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Feminism: Sex and gender discussions

Porn website restrictions from 2018

69 replies

BayLeaves · 17/07/2017 12:29

www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-40628909

Thoughts? Personally I'm happy about it, I just hope it works. Maybe we'll look back on the easy access to online porn in the 2000s and think it was incredible how children were easily able to get this stuff, when they would never be able to purchase a porn magazine from a real life shop, or to buy alcohol or cigarettes!

OP posts:
user1498662042 · 02/08/2017 09:46

I am fine with this law as part of wider measures and a wider campaign if that's what it was. I would change the way it was announced get loud cross-party support, have a media blitz with womens/childrens/trafficking charitites supporting it. I would combine it with adverts about the dangers and effects of porn, a ban on talking about or alluding to porn pre watershed, I would bring extreme porn laws in line with this one (ie not just enforced against UK producers), I would also review those extreme porn laws because at the moment they seem rather odd. I would commission proper research on porn, its contents and its producers in order to create some targetted (evidence based) harm reduction and education. It would be part of a long term strategy.

This makes no sense. I completely agree with most of your suggestions. But what I don't understand if why you'd support the law as long as it was surrounded by a raft of other laws, but rejected it on its own. Why?

That's rather like me saying (to imagine an alternative reality): 'Banning smoking indoors is a stupid idea. We can only stop people smoking if we run anti-smoking campaigns and educate children about the dangers of smoking in addition to this law. Therefore, we shouldn't ban smoking in indoor public spaces'.

Even if the law is fairly ineffective, it will still be to some degree effective. It will make it harder for children to access porn, and will mean at least some of them will lack the know how to access it with other means. Furthermore, one initial law could catalyse further legislation of the kind you describe. Why does it all have to happen at once?

So if it means so much as a hundred eight year olds don't access porn, then why should it not be brought in?

Can you be more specific and define 'extreme porn' yourself. I don't think you, or any such person, can do such a thing anymore.

Therefore the only answer is to ban and restrict it all to the greatest degree possible. All of it.

The problem is liberals is that they want it both ways. They don't want the degrading porn and all the rape threats on Twitter, but at the same they can't relinquish their ideal of a completely open, deregulated internet.

You can't have both.

Xenophile · 02/08/2017 10:04

I am fine with this law as part of wider measures and a wider campaign if that's what it was. I would change the way it was announced get loud cross-party support, have a media blitz with womens/childrens/trafficking charitites supporting it. I would combine it with adverts about the dangers and effects of porn, a ban on talking about or alluding to porn pre watershed, I would bring extreme porn laws in line with this one (ie not just enforced against UK producers), I would also review those extreme porn laws because at the moment they seem rather odd. I would commission proper research on porn, its contents and its producers in order to create some targetted (evidence based) harm reduction and education. It would be part of a long term strategy.

Yup, it was this exact strategy that made the seatbelt wearing laws so effective. Right now porn is seen to be something men "need", in the same way as smoking was seen to be a need, until there is wider understanding of the ills caused by porn, then there will be little traction with the laws.

user1498662042 · 02/08/2017 10:36

until there is wider understanding of the ills caused by porn, then there will be little traction with the laws.

Not going to happen.

You think that with all this porn available that men, curious children (and the female audience of Pornhub etc which is increasing all the time) are just going to spontaneously develop a 'wider understanding of the ills of porn' that overrides an impossibly powerful a drive for sexual stimulation and stop using it? Feminists are (rightly) more vociferous about the ills of porn than ever, and yet porn is proliferating, so it isn't working is it? Even if this higher understanding were to develop, the porn industry is so ingenious that it would start marketing 'ethical porn' in some sort of equivalent of the 'free trade' movement. It already peddles a pseudo-emancipatory model in the form of 'feminist porn' and platforms that allow users to submit their own content in what is purported to be an 'empowering' expression of their sexuality, but is really just another click generator for some scuzzy businessman that destroys people's lives.

The suffragettes, chartists, abolitionists and civil rights activists could have held prayer vigils for 'greater understanding' of black oppression etc, but I think it was probably better that they fought for a change to laws. In fact, every progressive advance of the last century has involved a changed to laws - laws that increased the freedom of some people by restricting the freedom of others. This meant that people were restricted by law from sticking 'no colored' signs up in sundown towns or raping their wives. This might not have stopped all of them from doing it, but to argue that these legal reforms shouldn't have happened on that basis would be downright weird. If the internet existed then, just appealing to people's better nature with some Twitter campaigns would not have worked on its own. It really wouldn't.

We either change the law or we live with a porn saturated society and suck up the fall out. That's the stark choice. End of.

