No smoke without fire? Sleepwalking into censorship

Icon with a cigarette! Call the censors!

Back in the halcyon days of summer, Prime Minister David Cameron decided to indulge in a spot of populist rhetoric by calling for internet service providers to explore the possibility of imposing filters on their services.

These would mean that customers would have to opt out of the filter in order to be able to see a variety of materials.

The big media fuss has all been about blocking porn and Saving Our Children.

But as the Open Rights Group made clear in July, having spoken to ISPs, porn is hardly the only thing on a list that you’ll be expected to opt in to.

Their list was:

• pornography;

• violent material;

• extremist and terrorist-related content;

• anorexia and eating disorder websites;

• suicide-related websites;

• alcohol;

• smoking;

• web forums;

• esoteric material;

• web blocking circumvention tools.

One would have thought that “extremist and terrorist related content” was already covered – by being illegal.

What constitutes “violent material”? A film – or stills – of Titus Andronicus? Tom and Jerry? The Rumble in the Jungle?

Alcohol and smoking? Both entirely legal the last time I looked. And would that include stills of, say, Humphrey Bogart with a fag?

And “web forums”. Well, that’s mumsnet gone.

But perhaps the best is “esoteric”. So, material that is ‘intended for or likely to be understood by only a small number of people with a specialised knowledge or interest.’ So a specialised area of history, then?

One is left to wonder at all these categories, which one will have to opt in to rather than opt out of.

There is an idea that it will act on ‘nudge theory’ – that people will be less inclined to uncheck boxes and simply glide through the setting-up process.

If one doesn’t, will one be monitored? Who will monitor the monitors? The evidence for the latter question is: ‘nobody’.

It’s difficult to think that that is overly paranoid.

Only a couple of weeks ago it emerged that Tony Blair had allowed the US to spy on British citizens and store data about them. The US had then gone further than agreed.

The Conservative Party, in opposition, were – rightly – opposed to increased monitoring of British citizens, but the Parliamentary party has changed its view since taking office.

Given the Snowden revelations, is there really a government that you would trust to censor what people can and cannot access on the internet?

Yet even if you could trust this government – and any foreseeable ones – to make decisions for you on what you should and should not see, why would you?

Why would you want to hand over to any government any degree of control over what you could view?

Personally, I don’t buy the ‘if you’ve got nothing to hide’ line.

I might have nothing to ‘hide’ in terms of any criminal behaviour, but that doesn’t mean that I should not still value my privacy – my right, for instance, to exchange (legal) comments with any other individual without anyone else watching in.

What we do need is far better sex education for children and young people – sex education that includes issues around social media and the internet and, yes, porn, but not religiously-based sex education that teaches only guilt, which then becomes counterproductive.

What we do not need is giving power over what we view and read to politicians and the security services (whether of this country or any other) and unelected, unaccountable internet providers.

And if those arguments don’t convince you, then remember that one of the biggest cheerleaders for the ‘pornwall’ is the Daily Mail, which you could almost forget does not routinely use its website to pen creepy, sexualising comments about underage girls.

I’ve posted about the ‘porn panic’ before – and hopefully this brief post makes clearer why any filtering is a slippery road that should be opposed.

Everyone needs to really think before getting suckered in to censorship on the basis of cheap soundbites.

• Interesting piece on the ‘special relationship’ and spying.

• Sleepwalking into censorship from the Open Rights Group (25 July 2013)

• For more on sex education for today, visit Bish Training.

Forget foodbanks, we've got another porn panic

Grande Odalisque, Ingres. It's Art – okay?

The latest brouhaha about pornography broke out last week, as the Daily Mail set its hypocritical sights on WH Smith.

The unfortunate retailer’s crime? It found itself in the line of fire after an online cataloguing error meant that pornographic or erotic ebooks were spotted near titles for children.

The Mail, which doesn’t include the titillation of its audience as one method of making sales; which doesn’t include and comment on as many acres of female flesh as possible on its own website, and which doesn’t – oh no, sirree – use creepy language to sexualise underage girls in that very same part of cyberspace, has apparently read every one of the naughty ebooks that were available to buy and announced that the subjects include rape and incest and beastiality and, and … well, won’t somebody think of the children (but not the way Mail hacks do)!

