Society must, at some stage, accept that not only is there a widespread demand for pornography, but that it also has the potential, in the process of adhering to certain values, to aid healthy adolescent sexual development. It may seem ludicrous to envision government-funded pornography, but there is no reason why such an enlightened initiative would not be theoretically feasible. …
Such an alternative could take many forms. A government-funded website or periodical aimed at adolescents between the ages of 13 and 18, for example, containing erotic and/or informative sexual content (written as well as visual); a high standard of journalism that is simultaneously accessible to the demographics in question; a feminist, but not misandrist, bent; a diverse, open-minded and celebratory view of sex; at least a small quota of queer material; healthy and realistic depictions of the human form, both male and female; opportunities for reader feedback; and rigorous production and employment standards that guard against exploitation.
– Monash University journalism student David Heslin, published this morning in The Age. He makes a sensible point that boys looking at pornography is no inherent cause for concern, but draws the ridiculous conclusion that government should pay for the kind of porn he prefers. There is no ‘market failure’ in the porn industry. And if people really want the nasty, non-NVE stuff a free alternative will not stop them.
Andrew Norton 
“healthy and realistic depictions of the human form, both male and female”
Yep that’s where you lost of teenage audience. Teenage boys in particular are not interested in reality. Zoo knows its market.
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Yet the nine comments The Age has published to date are generally very complimentary. Are we sure this article isn’t a spoof (pun intended)?
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If the government is going to subsidise porn for teenage boys, it should subsidise tissue paper as well.
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The government is subsidising porn – it’s called the national broadband network.
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Sinc – Good point. And people used to say similar things about foreign films on late at night on SBS.
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People often say that porn sites are the most visited on the web, but is there any reliable evidence that that is true?
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This whole Age article is just so wrong on so many levels.
I always perceived young undergrads wanting to make a career in journalism as being very anti the state, or at least highly suspicious of it. Indeed, this fellow expresses disapproval at our “reactionary government.”
And yet this fellow wants who – Kate Ellis? – to select “good” and “sanctioned” porn. Does the government replace the “reactionary” hat it wears when filtering the Net for porn, with a hat for the distribution – and presumably thus production – of “positive, respectful, non-sexist and healthy” pornographic depictions of sexual acts.
It is so Orwellian. And so creepy to be coming from a young university student. Why do otherwise highly reputable universities justify awarding undergrad degrees in “journalism?”
Clearly this kid’s father still hasn’t had “the talk” with him yet. “Respectful, non-sexist, and healthy” depictions of our bits pieces and well, er, rooting.
Who would ever want to buy or consume such a contradiction in terms? Pornography’s chief attraction is precisely because it sexist and disrespectful.
?
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Wow…
Why not subsidise brothel visits for 13-18 year olds while we’re at it.
I’m all for teens looking at porn and I’m against the naive moralising that is often targeted at our youth. But teens are quite capable of taking care of their own sexual urges…
I guess the angle he’s coming from is a feminist one. Some feminist theory claims “porn leads to sexual abuse because of the violent depictions of sexual acts and degradation of women” or whatever.
But still, wow… What a weird article to have published when kids are being labelled sex offenders for sexting. Why not clear up stupid laws that punish teenage sexuality instead of talking about subsiding it.
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Son of the Ratpack: At least according to Alexa, that doesn’t seem to be so (the first porn site listed is pornhub.com at #55).
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There is some porn David Heslin would approve of out there, but it’s a minority. I wonder what is going on in his head – if few people are watching that stuff now, why would free government subsidised porn make any difference? It’s not as if porn is expensive for young people to access anyway (mostly free, surely).
It would be good to get him to respond here to work out where he went wrong.
By the way, am I the only one who doesn’t know what non-NVE is?
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It is a ridiculous idea. Instead, can’t we just rely on good quality teenage sex education material about masturbation, like this one I recently found via Scientific American:
(It shows how all good robot mothers should react to an embarrassing situation.)
