You may have a friend who is an ex-smoker. You may also notice how some friends give up habits easier than others and how just sometimes, a friend can become a bit less fun to be around if they get uptight around anyone enjoying whatever they are currently fighting in themselves.
Russell Brand is spearheading a new anti-porn campaign called ‘fight the new drug’ and even though I have often found myself agreeing with his socio-political commentary I can’t help but think that he has lost the plot on this one.
Here is their list “10 PORN INDUSTRY STATS THAT NEED TO CHANGE ASAP” with some feedback.
- “Porn sites receive more regular traffic than Netflix, Amazon, & Twitter combined” - HuffPost
(And?)
- “35% of all internet downloads are porn-related” - WebRoot
(Who?)
- “34% of internet users have been exposed to unwanted porn via ads, pop-ups, etc” - WebRoot
(Ok so ‘WebRoot’ is an anti-virus software company. Pushing the wrong button can mess up your computer, we get it. Yet how can it be a source to justify this anti-porn campaign? You may as well call it ‘Update your antivirus kids’)
- “Porn increased marital infidelity by 300%” - WebRoot
(What? How? Who…said that? Ok, it was WebRoot again. Don’t panic)
- “30% of all data transferred across the internet is porn-related” – HuffPost
(It is a respectable source, but you just said the same thing twice. There is a lot of porn, we get it)
- “Most common female role in porn is women in their 20’s portraying teenagers” - Jon Millward
(In this context, do you mean we need more middle aged gay porn to balance it out or that porn is the reason that human sexuality manifests in this way?)
- “Child porn is one of the fastest growing online businesses” - IWF
(This is not something you can blame on or connect to professional adult pornography. Anyone can upload something but why blame the Wachowskis because someone else made a bad home movie?)
- “624,000 child porn traders have been discovered online in the U.S.” - Innocent Justice
(See above.)
- “Approximately 55% of teen girls living on the streets have engaged in prostitution” - Enough.org
(Several of these statistics are very emotive but there are no studies sited here by any respected academic source linking the existence of consenting adult pornography to street prostitution.)
- “Child porn is a $3 billion industry” - TopTenReviews
(TopTenReviews. Need one say more, other than how disappointed you would feel if any of your favourite bands had used TopTenReviews as inspiration for their new album. And see above)
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So there it is. Make of it what you will. Personally I think our society has far too many inhibitions already and anything that reduces that is a force for evolution in a world that could do with some of it. From my perspective and maybe some of yours, pornography is a revolution in itself.
The eternal words of Emma Goldman said it better than I can
“If I can't dance to it, it's not my revolution.”