Lawyer Myles Jackman has adroitly dismantled some of the Mail’s inaccuracies, showing how it misunderstands – or misinterprets – the law, for instance.

But unfortunately, the Mail was not alone.

The Guardian, for instance, was in spectacularly disingenuous form.

First, it effectively admitted that it hadn’t bothered doing any actual investigation itself: “At least 60 pornographic ebooks – some featuring rapes and bestiality – were available on the company’s online store, and could also be found on Amazon, Waterstones and Barnes & Noble … according to the Mail on Sunday.” [my emphasis]

That’s cool: just rely on the always-reliable Mail family of newspapers to feed you the details of the story. After all, this isn’t the Mail that has a record of ‘exaggerating’ on such matters, is it?

It’s not the same Mail, is it, that published an article by one Amanda Platell, claiming that she had searched for and easily found images of child abuse online? It turned out that she had found no such thing and, if she had, she would have broken the law in attempting any such search.

But let’s move on. A few paragraphs later:

“The National Crime Agency warned on Sunday that books appearing to legitimise child abuse ‘might feed the fantasies of paedophiles and in some cases encourage child sexual abusers to commit contact offences’.”

Woah! Where’s the child abuse thing come from? Where is there even a suggestion that some of the ebooks – which are self-published, apparently – include anything “appearing to legitimise child abuse?

Of course, the mere mention of kiddy fiddlers is enough to send half the nation into a state that includes the shut-down of their reasoning skills.

Odalisque with Magnolias, Matisse. Not erotic. At all

As it happens, other sources say that some of the books do contain themes of abuse, but if that’s the case, let’s have it mentioned in the article, without the sudden jump to the subject of paedophilia, which simply looks like a conflation of child abuse and pornography/erotica.

But this is entirely in keeping with the sort of knee-jerkery that is increasingly coming to inform the debate on whatever someone or other decides constitutes porn.

After all, in what passes for that debate in the UK, claims of the untold harm to women and children caused by pornography dominate, without a shred of actual evidence for that. Yet it has become accepted unquestioningly by many that it is simply true.

Say something often enough …

And the Mail and the Guardian are among those publications that are culpable on this count. Which should tell you something.

Mind, since we also apparently live in a world where a convicted and time-served criminal can herself state that most women commit crimes because of men, perhaps certain people do need ‘protection’ from anything that might ‘deprave’ them?

Maybe the Victorians were correct in believing that only respectable men of a certain class (which class presumably ensured the aforementioned respectability) could be trusted to look at dodgy images?

After all, women are obviously so clearly weak, aren’t they?

Well, that seems to be the theme of Vicky Pryce’s comments, as she continues to look for ways to blame her former husband for her own crime.

After all, stealing a load of designer handbags is all the fault of men, isn’t it?

Or when a woman is guilty of animal cruelty to her dogs, which also kill a child, it’s obviously the patriarchy behind it.

Or when a woman enters the home of an elderly person and sexually abuses her, that’s the fault of the patriarchy too.

Olympia, Manet. Entirely respectable pic of a prostitute

All of this – every little bit of it – plays to a censorious, reactionary agenda on women: one that is entirely happy to see womankind as vulnerable and as a perpetual victim, and to shoehorn womankind as a whole into a particular and limited template for ideological reasons.

At its extreme – its logical conclusion, one might say – is the likes of the Taliban.

Unfortunately, many people who would claim to be progressives buy into it and blithely aid the growth of a culture of victimisation, which demonises men and happily portrays women as eternal victims of ‘the patriarchy’.

And then, in response, we get the victimised white male routine.

This is all at a time when the populace as a whole is under attack from yet another government that readily does the bidding of the neo-liberal supra-national corporatocracy – and in this case, uses the result of the 2008 financial crash to batter the majority and set them against each other.

Against such a background, playing at divisive politics is not even intellectual masturbation, but far worse, it’s utterly counterproductive in terms of rallying and uniting people around the key issues, which have sod all to do with sex/gender and what turns people on, and everything to do with economics and actual politics.

And if anyone starts spouting off along the lines of: ‘if we only had more women in Parliament’, respond with two words: ‘Margaret’ and ‘Thatcher’.

