'It starts as all these stories do. With blood'

Joanne Harris’s latest novel, Broken Light begins with the blood of menstruation, decades in the past, while the onset of the menopause is the trigger for the contemporary sections.

At the centre of the story is Bernie Ingram (née Bernie Moon), approaching 50, in a marriage that has long since gone stale, while she’s estranged from both her mother and her own son. Working in a bookshop, she has no friends and begins to realise that, in effect, she has little agency.

But as she travels through the menopause, the nearby murder of a woman triggers a return of powers that she had long forgotten about – and Bernie begins a journey to a totally new sense of living.

Broken Light is an extraordinary tale of female experience; angry, passionate and deeply humane.

It’s been labelled as magic realism and it has, as much of Harris’s work, a quality of fairytale/folklore about. In keeping with that, it is an incredibly easy read (420 pages in two days for me), which illustrates the grip in exerts, but it’s also full of complexity, power and moral nuance.

The central theme here is the violence and misogyny that women face as a matter of routine, and the way that women are ignored.

But it’s also an examination of friendship – and of the cycle of toxicity in relationships. And also, the toxicity that can be spread on social media and is stirred by a sizeable amount of the mainstream.

There is something exhilarating about seeing some of the worst offenders called out, by their real titles, in the pages. Harris isn’t afraid to cast her fiercely feminist stare straight at them and illustrate the damage they do and the damage they facilitate.

In terms of the traumas that childhood can produce, there are places I physically winced in personal recognition – not least a child’s birthday party and aspects of domineering motherhood.

But the ending is shocking, yet redemptive and hopeful – simply stunning. Bernie Moon will stay with me for a very long time.

Broken Light by Joanne Harris is out now, available in hardback, for Kindle and audio.

A tale of vaginas and how some expect us to behave

Just don't

It’s been a wonderful couple of days for vaginas.

Only yesterday, news emerged that, addressing the Cambridge Union Society earlier this week, good old Germaine Greer observed that trans women weren’t real women because they don’t know what it’s like “to have a big, hairy, smelly vagina”.

In the meantime, news – and admittedly I use the word lightly – reached these shores that Gwyneth Paltrow is promoting the steaming with herbs of said vaginas to keep them nice and fresh and the owner ‘energised’.

Then today, the hashtag #NoHymenNoDiamond appeared on my Twitter timeline.

Although this appears to have actually started at least as early as last autumn, it’s today picked up a lovely head of steam (though there’s no evidence that steaming breaks or heals a hymen).

There’s also no evidence that those who tweeted it actually thought about how they’d check such a thing before the wedding day.

But then again, we’re not talking about people with big brains.

And as if all that wasn’t enough, it’s pretty much a racing certainty that life at the Daily Mail this past week has seen editor and champion of women everywhere, Paul Dacre, illustrating his notorious talent for ‘double cunting’: there’s a reason his editorial meetings are known as ‘the vagina monologue’.

So, is there a common theme here – beyond, y’know, stuff about cunts?

Well there’s certainly a steaming pile of irony.

Greer’s views on trans women are not themselves news, but although she slammed the views of some other feminists in the same speech, she shares with many radical feminists essentially the same attitude toward trans women (I don’t know if they have any opinion on trans men).

More than one rad fem has suggested that not having a womb discounts trans women from ... well, being a woman.

In other words, these feminists do precisely what they supposedly object to – and create an idea of womanhood that comes down to biology and sexual organs.

It’s no coincidence that rad fems in the US in particular have made unholy alliances with reactionary, Christian fundamentalist political groups and individuals. They are a form of reactionary fundamentalism.

I can’t answer for anyone else, but I know that I don’t want to be defined by whether I have a womb or whether my cunt is smelly.

Who would?

And who would imagine that those doing precisely that would, at the same time, equally want to say that women should not be defined in such a dreadfully limiting way by others?

I have no more right to define anyone else’s experience of their sex/gender than anyone does of mine.

