Tuesday 11 December 2007

Porn, Prudery and the Law: The Criminal Justice and Immigration Bill

Since the first caveperson picked up a flint to hack an enormously bosomed gnome out of granite, pornography has been a fact of life. In July this year, in one of his first acts as prime minister, Gordon Brown tabled the Criminal Justice and Immigration Bill, 2007. I'm going to be covering the Criminal Justice and Immigration Bill that's due to come into force in 2008 in more detail. Here, though, is a separate little dip into one of the issues that needs a whole separate debate: the new anti-porn legislation.

Now, this new bill included legislation banning the downloading and possession of violent or ‘extreme’ pornography, in response to a large scale media reaction to the sexually-motivated killing of Jane Longhurst in 2004. Ignoring the widely accepted fact that there is little to no evidence to support a direct link between violent sexual crime and ‘extreme’ pornography, the state has leapt upon the opportunity to further police and to criminalise the sexual mores of its citizens.

Handing control of pornography to the state is never going to end well. Conveniently, since the legislation was introduced to the Bill in 2004, the government’s definition of ‘extreme’ pornography has been expanded to include some kinds of homosexual porn. Giving the state license to say what is and is not criminal pornography gives it license to suddenly decide that the tastes and interests of any non-mainstream group should be penalised – to decide, for example, that whilst it’s no longer a crime to be gay, it is a crime to download certain pictures of men having intercourse with other men.

How old were you when you took your first illicit peek at an older kind’s dirty pictures – 13, 14? Quite possibly younger if you’re male, since ogling forbidden filth remains practically a rite of passage in schoolboy culture. Censoring pornography does not work. Even in the UK, arguably the most restrictive of English-speaking cultures in terms of anti-porn legislation, pornography is everywhere. It’s on the top shelves of newsagents, splashed across the front pages of Nuts, Zoo and Loaded. It’s widely available on most high-streets, in adult shops up and down the land, in the ‘explicit’ sections of every bookshop and print-store, and, most of all, it’s on the internet.

Censorship of pornography is also illogical. Since when did forbidding something fun do anything other than increase its illicit appeal, make it more enticing to the public, and cause an explosion in rates of crime associated with the new contraband? . During Prohibition in America, for example, not only did national alcohol consumption actually increase between 1920 and Repeal in 1933, but the result was a massive upsurge in violent and organised crime in connection with alcohol. Stricter legislation on pornography is likely, moreover, to drive the producers of ‘extreme’ pornography underground, depriving participants of legal safeguards and making working conditions considerably more unsafe for porn models, actors and actresses. Legislation to increase pornographic censorship would be immeasurably socially damaging.


Fundamentally, porn itself – the explicit representation of the human body or sexual activity with the goal of sexual arousal and/or sexual relief –is not harmful. What grates is that so much of the porn that is being produced and disseminated is so very, very dire.
Much of the contemporary porn available is tacky, limited, demeaning, badly executed, badly scripted and – often, but by no means always – exploitative to those that participate in its production and consumption. It is the type of pornography that is saturating our culture that is harmful, not porn itself.
Supply dictates demand, and if what is being supplied is countless images of women being demeaned, humiliated and, most of all, made voiceless sex objects, then this will be taken as the baseline for desirable sexual activity by young men and women who – despite legislation that is already in place – grow up watching this abominable, tragically limited trite. Our cultural sex-narrative has gone wrong. Our response to this should not be to criminalise sexual images, but to radically re-think the way in which we explore sexual desire.
What I’d like to see is pornography with a plot: pornography in which grown men and women are equal players, in which sex is joyful, playful, soulful, awkward even, and never abusive. I’d like to put that most dangerous and illicit of things, tenderness, back into scripts, screenplays and directives. I’d like pornography to be beautiful. I’d like it to be made by producers, models and actresses who are enjoying what they are doing and who are union-protected. I’d like my porn to be artistic, I’d like it to play with fantasy and desire whilst keeping within the boundaries of non-harmful sexual and emotional exploration. Then, I’d like this kind of pornography to be government-subsidised, and to be distributed freely online and in schools as part of a validated PHSE curriculum, so that growing children and teenagers can explore enriching, non-abusive sexual desire in an open, positive manner.

