Boycott Called for Groupon for Offering Torture Porn Tours in Calif.
Anti-pornography group Morality in Media has called for a national boycott of the deal-of-the-day-website Groupon for offering discounts on tours of California-based torture porn studio, Kink, for the second time this year.
Groupon has sent out thousands of emails to advertise a tour where people can view a live filming of sadomasochistic, torture porn at Kink's studios, New York-based MIM said Friday.
The studios are headquartered in the San Francisco Armory, a 200,000 square foot 1914 reproduction of a Moorish Castle that served as a National Guard Armory and Arsenal until the 1970s, according to Kink's website. MIM, a faith-based group which runs www.PornHarms.com, said Groupon is selling coupons for the porn studios under the garb of a "historic" tour.
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"Selling coupons supporting the degradation of women is as low as a publicly-traded company can go," MIM executive director Dawn Hawkins said in a statement. "Groupon frames the tour as a historic one, comparing the opportunity to visiting the Smithsonian Institute because the building that houses Kink has an 'historic history in San Francisco.'"
MIM confronted Groupon about their choice to feature Kink. But the coupon company defended it. "We thoroughly vet the businesses we feature… Fortunately, this business has proven to be a responsible member of their community," Groupon replied.
What's Groupon defending? Kink advertises that they have "young sexy teens who are overwhelmed and outnumbered…who need to learn a lesson by multiple men;" women being "bound, whipped, objectified and humiliated. They are immobilized, caged and humiliated as objects;" of women "suspended and tied in rope bondage…tormented beyond all reason;" and of women "naked, tied up, bound, punished, exposed in public…who are taken to public bars for public humiliation…," Kink says on its website.
"Groupon should be thinking of their wider commercial audience, most of which, unlike Groupon, would not support torture and humiliation of women and girls for the sexual enjoyment of disturbed men," said Hawkins. "But since Groupon not only seems to support Kink, but is happy to profit from the torture of women, we have called for a national boycott."
Kink, which sells porn videos and offers live online torture porn performances, also notes on its website that, "Girls are also pulled in and out of cages, their tongues clamped, their bodies pinned, and their arms and legs strapped," MIM pointed out. They also claim to employ "contraptions used in countries such as China for torture" as well as machines, water, metal, wood, electrodes, hooks, needles, and urination, all for the sexual persecution of women and "young teenage girls."
"Is this really corporate responsibility?" MIM asks on a special "Boycott Groupon Project" web page it has set up, which also urges supporters to send email to all top Groupon executives.
