he battle against the scourge of pornography permeating our country is again in full swing.
The latest rumble comes courtesy of The Justice Alliance of SA (Jasa), which this week filed papers in the Western Cape High Court challenging a decision by the Independent Communications Authority of SA (Icasa) in April, which gave TopTV the nod to flight adult entertainment channels.
Jasa’s justification for doing so? The protection of children’s rights, gender inequality and – my favourite – the “weakening of the spiritual and moral fibre of society”.
It’s not that I’m necessarily pro-porn. Thanks to the “artistic circles” in which I once travelled – and the freakish sibling of an ex-boyfriend – I was exposed to the full spectrum of erotica (in theory only, never in practice.) And lemme tell ya, ol’ Freud wasn’t far off the mark when he suggested that all psychological instability manifests itself in sexual perversion: what some deem “arousing” is just downright disturbing!
But this tendency to pin all of our social ills on a practice which, in one form or another, has existed since ancient times (just take a trip to the ruins of Pompeii) is absurdity in action.
Pornography isn’t responsible for gender inequality: people are. And while we’re on the subject of “spiritual fibre”, perhaps the complainants would care to take a closer look at how religion across the board (given that Jasa is a coalition comprised of churches as well) is one of the main culprits of female subjugation.
Whether the issue is in any way related to children’s rights is also dubious: the channels are authorised to broadcast only within a certain time slot (namely, between 8pm and 5am, when most young ’uns should be snoring soundly), and viewers will need a separate subscription from their main service to access the TV stations and a double pin code to boot.
The channel provider has, for its part, certainly taken stringent measures to prevent the material from being accessible to those who are under age.
If parents are concerned these measures still won’t be sufficient, perhaps they should make more of an effort to rear and instil discipline in their own children, rather than shift the responsibility to a faceless entertainment medium.
Besides which, it’s rather laughable there should be such concern regarding a child’s exposure to the subject on television, while the fact that they have ready access to it on the Net (roughly 4.2 million sites) goes largely unchecked.
Perhaps porn does create unrealistic expectations in the bedroom. Like the “fact” that a woman will immediately orgasm at a mere glance, or every hetero-sexual female is just “dying” to get it on with her girlfriend. While her boyfriend or husband watches on, no less.
But then, don’t movies do the same? They bombard us with endless storylines of a single protagonist who takes on an avalanche of attackers while barely breaking a sweat, the guy who always gets the girl, good invariably triumphing over evil and characters with the most menial of jobs who still manage to afford a plush flat and designer shoes.
Not to mention the graphic violence and gratuitous nudity and/ or sex scenes many movies – and music videos, for that matter – also display. Yet not a peep of “gender inequality”, “eroding of social and spiritual fibre” or “children’s rights” is uttered in relation to these far more prolific and accessible outlets.
Then again, who really needs to watch a porn channel to get their “fix” any how?
As one social network commentator put it: “We’re all being screwed by the government all the time.”
LARA DE MATOS
TONIGHT EDITOR