Pandora’s fascinating post earlier in the week about proposals to introduce an “opt-in” system in the UK for adult websites was extremely thought-provoking. I was going to comment on her site, but thought the issue was worthy of longer exploration here – as I find myself rather torn in the debate. (Briefly, for those of you who haven’t been following the issue, the government is considering a scheme whereby households might have to specifically request their ISPs to allow them access to adult sites).
First instinct: part of me *could* be concerned that the web permits easy, wide access to porn at a young age – certainly easier, wider and younger than would have been the case in pre-internet days. Would I feel happy if, say, an eleven year old with their first PC started browsing porn sites? Not especially: probably, not at all. Concerns… Might it confuse, corrupt? Might it promote excessive youthful promiscuity, make some younger folks feel pressured into sexual exploration sooner than they otherwise might? Could it encourage behaviour such as inappropriate sexting?
Pandora provides a fascinating quote:
Even the briefest look on Google Scholar will show you that there is not a lot of rigorous academic research in this area. Arguments about porn, such as arguments about sexualisation, are usually values rather than evidence based. There is certainly no consensus in the academic world about young people and porn.
Indeed. The lack of rigorous research concerns me as much because of the lack of evidence that porn *doesn’t* corrupt as for the lack of evidence that it does.
Does government have the right to intervene in some areas on the basis of age? We already have limits on drinking and smoking, for example, where youthful consumption could be damaging to health. If there is a case (note that ‘if’ carefully) that porn could have adverse effects, then why wouldn’t one protect young people in the same way?
Is “everything goes” an acceptable approach to the web? Internet content is already restricted in some ways: I guess most would agree that porn involving young children, for example, should be outlawed. And it’s worth remembering that the current political debate is not actually about a “porn ban” – the emotive phrase used in the title of Pandora’s post: it’s about restricting access to some information for some users, a far less swingeing measure.
Is this the next step along the “thin end of the wedge”? I’m not sure it is. Yes, I’m wary of censorship, deeply distrustful of government – and the police, when entrusted with powers that are too broad, too open to misuse. But does restricting access to porn for a certain group create a precedent that would readily morph into censorship of other types of site – say, on grounds of ideology? I’m not sure that, in a democracy (with all its flaws), it necessarily or particularly does. And, in any case, is freedom of expression a sacrosanct right? It’s general accepted that it’s not for hate speech – if the views being expressed would hurt or victimise – say, on the grounds of race or sexuality. So I don’t see there being a clear line here either.
What of the practicalities – if people live in a shared household, for example? Pandora observes that “You’d better have a good relationship with the housemate whose name is on the broadband account”. Indeed. Their name is on the account. If they pay, they choose. (And at what point do practical inconveniences give way to more important principles, anyway?)
Does everyone have an absolute right to access everything on the web, irrespective of their age? If so, isn’t existing parental control software (advocated by Pandora in her post) itself an unacceptable infringement on the rights of young people in the households where it’s used? Should we be seeking to ban those products?
And hasn’t, in any case, the line of unfettered access from all devices already been crossed long ago? I have no idea how it works, but I do recall my mobile provider wanting proof that I was over 18 before allowing me access to adult sites.
But… then an entirely contrary instinct kicks in. Naturally wary of government; instinctively opposed to censorship (for who decides what is and isn’t to be censored?). A believer in people taking responsibility for their own actions and choices. Concerned lest – in those shared households I mentioned earlier – new rules such as this would put those adults wishing to view ‘adult sites’ in an unfair position: why should they have to explain to others that they’re interested in looking at certain types of content, to ensure that their housemates don’t block access?
And I’ve long held the view that the web has been an immense force for good in many lives (my own included), by helping people to understand and embrace their sexual orientation and preferences. I’d echo Pandora’s comment, which rings pretty true for us too:
I get letters from kinky people who are grateful to me for helping them feel they are not alone. I hear from mature individuals who are only just beginning to discover the vocabulary to think about their desires, or to start to come to terms with them. I am so lucky, they tell me, to have become aware of my sexuality so young, to have accepted it and be able to find so much joy in it, and help other people make peace with themselves.
Yet even our blog has the usual disclaimer – “This blog is for adults only.” I even sometimes wonder whether that’s an appropriate statement, when we know folks who’ve found comfort and, ahem, inspiration from what we write before they had reached ‘official’ adulthood. And it’s clearly nonsensical to ban younger people from seeing porn before their eighteenth birthday whilst they’re of legal age to actually have sex!
