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Lawmakers Call for Pornography Crackdown Amid ‘Epidemic’ of Violence Against Women

Lawmakers Call for Pornography Crackdown Amid ‘Epidemic’ of Violence Against Women

By Movieguide® Contributor

British lawmakers are advocating for harsher laws against pornography as the industry exacerbates an “epidemic” of male violence against women.

“It’s time for MPs [members of Parliament] to confront the role of pornography in fueling violence against women,” said Dame Diana Johnson, a British politician and chair of the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Commercial Sexual Exploitation. “The intolerable level of sexual violence that is perpetrated day in day out in this country is not inevitable.”

“There is nothing ‘natural’ about it,” she added. “So the question is, what in our culture is fueling men’s violence against women—and what do we do about it? No answer to that critical question is complete without addressing the role of online pornography.”

As Movieguide® founder Dr. Ted Baehr frequently discusses, children and teens can easily access porn through various mediums. Movies show “scantily clothed or nude females in sexually arousing situations being attacked, raped, tortured, etc.”

“The research shows that male viewers can be conditioned by watching these movies into associating sexual arousal with inflicting injury, rape, humiliation, or torture on females,” he writes.

“Pornography is vicious, anti-woman propaganda,” adds Dr. Baehr, quoting Diana Russell. “It degrades women. Pornography is not made to educate but to sell, and for the most part, what it sells is a bunch of lies about sex and women.”

“Women are portrayed as enjoying being raped, spanked or beaten, tied up, mutilated, enslaved, or they accept it as their lot as women to be victims of such experiences,” Russell adds.

With easy access to the internet, “The quantity, and high definition quality of, pornography has exploded and one of the results has been a growth in human sex slave trafficking. As the number of men driven to the depths of pornography soars, so too does the demand for ‘something more.’”

A 2020 report from British law enforcement reveals what that “something more” is, finding that young men seek pedophilic content online as they become increasingly “desensitized” to porn.

“What we are seeing is a new group of young men aged between 18 and 26 who have been brought up on a staple diet of going to visit Pornhub and sites like that. They get to the point where there’s no pornographic material that is stimulating them, so then they start to explore what child abuse imagery might look like,” Norfolk Police Chief Constable Simon Bailey said.

Johnson concludes that mainstream pornography is “replete with violence and degradation, that the majority of users are men, and that, currently, children are able to access porn companies’ websites.”

Movieguide® previously reported on the UK’s efforts to suppress the pornography industry:

The UK Parliament recently announced the advancement of a bill that would force pornography websites to verify viewers’ age.

The Online Safety Bill seeks to protect children under 18 from exploitation and viewing explicit content. According to BBC News, the bill also holds those adult sites liable with the threat of fines or a complete URL ban in the UK.

“Parents deserve peace of mind that their children are protected online from seeing things no child should see,” Digital Minister Chris Philip said. “We are now strengthening the online safety bill so it applies to all porn sites to ensure we achieve our aim of making the internet a safer place for children.”

Andy Burrows of the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children (NSPCC) welcomed the new laws but said that the UK government should further protect children.

“It’s right the government has listened to calls to fix one of the gaps in the Online Safety Bill and protect children from pornography wherever it’s hosted,” he said. “Crucially, they have also acted on our concerns and closed the ‘Only Fans loophole’ that would have let some of the riskiest sites off the hook despite allowing children access to extremely damaging material.”

“But the legislation still falls short of giving children comprehensive protection from preventable abuse and harmful content and needs significant strengthening to match the government’s rhetoric and focus minds at the very top of tech companies on child safety,” Burrows added.

The Christian nonprofit advocacy organization, Exodus Cry, celebrated the bill as a step in the right direction.

Ever since journalist Nicolas Kristof released his expose that condemned PornHub’s abuse and exploitation of children, Exodus Cry’s efforts to #ProtectChildrenNotPorn gained momentum.

“Massive steps are being taken in the UK to protect children from porn sites, and we are thrilled at these developments,” Exodus Cry wrote on Instagram. “For far too long, the multi-billion dollar porn industry has been allowed to recklessly feed the most violent and degrading pornographic content to our children with absolutely zero accountability—and to make money off the web traffic.”

“If the UK’s Online Safety Bill passes, it would establish critical protection for millions of children and set a foundational precedent towards developing higher standards for the global porn industry,” the post reads. “Implementing required, ID-based age verification on every single porn site is one of the most effective ways to protect children from the life-altering effects of early porn exposure.”


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