As someone who has been described, by a long-time friend, as a “gay man in a woman’s body,” I’m well aware that there are many ways in which I do not personally conform to any conventional idea of womanhood.

But surely it’s precisely those ‘conventional’ ideas – and expectations and, with them, limits – that feminism seeks to combat?

If you want women to be able to escape lives based on restrictions imposed because of bodily functions, then it hardly seems sensible to use these same things to define women.

Many have found the obituary of best-selling author, and acclaimed scientist, Colleen McCullough, in Rupert Murdoch’s The Australian, to illustrate precisely what still faces many women.

It opens thus:

“COLLEEN McCullough, Australia’s best selling author, was a charmer. Plain of feature, and certainly overweight, she was, nevertheless, a woman of wit and warmth. In one interview, she said: ‘I’ve never been into clothes or figure and the interesting thing is I never had any trouble attracting men’.”

There’s so much wrong with this that it’s would be difficult to know where to start. Thankfully, Twitter users came up with #MyOzObituary to illustrate the insanity.

But choosing to remember a successful and talented woman in such a fashion is no different in its limiting terms to claiming that her sexual organs are what defines a woman.

And this, perversely, has something in common with the idea of the vagina – via the hymen – of that previous hashtag.

That’s about ownership. It’s about defining a ‘good’ woman on the basis of sex and an idea about what identifies a woman who has had sex. Commenting on her looks is about defining her by them.

The #NoHymenNoDiamond hashtag is particularly dumb, of course, not least since many things can break the hymen, from tampon use to riding a bike.

But that’s the point: none of this is sensible. None of it employs common sense. None of it employs the matter between the ears.

According to the biological definition of a woman, anyone born with Mayer Rokitansky Küster Hauser syndrome (ie without a womb) would not qualify.

So it serves – once again – to illustrate a number of things.

One, that rad fems are not, for the main, really interested in women as a whole and in overcoming the limits that our society does place on them.

Two, that said radical feminists push an agenda that is yet another form of intolerant, bigoted and limiting reaction against progress, and we should not be suckered in to treated it as an intellectually-sound matter.

Three, that radical feminism is a form of secular fundamentalism that has nothing whatsoever to do with what the majority of women think and experience.

And four, that whatever some claim, the main issue that faces us today – that is, ALL of us – is still a class-based one, with a ruling class/supra-national corporatocracy etc using all its weight to gain yet more wealth, and damn everyone else, whether male or female, straight or not, trans or cis, black or white etc etc.

Just look at TTIP – and the ISDS clause in particular – to see this.

Dividing human beings along lines of sex and/or gender, into whether or not they have a cunt that smells or not is idiocy and ignores all the really important questions that face us ALL.

But hey: what a vagina of a few days it’s been!

Silence or shouting? The problem of bullying

Since the silence was hardly been deafening, you might have missed the news that last Sunday was Twitter Silence Day.

It was a day when some predominantly middle-class journalists and columnists decided not to tweet as a protest against online abuse of women.

Let’s be clear: the nature and level of some of the abuse is disgusting. There is no excuse for it.

Not that she’s alone, but classicist Mary Beard seems to have become a prime and repeated target.

This isn’t just a spot of name-calling, even with the sort of added Anglo-Saxon words that renowned ‘double-cunter’ Paul Dacre would be in admiration of, but goes into explicit and sexual terms, and has reached the level of rape threats and bomb threats.

You have to wonder at the mentality of those who come out with this sort of thing. What do they think they’re doing?

Beard has taken to ‘outing’ some of the abusers by retweeting them. Only last week, one such episode turned darkly hilarious when another woman tweeted back, telling the professor that she knew the address of the abuser’s mother and, if she wanted, she’d forward it.

They don’t all hide behind anonymity and are clearly not all uneducated illiterates. It’s not a class thing or a race thing, because the abusers come from a wide range of backgrounds.

