against excess #1

I was surprised a few weeks ago when an academic friend and feminist responded to a note I had written in opposition to pornography. I had simply pointed out that the internet and the runaway mainstreaming of porn was likely to be more harmful than good, especially for young people with little or no experience of sex. If this was their portal to sex, then trouble was brewing. She said that porn was an issue of freedom of expression, that any censorship of the net was an attack upon choice and that people had the right to look or click off elsewhere. That, I suppose summarizes what might be a libertarian view.

There is a lot to be said for freedom of expression. Generally speaking, its a good thing, though I fail to see how the untrammelled publishing of porn has anything to do with it. No I'm not fond of censorship but understand that in a cohesive society, not everything is available to everyone all the time. Nor should it be. As for the 'off-switch' debate, sure, people can decide. But can children? When did you last meet a teenager with such discernment? What are impressionable, developing minds to make of material that 30 years ago would have landed the disseminator in court?

Porn pushes the boundaries of society in ways that are hard to predict the consequences of. Porn addiction is already clinically documented. Porn has been directly implicated (through testimony)in crimes from child abuse to rape to murder. It doesn't take a feminist scholar to understand that a huge percentage of internet porn is anti-woman. As one porn actor said 'They are just faceless holes to fuck.' The depersonalisation of woman in what are increasingly normalised sexual contexts augers poorly for the psycho-sexual health of young men and women.

Porn, of course, has always been around in one form or another. It's just that it used to be hard to find. Or you needed to be in a position of influence. Or have money. Now its everywhere, and its for everyone.

And that's sad.