Yes, porn can be vile and degrading but an authoritarian crackdown won't work | Suzanne Moore Jul 22nd 2013, 15:22
David Cameron's proposals are a sop – censorship never helps the powerless. Let's have a real debate on abuse and consent
"What did you do in the war, Mummy?" my children ask me. I assume they are referring to the great feminist "sex wars of the 80s". What else could they mean?
Well, in the great kerfuffle that we had at the time, one in which hardly any mainstream media were interested and that certainly involved no male politicians, I was on the side of sex, of pornography and of freedom.
Having passed through radical feminism, an always necessary phase, I still revere the work of Andrea Dworkin: "Pornography incarnates male supremacy. It is in the DNA of male dominance." We had been fully against the objectification of women and the passivity of the "porn stars", and in those days you could still see pubic hair and unsiliconed breasts. It didn't do much for me so I started watching gay porn as it was the only place I could see the male body sexualised.
All this of course was pre-internet, but there was a division between what were called "sex-positive" and "sex-negative" feminists. Both these terms are pretty dumb. No one was against sex per se but certainly against the commodification and trading of the bodies of women and children. Pornography was and still is seen as the legitimised pathway to all abuse, incest and rape, an obvious symptom of a culture that hates women.
Others of us though – some straight, some queer, some into S&M, some uncertain – started seeking other answers. Could there not be other kinds of pornography? Should sexual desire be policed and could it ever be PC?
One of the reasons is that we saw what happened when theory became practice, when radical feminists started hooking up with the right. In the US in 1986 Dworkin, who had already worked with Catharine MacKinnon on legislation to close down sex shops, defining porn as a civil rights violation, gave evidence to the Meese commission. This was under Reagan's watch. Much of it we would agree with – such as the removal of porn mags from the top shelf. But the sight of radical feminists getting into bed with rightwing Republicans was abhorrent to me. These same people would ban abortion.
Quite simply my mind was mind made up then: who do you want to hand over power to? Do you trust the state to act in the best interests of women or not? This is again the issue.
Of course it is problematic for feminism. The pornification of the mainstream disturbs many women. And some men once they have kids. Hello Robin Thicke; look at an ad where a woman has an orgasm because of a shampoo; watch reality TV. No it's not Boden-world but David Cameron is all mouth and no trousers on tackling nastiness.
His proposals are unworkable and sentimental and often deliberately confuse what is already illegal ("child porn" is always a record of abuse) with other kinds of pornography. Anyone who wants to get through these filters can. We seem to be governed by the internet-illiterate. In the day of Prism and maxi-surveillance, do we actually want more databases of those who access porn?
I am aware that by saying this, I am on the side of the great mass of wankers. But I would like some facts here. The prevalent mythologies around porn remain disproven: that it is addictive, destructive of relationships, always about the idealised then violated female body. Much porn is samey and some is utterly vile, full of torture, faeces, urine, vomit and blood and the utter degradation of women who become nothing but a series of orifices. The legality of all this rests on whether the acts or the rape are "staged" or not.
It's horrible stuff. I merely dispute the idea that politely asking the big internet service providers to put in filters when they garner revenue will work. Perhaps we can ask them politely to pay some tax too. Paedophiles, say the people who work with them, already know how to avoid search engines.
Of course I would prefer teenage boys not to have hardcore images on their smartphones. But kids do sext and film each other. I would prefer Page 3 not to exist, but Cameron says this is just another consumer choice. I would prefer women in public life from Sam Cameron downwards to be heard as well as seen and their bodies not put up for continual scrutiny so perhaps Dave could have a chat about that with his mates in the rightwing press.
But these proposals (and Labour is no better) are a sop. A sop to parents who think a safe space can be created where women are not meat. They are a sop to the market because wherever there is money to be made there is no direct challenge. Worst of all they are a sop to those who think censorship is the answer to powerlessness. Dworkin herself knew where her plans would go and warned that "the left cannot have its whores and its politics too".
These days, though I am unsure what the left is, my gut recognises authoritarianism when it feels it. And Cameron's proposals are just that. You don't need to turn on a computer to see the female form as mute and pliable. Post-Savile, the actual conversation that we should have but are failing to would be about abuse and consent. That conversation would include us all: men, women and children.
Meanwhile show me a regime anywhere in the world where women are empowered by censorship and I may change my mind. Right now just enforce the existing law. The only "crackdown" this government has managed has been on the rights of women. So I don't buy this latest gimmick.
Because repressing imagery, however much I may not like it, however you truss it up, remains the business of conservatives. And I am not one. Neither Big C nor little c.
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