And it’s not something that can be blamed on the internet, social media in general of Twitter specifically.

I’ve had a taste of it online – the imbecile who disagrees with you, runs off to look at any picture of you on Twitter, and then comes back to declare that you’re an ‘ugly cunt’ who is clearly single etc.

I’ve had it in other online places over the years: comments about being a Nazi who had a home decorated in lampshades made of human skin. Which was all the more amusing since the abusive little sod was himself at least sympathetic with the far right.

I’ve had emails with the old fascist tactic of ‘we know who you are and where you live’.

I’ve had abuse in the street: just one example being “Oi! You’re a big fat cunt!” Self-awareness was not his strong point: he was an extremely big, fat slob standing around outside a pub trying to see if his brain cell could come up with something to entertain him.

And some of this was deeply upsetting at the time.

But let’s be clear, so too were all the incidents, over many years and involving more than one female boss, of being put down at every opportunity, often on the basis of how I looked or dressed.

Oh, the language might not be as blatant, but the intent is no less negative.

So let’s not pretend that bullying and abuse are one-way streets.

However, to come back to the point about precisely what is going on with some of these Twitter abusers.

It’s all about power and attempts to exert it. And it isn’t remotely new.

As Libby Purves delightfully explains: “Years ago, when I was the first woman presenter on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme in the days of green-ink letters, I amused myself, unbeknownst to my employers, with a standard reply to any correspondence that was couched in rudely misogynistic terms (many men gave their real address, so secure were they in the patriarchy). I’d write:

“Thank you for your interesting letter. I am sure you will not mind my passing it on to Professor (Fictional name) of the Cambridge University Institute of Psychosexual Medicine, who has a research study about men who write strongly-worded letters to women in public life.”

I had several panicky replies forbidding me to pass on their name and even apologising. Nothing scares a nasty bloke more than the thought of someone knowing all about him. Digital technology doesn’t change that.”

In the days before the internet – or prehistory, as it sometimes known to today’s youngsters – I was bullied at school, too, but in some ways my parents seemed to regard it as quite normal (both of them had, apparently, suffered it too) and believed that teaching the old ‘sticks and stones’ rhyme would have power over bullies, together with the knowledge that a kick to the shins would sort out problems where that didn't.

There was an irony here in that constant put-downs were my father’s chosen oevre.

But while my fists eventually sorted out two particular situations of long-term persistent bullying (both were in all-girl schools, incidentally), one nearly got me into a real jam, while in the first, I apparently nearly broke the ring-leader's nose.

Interestingly, in both cases, the culprits were younger. Both also taught me that ignoring it is far from guaranteed to actually work.

But then again, that’s easier said than done, as I later found it in the workplace, where a boss bullying is a rather different matter, since it is based on very specific and quite real, economic power.

At least these days we take bullying more seriously.

And the kind of harassment that Beard and others have been faced with is prosecutable – as harassment. In other words, there are real, existing legal solutions to such issues.

I remain convinced that censorship is to be avoided at all. And the idea of a Twitter report button concerns me, as it’s easy enough to see how it could be abused (for want of a better phrase) against people who have done absolutely nothing wrong.

If there is to be any such system, it needs very serious and good moderation.

In the same vein, I reserve the right to call a politician, for instance, a choice name, just as I don’t go bleating to anyone if I get called something similar. These days, I’m old enough, ugly enough and thick-skinned enough to realise that if I want to play hardball, I have no right to expect to be treated with kid gloves myself.

There may be, however, some cases where some forums need either to be closed altogether or where some very strict and serious moderation needs to come into play.

Such an example is ask.fm, a social networking Q&A site that has featured in a number of cyber bullying cases, up to and including ones where young people have taken their own lives, apparently as a direct response to serious online bullying.

The latest to die in such an horrifically tragic way was 14-year-old Hannah Smith.

