Obsession.

So it's actually not pointing to obscenity exactly, but the fact that throughout a very long history in the United States, there have been social groups that have been obsessed with pornography and its distinction with obscenity.

And, and I think that to think about that as perhaps the, the way in which obscenity emerges is through this obsession with sexual displays that I think that's what I was trying to get at in the subtitle.

Heffner: Thank you.

You know, you, so you're using that as, as basically a way of describing the obsession.

It's, it's an obscene obsession, but you're not stipulating necessarily that porn itself is obscene.

Burke: That's right.

I mean, I have to say, you know, I'm, I'm not a lawyer.

I'm not a legal scholar, and I was unclear about the distinction.

I was confused by the distinction between pornography, which I learned was legal, but then claims especially made by anti-porn activists that it should be illegal according to the laws that are on the book, having to do with obscenity.

So I really had to do a lot of work to inform myself on what is America's history, what's the legal history when it comes to pornography's place within society, but also learned that anti-porn activists for a long time have been using obscenity laws to try to crack down on what the courts have fairly consistently deemed as a protected legal industry.

Judges in court cases love to make this, um, clarification that like, we see this content as unwholesome.

We do not approve, but we believe it should be legally protected because there is such a strong sense that, um, the right to free speech is really fundamental in terms of American democracy.

Heffner: We don't know yet as we record this, what will define a possible backlash to the measure in Utah.

But is it fair to say, Kelsey, that in most states, if not every one of our 50 states, uh, porn search results are the top searched item on any given day in America?

Burke: You know, I, I can't say either way to that direct question, but we do know that pornographic websites are among the most popular websites, um, accessed of, of all websites on the internet.

We know Americans tend to lead in terms of worldwide consumption of pornographic websites.

So they're hugely popular at the same time that they generate this public political discourse talking about the potential harms or, or damage of these websites.

A lot of people are looking at them at the same time, Heffner: I do think, and our viewers will correct us if we're wrong, that porn results have outpaced national and local news media in a lot of instances, perhaps not sports, but I, I think based on the most recent tallies of trafficked websites, porn and sports continue to be the most followed.

And that gets me to, to my next question, which we talked about a little bit before, off camera, and that is the idea of porn, consumption of porn as a release for society, knowing that I, if there is a truly obscene obsession, it is, um, violence, gun violence specifically in this country that can be correlated with, um, with the modern age.

So people aren't really en masse able to print 3D guns, but gun violence has exploded.

Uh, now I do wonder when you think of sexualized criminal activity, if rates of sexual assault and harassment and rape have, could be correlated with the accessibility of porn, and you might be able to shed some light on that.

Of course, if that's the case, then the idea of porn like ESPN for a lot of us watching 11 o'clock at night, uh, or the, the NBA playoff Super Bowl, that's a release.

Uh, we can take our minds off day-to-day affairs.

I have contended when we've interviewed authors in this industry before on the program, that it is a release that in some likely prevents more criminal activity than it precipitates.

Burke: I think that's something hard to test empirically.

And in fact, anti porn activists will claim it's the reverse that, um, watching pornography, specifically violet pornography leads to an increase in violence against women.

We don't have good empirical data to say either way.

And I think, you know, we have actually competing empirical findings over this question.

I do think, so I spoke with, uh, a former porn director who worked for kink.com, which is one of the most, um, sort of extreme porn production companies that, um, worked in extreme BDSM.

Um, and she reflected on her career after reading one of her, uh, videos, the comments that were posted on that video that she said it felt like there were rapists watching this video and were adding their comments to the commentary.

And she talked to her therapist about it because it sort of disturbed her.

And her therapist's response was, I think, similar to yours, which is that, well, people are watching these videos and maybe not acting out on these thoughts or desires, and that really helped her reframe her work in an interesting way.

So I think that's something, you know, that we should, should sit with and, and think about, um, deeply, even if we don't have definitive answers, um, that it's, it's a really important, um, important and fruitful, um, question to consider.

Heffner: We aren't able to test the answer yet to, to your point, based on empirical data.

Uh, but I'm not talking about violent porn.

I'm talking about porn broadly because I don't think necessarily that violent porn is the most dominant, um, or predominantly viewed, but is there any data, uh, to suggest that what we've seen with gun violence and, uh, misuse of, of firearms, um, resulting in homicide and murder, which just in America, that happens multiple times a day, and you're, and you're lucky if there's not a mass shooting on a given day as opposed to just shootings spread around the country.