Xenophile · 02/08/2017 10:40

Well no, I don't think it will be spontaneous, because I'm not a complete idiot, and that's why I don't think either Miffer, I or anyone with an ounce of sense would ever suggest that. But thanks for thinking we might.

user1498662042 · 02/08/2017 10:48

Well, how long do you think this is going to take? And how is it going to be achieved? There's no evidence it's even happening gradually.

All I'm saying that if endless varieties of sexual stimulation are available to people at the click of a mouse, then they'll look at it. If you don't like that (and I don't myself) then campaign for a law that disallows it, or places all sorts of restrictions on producers and consumers. I accept it's difficult because we don't want to turn into somewhere like Iran, but at some point heavy regulation of certain sections of the web is going to have to be looked at. Lots of feminists like Gail Dines are saying this.

Or don't, and live with it.

user1498662042 · 02/08/2017 10:48

Sorry the first sentence should not have been emboldened.

Miffer · 02/08/2017 16:13

The problem is liberals is that they want it both ways. They don't want the degrading porn and all the rape threats on Twitter, but at the same they can't relinquish their ideal of a completely open, deregulated internet

Hahaha. Okay, now I understand why you keep asking me things I already answered. You will be better off going finding an actual liberal to argue with :)

user1498662042 · 03/08/2017 12:48

Ok, but I think it's odd hat there's a call on here for legal regulation of other areas of the sex industry, like the Nordic law on prostitution, but when it comes to internet regulation people are very resistant.

Xenophile · 03/08/2017 13:15

I am fine with this law as part of wider measures and a wider campaign if that's what it was.

Which part of that suggests resistance to legislation?

It's your resistance to wider measures and a wider campaign as well as laws that the problem here. Legislation without education doesn't work. Legislation with education tends to, eg seatbelts, drink driving, smoking etc etc.

I'm not sure which part of that you're finding difficult to understand, maybe you could clarify what it is about education you don't like?

user1498662042 · 03/08/2017 13:57

It's your resistance to wider measures and a wider campaign as well as laws that the problem here. Legislation without education doesn't work. Legislation with education tends to, eg seatbelts, drink driving, smoking etc etc.

I have no resistance to educational measures to change attitudes at all. Where have I suggested otherwise? But without legislation it will not be effective. We bring up our kids to believe it's wrong to mug people, but that education would of limited efficacy if they were allowed to do it by law.

Though saying that, we don't really EDUCATE people about the wrongs of mugging people; it's just a given that results from a child’s moral socialisation concerning how we should treat people decently, underscored by legal prohibitions. Unlike smoking or wearing a seatbelt, porn is a squarely moral issue, not just a public health one. We don't hold classes on why it's bad to kill people or commit arson or that one should be polite and kindly. So, while I'm in no sense resistant to education (knock yourselves out) I don't quite get it. I mean, you can explain to children that lots of porn ‘actresses’ are refugees and fugitives from abusive backgrounds and the porn industry destroys lives, but that would take all of one lesson. Once you’ve said that there’s really not a lot else to say. I can’t explain to you exactly why mugging old ladies is bad, it’s just the sort of thing that in a functional, civilized society you come to know - and it being something for which you are punished by law is a big part of that. And there’s no reason they would necessarily care. This fetish for ‘education’, particularly concerning sexual ethics, just absolves everyone from the responsibility of addressing the core problem - which is a deregulated internet capitalism that is warping our sexual culture. Though I think making things clear to children like 'if you send a sexual video of yourself that is child pornography and you could get into trouble, as well as having your reputation ruined for ever more' is very valuable. They do need to understand that.

Thinking about it, you’ve got the argument the wrong way round. Boys should be educated to believe that women are not sexual objects, right? What is one of the key origins of their view that women are sexual objects? Porn. So if you limit their access to porn from day one, you won’t have as much re-education to do. If they can’t access it then they can’t be influenced by it in the first place. Banning it decreases the need for education.

To put it very bluntly, if you don’t want boys growing up believing women are sexual objects, then prohibit media which promotes that view. By law.

How you do that when it’s all over chat sites, Tumblr, dating sites, video tubes, Twitter etc etc I don’t know. But something will have to be done. Assuming it’s just not realistic to eliminate internet porn, I’d suggest some sort of licensing system. Just as you need a license to purvey alcohol, you would need a licence to set up a porn website. To qualify for that license you would have have to prove that all the participants in your material were of legal age, consenting, checked for STD’s etc. You would then get a certificate. Anyone wishing to access this material would have to authenticate their identity. Any pornographic material that was not so licensed would by default be illegal - and that would include things like sexts.