Prime Minister David Cameron has called for people to “boycott” such sites. Yes, because that’s what teenagers are going to do, isn’t it? And instead of putting all the responsibility on young people who could become abused, how about acting at government level to demand that such sites be closed down or better regulated?

Is it hysterical to ask how many more young people have to die before it ceases to be their responsibility alone?

The onus so often seems to be on the bullied.

And here I’m also wary of the words. I deeply dislike the promotion of any ideas of inherent victimhood. My own personal experience is that the key is confidence.

Since getting some, I’ve never had a repeat of any of the verbal assaults I was on the receiving end of in the street. It’s a cliché for a reason, to say that bullies themselves are basically cowards. They don’t pick on someone they realistically think will fight back. But they seem to be able to easily spot those who will not; those who are low on confidence.

I do also wonder whether part of the targeting of Beard and other high-profile women is not so much just about sex as also about a very British dislike and distrust of intellectualism. It could also be suggested that it’s about a dislike or even fear of those who don’t conform, and we Brits do, in so many ways, remain wedded to conformity.

Beard most certainly doesn’t conform – in her case, on the grounds of how she has chosen to allow herself to be seen, without kowtowing to conventional and mainstream views on make-up, hair etc.

I wonder too what other issues are at play. Does a society that is, of itself, so troubled with massive job insecurity, for instance, also help to create a climate where some feeling need to target those who appear to have success?

In a country where politicians regularly demonise those who cannot easily make their own voices heard – the disabled, for instance – is it then easier to start targeting all manner of other groups?

Does such a level of abuse exist in other Western European nations?

A good friend, who was a young adult in Germany in the 1960s and had a very libertarian attitude toward anything that occurs between consenting adults, once observed to me that he was also shocked (and he was pretty unshockable) at the way in which he overheard British men talking openly about women.

There are real questions about bullying and about the wider culture, but they seem to get lost – perhaps because they’re difficult.

What we don’t need is some really poor new legislation or scheme, but education and a system whereby real offences can be easily reported and are properly followed up and, where applicable, the law is brought to bear.

What benefits nobody is gestures. And while I sympathise with anyone – male or female – who has been harassed and abused online, the Twitter silence was just that. If anything, there’s a danger that it will have given encouragement to the trolls: ‘oh look – if we do it more, maybe they’ll fuck off altogether and we’ll have won’.

That Beard was subsequently berated by Giles Coren for ‘breaking’ the silence by using Twitter to highlight yet more abuse should perhaps tell us something about the rather elitist nature of this protest.

Now, on one hand, good for Giles for considering the abuse unacceptable and for supporting those (or some of those) facing it. But frankly, outing these bastards is actually far better. Let them be seen for their attitudes. Don’t hide them – and certainly don’t hide from them.

The abuse is not acceptable. But in terms of social media, boycotting it is tantamount to giving in.

Many, many women (and supportive men) chose not to be silent. They used the day, instead, to go about their normal social media business, or to #ShoutOut against sexist behaviour and, even more positively, list #InspiringWomen – a hashtag that was both educational and full of surprises, and precisely because of that, genuinely inspiring.

The underlying roots and causes are complex – and the last thing this issue needs is simple answers that will merely wallpaper those real roots and causes. And treating it as though it's essentially a matter of sexism will also get in the way of finding real and lasting ways of dealing with bullying as a whole.

Porn is a class issue

Oh look – the anti-porn Mail

On Monday, in a blaze of glory, the Daily Mail declared victory in the war on internet porn - and the internet itself died from the irony overload.

Few will have missed the news that prime minister David Cameron has decided that online smut is 'corroding' our children's lives and that search engines and ISPs Must Do More to stop the nasty stuff.

First, let's be clear about a few things. There is no such thing as 'child porn'. There are images of child abuse. Porn requires consent.

There are also already laws in place to deal with images of acts that are themselves illegal - including the abuse of children.

