Should college networks ban porn?

 
Cherwell is the independent student newspaper of Oxford University, England. Founded in 1920 by students Cecil Binney and George Edinger, it has continued as a weekly publication during term-time to this day.Cherwell is named after a

BuzzNet Tags: bdsm porn

local river in Oxford and is published on Friday mornings when 3,000 copies of each issue are distributed around Oxford's colleges, the Oxford Union and some local cafes. The staff of Cherwell, including the Editors, changes every term.


Jennifer Brown, Anna Cooban on Monday 6th May 2013
 

Jennifer Brown and Anna Cooban go head to head.

YES

Jennifer Brown

The St Anne's Feminist Discussion Group this week mused putting a motion before their JCR to ban the use of pornography on the college network.

There are, of course, cases for the proposal. The most widely used argument is that porn is degrading to women and therefore, in allowing students to watch it, colleges are inadvertently allowing male (and female) students to be exposed to the objectification of women.

As I’m sure you will agree, using the words ‘slut’, ‘whore’ or ‘bitch’ to describe females is hardly progressive. Nor is the idea that a woman will submit to anything her male partner demands. And whilst some may argue that this is reality, that this is how some people behave during sex, it does not mean that such behaviour is right. For if that is the case, it is not just college rules which need to change but society’s perception of women also.

Furthermore, I am sure few will argue that porn which depicts women being raped, put into cages or performing oral sex on a dog, is really ‘suitable’ late night viewing.

And, yes, you may think bringing this up is all a little over the top for a matter solely concerned with students who are not generally associated with sexual abuse. . The majority of students at Oxford and indeed across the country will not delve into ‘violent’ porn like this. At least I hope not.

But the fact remains that it is available on the internet should a student wish to find it. Banning porn from its college network may seem a ridiculous idea, yet if acts such are these are socially unacceptable in some places, any desire to prevent association with them does become a little easier to digest.

The negative effects of porn do not end here. Porn engenders unrealistic physical standards for the majority. One only has to look at statistics for cosmetic surgery within the UK: 9,843 cases for ‘boob jobs’ are recorded for 2013 alone. Clearly presenting ideal archetypes has a detrimental affect on the self-esteem of individuals.

And as increased expectations not only affect notions of physical appearance, but sexual performance too, it is hardly surprising that individuals take issue with the concept of porn even prior to any discussion of college imposed bans.

Evidently, what people have failed to realise is that banning porn in colleges would be a good thing. Banning porn would be sending out the message that we wish to disassociate ourselves from porn’s link to sexual discrimination, the promotion of anti-social behaviour and out of proportion expectations.

Considering the collegiate system and heavy workload, many people in Oxford often find meeting a potential love interest a challenging task. Thus, they regress to the confines of their room, safe in the knowledge that porn will always provide an adequate alternative to social interaction and indeed, sex.

If St Anne’s adopts the potential JCR motion, then it could become the the leading light of Oxford as porn addicts come out of the woodwork and prepare themselves to find someone real rather than sitting behind their desks (where they work and eat) fixating over videos of people they’ll never meet.
 

NO

Anna Cooban
Banning porn is far too moralistic. If watching porn does provide issues for college internet connectivity then any ban on pornography hits no theoretical or moral brick wall, only a practical one.

Porn, in this context, is watched privately by adults in their rooms. What such a ban hints at is an objection to the personal use of pornographic websites, a prudish revulsion to the masturbatory indulgences of – let’s be frank – a predominantly male demographic.

Perhaps it makes some slightly queasy to know that somewhere in college a student may just be reaching their moment of ecstasy while the rest of us are poring over our textbooks.

However, the issues surrounding porn are clearly much bigger than this – it would be foolish to deny that the birth and subsequent boom of the porn industry has not in some way damaged society. The impossible scenarios depicted in these videos warp expectations of an individual’s own sexual experiences. Watching porn would make anyone feel that they had to climax within seconds and possess E-cup (and yet suspiciously perky) breasts, or a ten-inch penis that is perhaps better suited to a travelling circus than symbolising ‘true’ masculinity.

Porn is a feminist issue and to suggest otherwise is to deny the role it plays in objectifying women. Yet I find it hard to imagine that the proponents of this motion would have the same distaste for pornography if it was a widely accepted fact that men and women enjoyed watching porn to the same extent.

Porn is arguably just as much a male as a feminist issue; from increasingly younger ages, boys are pressured into following this ‘norm’ just as girls are taught to play with Barbie dolls, such that for one boy to buck this trend is an act of defiance rather than an uncontroversial personal choice.

