My erstwhile editor on the late, great PostRight, Freddy Gray, demonstrates that the cause of those who understand that nothing is less conservative than capitalism lives on:
Porn, porn, porn. One way or another, we all like
talking about it. But today’s debate about children and ‘sexually explicit
material’ on the internet might be more demeaning than the smut itself. For a
start, it’s government manufactured: the coalition knows that nobody ever lost
votes by saying they cared about kids.
The media love tackling porn, too, because the
subject enables them to be prurient and morally serious at the same time.
Stories about online porn and the young are, inevitably, accompanied by lots of
images of naked women in provocative poses. Newsnight
last night used this strange blue filter to soften their broadcasting of
quite a lot dirty pics to the nation – after the watershed, of course. (And oh
look above — we’ve done it too. LOL!)
The current row seems to be over whether internet
service providers should block hardcore pornographic sites, or whether we
should continue to expect parents to control what level of filth they want
their children to see.
There’s said to be a strong free speech argument
against stopping porn sites at source, but I can’t see how that competes with
the argument that we don’t want ten-year-olds learning about sex from videos
called ‘ASIAN BABE GETS GANGBANGED’ and the like.
The point is, if somebody went around delivering
free hardcore porn to schools — which is effectively what internet providers
are doing through mobile phones — he or she would be locked up. And rightly so.
Nobody wants to grapple with a more fundamental
problem, though, which is that porn — for all its merits — is wrong for adults,
too. It is meant to be fun, I know, but it is actually degrading — to the men
and women who make it and to the men and women who ‘consume’ it.
We spend so much time worrying about the
sexualisation of children, but we find it harder to admit that we are excessively
sexualised too — which is why the press can’t talk about pornography without
getting a bit pervy.
What damages children harms us, too. But few
people want to say that for fear of being a 21st-century Mary Whitehouse. Much
better these days to be a pervert than a prude.
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