Is it good or is it bad for society?
I remember listening to feminist Angela Dworkin as she worked herself into a frenzy of hatred over pornography. According to Dworkin, pornography debases women, humiliates women, and encourages men to rape women. On the first two issues I believe she got a point, and as far as rape is concerned, pornography might be a contributory factor in a minority of cases.That being so, isn't that good enough reason to ban pornography? No. This, "If it saves so much as one person..." argument, whether applied to rape, road accidents, or illness, is bullshit. We could save thousands of lives a year by reducing the speed limit to 30 kph, or by spending billions of extra dollars on hospital care. But no one wants to drive so slow, and no one wants to pay extra tax for better health care.
Ask any female, "If it saved one woman from getting raped, would you be in favour of a law forbidding women to wear skimpy or provocative clothing?" And then duck!
Quiet apart from that, a lot of women enjoy pornography. Feminist Camille Paglia, for example, is on record as agreeing she enjoys pornography. Pornography can both debase and liberate at the same time. Gone are the days when women believed they were forbidden to enjoy sex, when female masturbation was a taboo subject, when women had no idea what to expect in the marital bed.
Pornography has taught women that they can enjoy sex to the utmost, talk openly about their sexual experiences and desires with other women, and demand more satisfaction from their men. I'm not saying this is so in all cases, but it's an established and growing trend.
As for rape, for every man encouraged by pornography to rape women, hundreds more simply masturbate instead and the incidence of rape is less than it would otherwise be. Male masturbation is out of the closet, so to speak. Never as taboo as female masturbation, it was nevertheless regarded as a low-life sort of activity. No longer. A man can relieve himself without any feeling of inferiority or shame. And he won't go blind!
Of course there is always the odd lunatic, like Ted Bundy, who was influenced by violent pornography and who went on to murder thirty or more women. But then for every Ted Bundy there are dozens of serial killers who are influenced by the Bible. God instructs them to murder prostitutes or "sluts." And there are countless parents who torture and murder their children because the Bible legitimises child abuse. It's a rare day when I don't read of some religious maniac murdering his or her child because the child was possessed by the "devil."
Should we ban books like 'Catcher in the Rye' because both the man who shot John Lennon and the man who shot President Reagan were influenced by it? Should we ban movies depicting smoking as a glamorous pastime because millions die of smoking related illness? Should we ban movies that encourage young people to drive recklessly?
"One of the biggest threats to human freedom � the wedge that will lead us to total political censorship � is the attempt to censor what is described as pornography." Reverend Chad Varah � Founder of Samaritans (aka Lifeline)
Should we ban the Bible because it has inspired countless atrocities? There is a definite case to be made for banning the Bible, but it would be pointless. Very few people read the Bible, and if we ban it, people will start reading it. So where's the sense in that? Banning the Bible or pornography would be like banning prostitution, or alcohol, or drugs. Doomed to fail.
On a scale of one to a hundred, when judging the harmful effect of pornography I would position it at point-one. Religion on the other hand, is a thousand times more harmful. I would position that at one-hundred. No one ever burned or drowned millions of "witches," innocent women and children, because of pornography. No one imprisoned, tortured and executed millions of "heretics" because of pornography. No one marched across Europe to slaughter millions of "infidels" because of pornograhy. No one eliminated entire villages of innocent people because of pornography. No one waged war across Britain and Europe because of pornography.
No pornographer instructed parents to beat their children with a rod and to show no mercy. No pornographer ordered parents to stone their children to death. No one authorised and encouraged governments to kidnap millions of negroes and work them to death because of a passage in a pornographic book. No one slit the throat of thousands of Parisians because of pornography. No one shot and gassed millions of Jews because they worshipped the wrong pornographic deity. No one flew planes into the World Trade Centre because of pornography.
Religion did all the above, and far, far more besides. So let's keep this in perspective.
Kiddie porn is a worry because the children have no say in the matter. It is exploitation, no question. Whether or not making it illegal is the solution, I'm not sure. Somehow I doubt if it makes much difference. Back in the late 1950s I knew a girl whose father was arrested for incest with both his daughters, and it came to light that half the fathers in the street were fucking their daughters. A few weeks later the News of the World exposed the whole suburb as The Suburb of Shame. Was it a unique suburb? I doubt that very much. And this was going on long before the ready availability of kiddie porn. Fathers got away with it for decades, probably hundreds of years, because the subject was taboo and nobody dared speak about it.
"However people carp and cavil about what has come to be known as the Permissive Age, I believe that free communication, even if pushed to excess, is infinitely preferable to the murk of ignorance." Peter Ustinov
Kiddie porn is illegal in every country, possession is a serious crime, and so it is outside the scope of this discussion, but I needed to mention it lest it be said I was brushing over the subject. And despite individual cases of child sexual abuse, there is no equivalent of the Catholic/Anglican Institute of Sexual Child Abuse, no pornographic version of the Catholic Legion of Child Sodomisers.
The Catholic Church holds the world record for child molestation, followed by the Anglicans, the Jehovah's Witnesses and Muslims. For representatives of those filthy, criminal institutions to tell decent people what they can or can't read is an outrage.
Kiddie porn aside, there is a down side to pornography. In my opinion the worst thing about pornography is that it raises our expectations too high. Men become dissatisfied with their girlfriends and wives because they don't perfom like porno sluts. And women start lusting after ten-inch fuck studs. So pornography can harm relationships, but it can also enhance relationships by encouraging experimentation leading to greater satisfaction.
But if there is one reason why pornography is good for society it is because it has dispelled the church driven myth that fornicators will burn in hell. We no longer believe that, well, most of us don't. And that, by itself, signifies the end of church dominance. The Church has thrived this past two millennia by a combination of brute force and psychological manipulation � either believe in the Lord and repent, or burn in hell for eternity.
By dispensing salvation, the Church has managed to hold the population of the Christian world in its grimy hand. Nowadays it is illegal to torture and murder anyone who expresses alternative views to the Church, so it has lost that instrument of control. And largely thanks to the ready availability of pornography we have come to view threats of damnation with disdain. We realise that the Church is talking nonsense, and so it is powerless to manipulate and control us now.
The demise of the Church is taking longer than hoped, but its days are numbered.
Viva la Porn!