Excellent article which, refreshingly quotes from the law lords discussions and detailed reasoning.

Final line “Meanwhile, murderers will still murder women and rapists will still rape women. Attributing it to pornography is not addressing the issue - it is distracting from it.”

I wholly agree, a fixation on pornography maybe considered unhealthy. However, I would apply the same test of "unhealthy fixation" to both the consumers and the antagonists of pornography.

regarding

“If you need ‘violent pornography’ to get you through the night, you have serious problems and should get help … If you ‘get off’ on watching any of the things listed as ‘extreme porn’, you are a sick individual”

It is only the authoritarian social systems which think they have the right to decide who is sick and who is not.

In a democratic system, it is up to the individual to decide, for themselves, if they should get help, regardless of how “sick” others may brand them.

In a democracy, the point of initiation for “state intervention” is when someone’s actions are either illegal (child porn and non-consentual acts) or have affected another, non-consenting individual.

Les “I am exposed to this abhorant material through my work in the criminal justice system. I am sick of having to view porn material”

I suggest you get a different job.

That way you do not have to be exposed to this “abhorrent material”, you will no longer feel sick and the rest of us will not be pressured to fall into line with the delicate balance of your metabolism.

Re “the victims of the men who are porn users”

Real research suggests the use of porn reduces the number of victims, not, as you imply, contributed to them.

T'riffic article — I agree wholeheartedly.

Les, I am a woman and a feminist who defends the industry for much the same reasons as Caroline Shepard. For a start, I believe in freedom of expression. I also believe there's nothing wrong with men masturbating — or women either — and aids to sexual enjoyment I regard in general as Good Things. Porn heightens sexual pleasure.

The examples you use are largely of illegal acts — adults are not allowed to have sex with children or animals. All areas of human endeavour appears are violated by lawbreakers, and porn is not exception — but illegal acts within pornography does not invalidate the whole industry.

I believe we need to be ruthlessly honest about pornography. There are myths on both the pro side and the anti side. It's a myth that porn is predominantly violent — the vast majority of porn is made for men and depicts women in various states of sexual bliss. That's what most men want to see — women getting off on a d!ck they can imagine is their own. Of course, there are a gazillion variations on this, some ghastly and violent, and women enjoy porn too, but that's the brass tacks of it.

On the pro side, men sometimes mythologise their own ability to tell if a woman is "really enjoying it". It's a myth that most women who work in porn get sexual gratification from their jobs and earn lots of money which they use to pay their way through law school. Statistics are hard to come by, but the truth is that many if not most don't much like it, but are in the game to fund a drug habit. (And sometimes a boyfriend's drug habit too.) While they often earn more money than sex workers, the system is the same as the real acting world — the wages are not high unless you're a star. The more legal porn is, the more the women and men who work in it can get the best deal for the work they do.

cont...

cont...

Porn can, of course, be problematic. I know men who have felt they've become addicted to it at different points in their life. Some regret the proliferation of porn on the internet, because they rigmarole of acquiring and storing magazines provided a natural containment to what can become obsession.

And it's certainly true that some porn depicts violent sex. I'm not into it myself, but, as long as it is made legally, it is hard not to see why that is not a valid expression of some people's sexual tastes — however abhorrent those tastes may seem to you or me. As the author points out, porn does not make people "flip". No study has ever proven a link between porn and rape.

I appreciate that the porn you've seen, and the victims of illegal acts, have distressed you. They would distress me too. But it is the illegality that should concern us, not porn itself.

I am not huge consumer of porn — very occasionally, I look, and really just at one website which is very arty and includes a lot of antiquities. But I believe it has a right to exist, employers are obligated to provide safe working conditions, and people who enjoy porn should not be made to feel ashamed about it.

Good article. Sums up the situation quite well.

In response to posters:

runner states: "I am sure many of the posters here would take their 12 year olds to nude beaches and allow every other perverted person to stare at her."

Care to point the finger? Because I'm am sure you're using this to smear those who consistently defend freedom of speech, regardless of whether they personally find such an idea repugnant.

I sincerely doubt the posters here would do what you describe, and don't think you're doing your own image any favours by casting such nasty aspersions.

Neither does the assumption: "you can be sure her religous 'degree' must be in earth worshiping or something similar."

If you're going to keep banging on about 'earth worshipping' you best learn to put a second 'P' in there, however might I humbly suggest you look outside your own need to worship things, and call atheists and agnostics by what they really are, lest they respond in kind by calling you a sky-deity-cross-fanatic.

HRS: "However I do think that the internet should be cleaned up."

Classic. Then we can move on to getting all that damn fish urine out of the ocean.

Les - I understand your point. However, I don't think many defend violent porn per-se. They oppose a government's right to crack down on any form of expression that doesn't hurt someone directly.
The harmful things of which you speak, can just as easily be ascribed to action or horror movies. I grant you, the sexual element here is unpleasant and confronting, but I for one, wouldn't trust what we have the right to view to our governments.

Most of this has been hashed out in these threads:
http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?discussion=1644#31661

http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?discussion=1654#31974

http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?article=7114#108907

They're similar.
A bunch of wowsers pop in to say how evil porn is. Others chime in to defend freedom of speech.
They then point out that the actual statistics indicate this is a tenuous claim, and that's being generous.
Then the wowsers fail utterly to provide any kind of backing, but continue in the same vein regardless.

I think Les is blurring the lines between adult pornography and child pornography, that are two different things, and exploitation is morally wrong and subversive, I agree, but adult pornography is not the same. Many adult developers are serious about age restrictions, all models are required to be over the legal age and this is something that is taken seriously. As a publisher of adult literature (or erotica, which is sometimes considered as ‘porn’ by some people) and erotic art, I don’t see how this form of expression is subversive.

I think many Australians don’t understand the UK Law and what it really means. It is basically founded on an old obscenity law, that did see novels like Lady Chatterley’s Lover prosecuted in law courts for being obscene.
And what is porn? It appears that everyone has their own definition of porn. So the question remains, do people go back in time, and ban books like Lady Chatterley’s Lover and remove imagery from sexual instructional guides like Alex Comfort’s Joy of Sex, or do we spend more time debating the issue, being real and faithful to the era we are living in, rather than opting for the band-aid approach? Band aids don’t last long.

The UK law is interesting, considering the current talk of Australian Internet filters after the recent federal budget. The amount this Rudd government proposes to spend on such a filter is hideously absurd. To subsidize telcos and ISP's to filter porn, based on an opt-out system, is a waste of money, and many know this. Parents should actually parent, and take more control or interest in what their children may be viewing on the net. The idea of spending millions of dollars, to effectively fund telcos and other corporations to develop filtering is an insult to many Australians who are struggling to make ends meet, and using porn as the excuse is BS

I agree that this is a very good article about a 'touchy' subject :)

While we can expect more from the wowsers, Caroline Shepherd points out the argument that trumps all others in this case - i.e. that it is preposterous to outlaw the viewing of images of behaviour that is not illegal.

I cannot believe the 'new prudery'. The idiocy in relation to the banning of an exhibition of nude photographic art yesterday is another case in point. Adults are responsible for their own behaviour - the State has no business in their bedrooms - or living rooms and art galleries!