The idea that you find porn everywhere online is nonsense. I have all filters off on my computer and I use search engines regularly. I do not come across pornographic material on a regular basis, by accident, while searching for completely non-porn matters.

And anyone looking online for images of child abuse is highly unlikely to do so via Google. It would be a pretty surefire way to earn a visit from the local constabulary in short order.

The internet though, has layers that are far deeper and more hidden than anything that a search engine can come up with. These layers are where those who want pictures of illegal activities will go and will look and will exchange what they want.

So in other words, the prime minister's performance was meaningless, soundbite rhetoric.

The Mail, of course, loved it. Why wouldn't it? After all, such rhetoric plays to a particular constituency, many of whom doubtless view the internet and porn as evil incarnate to start with, and plenty of whom appear to understand nothing about, say, those deeper levels - let alone other tech stuff that people like me find too complex.

A short time ago, the paper got into a bit of a fix when columnist Amanda Platell revealed in a sensationalist article that she'd searched for dodgy terms and, oh goodness, found Awful Things. The police got involved, because her searching for images of child abuse was, itself, illegal. There are very strict rules for any serious investigative journalist to follow.

And then it materialised that what she'd found was content that involved not a single minor. All involved were over 18. 

But that was not what sent the irony meter into overload.

That was because the Mail itself does a nice little line in online pictures of underage girls accompanied by text that quite deliberately sexualises them. I'm not going into this in detail here, because I've done so before, so as evidence, see here and here.

It is that it is not an accident or an error. It is quite deliberate.

Beyond that, the online version of the story had, as a sidebar, the usual Mail Online content of various stories of women in bikinis, more women with little on, women with very little on, commentary about what they were/weren't wearing, commentary about their bodies - and so forth.

The divine Geoffrey Rush as The Divine Marquis in Quills

It's useful at this point to remember that the Mail's print editor, Paul Dacre, is also the editor in chief of the entire Mail family, so what goes on the web site is every bit as much his ultimate editorial responsibility as what goes in the pages of the daily paper.

So the deliberately sexualised tone of reports on underage girls occur on exactly the same watch as the campaigns against internet porn and the sexualisation of children.

To put it simply, Dacre and the Mail are steaming piles of hypocritical shit.

But now let's examine some of the issues surrounding Cameron's announcement.

And to start with, a very brief introduction to the subject as a whole may be useful.

Pornography comes from a Greek word, basically meaning 'the writings of prostitutes'.

Until the second half of the 19th century, it had no moral connotation - we can see this in how dictionary definitions changed over the second half of the century.

Many paintings of classical subjects deal with themes that could now become illegal - the Rape of the Sabine Women by Rubens, for instance.

Art had represented the erotic for centuries - much Christian art is highly erotic, and, in some cases, homoerotic, as described in Closet Devotions by Richard Rambuss.

For goodness sake, look at almost any representation of the matryrdom of St Sebastian, as he gazes feyly at the sky, apparently oblivious to the arrows piercing his body, and seriously claim that this does not have an erotic aspect to it.

But then, isn't religion itself erotic too? Research has suggested that the chemicals released during prayer and meditation are pretty much the same ones released during orgasm.

It gives a whole new meaning to the idea of divine bliss.

But the point remains that these were pictures that were not intended for the hoi polloi, but only for those who could afford to have such art created or who were fortunate to live or work in institutions where such art was displayed.

What we see now with the prime minister's pronouncements is not far removed from current ideas that the poor shouldn't have tobacco or booze or TV - or computers, even though they'll need those to claim benefits and look for work.

The Rape of the Sabine Women by Rubens

It's reminiscent of the infamous pleading by the prosecution in the Lady Chatterley obscenity trial: "Would you approve of your young sons, young daughters - because girls can read as well as boys - reading this book? Is it a book that you would have lying around in your own house? Is it a book that you would even wish your wife or your servants to read?"

