(Warning: white guy making observations about another culture)
www.theguardian.com/...
According to the Indian courts, “girls and women are getting raped left, right, and centre.” [Sidenote: this is a specific driving fantasy in misogynistic conversations—rampant, unaccountable rape.] It’s yet another appalling modern horror that lets us know that everything is not OK.
Will censoring porn help? It seems that’s the conversation being had, so I hope so.
The global porn industry, poorly regulated as it is, encapsulates a spectrum of abuse that runs from a terrible track record in female treatment and turnover to human trafficking and sexual slavery. It is a necrotic rot on our culture. There are several documentaries, including this one. www.imdb.com/...
But what if porn was produced differently? Could it be a healthy sexual and emotional outlet? What if it compensated its workers fairly, centered the female experience, put safety first, or was completely animated? Outside of the industry, what is the interplay between violent pornographic images and culture? Maybe it’s not necessarily: “violent porn causes sexual assault.” The article above references violent porn as a potential driver of assault. Research is not explicit on the causality. I’m not making a case for the continued existence of violent porn, and censorship may place a role in larger policy prescriptions. But whether it’s sexual assault in India or in the U.S., it seems a larger conversation centering other potential drivers might be helpful.
Analogy: Who, besides my uncle and his Facebook circle, believes that rap music causes gang violence? Arguments for censoring hip-hop based on the notion that it causes gang violence--it feels like they are ignoring poverty. Is the art~behavior dialectic similar with porn? Like rap music, yes, it can draw people towards toxic dialogues and nurture unhealthy narratives that lead to harmful behaviors, but would censoring rap music solve the problems of its source content? Would censoring porn solve the problems of a fundamentally misogynistic culture in the “rape capital of the world?” It might have some positive effects, but censoring porn ignores misogynistic cultural norms in the same manner that those who catch the vapors over rap lyrics ignore poverty.
My observation is that censorship reflects a dubious approach to social problems. It can increase the risk and reward of profitability, creating an unregulated shadow market. In a large country like India, it seems that’s exactly what would take place. As they say, porn finds a way. Attempting to censor one current in the vast sea of the internet seems close to impossible, and even if it was doable, stopping the intervention there is flat-out misguided.
I’m no lawmaker, and I’m not from India, but I do work on policies that address sexual assault in my particular corner of misogyny: the U.S. military. There, censoring the access military members have to porn at home is not possible, but, sexual assault response policies and cultural norms that specifically and publicly empower bystanders, advocate for victims, hold offenders accountable, and center consent--those do work, and so I’m advocating to move them closer to the center of other discussions about sexual assault.