User voices are missing from the porn debate
The debate about regulating online porn almost never features the voices of porn users, because stigma and shame surround the consumption of porn.
Porn users who have an informed perspective on the diverse realities of porn — the good, the bad and the ugly.
Consumers are often critically informed, alive to the ethical issues in porn, and aware that there are key problems remaining to be solved.
But porn consumers are regularly represented as:
- addicted to porn use
- ceaselessly seeking harder porn
- misogynistic by definition
The debate over porn regulation is missing the full picture, and it fails to represent the needs and experience of a key stakeholder community.
In a liberal democracy that’s cause for concern.
Fast regulation—crisis by crisis
Remember the panic about sexting?
It was the mid-2000s and for the first time in history many adolescents had a digital camera under their own personal control — attached to their phones.
They did what people have done throughout the ages and took nude selfies. Sometimes they shared them with other people, and sometimes those recipients shared their pictures and videos with yet more people.
‘Sexting’ (as it became known) caused some young people a lot of suffering, and parents were panicked about how to stop their kids getting involved in it.
But panic makes bad policy.
Sexting was regulated in many places through a combination of new and old laws and regulatory practices including ‘cyber’ agencies and the police.
Today, a minor person (someone under 18 years of age) who complains to police that their picture or video has been circulated online may be charged with producing child sexual abuse material (CSAM) — of themselves. The recipient — often another minor — can be charged with possessing CSAM even if they didn’t solicit the material and don’t circulate it to anybody else. Young people have even been charged for sending the evidence to police.
The regulation of online adult content proceeds crisis by crisis.
Some of these crises are quite carefully manufactured and coordinated by anti-porn organisations motivated by Christian or radical feminist beliefs.
Slow regulation—coordinated and stealthy
The other way in which the regulation of online porn takes place is slow, deliberated, coordinated and stealthy. Religious and feminist anti-porn organisations work behind the scenes to apply pressure to digital platforms, payment processors and service providers to ‘de-platform’ adult content, adult performers, and adult service providers like sex workers.
Let’s be real—there are problems with online porn
Right off the bat, I want to acknowledge there are problems with porn:
- Free ‘tube’ sites that rip off performers, creators and producers
- Lack of copyright notices for reproducible video content
- Predatory copyright action that amounts to extortion of consumers
- Exploitation of inexperienced performers in challenging scenes
- Lack of consensus on safer practices for kink or adventurous sex
- Corners of the web where misogyny is celebrated
- Difficulties conveying and confirming that a scene was consensual
But effective regulation requires bringing all the parties to the table and hearing their different perspectives.
Right now, we are only hearing from the ‘moral entrepreneurs’ on porn.
Regulating porn can be done better
Here are six principles that could improve the regulation of porn.
Click on each heading to see the underlying principles.
Porn users have been silenced by shame but their experiences and perspectives matter — and so do creators, producers and performers.
Don’t respond rapidly to a sense of crisis — respond carefully based on evidence and experience
Build the skills of creators and consumers to navigate ongoing and affirmative consent
Support porn consumers to appraise the ethics and safety of the content they are accessing
Acknowledge the ways in which porn use can contribute to sexual wellbeing and fulfilment
Promote strategies to reduce the injury risk and minimise potential harms in production and use