The Porno Paradox

In an essay called The Billion People Effect: Lessons From China (http://www.worldchanging.com/archives/001504.html) I’d hinted that India might soon be struck by a giant wave of change. This may not be very different from the wave of Internet and cell phone-based uprisings that have recently upset the Communist regime in China.

The sexually explicit MMS (Multimedia Message Service, in this case - a cameraphone-recorded video clip) that originated in a Delhi public school and led to the arrest of students, and the CEO of Bazee (subsidiary of eBay), will ripple across many dogmas and legal inconsistencies that exist in India. Clearly, it will not be the first and last MMS of it’s kind.

Very few people will debate that pornography has continuously exposed new markets and possibilities in an information-based economy.

Pornographic websites were some of the first to make the Internet a business, and they are still the largest conduits by which new users are exposed to the Internet. The same pattern is being seen in cell phones.

Just like hackers are responsible for technological innovations by virtue of exploiting network flaws, pornographers are responsible for exposing new ways of spreading information and making money.

The girl and boy involved in the fellatio clip are apparently not ashamed of what they were doing. A lot of Indians may find this alarming, but the trends have been hinting towards a cultural makeover of the country. The girl wanted to be popular, and from the reports, it is suggested that the public distribution of that tape was a consensual act by the lovers:

It is being said that on being questioned by the Principal, both students did not appear to be ashamed of what they had done. In fact, the girl even reportedly retorted, "Who doesn’t do it? Haven’t you done it?" The boy is equally nonchalant about what he had done, according to his peers. ..."

This is not just another sex-scandal or media circus. This single event has the potential to start a process that may completely transform the legal, economic, sexual, cultural, judicial and informational landscape of the nation.

Rewriting of the Information Act

The issues of intellectual copyright are brought into sharp relief, because the law now has to decide who exactly is responsible for the production and dissemination of pornographic content. For that matter, the law now has to decide what exactly is pornographic content.

The key in this matter is whether the content is produced and disseminated by consensual participation, rather than abusive exploitation. This does not seem to be the case in the DPS school incident.

What exactly is pornographic content? There are people on the margins of sexual deviance who are excited by the most inane, everyday objects (fetishists), and something as simple as a stocking or a satin sheet could be erotic for them, while an adult tape with intercourse may not prove a good stimulant. Everyone’s sexuality is different, so how can the same law define pornography for everyone as if it were a generic thing?

I won’t get into the clichéd Ajanta Caves and historical temples argument, that the figurines there reflect an ancient culture that had assimilated sexuality and God in the same institution. People may love to forget their origins, but history repeats itself by remembering, and remembers itself by repeating, in the process designing the future.

The biggest issue facing us in the shadow of porn, perhaps the only issue worth a serious debate, is that of child pornography. We need to understand three ethical issues before we discuss this:


1. What is allowed by society is not necessarily accepted by it.

2. Child pornography is not the same as child abuse. Innocent photographs of infants, taken by parents out of love, can also be construed as pornography, should you choose to do so.

3. The question is not whether an act is moral or immoral; these are subjective qualities. The question is whether they are consensual or exploitative.

The DPS case is an instance of Case 1. Below, I cite an instance of Case 2, where child pornography is not a case of abuse. A child is being charged with child pornography when the "child" in the photos is herself! From the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette:

Police said the girl, whose identity they withheld, photographed herself in various states of undress and performing a variety of sexual acts. ... She has been charged with sexual abuse of children, possession of child pornography and dissemination of child pornography.

Here is another case of a man trying to reclaim his childhood photos:

In a June lawsuit in Albany, N.Y., Mark Hogarth, 45, asked a court to protect his constitutional right to privacy by exempting him from child-pornography laws so that he can reclaim 269 lewd photos of himself, taken when he was a kid, but which his now-deceased father had hidden away in another country. In his petition, he said that his father approved of, but did not participate in, the photo sessions (some of which featured other children) and that Hogarth would like to keep the pictures as, basically, mementos of his childhood.

This raises several questions in my mind. What exactly separates an ’infant’ from a ’child’. Can the phenomenon of human birth, because we are born without clothes, be considered pornographic? Is it not that ’lewdness’, ’eroticism’ and ’pornography’ are constructs by the observer, and not entirely intended by the content?

Now let take the case of various laws that try to curb prostitution, drug use, piracy, homosexuality, pornography, hacking - that is - behavior deviant from the social norm. The classic sociological work on the nature of taboo and transgression is Kai T. Erikson’s Wayward Puritans: A Study in the Sociology of Deviance, which states:

There are people in any society who appear to "choose" a deviant style exactly because it offends an important value of the group.

This means that the legal furor and social anxiety we express about child pornography makes it more attractive and inviting to pedophiles. In fact, the true pedophile should be wary of hurting the children he seems to love and desire, until such a point that they grow up and lose the attractive quality for him. This essay analyses Erikson’s theory:

...deviant behavior manifests itself in perfect symmetry to social fears, lending a "self-fulfilling prophetic" quality to the community’s apprehensions.

While we create elaborate arguments against kiddie porn, it is all around us. Fashion is obsessed with the ’waif’ look. Bollywood remix videos feature girls in short skirts, which are usually part of a school uniform. Japanese Manga comics depict child-like faces and bodies in extreme violence and copulation with futuristic machines. The Village Voice wrote about the increasing demand for models that look like little girls:

The modern ideal has "the face of a child, while her engorged red lips suggest readiness for penetration. Her boyish body heightens the illusion of the fuckable child."

In some ways, the DPS incident is a direct result of videos like Kabhi Aar, Kabhi Paar featuring Deepal Shah in a school uniform. So should the video be banned or should we just accept our sexuality as a nation? I think we should do the latter, because banning something is just another form of advertising, far more seductive than any kind of liberty. Restricting any kind of information makes it all the more desirable.
We are a specie seduced by secrets, by the unknown and the undiscovered, and not as is widely believed - the nude, the uncovered. What is already laid bare open has no allure for us.

Nationwide Culture Shift

What Rushdie may have meant when he said that the acceptance of pornography is vital to the freedom of a civilization is this - we have far more important things to worry about - like survival.

It may be that more permissive societies have less need for porn, and certainly they don’t need to turn blue movies into icons of revolution or peace ... If the restrictions on ordinary social, romantic and sexual relations that [less permissive] societies impose were to wither away, the need for pornography would very likely diminish, too ... If Western pornography is a symptom of Western decadence, then Eastern pornography is a side-effect of Eastern repressions. Pornography is almost always an effect, or a dramatic symptom of some non-pornographic social malaise. It is almost never a cause.

How come the Indian legislature, the judiciary, and the media spend so much time deliberating a small sex video, when there are millions living in stark poverty?

What does child pornography mean in a country where millions of children are on the street and naked, playing at dirty cholera infested taps that bring forth no water?

Our preoccupation with sexuality and sex is probably a huge hindrance in our efforts to reform the country.

Pornography is a paradox. Though morally you disapprove of pornography, you may find yourself defending its right to exist. It’s at the cutting edge of technology, pushing the boundary of what’s possible. It’s also at the cutting edge of morality, pushing at the boundary of what’s permissible. What information do we have a right to? Who has a right to control its transport and use? Whether we like it or not, pornography has been and will be at the forefront of the debate.