The idea that somehow there’s some sort of unified feminine niceness out there that’ll solve everything is, at best, a misguided fantasy.

Even a cursory glance at history would suggest that, when women have power, they behave no better or differently to how men behave.

But that’s okay – because if we take on board the narrative of a certain type of feminism, then women don’t have to take personal responsibility because it’s all the fault of ‘the patriarchy’.

Which brings us back to the point where, if you continue to argue that, then you effectively argue that women are inherently weak – in which case, why, rationally, should they be considered equal within society?

The porn ‘debate’ is just one part of a wider war being waged by a number of protagonists with some slightly differing perspectives.

James as Odalisque, Niki Grangruth. Still Art

Other aspects of this war include, for instance, the male-dominated campaigns against abortion and the right of a woman to control her own body.

But if we believe that a woman should be able to have complete control of her own body, then it is inconsistent to patronise, condemn or exclude women who, for instance, work in the sex industry.

Do those who do that condemn the rent boy equally? Or what about the female ‘escort’ who provides services for other women?

The ‘debate’ is so up it’s own metaphorical arse that you will, even now, hear spectacular claims such as the famous one that ‘all porn damages women’. What? Even the gay stuff?

It’s also indicative of that divisionism: conflating all womankind to a single version. There is no female or feminist consensus on these subjects, no matter how much Guardian editor Alan Rusbridger has apparently allowed himself to be told by the merry little band of misandrists that he continues to give space to.

You don’t have to like porn yourself to see this. That’s not point. But get caught up in the rhetoric, without understanding that, and you become just like the Daily Mail itself or the Guardian.

And don’t forget: there is – as I’ve mentioned before – there’s also the small matter of class.

Ask yourself: would the campaign against page 3 exist if it wasn’t in a working-class publication?

Leather Crotch, Robert Mapplethorpe. Not sex. Art

If you think so, why is there no comparable campaign against odalisque paintings that hang in open galleries? Perhaps because visiting galleries is considered a rather middle-class thing to do? And, when it’s in a gallery, it’s Art anyway, isn’t it?

If there are issues about how availability of pornographic materials is affecting young people, then perhaps the answer is proper education?

However, given the generally parlous state of sex education across the UK – not least because governments still cravenly kowtow to religious groups, schools and parents in allowing them to opt out of proper sex education – it’s easy to see why a spot of ranting stupidity appears to be the preferred solution for some.

The thing is, porn’s a nice, easy target, because few people will defend it, so bound up are we ideas of sex as still rather dirty – certainly if it’s lust and not lurve – and because the moment the ‘won’t somebody think of the children’ soundbite gets bandied around common sense is bundled out of the room.

Now just imagine if the Mail in particular brought as much concern to the news that the Red Cross is now handing our food aid in the UK.

As I said: a useful distraction – and not for the good of women or men as a whole.

Won't somebody think of the children!

Dangerous to innocent minds?

Many years ago, on a family holiday in Cornwall – at Polzeath, where you can actually ride the surf on a body board – days on the long, golden sands were punctuated by parental observations about a man who always seemed to be near us on the beach.

He was middle aged and, if memory serves correctly, he was with his own family. What made him worthy of repeated comment was his choice of swimwear.

Because he was sporting very brief briefs.

I can’t remember who started the comments, but I suspect it was my mother. The briefs were a problem precisely because they were brief.

Memory conjures up my mother suggesting, in all seriousness, that my father should report him to somebody – even the police. For wearing the sort of briefs that you’d probably have seen on Mark Spitz in the pool.

This would, indeed, have probably been around the time of Spitz’s great triumph at the 1972 Olympics, or maybe a year or so later at most.

Given the paucity of evidence on the matter and the notorious unreliability of memory, I can only conclude that my parents, and my mother in particular, considered such attire too ‘revealing’ for a family beach.

But there is a moral to the story. Quite simply, the only reason that I remember the incident at all is because of parental outrage.

I didn’t go around, at the time, staring at men’s crotches and lewdly contemplating the degree of bulge contained by tight bathing briefs or tight jeans.

It is entirely likely that I would not only not have remembered the incident, but would not even have noticed the man himself in the first place had it not been pointed out with such prudish indignation.

It was my mother who looked and saw, not a man in bathing briefs, but, in effect, sex.

