Tune in, turn off
Without doubt, though, the Net has bred a new generation of electronic
voyeur. Does society have an obligation to make access to material
like this as difficult as possible? Some, especially those
who associate pornography with abuse, would say yes. The trend
over the past few years has been for online
pornography to get steadily more hardcore.
People become unmoved, turned off, by seeing the same old "man
bonks woman" routine and seek something ever more daring,
ever more out of the ordinary. Constant exposure to explicit
and increasingly bizarre images may well blunt our reaction to
what is acceptable behaviour and what isn't.
It may be that levels of violence in our society have increased roughly
in line with the levels of graphic violence in film and on TV. It may be that appropriate sexual behaviour is threatened by the increasing availability of explicit material. It may also be that neither of these is true. We can speculate but we don't know. I've often
wondered why, if exposure to hardcore pornography leads to sexual
abuse, more censors are not appearing before the bench on serious
charges? (Maybe it is just the rest of us who are
affected by pornography.)