So, compared to Pandora, I see it as a less black and white issue – but share her view that it needs more widespread discussion. Much as I admire her and her eloquent opinions, I’m perhaps less vehement in my opposition to any exploration of the issue by the government and ISPs. But I don’t think I’ve yet read a persuasive, evidence-based case either for or against. I recognise the importance of the debate – but I’m confused. And that’s why I’d really value our readers’ contributions.
PS apologies to those of our readers missing Haron’s contributions; she’s been suffering from flu for the past week, so I’ve been writing a little more than my usual share of our posts!
I pretty much grew up in the porn generation. The internet has been a perinal feature of my life since I was very small.
I grew up in a no-net nanny kind of household. My laizze faire parents don’t do censorship. As such I discovered spanking blogs when I was about fourteen or fifteen. By sixteen I was corresponding with people, at seventeen I went on my first kinky date.
For some people, the fact that I’ve ended up in a relationship with a much older man would make my story a prodigal tale. This just shows how case studies can be manipulated. I’m happier and more secure than I’ve ever been in my life, in no small part due to the fact that I’ve been involved from a young age with porn.
I watch porn. Not just spanking porn, regularly, dirty, free to view porn. On redtube, or youporn. I think that’s supposedly unusual for my age and gender. Bollocks. I know just as many girls (and girls of 18 and 19, not women in their thirties) who own vibrators and enjoy porn.
Maybe the sexual liberation with regards to pornography and masturbation, that I see amongst my peers, is a result of the growing interest in porn. Is that such a bad thing?
The idea that porn is making teenage boys expect pornographic sex in real life is mental. Most of the boys I know love playing Call of Duty, but they don’t expect to go out and shoot people in the street every day.
I have had sexual experiences (though admittedly not full sex) with people who were born in 1990, and 1991, for whom porn is apparently normalised. Did they expect me to be hollywooded, perfect and give them anal sex? No. They were dickheads, but that is a permanent feature of being a 15 year old boy, not a reaction to watching porn. Most teenage boys are just twats. If we want to change that we need to look a lot deeper than just at porn.
My parents accidenatlly found porn on my brother’s ipad the other day. They thought it was hillarious.
For how many years have boys had pornographic magazines, postcards, picture ect? Now the pictures move.
Society has always presented an idealist representation of sex. Watch *any* hollywood movie. The sex is always pretty and perfect and ends in mutual orgasm. Doesn’t that convey a similarly confusing and unrealistic notion?
Also, if we’re going to do anything to change the way porn is viewed and accessed, then why not make condoms compulsory?
If porn really does have the gravitas these studies claim, then making a condom rule would have huge impact on teen pregnancy and STI rates.
Interesting thoughts. I, too, am troubled by the easy access young people have to pornography. Even if they have good guidance from other sources, the visual nature of film pornography can give it documentary weight it doesn’t merit. Another important aspect of a lot of porn is the way in which the male performers are stand-ins for the viewer, is encouraged to identify with actions, over which he has no control. The lessons passively learned in this process trouble me. The idea that some teenage boys learn how to go about sex from contemporary porn is horrifying. I’m sure it’s the origin of a lot of disappointing hammering, bad blow-job etiquette and questionable pubic hair choices. It must be stopped!
All of my worries relate to a certain kind of pornography, though, pornography propounding principles and practices I disagree with or dislike. Most mainstream film porn is racist, misogynistic, essentialist, promotes distasteful beauty standards and is badly lit. I think access to it should be allowed to adults, not because it isn’t bad for them, but because if we censored cultural artefacts on the basis of a hateful subtext, we’d have to disallow almost everything and we’d never agree on which bits to keep. I think the Daily Mail is bad for everyone. So is that television talent show with the very rude man. Fortunately, I don’t get to decide.
Pandora is correct that very little research has been done on the effects of pornography. Even quite widely accepted views, such as that exposure to violent pornography increases aggression, haven’t been rigorously researched (one of my favourites is a project where they showed male volunteers scenes including rape, measured responses and concluded that violent porn incites men to actual violence. What they didn’t note was that the film they chose was from mainstream cinema, not porn, and the excerpt included the raped women wreaking bloody revenge. Hardly comparable to most violent porn. It’s in Kipnis’s ‘Bound and Gagged’, if you’re interested). The debate about the effects of porn is largely ideological, and probably tells us more about the discomfort we feel about our own sexual fantasies, and the need we have to believe in a contrasting purity, in the form of childhood, than anything else.