But then again, this was a parent who insisted that one of her daughters should not be allowed to bathe for most of a holiday because she was having a period and could not possibly be allowed to use tampons (it’s fairly obvious why those were considered verboten).

Of course, it’s quite amusing now to consider the belief that a simple bulge, even covered by the tightest of clothing, has the capacity to corrupt and deprave.

Does it work the same for boobs or is it just man bits?

Or would that largely depend on the sex of the children that one believed were likely to be corrupted, in combination with a belief that they were – obviously – heterosexual?

Actually, when I first saw ‘man bits’ – not in the flesh but in a picture in a magazine that was found in a train carriage on a school trip – I was both shocked and fascinated.

It wasn’t as though I was going to find out what they looked like in pretty much any other way.

But after that, the fascinated bit meant that I went looking: there was a large newsagent that I passed on the way home from school in the evenings, and it had magazines aimed at women – Playgirl, I assume. I’d browse them surreptitiously, until the day I was spotted and harangued by a member of staff, and never went in again in a state of massive guilt.

A few years later, doing ‘voluntary’ service at the local psycho-geriatric hospital, I spent lunchtimes dragging a petition against porn around for people to sign.

I cannot for the life of me remember precisely what had set off this particular outburst of prudery, but I do remember being told off by one of the senior doctors, who asked me whether I’d really ever seen porn (deep embarrassment and a mumbled ‘yes’ and then the story of the magazine on the train and how shocking it was) and why did I think it was so bad (more red-faced mumblings).

In retrospect, it was probably the case that he’d quite quickly been able to diagnose me as being well on the way to becoming a very screwed-up and conflicted individual where sex was concerned.

If my most intense religiosity had faded by that point in my life, it had not died. It was just a few years after being carted along to service after service of a two-week evangelical ‘crusade’ in Thameside had produced the intended and pretty much inevitable result, given such sustained emotional overload (blackmail).

It would also not have been long, one way of the other, from a trip, made with bus-loads of my father’s parishoners, to the Blackpool Winter Gardens to hear Billy Graham preach in person.

It was also only a short time before I had a wildly kinky dream that actually produced an orgasm as I woke, and left me in a state of deep shock and confusion for some considerable days – the sort of experience that I could tell nobody about because of the abiding conviction that sex was a synonym for sin.

It was only a year or so later that I discovered, from a book, that puberty doesn’t just change you physically. Later, I challenged my parents over it, but they found it impossible to believe that they hadn’t given me all the information that I needed.

When I told them that I had felt ‘unclean’, like a leper, they merely responded that I could always have talked to them about it. Perceptions, eh?

When, eventually, my parents moved away from the area, I decided to stay and try to carve out my own life there.

On my first night alone, I slunk into a local ‘private shop’ and bought a magazine.

Guilt and fascination and sexual need make a damned unholy alliance, believe me.

But I’m not just penning this for the sake of idle nostalgia. It has a real and entirely serious point.

How much of the current mantra about the ‘sexualisation’ of young people is actually in the minds of those who worry about it, just as the fear that somehow my sister and I would be corrupted by a man in skimpy bathing shorts was entirely in the minds of my parents?

There are issues, I think, with the increased commoditisation of everything, and that includes our bodies, but this is not what those involved in campaigning on the issue are on about.

How much does all this moral panic actually make young people more aware than they might otherwise be? And then, of course, make porn even more taboo and even more ‘sexy’?

How much damage does the absence of proper sex education in the UK cause? And it is worth specifically mentioning faith schools, where not only are lessons unlikely to provide genuine information, but where other lessons are also more likely to create problems, while the parents of pupils at such schools are also probably less likely to offer open and clear and non-judgmental messages on sex and sexuality.

Blaming pornography is simply one more excuse for the ridiculous degree of frankly dangerous prudery in this country; for a general squeamishness about discussing sex properly and openly with young people; for an unhealthy overregard for religious sensibilities and a concomitant disregard for the health and wellbeing of young people themselves.

Elements of what passes for a ‘debate’ are even still couched in terms of ‘innocence’, as though sexual knowledge ends that – as though, indeed, children are ever non-sexual beings.

