How good porn can save the planet

[Music]

120

million people

visited this porn site pornhub today

11 000 hours

of porn are being watched there in this

very minute

approximately up to 30 percent of the

internet content

is porn related

and the most popular day to watch porn

is a sunday

so

good lord thank you that we are here

together now on a saturday

i care about the future of your sex

i really do

we are all human

we are sexual technological narrative

and political beings

we have our kings and preferences

all the actions we take have a direct

impact on our environment

and consumption is our daily bread

think about how

technology and consumer culture have

shaped aspects of your sex life

think about

contraceptives think about sex toys

and

pornography of course

folks usually don’t talk so much about

their sex life or about watching porn

except me

i do this all that time why

i am the creative director of the porn

film festival here in vienna

just left

and i just can tell you that i watch

quite a lot of

smarties stuff

hey i love my job

and you know

from doing so and from having this job i

really learned quite a lot

it even changed my view on bodies

especially my own body and sexualities

our choices

have consequences

we need to deal with porn the same way

we deal with let’s say recycling or how

we address

water shortages

we need to change the way we consume

porn

well

we need to do that

because abandoning is not really an

option as some people might say

pornography is an age-old way to portray

sex to get aroused

to deal with taboos and shame

i

love porn

i really do

i would not want to miss it

i firmly believe

that social and economic context

influences how when and in what way we

consume

so we should really openly ask

whether good porn can make the world a

better place

so today we are going to talk about what

good porn actually is

about the environmental costs of

internet pornography

and finally about how good porn

influences the world

so

we all watch porn

at least we all have seen one that’s not

and for many of us this means

out of ignorance or not knowing where to

consume

of course we open up the internet the

browser tabs we go to the classical

mainstream porn sites

and there we end up going to see

the classical

boring heteronormative

porn

said smiley

don’t know what i mean by that

well that’s totally okay

because you might not even hear about

good porn or ethical porn let alone

consume it

so

i have to come back to the mainstream

porn sites most of the content that you

can find there

is actually quite sexist discriminating

misogynist

and violent

so

is there good porn

and enthusiastically yes there is

but we need so much more of it we need

ethical porn production or so-called

fair trade porn

and what this

yeah and but this

i mean

good working conditions are created for

those people who are working on sets

there is really a fair payment for all

the people involved in such a production

there are precise agreements about what

is short and how and when

and attention is paid to hygiene

health safer sex of course

and transparency

about what happens to the material

afterwards

where is it published who has access to

it

all these

things mean ethical porn of hatred porn

and

all this

already exists

porn can be about real lust and sexual

well-being

it can be

feminine and queer positive it can be

you know gender aware and at the same

time male friendly

porn to put it differently

is part of society

porn

is

political

so now it’s let’s have a look at

sustainability

first of all i want to introduce you to

sex ecology

sex ecology or ecosexuality

is a trending sexual identity that

describes everything from literally

having sex literally again with the

earth

to getting it on the most eco-friendly

ways possible

and that’s quite a range actually

the founders of these movement are any

sprinkle and beth stevens

annie sprinkle was a porn actress

herself she was a sex worker and she has

been an activist since the late 1970s

and for them

especially sex ecology means

that they are married

yes you heard right they are married

to earth sky sea soil and the multitude

of natural beings

and as it is in every good marriage they

even have sex with those forces of

nature can you believe that

well

if this now for some of you sound a

little bit too new-agey you know

well

other forms of sustainable sex activism

exist

so secondly let me introduce you to the

one with the most obvious title

[ __ ] for forest

you know

two norwegians johansson and ellingson

founded a website based on the concept

that they use porn in order to raise

money for an ecological project

to protect the rainforest

so

sex sells

does it even sell better for a good

cause

well

the project itself how it was executed

and the

philosophy behind it had to face quite a

lot of criticism

but still i think it is worthwhile to

discuss

because

pornography has a

footprint because we always consume it

on some form of hardware

magazines books celloids dvds super

eight films

you name it

and most of the time

on the internet

so let’s look now deeper into the

environmental costs of internet

pornography

most people think that carbon footprints

of online porn

is much smaller than it was in the hay

days of physical media

in principle the materialization is a

very effective approach

but we can’t forget the combined

carbon emissions of server farms

and still physical media

although of course silver farms are a

little bit greener i have to admit that

precise numbers are very hard to come by

if they exist at all

but i have an interesting example for

all of you here

if pornhub

streams as efficiently as netflix does

the company would use around

6 million kilowatt hours per year

let that sink

so pornhub only uses the energy of 11

000 light bulbs turned on a year

that’s pretty low impact actually

especially if you compare it to the

energy that is needed to the oil that is

needed

if you want to make and distribute let’s

say thousands of dvds or maybe millions

of it

the advent of broadband and the

so-called pawn tube sites in the early

2000s

allowed it for users like us to view

clips for free

and suddenly this meant that pawn was

accessible

from anywhere

at any time

in high quality

this led actually to a big porn

explosion you know

like the big bang

of porn

and of course the covet pandemic

drastically increase increased online

porn usage how should it be different

but companies like pornhub also want to

be part of a green movement

so in 2014

pornhub actually launched a campaign

that was called

pornhub gives america woods

a promise to plant one tree

for every 100 views in a category called

big dig

the campaign went viral of course

and certainly we can ask if this is real

social responsibility

or just a marketing tactic

but at least they do something

so

by show of hands now who here in the

audience

did not know about pornhub before my

talk now

raise your hands don’t be shy

okay

okay well

some more things than for you

pornhub

belongs to a vast porn empire quietly

run by a canadian company called

mindgeek

and actually mindgeek is the largest

adult entertainment operator globally

and one of the top five bandwidth

consumption operators also globally

so

and

of course mind geek not only represents

pornhub

but in total they own and represent 165

pornographic membership sites

that’s actually a very monopolistic

dominance

and still again at this point i have to

say

that the mainstream industry

and all all the mainstream porn we can

watch on this 164 porn sites

that some of you surely know

this still is full of exploitative

tactics and the material the clips

uploaded there

are mostly illegally obtained

please always remind that

well

so

the solution cannot be that you stop

watching porn no

absolutely no

[Applause]

but it ultimately must be a reflective

approach

yes

this is what it’s about

and this must not only refer to porn

this should extend to our bodies our

sexuality

because

we all consume

we all have to reflect

so use alternatives

like uh ethical porn productions

feminist porn sites use fair trade sex

toys use fair trade hygiene products

uh you know even a solar powered

vibrator

exists already so

it’s up to you

the question about fair and equitable

bandwidth on the internet still

is extremely relevant

and we really need to care about our

mental

and our natural environment

so

let’s start to imagine a world together

where we all watch good porn

imagine it

what would be the effects of that

actually very much is already known

about this

first of all porn increases satisfaction

and we all want to feel good

masturbation would increase

self-care

and this means and studies show this

that this makes us happier

porn helps to normalize

desires

do you like to get off while dressing up

like a werewolf maybe

[Music]

do you like to have sex with a lamp

or with a train you up there maybe

um and did you all hear the story about

this woman

who married the eiffel tower because she

totally got turned on by it

well

the more we have to fill up our desires

and kings the better all will be

and of course the worst porn can lead to

more acceptance within a society

if we have tons of sex positive feminist

queer hairy non-binary

body positive and ethical pawn to choose

from

as we are all different

porn can help you figure out what turns

you on

the wiser the choice

the better porn can be

lustful

honest

and self-empowering

and this choice

is up to you

yeah

thank you

you