I’m going to avoid anything inflammatory here, but let me put a giant trigger warning on that link - it gets really ugly towards the end. One of the less explicit areas, which adequately summarises the article:
Sue Berelowitz told the home affairs select committee that social networking sites and the use of pornography was one of the key areas she was examining in an investigation of group and gang child sexual exploitation. Her inquiry had already revealed that such exploitation was taking place across the country in urban, rural and metropolitan areas. “It is violent, it is sadistic, it is very, very ugly,” she told MPs on Tuesday.
In fairness, The Guardian is still attempting to be objective on this by just reporting what an authority figure (Berelowitz) is saying on a subject she likely knows little about. The headline, however -
Access to online porn ‘twisting children’s view of sexual norms’
doesn’t exactly allow for the same degree of nuance.
This fucking story has been reported everywhere. The tabloids are being just as alarmist as you’d expect them to be - I’m not going to link to the stories by the Daily Mail and Express, but it’s likely what you’re already thinking of.
Here’s what’s wrong with it: it’s taking something as delicate as human psychology and reducing it to simple cause and effect. Kids watch porn, so kids sexually assault other kids. That’s stupid. It’s stupid because it ignores dozens of other factors - social class, upbringing, attempts by authority figures to draw a distinction between fantasy and reality, and honest and open sex education. The fact remains that there are millions of parents who never talk to their kids about sex (mine are part of that group), thousands of schools whose approach to sex ed is fucked (most religious schools in this country, of which there are a fuckton, can teach sex and religious education however they want), and a ton of social factors that contribute to a climate where sexual violence is on the verge of being legitimised. But obviously, we can’t talk about that. Not in the media, which is part of that social background. Tabloids can’t tell stuffy, indignant parents that they’re fucking their kids up, because then they can’t sell papers. The porn industry - largely US-based, with no financial contribution or emotional stake in the future of the news media - is an easy scapegoat.
Do I think porn’s harmless? No. Probably not. I don’t think young kids should watch porn, but I think the supposed “over-18” limit is really stupid, especially considering that the age of consent in this country is 16. I believe there’s such a thing as moderation, too. Porn can be addictive, more so than other media. It doesn’t have to be, but it can be.
Fundamental to the appreciation of any art is understanding its limits - knowing that it can throw a light on and inform our understanding of the world, but that it is ultimately a particular representation with its own biases. Most porn - even the good stuff - still thinks in terms of a male gaze, where tits and asses fill the screen and cocks are often reduced to just that - disembodied penises intended as a surrogate for the (supposedly male) viewer. And it’s endemic, too - that most people can probably name a handful of female porn stars and at most one male (I’m thinking James Deen, and yes, I know the names of a bunch of others, but I have the weird sort of fascination with porn that Hunter S. Thompson had with politics) probably isn’t great.
But what about alternative porn, or some of the work that Kink.com produces, or the wealth of queer porn you can find after a bit of digging? Sure - in terms of its prevalence it’s like European art cinema against blockbuster behemoths, but it’s still porn. That stuff isn’t harmful.
Neither is the tacky male-gaze stuff completely bad, and you’d have to be very careful to suggest that it leads to an increase in sexual violence (and not say anything that Berelowitz said). I’ve learned a lot from conventional porn. I’ve learned that pain can be fun - both to give it and receive it. I’ve learned how people’s bodies work, to an extent - watch it for long enough and you start to tell who’s faking it, and who isn’t (protip: there are a lot of fake orgasms in porn). I’ve learned how to tease and be teased. It was the combination of being in a relatively stable relationship and the ability to furtively check porn sites that made up the bulk of my sexual education, and - while I’m by no means an expert - it’s helped me get in touch with myself.
Here’s the key, though - porn does sex best. Sexual violence, as the noun suggests, is violence first and foremost. To suggest that the majority of pornography is rape is disgusting, and betrays the sort of thinking that someone who formed their opinion of a multi-million dollar industry on the back of a thirty-year-old interview with Linda Lovelace might have. And I’m not naïve - we live in a culture that blurs the distinction between the two on a day-to-day basis (oh, look, I wrote about that recently) - but there is still a jump between saying “a kid is watching some actors have exaggerated sex” and “a kid believes it’s okay to rape someone”. There are dozens of factors that encourage that line of thinking a hell of a lot more. There’ll be a lot to get through, but it might be a good idea to start with newspapers that objectify women every single fucking day.