Exodus Cry is an anti-trafficking organization that is calling out sexual exploitation in the porn industry. However, their message can sometimes be misconstrued by the public or in the news, particularly those who see nothing more than the headlines. Their strong stance against criminally tolerant companies like Pornhub has led some people to claim the advocacy group is on a moral crusade to shut down the entire industry.
This is a misconception though, one that has helped some people dismiss the legitimate concerns of Exodus Cry and their much-needed calls to action. To understand more about the group’s stance on porn, there needs to be an examination of the kinds of content available across various platforms. We’ll look at what counts as consensual and why it’s so important to distinguish it from toxic—often criminal—content.
Does Exodus Cry Want to Shut Down the Porn Industry?
No, shutting down the porn industry is not among Exodus Cry’s goals. But it is actively working to uproot the widespread human rights abuses in porn and is calling for toxic content to be removed.
The group is calling for the removal of pornographic content that promotes activity generally regarded as toxic to society such as violence, rape, racism, incest, underage, and especially nonconsensual and criminal content. They campaign for the right steps to remove it from view, and seek to prevent it from happening again. Stricter regulations mean less incentive and more consequences for perpetrators.
Both the creation and consumption of porn is destructive to human sexuality but attempting to shut down the industry is an undertaking of a different scale. While Exodus Cry would consider the elimination of all porn to be beneficial to society, the group’s real goals are to focus on the most exploitative elements.
What Is Exodus Cry Calling for?
Exodus Cry is calling for the prevention of all abusive pornographic imagery, including underage, revenge porn, and rape. The group wants every site hosting porn to verify the age and consent of all persons in the video or image, ideally through third-party software.
It’s become increasingly evident that porn sites cannot be trusted to self-police the people that post content and the people appearing in the content. Despite any porn website’s flimsy terms and conditions, which attempt to ban criminal porn the reality is that porn sites often turn a blind eye to everything from spycam footage to human trafficking. Rape is being filmed and labeled as entertainment, children are being coerced into sexual abuse, and human trafficking is increasing because there are profits to be made.
Why Is Exodus Cry So Concerned?
There is a sea of porn out there, and it’s available in nearly every format imaginable. It spans decades and, in the age of the internet, is difficult to control. Especially when websites feature a download button, even if a website removes content, it often gets re-uploaded. This makes it impossible for the victimization of sexual exploitation survivors to end. It’s impossible to prevent all toxic videos and images, but Exodus Cry strives to limit its production by taking practical steps to stop it.
If porn sites are being bombarded with videos and images with thousands of uploads per second, who exactly is verifying that the content meets any kind of legal parameter set for the uploader? The answer is, there often aren’t enough people available on the content reviewing teams to see that every video is properly vetted.. Site executives rely on the sheer quantity of content to hide many of their misdeeds, and they do not take kindly to those who call attention to their neglect.
How Is Exodus Cry Protecting Children?
Over the past few years, child sexual abuse material, also known as “child porn,” has surfaced at a particularly alarming rate one that has proliferated due to a lack of oversight. The number of sexually abusive images reaches into the hundreds of millions.
Porn sites are also impacting children on the other side of the screen too, often for decades after they’ve seen their first image or video. Most online platforms don’t require a child to verify their age before accessing content. There’s no attempt to hide these sites behind complicated code or passwords either. This isn’t on a Dark Web that takes hours to hack. It’s relatively easy for a child to stumble across a porn website before falling into a rabbit hole of anything from torture to incest to gang rape in a matter of seconds.
In the modern age, kids are being exposed to intense pornographic content on a regular basis. These kinds of horrific images can actually traumatize a child’s brain and shape their sexual appetites for the rest of their life. It doesn’t take more than a few clicks to develop a life-long habit. This is not the kind of sexual education anyone wants a child raised on, yet the truth is that the average age of exposure to porn is now about 11.
Exodus Cry is fighting for all online hosts to implement stricter age verification protocol. The group wants all content viewers to be required to present a government-issued ID so it can be verified before they can access adult content.
How Is Exodus Cry Helping Prevent Abuse?
The sex industry inspires new kinds of fantasies, including those of having sex with kids, raping another person, or engaging in other kinds of violence during a sexual act without explicit consent. This can form unhealthy desires in a viewer and potentially spark an undesirable urge to recreate scenes in real life.
Regardless of how content is labeled, the reality is that many porn websites encourage people to watch and receive pleasure from violent or exploitative scenes, which normalizes this kind of behavior. Exodus Cry is calling for all destructive content of this kind to be banned, including any images that promote incest, violence, sex with children, or racism.
How Is Exodus Cry Fighting Human Trafficking?
A viewer on a porn site might reasonably believe that the video or picture they’re viewing features someone who has willingly agreed to be in the content. However, the porn industry thrives on coercion, which by legal definition constitutes human trafficking.
Regardless of how the person is acting on screen, Exodus Cry is interested in the relationships that may have formed before the content was created. For instance, a young woman may have been lied to about the kinds of content they would be filming. They may have been told they would be doing one thing on camera, only to find themselves being coerced to do far more.
Producers will prey on young, inexperienced women, particularly if they’re in a vulnerable position. During the actual filming, they may force them to perform degrading acts or even violently rape them on camera. This is a form of human trafficking, one that has been perpetrated again and again through the relaxed rules in the adult industry.
Exodus Cry is calling for porn companies to be held accountable by a third party to ensure that all performers in the content gave their consent of their own free will. This is the only way to ensure that no coercion or trafficking was involved.
Exodus Cry: One Step at a Time
Online porn is a destructive force for many people and legal regulations are one key way to both limit its reach and prevent the proliferation of widespread harmful or criminal sexual activity. By raising awareness about how porn damages the human psyche, Exodus Cry is attempting to transform society at large. Exodus Cry believes that millions of people will stop consuming porn once they understand the toxicity that lies just behind the facade.
Laila Azzahra is a professional writer and blogger that loves to write about technology, business, entertainment, science, and health.