We’re living in a frightening time. Over the last few years we’ve faced a global pandemic, unusual and catastrophic weather events, and a political system that is falling apart at the seams. In addition to escalating wars abroad, Americans face inconceivably frequent mass shootings, rising inequality, visible poverty, protests, and police brutality. All of this in addition to a parade of new and terrifying technology that makes it easier for us both to communicate and to commit atrocities on an unprecedented scale. It makes sense that people are anxious. But instead of meeting this moment of rapid technological and social change with evidence-based solutions to real world problems, we’re hung up on an age-old issue: Pornography.
Last week the Wall Street Journal ran an article entitled Smartphones Have Turbocharged the Danger of Porn. The piece comes as a chorus of voices claim that the ability to access porn through our smartphones is the most urgent problem facing today’s youth.
We are in the midst of a moral panic similar to the Satanic panic of yore, or the unfounded fear that nefarious people are lacing Halloween candy with drugs. Some don’t like the widespread availability of pictures of naked people having unconventional sex — and that’s understandable, if a bit prudish. But we have bigger problems. It simply is not the most disturbing issue threatening the physical or psychological safety of our children.
However, denigrating pornography is a reliably effective tool to marshal and direct an older generation’s anxiety about the next. We have been having the same conversation for over 100 years. Each technological innovation that enables a new generation to access or share information that the ruling class (or parents) object to has brought with it a moral panic.
Anxiety about the corrupting influence of new technology dates back to Socrates who warned that teaching children to write would inevitably weaken their own memories to the detriment of their intellect and soul. Similar concerns about fleeting attention spans and moral corruption of the youth were expressed at the invention of the printing press, the widespread availability of novels, comic books, the radio, television, and of course, the internet.
For a more recent example, take the Comstock Act of 1870 which conflated obscenity with contraception. Anti-vice activist Anthony Comstock succeeded in criminalizing the distribution of not just porn, but also information about contraception, through the U.S. mail. During this period of time, conservative moralists often conspired with prohibitionist feminists to criminalize alcohol, abortion, prostitution, and obscenity. These laws, similar to the War On Drugs, ruined many more lives than they saved.
Too often we have sacrificed not just our liberty, but also the lives of artists, provocateurs, and adult sex workers in the name of “protecting” children and women, who are considered child-like in their supposed inability to handle explicit content or exposure to vice.
Yet porn and prostitution have been around forever. People have been making images depicting sexual behavior of all kinds — even what some would call deviant sexual behavior — since we were drawing on caves.
But believe it or not there’s no causal link between violent porn and actual sexual violence. And today’s prohibitionists, like their predecessors, are not interested in reducing exploitation in the sex industry; they are interested in removing all sexual content, even sex ed and information about consent and contraception, from the internet.
Today’s pornographers have gone to great lengths to moderate content, to verify the age and consent of performers, and to respond to violations. However, legislators are not waging a war on violence, or on exploitation, but instead on sex at large. The new wave of age verification laws are not meant to work with legally operating pornography companies toward the shared goal of keeping kids from accessing adult content, but rather on eradicating it entirely. As Harrinton notes, “Pornhub has withdrawn service entirely in the [now five] states that have passed age verification bills.” All that means is that adult residents of those states have now been denied access to the fourth most popular website on the internet.
In addition to age verification laws, stigma and a sustained effort to compel credit card companies and banks to stop doing business with erotic content creators have led to devastating consequences. People who make legal pornography have lost jobs, been kicked out of school, lost custody of their children, had their money seized, and have been permanently barred from accessing financial services and technology platforms.
There are absolutely people who have an unhealthy relationship with pornography. But porn has also created opportunities for people to get in touch with their own erotic power, and to find new tools, information, and courage to ask for what they want in bed.
Adult content has been used by countless couples who want to keep the spark lit in their own, private, bedrooms. Few elected officials have the moral courage to defend pornographers, or sex workers, but anyone who has ever enjoyed a moment on the internet that they would like to keep private ought to stand up for all of us.
Our children need to be protected from the proliferation of real violence: lead in the water, malnutrition, and broken educational and governmental systems. Children need housing, access to opportunities, and healthcare. And yes, they need to be protected from sexual predators. But censoring legal content intended for and created by consenting adults won’t help.
We have real problems to solve. People enjoying themselves, by themselves, has never been what’s tearing society apart.
