Ya gotta read this article for its truly whacked-out ideas:

[The Recorder] Estela Lopez of Stop Porn Culture.org visited to deliver the organizations’ views on the porn industry and its ability to deceive viewers while endorsing stereotypes and misogynistic tendencies.

According to Lopez, the porn industry brings in anywhere from eight to 10 billion dollars a year and is the third largest revenue source of organized crime behind gambling and drugs.

Today’s image-based media are aimed primarily at 25-year-olds and younger.

“We are fish swimming in a sea of media. Without the tools to think critically about media, we won’t see how it affects us – the water remains invisible,” Lopez said. “You can engage with printed material but an image hits you off the bat.”

Interest groups such as the Freedom of Speech Coalition work hard to maintain the porn industry’s freedoms since pornography is readily available to anyone.

“Pornographers contributed money to get iPhones better screens,” said Lopez. “Technology makes it more convenient for pornography consumption to be anonymous.”

According to Lopez, in the United States alone there are 68 million searches daily and the average age of porn watchers is 11 years old.

Mainstream magazines such as Cosmopolitan and Seventeen portray women who are openly sexual as avant-garde and feminists, but this may not always be true.

According to Lopez, 85 percent of women in the porn industry are women who have been sexually exploited or are rape victims. These traumatic events cause many of these women to come to believe their purpose in life is to be sexually abused.

“Pornography is filmed prostitution,” said Lopez. “Women’s bodies are exploited and used as objects. It is no longer important whether the woman has a biography and an identity; she’s simply a walking image of sex. Pornography teaches men to break her down into body parts. A fragmentation process occurs. Women have two choices: be sexually available to men or be invisible,” she said.

Lopez went on to explain that the porn industry is often portrayed as “glamorous, lucrative and exciting.” Popular porn stars like Jenna Jameson are often used to portray glamour and success, but Jameson herself is a victim of rape, drug abuse and alcoholism. The effects of pornography on men and women are simply unavoidable, said Lopez.

“Porn reinforces a pro-rape message. Today’s pornography is ramped up as far as it can go without turning violent,” she continued, saying that the Internet is littered with sites boasting rape and incest fantasies. “The violence in porn is shown to be consensual.”

Lopez also explained how pornography also deepens the racial divide between women of all races. According to Lopez, women are separated into stereotypical subcategories.

Most mainstream pornography like Playboy, Hustler and Penthouse depict conventionally attractive women, most of whom are white. Other races such as African American women are often portrayed as subhuman. Oriental women are portrayed as overtly innocent and eager to please. This dehumanization process causes society to use otherwise offensive words such as “pimp” in a positive way.

“How did the word ‘pimp’ become so cool today? Pimps commit tremendous violence against women,” Lopez said.

Pornography distributors often find ways to get around the law in order to produce work that would otherwise be deemed illegal, said Lopez who pointed out that the phenomenon of child-like women in print and media has quickly become a major theme in pornography across the United States.

“It’s funny, because in the U.S. we have very conflicted views of sex. Many religious people say sex education is detrimental to young people and [they] stress the importance of virginity. Strangely, porn industries often endorse virginity also, as a fetish,” she said.

Pornography gives men unrealistic expectations about sex, the fear of men becoming bored with the material forces porn industries to up the ante constantly, explained Lopez.

“Guys who watch porn don’t necessarily rape girls, but it allows desensitization towards sexual violence,” she said.

As women here in the real world fight for equality and integrity, the image of women portrayed as sex objects may leave a lasting impression. It is important for young men and women to differentiate the onscreen “relationships” from the real-life ones. “It is a constant uphill battle,” Lopez said.