I realise that I don’t participate in it much—I rarely read pornography written much later than 1800—but pornography is a normal part of life today for many, who choose to download it on the internet or are just subjected to the softcore, as we all are in our everyday lives, in a range of advertising, film, etc. There is something very perverse in distinguishing internet porn as bad, while many other forms of it are considered acceptable. Does anyone remember the Opium advert? How about these pictures, displayed in a shopping centre? http://quietgirlriot.wordpress.com/2010/11/19/death-at-the-mall/ (I was spanked, incidentally, for getting distracted by opinion on those, which led to me not setting the table in good time). Harmful cultural forces don’t reside in a few, taboo, texts. They are the result of a wider, intertextual network. Scarlett is right, we need to look deeper than porn for the problem. Hollywood movies are pretty bad, fairytales are even worse. Newspaper articles decrying something, illustrated with a large number of colour pictures, are the most angering. The least we could do is own our fantasies.
My principle objection to the porn ban is that it tries to denormalise sexual fantasy, shoving it back into the realm of taboo under the guise of protecting the children. I think that perpetuates a view of porn as inherently shameful, based in the notion that our communal fantasies aren’t wholesome. Many aren’t, but they could be, and are more likely to be if we don’t inscribe them as inherently bad. Instead, we should take some responsibility for our collective unconscious. More practical concerns include the problem of muddling in a lot of very useful content with porn, and so denying access. I was the only girl at my school given the passwords to access naughty things on the computers, after I complained that I couldn’t complete a project because the writings of Saint Thomas Aquinas were banned. I’m sure the technology has improved since then, but it would have had to come on a very long way.
I’m sorry this has got so ridiculously lengthy, I shall stop. Thank you for sharing your thoughts. I’ll be interested to see what others think.
N
I think having to opt in to view porn via the ISP is too much restriction. I also grew up with a computer with no censorship as I was the only one who knew what to do with the computer. I remember aged 17 going onto websites and reading the “If you are under 18 do not enter” disclaimer. Then I’d click “yes I’m over 18 let me in” and continue with my viewing/reading. Lots of my early knowledge of kink came from Laura’s Spanking Corner and it is still words rather than images that most turn me on. I remember feeling reassured that other people also had similar turn ons as me, I wasn’t the only one. That helped me to be more comfortable in who I was. Additionally I read lots the of “keeping yourself safe” advice, such as if you meet someone online in real life make sure it is in a busy public place etc etc.
I agree that it is odd that a 16 or 17 year old can legally have sex but cannot view images of other people doing so and cannot make images of themself doing so. We all need to be educated about sex and porn/erotica should be PART of that education. I think that it should be down to parents to educate their children about sex and to manage the restrictions in place on the internet and at what age/maturity level those restrictions should be lifted.
If there was legitamate research evidence to show that having ISPs restrict adult websites from under 18s and that this protected them from harm then it would make sense. But I don’t think it is such research that leads to these decisions. It is more lobbist and certain “newspapers” making their agendas known to politicians.
As I don’t live in the UK, I don’t have a dog in this fight, so to speak. At least, not yet. From what I’ve read here and on Pandora’s blog/tweets, the proposed policy smacks to me of a typical government response to a complicated problem. Instead of focusing on all the ways in which kids are taught to be be sexualized at an early age and in a perhaps inappropriate way, let’s just ban porn. That’s so much easier than taking on the entertainment, advertising and fashion industries, isn’t it?
On this subject, I found Anna Arrowsmith to be persuasive that the human sexual experience may be portrayed more broadly in porn than in mainstream media. Which of course doesn’t mean that the porn a child would run across most easily is necessarily more reasonable than the constant media messages with which we are all overwhelmed.
I do have a problem with forbidding sexual material to those of the age of consent, and I think I’ve said here before that I find that particularly problematic in our community. Even at the age of 40, it took me a while to learn to separate fantasy from reality, to tell the difference, say, between men who really want their women under their thumbs and those who want to play kinky games along those lines. I think I would have had a hell of a time figuring any of that out at 16 or 18, even if the internet had been around. But it would have been a lot easier with free access to the internet than with restricted access and stolen moments.
