WillWybrow.com

There has been some discussion online about this Julie Bindel article in the Guardian about a book by Gail Dines that’s been going on over the past few days between some acquaintances of mine, and I was reprimanded for making a sarcastic comment about it because of how trivially wrong I felt the main point covered in it was, so I’d like to just write a little thing about it.

The idea raised in this article that I felt was most forceful and most wrong was the claim that watching pornography can make people commit sexual assault.

At this point I don’t think it matters whether one thinks that pornography or the sex industry is demeaning and exploitative to those in it or whether one thinks it’s empowering and freedom of expression or whether you don’t really know or care either way. It doesn’t matter if you’re pro- or anti- pornography, I still feel my exception to this is justified.

I found this point offensive for two reasons: firstly, it diminishes and marginalises the responsibility of anyone who commits a sexual assault on another person by suggesting that there was some reason or justification for it. “I saw it in porno and thought it was okay” would never legitimise any act of violence, sexual abuse, rape, misogyny or misandry against another person and it’s completely irresponsible to even suggest that the ’cause’ of rape is anything but something wrong with the person committing the act. There’s no excuse for it. Nobody would ever excuse a murderer from his or her actions for them using a defence like “I saw it in a video game,” so why should the influence of watching pornography even come into the equation when looking for the motivation of someone to commit rape? It just shouldn’t.

Secondly it greatly exaggerates the impact of the media on people’s behaviour and even attitudes and suggests that some (or most? or all?) people can’t tell the difference between something they see on their TVs or computer screens and what goes on in real life. Maybe my faith in people is misplaced but I’d like to believe that the majority of us do know that on-screen crime/violence/sex is not comparable to reality. I’d like to think we’re more than just suggestible lumps of amorphous clay ready to be moulded into likenesses of whatever is beamed into our eyes. People do know what’s right and wrong behaviour and what are right and wrong attitudes to have.

There are honest ways of highlighting the terrifying and heart-wrenching prevalence of sexual assault without trying to explain it away as a by-product of the sex industry, and I think (again, without requiring anyone to take a stand pro- or anti- porn) that lumping the two issues together is both misleading and unhelpful to dealing with the problem.