Government, it seems, wants to control our access to porn on DSTV. Thank goodness we have them to look out for us. We are clearly not capable of making these complex moral decisions all by ourselves. We are the rabble, the electorate and all we understand are those empty campaign promises. We love those flashy rallies and posters you print with all the money you get from those fishy tenders you issue to yourselves. Smiling, saying nothing in a roundabout way and baby-kissing is our daily bread. That’s our thing. We need the higher moral guidance of government. That’s right, we need our great unblemished leaders, the bastions of good and democracy, the masters of freedom and ethics who run this socially damaged country of ours to show us the way on this issue. We need them to do the thinking for us.
But there is a little glitch.
Our president is basically a porn star!
Talk about a conflict of interest here. He has had more partners than Dirk Diggler, markets his frisky image on the front pages of all major newspapers and on TV; the guy is a major celebrity. If there was camera equipment in his bedroom, vast fortunes could be made. He has shagged young barely-legal girls, daughters of friends, multiple wives, lovers and purportedly even secret agents sent by Mbeki to bring him down. And those are just the ones we know about. He gets laid more than James Bond and Hank Moody put together! How could such such a leader condone the clamping down on porn? He is porn!
Furthermore, our great and virile leader is currently bunking with the queen of England over in London which is tacit approval from her majesty for his lifestyle and actions. Had they been too offensive, she would have declined to have him and his machine gun under her roof. She didn’t seem too worried and actually seated him next to Camilla Parker-Bowles, a known late night sneaker-arounder with other women’s famous husbands. If I didn’t know better I may even suggest the naughty queen was trying to set them up. Devious old match-making goat! If I were the collective conscience of the five wives, I would be worried.
Those of you who think I am judging him for his sexual exploits are sorely mistaken. I think it is his right to have consensual sex with whomever he wishes; even Camilla, if that floats his Nkandla-meets-Isandlwana boat. I even think that massive media vilification and moral outrage are uncalled for here. There is a much greater force. It’s called voter outrage and democracy.
If there is no voter outrage, then our nation, on balance, suggests they approve of his recent philandering or at the very least approve of his governance more than they disapprove of his bed-hopping. His wives have the right to kick his randy butt out of the kraal if they so desire so it’s not like they have to stick around. South African voters will speak and if he has crossed an ethical line with them, he will be out on his leopard-skin bedecked ass.
I am guessing they will not and he will continue to rule us all.
In tandem with this accepting view of his nefarious activities, however, I don’t feel that gives him or his morally bankrupt bunch of ministers that pontificate over these issues any right to make pronouncements to us, his lowly citizens, on the subject of porn or sexual morality. If anything, I would expect them to dodge this issue for all they are worth. The hypocrisy would be too hard to spin, the damage endless. If you were not careful, the entire party could come off looking like a sex-crazed bunch of nymphomaniacs trying pretty hard to keep all the fun to themselves. Too risky, one would think.
Not so it seems.
Just as we were all becoming accustomed to the new sexual freedoms pervading our lives set by our role models at the top and the exciting announcement by DSTV that a TV porn channel is on its way when along comes Minister Noluthando Mayende-Sibiya. Armed with dubious statistics, no doubt supplied by the 13 000 amateur Christian statisticians that signed the petition against the channel, she decided to deliver the bewildering statement that bringing porn into the home will cause child molestation and all sorts of other horrors.
Really?
And here I was thinking that porn was already squarely in the home. Didn’t it happen years ago with the internet? I also just figured out on the back of an envelope that houses with internet are likely to be the same houses with DSTV so all that is happening is we are just being offered more porn, but this time on the big TV with surround sound and without the long download times.
But you see that’s why we need these guys! Thank goodness for that cutting insight from the minister. Instead of covering up for her boss, she is sticking her neck out to save us and she is not even bothering to support her claims with anything even resembling logic. Political bravery tempered by the kind of hard-headed conservative attitude that powered ox-wagons over the Drakensburg. So enlightening to see it thriving in the ANC as it did in the Nationalist Party that brought us the ultimate porn show of conservative deviance and sexual repression …. apartheid.
Not a few days before that, Minister of Arts and Culture, Lulu Xingwana, stormed out of the Constitutional Court gallery in protest of a few pictures of spooning lesbians. It is quite unclear whether it was the spooning, the exposure of a bit of skin or the fact that it was monochrome gay love on public display that made the minister’s bigotry gene start to twitch. What we can say for certain is that culture seems to be defended if it is your own and offends if it is not. The same minister did no storming when Zulu culture was brought in to the spotlight with ritual bull killings. Seems OK to beat an innocent animal to death with bare hands for no real reason other than to stroke your severly threatened male ego, but don’t you dare spoon a lesbian or stroke anything other than your ego, you degenerate!