You’re missing the point. It won’t just restrict access to porn, it will also wind up restricting access to a whole host of other material. Like gay sites (all gay sexual activity, including two members lf the same sex kissing, is adult material, remember), or trans sites or sex advice sites. This thing won’t be intensively managed by a sentient human, it will ban any and all sites that meet the criteria it’s given. So young people trying to figure out if they’re gay will have fewer resources, and none that will be able to talk rankly and explicitly about the mechanisms (and safety considerations) of gay sex. Heaven forefend a 14 or 15 year old might want to be reassured that they’re not the only one who feels that way. I have trans friends who say the internet literally saved their lives, such was the relief at discovering there’s words for what they’re feeling, that others have gone through it before, that it’s okay. All of that will go. Or what about the teenage girl who wants reassurance that the sexual activity she just participated in won’t lead to pregnancy? Or any teenager of any gender who wants reassurance that the size/shape/colour/etc of their sexual organs is within the normal spectrum for these things? Teens suffer incredible anxiety about whether their bodies are normal or not, and there’s so little information about sex out there that I’ve literally participated in forums where girls anxiously ask if they went down on their boyfriend, and then they shared a glass of water and then he went down on her, might she be pregnant now.
These things should not be, can not be, answered by porn. But any action to block porn will almost certainly wind up blocking these sorts of sites as well. And no one seems to care! But after all, acknowledging that teenagers are sexual beings is so uncomfortable for somany adults; far, far easier to deny them any agency instead.
Thank you all for your thoughtful contributions.
What interested me is that there seem to be so *many* arguments against the proposal – some of which, when I started reading the debates, didn’t appear to stand up to close scrutiny or which seemed to be almost contradictory.
Actually, Spankable’s argument seems to be the most persuasive to me (albeit I hope you didn’t mean your opening comment to come across quite as bluntly as it sounded from here – particularly since I’d made that very point in my post!). There are, perhaps, echoes of “Clause 28” here?
The balance is fascinating – my gut feel suggests that there must be some risk to young people being exposed to porn. (And I mean young – take an eleven-year-old, for example, as per my post, rather than someone even a couple of years older). But gut feel, of course, isn’t enough – hence my point about concerns regarding the lack of robust evidence either way. Then one balances that with the risk of compromising young people’s access to important information about their sexuality, and their ‘right’ to that. It’s a tough one, and I value the debate.
Ah!!! It’s been a long time since I’ve flexed my debating muscle!
THanks for the hoppertunity! Censorship is a subject I feel very strongly about, so this promises to be an excellent debate, and you raise some very interesting points.
(snipped for brevity)
>the government is considering a scheme whereby households might
>have to specifically request their ISPs to allow them access to adult
>sites).
Ah yes – I’m quite sure the government would like easily accessible lists of perverts. Yep…
>First instinct: part of me *could* be concerned that the web permits easy,
>wide access to porn at a young age – certainly easier, wider and younger
>than would have been the case in pre-internet days.
True, access is relatively easy nowadays. But imo that is where parental authority should come in. I hear the bleeding hearts bleating that we must protect the children and that their poor parents might not understand what to do. *shrug* Children are the responsibility of their parents first and foremost – if the parents don’t understand how to use t’interweb, then there is more than enough advice available. Let them ask their ISP to block naughty access if they desire it. Why should their inadequacies impose restrictions on me?
> Would I feel happy if,
>say, an eleven year old with their first PC started browsing porn sites?
>Not especially: probably, not at all.
I concur – I think it’s entirely normal for young people to be interested and concerned with their developing bodies and emotions and sexual feelings. I believe it’s much healthier than pretending that people under 16 (legal age of consent) live in some sort of asexual limbo, and suddenly emerge from their cocoon at age 16 as sexual creatures.
I would go further and say that we do our children a vast disservice by not adequately preparing them for this part of their lives.
> Concerns… Might it confuse, corrupt?
Well – this isn’t one that I would care to pronounce on definitively but… I seem to remember reading about a study of violent criminals several years ago where the results showed that it was not the perusal of porn which was the problem but the harsh recriminations and punishments of the parent when the child was caught with the porn that helped develop the twisted psyches.
From a personal POV – I remember reading a newspaper article when I was around 12, about someone who had died following an auto-asphyxiation session gone wrong. I clearly remember thinking – what sort of weirdo does that kind of thing. It didn’t inspire me to try it out, I didn’t feel dirty because of it, or corrupted. At the time, I just shrugged and mentally filed it away under ‘crazy adult behaviour’
I believe that what corrupts children is being taken advantage of by the people who are supposed to be protecting them.
