The PIL on Internet porn
Definitions apart, filters will result in the State wrapping a sterile blanket over individuals' freedom of expression.
SAURAV DATTA decodes the arguments
"I shall not today attempt further to define the kinds of material I understand to be embraced within that shorthand description, and perhaps I could never succeed in intelligibly doing so. But I know it when I see it…”
Sounds like the blabbering of a prude? Think again, for that was the ruling of Justice Potter Stewart of the US Supreme Court in Jacobellis v. Ohio (1964). He had to decide whether The Lovers (1958), a French film about a woman involved in adultery who rediscovers human love contained hardcore pornography, which would make it liable to be censored.
Such a benighted ruling has the insidious potential to have a chilling effect on free speech. Kamlesh Vaswani’s PIL seeking a blanket ban on Internet pornography and the Supreme Court’s notice to the government to come up with methods for achieving this purpose, raises a similarly haunting spectre. In the last hearing on 30 August, the Court made it abundantly clear that the Government ‘has to do it’.
Mr. Vaswani’s intentions are laudable. He is mortified at the spate of increasingly gruesome rapes and sexual violence being perpetrated on women in India. Therefore, based on his ‘personal knowledge’ and meticulous research on Wikipedia (the most ‘trusted’ site, the PIL claims), he believes that all sexual offences are fuelled by pornography, a surfeit of which is apparently polluting Indian cybersphere. Hence his plea that India’s Internet sphere be scrubbed clean of pornography, forthwith.
It may be pertinent to point out that the demands in Mr. Vaswani’s PIL are already met under the current existing regime. The existing law covers the production and distribution of any obscene material including online pornography both under S.292 of the Indian Penal Code and Sections 67 and 66E of the Information Technology Act. Only the watching and consumption of obscene material, including pornography, is not an offence.
The only substantial change proposed in this PIL is to criminalize viewers of extreme pornography, aside from the producers and distributors.
Unfortunately, Mr. Vaswani’s zealous endeavour is unable to define what exactly “pornography” is. For him, images depicting and celebrating violent degradation and humiliation of women are pornographic. In a television panel discussion where this writer was a participant, he was asked whether depiction of nudity, lingerie ads and images of breastfeeding women (used in public information campaigns) would also be included? How would one determine if a particular image invokes lust and which of these images would instigate a man to commit rape?
The answers were conspicuous by their absence and Mr. Vaswani reiterated that pornography was a corrupting influence and the ban must be immediately implemented.
But this is precisely the attitude we need to be wary of. An attitude that urges the State to wrap a sterile blanket over individuals even as it uses the fig leaf of concern for the ‘weaker’ sex and rams a particular version of “morality” down our gullets. The cumulative effect of which is to drive a sledgehammer through the freedom of speech and expression.
But how exactly would this ban trample upon free speech?
Now, if the nature of the beast remains unknown, the consequences of trying to rein it in can only be perverse. Till date, there has been no concrete definition of pornography, or what all would have a pornographic effect. D.H. Lawrence, in Pornography and Obscenity (1929) tried to distinguish between the two, and all he could manage was: “What they are depends, as usual, entirely on the individual. What is pornography to one man is the laughter of genius to another.” He showed how pornography is a result of the separation of sexuality from a notion of the whole person- it stems from a refusal (on moral, religious, or aesthetic grounds) to admit in a public way the centrality of the sexual impulse, and therefore, is an inevitable byproduct of prudery.
Of course, some types of pornography are overwhelmingly violent, contain fearfully grotesque representations, and some involve the exploitation of children and minors. The tussle between erotica and pornography is an ongoing one, and “obscenity” shall continue to raise hackles because of its sheer ambiguity and subjectivity.
What is the evidence of causation? Or even, correlation- between access to pornography and propensity to commit rape and other sexual offences?
Mills, in On Liberty (1875) stipulated that “harm to others” is the sole principle on which power can be rightfully exercised to curtail the rights of an individual. The available research results on this “harm” remain not only inconclusive, but also sharply polarized.
There have been numerous studies on the effects of pornography but none have been conclusive. In 1978, Joel Feinberg concluded that those identifying with the cult of the macho are the most likely to be attracted to violent porn and commit acts of sexual assault. In 2000,Malamuth et al demonstrated there was a link between violent pornography and sexual aggression but in 2009, Ferguson and Hartley demonstrated an inverse relationship between pornography consumption and rape rates!
Todd Kendall’s research suggests that incidents of rape decreased with more access to the Internet and pornography.
In 1993 Ronald Dworkin attacked the hollowness of the “breathtaking hyperbole” (example-Andrea Dworkin’s
“Porn is the theory and rape is the practice”) of pornography being the fountainhead of all forms of violence against women, including what is now termed “rape culture”, referring to Ted Bundy, a necrophiliac and pornography addict as well as a reader of Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment in his youth, and asks, if the latter novel had also contributed to his committing heinous crimes.
Besides, why only the Internet? There is no dearth of sexist, titillating images and videos floating around- in print or film, so why focus only on one platform? But why care when technology and new media can be the most convenient whipping horse?
Of filters and blacklisting options
How technically feasible it is to implement a blanket ban, and what are its grave perils? One could try Iceland or David Cameron’s recent measure in the UK to insert internet filters so that no site or search engine is used by the depraved, paedophiles and the like. However, no filter is perfect and blocking dragnets produce unintended upshots. Recently, the Maharashtra government’s efforts to block stock market and gaming sites ended up blocking pornography websites too!
So how does one deal with what they think is objectionable online content? There are two basic options: a blacklist, in which everything not on the list is allowed, and a whitelist, in which only web pages on the list will be shown. A whitelist is impractical, given the sheer size of the internet. A blacklist, though, can only block sites that its creators know about. And again, the sheer size of the web, and the speed with which it changes, means they will probably always be somewhat behind the times.
A way out would be to manually categorise sites and images. And that would just exacerbate the problem. Think about it- euphemisms, double entendres, people with ‘unfortunate’ names, woe betide them if the censors are not particularly adept at word play! And no one needs to be told how worse it can get in India where consternation and outrage caused by the supposedly profane and obscene seems to be the national spirit. Or take even this article in Guernica (a magazine of art and politics) an author’s memoir- literature, which Google AdSense took for porn, and obstinately blocked.
Apart from the cultural context of pornography, another crucial question is about the choice of women and sexual minorities. Mr. Vaswani was completely at sea when asked if women who watch pornography are also potential sexual predators. EROTICS’ survey of sexual practices and behavior remains the most comprehensive one to be done in India. Of the respondents, 60 percent women and 80 percent men admitted to accessing sexual content online. Significantly, 30 percent of women respondents said that such content deals with sexual and reproductive health and romance, too. More significant is the response that usage of pornography improved couples’ sex lives and enhanced marital bliss. One can only dread the day when someone like Mr. Vaswani moves court to direct such couples for compulsory marital counseling and any other psychiatric, corrective therapy.
Art historian Lynda Nead contends that the cultural distinction between sublime and profane- what is obscene or pornographic, and what is not, serves a social legitimising function, thereby reinforcing social distinctions. This is far more pernicious than censorship and must be resisted. But the legal implementation of the wishful thinking that our browser histories could eradicate all social malaise would make this a reality.