Banning pornography is not about censorship but protecting the public from its “myriad harms”, a campaigner and academic has said.
Writing in The Daily Telegraph, Boston-based anti-porn scholar Dr Gail Dines warned of the damage caused by the industry – especially to women and children.
The UK Government recently announced a review of pornography regulation to tackle any gaps which allow “exploitative, abusive and illegal” content online.
Emotionally stunted
Dr Dines said the ‘industry’ was “gaslighting the public into thinking that porn is an issue of personal religious or moral opinion rather than a public health concern”.
But, she countered, research shows that regular viewers of pornography have higher rates of “emotional problems”, “sexual coercion”, “cyberstalking” and “sharing of nude photographs”.
The academic also related how younger users “tend to lack the necessary social and emotional skills to avoid unhealthy relationships and sexual encounters”.
She welcomed the move towards greater age verification in the US and elsewhere, including the UK – “which would require porn sites to check the age of their consumers”.
‘Virtue-signalling’
In reaction to anti-porn legislation, pornographers had become “apoplectic with litigious rage”, “waving the banner of free speech”, the campaigner argued.
“But it’s virtue-signalling intended to divert attention away from an obvious and effective step to protect the social, emotional, cognitive, and sexual health of minors.
“And overtime it will fail, much as Big Auto once did when railing against seat belts as a threat to freedom, or when Big Tobacco fought regulations banning advertising to kids.”
Dr Dines vowed to continue to harness academic research and feminism to stop “the largest unregulated – and predatory – industry in the world” from “further harming women and children”.
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