>Might it promote excessive youthful promiscuity, make some younger folks
>feel pressured into sexual exploration sooner than they otherwise might?
My instinct and personal knowledge leads me to believe this is unlikely. I think peer pressure is more likely to push kids into doing things too soon.
>Could it encourage behaviour such as inappropriate sexting?
Again… I think it’s pressure from others that would lead to that, rather than viewing porn online. (And I also believe that its’ not just peer pressure that would egg kids on, but also the kind of parenting that simultaneously doesn’t adequately discipline yet also imposes an inflexible psuedo-morality – eg parents who think any form of nudity is wrong, but who pander to their children and let them get away with being rude spoilt brats)
>Does government have the right to intervene in some areas on the basis
>of age? We already have limits on drinking and smoking, for example,
>where youthful consumption could be damaging to health. If there is a
>case (note that ‘if’ carefully) that porn could have adverse effects,
>then why wouldn’t one protect young people in the same way?
The government already provides such protection – it is not legal to sell porn to children. Do we need further laws – I don’t think so. Again, I believe it is the responsibility of the parent to decide what to allow their children to access, based on age-appropriateness.
One of the things I find exceedingly irritating is that if I record any program on my virgin box after 9pm I have to then enter a pin in order to view. There is no setting to say this is an adult-only household. I can’t opt out. Why on earth can’t they make their boxes as opt-ins, so parents can have the damn choice!
>Is “everything goes” an acceptable approach to the web?
I believe it has to be.
Because if it is not – then what concerns me is : who gets to decide what sites are acceptable and which are not. This week porn may be the hot issue. But once censorship begins, where will it end?
Would heterosexual porn be ok, but not gay porn? What degree of porn? hot kissing? groping? full frontal nudity? cum shots? What about fetish – for example – those with a crush fetish – look on youtube – you wil find loads of videos of ladies in various footwear crushing things like model trains. Or wearing waterproofs, or mudfighting….
What if it’s not porn per se, but sites dealing with sexual issues. sites which tackle subjects like : how my body works, am I gay?. How do I tell my mum I’m pregnant? How do I get the pill without my mum knowing?
or maybe we should look at what fables religious sites are allowed to peddle?
Who gets to decide what’s allowable?
> Internet content
>is already restricted in some ways: I guess most would agree that porn
>involving young children, for example, should be outlawed.
And that’s another can of worms for you…. I absolutely agree that images of real children suffering real abuse is evidence of a crime and should be treated as such.
But… what about drawings, or computer generated images? In our current climate I am led to understand that no legal discrimination is made between those images. (And there’s another debate for you – would allowing fake images of children prevent or exacerbate child abuse??)
Or – what about stories that have no pictures at all, that are just the written word? What if the stories aren’t overtly sexual – but involve say – girls in uniforms, being punished?
>worth remembering that the current political debate is not actually
>about a “porn ban” – the emotive phrase used in the title of Pandora’s
>post: it’s about restricting access to some information for some
>users, a far less swingeing measure.
who decides….
would it be the provider who hosts the site?
or the isp the user subscribes to.
Would the ISP be legally obliged to keep a register of perverts? Or track what sites users visit?
How to control what users see if they visit sites hosted outside the jurisdiction of our shores? (Of course we always have the burma or chinese option..)
>Is this the next step along the “thin end of the wedge”? I’m not sure it is.
I am convinced that it is
> Yes, I’m wary of censorship, deeply distrustful of government – and the
>police, when entrusted with powers that are too broad, too open to misuse.
>But does restricting access to porn for a certain group
Ah – but the debate is not about restricting access for a certain group – the argument is about restricting access for *everyone* unless you identifiably opt-in to view all that sicko disgusting pervy sexy porno stuff.
>that would readily morph into censorship of other types of site – say, on
>grounds of ideology? I’m not sure that, in a democracy (with all its flaws),
> it necessarily or particularly does.
But are we, really, a democracy? Because from where I’m standing, it looks to me that over the past say 50 years, we have become more akin to a fascist police state than a true democracy…. the news we are fed by the Beeb and Murdoch is almost always biassed (did you hear anything down south about the Tommy Sheridan perjury trial?) Did you hear the almost universal condemnation of the recent ‘student violence’ and barely a word said about not only police violence, but the police tactics that provoked and indtigated the violence?
