Over the weekend, the British PM David Cameron announced a new war. No, not the type which involves guns, missiles or army uniform. A social war that would avoid "the corrosion of childhood." This follows a succession of social wars that previous Prime Ministers have begun and are still yet to prove their 'victory.' We have the war on drugs, war on terror, war on smoking, war on youth gangs in London - so much so that the social narrative of Britain has become a semantic field of socio-economic warfare. Mr Cameron has decided to embark on his war against the cyber world. Starting with online porn.
When this was first announced, I was quite pleased because it was generally reported as Mr Cameron wanting to clamp down on the porn industry. We hear of horrific situations where young men and women are conned into the human trafficking industry only to end up in pornography videos against their will. The argument against pornography is an iffy one. People argue that porn takes sex, something many consider to be intimate and cheapens it - yet at the same time sex is still a taboo subject. Porn degrades men and women into silicone pumped, plastic, sexual objects - yet millions of people get a kick out of watching it. Porn has begun to distort the way that we view each other, ourselves, relationships and sex. But at the bottom of it all, sex is a natural normal thing right?
After a day or two, it turns out that Mr Cameron's war on online porn is specifically child sex abuse. Something that millions wholly welcome as a future policy following the aftermath of Jimmy Savile's abuse, eye-watering scores of paedophile rings and reports of children as young as ten being raped by other children with the root cause being diagnosed as children watching sadomasochistic pornography videos. Protecting children is something many people have high on their agenda. Children are the future of any state, so it's important to nurture and encourage them to be good citizens. Anything related to child abuse is instantly controversial and relevant because it is an issue that needs to be resolved. It's also a topic that everyone has an opinion about.
The BBC proclaimed Mr Cameron's proposal with the following headline and article: Online pornography to be blocked by default. It's not very clear how Mr Cameron is going to go about controlling online porn. For a start, we've always been told how ungovernable the Internet is. Can Cameron conquer the Internet? With any ban that takes place, normally a board is set up with an independent third party who monitors that board. With regards to a proposed ban on online porn who decides what is and what isn't pornography? How will this be policed? Will we have a National Porn Regulation Board? When it comes to things like this Britain, along with thousands of other countries, has issues with transparency. You need only look at the MPs expenses scandal which occurred a few years ago and the banks which were pretty much unregulated.
So Mr Cameron wants to ban online porn and child sex abuse- so far so good. It's a good strategy for people to warm to him because "he'd be the Prime Minister who put a stop to this madness." It would elevate him and give our current coalition government a bit of decent press for once. But he won't ban Page 3. For those not in the know, page 3 is in a news publication called The Sun and features images of topless women. Yet it calls itself a "family newspaper." Surely this counts as a form of pornography? It's hypocritical for Mr Cameron to want to implement an opt-in policy for online porn yet refuse to ban page 3 which is also a form of pornography. If you are going to propose a policy which claims to avoid "the corrosion of childhood" you might as well do away with images of rape, nudity and sexual abuse in films, games, music videos and imagery. Do these not contribute to the "corrosion of childhood" as well? Ah but of course, what would Mr Murdoch say?
The proposed ban so far is unrealistic. If people want to watch online porn, they will find ways to do it. I believe that we need to improve our sex-education system and not regard sex as a taboo. The flipside of implementing a ban is that things go underground and remain largely ignored because they are no longer in the public eye.
When this was first announced, I was quite pleased because it was generally reported as Mr Cameron wanting to clamp down on the porn industry. We hear of horrific situations where young men and women are conned into the human trafficking industry only to end up in pornography videos against their will. The argument against pornography is an iffy one. People argue that porn takes sex, something many consider to be intimate and cheapens it - yet at the same time sex is still a taboo subject. Porn degrades men and women into silicone pumped, plastic, sexual objects - yet millions of people get a kick out of watching it. Porn has begun to distort the way that we view each other, ourselves, relationships and sex. But at the bottom of it all, sex is a natural normal thing right?
| Can we ever fully control the Internet? |
After a day or two, it turns out that Mr Cameron's war on online porn is specifically child sex abuse. Something that millions wholly welcome as a future policy following the aftermath of Jimmy Savile's abuse, eye-watering scores of paedophile rings and reports of children as young as ten being raped by other children with the root cause being diagnosed as children watching sadomasochistic pornography videos. Protecting children is something many people have high on their agenda. Children are the future of any state, so it's important to nurture and encourage them to be good citizens. Anything related to child abuse is instantly controversial and relevant because it is an issue that needs to be resolved. It's also a topic that everyone has an opinion about.
The BBC proclaimed Mr Cameron's proposal with the following headline and article: Online pornography to be blocked by default. It's not very clear how Mr Cameron is going to go about controlling online porn. For a start, we've always been told how ungovernable the Internet is. Can Cameron conquer the Internet? With any ban that takes place, normally a board is set up with an independent third party who monitors that board. With regards to a proposed ban on online porn who decides what is and what isn't pornography? How will this be policed? Will we have a National Porn Regulation Board? When it comes to things like this Britain, along with thousands of other countries, has issues with transparency. You need only look at the MPs expenses scandal which occurred a few years ago and the banks which were pretty much unregulated.
So Mr Cameron wants to ban online porn and child sex abuse- so far so good. It's a good strategy for people to warm to him because "he'd be the Prime Minister who put a stop to this madness." It would elevate him and give our current coalition government a bit of decent press for once. But he won't ban Page 3. For those not in the know, page 3 is in a news publication called The Sun and features images of topless women. Yet it calls itself a "family newspaper." Surely this counts as a form of pornography? It's hypocritical for Mr Cameron to want to implement an opt-in policy for online porn yet refuse to ban page 3 which is also a form of pornography. If you are going to propose a policy which claims to avoid "the corrosion of childhood" you might as well do away with images of rape, nudity and sexual abuse in films, games, music videos and imagery. Do these not contribute to the "corrosion of childhood" as well? Ah but of course, what would Mr Murdoch say?
The proposed ban so far is unrealistic. If people want to watch online porn, they will find ways to do it. I believe that we need to improve our sex-education system and not regard sex as a taboo. The flipside of implementing a ban is that things go underground and remain largely ignored because they are no longer in the public eye.
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