September 2, 2015 (LifeSiteNews) — Leading porn site Pornhub has launched a philanthropic non-profit — and its first charity is a $25,000 college scholarship.
According to the charity's website, “Pornhub … work[s] hard to help make millions of people feel happy every single day. In turn, we would like to help support the recipient of the first annual Pornhub Cares Scholarship to realize their goal of doing the same.”
Participants are encouraged to send an essay answering the question of “How do you strive to make others happy” and send a two-to-five-minute video “that elaborates on the good work that you do.”
Pornhub, which says it garners nearly 79 billion video views per year, told The Daily Beast that pornography was not required to win the scholarship, but a leading anti-porn activist isn’t buying it.
“It's definitely not a requirement,” Vice President Corey Price said. “The criteria isn’t to submit the best porn video and get a scholarship. I would be surprised if we had any pornographic entries.”
However, Dawn Hawkins, the president of the National Center on Sexual Exploitation (NCOSE), had a different view.
In a press release, NCOSE demanded that Pornhub “remove this phony scholarship, which is luring teens to send in pornographic videos simply so PornHub can increase their profits.” It also said that Pornhub is risking legal action “as it is impossible for them to discern whether participants in a video are above 18, and federal law requires that records be kept detailing the ages of each individual in the film.”
“Pornography is by nature sexual exploitation,” Hawkins said in a media statement sent first to LifeSiteNews. “If Pornhub truly cared about disadvantaged youth, they could give away scholarship money without exploiting thousands of teenagers.”
“This company is built upon a legacy of exploitation, and it is no more charitable in mind than a tobacco company that offers a scholarship to whichever teen can smoke the most of its brand-name cigarettes,” she declared.
The company did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
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Pornography has been linked to numerous harms to society, families, and individuals. It has been blamed as a leading cause of infidelity, causing one marriage therapist to write in 2011 that “there is a tremendous cost to society, whether we acknowledge it or not,” when it linking porn and divorce.
Researcher Mary Anne Layden, Ph.D., recently called pornography to “sexual obesity,” and said that it is “causing catastrophic outcomes” for how people view sex.
“What information is it feeding [young people]?” Layden asked. “It is telling them this: there is no such thing as too much sex, and there is no sexual behavior that is harmful, toxic, or traumatizing, and that sex is not about intimacy, caring, love, or respect.”
“Porn tells young people” that “you don't even need to know your partner, because sex with strangers is the best and most intense time for sex, and you can see the consequences of that in hookup culture on our college campuses,” she said.
Layden noted that viewing pornography often causes both men and women to view rape more favorably, and support weaker punishments for rapists.
Sharon Slater's documentary, “The Porn Pandemic,” describes how pornography has also been blamed when young men act out sexual fantasies in ways that are illegal — and harm women. Sex trafficking and pornography are closely related, as well.