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non-NVE = non-non-violent erotica. Apologies for the double negative.
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Thanks for that – I didn’t want to ask, nor google it (I’ve already googled bondi cigar today and learned far too much new information as it was). 🙂
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Society must, at some stage, accept that not only is there a widespread demand for pornography, but that it also has the potential, in the process of adhering to certain values, to aid healthy adolescent sexual development. It may seem ludicrous to envision government-funded pornography, but there is no reason why such an enlightened initiative would not be theoretically feasible. …
Ummm I’d say Clive Hamilton would have a few things to say about that after reading his “please think of the children” rant (despite looking to me suspiciously like at an attempt at writing a porn novella).
here
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/australian-it/web-doesnt-belong-to-net-libertarians/story-e6frgakx-1111118869227
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Steve says
…material about masturbation, like this one I recently found via Scientific American:
Steve, I’m sure you saw the educational side of that no doubt.
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Have u seen it, JC? It is bizarrely amusing.
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Or amusingly bizarre, perhaps that is what I meant.
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The only thing sadder than that article would be the author’s sex life. I pity his girlfriend.
I think David Heslin’s ideal pornography, i.e. pornography “that depicts sexual acts and the human form in a positive, respectful, non-sexist and healthy manner” has in fact been featured in an episode of Family Guy:
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Hi Andrew –
I don’t see how you can categorically say “There is no ‘market failure’ in the porn industry.” It seems quite plausible to me that there is: that because of the social taboo & legal issues about porn, the sort of people who go into porn production are disproportionately likely to be anti-social jerks, and therefore they are likely to overproduce, relative to demand, the more nasty misogynistic sort of porn and underproduce the more egalitarian sort.
I don’t know if this is true or not, but it’s not unbelievable. Even if it is, though, trying to cure the problem by govt subsidies would almost certainly make things worse, and if this guy Heslin doesn’t realise that then he’s a fool. But he wouldn’t be the first one who’s made the inference from “market failure” to “govt action” without stopping to consider the possibility of govt failure.
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I’m not sure you can just say ‘no market failure’ in erotica because tonnes of porn have flowed from California and parts of Europe in recent decades. There are a panoply of inhibitions and laws that shape keep the porn industry happily shady.
Sexual desires and a need for intimacy are natural; its expression is socially constructed. To me it’s one area where conservatives and communitarians can agree, but liberals often flounder. Women blown up to caricatured proportions by cosmetic surgery and are a recent, industrial creation. Placed alongside ‘wooden’ men of rare proportion, they reduce erotica to a kind of super-hero cartoon.
This student’s heart is probably in the right place. His naivety is not in his silly call for a kind of Radio National of porn, but that it would change much whilst the whole of the media is saturated with a page 3 kind of sexuality.
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Its very rare that a young person has gained sufficient wisdom and experience to offer anything to public debate. This goes more so these days with adolescence extending out to middle-age.
This article continues degeneration the Age’s op-ed pages into uncontrollable farce. Once upon a time it was a venue for high-minded coverage of current affairs. They might have been liberal, even Left-liberal, but they had standards.
Nowadays the Age’s tone is invariably undergraduate, juvenile bitchin’ and snitchin’, woven together with post-modern liberalism that is a mixture of perversity and political correctness gone mad.
I would exclude a few writers from this broad-side, Sheehan and Duffy of course. And Davidson and Gittins. Not exactly spring chickens.
Also, the style of writing lacks all wit and charm. The Sun Herald, by contrast, contains a number of genuinely gifted writers such as Blair and Hildebrand.
Graeme Perkins would be rolling in his grave.
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Without commenting on the substance of the article, I think this fellow’s timing is rather poor.
If he had asked for funding a few years earlier, when John Howard was throwing taxpayer money at every interest group that moved, he might have been in with a chance.
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Charles – My comment this morning was based on theory: that where there are few barriers to entry and commercial incentives to satisfy as wide a range of tastes as possible it’s unlikely that the kind of material young Mr Heslin thinks necessary isn’t already available.
