internet pornography

I was talking to my friend today about a Channel 4 programme I'd watched called 'Why men watch porn'  and he said 'why not write about it' so this is simply my take on it.


There were a few issues that were skated around regarding the programme.  The 'experts' on the show gave the impression that watching internet pornography regularly is socially acceptable and women are OK about it. I'm not sure that's entirely true, well not from any women I've ever talked to. At best they're more likely to shrug their shoulders and leave their men to their kleenex boxes and go to bed. At worse they're deeply distressed about it, affecting relationships and their own self-esteem.


The first issue was: there's no brake for men watching porn on the internet. No moral code or censure.  What is to stop men going ever deeper into the morass, looking for a bigger thrill which must inevitably happen as it's all conveniently just a click away?  As the brain's dopamine levels become inevitably jaded as in cocaine addiction, requiring more and more salacious content to maintain a hit, what is there to stop a man accessing quite unthinkably dark illegal pornography?  And becoming an addiction to such an extent, a man can't perform 'real' sex with a 'real' woman.


Forty years ago, men who hung around outside school gates were reviled and referred to as 'the dirty mac brigade' and viewed with derision and contempt. Sometimes they sat in their cars masturbating as they watched young girls playing netball. It appears now with the explosion of pornography on the internet that's it's OK to be doing - no different basically -  what these men did forty years ago. Even twenty years ago pornography wasn't so accessible, that's part of the problem. Men had to reach for the top shelf in bookshops or enter dubious looking premises with blacked-out windows and shifty looking customers. Or wait for unmarked brown paper-wrapped parcels to arrive in the post. The internet has changed all that.


Pornography is used by 80 – 90% of sex offenders and murderers. Most notably Ian Brady and Fred West. World-wide porn revenues, including in-room movies at hotels, sex clubs, and the Internet, topped $97 billion in 2006 — more than that of Microsoft, Google, Amazon, eBay, Yahoo!, Apple, Netflixs, and EarthLink combined. There are a staggering 68 million search engine requests for pornography daily, that's 25% of all use. And is the fastest growing cause of divorce in the United States. In the UK, the number of cases in which children received court orders or warnings for sex offences has jumped by 20% in the past three years; experts blame the Internet, saying that the youth behaviour has been changed by ready access to sexual imagery. ("Web is blamed for 20 per cent leap in sex attacks by children", This is London, March 3, 2007.)


Chillingly, 20% of all pornography on the internet involves children and is a multi-billion dollar industry. And is amongst the fastest growing criminal segment. No decent person would dream of allowing someone into their home with such intent but shockingly at ease with the association on their computers. I find it odd that policing isn't in place via search engines and service providers, it can be done as the Chinese government proved recently. Because if it's like this now, at the current rate of explosion, I dread to think what the next ten years will bring forth. This isn't censorship but crime prevention.


The second issue is what men and boys see portrayed on the 'net isn't a true picture of a woman whether young or older.  Women don't wear inch-thick pancake body makeup to cover flaws nor are they hairless. Feminism was about being equal and being treated equally but this isn't equality.  We are still being viewed and used as submissive 'sex objects', not much has changed, you see it everywhere in the media, if anything it's deteriorated to the levels where young girls often hate their bodies after looking at often photo-shopped images.  And a lot of young boys expect girls to look like what's shown on the 'net. It's little wonder there are so many examples of body dysmorphia amongst our sex,  markedly so in our younger girls.


And a frightening rise in young women resorting to breast augmentation and other cosmetic surgical procedures. Along with Brazilian waxes or total waxes, and veers uncomfortably close to an 'ideal' of pre-pubescent girls, is this really something we should be perpetuating as women? So much pain - so little gain. Women who state that jobs such a lap-dancing etc are empowering are a bit wide of the mark. For a start, most of the club owners are men. I've spoken to former lap-dancers after they've given it up and started families. Their opinion shifts dramatically and it's talked of with disgust.


We have the worst teenage pregnancy rate in Europe along with a 'binge drinking' culture. Self-respect isn't something that should have to be taught in schools, it should come from within the family and role models in society. That those role models are the likes of Katie Price and Kate Moss or footballers wives is unfortunate as their car crash lives are explicitly reported in the gutter press. There is nothing wrong in saying no. That it's cool to say no. That sex is something wonderful, an act of intimacy and an expression of love: a gift and not something to be cheapened and denigrated. Not a farmyard act. This message needs to be got across to teenage boys who's only sex education may be the internet. And take the pressure off teenage girls.


I can only equate the explosion of internet porn and constant viewing of it to certain television shows, where vast numbers sit and watch – for example - cookery programmes then order a takeaway pizza. We have become a nation of voyeurs, incapable of getting off our backsides,  content merely to live vicariously through the actions of others.