Earlier, in 1969, US President Lyndon B. Johnson’s Commission on Obscenity and Pornography, formed to study the effects of porn in the American community, concluded that:
· There was no evidence to date that exposure to explicit sexual materials plays a significant role in the causation of delinquent or criminal behavior among youths or adults.
· A majority of American adults believe that adults should be allowed to read or see any sexual materials they wish.
· There is no reason to suppose that elimination of governmental prohibitions upon the sexual materials that may be made available to adults would adversely affect the availability to the public of other books, magazines, or films.
· There was no evidence that exposure to explicit sexual materials adversely affects character or moral attitudes regarding sex and sexual conduct.
· Federal, state, and local legislation prohibiting the sale, exhibition, or distribution of sexual materials to consenting adults should be repealed.
Feminists like Avedon Carol, one of the founders of the UK-based feminist group, Feminists Against Censorship, believes that the demonization of porn — that is, connecting porn with violence against women by some “rightist moralists” — was just another attempt to curtail the freedom being enjoyed by Americans, especially women.
In 1995, she wrote:
“As those among us who have studied child abuse and sexual violence (or experienced it) know all too well, rape and abuses are problems that go deeper and are more intractable than anything that can be blamed on the camera and the printing press. Abusive relationships take many forms and almost anything can be seen as the ‘cause’ of abusive behavior. As many husbands have harassed and humiliated their wives over cooking and housework as have done so over sexual issues – and many women have learned, to their chagrin, that abusers are often more likely to try to suppress sexual expression in their wives than they are to try to force such expression. And most abused women – including those who have suffered sexual abuse – have little to say about pornography as a specific problem in their relationships… (The Harm of Porn: Just Another Excuse to Censor; accessed at http://www.fiawol.demon.co.uk/FAC/harm.htm, May 27, 2009).
In the Philippines, debates raged about attempts to legalize not only pornography but also prostitution.
“If they legalize porn, we might as well legalize the others like abortion or marijuana,” said Ma. Consuelo G. Cabrera, a filmmaker and a painter, from the Southern Tagalog Exposure Media Collective.
Who’s Benefiting from Pinoy Porn?
“Who else but the foreign producers,” Cabrera said. (Bulatlat.com)