An infant may not be able to orgasm or get an erection, but they will play with their genitals precisely because it is pleasant. Attitudes of guilt and fear, convictions about sex being dirty – these things are foisted on them by adults, not by pornographic images.

I got over the conflicts and the guilt; eventually – a good two decades plus after being shaken by that dream.

My therapy – self-prescribed and administered – included writing the filthiest stories I could (it was an added bonus when they got picked up by a publisher and, as a friend put it, I got paid for my wet dreams).

I looked at porn too – what a delightful revelation and boost to the self-esteem it was to discover that there were men out there (and other women) who actually liked the more Rubenesque figure.

Because that’s not something that mainstream culture suggests at all. Quite the opposite: mainstream, non-porn culture is more interested in feeding your insecurities and thus enrolling you in the sort of lifelong self-hatred that has you spending money on diets and gyms and all manner of ‘cures’ in the hope that, one day, you’ll be able to start actually living a life that you dream of.

Nor is it just aimed at women and girls, but increasingly at men and boys, as businesses look for and create new markets.

But wouldn’t it be nice if we actually had a world where the chances of the sort of screwed-upness that I experienced were reduced?

Well, don’t make the mistake of imagining that getting rid of porn is the way to do it. Because it jolly well isn’t.

Beware the propaganda you pay heed to

Bogart with fag: filtered or not?

A few days ago, with an hour to while away at lunchtime, I pottered along to the British Library to see its current exhibition on Propaganda: power and persuasion.

Although the subject is hardly new, the exhibition itself is described as ‘groundbreaking’.

On that note, I was at a bit of a loss to understand why. That’s not to say that some of the exhibits are not fascinating – a 16th-century book of anti-papal cartoons, for instance, which is used to illustrate the importance of the printing press to the spreading of propaganda – but it hardly felt revelatory.

The exhibition included recorded interviews with various people, including, for instance, Alistair Campbell, the former spin doctor to Tony Blair, while various exhibits bring the subject bang up to date by examining how social media is being used in the cause of propaganda.

There were materials from both sides in the first and second world wars, materials relating to colonialism and liberation struggles, to domestic politics and also to the sort of health and public information messages that we perhaps forget are also propaganda.

Perhaps it all felt a little staid because of the times we’re living in.

After all, this is the government that has looked as though Armando Iannucci’s The Thick of It has been its working script for governance.

And that’s before we mention Iain Duncan Smith’s repeat offence of being ‘economical with the truth’ about welfare stats.

Or David Cameron’s “there will be no more top-down reorganisations of the NHS”.

They could give Goebbels lessons.

Mind, as we’re also seeing, a complicit, conniving media is a big help.

In much the same way, as the issue of pornography has hit the headlines, the propaganda machine has been beavering away to sell the idea of internet service providers (ISPs) putting anti-porn filters on any contract.

You’ll have to opt in to ‘adult material’, not opt out.

But as I asked the other day: “One of the concerns about this announcement is whether it softens people up for further censorship. Do we trust government on the issue?”

Well, I didn’t then and the reasons are becoming increasingly apparent – whatever personal feelings are on the issue of pornography itself.

Because it seems that porn is far from the only thing that the government wants ISPs to block.

It seems that users may also find that they have to actively opt out of blocks on a variety of things from ‘violent material’ to ‘suicide-related websites’ to ‘alcohol’ to ‘smoking’.

Now it’s hard to know how this would work – whether a search for Alcholics Anonymous, for instance, would be barred if you hadn’t opted out of the relevant one. But that’s far from the only issue.

Many of the currently listed topics to be ‘filtered’ could easily play well with the population – ‘extremist’ materials, for instance.

But who finds those by accident anyway?

What should alert people rather more to the real agenda here is seeing ‘web forums’ listed – why? – together with the extraordinarily-labeled ‘esoteric material’, which, one suspects, could be applied to mean whatever someone wanted it to mean.

After all, since ‘esoteric’ means, in essence, ‘only understood by the initiated’, that could be applied to anything.

This blog, for instance. Trade unions. Religious groups. Take your pick.

Or, more to the point, whatever is the pick of whomsoever is in charge of defining these things at the time – fuller story here.

There’s a simple lesson to be learned here – hopefully before it’s too late: beware the propaganda that you allow yourself to believe.

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