Ukrainians with a penchant for porn now risk fines and imprisonment for up to three years. In the last few days, President Viktor Yushchenko signed a law to that effect, much to the dismay of human rights activists and members of the artistic community.
The draft of the law was prepared by the Ukrainian government and was passed by the Ukrainian parliament, the Supreme Rada, on June 11.
Right now, I know little about the political and social motivations for such swift legislative action. Could a rise in porn addiction be a factor? It clearly smacks of nanny state prohibition, and I wonder just how it will be enforced and who might be targeted.
Intriguingly, the new law includes a caveat: pornography can be kept “for medicinal purposes”. I’m assuming were talking about ‘motivational material’ for sperm donors. Or perhaps the Ukrainian authorities have discovered some other medicinal benefit of porn.
If anyone knows more about this story, please do let me know!
It’s easy to become blasé about the risks of storing hardcore porn images on our computers. A porn habit often means that vast quantities of explicit images and videos are collected on harddrives; any concerns about being rumbled are overridden by the compulsive cravings to gather more of the stuff.
And if you’ll excuse the pun, porn collectors become hardened to standard hardcore fare. To maintain the buzz of our habit, we might find ourselves seeking out more extreme and fetishistic material. I’ve spoken to guys who found themselves stimulated by bizarre and outlandish images that they would never have previously felt attracted to. For a small minority of guys, this appetite might lead them into illegal territories.
I’ve just been forwarded this article (thanks Alex!) which highlights the risks of being stumbled upon by computer repair technicians, work colleagues, employers and family members. It’s still early days for the the Dangerous Pictures section of the Criminal Justice and Immigration Act, but there are indicators that successful prosecutions are on the increase.
To quote the article:
Whilst in theory this should only be of concern to individuals who habitually surf in areas where they ought not, readers should remember that many porn sites will download all manner of images, sometimes going well beyond the matter originally sought.
Porn obsessed guys lose count of websites visited and files downloaded over countless hours spent in the online trance. But in the face of police and judiciary, would porn addiction present any form of defence? I very much doubt it.
Greg Barrett’s Huffington Post article Like Big Tobacco, Big Porn Peddles Poison to Children makes interesting reading.
The writer summarises the ongoing debate about the similarities between porn addiction and smoking, and the case for censorship legislation. We are reminded of just how much hardcore porn is available on the web, and that lots of people, including our wide-eyed children, are lapping it up. Barrett gets a little carried away with the shocking revelation of it all, but that’s ok; if one parent is reminded that they really ought to take more notice of what their kids get up to online, this journalistic treatment is justified.
Barrett picks up on Hoover Institution fellow Mary Eberstadt’s recent comparison of the addictive qualities of porn and tobacco. There are indeed some surface similarities, especially in terms of the common justification of “everybody does it”. But Eberstadt’s report highlights some of the critical differences too, predicting that the prevalence of porn will become a greater issue of social and political concern. Logically, some form of public health campaign may be beneficial, just like raising awareness of the hazards of smoking. I don’t interpret Eberstadt’s report as a direct call for censorship. read more…
We are surrounded and swamped by sexual imagery. So-called raunch culture and sex sells marketing has infiltrated the mainstream. And either we laugh at this (often with embarrassment) or just nod in knowing agreement. Either way, we are affected by the use of sexuality to sell more products.
Because of this, I believe that more people than ever before are using porn in the mistaken belief that it carries no negative consequences.
Why does porn have such a negative and potentially corrosive influence upon us?
First of all porn objectifies women and men. A person is reduced down to an impersonal, sexual object by medium of porn and this is passed on to the viewer. Porn models and actors are shown devoid of their humanity, devoid of their unique personality. They are stripped quite literally and degraded in the process of creating porn.
Here is another reason (and perhaps a controversial one) why using porn is potentially so damaging. It’s the flip side of objectifying porn models for our sexual gratification. I suggest that we dehumanize ourselves by this same process. We end up degrading ourselves in the same moment that we objectify others.
In order to objectify another person we must split off a part of our humanity. This splitting process occurs inside us, within our psyche (within the emotional body-mind). This splitting off diminishes our full humanity. We separate off part of who we are. We become a divided self through this process of objectification. This can have a very deep and lasting impact on our sense of self and our well being. It can impact our mental and emotional health; even on our very sanity perhaps.
The end result of this objectification process is that we only hurt ourselves by using porn. By objectifying others we objectify ourselves, inflicting upon ourselves the pain of inner conflict and betrayal. To find the undivided self again requires a healing process to take place, and this healing process can only succeed when we stop objectifying others.