I have done some empirical investigation this evening – though stopped short of actually watching any porn:)
1) The existing legal porn industry selling X-rated material has legal reasons for not providing ‘nasty’ porn, since that category requires ‘No depiction of violence, sexual violence, sexualised violence or coercion is allowed in the category. It does not allow sexually assaultive language. Nor does it allow consensual
depictions which purposefully demean anyone involved in that activity for the enjoyment of viewers.’
2) In the research for The Porn Report (MUP 2008) Catherine Lumby and her colleagues classified all 838 scenes in the 50 bestselling porn videos of 2003. Only 2% contained anything they classified as violence, and some of this was aimed at providing laughs (eg what happens to the man who pretends to be a born-again preacher so that he can sleep with lots of women). The researchers note that while 1970s porn was aimed almost entirely at men, much of it is now aimed at a couples market, suggesting unsurprisingly that the industry is responsive to what people want to watch.
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Jack – I think you should be focussing on the argument and not the person making them.
Graeme – The market for pornography is incredibly saturated and competitive. There’s no reason for any ‘overproduction’ persist in such a competitive market.
SoR, caf – I’m not sure that’s the right question. What are we trying to measure here? Looking at Alexa top 500 global sites, it’s mainly facebook, youtube, and just different language versions of google yahoo and other portals. But what if people are using these search portal to look for pornography? I think a better question is what % of web traffic can be classified as pornography. That would not just include traditional web-browsing, but also video and audio streaming and untrackable peer-to-peer file-sharing made famous by Napster, which is equally able to distribute porn as it does with music and TV-shows. One study concluded that peer-to-peer traffic accounts anywhere between 43% and 70% depending on the geographical location (for 2008/2009).
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“I have done some empirical investigation this evening – though stopped short of actually watching any porn:)”
Why that’s just plain lazy!
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Thanks for the feedback, Andrew.
The government-funding concept, I agree, is somewhat utopian. It won’t happen in our lifetime – but then, we still have a government that doesn’t want to touch same-sex marriage. Progression is always a tortuously slow process.
So, once the logistical problems are understood, what of the theoretical merits? It all comes down to whether or not you’re comfortable with the status quo. Some are, some aren’t; I fall into the latter category. So, this, as far as I can see, is something of a solution – a diversification of the market, whether that be through commercial or government-funded (no, not government-produced) means.
I’m quite happy for this suggestion to be questioned or even mocked. The point is to add another perspective to the discussion.
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Re: BuckNaked
“The only thing sadder than that article would be the author’s sex life. I pity his girlfriend.”
Lol!
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David – I am not convinced that we have a problem with male sexual dysfunction that should or could be improved by government. Therefore from my perspective government funding for pornography is not ‘utopian’, it is not needed at all.
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Lefties want everything government funded. Mark Bahnisch – hi Mark! – was saying some time ago that we needed a government-funded networking site that would be the equivalent of facebook, presumably run by the ABC.
.
(Can’t see any problem with Conroy – or whoever replaces him – being in control of that at all…)
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We already have government funded porn. It’s called SBS
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oops I see Andrew has already beat me to the joke
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Worth repeating:)
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For me, it’s less about government funding than simply providing an alternative. The crux of the issue for me is that a huge percentage of teenage boys (and probably more than a few girls) are learning about the mechanics of sex through shoddy, sexist, artificial internet porn.
You don’t have to be an adherent to radical feminism to realise that this sort of media has a significant effect on the way views on sex and gender are developing. As a self-described ‘liberal’, I would have thought you’d have some sympathy for the concept of market diversification being promoted over censorship (which is the typical catch-cry of Christians and feminists).
Would people watch it? Maybe, maybe not. I reject the point that people are only interested in the mainstream stuff, because at the moment that is the only real widely available option. While there are a few supposedly ‘ethical’ commercial porn sites, they usually require subscription, and what 16 year old male is going to pay for porn?
