A ban on Pornography in India: pros and cons

Proving to the society that smoking is harmful took decades and a whole lot of scientific banter. And today, with the ban on pornographic websites in India, we are learning a very similar lesson.

In the latter months of 2018, India attempted to crack down on porn yet again. The Indian government through the Department of Telecommunications (DoT) directed the country’s various Internet Service Providers (ISPs) to implement a ban against 827 porn sites on October 27, 2018. Jio was the first ISP to implement the ban, followed shortly after by Airtel, BSNL, MTNL, and Act Broadband.

But unfortunately despite the Indian government’s best efforts, people have already found loopholes to skirt around the law and use other browsers such as UC and Opera to circumvent the government’s ban which is not surprising considering the fact that Porn websites get the most traffic in the world and India is the world’s third-largest porn-watching nation.

This is not the Indian government’s first attempt to take down internet pornography. In November 2014, the government put a blanket ban on porn as a whole which was not just limited to some 800 websites but took down 40 million porn websites globally which had to be lifted in a week’s time because porn websites in India drive the online traffic by as much as 70% and the ban was harming the telecom operators. (1)

This brings us to the question, is the ban on pornography in India justified? Is pornography demonized unnecessarily in India or is there more to the debate than what we see at the surface level? In a society where even technology and television are debated on as a question of boon or bane, assessing the effects of Pornography is not simple, but extremely vital.

The New York Times opens a wide room for debate on the topic. While one side of the society openly raises questions like, “Should Pornography Come Out of the Closet?” and “Does Pornography Deserve Its Bad Rap?”(2)

There’s another approach that strongly disagrees and calls out Pornography to be degrading, harmful and a habit that can destroy lives.

This ongoing debate justifies consumers’ lust for pornography to have led to world-changing innovations like the Internet itself. Also, H.I.V. researchers have called the industry a strangely effective model for reducing the risk of promiscuous sex.

Candida Royalle(3) believes that watching pornography is not inherently harmful. While there do exist some red flags, “Pornography can reboot a couple’s sex life. Our culture consumes porn at record numbers and thus porn can deliver you there at best, or disgust you at worst. It all depends on what you choose to watch. With the availability of porn online, it’s possible to sample enough porn quickly that you don’t have to find yourself watching wall-to-wall hard-core sex if it’s plot-driven erotica that appeals to you. You’re only a victim of bad porn if you let yourself be.” (4)

Across various surveys, studies, both laboratory-based and in the open natural environment--violent and degrading pornography is negatively perceived and also leads to lower relationship and sexual satisfaction in both men and women.

Furthermore, even though pornography isn’t made for adolescents, it would be naïve to believe that they don’t consume it. And while pornography is no substitute for Sex-Ed; in countries like India and many more all over the world, which have no programs or initiates working towards promoting sex education and where the topic of ‘sex’ is still a taboo, it has, unfortunately, become the de-facto source of educating oneself with the sexual knowledge one needs on how to practice safe sex. Even Pornhub, one of the most popular portals for watching porn(5), a few years back launched its ‘Sex Education PornVideos’ as a category to promote safe and healthy sex. Pornhub even went on to launch an altered URL after the ban, so that its Indian users could still have access to their site. Their vice president, Corey Price, has argued, “The ban could lead people to visit ‘risky porn sites’ that may contain illegal content.

But no positive claims to this subject can silence the two loudest criticisms of pornography: that is, exploitation of performers and rewiring of the minds of the adolescents, women, and men who consume it.

While porn habit may start of harmless and exciting, triggering dopamine into the reward centre of the brain, it can quickly escalate into an unexpected and unknown territory where the user seems to quickly get bored by basic stuff and wanders off into hardcore material filled with aggression, violence and edgy fantasies to maintain that excitement they get addicted to achieving. The results are absolutely shocking.

