Banning porn in the EU won't make women and men equal Compare and contrast with Lib Dem peer Floella Benjamin's uninformed remarks about an 'epidemic' of violent online porn leading people on a "seemingly unstoppable march into a moral wasteland." Let me guess... she based her conclusions on the Lib Dem-commissioned Bailey report on sexualisation, which contained no evidence to support that erroneous assumption? Or the equally logic-free earlier report from the Labour government? That's assuming she did research at all past shock-horror headlines running rampant through Fleet Street like a bad case of herpes. In response to Iceland's recent considerations of a similar ban - one that is highly unlikely to be effective or produce positive social change - the International Modern Media Institute released an open letter that predictably did not gain even a fraction of coverage the initial ridiculous proposition did. "The internet is not the source of violence, it is merely a medium by which violence is made apparent," it said. The current discussion of blocking pornographic content has offered no definition, no evidence, and suggested no technology. What is porn? Porn is impossible define. Anything can be porn given the right circumstances. For all the topless pro-feminist antics of Ukraine's Femen group, there are no doubt a sizeable proportion of observers who are more interested in the sight of some young women getting their tits out then in the message the group is trying to convey. Meaning is in the eye of the beholder: twas ever thus. How would this play out in real life? Banning of sexy self portraits shared consensually between partners? Or the Evils of Sexting, as many in media would have it. Go ahead and say it's ridiculous to think the slippery slope could end up with laws banning you from taking pictures of yourself... but with no guidance from any of these proposals on what constitutes 'pornography,' that's exactly where it could lead. From a technical standpoint, stopping internet porn is impossible without monitoring all electronic communications, and even then, probably still impossible. Preventing pornography in "all media," whatever that means, would be exponentially harder. But, enough about the logistics of it - this is wrong. As per ever, the focus of the panic is mainstream, heterosexual porn being viewed only by men. Yet again the assumption is that all men are easily programmed, woman-hating abusers, and all women are meek sub-adults who must be protected from the clutches of sexy, sexy evil. In this worldview, gay people, mutual consent, and women's sexual agency conveniently do not exist. If you think this represents all or even most of pornography then you need to get out more. Where by "out" I mean "the internet." We get the porn we deserve Porn is not the cause of gender stereotypes; eliminating it will not end them. Banning access to porn in Egypt obviously won't do anything to make women more equal to men there. Banning adult entertainment does not eliminate sexual crime, as Iceland surely should know, with its epidemic of sex crimes despite bans on strip clubs and prostitution. So why does anyone think such measures would have an effect in the EU? Rather, the forms that sexual entertainment takes are a result of gender stereotypes rather than their cause. In sex-positive, queer-friendly San Francisco, porn looks a lot like society there. In image-obsessed, results-orientated mainstream media, porn looks a lot more plastic and uninviting to everyone but straight cis men. In other words: we get the porn we deserve. Banning it won't make a twopenny bit of difference to that.