Once again, pornography and the Internet are in the news again in the UK following the report commissioned by the Office of the Children's Commissioner (OCC) and undertaken by, primarily, researchers at the University of Middlesex. No doubt this will occasion the usual pointless and acrimonious dialogue between the 'guardians of the public morality' and those in defence of the Internet's right to freedom of expression.
(Of course I am ignoring the long-standing question of the morality of pornography per se, in whatever form or medium of distribution; that is as much as an intractable problem as is its effect on the Internet. I will say only one thing in that respect; it is no more exploitative of its workforce and its customers than any other capitalist enterprise and no less prone to breaking the law!)
In five years, I have purposefully steered clear of the thorny issue of the ubiquity and ready availability of web-based porn primarily because it is so intractable. On the one hand, we have the defenders of an adult's right to choose what they read or watch in the comfort of their own home and the very real necessity of trying to protect young children from exposure to writing or images which could be immensely damaging to immature, malleable and impressionable minds.
While there is little hope of a compromise being brokered between the two sides, who, let us be blunt, both have a certain degree of 'right', if not God, on their side, the Government's tentative plans to try to cover the ubiquity and availability of pornography in all of its varying degrees of 'hardness', ranging from 'pin-ups' in the Sun at 9B to the frankly stomach-churning at 9H*, is to be commended. I fear, however, that they are barking up entirely the wrong tree when they seek to encompass it all under the banner of 'Sex Education'.
Before the late 1990s, Britain was renowned for having one of the most repressive of cultures in relation to the 'sex industry' in Europe; probably only Roman Catholic Ireland was more repressive. Strangely, the Obscene Publications Act of 1959 and 1964 had largely failed because juries would seldom agree with the prosecution on what might be considered 'obscene'; pandering to the prurient interest was no longer enough for juries to convict, raised as they had been in the new-found permissiveness of the 'teenage revolution' that was the nineteen-sixties. However, no UK publisher or film-maker was willing to risk all on a 'continental European' approach and, somewhat grudgingly, allowed themselves to be governed by a self administered 'Code of Practice' which eschewed, what at the time were seen as, somewhat naïvely as it happens, the worst excesses of the Scandinavian, German and Dutch models. This led to all manner of ridiculous photo shoots and films, where the participants were trying very hard to appear to be in the throes of lust and yet evidenced none of the physical signs; a recipe for a train wreck, if ever there was one, Internet or no Internet.
Once the Internet became of age (and real-time streaming became actual), pornographic film making, for release, whether in the mainstream or into back- street seedy cinemas or home video, took a nose-dive and magazines all but died a death. However, this new-found, and it must be said cheap, ability to both make and distribute pornography, led to an explosion of content the like of which Harrison Marks** could have only dreamed about; freed from the requirements of capital for the making, processing, conversion and the manufacture of physical media and packaging, anyone with access to a semi-pro camera, a PC or a Mac and access to the Internet could go into business. Of course, 'the elephant in the room' was the truism that, in an ocean of, often mediocre, content, how did the individual pornographer make their product stand out; by making it different!
While the likes of the big four and the big two, Tracy Lords, Taija Rae, Ginger Lynn, Amber Lynn and Peter North and Tom Byron respectively could still expect to sell well during the eighties and the early nineties, the market was moving in an entirely different direction. With the freedom and, to a large degree, anonymity on the part of the consumers, pornography not only moved into the 'fetish zone' in a way and a volume unheard of twenty years before but also took a turn for the worse in its treatment of its 'actresses' and to a lesser extent its 'actors' not only in real life but also in the movies and stills, with their attendant incipient 'violence' and degradation, especially of women. How much of that was down to the popularity in the US of John Stagliano and Rocco Siffredi, producers and actors in some of the most violent, short of outright sado-masochism, movies, is difficult to tell but one thing is clear; such 'violence' is now the norm in the US and Germany.***
It is this, I think, which, primarily, concerns the OCC. While, I, along with most of my fellow males, do not find what passes for pornography now, in the least bit arousing, it is largely because we are (a) mature enough to treat the opposite sex as equals and (b) to find doing violence to a woman who does not specifically request it distasteful, nay abhorrent. The only people that those with a leaning to sadism should jump into bed with are avowed masochists; at least there is a certain mutuality there. However, if your only experience of sex is the occasional fumble behind the bike sheds or, worse, none at all, then what are you to make of images which are so prevalent as to foster a belief that this might well be the 'norm'. Girls, so they say, are less inclined to the visual and more inclined to the bizarre writings such as '50 shades of grey' and the 'twilight saga' but their 'partners' will most likely be males who will often have had exposure to varying degrees of pornography and they need to be prepared, inculcated, as much as the boys, in what society deems broadly acceptable, a lot more than it used to, and what is unacceptable behaviour towards another human being, irrespective of gender.
