what's worse: popular media or "porn"?

In the UK, there's talk going on about introducing an online filter to block out Internet porn in order to protect children. There's been much controversy surrounding this bill. This biting article published at The Guardian nails a lot of the problems not only with the proposed filter, but also with the media's and our culture's attitudes to sex and porn in general. EXCERPTS:

The Daily Mail makes money from posting pictures of scantily-clad women on the internet. Sometimes these women are topless. Sometimes they are completely naked. Often the images are captioned with breathy descriptions of 'cleavage', 'dangerous curves', 'thigh-skimming' dresses. Sometimes the images are of disturbingly young girls, accompanied with phrases like the infamous "all grown up." [...]

Leaving all that aside for the moment, would blocking online porn work? The idea relies on three assumptions: that we can define porn, that we can block it, and that doing so would somehow save children from harm. Three simple threads, tangled in a knotty mess. [...]

What are we trying to stop anyway, and why? The American judge, Potter Stewart, famously remarked of porn, "I know it when I see it." Fair enough, but do children know when they see it? The Daily Mail might reasonably argue that the topless shots of Madonna they published are art rather than pornography, but does that make any difference to a child? Do the boobs do the damage, or are children more or less affected by boobs in certain contexts? [...]

I have a healthy range of fetishes, one of which is so unusual that I've never met anyone in 'real life' who shares it. Growing up with that sort of 'dirty secret' can be a lonely experience; but finding a whole sub-community of dedicated porn-makers who not only shared my kink, but actively celebrated it and acted out the same fantasies, helped me to realize I wasn't some twisted freak. At least not for that reason. If porn can help kids realize that their urges are natural and healthy, that's not a bad thing in my book.

The diversity of adult entertainment is so great that just talking about 'porn' as if it's one big pink throbbing homogeneous mass is profoundly ignorant, whether its the subject of a campaign or a research question. [...]

It could well be true, for example, that the majority of porn reinforces misogynistic attitudes, and that this could damage young children as a result; but if that's the case then the problem is misogyny, not pornography, and it needs to be tackled wherever it appears, not just in the adult entertainment industry.

Are all degrading depictions of women a problem, or just the ones where they're naked? Are kids more damaged by women who appear as little more than sex objects in porn films, or by the obsession newspapers and magazines have with bullying celebrities over minute changes in their weight? Is sex the only problem, or should we be equally concerned about violence, or newspapers gratuitously publishing pictures of dead bodies?

I encourage you to read the entire article at The Guardian: Porn Panic!

And for a more US-specific context, you might enjoy this Huffington Post article: It's Not Porn, It's HBO. As I commented about this article on Facebook:

Apparently BAD PORN inspires HBO and Showtime, as entertainment and media writer Lorraine Devon Wilke points out in this article. I wonder how these shows could be different if GOOD PORN instead inspired them, rather than the "sexually utilizing of women porn" and the "violence porn" that seem to fuel these television shows.

photo credit: Porn is good for society by Anna Span