Image: Maja desnuda censurata by Twice25 (via Wikimedia Commons)

Adult content. Pornography. Legal. Criminal. Consensual. Fantasy. Responsible parenting. Child abuse.

What do these words and terms mean to you? How do they make you feel? And if I asked you to separate them into ‘Good’ and ‘Bad’ buckets, what would you put where?

In the wake of the U.K. government’s plans to default censor pornography (David Cameron announced last week that all British households will be required to ‘opt in’ if they wish adult content to appear in search results), these questions will become more and more pertinent. Everyone, and I mean everyone, regardless of whether they feel they’re directly affected by these proposed changes, needs to be asking themselves ‘How do I feel about government imposed censorship?’ and ‘What value do I place on my right to discover legal content on the Internet?’

I’m willing to bet money on the fact that any normal, well-adjusted person reading this post will have put ‘criminal’ and ‘child abuse’ into the ‘Bad’ bucket and ‘legal’, ‘consensual’, ‘fantasy’ and ‘responsible parenting’ into the ‘Good’ bucket. But where did you put ‘adult content’? Where did you put ‘pornography’?

Up front and in a loud, shouty voice: I do not, for one minute, condone any pornographic content that is produced illegally, without the actors’ consent, or features children. Anyone who has any sort of involvement in that kind of sick sh*t needs to be prosecuted to the full extent of the law. Legally produced pornography, however, is another matter entirely. By definition, it is just that – legal – and it’s a dangerous and slippery road we travel down if we decide that governments have the right to automatically restrict our access to material that may make us uncomfortable but ultimately complies with the law.

I will be blunt: as far as titillation goes, visual pornography is not my thing. I come across it on my travels around the web and usually keep moving right along – I far prefer to explore sexual fantasy in text form. But the fact that legal pornography doesn’t work for me, that it is not a hot button in my particular case, in no way means that I have the right to tell another responsible adult that they cannot source and enjoy it. That would be projecting my own tastes and values on someone else and I have absolutely no right to do that. Do I see legal content on the Internet that offends me? All the time – and do you know what I do? I click away. The same way that I put a book down if the content is objectionable, switch off a television programme I dislike.

‘But isn’t this move about protecting children?’ I hear you say. ‘Won’t all this default censorship better shield them from the cocktail of sexual content lurking just a few key taps and mouse clicks away?’

For about five minutes. If we, as parents, think for one second that this move is going to absolve us from teaching out children about online safety, sex and sexual responsibility then we need our heads read. We live in a digital age and we need to get our heads around that. Fast. What happens when they go to another child’s house to play, those filters are switched off and they’re surfing the web unsupervised? What happens when they discover how to deactivate the filter on your home computer and have a good old poke around when you’re in the kitchen cooking supper? There is no substitute for age-appropriate discussions about sex and what is morally right and wrong. No substitute for providing a frank and thorough education about the online space and what they may or may not discover there. Frankly, I have more immediate concerns about the content on the various music video channels, which is readily available, at any time of day, via a digital T.V. box.

It is my job as a mum, as a responsible parent, to make sure that I educate and supervise my kids, ensure to the best of my ability that they are not exposed to pornography, and not rely on the government to semi-babysit them at the expense of normal, law-abiding adults. Because what the government is basically saying with this proposed legislation is that we, as a nation, cannot be trusted to turn on a filter system on our own, and that porn and the people who engage with it are bad, lumping them in with all those who are truly criminal. Nice.

What I would like to know is how this censoring is going to stop child pornography, because that, to my mind, is the issue that needs urgent attention. Tell me, Mr Cameron: how is this default filter going to stop those who are putting it online and those who watch it? How will it help with prosecutions? What are you doing to teach young people about online safety in schools and (controversial suggestion ahead), at the appropriate age, about ‘good’ versus ‘bad’ porn? Are we giving children any tools to cope, teaching them what to do if they discover the latter? Do they know how to report it?

What has also become very clear from all the commentary out there is that many people are confusing legal and illegal content. Further, we don’t seem to be able to distinguish between fantasy and real life:

 

‘Possessing pornography that depicts simulated rape is to become a criminal offence in England and Wales to make Britain a place where there is a “sense of right and wrong”.’

– via The Independent

 

Remember that word I used at the beginning of this piece, ‘consensual’? It’s sitting in your ‘Good’ bucket, yes? Well, let’s for a moment attach it to the word ‘fantasy’, also on the ‘Good’ sheet. ‘Yes, yes, Jane,’ I hear you say, ‘That’s perfectly all right with me. Consensual fantasy. Totally acceptable.’ Okay, then. Now imagine that the fantasy involves consensual non-consent between adults – by which I mean that the participants willingly choose to play out a non-consent scenario. What is your stance now? Keep in mind that none of the elements in these fantasies can be attached to the two things we’ve placed in the ‘Bad’ bucket, ‘criminal’ (there’s consent) and ‘child abuse’ (only of age adults are involved). My point here is that this scenario may make you feel uncomfortable – it may make you squirm more than a little – but it is, nonetheless, a consensual fantasy, and one that the participants or observers have every right to engage with or in. (You can read a brilliant article about this very topic on Musing of Rose’s blog; she herself is a rape survivor, and she articulates the complexities of such a scenario far more eloquently than I ever could.) I am not saying for one minute that some people won’t find this particular proposition offensive or that rape is ever acceptable in real life – rather that we have the right to engage or not engage in consensual fantasies of this type. And I’m not the only one who thinks this; per the Twitter account of author and columnist Louise Mensch:

 

‘It is not for our government to police consensual simulation, between adults, of one of women’s most common fantasies. I would hope that any such law would be challenged in the courts and fail in the courts. It is inhuman. Rape and rape fantasy not the same.’

 

I have to wonder, if the government pursues this line of thought, are they  going to go after the Mills & Boon back catalogue, which throughout the 80s and 90s featured the awful ‘rape plot’ device? In my opinion, the messages in those books promoted a far more damaging idea (‘rape as romance’).

And this leads me on to my next point: copy.

I can’t help but notice that the media hoopla surrounding this whole pornography crackdown has focussed largely on the Big P in its visual form, that there has been very little said about text. Will these measures affect the written word? What about short stories, books and articles? Will these filtered by search engines, too?

According to David Cameron:

 

‘It will depend on how the filters work.’

– via The Independent

 

Well, that clears that up then. And who, may I ask, will be deciding what is pornographic? Who, pray tell, is going to become our moral compass? What exactly will be included on the hit list? Sex education blogs? Sexual health sites? Erotic romance bookstores? Sex toy retailers? Fetlife? Blogs just like this one? (I had a friend recently tell me she got a pop-up warning saying that Behind the Chintz Curtain was a ‘porn’ site. Wow. News to me.) Oh, and I read non-con erotica. Am I going to be prosecuted for having C.J. Roberts’ Captive in the Dark on my bookshelf?

Freedom of speech and expression are not always comfortable. But we cannot just choose to be liberal with the easy stuff. We’re very lucky that, up until now, we have automatically been given the opportunity to decide what we see when we search for material online. (At this moment in time, you can choose to visit this site, read this post, decide I am or I’m not talking complete rubbish, and stay or leave.) But if we let this type of default censorship become the norm, where does it stop? Per Molly Moore and Harper Eliot: First they came for the pornographers – but who’s next?

I’ll leave you with this map of world Internet censorship below; I suspect that the U.K. isn’t going to be green for much longer …

 

Image: via Wikimedia Commons

 

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