Anyway, thanks for actually discussing the points instead of engaging in ad hominem rhetoric.
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David – I’m still not convinced of the problem. Video porn has been easily available since the 1980s yet I’d say on average the boys of that era have since had more egalitarian relations with women than their fathers did, who would mostly only have had tame stuff like Playboy. The book on porn I looked at last night suggests that it has improved (from a female point of view) over the years, in response to both legal requirements and a realisation by the industry that women watch it too.
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Fair enough. Regulation of the industry probably has had a positive effect, although I wonder how much of it remains ‘underground’. I also wonder how much the dynamics have changed with the advent of the internet and shift away from video and adult cinemas.
In any case, I think we both agree that a regulated industry working within a legal framework is better than most alternatives.
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David:
Can I understand something here. You want the government to subsidize your porn viewing. Is that right? If that’s the case, would it be a good idea if the government also bought you a 3D television .. all in the interests of making you into a more satisfied porn consumer.
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Without having read recent research on this, I would have thought the big change since the 1980s is the ‘home sex video’ made possible by cheap cameras and the internet. I would expect that in general this was more ‘realistic’ than the commercially made material.
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JC, I don’t watch porn. Never really have. If you actually take the time to read the article, you’ll see that this has precious little to do with me, and not all that much to do with government funding (although I have suggested it as one possible solution to the problem).
Andrew’s perspective is that there’s no problem to begin with. Fair enough. Your perspective is… er… well, damned if I know.
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Fair enough David, but I have a golden rule to never read an Age Op-ed for the obvious reason that the couple of minutes wasted will never be returned to me. However I will take the time to read yours.
Having said that can I ask you…. we know how government funding of Australian films has gone over the past 20 years. They are so bad it’s no longer funny. No one wants to see them even for free.
Why would you think government subsidy of porn would make it better? You could very well have people turned off sex if our film industry is any guide.
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That’s a good point re the AFI. I think the main problem there is that there’s always been a pull between festival-oriented film-making and commercially profitable products. The fact that the vast majority of Australian films end up as mediocre efforts that fail both criteria could be put down to the AFI not knowing what they want.
In one sense, they’ve recently taken a step in the right direction by deciding to solely fund genre film-making, which is somewhat ironic considering Australia had a rare arthouse breakthrough last year with Samson & Delilah. It’s a good commercial move, but it’s a bit of a death blow for artistic film in this country.
Government funding isn’t all a disaster story, however. It’s the only reason we have the best channel on TV (the ABC), and shows like The Chaser’s War on Everything and Media Watch couldn’t have existed without it.
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The Wikipedia page for the Film Finance Corporation states that, “since its establishment the FFC has invested in 1,079 projects with a total production value of $2.58 billion”
Though the July 2008 issue of the IPA Review notes that “Of the 1007 movies supported by the federal government’s Film Finance Corporation in the last 20 years, only 10 have recovered their initial investment.”
The government never “invested” money in the film industry – they wasted it. This is not an unexpected conclusion for those who understand the differences between the market and the State.
David – In a market economy, it is consumers who call the shots. Our buying behaviour ultimately determines what does and does not get produced and if a business sells a lousy product that no one wants they go broke. In a market economy, businesses have to cater to the tastes of us – the consumers – if they want to remain profitable. It’s no surprise that so many films funded by the government failed – the film-makers produced these films with the preferences of grant-giving officials of some government board in mind, not the preferences of the masses.
The exact same thing would happen if the government decided to subsidise porn – millions of dollars would be forcibly taken from Australians and handed over to those few pornographers who decide to go through the process necessary to get gov’t approval and sanction.
I find many of your statements curious and troubling. You say that the “law’s general failure to regulate [porn] means that there are few, if any, ethical or artistic standards involved in the production of internet pornography.” Is this what you see as the purpose of law? Do you honestly think that it is a legitimate activity of government to establish and enforce the “ethical or artistic standards involved in the production of internet pornography”? Can you not see all manner of possible problems with such a statement?
