Canada- From www.burlingtonpost.com- An American scholar travelled halfway across North America to come Halton to talk about what he considers to be disturbing trends in pornography.

Robert Jensen, a journalism professor from the University of Texas, spoke to a crowd of roughly 130 police officers, counsellors, educators, public health workers and members of the general public from across southern Ontario and the United States at a workshop held recently by the Halton Regional Police and Burlington Counselling and Family Services.

Talking from a feminist, anti-pornography position, Jensen argued that pornography isn’t what some consider to be harmless fun for adults.

Rather, he said, it is cruel and degrading to both women and minorities.

The impact is proving to be detrimental, he continued in his presentation at Halton Region headquarters in Oakville, as the increasingly graphic and offensive nature of pornography is seeping into mainstream culture.

“Pornography is more mainstream than ever before, more normalized, more accepted in the general public,” he said in a presentation that did not include visual images. “Some of us are old enough to remember a time when pornography was marginal, was a subject of debate. Now pornography is right smack in the middle of pop culture, and the graphic and sexually explicit nature of pornography has become more normalized. Pop culture has also become more sexually graphic.”

The problem, Jensen explained, is not that pornography is about sex. He said that sex has been a subject of artistic creations for centuries.

What is a cause for concern, he continued, is how women are portrayed in pornography. Speaking about heterosexual, adult pornography, Jensen argued that contemporary pornographic films generally show males as dominant and females as submissive. This involves sexual practices that women do not usually enjoy or ask from their partners, he said.

“Women are presented as enjoying this kind of sexual behaviour and finding their true sexual nature in this behaviour,” he said. “Women’s submission to these acts is not the product of force in most porn films. There are films that depict rape and torture and various forms of submission, but for the most part, these films present this activity as not simply sex that men want from women, but sex that women want so they can get in touch with their true, innate sexuality. That to be female is to be submissive is the underlying ideological message in these films.”

Another problem with the contemporary pornography industry is its overtly racist practices, Jensen said.

“We see every racist stereotype with a sexist twist,” he said. “We see the presentation of African-American women as animalistic, we see Latinas presented as naturally hot-blooded, we see Asian women presented in the demure geisha-girl mode living only to please Western men. Every racial and ethnic group you can imagine, there will be pornography of women in that group somehow presenting women as uniquely positioned.”

It appears to be a case of David versus Goliath when it comes to individuals taking on the injustices of the pornography industry.

The majority of adult pornography in North America is produced in California and the output is staggering, according to Jensen.

“Last year the pornography industry produced roughly 13,000 films,” he said.

“We are not talking about a marginal cultural product. That’s 13,000 new hardcore, sexually-explicit films produced in the United States last year. In comparison, Hollywood produces about 600 films per year.”

Jensen said it is a very lucrative business. The pornography industry makes $15 billion in estimated revenues annually in the U. S.

“The reason pornography is a major entertainment vehicle is not because it is at odds with the culture, it is because it is based in the culture,” he said. “That’s why this is so difficult.”