Quite obviously the answer, to some degree, is to impart the wisdom and maturity of the older generations to the young. However this is much easier said than done. Males and females, with the arrival of puberty, the onset of which appears to reducing with every passing decade, have a very distinct tendency to do the exact opposite of what they are told or advised by their elders. I doubt that this is likely to change in the foreseeable future; adolescence has always been a time for rebellion. We can teach them all about 'loving' relationships, we can teach them about the dangers of unprotected sex, we can even try to delay the onset of experimentation but will they listen? In truth, without some other education, which does not relate to sex and relationships, I see little prospect of any change in the near future.
In the main, we teach our children far too late about moral philosophy, responsibility, the myriad different ways of looking at the world and which ones our society might consider moral and which immoral, if we do so at all. We do not equip them with the necessary tools early enough so that they can make rational, justifiable arguments for their actions and behaviour. Some acquire such tools, from their parents, by osmosis, from older siblings, but many do not. Pornography and the Internet is not the only problem faced by our children but if we address this issue by not restricting ourselves to tackling that problem per se, in isolation, but trying to see that as one issue of many, which perhaps begs for a more holistic approach, perhaps we would gain benefits in a host of other areas as well as the one that concerns us.
PC based controls such as 'NetNanny' do a good job with younger children
in weeding out the most troublesome sites if you set the controls up correctly
and, to be frank, parents should take a healthy dose of responsibility in
trying to ensure that their children are in some way protected on any
machine that is based at home, whether desktop, laptop or tablet; after all, the education system stands 'in loco parentis' not as actual parents.
You will have noticed that I have not suggested 'central' controls to tackle this problem. Why? First, I believe in freedom of expression and secondly, more importantly, it would have no effect. There are always methods by which any semi-effective control of the Internet can be circumvented by a passably tech-savvy child (or adult), if she or he wishes to do so. Perhaps what parents need to do is to take a healthy dose of salt with their son's declaration that he only "found 'www.grapplinghootersinthesnow.com' purely by accident! And no, there's no real reason for the cushion of my lap, Ma, but it does keep my thighs warm."
* The gauge of the 'hardness' of graphite pencils in the UK which range from 9BB (the softest, having a greater proportion of clay to graphite) to 9H, the hardest pencil imaginable.
** Harrison Marks was a notable film-maker of 8mm 'home movies' of the 'glamour' variety who only latterly in the 1970s moved into producing 'hard-core' pornography for the German and Danish markets, when the market in the UK for films featuring 'strippers' ran out of steam.
*** O where did all those cuddly German comedies go, 'Bienenstich in Liebesnest' (Bee Sting in the Love Nest) or 'Kasimir der Kuckuckskleber'**** (Kasimir of the cuckoo stickers); a time of relative innocence, Benny Hill with penetrative sex.
****Well nigh impossible to translate without seeing the film. Kasimir is a debt collector with all female debtors. With their agreement, he auctions them to businessmen for sex and thus they clear their debts with Kasimir. Before the auctions, Kasimir 'road tests' each debtor and if she 'passes' he applies a little cuckoo sticker to her bum. Very not-PC but in its defence it was made in 1977 and it was a comedy!
No comments:
Post a Comment