The Pornification of War in Ukraine
(This article is from March, but still critically important)
The Pornification of War in Ukraine
3/30/2022 by Gail Dines and Eric Silverman
The trending of #Ukraine on porn sites is only a recent development of an age-old misogyny, as old as warfare itself.
Civilians fleeing the war in Ukraine arrive at Przemysl station, 20 kilometers from the Ukrainian border on March 30, in Medyka, Poland. Ukrainian women refugees are often traumatized and vulnerable—making them targets for traffickers. (Cem Tekkesinoglu / dia images via Getty Images)
There is no atrocity that the sex industry doesn’t commodify or monetize. War, like porn, preys on women’s bodies and intimate lives, which become the battlegrounds for male power, the sites on which men inscribe masculinity and the accompanying sexism.
While the world recoiled in horror last month after Russia unleashed its military might against a sovereign nation, #Ukraine was trending on Pornhub and similar sites with titles such as “We are bombed and we f**k, Kharkiv, Ukraine,” “Ukrainian soldier f***s Russian girl before going to war!” and “Porn action during war in Ukraine.” As past examples have shown us, the porn industry is nimble when it comes to monetizing misogyny, especially in times of catastrophic suffering.
The invasion of Ukraine is now the worst military conflict in Europe since the Second World War. More than 3.5 million Ukrainians have fled the bloodshed for other countries, almost all of them women and children. Another 6.5 million are displaced within Ukraine. But Putin and pornographers aren’t the only ones seeking to profit from this humanitarian disaster. The refugees from Ukraine are, as refugees are wont to be, penniless, hungry, drained and frightened. They’ve left behind everything—not just their jobs, schools, dreams and savings, but also their fathers, brothers, husbands and sons. They are traumatized, alone and vulnerable, and for this reason they are targets, but not from bombs and bullets. They are now hunted by traffickers.
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Trafficked women from Ukraine are sent not just across Europe but also to Turkey, South Africa, China, Japan, Korea, Israel, Syria, the UAE and—no surprise—Russia. By some estimates, trafficking, also called modern slavery, enchains more than 40 million people worldwide. The annual monetary value of forced sexual exploitation in particular probably exceeds $100 billion. It is highly likely that some of the trafficked Ukrainian women and children will end up—drugged, beaten, coerced and raped—on the pages of ‘tube sites’ which, like Pornhub, allow users to upload videos without any authentication for age and consent. Today, a top porn site features the video, “Hot Ukrainian Girl F***ing her man on live stream against war.”
The pornification of the Ukrainian war is only the latest crisis to befall women in the country. Before the Russian invasion, trafficking in Ukraine had spiked from the global COVID-19 shutdown, which resulted in a mass return of male workers back to the country, which was already reeling from a dramatic rise in unemployment. Facing this dire economic instability, many women felt that they had no choice but to agree to deceptive job offers, only to end up in the hands of traffickers. Of course, COVID didn’t initiate trafficking in Ukraine. It was a long-standing problem, ensnaring hundreds of thousands, largely due to years of post-Soviet corruption, organized crime and joblessness. Traffickers baited victims with sham employment and travel agencies, fake ‘modeling’ services aimed at teen and preteen girls, deceptive offers of housing to homeless youth, and pretend missionaries who invited parents to send their children to religious schools. When all else failed, traffickers simply abducted kids. They also, of course, preyed on women driven by economic desperation into prostitution. These same ruses are now assailing the current refugees.
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Wars are fought disproportionately by men, so not surprisingly, women and children are the collateral damage. What we see during wartime is not unprecedented. Misogyny is always present. It is only amplified and made more stark.
https://msmagazine.com/2022/03/30/ukraine-porn-war-women-russia-sex-trafficking/