honesterotica and porn

Porn is everywhere      FACT

Whatever you might think about porn, images which are considered to be more or less pornographic have flooded our world. Online porn sites receive more traffic than Netflix, Amazon and X/Twitter combined – 35% of all internet downloads are porn. That’s just online, and doesn’t begin to touch the widespread use of porn-like imagery in advertising and entertainment.

Not all porn is exploitative, of course, and it’s important to think long and hard about why porn is so pervasive, and what its benefits might be. It’s also important to think very carefully about who creates and provides ‘pornography’, and who it’s designed for; those (mostly women) who provide sexual services have always played an important role in society, and many of the portfolios here in honesterotica celebrate that role. The fear of and discrimination against sex workers, treating them with suspicion and disgust, has a long history; that fear and discrimination needs to be understood, recognised and challenged.

Therefore honesterotica is not anti-porn, but we do believe that the ocean of over-commercialised male-fantasy porn deserves to be balanced by a small sea of alternative imagery.

We have to protect our children from it      SUPPOSITION

What are we protecting them from – exploring intimacy in relationships, becoming aware of their own and other people’s bodies, growing into their own power and imagination? Campaigns to stop young people accessing ‘adult’ material are generally ineffective, and mostly don’t make any serious attempt to distinguish between exploitative and more honest depictions of sexual and erotic intimacy. More often they encourage children to become uncomfortable within bodies which they feel are not ‘normal’, to engage in exploitative and non-consensual sexual activity with little or no sex education, and to be fearful of intimacy in case they get it ‘wrong’.

We have to ban it      IMPOSSIBLE

It would be as impossible as banning junk food or body odour! However hard anti-porn campaigners and concerned parents might try, the answer isn’t to try damming the ever-growing torrent of pornography. And it’s important to recognise that what is categorised as porn often fulfils important needs for exploration, self-awareness and appropriate risk-taking.

So what do we do? We offer an intelligent and satisfying alternative pictorial resource which honestly reflects the complexity, reward and heartache of intimate relationships. Enter honesterotica, a source of imagery which celebrates an enormous range of erotic relationships with joy, humour and integrity.