This isn’t perfect, and I’m aware it would be a bit like a legalised brothel system, but at least porn would be regulated and demarcated to its own space on the internet, like cigarettes stored out of sight and covered in health warnings. In addition to that you could run all the anti-porn campaigns.

If this does not happen then porn will become - if it hasn’t already - a public health epidemic that will destroy lives and do incalculable damage to children.

user1498662042 · 03/08/2017 14:11

Just another thought: This distinction between education and the law is a bit of a false one. The law is part of education. The popularity of smoking amongst young people was reduced more than anything else by the ban itself. When I was at uni in the 90's, most of us smokeed, including me; now hardly any of the students round here do. The warnings etc might have had something to do with that, but more than else it's people thinking 'if smoking isn't allowed indoors, it must be a really bad thing to do'. The law reinforces the perception that smoking is harmful and anti-social. When you're a child the prohibitions of your parents educate you on the rights and wrongs of things very effectively. You know not to take your brother's toy because you know there will be consequences, and if there are those prohibitions then taking something from someone else must be a bad thing to do. That is your education. Similarly, if you know porn is difficult to access, then it must be elicit, bad. But if it is accessible everywhere then that implication is that it's normalised - that it's kind of OK, just something you need to be 'educated' about, something that you can use as long as you have some awareness. It's a bit like kids being taught that drugs are OK to use so long as the they're aware of the dangers and use them responsibility.

Education implies that porn is still, in some sense, OK.

Miffer · 03/08/2017 18:50

TL;DR

I mean why the fuck should I bother reading your wall of text when you have blatantly not bothered reading my much more succinct replies?

Xeno has been even briefer and helpfully quoted the most pertinent points of my own posts and yet you are still choosing to ignore all that and argue a point nobody has made.

SaskiaRembrandtWasFramed · 03/08/2017 19:14

'What law would you suggest in its' place?'

A law that says parents are responsible for ensuring their children are not allowed to roam the internet unguarded, in the same way that parents are responsible if their children roam the streets at midnight. We don't condone the latter and the former should be just as unacceptable. It is not a defence to shrug and claim ignorance of how the technology works, it is massively irresponsible.

stumblymonkeyagain · 03/08/2017 19:21

@Dervel

Thanks for that link...would that allow you to see what your DC were accessing irrespective of them using Google incognito for example?

scaevola · 03/08/2017 20:36

"But something will have to be done."

Well quite.

The key question is "What?" and I have yet to see a satisfactory answer that is even vaguely likely to work in the internet as it now exists.

"you would need a licence to set up a porn website"

That would only be effective if porn was only on 'porn websites' (assuming you can define, legally, what one of those is). It isn't, and you cannot change the world-wide web in ways that wouid mean porn was only on 'porn' websites, beheadings were only on ISIS channels, pro-rexy material only in anorexia sites etc, etc, etc

It's why the XXX initiative made no difference whatsoever.

I think Saskia- is more realistic.

user1498662042 · 04/08/2017 02:53

I mean why the fuck should I bother reading your wall of text when you have blatantly not bothered reading my much more succinct replies?

Rude.

user1498662042 · 04/08/2017 02:55

A law that says parents are responsible for ensuring their children are not allowed to roam the internet unguarded, in the same way that parents are responsible if their children roam the streets at midnight. We don't condone the latter and the former should be just as unacceptable. It is not a defence to shrug and claim ignorance of how the technology works, it is massively irresponsible.

Parents should be responsible, but the best parent ever cannot be completely responsible for their child's use of the internet.

user1498662042 · 04/08/2017 02:58

Xeno has been even briefer and helpfully quoted the most pertinent points of my own posts and yet you are still choosing to ignore all that and argue a point nobody has made.

Why should I argue a point someone else has made? I've got my own point to argue. I didn't ignore what Xeno said at all, I just don't entirely agree with it, and I've explained why in my 'wall of text'.

user1498662042 · 04/08/2017 03:09

That would only be effective if porn was only on 'porn websites' (assuming you can define, legally, what one of those is). It isn't, and you cannot change the world-wide web in ways that wouid mean porn was only on 'porn' websites, beheadings were only on ISIS channels, pro-rexy material only in anorexia sites etc, etc, etc

This is the whole point. Anything pornographic that is not on those certificated websites would be automatically illegal. It doesn't matter if it's on a porn website or not, it would be illegal. All those tumblr sites, and all the porn on Instagram and Youtube would be illegal material, and full responsibility would be accorded to the people who own the platforms. If it isn't removed, they get fined.

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