Okay, one final aside on this topic of the sex industry. We've talked mostly about the consequences of the sex trade (prostitution, pornography, etc.) for heterosexual women, but not so much for lesbians. There was a story I was just now reading that I'd like to highlight: Google tweaks algorithm to show less porn when searching for 'lesbian' content.
The campaigners for this cause observed that "in their research, they found that only the word 'lesbian' was linked to pornographic sites, whereas searching for 'gay' or 'trans' linked to informative pages including Wikipedia, top news articles, and specialized blogs".
This is a real issue. Because lesbians are an all-female group by definition, we are sexualized way more than anyone else. The top search term on both Pornhub and YouPorn is, in fact, 'lesbian'. To judge by the leading search results one encounters (a large percentage of which seem to involve things like penetration with penile-shaped objects), one seriously doubts that it's mainly lesbians who are doing these searches. Even gay men sometimes participate in the sexual objectification of lesbians (example).
The consequences of people viewing lesbians more as entertainment than as people can get very real. To highlight a high-profile example of what I mean that made global headlines earlier this year, there was group of male teenagers who approached a lesbian couple on a bus in London and, on learning of their sexual orientation, demanded that they kiss for the group. When the couple refused, they were beaten and had to be hospitalized. Likewise, just the other weekend, a lesbian couple was physically attacked at Amsterdam Pride after refusing the advances of two men. In these sorts of ways, we can see how pornography fosters a dangerous culture of male entitlement to women, and not just the straight or even bi ones. So yeah, I'm very glad that Google has recently tweaked their algorithm for the term 'lesbian' to produce informative results comparable to what appears when one searches for 'gay' or 'trans'.
Just wanted to posit that as a final thought.
Last edited by Jaicee - on 13 August 2019
