Men Try To Guess If These Situations Are Porn Or #MeToo Stories

Over 80 percent of porn scenes contain some form of physical aggression toward women.
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Porn or #MeToo?

That’s the question two filmmakers recently asked a group of men for a new video project titled “Be Frank.” Created by Dutch natives Damayanti Dipayana and Camilla Borel-Rinkes, “Be Frank” is a seven-minute film featuring men discussing the recent #MeToo movement and the role men can play in combating sexual violence.

“The project aims to close that gap and enables men to be part of the conversation and the solution,” Dipayana told HuffPost. “Additionally, being Dutch may have something to do with it ... we’re known to be quite frank about any and every topic.”

In the above “Be Frank” clip, Dipayana and Borel-Rinkes asked men to read different storylines and then guess whether the situation was from a pornography script or a #MeToo story. The #MeToo campaign, originally created by activist Tarana Burke, has recently sparked a cultural reckoning with how we deal with sexual violence around the world.

Although it’s revealed at the end of the clip that all of the stories are porn scripts, many of the guys have trouble discerning which ones are porn and which ones are sexual assault.

The last still in the clip features a statistic that sums up the issue well: “88.2 percent of porn scenes contain some form of physical aggression against women.”

The depiction of violence against women in porn has long been a point of contention. Some people believe porn perpetuates rape culture and violence against women by repeatedly portraying women in demeaning or non-consensual sexual situations. Others believe porn can be a healthy and necessary sexual outlet for many viewers.

Mostly, it comes down to the fact that porn serves as a stand-in for sexual education for many young men due to a glaring lack of comprehensive sex-ed programs in the U.S.

“The statistics and #MeToo stories are disheartening and overwhelming, but also resulted in my determination to speak up and help find solutions,” Borel-Rinkes told HuffPost. “Damayanti and I both firmly believe that this is not just a story for women to tell. There’s many concrete things ‘good guys’ can do to help improve the climate for the women around them, and the time has come for them to join the conversation.”

Watch the video below.

Watch the full version of the “Be Frank” film below.

Watch the full video below:

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