Gail Dines and Robert Jensen(7) intimately go into the details of disturbing trends in pornography which lead to a culture that is saturated with sexually explicit images eroticizing male domination and female subordination that increase cruelty, degrade women and are increasingly and unapologetically racist. This can accelerate the consumer’s sexual taste to become extreme, disgusting or even morally shameful.

Also, Pornography can very easily develop into an addiction similar to drugs and can make its user obsessively compulsive which not only affects the person’s brain but also damages their sex life and sexual health. Doctors report a sharp and alarming rise in low sexual desire and erectile dysfunction among many young men who are constantly exposed to pornography.

And what is most necessary to realize is that Porn is full of virulent lies. Porn sells on lies that are edited and reshot to near perfection and do not in any way depict what natural normal sex is. Surprisingly enough, porn even promotes poor body image. It sexually victimizes everyone, even though you may not yourself be consuming it. One develops unrealistic expectations about sex or what people look like or how you’ll be expected to “perform.” This ultimately leads to a wedge between your relationships.

From what is evident after these constant attempts at banning Pornography, India clearly demonizes the world of pornography even though it might not be the demon but the catalyst we label it to be.

One very major reason for this ban is the non-consensual explicit content sprawled all over the internet. The side of the society that defends porn always makes an argument that no matter how someone is treated in porn, it’s okay because they gave their consent. But in some badly made, secretly filmed and intimately captured images and videos that are put over the internet without the knowledge or the consent of a party involved in the action lies a harsh and bitter side of the industry. This even includes child pornography and human trafficking.

Apart from all of this very scientifically researched data all across the globe, it was very necessary to evaluate how the general public actually reacts to this ban and 2 very new and interesting views were brought to light when two students were asked to give their views on the topic.

“I have personally experienced some really negative impacts of porn like erectile dysfunction, low sex drive and started linking sex to violence. Your expectations with sex become too unrealistic when you link porn with sex. There’s a limit to everything one does and we need to apply this mantra to our masturbation habits too. So many rapists in our country have been recognized to be porn addicts. Maybe banning it is not the solution but it definitely needs to be controlled because the amount of exposure and access we had to it before the ban was alarming.” – Male, 21, Student

“This move by the government is another in a long line of intolerant directives with the government cracking down on the freedom of expression and communication. It’s a very personal choice that should not be controlled by the government.” – Female, 21, Student

There are some very evident red flags that correctly label pornography as a social ill. But there also exist benefits that need to be recognized. The question of balance that remained unanswered was whether the weight of pros on a weighing scale outweighs the weight of the cons and does pornography create a rewarding work and offers entertainment, education, and inspiration? The Indian Government has answered this question in a big and bold ‘negative’ by putting a ban on pornography in India.

[ Author: Architi Batra, Third Year B.a. Llb(H) student, Vivekananda Institute of Professional Studies, GGSIPU]

{The article was first written on 25th March 2019. It has been reproduced here with the consent of the author}

1. According to the sources at LiveMint.com
2. The New York Times, Does Pornography Deserve Its Bad Rap?, NOVEMBER 11, 2012, Available at: https://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2012/11/11/does-pornography-deserve-its-bad-rap
3. Creator of feminist pornography and the author of "How to Tell a Naked Man What to Do."
4. The New York Times, Pornography Can Be Good for Consumers, NOVEMBER 11, 2012, 9:00 PM
5. According to Alexa’s most visited IPs in India
6. An associate professor of feminist studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara, is the author of the forthcoming manuscript “A Taste for Brown Sugar: Black Women, Sex Work, and Pornography” (Duke University Press, 2014) and a co-editor of “The Feminist Porn Book: The Politics of Producing Pleasure."
7. Gail Dines, a professor of sociology and women’s studies at Wheelock College in Boston, is the author of “Pornland: How Porn Has Hijacked Our Sexuality.” Robert Jensen, a professor in the School of Journalism at the University of Texas at Austin, is the author “Getting Off: Pornography and the End of Masculinity.” They are founding members of Stop Porn Culture.