In your article you lay out some possible alternatives of gov’t funded pornography but you say that “its key function would be to provide an alternative, and perhaps diversify the market.” But in post #38 you state that you “don’t watch porn. Never really have.” So on what grounds do you claim the authority to judge the market for pornography?
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Admittedly, that last response was a little poorly phrased. I have never habitually watched pornography, primarily because I found mainstream porn (through my inevitable exposures to it as a teenager) unerotic and unappealing. Sure, I might not be the J. Rosenbaum of internet porn, but I’ve seen enough.
Are you asking if I think there should be regulation of adult industries? Well, yes, I think that goes without saying. And yes, that should be enshrined in law. Whether we need MORE regulation than what we currently have is another question, but that’s not the point I was trying to make – I am simply noting that a lot of porn is likely still produced underground and consequentially sans restriction; hence the suggestion that unenforced regulation is one argument against maintaining the status quo.
When you reference the “few pornographers who decide to go through the process necessary to get gov’t approval and sanction”, you misunderstand what I’m trying to suggest. When I float the idea of government-funded porn, I’m not talking about producing a toothless, sanitised manifestation of the garden-variety thing, but rather a completely revolutionised brand with positive and aggressively political goals (that understands the market it’s trying to appeal to).
I understand that you’re all small government flag-wavers, but government funding is crucial to the production of art and high-quality entertainment. The BFI (as part of the UK Film Council) have been doing excellent things for British cinema over in the UK, and as I wrote above, the only television worth watching at the moment is partially government funded. The FFC’s mess is, I would suggest, the exception.
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**My post is awaiting moderation so I’ll repost it without the URLs in case Andrew doesn’t get to it tonight**
Unfortunately I don’t have the slightest idea what you mean when referring to pornography that is “a completely revolutionised brand with positive and aggressively political goals (that understands the market it’s trying to appeal to).”
The barriers to entry to produce and distribute porn today are so incredibly low – anyone can record a video or upload images and share them with the world if they so choose. In their book “Against Intellectual Monopoly,” Boldrin and Levine make the argument that the lack of enforcement of copyright has been a tremendous boon to the porn industry:
If we compare the pornographic movie and entertainment industry to its “legitimate” counterpart, we find an industry that is more innovative, creates new products and adopts new technologies more quickly, and for which the reduction in distribution cost has resulted in more output at lower prices, and a more diverse product. We also find an industry that is in many ways a cottage industry, with many small producers, and no dominant large firms capable of manipulating the market either nation- or world-wide. (p. 25)
It seems to me that if there really was a demand for “a completely revolutionised brand [of porn] with positive and aggressively political goals” (whatever that means) – we’d have it already. Entrepreneurs would have exploited the profit opportunities in bringing this porn to market.
I am honestly confused, though, because it seems to me that, especially with the advent of the Internet, pornography is the one area where everybody’s desires are satisfied. Whatever your fetish, you can surely find it on the Internet. I suspect that, instead, the one desire that this explosion of online pornography has not satisfied is the desire by those who like to promulgate ‘appropriate’ sexual practices and dictate to others what they should or should not find desirable. While I can understand that some may have good intentions, I find it rather haughty to suggest that, “what turns you on is ‘wrong/incorrect/deviant'” and to suggest instead that what you find sexually appealing is what others should too. Providing someone is not forcing another to do something they do not wish – I don’t see the law as having anything to do with the matter.
The argument that gov’t funding is crucial to the arts is completely fallacious. I’d suggest taking a look at Tyler Cowen’s book “In Praise of Commercial Culture” and/or listening to the (highly informative and entertaining!) 10 part lecture series by Paul Cantor, “Commerce and Culture.” Details about the seminar and free links to d/l can be found by Googling it. The series can also be d/l for free from iTunes.
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“..the only television worth watching at the moment is partially government funded.”
