html>
It is important to establish fairly precisely what we actually mean when we use the word Pornography in view of the fact that different individuals have different opinions and perspectives: the word derives from Greek (the writings of Prostitutes would be a fair translation). Many Liberals often contend for example that the habitual screening of real and feigned violence on TV is far more obscene than pictures images or film of an unreserved sexual nature and it is an argument which many feel obviously carries a great deal of weight.
Classical arguments for and against the censorship of Pornographic material tend to run roughly along the lines of, on the one hand advocates who say that uncensored material can be damaging to the minds of not merely minors but to adults as well: simple sex acts for example are forbidden on TV in many western countries and not just those which are obviously open to criticism on the basis that they are at least partially violent. Opponents of strict censorship tend to say that it is a dangerous precedent, in terms of civil liberties and so on to allow the state to legislate for morality, questions of right and wrong, that what the individual looks at is best left to the individual's conscience and that it is ridiculous to forbid the viewing of the most basic act of procreation on any pretext.
It is of course true that the difference between sex and violence is one of the oldest subjects in human civilisation, at least in terms of the amount of time that has been devoted to the subject since giant phalluses were daubed on cave walls and the earliest classical writers first recorded smutty jokes, and must rank alongside such questions as: what is the meaning of life ? Is there a God ? Did Shakespeare really write all those plays and so on? I personally find this latter difficult to believe and am rather in love with the idea that the author was in fact Christopher Marlowe, but anyway.
In asserting that it can be difficult to evaluate and describe what is a sex act and what is an act of violence there are many adjectives that spring readily to mind to complicate the issue: submission; gratification; consensual; dehumanising; professional; loving ; authoritarian; jealous; fulfilling; liberating and betrayal, are all examples of words which can be used to describe a variety of situations in which lovemaking or issues related to it can be something less desirable or edifying than a mere gratification of the individual's desire for pleasure, or simple physical exchange of mutual affection, or profoundly full blown sweetly sick love in it's most perfect sense. For example the dividing line between what constitutes a brutal rape that is largely an act of violence in perhaps most people's perception is possibly viewed as little more than an arguably reprehensibly hasty courtship or a rite of passage in some societies (if that) and the reality is, that such definitions are, part of the process of 'negotiation of meanings' identified by some Sociologists as an ongoing feature of any given social system. As therefore, so much of human behaviour cannot easily be defined simply as either acts of violence or of love in any 'true' sense it is a very worthwhile observation that such issues are unusually psychologically complex even by the most literate and civilised standards.
In exploring the contention that lack of supervision of sexually explicit and hard core literature, film and images will be likely to have an adverse effect on the minds of persons exposed to it, especially with regard to their tendency to commit sexual offences, it is striking that we are highly effectively trammelled and immediately crippled in our efforts to draw any worthwhile conclusions by the near total lack of evidence to support or deny the assertion that such might be the case. It might prove possible to adduce a number of interesting statistics on sexcrime in England and Wales, which would evidently require a more recent bursary than my last in 1992, but which could quite conceivably provide significant support or detraction for the contention. For instance we might be able to piece together from such access as might be found available that many, or most of those convicted were in fact those who had access to pornography early in life; it seems equally plausible however, that we might discover that the majority of those convicted within a given time period were those who had been highly protected from sexually explicit material and it was rather the case that those who had repressive rather than shall we say, 'liberal' personalities for parents, who tended to commit sex crimes.
As the child of a disgraceful dropout academic who has always evidenced severe behavioural dysfunction (obviously as the result of some unseemly experimentation in the 1960's and about which he finds it necessary along with all of his relatives to issue pointless dissembling denials) I have a lot of sympathy with conservative views on the subject. It is a very disturbing thing to have a parent who not only lives like a tramp, but also puts on fantastic airs about being a gentleman and an intellectual and living in a near complete fantasy world which is actually one of unhygienic squalor: especially when you discover that he collects sickening pornography of babies being s******ed and other such abominations. So, I would personally have been appreciative if so called 'ultraliberal' views had never gained any currency in my own family.
I have to say that of what I have seen of the burgeoning US porn industry (which really isn't that much), that I would have to be strongly tempted to agree with the contention that at least at first sight the lack of censorship of some sort might be involved with the evolution of an unwholesome sex industry. Most of what I have personally seen is the result of the fact that it is freely obtainable over the internet and costs nothing. There must be many like myself who have found themselves in the position of having invested scarce resources in Computer hardware and have found that they cannot afford the latest games and software and that scrolling through endless pages of abominable filth is a readily available diversion with the single excellent quality of being free. On the other hand however I am equally moved to say that if it is the case that exposure to sexually explicit material is potentially harmful to the extent that we ought to have some form or forms of censorship and legislation to promote how you say 'family values,' why do we not have all the relevant statistics easily to hand in a readily understandable format annually published so we can all see the facts. A more realistic motive for such constraints or at least the general ideological stance posed by them might seem to be that of social control on the Orwellian or Huxleyan model: which is to say that the powers that be have got the people where they want them, trapped in wage slavery (or worse), landlessness or indigence of one sort or another and that the News people who work for these powerful interests do not want the circulation of information of any sort that will be likely to undermine their position in relation to the masses of 'nathelings' the politically unempowered who continue to make up the bulk of the World's population today.
In general I think it true that exposure to hard core pornography will encourage many to experiment with decadent and unseemly forms of behaviour that they otherwise would not; however having said that I think most of those will be people who were already cursed with behavioural shortcomings of personality defects. On the other hand I think it equally true that such exposure also has the capacity to lighten many humdrum existences and improve the quality of life for many if obviously not in the most desirable and edifying manner, and that in any case the adult individual should have the right to choose what they wish to view except insofar as it lies within the purview of government to legislate against eg, advocacy and dissemination of extreme sadism which is pretty much the same thing as preaching racial hatred or violent terrorism and is not specifically a sexual matter as such.