Saturation

I read a letter to an editor recently that argued, somewhat unconvincingly, that pornography was essentially harmless. In fact, it was good for you. Never mind that the correspondent was an advocate for the industry. The fact that so few letters demurring from the opinion followed was evidence, if any more were needed, that porn has moved from the shadows into the mainstream.

Formerly, pornography was something that was restricted to tacky-looking, brightly signed shops in the most run down parts of town. Those accessing such premises ran the risk of being seen by colleagues or friends or even strangers. Hence the furtive dash from the door with the suspicious brown paper bag wedged under an arm.

Nowadays, its pretty much open slather. My email box is often graced with ads for enlarging organs of one sort or another, and much else besides. The most innocent of searches turns up one porn site after another. A simple search to find free porn is extraordinarily easy and shows up hundreds, perhaps thousands of sites. Well, so what, you might ask?

I'm no expert on the erotic, but surely porn is an unhealthy and utterly misleading entry into it. Are teenage boys to get their cues on sexuality from pornography? Hardly. What will they learn about the girls and women, other than the fact that they are, apparently, insatiable nymphos who love a good serving of abuse and humiliation on the side. If sex is about intimacy then porn is about its antithesis. Its about the explicit, the obvious, the public face of the mechanism of intercourse, outside of any real human context.

I've written before that I object to the nannying that often occurs at many levels in our society. But the regulation of access to porn is essential if sex isnt to become another tawdry consumer durable. The implications of that are too sad to contemplate.