BBC Radio 4 presenter Jane Garvey's shock reaction to watching hardcore porn at work: 'I don't like seeing women in pain'

The Women's Hour host was left 'upset' after the explicit research

Jane Garvey, presenter of Radio 4’s Woman’s Hour, expressed her sadness at witnessing women in pain as she researched hardcore porn at her BBC office at work ahead of a debate on the subject.

"I have to say I spent an informative hour or so last week watching porn at work. I don’t want to miss Call The Midwife,” she said during a discussion on the question ‘Can Porn Empower Women?’.

"When I watched it last week, if I am really honest with you, I am probably a bit naïve and vanilla in my taste, I don’t think upset is too strong a word, but I was upset by the expressions of some of the women. I do not want to watch women in pain. It is not sexy. I don’t get why I should be expected to get that. Why should I?"

"Porn is not a genre," Pandora Blake, a ‘feminist porn performer’ also on the panel, said in defence.

"It is a medium like film or television. Saying it is degrading is like saying all of TV is degrading just because you have watched Top Gear. I would say don’t throw the baby out with the bath water."

"There is a growing number of feminist porn directors making the porn they want to see. It is a huge business and it is happening now.

"I have produced porn for nine years. I have a creative vision that I want to get out there. It gives me body confidence and financial independence. We should not be judging porn on whether it empowers women as capitalism is degrading as you have to exchange your labour for money."

Garvey added that porn itself – as well as its availability – has transformed over the last few decades.

"When I was a child you might find a school friend’s dad’s copy of Playboy in his bedroom and have a blooming good look and be slightly amazed and a bit stunned and a bit baffled if you were me," she continued.

"It was not everywhere, and now it is. It was not so easily accessible. Surely that has made a difference?"

The talk came amid discussions over the recent boom in BSDM terms being searched for on the internet following the success of the Sam Taylor-Johnson-directed Fifty Shades Of Grey movie.

Pornhub recently released statistics that suggested it had experienced a 20 per cent surge in searches for the words 'spank', 'bondage' and 'submission' in the US following the premiere last month.