Firstly, umm.. Foxtel? Secondly, that statement is completely subjective. The fact that millions of people tune in every day to watch TV shows like Neighbours and Home and Away, etc., demonstrates that, for these particular individuals, they are worth watching. You can have an opinion that they have poor taste but it’s a completely different matter when you believe the gov’t should become involved and should subsidise shows that you think are worth watching. The way that I read this statement and your one on porn seems, to me at least, like you essentially think ‘the uncivilised masses are too stupid to know what’s good and they should be forced to subsidise what I think is good.’
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Luke’s links:
The argument that gov’t funding is crucial to the arts is completely fallacious. I’d suggest taking a look at Tyler Cowen’s book “In Praise of Commercial Culture” and/or listening to the (highly informative and entertaining!) 10 part lecture series by Paul Cantor, “Commerce & Culture.” Details about the seminar can be found here: http://mises.org/events/84 and it’s available to d/l for free on iTunes or from here: http://mises.org/media.aspx?action=category&ID=91/
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“It seems to me that if there really was a demand for “a completely revolutionised brand [of porn] with positive and aggressively political goals” (whatever that means) – we’d have it already. Entrepreneurs would have exploited the profit opportunities in bringing this porn to market.”
We do, and they have. There are a number of companies out there already trying to realise what I’ve been suggesting here. Lars Von Trier’s Zentropa company has, I believe, been attempting to do something like this up in Scandinavia; closer to home, AbbyWinters (a company which has come under some deserved scrutiny for their practises in regards to employees) is aesthetically radically different to the bulk of what you would see on the internet, and certainly the kind of thing one would like to see more of. The trouble is that these are niche companies catering to niche markets. They cost money, and are aimed at people who can afford the expenses and know what they’re looking for.
Most teenagers aren’t going to have access to that stuff. They’re not going to have the money, and even if they did the chances are that they would have seen 99 luridly flashing ‘horny sluts’ websites before chancing upon the better quality stuff.
Government funding achieves two things: firstly, it would give a production company more clout than the relatively small-fish companies I mentioned above; secondly, it would be a safeguard against the commercial urge to mainstream. Those pesky employee rights and production standards cost money to maintain, and there’s always going to be that struggle to mainstream and degrade in order to earn more.
Sorry, I might get around to the other points later, but hopefully this will help to explain the gist of my article a little better.
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If your strategy is to use government to safeguard against going ‘mainstream’ doesn’t that frustrate your stated main goal, which is the mass-market provision of porn to Australian teenagers?
Another question: Is your imagined market just teenagers?
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I understand that you’re all small government flag-wavers, but government funding is crucial to the production of art and high-quality entertainment. The BFI (as part of the UK Film Council) have been doing excellent things for British cinema over in the UK, and as I wrote above, the only television worth watching at the moment is partially government funded.
Is it, or are you simply ignorant of what is on offer, David? In fact I would argue that television would be a lot poorer if HBO and Cinemax didn’t exist: American cable channels with the best programming in the world.
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David,
Again, when you reference, for example, those two companies and say that they’re “certainly the kind of thing one would like to see more of” and when you say that teenage boys will come across certain websites “before chancing upon the better quality stuff” you seem to be completely missing the point that these statements are subjective. Everyone’s preferences are different, you can use your argument and apply it just about anything. “If only the gov’t could subside rap music –then we’d get the really good stuff produced that would promote a positive message to the kids.”
A statement such as “there’s always going to be that struggle to mainstream and degrade in order to earn more” is very telling. I’d politely suggest that you have a lot to learn if you think that’s how a market economy works. The budget for the 2008 film “Pirates II”, for example, was the most expensive porn film ever made ($8 million). The company who made that film spent so much money because they believed that, by increasing the production value, they could appeal to a wider audience and make even more money.
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And in fact David I would argue that Australian film arts has never been stronger with our artists and various technical people moving around the world to ply their art.
It’s just that the people left here are simply not very good at what they do and usually spend a lot of time whining and demanding more taxpayer funding for stuff no one likes.
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