Besides the obvious Orwellian alarms that this kind of censorship simply must trigger in the reasonable person, what on earth is wrong with watching porn anyway?
Porn is art, it is education and it is entertainment. Porn is creative, it can be beautiful, it can be silly, comical, sensual, erotic and on occasions it can even show the biomechanically incredible and that previously thought impossible by the world of Newtonian physics. It is honest and raw and those who make it are brave and crazy people. Yes, it can be depraved, sick and experimental too for it is us, the human being, naked and exposed for what we really are. The freedom of availability and popularity of porn on the internet proves it. We all want it, we are all curious, we all hide it well behind a civilised veneer but inside we are sexual animals driven to procreate and are genetically coded to enjoy doing so.
Only a truly sexually repressed, frightened little individual would try to ban pornography. You are basically trying to ban the best instruction manual available for generating life itself. Porn is to the human mating animal what the bible is to Christians … a user manual, a collection of totally unbelievable stories and a source of great joy.
If porn offends you, block the channel or don’t ever, ever go to www.youporn.com for free porn. You are free to keep your life porn-free while allowing others to enrich it with as much porn as they so desire. Live and let live. Turn the other cheek.
And let us finish off with that sticky topic of porn and the children who may watch it. I got my sex education in primary school, as a child, mostly from porn and classmates. The classmates got their education from porn and older siblings that had seen porn and bought the latest Scope magazine. None of us got anything of use from our parents. It was just too weird. The video that they made us watch in biology with a penis becoming erect in infrared was so cryptic that it confused me for a long time until I watched more porn to sort it out.
I am aware that you will have to take me at my word here when I state that I do not abuse or molest children. Well, I don’t and I am not alone. Many, many millions of wonderful porn-loving or even porn-liking warm decent people also do not molest children. Linking porn to violence and molestation is a scare tactic. It’s the kind of thing that mind-controlling religious freaks revel in. It’s the kind of thing that the Christian Right in America fund with millions to further their agenda of control over our minds and bodies for reasons apparent only to them. It’s bullshit!
In response, I propose a new study: I would like to study the prevalence of child molestation in the clergy. The clergy are presumably some of society’s only members untainted by porn, or so the brave 13 000 would have us believe. They are the perfect sample for my study. I bet the figures are compelling. Actually, I win either way. If the clergy are found to be deviant without porn, then we need not fear that it is the porn at work but something so central to our nature that even the clergy can’t escape it. If they are found to be deviant at all and we are forced to believe that the link between porn and abuse is causal then our only other logical conclusion is that the clergy MUST be secretly watching a lot of porn. Good for them. I suggest they need it more than most. With the same abuse of statistical method that the 13 000 anti-porn stars have thrust upon us, I bet we could go further and prove an actual correlation between a lack of porn and the sexually deviant, child-fiddling behaviour observed in the clergy.
I don’t personally know a single person who can claim to be porn-free, a virgin of porn so to speak. Porn is fun, it helped me learn what was possible and I am an emotionally richer, more deeply informed and happier human being as a result of my exposure to it. It made my childhood a more exciting experience and helped to alleviate the teenage confusion and depression surrounding the topic of sex.
I refute the notion that porn is bad for a society. I refute it more verbosely when those stats are being shoved in our faces by the religious conservatives or government ministers neither of whom can lay claim to or hold custody over morals and ethics in our society and are simply furthering their own warped agendas or personal issues. To use some saucy porn innuendo: screw you both!
Without porn and the internet, it is quite conceivable that the wonderful sexual revolution that has occurred may have been suppressed by these very people. The freedom to talk about sex and using condoms, the emancipation of women and the right to be gay or lesbian was won at a price. Let’s hang on to it for all we are worth and not give an inch.
So, esteemed ministers, religious conservatives and other prudes, please take your filthy hands off our porn.
You conveniently leave out the fact that civil society organisations have been more vocal on this issue than government. In fact, Solidarity is shouting against this from the rooftops, organising protests, etc. But hey, blame government. Its easy.
Amen brother!
All this talk about porn turning everyone into child molesters and rapists is utter nonsense.
The little Freudian in me thinks it says a lot more about the person who is claiming that porn leads to rape, then it does about porn itself.
If those who think porn causes violence to women and molestation of children in South Africa had bothered to pick up a book written in the last decade they would realise their errors…one hopes.
