Pornography is turning sex into an extreme sport
‘Y ou know what would make this world a better place? More pornography,” said no sensible person ever. And yet every day, more pornography is what we get: more online videos, more social media clips, more people burning the images into their eyes. Occasionally there are small panics about this. Last week there were two.
On the one hand, there was the voyeuristic Channel 4 documentary about Bonnie Blue, a young woman who has found fame by treating sex like an extreme sport, posting videos reminiscent of the 2000s stunt television show Jackass, but with more penises, which are jammed into her orifices. She’s so obscene, so masochistic — and yet so popular, fretted the critics. What to make of it all? On the other, there was the debate about age verification on pornography sites, which became mandatory two weeks ago. Is this protecting children or pointlessly invading people’s privacy?
All of this discourse is a desperate avoidance of an obvious truth, fussing over the deckchairs long after the iceberg has destroyed the ship. Because the simple but apparently unsayable fact is this: pornography is bad. No, not just for kids. For everyone. And it has eaten the world.
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