Considering how taboo mainstream media can portray pornography, it comes as interesting news that many mainstream publishers use porn to make money. In other news, John Lasseter of Pixar takes time off after apologising for unwanted hugs and Police in Tanzania arrest a woman for kissing another woman.
You won’t find porn on mainstream publications such as Teen Vogue, Bustle or Cosmopolitan. After all, they make their money from advertisers and advertisers generally shun pornography. However, these sites do still use porn, or rather, people’s interest in porn to make money.
Advertisement money often comes from the number of views or clicks an ad gets. The more views and clicks, the more money the website is able to negotiate/gain. How do you get more views and clicks? By increasing your site traffic.
What’s one sure fire way of getting more traffic? Possibly playing up to the internet’s most searched thing. Porn.
Mainstream news outlets, particularly women’s lifestyle magazine, optimise their articles with pornographic tags. Because their sites rank well on google anyway, it’s a good way for them to get front page results from Google when people type in certain terms, such as “Anal sex”.
In fact, if you google “anal sex” on the USA google the first result is an article by Cosmopolitan, and the second result is an article by Teen Vogue. That’s the power of SEO and how these companies are able to utilise porn interest to get more traffic and ultimately more of that sweet advertising money.
Looking into how some articles tag themselves, you can see the strategy very clearly. In an article with the headline “This Kind Of Porn Is Surprisingly Popular Among Women.” you’ll find the website uses the tags “Squirting”, “Porn”, “Female Ejaculation”, “Popular Pornhub” and “XXX”.
John Lasseter takes 6 months leave from Pixar over “unwanted hugs”
Has the sexual assault witch hunt gone too far? Some might say it hasn’t gone far enough, and that we’re still ushering in a new era of progressive anti-rape awareness. Others will point out that the media has become a place of mass hysteria, with innocent social interactions now deemed as rape.
One such story is that of John Lasseter who recently announced a leave of 6 months from his company Pixar. Lasseter announced his leave in a company memo.
“I especially want to apologize to anyone who has ever been on the receiving end of an unwanted hug or any other gesture they felt crossed the line in any way, shape, or form,” he writes. “No matter how benign my intent, everyone has the right to set their own boundaries and have them respected.” He states.
Disney, who now owns Pixar has commented on the situation with “We are committed to maintaining an environment in which all employees are respected and empowered to do their best work. We appreciate John’s candor and sincere apology and fully support his sabbatical.”
But the question is, should he have apologised for giving unwanted hugs? Did he need to take 6 months of leave to deal with the situation? It seems clear from his apology that there were no malicious, sexual or controlling intentions behind his actions. But the fear that others may consider it a form of assault has pushed him, Pixar and Disney into these actions and apology.
Whilst sexual assault is horrific, and the new wave of victims becoming strong enough to speak out against it is admirable and progressive, we should not let things escalate to other extremes. We will end up in a world where people are afraid of any form of human contact without explicit verbal and maybe even written consent. Where giving someone a hug or brushing their knee could mean losing your job.
The Police Service Northern Ireland this week posted a tweet stating that kissing under the mistletoe at an office party without consent is rape. They have since deleted that tweet after backlash, but posted a second tweet still along the same lines that are still vague.
Woman in Tanzania arrested over video showing lesbian kiss
A woman in Tanzania has been arrested after a video of her kissing another woman at a party became viral. Tanzania is one of the African countries that deem homosexuality illegal. Breaking this law can give you a life sentence in jail.
The other woman in the video has not been found but police state they are looking for her. In the video, the two women kissed and the unknown woman produced a ring.
A large crackdown on homosexuality started in Tanzania after president John Magufuli came to power in 2015.
The police target gatherings, parties and other events that they believe facilitate homosexual advocacy.
Along with more police arrests, there has also been a crackdown on the distribution of lubricants and condoms to possibly gay men. This comes against warnings of sexual health risks. In a population of 50 million, Tanzania has 1.4 million people infected with HIV.
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