Porn, Censorship, and the Rise of a New Form of Fascism
@PornPanic France is not banning prostitution actually quite the contrary. We are banning the buying of sex and de-criminalizing prostitutes -
Stephanie Lamy (@WCM_JustSocial) April 6, 2016
But it takes a truly Orwellian mindset to believe that one can outlaw the buying of service without hurting those who sell it. This is, of course, designed to hurt sex workers.
The bigotry of the anti-prostitution movement is there for all to see. Sex workers are not divided on this: they are clear, whenever they are listened to, that sex work must be entirely decriminalized.
Impartial observers - such as Amnesty International, who recently adopted a policy of decriminalization - have not found this a tricky, two-sided argument.
It is well known that criminalizing any aspect of the trade clearly harms sex workers. So let us not treat prohibitionists as misguided people who care, any more than we should waste breath over whether it is right or wrong to lynch black people or gas Jews.
Anti-prostitution campaigners are bigots, plain and simple. They seek to attack what they hate and fear. And this bigotry born of fear and loathing, that is rising in France, is part of a far bigger historical shift. France is sinking back into fascism.
What is disconcerting is that, unlike last time around, the driving force of French fascism is the political left. A few days ago, for example, French Socialist government minister Laurence Rossignol said that women who wore veils were like “negroes who supported slavery”. The anti-veil law was presented with a thin progressive veneer, using ‘secularism’ as an excuse.
But France’s secularism is not the religious freedom of the Enlightenment. It is an opportunity to viciously abuse minorities.
And as the sex work commentator Laura Agustín wrote on Facebook yesterday, this anti-prostitution law, too, is rooted in France’s deep racism: “In France where more than half those who sell sex are migrants, the law is overtly anti-migration. The message is if you want to do this - Leave.”
France has always been one of the worst places in Europe to be an immigrant. Now the French war on immigrants is getting vicious, and the left is at the forefront of it.
The job of far-right leader Marine Le Pen is done: who needs the far-right when fascism is just as comfortably at home on the left? The collapse of the progressive left is not just a French thing. It is no coincidence that, in the UK, a Labor-led parliamentary inquiry is also trying to ban prostitution.
Open anti-sex attitudes and veiled racist attitudes are now commonplace on the political left everywhere: the recent attack on a student wearing dreadlocks - simply because the student was white - shows the rot is there on the American left too.
As someone who once felt at home on the left, this change in the political landscape is disconcerting. The left’s shift towards fascist attitudes forms the heart of my new book, Porn Panic!
Liberal values of equality, liberty, and reason are collapsing across the political spectrum. France’s prostitution ban and that of the veil represent dark clouds rising over the western world.
I am part of several online groups for sex professionals, which are a great source of inspiration and also discussion.
Recently, a discussion erupted into a slagging match in which one member criticized some of the senior educators in our global community for not doing ‘enough’ about the ‘crisis’. Crisis? I thought. What crisis were they referring to exactly?
The crisis that leaves people feeling ashamed of their sexuality? The crisis that is the appalling state of sex education globally?
The crisis that leaves people feeling broken or damaged if they find themselves enjoying porn? The crisis that means we still regard sex as a taboo topic on social media, but acts of violence and animal abuse are OK?
Is that the crisis they were referring to? No. Apparently, the crisis they were referring to is the one that we as sex therapists and sex educators don’t all agree that all porn is bad. That all teens are being led astray by porn, (because they are stupid… or because they often don’t get proper sex education?).
That young boys are monsters and girls are victims with no interest in sex for their own pleasure: that otherwise powerful, well-balanced men are suffering because they are incapable of knowing the difference between reality and fantasy: and that porn is to blame for compulsive (sexual) behavior and destroying relationships (unlike smartphones, social media and the Internet which have never contributed to breakdowns in communication between loved ones…apparently).
The truth is, compulsive behavior is a thing, and compulsive behavior around sex and porn is also a thing. But compulsive behavior is a thing also associated with sugar, cleanliness, food, smells, and just about anything else that affects us as humans.
Compulsive behavior is seen in humans and in animals and can stem from a variety of sources, most often responses to stress and anxiety. In fact, compulsive behavior in many guises has been around a long time, well before the rise of internet porn.
Just ask Lady Macbeth and Van Gogh. While I agree that some porn around these days is truly awful, and some people struggle in their relationship with it, I also see a lot of TV shows, music, films, and truly awful blogs, that wield extraordinary influence on the lives of many, yet this is rightly not referred to as a ‘crisis’. It’s just considered garbage.
Like crap porn, this too is garbage. A crisis on the other hand is huge. Poverty. Racism. Sexism. Corruption. These are serious crises with large NGOs and global movements drawing attention to their needs. Porn and its rise is not a crisis.
Porn is a response. Beyond that, smart porn (ethical, feminist, diverse, and even mainstream that depicts equality, pleasure, and consent) is a response to not only such crises but to our inability to address the elephant in the room that is our sexuality.
Smart porn is a way of expressing that which cannot be expressed in words. And this is what makes it powerful and necessary.
Sex, intimacy, and their associated complexities are not a crisis, but how we disregard that part of ourselves is. But there are no NGOs for bad sex because sex taps into our core, the parts of ourselves that leave us feeling uncomfortable at times – a vulnerability we would prefer would just go away.
We so rarely get to see these parts of ourselves reflected back to us, but all porn addresses that need. The good, the bad, and the ugly. This is, in my opinion, why it’s so popular and makes up over 25% of all internet searches (Perrin et al. 2008).
Smart porn is one medium that is picking up the slack and making sex publicly accessible and a powerful initiator of conversation and therefore change. As consumers, the public, and sexuality professionals, we do not have to agree about how we like our porn if we like it at all. But what we do have to accept, is porn is not going away.
For those who don’t like it, don’t watch it. And for those who do, let’s strive to talk about it more, to make it better, and to see versions of ourselves we would like to see celebrated.
If you are struggling with porn consumption, compulsive behavior and feel shame about expressing sex and pleasure, get in touch with me for a private therapeutic consultation face-to-face or via Skype.
Author: Jerry Barnett
Jerry Barnett is the founder of the Sex & Censorship campaign in the UK. In many ways, he runs an organization that does similar work to Eros in Australia and the Free Speech Coalition in the US.
Over the last decade, there has been an undeniable shift in the way European governments have viewed the whole of the sex industry. After legalizing X-rated films in the early 2000s, successive UK governments have attempted to claw back on what sort of sexual material can be legally sold. But unlike the conservative campaigns of Margaret Thatcher, Ronald Reagan, and John Howard, this new wave of censorious legislation is coming from the left and not from the right.
The prosecution of the clients of sex workers in Scandinavia under the misleading ‘Nordic model’ label has now spread to other countries with France being the latest to fall.
There are now serious stirrings in the UK to adopt this model even though Amnesty International has laid all the best evidence for full legalization on the table for all to see.
So what does this say about where the new moral panic is originating from? Porn Panic! charts the rise of a new antisex, pro-censorship movement. Unlike the old morality movements, this one is focused on the left of politics. Using the language of the old, liberal left – especially the feminist movement – the new conservatives have set out to rein in pornography, erotica, and free speech in general.
This book is a must-read for all students of the adults-only industry in Australia because it is starting to happen here as well! Individual copies available from Booktopia.com.au Wholesale inquiries for adult shops: Jerry Barnett jerry.barnett@gmail.com
