There was an Interesting article by Janice Turner in the Opinion section of The Times yesterday, asking whether the time has come to limit the predominance of porn across the internet, basically, to protect the innocence of our children:

“How do you tell a child who has not yet had a first kiss that the plasticated members, the goggle-eyed grunting Barbies, that he came across while noodling around online are not what sex is about? Sex is tender, loving, fun, you might say brightly. (Sounding like what? A tantric hippy? A Sunday school teacher?) This porn, on those websites that can pop up unbidden and so freak you out, it’s not real. Well, it’s not the good stuff.  

But as your daughter or son’s eyes cloud with derision and your own cheeks pinken, you know the grim pointlessness of this chat, given that, for a whole generation, porn is what sex is about, since its clothing and poses, its service industry soullessness has been allowed to move into that time of faltering, gawky sweetness and rewritten the whole damn script.”

“Porn should have been returned to its rightful place, the top shelf, under the bed, the red-lit back streets, the adult domain, when it first penetrated the public sphere a decade back. Lads mags could have been classified with Razzle five years ago, not when, circulations declining annually by 25 per cent, they look certain to die out. Surely ministers in their chauffeured Jags spotted the bawdy billboards that demeaned our public spaces or caught the MTV videos just a leather thong’s breadth from Penthouse or came across the “adult” cable section where girls lick their own nipples at a texted request from Steve of Chelmsford.  

Did they never look up, frowning, from the atrocious teenage pregnancy figures that they promised but failed to halve and see the root cause — girls aping the tits-out attire of porn stars, practising the raunch culture credo that the only satisfaction girls should hope to get from sex was how well they performed it for men — and that only a dried-up priss would ever say “no”.  Did they not wonder that rape convictions were so unobtainable, despite a revolution in policing, because the notion that girls were all perpetually “hot” and “up for it” was tainting the judgment of juries — and of young men?  

Did it never occur to them that the Islamification of young Muslim women, the ascendancy of the hijab, that categoric statement of separation and difference, was, to no small degree, a protective reaction by a modest people against a host culture that was running through a shopping centre with its arse out, wearing a T-shirt saying “No gag reflex!”  

But, too terrified of seeming anti-sex or of defying the prevailing boomtime ethos that the only morality was the market, government back then refused to tackle pornification. It was a private matter, it insisted. But it wasn’t any more: it was manifestly, luridly public.”