For the well off, there will still be 'erotica' - which is merely a hypocritical name for porn. After all, both set out to arouse the viewer/reader, so what's the difference really?

So what changed that definition of pornography?

In essence, photographic technology, which when it emerged meant that the man in the street could afford to buy a smutty postcard.

The problem, in other words, was based on class.

Indeed, let's go further.

As a result of archeology in the 19th century, many artifacts were uncovered from the ancient world that were, in the Victorian one, considered depraved.

Some were destroyed. Some were placed in a number of 'secret museums' around Europe. These were places where only men of a certain standing and character could apply to see them.

Women, children and the lower classes were all far too fragile and corruptible to ever be allowed access to such works.

Go further: to demonise those that work in pornography - and the wider sex industry - is to demonise working people. And to see some on the left doing this is particularly disappointing, never mind when they fall into hate rhetoric and call for such workers to be 'put up against the wall and shot, come the revolution', as the likes of über-rabblerouser Julie Birchill has.

What is the difference between that and anti-semitism or racism or straightforward, old-fashioned sexism?

Besides, it totally ignores the simple fact that, as women have had more disposable income, some have chosen to buy sexual services, and as women's liberation continues, some have also chosen to become pornographers themselves: Fifty Shades of Grey might not be Nobel-winning literature, but it is written by a woman and has been consumed voraciously by women. And pretending that this is not the case is simply infantile.

But let's got further yet: if people really believe that porn is dreadful (and they also tend to believe that the entire sex industry is dreadful too), and that no woman would ever do these thing voluntarily, then don't campaign to cut porn - campaign for improvements to pay that keeps women in particular in poverty or close to it.

And then, when that serious political-economic battle is won, if there are no longer any women going into the sex industry, clearly it will have been shown to be because of the tyranny of low pay etc.

But equally, if there are still women going into the sex industry afterwards, you'll have to accept it as a matter of free choice.

Did you realise that porn was such a class and equalities issue?

In case anyone wonders, I'm well aware that men also work in the sex industry, but these debates rather tend to exclude them, just as they 'forget' lesbian porn.

Anyhow, let's move on.

Is porn really the end of civilisation as we know it?

No. It's really not.

Is it evidence of a lack of respect toward women?

No, it's not.

Look at countries that ban porn - like Dubai or Saudi Arabia - and ask yourself how they treat women. With more respect than, say, the famously open Netherlands?

Nobody has to like porn. That's not the point. But porn is also not the great evil that it is made out to be by some.

After decades of research to quite specifically prove a link between viewing porn and becoming violent, no such link has been proved, as I mentioned here.

Equally, some research has suggested that serial sex offenders often grew up in homes where they were denied any sexual outlet - including porn.

There are complaints about young people getting their sex education from porn.

Secretary

Given the chronically piss poor nature of UK sex education, that should hardly come as a surprise to anyone, and the solution isn't banning porn, but improving sex education for every single child.

Proper sex education should not be an option: no parent should be able to opt a child out of it.

That's part of the problem: the UK has, in general, more respect for the rights of prudes and religious fundamentalists than it does for the emotional, mental, physical and sexual health of young people.

Experience in the US has illustrated that abstinence education actually worsens the situation of teenage pregnancies and STIs.

And that, of course, is without even mentioning the point that there are plenty of non-religious homes where sex is not discussed for a whole variety of reasons from embarrassment to a lack of interest.

Some years ago, a survey by various children's charities found that the group of young people that started sexually experimenting with others at the latest age was the group where sex was discussed openly and without 'moral' judgment at home.

This was also the group most likely to know about and use safe sex and contraception.

Next up was the group whose parents held 'moral' and religious attitudes toward sex.

They started experimenting with others at an earlier age and were less likely to know about/use safe sex and contraception.

The third group were from homes where, in essence, the parents didn't give a toss. The age at which experimentation with others began was lower again, as was knowledge and use of safe sex and contraception.