Finally, in this sexual utopia, I would restrict so-called ‘extreme’ pornography – pornography that includes, for example, violent BDSM games, rape and abuse fantasy or necrophilia – to over eighteens, who would hopefully be adult enough to explore valid kinks in a mature way that would ensure that they remain fantasy. A pornographic market overflowing with widely available, quality, joyfully explicit plot- and character-driven, sexually equal pornography would both benefit the sexual and emotional health of the next generation and reduce people’s drive to indulge abusive kinks at vulnerable, impressionable ages.
If we really want to reduce violent and sexual crime against women, only a radical re-think of our attitude to pornography, encompassing a long, hard look at our social and sexual mores, will cut it. A warped, limited and misogynist cultural sex-narrative is the problem, but censorship is definitively not the answer.

8 comments:

  1. Just a couple of links for the campaign to stop the anti-porn legislation:

    The discussion group:

    http://www.seenoevil.org.uk/phpBB2/index.php

    The campaign website:

    http://www.backlash-uk.org.uk/

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  2. A warped, limited and misogynist cultural sex-narrative is the problem, but censorship is definitively not the answer.

    Absolutely.

    Just one thing, though: you suggest that hard BDSM porn and such should be kept back for over-18s while romantic porn can be used as part of sex-ed and so on.

    I was born to be kinky, as near as I can guess: what might be termed an "orientational" BDSM Dominant/sadist. But growing up, I had no means to process the extreme fantasies that I had. Everything in the media and in my social life said that the fantasies I had were sick, evil and wrong. That had a clear negative impact on my personal development (and I even identify this as a contributory factor to my depression).

    I guess my question is - what of people like me (and indeed, submissives who also grow up with extreme fantasies) in your sexual utopia? It seems to me that by drawing a distinction between certain types of porn, you're sending the same negative messages to people like me, with the same damaging effects.

    (and yes, to some extent I'm just using this to play devil's advocate)

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  3. Hey snowdrop :)
    As another person who had dom(me) fantasies as a child, I can see where you're coming from. However, I can't balance the good it'd do people like you and me against the potential harm from young kids having full access violent stuff they're too young to appreciate in full. In my pornutopia (tm), though, educating *about* kink would be a vital part of sex-ed. 'Some people like to do odd things. And that's okay. Just as long as boundaries are strictly observed and everyone's enjoying themselves.'

    Would that do you?

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  4. What I’d like to see is pornography with a plot: pornography in which grown men and women are equal players, in which sex is joyful, playful, soulful, awkward even, and never abusive. I’d like to put that most dangerous and illicit of things, tenderness, back into scripts, screenplays and directives.

    Lovely idea, and I'd like to see that too, but I'm fairly sure it's been tried and turned out not to sell as well as exploitative ugly-O-vision :-(

    By the way, do you read Douglas Rushkoff's blog? Your posts were right next to each other on my friends page, and it forcibly struck me that you two ought to be made aware of each other :-)

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  5. Penny Red:

    Yeah. At least, it would be healthier than the current system!

    I don't think we can sort out the misogyny in sexual culture, until we can actually look at the sexual culture itself without having to get either prudish or Carry On tittering about it.

    I seem to remember hearing something, I think it was an episode of "Mondo Macabro" that Channel 4 showed a few years ago, where they talked about a whole film genre in Japanese film, called pornographic romance, or "pornoromo".

    (I just wondered if you think the movie of "The Story of 'O'" counts as porn with a plot?)

    I think there is more semblance of plot in a lot of written-word erotic fiction, I wonder what would happen if people started making screenplays of the Chimera Publications, Nexus and Black lace type books? (Apart, of course, from the BBFC promptly banning all of them!)

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  6. Penny, I agree with you about censorship not being the answer.

    I prefer as little government as possible. I would not want subsidized porn except in a sex ed class in school.

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  7. "pornography with a plot: pornography in which grown men and women are equal players, in which sex is joyful, playful, soulful, awkward even, and never abusive."

    Well, write some then.

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  8. what I would like to see is pornography with a real guaranty of the participators genuine enthusiastic consent. I might still not be able to stomach it myself, but at least I could stop worrying about the emphatic capacities of the people who do watch it.

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