Let the ISPs have safeguards by all means – but let it be in the form of putting restictions in place for those parents who want it for their children and not the other way round.
> And, in any case, is freedom of
>expression a sacrosanct right?
I believe it is (or should be!)
> It’s general accepted that it’s not for hate
>speech – if the views being expressed would hurt or victimise – say, on the
>grounds of race or sexuality. So I don’t see there being a clear line here
>either.
Even this is open for debate imo…. To my mind there is a difference in saying “I hate ” and saying “We should go out and kill ” : one is expressing an opinion and the other is incitement to crime. I’ve conducted debates on censorship with a writing class, and in my experience, ordinary people prefer to know what extremists are actually saying, because that gives them the platform to counter the hate speech with reasonable argument.
By denying a platform to so-called hate speech, aren’t we driving it underground where it will fester unchecked?
>What of the practicalities – if people live in a shared household,
>for example? Pandora observes that “You’d better have a good relationship
>with the housemate whose name is on the broadband account”. Indeed. Their
>name is on the account. If they pay, they choose. (And at what point do
>practical inconveniences give way to more important principles, anyway?)
It is impossible to legislate for all eventualities – if it’s a shared household – then let the adults among them argue it out and settle it between themselves! If that means each member having their own ISP – well why not?
>Does everyone have an absolute right to access everything on the web,
>irrespective of their age? If so, isn’t existing parental control software
>(advocated by Pandora in her post) itself an unacceptable infringement on
>the rights of young people in the households where it’s used? Should we be
>seeking to ban those products?
This is a whole different argument imo. I’m not advocating that young people should have free run of whatever they want to. It would not be a good thing for them.
It should be the responsibility of the parents to monitor what their children do in all aspects of their lives not just online – as an aside – I was watching a supernanny program the other day – where the parents seemed to be oblivious to the fact that their young child (I think he was around 7) was playing a over-18 game. I believe that violence is much more damaging to kids than viewing a bit of porn!
The government is not allowed to dictate what parents teach their children as far as religion, ethics and morality. Parents can teach their children the earth is flat without recrimination, We can teach them that god is a loveable father-figure, or a fat smiling man, or an elephant with 8 arms or whatever we like, and that’s acceptable.
So I believe that it is parents who should be the arbiters of what their children watch on tv, what books they read and what websites they visit.
>And hasn’t, in any case, the line of unfettered access from all devices
>already been crossed long ago? I have no idea how it works, but I do recall
>my mobile provider wanting proof that I was over 18 before allowing me
>access to adult sites.
Quite probably they did, but they likely did so out of a desire to cover their backs rather than due to a government imposition.
>But… then an entirely contrary instinct kicks in. Naturally wary of
>government; instinctively opposed to censorship (for who decides what is
>and isn’t to be censored?). A believer in people taking responsibility
>for their own actions and choices. Concerned lest – in those shared
>households I mentioned earlier – new rules such as this would put those
>adults wishing to view ‘adult sites’ in an unfair position: why should
>they have to explain to others that they’re interested in looking at
>certain types of content, to ensure that their housemates don’t block
>access?
I think this is a red herring. Assuming your hypothetical shared household is composed only of adults, then there is always the choice – if you don’t like what your flatmates are doing – leave and go live elsewhere. If your flatmate smokes, or farts, or has loud parties, or does illegal drugs or any of the other unsavoury acts that flatmates sometimes display – if you are an adult, you can vote with your feet and decide to leave. If you *choose* not to – well that’s your choice.
>And I’ve long held the view that the web has been an immense force for
>good in many lives (my own included), by helping people to understand and
>embrace their sexual orientation and preferences.
Quite.
>Yet even our blog has the usual disclaimer – “This blog is for adults only.”
>I even sometimes wonder whether that’s an appropriate statement, when we
>know folks who’ve found comfort and, ahem, inspiration from what we write
> before they had reached ‘official’ adulthood.
Well – it’s not like you’re checking people’s IDs before they can read your site. You know I’m well over legal age, but I refuse to enter sites which demand legal proof of my age.
> And it’s clearly nonsensical
>to ban younger people from seeing porn before their eighteenth birthday
>whilst they’re of legal age to actually have sex!
