Porn – Pleasure but also exploitation

I believe when the government extended a ban to some 900 odd porn sites, they did it with a good intention. I also don’t want to pretend that I am a Victorian prude and talk about how porn has wreaked havoc in society.  Porn is probably one of those words that have both pleasure and exploitation attached to it. This ban (Porn ban is a misnomer because there are many more than 900 sites and you still have easy access to DVDs) is one of those occasions when one is left with two minds. One part says it is not justified, while another says it very much is.

Now let us not mistake porn with erotica. Erotica has aesthetics associated with it. Porn in most cases doesn’t. Also porn is not just limited to visuals of acts of intercourse. There is coercive and humiliation porn, and rape and revenge porn. Then we also have snuff and BDSM and the worse of them all probably is the child porn. In all these categories there is a constant domination and humiliation of the woman (or child) involved in the act.

People might argue that it is just an act and not a real case of rape and humiliation. Here I probably take my one chance to act as a prude and say – if watching women putting up an act of getting raped by one or more men is a mark of a liberal society then I would happily trade that for maybe the Victorian era.

With the increasing cases of assault of young children and toddlers, child pornography on the internet should be severely dealt with. As I am very technically challenged, I don’t know what steps could be taken to completely ban child porn (as you block one site and another will eventually come up), but for the sake of sanity this ‘genre’ of porn should go down.

In the past 24 hours I’ve come across various tweets and posts on the government’s ‘conservatism’ (and of course how the RSS is against ‘porn’).  The angst against porn is however not a patented Sangh thing.  A couple of years back Mr. Cameron was bombarded with signatures to protect children by imposing an automatic block on online pornography. Feminists ( I mean feminists who actually fought for the cause of women and not those living off  foreign funding and finding faults in everything that has ‘culture’ attached to it) world over have at various times wanted to bring down pornography.  While degradation of women has been their primary concern, essays such as Naomi Woolf’s have argued that it desensitizes the minds of men and leads to impotence and premature ejaculation.

And even as we talk of freedom on the internet, we forget how that same freedom is ruining lives of innocent young girls and women. The porn industry in India is not like that of the west. The models here are not carefully dolled up with pretty clothes and make up and there are no shimmery lights to make it look like an actual film. Though we have lot of prostitutes indulging in the act, we also have a lot of hidden cameras capturing the act.  Or sometimes the woman is coerced. Then you also have the ‘ex boyfriend genre’, where a relationship turns sour and an intimate act is put up on the internet. Most of us are not strangers to the news of women killing themselves over such incidents.

Also there are acts of rape that are ‘liberally’ uploaded on the internet and a woman is held in lifelong captivity by her attackers.

Women have also argued about how their man makes them feel inadequate. The idea of a woman’s body that they get from porn stars is not replicated in their partners. Or some women have felt anguished when a partner has requested or coerced them to perform an act they had just seen in a film.

Though critics here will be quick to point out that ‘blue film’ existed probably from the times when dinosaurs roamed the earth, but degradation and unreasonable demands on women cannot be just overlooked.

Pornography also forms a subtle tool of humiliation in office spaces. I am sure many form my gender will agree to have stumbled on a shared computer where a colleague has deliberately left a window with a ‘moaning couple’ open. Or having walked into a cubicle and a huddle dispersing in hurry and the snide suggestive comments that follow!

As a woman I would feel empowered to know that there is no one taking a video of someone less fortunate. However technology has not given us the pleasure of security. And trusting fully in the government’s intentions I also feel there is no concrete means to see an end of this.

It is a humongous task and of course we cannot set up a ‘Ministry’ that will look into ‘aesthetic porn’ and ‘ugly porn’.  Banning 900 odd sites will also not curb forced nudity or exploitation of women. We still have Mms, Dvds, torrents and proxy servers.  And these points also form the premise of ‘why I think the ban is not justified’.  One- it is an exhaustive exercise.  Two- not all men who watch porn do it with to quench their thirst of bestiality and domination.  And only a minuscule number of men would want to embarrass women with display of pornographic content in public spaces.

Also let me not pretend that my gender doesn’t watch porn. Of course women do for the same reasons that men do. Some are locked in sexless marriages and seek pornography as a means of gratification. So even as people talk about how the ban of Maggie and porn will be hard hitting on hostels they should also remember the same applies to girls hostels. Also it is no secret that women ogle at men and enjoy the show of their bodies.

A topic where even psychiatrists are divided is actually muddy water. A blanket ban on anything will not see any solution.  Instead of outraging probably this is one area where we as citizens need to unite and brainstorm to differentiate between the pleasure and exploitation.