Waterboarding, electrocution, tying a person up with ropes and chains then gagging them and tormenting them with instruments, as well as urinating on them and defecating on their face and body, are all part of the landscape of acceptable porn in England and Wales, thanks to a new law.
Acts such as these were previously forbidden under the Obscene Publications Act, but a few days ago the laws were changed to allow all manner of pornographic violence and sexual torture. The Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) defended the new law saying “It is not for the CPS to decide what is considered objectionable.”
The new law has removed previous restrictions to test obscenity boundaries, replacing them with flimsy notions of performers’ consent and delusional fantasies of limiting exposure to these images to those who are 18 years old and above. These tests are extremely problematic because consent is often coerced, often withdrawn after filming begins, and it has been established in international law that a person cannot consent to their own torture.
Considering how widespread early childhood exposure to porn is, it is highly likely that children will be discovering these images, often as their first sexual experience.
Aggressive lobbying by the porn industry has pushed through legislation that is going to shatter any framework for human dignity, women’s safety, and sexual ethics. This decision flies in the face of longstanding international norms set by the United Nations that declare freedom from torture as a fundamental human right for every human being regardless of consent.
England and Wales’ new “anything goes” approach to porn sex is a dangerous slippery slope. The recent case of millionaire John Broadhurst from the UK illuminates just how dangerous this trend of normalizing sexual violence can be. After brutally murdering his girlfriend, Natalie Connoly, he was simply let off the hook by claiming she consented to the sadistic sexual torture that killed her.
While she is dead and unable to defend herself, he is getting a mere slap on the wrist. Connoly’s body was found with horrific wounds, including: “40 separate injuries, serious internal trauma, a fractured eye socket, facial wounds, and hemorrhaging.” But Broadhurst successfully chalked it all off to “rough sex” between “two consenting adults.”
Do women now need to make preemptive public declarations that, should they wind up dead from blunt force injuries during sex, they didn’t consent to their own murder?
What does this mean for women in society today? Do women now need to make preemptive public declarations that, should they wind up dead from blunt force injuries during sex, they didn’t consent to their own murder? …All because sadistic sexual torture has now been deemed acceptable and normal in society. The new laws on porn obscenity are making the world a much more dangerous place for women and girls.
Producing and consuming violent pornographic material is not a step towards freedom, as advocates of porn would like us to believe, but rather an infringement on a woman’s right to live free from sexual violence. Such content should never be tolerated in a society that espouses the value of human dignity.
This development in Wales and England is emblematic of a much larger trend of deviant sexual practices that result in violence against women. It is time for us to raise our voices to oppose such madness. Let us take courage in linking arms together to become one unified voice for a world free from sexual violence–A world where human dignity guides our ethical compass.
Join us in the movement to end sexual violence and exploitation. Go to exoduscry.com/getinvolved to learn a few practical ways you can get involved in the fight.
Photo Credit
- Photo of London’s Tower Bridge by Shannon Tremaine on Unsplash