Now..who *was* it said “The law is an ass”
>So, compared to Pandora, I see it as a less black and white issue – but
>share her view that it needs more widespread discussion. Much as I admire
>her and her eloquent opinions, I’m perhaps less vehement in my opposition
>to any exploration of the issue by the government and ISPs. But I don’t
>think I’ve yet read a persuasive, evidence-based case either for or
>against. I recognise the importance of the debate – but I’m confused. And
>that’s why I’d really value our readers’ contributions.
Well – you wanted an opinon
here’s mine. I am violently opposed to this sort of legislation. I believe it is the thin end of the wedge and like other laws (prevention of terrorism, anyone?) will be corrupted by the government, councils and arbiters of law enforcement to obtain their own ends. At *best* it imposes restrictions on adults in the name of pretecting the children and provides a placebo effect for parents to shrug off their responsibilities onto the govt.
Porn legislation? JUST SAY NO!
I especially agree with domino’s last paragraph
Also, ISP’s are already actively working to block child pornography – and they haven’t been successful. It’s still out there. If you want to find it, you can.
I thus find it hard to believe they are going to successfully block every porn site. Legitimate sites will follow the rules, but “questionable” (for lack of a better word) sites won’t. They’ll still be out there. And young people will still search for them.
But I suspect more young people will be watching television, reading magazines, playing music, shopping for clothes, playing video games… if the government doesn’t want children exposed to anything sexual, perhaps they should stop worrying about shadowy bad guys on the Internet and notice what’s all around children these days?
Just my opinion
I’m writing quickly, need to go get ready for family to come over, so I hope this makes sense, lol
Abel, for those who may not be checking both blogs, I’m posting my reply to Pandora’s comments here too:
***
So we can have an informed debate, those proposing the UK ban need to be brave and clearly define what they understand is pornographic. I think we’ll be waiting for a long time, because the proposers are generally perturbed by the sex they’re not getting, and their cynical exploitation of the lazy and popular confusion of pornography and erotica gives them all the tabloid inches they need to divert attention from far more serious issues. “Intended to deprave and corrupt…” Who? Servants? “…Which a reasonable person would find was intended to be sexually arousing…” Reasonable person? That’s a term-of-art which is as varied and flexible as road-full of rubber tires. Sexually arousing? By whom? Men? Women? Gay? Straight? Roman Catholic? Jew? What’s the test? Penile centimeters? Good law must sit on the principle of measurement e.g. too fast, defrauded. too many, substandard, not someone’s erectile impressions.
No, the intention of the debate and any legislation is simply to give politicians the right to say “We’re doing something to protect our children” when in fact, with the curtailment of free children’s books in England they are doing the opposite. It’s the deceitful hypocrisy that oils the revolving doors between them and the fourth estate.
I know several who have contributed to this thread. By and large, you represent a far higher level of education than the Great British public that the politicians need to deceive, would ever wish to aspire to. BDSM is by and large an educated person’s pursuit. You are thinkers. Their currency of coercion is the fiery outrage of the fearful, which is happily enflamed by the manipulative right-wing press. It baffles us in the US, why Ohio, home to so many of the dirt poor rust-belt unemployed regularly returns precisely the party which allowed their jobs to be uncontrollably outsourced in the first place. It shouldn’t baffle; fear is a primæval instinct; applied thought is bounty of education, reasoning, extended attention spans and civilization.
Last year I collaborated on bringing a ‘social conscious’ piece to stage to show some of the awful things going on in the world – particularly with children. The show was widely reported. The theatre was full with around 2,000 audience members of which around 10 to 15% were minors, many below 10 years of age. Never once did my producer say I should adapt, edit, censor or cushion the piece; on the contrary it was decided to set the tenor of the whole show by leading with this piece. On TV/radio our kids see/hear even worse reports from the Indonesian tsunami, knee-cappings in Ulster, lynchings in Texas, the road-side bombs, mutilation of women in sub-Saharan Africa or earthquakes in Haiti. Being exposed to this information is part of the learning process we all need to develop in order to manage informed choices as we grow up.
I don’t like the word pornography. I’d prefer the reference always to be to ‘erotic expression’ that can be artistic or not. Erotic expression is a function of the tastes we develop as we grow older. Like Pandora, I had my first really powerful erotic experiences when I was in my very early teens. My mother made wise judgments, and she and her friends lived very open lives – free of fear and censure regarding sexual matters. I was/am young enough to remember that children always learn on their own level.
