In June, shocking analysis of the Everyone’s invited website, set up to allow women and girls to anonymously report sexual abuse, revealed numerous reports of sexual harassment in primary and secondary schools across Scotland. A few weeks earlier, English schools’ regulator Ofsted warned that sexual harassment has become “normalised” among school-aged children. Ask female pupils what they think the root of the problem is and many will say the same thing — porn. 

A growing body of evidence links pornography consumption to harassment and abuse. It is said to propagate degrading ideas about women, inspire sexual violence, and desensitise viewers to shocking sexual practices. Commenting on the character of porn videos, Dr. Norman Doidge, an academic at the Toronto Institute of Psychoanalysis, writes that videos are “increasingly dominated by sadomasochistic themes… all involving scripts fusing sex with hatred and humiliation”. Given all this, is it any wonder that attacks on girls are taking place?

The production of pornographic videos is also harmful to porn industry insiders. Women are leaving the industry in droves and lamenting the toxic culture that exists “on the inside”. A recent Reddit thread penned by a man who worked for several pornographic websites reveals a toxic and criminal industry, indifferent to human suffering and safeguarding concerns and always pursuing financial profit, regardless of the cost to people:

The government has consistently refused to implement measures to restrict access by children

 “New content would come in (filmed/shot) daily and it needed to be edited/published ASAP. It didn’t matter what the talent looked like. Hot, drugged out of their gords, crying, happy, questionable age, raped, didn’t matter. The company paid for it and it all had to be used. If I objected to questionable material, I was told to ignore it and do my job.”

“…companies are required to keep records of the ages of all the talent they use. In one company…It consisted of images of the model holding their IDs next to their faces. These photos were the first ones before any of the porn photos… Four times out of 10, the model has their thumb over their date of birth.”

“When the stuff is shot, it’s shipped off to the main office to be edited. Like I said, they shoot EVERYTHING. Nothing is tossed…I saw a lot of homemade rape, child porn, borderline stuff, guys injecting their genitals with stuff, drug use, etc. Oh, and actual incest.”

Mind Geek, the parent company behind the world’s largest porn site “Pornhub” and other major sites, is now under investigation by Canadian authorities for publishing videos of actual rape and child abuse. In May, a letter signed by 750 people including victims of sexual exploitation accused the site of: “corporate indifference regarding harm caused to women and children on its platform” and “facilitating and profiting from criminal acts” including sex trafficking, child abuse, and voyeurism.

It’s hard to justify the publication of videos that favourably portray rape, violence, and humiliation

Given the significant and growing evidence showing porn’s harms in wider society, and in the industry itself, it is staggering that so little is being done to curb it. In the UK, the Conservative Government, which has controls over internet regulation, has consistently refused to implement even the slightest measures to restrict access to commercial porn sites by children, and punish sites that post vile content.

Ministers scrapped legislation, Part 3 of the Digital Economy Act, to usher in age verification and regulation of “extreme” content in 2019 — despite these measures being backed by children’s charities and women’s groups as well as Parliament as a whole. And they are refusing to resurrect the measures despite growing pressure from Scottish parliamentarians, Peers, and the public. Why is the government so hesitant to enforce legislation that could counter sexual harassment, and deter sites from publishing vile content?

The Government might point to its online safety regime, expected in the coming months. However, if this regime ever does come into force, it is not set to cover all porn sites. Its focus will be user-generated content, of the type found on social media platforms. Commercial porn sites that do not host user-generated content (or quickly change their rules to avoid doing so) will be missed. A requirement for age verification is also missing from the government’s plans. Perhaps this is deliberate.

Cabinet politicians appear to have bowed to pressure from voices who see any restrictions on porn access as a violation of “freedoms”. One prominent think tank actively campaigned against age checks on the basis that providing ID to access porn violates privacy. Privacy is important. However, adults provide ID to access other adult products online. I recently had to provide ID to purchase cutlery from Amazon. It hardly seems right that we require proof of age for access to cutlery but allow children to access explicit sex videos on porn sites with no age checks whatsoever.

The porn industry profits from human misery. Why should we allow it to continue unchecked?

It is also hard to justify the publication of videos that favourably portray rape, violence, and humiliation — especially in a context where harassment is on the rise. Whether such videos are dramatised or not, do we really want to turn a blind eye to them? What message does this send to women? The duty of care politicians have means that they should protect young, impressionable minds from these odious videos, which teach boys that rape and harassment are satiating, rather than sinister. And protect women from attacks motivated by online pornography. 

The porn industry profits from human misery. Why should we allow it to continue unchecked? Civilised societies don’t allow exploitative industries to exist, they tear them down. It is past time the government got tough on the porn industry and acted to protect women and girls. No more dither and delay, no more half measures. If Ministers won’t usher in age verification and regulation of porn sites, MPs across the political spectrum must stand up, join up and act.