{"id":31418,"date":"2018-02-14T05:45:26","date_gmt":"2018-02-14T10:45:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/geneveith\/?p=31418"},"modified":"2018-02-13T21:52:13","modified_gmt":"2018-02-14T02:52:13","slug":"a-serious-call-to-ban-pornography-draft","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/geneveith\/2018\/02\/a-serious-call-to-ban-pornography-draft\/","title":{"rendered":"A Serious Call to Ban Pornography"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Some of you may remember that in our predictions for 2018<\/a>, I said that the \u201csexual counter-revolution\u201d\u2013that is, the reaction against the sexual mistreatment of women ignited by the #MeToo movement\u2013would continue and that it would manifest itself in an \u201canti-pornography backlash.\u201d\u00a0 This is starting to happen.<\/p>\n

I blogged about<\/a> Great Britain forcing free porn sites to require users to register and give their contact information so that their age could be checked and how this loss of anonymity would likely have an inhibiting effect.<\/p>\n

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Now columnist Ross Douthat, writing in the New York Times, no less, has written a column entitled Let\u2019s Ban Porn<\/a>.<\/p>\n

He says that women who are rebelling against sexual predators are realizing that many of them are acting out the fantasies that they learned from pornography.\u00a0 In fact, pornography has become the major source of sex education, so that young men are using pornography as the model for their own sexuality, to the repulsion of their partners.\u00a0 This is having serious repercussions on the family, on dating, on the treatment of women, and our moral climate as a whole, even considered in its most secular forms.<\/p>\n

Douthat says that, contrary to the common assumptions, it is certainly possible to ban pornography.\u00a0 There is plenty of legal precedent for that, even considering free speech issues.\u00a0 And it is certainly possible to restrict it.<\/p>\n

He doesn\u2019t mention the British experiment, which doesn\u2019t actually ban anything, just sets up a process to keep children away from it, and, in so doing, brings to bear the salutary feeling of shame\u2013<\/em>as in, \u201cI would be ashamed to admit that I use this site by giving my name.\u201d\u00a0 It isn\u2019t clear to me whether the British regulation, to which the multi-national pornographers have agreed to follow, will affect just Great Britain or other parts of the world too, such as the United States.\u00a0 (If anyone knows, please say so in the comments.)\u00a0 But there is no reason that the United States and other countries couldn\u2019t impose a similar requirement.<\/p>\n

Here is a sample from Douthat\u2019s column:<\/p>\n

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You see a kind of female revulsion, not against Harvey Weinstein-style apex predators, but against the very different sort of male personality that a pornographic education seems to produce: a breed at once entitled and resentful, angry and undermotivated, \u201cwoke\u201d and caddish, shaped by unprecedented possibilities for sexual gratification and frustrated that real women are less available and more complicated than the version on their screen.<\/p>\n

Such men would exist without industrial-scale porn, but porn selects for them, as it selects for\u00a0a romantic landscape like our own<\/a>: ever-more-liberated and ever-less-erotic,\u00a0trending Japan-ward<\/a>\u00a0in its gulf between the sexes, with marriage and children and sex itself in shared decline.<\/p>\n

So if you want better men by any standard, there is every reason to regard ubiquitous pornography as an obstacle \u2014 and to suspect that between virtual reality and creepy forms of\u00a0customization<\/a>, its influence is only likely to get worse.<\/p>\n

But unlike many structural forces with which moralists of the left and right contend, porn is also just a product \u2014 something made and distributed and sold, and therefore subject to regulation and restriction if we so desire.<\/p>\n

The belief that it should not be restricted is a mistake; the belief that it cannot be censored is a superstition. Law and jurisprudence\u00a0changed once\u00a0<\/a>and can change again, and while you can find anything\u00a0somewhere<\/em>\u00a0on the internet, making hard-core porn something to be quested after in dark corners would dramatically reduce its pedagogical role, its cultural normalcy, its power over libidos everywhere.<\/p>\n

[Keep reading. . .]<\/a><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

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\u00a0Photo by Jeramey Jannene from Milwaukee, WI, United States of America (Laptop Time) [CC BY 2.0 (http:\/\/creativecommons.org\/licenses\/by\/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons<\/em><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/article>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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Some of you may remember that in our predictions for 2018, I said that the \u201csexual counter-revolution\u201d\u2013that is, the reaction against the sexual mistreatment of women ignited by the #MeToo movement\u2013would continue and that it would manifest itself in an \u201canti-pornography backlash.\u201d\u00a0 This is starting to happen. I blogged about Great Britain forcing free porn […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1281,"featured_media":31433,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,15,26,41],"tags":[6033,6200,6203,1763,6114],"class_list":["post-31418","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-culture","category-ethics","category-law","category-sex","tag-metoo-movement","tag-anti-pornography-laws","tag-banning-pornography","tag-pornography","tag-sexual-counter-revolution"],"yoast_head":"\nA Serious Call to Ban Pornography<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"The sexual counter-revolution ignited by the #MeToo movement has produced an anti-pornograpphy backlash. 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