If anything perpetuates the gender violence in our country it is the highly patriarchal society we live in.
Need I remind everyone that the vikings, who are notorious for their rape and pillaging, probably didn’t subscribe to playboy.
Or in plain English, women have been subjugated to men and have been victims of sexual violence for a very very long time before porn.
Am I the only one who thinks that the Christian wedding vows a women repeats, “to love honour and OBEY” are somehow more exploitative than a women getting paid to have sex in front of a camera. I’d argue the second is more liberating than anything else.
And all you would be feminists shush now about women being exploited…men are in porn too you know.
At the core of this issue lies the fear of sexuality and the need to suppress it. Porn is liberating, its enjoyable and like all things should be consumed in moderation.
I liked this article. some solid points.
What a brilliant piece!
Don’t try and understand “shoot to kill” and “protect our poor kids from the sight of human skin” in the same week. You’ll go mad. We can’t educate them, but by god we’ll indoctrinate them. THAT we can do. — – - – — Lost Lulu is desperate for a cause. We’ll simply have to suffer the consequences. Under Zuma we will never have government by principle. It is always going to be by expediency.
Very true indeed. We want our porn. Leave our porn alone.
I think we should involve Cosatu in this matter, we need them to organise their “rent a crowd” crowd so we can protest about this.
Seriously, we want our porn channels here.
collarme.co.za is a great deviant porn community…excepting of all, gay, lesbian, straight, white, black, whatever….more than I can say for any religious community!!!
Relations are a mix of intelligence, emotions and physical attractions.
Theoretically this could allow for a relationship with three different persons, each giving satisfaction in their field of speciality at the time it is needed.
If the mood is “physical”, porn could be the oil to enjoyment either in solitude or in company. Enjoy it while it last.
Public broadcasters should be able to offer this service. Technology provides the tools to shield this if and when required.
Great post!
I think the root of the whole “porn and nudity are the worst things our children can be exposed to” argument lies in a lack of self body image and repression of sexuality. Ask these christian conservatives why nudity is so bad for kids first.
I wouldn’t show my 7 year old hard core porn because it would confuse and maybe frighten him/her. But once a kid reaches puberty they WILL be exposed to it, whether you like it or not. Talk to your kids about safe sex and STIs and realise that your 16 year old will think about sex before they get married at 30. Stop living in the past.
Excellent comparison with the clergy. Let the righteous christian bigots clean their own houses before trying to sweep other peoples lives into their deluded mindset. Child abusing priests have been around for a lot longer than electronic images of nudity. Lets start at the church doors to weed out the sexual predators masquerading as moral crusaders. At least we have the clear evidence of their sordid behaviour, unlike the silly claims made by the minister and her christian crusaders.
Gather you are somewhat passionate about this. I’m not.
But Chris E is right about marriage; not just the words in the ceremony, but the entire issue.
I think many married women live for the day that they can give up work and stay at home with the children. By which stage physical love has more or less fled the nest and dad is more meal ticket for the masses than anything else.
Hell, had my child’s father contributed just half of his needs, we’d have been well off! Going through the motions didn’t even make up for all the nappies he didn’t change and I did.
But to be fair, he wasn’t around all the time. He died.
Personally, I do not have too much time for porn and like illegal drugs believe that in the main, very little good comes from it.
As long as access is very strictly controlled (unlike the Internet!), I would have no problem with those that do see value in and get pleasure from Porn paying for their access – say on an encoded separate channel.
I share some of the commentator’s disdain for the hypocrites and those that either misrepresent statistics or just plain fabricate “findings”.
There is no credible scientific evidence that I have seen to suggest a causal relationship between porn and child molestation etc – yes paedophiles and sex offenders often “consume” Porn, but the evidence suggests that they would carry out their crimes even if the porn was not available. (The anti-porn movement’s argument is sort of like saying “let’s ban ketchup, then no-one will eat hot dogs!).
Organised religion and extreme religious movements have been responsible for some of the worst conflicts and human rights violations in history (Christian crusades, persecution of Jews, 9/11 bombings, Middle east conflict, conflict in Kashmir)and don’t get me started on the abuse of choir boys by supposedly celibate Priests!
Against that background, I assess the viewpoint of Religious movements with a somewhat jaundiced eye.
@ Chris E – I am descended from the Vikings, and the myth that they were in the main a bunch of rapists, plunderers and pillagers is just that – a myth.
hehehehehe. good one.