I would think there might be some data available.

If you look at, since high-speed internet became publicly available in the late 90s, early 2000s to see if, if that, if porn as a whole and its availability, uh, precipitated some rise in, um, in, in sexualized crime.

I have not seen anyone report that, but you studied this for five years, so if it, if it was out there, you probably know.

Burke: Yeah.

We do know that rates of, um, violent sexual crimes have been on the decline for several decades.

So that's interesting.

Your question makes me think of something I write about in the introduction to the book.

You know, we've long wrestled with like, how do we define what is pornography and where's the boundaries between, like, what's porn, what's art, what's other stuff?

And I really like the definition provided by a couple of philosophers who say that pornography allows us to skip the hard part.

And this is why we have these different genres that we call porn, like food porn or real estate porn or organization porn, that all of these things allow us to sort of skip over the tedious, um, annoying long, hard aspects that require cooking an elaborate meal, actually buying a house, engaging in a sustained real life sexual relationship that all of those forms of porn allow us to skip the hard part.

And so I think to your point about like, it is a release, it's, and it's a form of entertainment, um, that is, that is similar across, across all of those, those different categories.

Heffner: Can we think about it differently in a humane sense to the aspiration of being a professional ball player?

And the way that, you know, you, you, you seek some sort of gratification as a viewer, even though, you know, most of us at least, will not partake in the event.

Uh, is that a fair analogy on any level?

Burke: Yeah, it's interesting.

I think across both sides of debates about porn, they talk about sex and sexuality as, as a unique dimension of our personal and social lives.

So sex means something different than baseball in, in American society.

So maybe the analogy holds, but only to the extent that we sort of forget that sex is, is stigmatized, is, you know, that, that we've got a lot of social baggage about sex and sexuality that we might not have about baseball.

And I think that's one of the reasons why I'm drawn to pornography and sexual politics because, because it means so much in, in the world in which we live, Heffner: And yet of course, the pornographers that preceded us were far more pervasive and maybe corrupted or corruptible in, in the ancient era.

Uh, if you think of public displays of sexuality and ancient Athens and ancient Rome, um, by a lot of measures, we are tamer, you know, going into the Home Depot in our togas.

Um, that, that also seems to be a, a, a historical fact that, uh, what has become normalized as sort of the acceptable amount of public sensuality or nudity, or obscenity, if you want to use that word, is we have become much more conservative despite all of these new technologies.

Burke: It's interesting that you bring up ancient Rome or ancient Greece.

So the word itself, pornography doesn't come around until the 18 hundreds.

And historians of pornography actually name sort of a starting point of pornography, which is in the mid 19th century.

Of course, as you mentioned, we've had sexual displays in public life as really, as long as humans have been on this planet.

But these historians of pornography say that, that that didn't count as porn in the way that we understand it today.

So that pornography itself, I really like this definition, um, posed by a historian named Walter Kendrick who says, pornography names an argument, not a thing.

So when we look to those displays of sensuality or sex nudity in ancient Greece or Rome, that that's not pornography in the sense of what we understand the word to mean, um, in the modern era.

And so in fact, pornography is reflective of this social conflict or tension, um, surrounding what is appropriate and what should be kept out of public display or public consumption.

Heffner: Interesting.

That's, that's fair.

I would just submit that the salaciousness of that earlier era, uh, is a known fact.

And even though it wasn't being streamed on their iPhones or subject to the kind of public scrutiny it is today, if we're thinking about pornography in the context of salaciousness lewdness, um, you know, free living, um, then it still seems to me to be a historical fact that, uh, we have gone, we've gone a long way towards being clothed and proper, even if we don't wanna call it pornography.

There was a form of something like pornography in Benjamin Franklin's era.

Right?

Even if we don't call it that.

Burke: Absolutely.

Yeah, I would agree with that.

And I think you're making a really important sociological point, which is that how we think about sex and sexuality directly results of the social context, the history in which we live.

So I think so often we have blinders on when it comes to sex because we are limited by our, our social circumstances.

Heffner: The most important thing in terms of protecting the integrity of the industry and those who consume it is ensuring consensuality, uh, that, that it is age appropriate and that the people participating are, uh, consensual adults.