Such a ban would be based on well-founded concerns and a debate that aims to raise awareness of porn-related issues is invaluable. However, forcing through the motion is little more than nannying.

The entire basis of modern capitalism is designed to make us all feel inadequate, encouraging us to yearn for something we do not have. To ban porn on these grounds would be to also ban any women’s fashion magazine that holds airbrushed supermodels as standards of acceptable beauty, music videos that depict pin-thin 20-somethings grinding on their 40-year-old rap overlords.

Men’s fitness magazines promote body builders as the pinnacle of masculinity, yet with hearts so fatty that the irony of the word ‘fitness’ appearing next to these specimens is inescapable.
We are constantly bombarded with reminders of the person we are supposed to be. Any student-led revolt against the porn industry is going to fall on deaf ears when it challenges a problem that is ingrained in our culture.

Porn is a destructive force of modern culture and a result of the 1960s sexual revolution that has, ironically, come full circle to produce a new kind of entrapment. Yet to restrict the personal use of pornography outright is to argue for the banning of any medium which produces the same destructive effect.

---

"Porn is not inherently misogynistic"

Simone Webb counters the arguments in last week's porn debate from Cherwell’s “Should college networks ban porn?”

Simone Webb on Thursday 9th May 2013

Photograph: Cherwell

The debate by Anna Cooban and Jennifer Brown in Cherwell on whether colleges should ban internet porn from their networks was badly argued, written and informed. Both pieces rested on dubious assumptions and a naïve approach to pornography: Brown’s article misused statistics astoundingly, while Cooban’s ignored some of the most important arguments in opposition to colleges banning porn.

Firstly, Brown showed a complete failure to differentiate ethically between consensual and non-consensual scenarios. For instance, the line “I am sure few will argue that porn which depicts women being raped, put into cages or performing oral sex on a dog, is really ‘suitable’ late night viewing” did not distinguish between the two acts which are both non-consensual and illegal (rape and bestiality) which are therefore already not permitted and require no further regulation, and an act which may well be fully consensual and part of a BDSM scenario (being put into a cage). Similarly, she states that it is not right for a woman to submit to her male partner during sex, which again erases the experiences of women who enjoy consensual BDSM activities (and assuming, as is often the way, that all BDSM involves female submission and male dominance).

Secondly, I want to touch briefly on Brown’s failure to demonstrate a causal link between the viewing of porn and cosmetic surgery: the argument essentially ran: “Porn! 9843 ‘boob jobs’ in the UK this year! Therefore porn bad!” One data point is not enough even for me to warn against assuming that correlation is causation; Brown did not even demonstrate correlation, or look at all at the break-down of that statistic.

Thirdly, Cooban’s argument against banning porn brings up, rightly, the way in which it is not just porn which affects self-image, behaviour, etc. However, she ignores two significant arguments against the banning of porn by college networks. The first is the way in which it affects students who may also choose to be sex workers, cutting off valuable sources of income. I quote from an email sent to me by a sex worker and Oxford alumna, Violet Rose: 

“Student sex workers might face loss of earnings if fewer people could view their sites and … purposely causing loss of earnings for other students seems like a wilful lack of worker solidarity between students, which may not have been apparent to more privileged (non-working) students”. (As requested, a link to her website. Largely safe for work.)

The second is just as significant: porn filters frequently block not just pornography and erotica, but also sexual health resources, particularly those for LGBTQ people: I would suggest that it would be negligent and harmful for colleges to put porn filters in place with this in mind. LGBTQ young people who require sexual information or even just wish to explore their sexuality using porn or erotica may be negatively affected.

Finally, I need to address the assumptions made by Cooban and Brown about porn. Porn is very much a feminist issue, but I take issue with the pessimism Cooban and Brown display. Much of the porn industry is misogynistic and aimed at men. But there is a burgeoning effort by many to produce ethical porn, porn which treats women as sexual agents and is female focused, queer porn (which treats transgender people with the respect often denied them by the mainstream porn industry) and feminist porn. T

here is erotica, for instance, like the Hysterical Literature video series (to be found on YouTube) which focus on women’s pleasure for its own sake, as opposed to more overtly performative displays of the female orgasm. For a college to institute porn filters banning ethically produced, non misogynistically presented and overtly consensual porn means that the filters boil down to preventing – or trying to prevent – adults making an informed decision to watch other adults engage in sexual acts, which is frankly bizarre. Porn is not inherently misogynistic and dangerous.

SOURCES: http://www.cherwell.org