It's rather obvious, really, but it emphasises the need for a real programme of mandatory sex education - and this needs to be far more than the birds and the bees.

I experienced the latter form of sex 'education'. My mother checked I knew about periods. And that was it.

Not a single word about what 'feelings' I might experience.

When my sister shopped me for drawing topless women, I got a lecture on how such things were inappropriate - except in an art gallery.

And then there were the sermons - both from my father's formal pulpit in church, and also the informal one, at the family dining table.

Sin, I understood early, was shorthand for sex.

Pan & the Goat. Only for respectable, upper-class gents

Producing children who are guilt-ridden about sex is not healthy.

But for some at least - and I am among those - pornography was eventually one of the things that helped me to liberate myself from all that negativity.

As I worked through things, turning my fantasies into stories acted as a form of therapy - hardly hindered when I got paid for it too.

And I know I'm not unique.

In particular, it happens for people who have 'alternate' sexualities.

Is that what people want to ban?

Do they also want to increase the issues that already exist with search engines treating terms such as 'breast cancer' and 'Scunthorpe' as verboten?

Cameron has also announced a ban on porn representations of rape. Will this include literary porn?

If not, why not? A cursory glance at history suggests that the written word has caused rather more wars than pictures of people shagging.

So will my collection of Sade be safe? Or does one only need to worry if they have a DVD or Pasolini's Salo? Where does it leave Quills, the mainstream movie starring the excellent Geoffrey Rush or Secretary, both of which are sympathetic to kinky people?

Here's another little bit of history: Sade actually spent the majority of his lengthy stays in prison because of what was considered blasphemy against the church.

Indeed, porn has been used as a tool of satire and political opposition more than once.

The Beate Uhse Erotik-Museum in Berlin has an excellent exhibition of just such works, including ones by George Grosz.

One of the concerns about this announcement is whether it softens people up for further censorship. Do we trust government on the issue?

I don't. Not least because successive governments, whatever they say in opposition, then get into power and start listening to GCHQ about what additional surveillance powers it wants, and previous policy statements go out of the window.

But back to this issue. What about The Accused or Last Exit to Brooklyn, both of which have very graphic and disturbing rape scenes?

In fact, and in many ways far more to the point, would any ban include all those Barbara Cartland books where the heroine is 'ravished'.

There is a vast amount of 'romantic fiction' out there that and, if one issue with porn is that it creates 'unrealistic expectations', then such fiction does precisely that.

Such stories feature not just in books, but also in magazines aimed at a wide variety of ages, from teenagers up.

Add to that romantic films, including but not limited to rom-coms.

Then there are the newspapers that, for instance, report sex matters as though monogamy is the only decent option, and all people are sexually identical and should conform to the same behaviour.

These are the mainstream; they are consumed by a very large number of people, and they create expectations and guilt. Why are such things not being targeted?

And as for violence in entertainment ...

Now, to clarify, I am not suggesting that such things are banned.

Of course, people also raise other objections to porn - or at least to that which requires performers. They will sometimes attempt to deny that porn can be written.

But that's another issue, where this entire attempt to ban porn is based on 'won't somebody think of the children!' (and the votes).

It's tempting to say that Cameron's announcement is cretinous - for the lack of technological nous it displays etc.

But I don't think it is. I don't think that that was ever what he and his advisors were remotely concerned about.

This is not even soundbite politics - this is dogwhistle politics.

The Daily Mail has whistled, and Cameron and his cohorts have come running, desperate for the master to them a pat on the head - particularly after upsetting Dacre and co with Leveson.

And that alone should warn any intelligent people against this entire shifty business.

Further suggested reading matter

Pornocopia by Laurence O' Toole

Pornography: The secret history of civilisation by Isabel Tang

The Marquis de Sade: A life by Neil Schaeffer

Porn blocking: a survivor's perspective – excellent blog article

Is the rape porn cultural harm argument – blog by lawyer Myles Jackman