Um, if you talk to pornographers, uh, who are, um, in the entertainment realm as a, as opposed to kind of the grassroots OnlyFans realm, they tell you it is strictly regulated in terms of s t d testing, in terms of consensuality, uh, having verification as you slip away towards the grassroots, correct me on what word you would use, but the local, uh, folks who are just deciding one morning I'm gonna open up my laptop and take my clothes off, um, with a partner, without a partner with several partners.

Like, it seems to me, as you slip towards that, that ladder category is where it, there it can be more iffy in definitions of, uh, consensuality and, um, you know, in age compliance.

Burke: So this genre of like I might call it independent porn, independent sex work, um, has that as one possibility that there's fewer regulations that people are doing things, um, without the oversight of production companies.

Um, on the other hand, it means that performers can be more autonomous in the kinds of content they, they create in having a direct line of, of payment to themselves.

So there's a lot of possibilities that are opened up with, um, the emergence of the internet.

I think the other reality that performers have to face today is that, you know, a lot of people I spoke with said the commercial porn industry no longer exists today.

The, the porn industry is dominated by these websites, what used to be MindGeek.

That's why I write about in the book.

And just as of a couple months ago, it was taken over by a another company called Ethical Capital Partners.

Um, but these are, are companies, software executives, you know, people who spend their day in offices writing up algorithms, generating revenue based on advertisements, and that people really can't make a living purely working within the commercial porn industry alone.

So people are doing a lot of different hustles on the side.

You know, they'll have an OnlyFans site on the side.

Some may engage in escorting or stripping or other kinds of work, um, work outside of sex work, all, all to get by because it could be a couple decades ago that you could sign a contract with a production company and make a very good living.

What we think of as, you know, the porn star life that just no longer exists today with, with the internet, um, takeover of the porn industry.

Heffner: And if you're going to criticize porn from the ethical lens, then you also have to acknowledge an economy.

Uh, there have been many stories over the years about people in honest professions that, um, don't involve taking your clothes off.

You can have honest professions that do involve taking your clothes off, in my estimation.

But, uh, professions of geared towards public service, uh, teachers, nurses, um, who couldn't afford, um, basic living expenses and developed an OnlyFans page, um, to, to engage in that kind of activity as a side gig.

And so there, there, just as a closing question for you there, I don't think you can ignore an indictment of the inequity of our economy and the priorities we're placing on those professions and chastise these people who undertake work in this industry.

I just don't think it's fair to do that without an overarching acknowledgement of the economy that made it so.

Burke: Yeah, I heard that sentiment time and again, um, I interviewed a sex educator and former feminist pornographer, Tristan Tino, who said quite pointedly the problem is not pornography, the problem is capitalism.

And that some people make choices to engage in sex acts, some of which they don't like very much in order to get a living wage, that that feels better to them than working.

She used the example of working a 12 hour shift in an Amazon warehouse.

And I think that that's something that we really have to reckon with is, is, is the problems we observe, which there absolutely are legitimate problems within the pornography industry.

What do those result from?

Do those result from capitalism and in social inequalities, um, misogyny that exists, not just in pornography, but in the broader world.

These are really big social questions.

Heffner: Right.

And I would say Hannibal capitalism as opposed to capitalism, because as you said, maybe a decade ago, you could enter the industry and, uh, have a decent living.

Uh, and probably I would like to believe that this, this degeneration has occurred within the last 10 years.

So I would like to believe that in the 70s and 80s and 90s and maybe 2000s, you could be a nurse, a teacher, or someone in a public service profession or any good paying honest profession and make a living.

And that doesn't seem to be the case now.

So, um, I would say cannibal capitalism is something that we're experiencing now.

It's, and it's, it's different than it used to be.

Um, we'll have to leave it there.

Kelsey Burke, I encourage everyone to pick up your book, The Pornography Wars, The Past, Present, and Future of America's Obscene Obsession.

And no one be turned off by obscene obsession.

She's talking about the obsession, uh, maybe the obsession of those who are critics or maybe the obsession of those who misuse or abuse foreign.

Um, but she is not making any judgment about you or me, um, as a prospective porn viewer.

Uh, thank you, Kelsey, for your time today.

Burke: Thank you.

It was a pleasure.

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