Here in the National Gallery of Victoria in Melbourne, as in the Tate collections in England or the Pinakothek in Munich, you’ll find the works of Carravagio, Titian, the Gentileschis, Hans Belmer, Robert Mapplethorpe, Helmut Newton etc.etc. on the walls and in the bookshops alongside the coloring books intended for kids. What does a kid think of an image of Mapplethorpe’s stapled prick or a whipstock up his rectum? I can remember, “Ouch that, that looks uncomfortable.”[but far less disturbing than a heap of bodies or a man being waterboarded in Abu Grahib], and move on to something more interesting like a kaleidoscope, electronic art or an art-deco poster of a racing car.
So my definition of erotic expression which should be openly available are those works which any member of the school parties who browse around our state and municipally supported galleries or Bandes desinées departments of bookstores can see. To be taken seriously, the politicians need come to terms with the dichotomies between that and their desires to protect; or do they really prefer to outsource control to a Chinese designed internet firewall that their less benign successors can use in the future to tyrannise us?
R
I think everyone agrees that it is inappropriate for children to view pornorgraphy. Children do not have the emotional maturity and the life experience that adults have. Therefore, they do not have the ability to understand pornographic material and to put it in context like an adult can. Therefore, they might be disturbed by what they see.
There is no fundamental disagreement about that. The real questions are: 1) What is the best way to prevent children from viewing pornographic material? 2) Who is responsible for monitoring what a child is viewing, the parents or the government?
In response to 1), I think it is fair to say that the proposal to make people ask their ISPs to “opt in” to view porn is an extremely stupid and heavy-handed solution. Numerous technical and organisational problems with the proposal have already been pointed out, the ISPs themselves consider it unworkable, and the dangers of abuse, which could result in censorship of entirely non-pornographic websites as well, are just too big for comfort.
In response to 2), it is my belief that the responsibility for what kinds of media a child has access to lies first and foremost with the parents. It is also my belief that I as an adult should not have to be subjected to ever-increasing silly nanny state laws and ever-increasing media censorship just because some parents are too lazy or too incompetent to fulfil their parental duties.
It is sometimes objected that parents “don’t have enough time” to monitor what their children are doing, but frankly, I regard this as a cop-out. No, of course you don’t have time to watch your child 24/7. But no one forces you to buy your child his own PC with internet connection. No one forces you to let your child surf the internet for eight hours per day unsupervised. If you do, then any unpleasant experiences which your child has as a result are your fault, not mine.
In the context of the debate, I think a recent study called “EU Kids Online” is of interest, which was done by the University of Hamburg et al. Among its findings:
1) Of a number of German children aged 9 to 16 that were surveyed, only 5% reported that they had ever accidentally seen pornographic material while surfing the web. The claim that huge numbers of children are being exposed to porn throught he web is a myth.
2) To really view porn on the web, you have to look for it. Cases of unwanted exposure do not usually happen through websites, but through messenger programs, chat programs and spam emails. Which shows that the website-centered UK plan is flawed from the outset.
3) So called “cyber nanny” software which you can install on your PC is already very effective in blocking access to porn. By today, such software is even integrated into some operating systems, as with “parental control” and “content advisor” options in Windows 7. However, most parents do not make use of it.
I think point 3) is of particular interest. If more parents would make use of the ways to prevent their children from viewing porn that are already available, we the rest of the population would not have to deal with plans to have our freedoms restricted by the nanny state.
I don’t live in the UK, either, but this seems to be a perennial debate. I remember during the Nixon Administration in the U.S. (that would be in the early 1970s) there was a huge push to ban “pornography” and they impaneled a commission to study it. They picked a particularly right-wing guy (Edwin Meese) to head it, I suppose thinking that it would come up with all these horror stories about children and porn.
To their regret, one of the main findings (reported in Playboy, as I remember) was that children weren’t interested in porn. They didn’t have the raging hormones required to make it attractive. Given the opportunity to access it they simply walked away!
It’s hard to imagine that children would actually be harmed by any kind of portrayal of sex unless someone told them they should be afraid of it or think ill of it.
Of course, I don’t think we should inundate them with it or make it so easy to see that it starts to feel like we are pushing it on them. But, to be overly concerned about children accidentally coming across it on the web strikes me as an overreaction. And every attempt to restrict this is just another nail in the coffin of freedom for adults.
Were I in Britain, I would oppose this. You should, too, if you live there. Otherwise, they’ll soon be whipping Quakers out of the country, expecting them to swim the Channel after the sheriff of Dover takes his cuts.