Grant,
I agree with most of what you say except for one minor detail You make the point ” I also just figured out on the back of an envelope that houses with internet are likely to be the same houses with DSTV so all that is happening is we are just being offered more porn, but this time on the big TV with surround sound and without the long download times.”
I am not sure what internet connection you are referring to when you speak of “long download times”. If you have a 1-4 Mb per second ADSL line and a good telephone network you can (almost) watch certain TV channels live on a computer.Streaming hour long video content on you tube, online news networks [ as well as porn if you are so inclined] is a cinch.
Nicely reasoned. You have a supporter right here. It needs brains to sort wheat from chaff and your arguments show brains at work.
I have nothing against anything you have to say, including the ridiculous notion that porn leads to child molestation, BUT….here is my beef. I had no idea why men (in general) are such bad lovers until I watched some porn myself. It all became crystal clear. Women in real life are not the same as women in porn movies. Guys… indulge in the fantasy, but really, male-centric porn really leaves a lot of us pretty hot-blooded, sensual women cold, and frustrated. Real women do not work like that. Why don’t u spend some time finding out how they do! It might be much better than you think.
Grant, what a load of self-serving, self-opinionated crap. However, you must feel good at all the followers you generated, like a Pied Piper or Peter the Hermit, who threw in their pennyworth of unthought-through codswallop. Inanity is OK so long as I can write a few hackneyed criticisms of christianity, priests, gender relations, traditional marriage etc. Cut and paste by the brainless seems to be the order of the day when moral issues are on the table.
It almost becomes a competition as to who can “out” themselves the most.
Let us just look at one basic issue. I think it was the hippy’s guru, Alan Ginsberg, who said: “masturbation is OK; but you don’t meet many interesting people that way.” Porn is, at its least damaging, a complete cop-out when it comes to sexual relationships. It is the food for the low risk takers who are too lazy, spineless or gormless to chat someone up, and build a relationship that may become sexually satisfying. Sit back and let some guy with a bigger penis do it for you. What fulfilment!
The other extreme: In the UK we have recently had two horrifying stories of preteens who murdered a toddler and who tried to murder (after sexually molesting)two other preteenagers. In both cases they had been allowed to watch porn and very violent films on TV. Now, two swallows do not make a summer; but they do give pause for thought.
Wakker skrik!
was hoping for a balanced article merely making the case for porn, but the prolonged Zuma-bashing in the intro just turned me off, no pun. &what is the relevance of the bull-slaying here? People need to be educated on cultural rights (not rites), freedom of expression and pornography. The rampant ignorance & naivety, so sad.
I think there should be a strict requirement that all Cabinet Ministers incl. our SEX President must have a tertiary qualification. It will help their reasoning. Anyone who can afford DSTV probably has internet access incl. their kids and they can watch porn anytime. They should focus on their lapdog the SABC and cellphones.
Great article by way.
How did we land up with such a president? I feel like I;m in coma when I see his name.
Grant
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1255856/Teenage-boys-watching-hours-internet-pornography-week-treating-girlfriends-like-sex-objects.html.
‘Teenage boys watching hours of internet pornography every week are treating their girlfriends like sex objects’
Among today’s teenage girls, the chaperone has made a comeback and is not being forced on girls by controlling adults worried about honour.
The ‘third wheel’ has been re-invented by the girls themselves because they want protection from the sexual demands of their boyfriends.
When I spoke to many teenage girls, they told me these demands are both ‘disturbing and upsetting’, and they are certain they’re being fuelled by what their boyfriends are watching online: hard-core, explicit porn.
‘Boys just want us to do all the stuff they see the porn stars do,’ one 16-year-old girl told me. ‘It’s as if we have to pretend we are in a movie.
This deeply worrying trend is finally starting to be noticed by those in authority.
Psychologist Dr Linda Papadopoulos has just published a government report into the sexualisation of children, and is certain that exposure to porn is having an adverse affect on the lives of today’s teenagers.
‘My research has left me extremely concerned,’ she says. ‘A recent survey showed that 54 per cent of boys found porn “really inspiring” in terms of sexual performance. This worries me, because of the nature of the material they are now watching’.
Seems a good argument to me!
Most christians are threatening to cancel their DSTV subscription if such a channel be introduced on their bouquet, what these people dont know is that they are just a minority group of subscribers who had the chance to vote against this channel. The vast majority of subscribers are those people who were not given the opportunity to raise their voices about this issue, if we were to cancel our subscriptions DSTV would have to end their services because of bankruptcy we make them who they are (DSTV). They should have atleast considered a 3 months trial broadcasting service of this channel rather than scraping the idea completely. Viva porn channel viva.