Over the weekend, Pornhub — one of the biggest mainstream porn websites in the world — came under fire for its role in promoting pornographic content relating to Ukraine via its “Trending Searches”, a country that, if anyone had forgotten, had been invaded by Russian forces not 24 hours earlier. Now to clarify, this does not mean that the website had only then begun to host content with the key search term “Ukraine” tagged to it — in fact, the site contains content with this search term going back several years. What it means is that, in light of Russia declaring war on Ukraine, the fetishisation of Ukrainian women (and more specifically, girls) skyrocketed.

There has been a notable shift into a more egregious commercialisation of abject misery

In the wake of Ukraine being declared a war zone, a sizable portion of the global population — enough to push “Ukrainian girls” to the top of the trending search list — reacted by seeking out videos of the inhabitants of said war zone engaging in sexual activity. This is, disturbingly, nothing new. Since at least 2015 there has been a dramatic increase in searches for “refugee porn”, linked to the ongoing humanitarian crises in the Middle East. The very first stages of the COVID outbreak in China were coupled with the creation of “Coronavirus-themed porn”.

Video titles back in 2019 included: “Coronavirus pandemic makes cute girl do anything for toilet paper”, “desperate covid teen” and “Covid-19 lockdown schoolgirl was all alone”. This theme has been continued with recent videos including “Ukrainian teen rides big Moscow dick”, and one video entitled “Russian soldiers rape Ukrainian bi-atch” that has over 30,000 views on one site alone.

The fact that these videos span many years, and between them rack up hundreds of thousands of views, shows that this type of content is not only normalised, but growing in popularity. This was not always the case. Whilst the porn industry has always been built upon the commodification and exploitation of women, there has been a notable shift since the advent of internet into a more egregiously obvious commercialisation of abject misery. To unpack how this happened, it is vitally important to understand the impact of modern-day porn on its users.

Research increasingly demonstrates that due to the addiction-like effect of porn on the viewer’s brain, the content they access must be ever more violent and degrading to keep the “novelty factor” engaged, which in turn reinforces a vicious cycle where increasingly violent content is created to keep up with viewer demand.

Many of the responses to the “Trending Searches” tweet linked previously failed to make this connection, with some myopically declaring that “it isn’t the industry’s fault that people want to search for this”. This entirely misunderstands the symbiotic relationship between viewer and website.

The videos sought out by users are created because there is a market for them

Increasingly abusive “themes” within modern-day porn, whether “fictional” or not, draw in more viewers. By hosting and indeed promoting this content, websites such as Pornhub tacitly allow the exploitation of vulnerable and often desperate individuals, while simultaneously reinforcing the idea that it is completely acceptable to capitalise on someone else’s misery to achieve sexual gratification.

This then impacts users’ perception of “real life” sex and has a notable “trickle down” effect. By normalising the consumption of porn — specifically, porn depicting the grotesque exploitation of women in literal war zones — this business encourages increasingly harmful and damaging attitudes and behaviours, evidenced by, for example, an increasing number of women reporting instances of sexual violence in otherwise consensual relationships.

It is all too easy to carve off porn use as some kind of abstract event, a metaphysical thought experiment that exists only on the digital plane, and only when accessed by users. This is not the reality. The videos sought out by users are created because there is a market for them, and this market is something which websites like Pornhub are single-mindedly obsessed with profiting from. The abuse meted out on the women and children within these videos occurs before they’re watched by anybody, and the impact of viewing such abuse and exploitation is passed forward into the interactions of the viewers in the “real world” long after they have been viewed.

The porn industry will stop at nothing to turn a profit, even if that means promoting the most harrowing sexually exploitative content the human mind can conjure up. For those who speak out against the Russian-led war in Ukraine, but also seek out videos of its citizens being subjected to all manner of sexual abuse and exploitation, your words are of little comfort to the women and girls you view as barely human.