Feminists to stage ‘meat market’ outside porn trade summit
Feminist groups (1) will today (23/9/11) stage a protest outside XBIZ EU (2), an international pornography trade summit, taking place in central London this weekend. The activists will be dressed as butchers and businessmen pretending to trade in women’s body parts to illustrate their message to the XBIZ conference: “porn butchers women: stop the meat market”.
Speakers at XBIZ EU include porn baron Berth Milton, Chairman and CEO of Private Media Group (3), and Michael Klein, president of Hustler. Hustler, founded in 1974 by Larry Flint, is now a major producer of pornographic DVDs and online content. In 1978 the Hustler magazine featured an infamous front cover image of a woman’s body being mutilated by a meat grinder (4).
The global pornography industry is estimated to be worth $97 (US) billion (5), with young men watching on average 2.5 hours of pornography each week (6). However, extensive research evidence shows that viewing pornography leads to acceptance of rape myths and attitudes supporting violence against women (7), and a quarter of young men worry about the type of images they are viewing in pornography (8).
In response to this, OBJECT has launched the STOP.PRESS.PORN campaign to call on the Government to end the sexual objectification of women in newspapers and to end the Page 3 phenomena (9). This move has already been supported by the Lib Dem Party Conference (10).
Kat Banyard, Director of UK Feminista, said:
“The pornography industry butchers women. Brutal, body punishing acts are now routine in mainstream porn and women are presented merely as a collection of body parts, deserving and desiring of pain. The pimps and porn moguls gathered this weekend are part of a global industry ruthlessly seeking new and profitable ways to carve up sexuality and trade away women’s equality. The Radisson Edwardian hotel is hosting a brutal meat market, not a lavish corporate conference.
“For decades the pornography industry has enjoyed unchecked expansion. It’s time to wrestle power back from the pornographers. With a review into the culture and ethics of the press underway, the Government must ensure that pornographic imagery – like ‘Page 3’ – is a key part of this review.”
Anna van Heeswijk, Campaigns Coordinator at OBJECT, said:
“This is not the porn of yesteryear. Pornography today is increasingly violent, body punishing, degrading and woman hating. Hardcore porn is the norm and it is being accessed by boys as young as 11 on the internet and on mobile phones. The messages and images from porn are infiltrating every aspect of our popular culture and women and girls are bearing the brunt of increased levels of violence, sexual abuse and harassment that accompany pornification.
“This porn summit represents pimps in suits, paying in what they term ‘Pussycash’, meeting to plot how to push the boundaries of porn even further to increase their profits. It is their aim to make the sexual violence of porn appear normal and acceptable. It is our aim to stop them. Our message is clear: ‘women are human, stop treating us like objects’.”
Julia Long from the London Feminist Network said:
“This summit is being presented as a lavish, respectable corporate event, when in fact it is a brazen opportunity for the porn industry to plan new ways of profiting from the exploitation of women. No matter how slick and sophisticated the presentation, it is the still the same old meat market just below the surface. This protest is sending an important message that Xbiz is not welcome in London.”
Sabinra Qureshi from Million Women Rise said:
“The public deserve to know the truth and reality behind the so called sex industry and the harm that underpins it, not the glamorised version the media and events like this tend to promote. Events like this are just a modern show case of the slavery of women in the UK and globally by the exploitation and objectification of women and children’s bodies.
“The present government should be ashamed of allowing an event like this to be happening in our capital in 2011 in the midst of cuts of services for violence against women and children and supporting the event organisers for trying to glamorise one of the oldest forms of violence against women. Porn and prostitution was never a woman’s oldest profession. Let’s break the myth it is and always will be the oldest form of exploitation of women and children.”
Notes to editors
(1) The groups taking part in the protest are:
a. UK Feminista: www.ukfeminista.org.uk
b. OBJECT www.object.org.uk
c. London Feminist Network http://londonfeministnetwork.org.uk/
d. Million Women Rise http://www.millionwomenrise.com/
(2) XBIZ EU is taking place from 23-25 September at the Radisson Edwardian Bloomsbury Street Hotel: http://www.xbizeu.com. The protest will take place on Friday 23 September, 6.00-7.00pm, outside the Radisson Edwardian Bloomsbury Street Hotel, 9-13 Bloomsbury Street, London, WC1B 3QD.
(3) Private Media Group http://www.prvt.com/.
(4) http://thesocietypages.org/socimages/2008/02/29/the-infamous-june-1978-hustler-cover/
(5) http://www.toptenreviews.com/3-12-07.html
(6) BBC pornography survey of 1057 men aged 18-24: http://www.bbc.co.uk/newsbeat/12918531
(7) C. Itzin et al., ‘The Evidence of Harm to Adults Relating to Exposure to Extreme Pornographic Material: A Rapid Evidence Assessment (REA)’, Ministry of Justice Series 11/07, September 2007. This report contained a series of meta-analyses on the effects of pornography:
a. One metaanalysis of over thirty studies found that consuming pornography increased aggressive behaviour in the viewer.
b. A separate meta-analysis of forty-six studies found that exposure to pornography reliably had the effect of making viewers more likely to commit sexual offences, experience difficulties in intimate relationships, and accept ‘rape myths’ as true.
c. Finally, a meta-analysis of nine studies revealed a statistically significant relationship between attitudes supporting violence against women and pornography consumption.
d. Itzen and her colleagues conclude, “Taken together they constitute a substantial body of mutually corroborative evidence of the harm effects of extreme – and other – pornographic material.”
(8) (BBC survey, above)
(9) OBJECT letter to PM can be found here: http://www.object.org.uk/component/content/article/3-news/142-stoppressporn-sign-up-to-letter-for-the-prime-minister-to-end-page-3
(10) Lib Dem motion F 26 can be found here on Page 33: http://www.libdems.org.uk/siteFiles/resources/docs/conference/Conference%20Extra%20Autumn2011.pdf
