Yes I agree the way the UK is going about this is fucking silly and unlikely to even work, however I haven’t seen much debate about the motive behind the act.
I feel like this community has generally been pretty critical of the porn industry and particularly the effect of the massive proliferation of easy to access internet porn on young men (“porn brain” was a pretty common term around here). But when the UK tries to ban it I’ve suddenly seen a lot of defense of teenagers right to see pics or boobs on the internet.
I would also point out this is an ML dominated community, most people here are pretty fine with socialist governments censoring content or restricting access to good that are deemed harmful to the common good. But I have noticed a trend on here where when a liberal capitalist government tries to do the same thing everyone suddenly start sounding very libertarian about porn/booze/slop movies/what have you.
Idk if this is looked at badly or whatever, but I really don’t care if under 18s look at porn/naked people. It’s normal for teens to be sexually active and I don’t really see how porn is any worse then that. It’s not a super principled, ml position or anything but yea :shrug-outta-hecks: idc if teens look at porn.
porn brain
I think better sex ed would fix this. I don’t know much about what it’s supposed to look like but I was given a very basic run down of the physical piv act and that was it. I don’t remember learning about kink, or consent, or any of that. Just penis in vagina, sperm in egg.
Yeah. Porn and stuff should definitely be kept to adults-only spaces of the internet, but also, we shouldn’t be making access more difficult than just requiring people to provide (or lie about) their age. If someone says they’re a kid in an adults-only space,
, and if any adults knowingly interact with minors in that space, x1000, but I think that should be the extent of the moderation.Breaking the rules is a time-honored teenage tradition, and I think we should allow kids the privacy to break rules without having a digital surveillance record keeping track of all the rules they broke, if that makes sense.
My stance on this has been consistent since my own teenage years (long ago). I just don’t chime in on these discussions very often.
Tbf I wasn’t that interested in mainstream porn when I was a teen anyway - I was more into illustrations and written smut. I get that there’s an argument for mainstream porn being harmful and exploitative, but I don’t think digital surveillance is the solution to that problem.
Unfortunately, I believe most of the people who want to ban porn also want to ban sex education. Giving people good, free, education would go a long way. People shouldn’t be learning about sex from pornhub.
One of my friends was saying like too many of her male partners try to choke her during sex, or to casually do some anal, and she thinks that’s just stuff they pick up in porn and think is normal.
Actually trying to make things better is never the point. The point is to label people as “bad” so that punishment and exploitation are justified.
I don’t like sex work, but I fucking hate the people who are currently fighting against sex work. I would have more trust with a socialist government regulating things than the religious fascists that we are actually dealing with.
Because this isn’t about actually protecting children and bettering society, it’s about using “protecting the children” as a cudgel to ban things they want to destroy or suppress. It isn’t just about porn, it’s also going to be used to attack minorities, LGBTQ people in particular. Every capitalist accusation at socialist countries is a confession. They accuse places like China of “suppressing free speech” and “controlling their citizen’s thoughts and behaviours” because that is exactly what they want to do.
To answer your question directly, no. I don’t think there is a “better implementation” of such a thing in a capitalist country. At best it would be less mask off, and would only open the door for more harmful policies years down the line, instead of months down the line. But the end goal of this isn’t to help, it’s to harm. “Better implementation” of deliberately harmful policy isn’t actually better for people, and doesn’t improve things, it just hides the harm better. The purpose of the system is what it does, not the flowery language they use to cloak it.
This is just my own uninformed take and I’m hoping to learn more so please be nice. I’m happy to be corrected if I’ve made an error.
I have no issues with an ideological commitment to combat Nazism and genocidal rhetoric, and taking effective measures to limit their spread, but I would still assume this needs to be backed up with the understanding that ideas cannot be killed and risk of the Streisand effect has to be managed.
In the US, governments attempted to impose restrictions on drugs and alcohol during the “war on drugs” and Prohibition, and regardless of the motive, it’s pretty clear the drugs won out both times. Similarly, restrictions on sex work seem to only harm the workers by driving it underground to give them no recourse should problems arise. What do you think a hypothetical “implemented better” restriction would look like that helps more than it harms?
Censoring “adult” material is always a kkkristian plot to suppress LGBTQ people
I would be for it if I thought that the policy had literally anything to do with actually keeping children safe
i don’t trust the motives or the tactics of a liberal capitalist government. they didn’t make a mistake here. it’s pretty obvious they don’t actually give a shit about vulnerable people and instead go to great lengths to protect the rich and powerful from any consequences that might arise from abusing vulnerable people.
if a socialist government wanted to enact a policy to protect minors from seeing harmful material, i would come to the meeting or read the remarks and decide if i agreed on the implementation strategy, because the goal seems laudable. i don’t know that i would be down for a strategy that could be scraped to make lists of people connected to their sexual interests, and that would be in my feedback to the committee.
in cuba, immediately after the revolution, they did not enforce the ban on underage people from engaging in sex work. rather they specifically banned and prioritized going after pimps, because those were the obvious predators in the equation. with capitalists, their enforcement mechanisms invariably betray the distinction between their stated goals (protect the vulnerable) and their actual motives (erode anonymity and the civil liberties of workers).
On a practical level: No. No “porn block” will be ever be implemented thoroughly enough that kids can’t find some shit online. And now that they can’t use pornhub.com, they’re instead gonna share links to undergroundfuckedupshit.com and see some really fucked up shit.
On a theoretical level: Still no. Sexuality is a natural part of life, and that still holds true for minors. I don’t think even a magical perfect censorship would help at all, it’s the equivalent of ‘abstinence-only’ education. Keeping children ignorant of sex is just a recipe for even more disaster.
I’d like to see massive regulation and cultural changes for porn industries such that they aren’t exploitative (unlikely to ever happen in capitalism). And I’d like to see massive changes to sex ed so kids can actually be taught about porn and how it’s unrealistic. Those changes would go 100x further to making lives better.
while i think the excuse they are using is a real problem and we should have discussions about it and try to come up with solutions, i would not trust a western government for a second about trying to do anything that is not pro capital and actively harming minorities. even less a government that actively and openly wants to remove queer people from existance
even if they would limit themselves to just limiting porn to adults (which obviously won’t happen since they want to be actively harmful) they are way too incompetent to actually create meaningful laws that actually protect anyone
I think if you’re 18 you should be allowed to look at porn and purchase it, I don’t see anything wrong that that. Under 18? Yeah it’s not good, younger people probably shouldn’t be exposed to it early. I disagree with China’s approach to ban pornography, it’s one of the few things I disagree with them on. Funny enough I could see China doing a better ban on porn for minors, while still allowing adults to access it, than anything the UK or USA is cooking up which is backwards and wrong.
I don’t think so, the issue isn’t really the implementation, but it not dealing with the wider issues of exploitation in the porn industry, and the implications for queer people under a government that is being increasingly hostile towards them. There are also issues with the implementation, like 18 year olds still being young, it not being a complete ban, and the whole… everything technical, but as far as I’ve seen the criticisms here haven’t been centered on the teens.
