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Dr Helen Pringle: Submission

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Dr Helen Pringle: Submission DR HELEN PRINGLE: SUBMISSION Senate Environment and Communications References Committee Inquiry, 2016 Harm being done to Australian children through access to pornography on the Internet Introduction The main recommendation of this submission is that government measures in understanding and responding to pornography and its harms to children should be formulated as part of a broad-based approach that addresses Violence against Women and Girls (VAWG). The approach recommended here is on the model of the strategy adopted by the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) in England, and set out in the Equally Safe strategy of the Scottish Government/Riaghaltas na h-Alba.1 I acknowledge that pornography and associated practices also do harm to boys and young men (as the mother of a son, I am acutely concerned with such risks and dangers), and I have no wish to neglect, or counsel neglect of, the problem of violence to boys and young men, whether it be perpetrated by boys or girls, men or women. However, the need for a comprehensive strategy in terms of VAWG arises because of the systematically gendered patterns of sexual abuse and violence in our society, and the role of pornography and the sex industry more broadly in constructing and reflecting those patterns. My submission to this Inquiry focuses on the impact of pornography on the autonomy, equality and dignity of children, and of other parts of the sex industry like prostitution with which it is intertwined. I understand and respect the framework of ‘public health and morality’ within which the questions of this Inquiry are often placed. However, my response in this submission to those questions is more oriented to the ways in which the sex industry reflects, constructs, normalises and even valorizes sexual violence and systemic inequality on the basis of sex or gender. In accordance with this perspective, I understand harms of violence to children in alignment with the broad gender-based terms of the Declaration on the Elimination of Violence against Women viz. ‘For the purposes of this Declaration, the term “violence against women” means any act of gender-based violence that results in, or is likely to result in, physical, sexual or psychological harm or suffering to women, including threats of such acts, coercion or arbitrary deprivation of liberty, whether occurring in public or in private life.’2 Throughout this submission I understand pornography not as a harmless ‘fantasy’ but in terms of practices of subordination of women and girls, practices that often lead to or are associated with other forms of ‘acting out’ violence and abuse against them. Pornographic ‘objects’ take different forms, and different people adopt different practices in their making, use and consumption, which do not affect everyone in exactly the same ways. But pornographic objects and practices all find a place within a regime of the subordination of women, which reproduces gender inequality. Rather than expressing choice, power and agency for women, pornography forms part of systemic gendered inequalities of power. Just as the forms it takes are varied, so also its harms range across physical, sexual and psychological areas, and its effects are not constrained to ‘private life’. 1 See respectively Crown Prosecution Service (UK), Violence Against Women and Girls strategy, http://www.cps.gov.uk/publications/equality/vaw/, and Scottish Government/Riaghaltas na h-Alba, Equally Safe: Scotland's Strategy for Preventing and Eradicating Violence against Women and Girls, http://www.gov.scot/Publications/2014/06/7483/downloads. 2 UN General Assembly, Declaration on the Elimination of Violence against Women, 20 December 1993, A/RES/48/104, Article 1, http://www.un.org/documents/ga/res/48/a48r104.htm. 2 What to do about pornography in a democracy is a serious matter involving reflection on what the meaning and significance of harm and freedom. However, as I note below, the topic is frequently seen as something to be laughed and joked about, rather than raising questions of individual and collective harms of subordination, abuse and violence. In regard to the position from which I am making this submission, I write as a woman with academic expertise in human rights principles and practices, particularly as they bear on the freedoms and securities of women and children, and as they concern freedom of expression and democratic participation. I hold a BA (Hons) from the Australian National University, and an MA and PhD from Princeton University. My academic training is in political philosophy and its history with a focus on questions of justice. I research and teach across these areas at the University of New South Wales (UNSW), and am the recipient of multiple teaching honours and research awards (at UNSW, state and commonwealth levels). I serve on the executive committee of the UNSW Gendered Violence Research Network. The perspective expressed in this submission is not that of UNSW. My submission is in broad agreement with the submissions made to this Inquiry by Dr Maddy Coy and Dr Miranda Horvath, Dr Meagan Tyler, and Dr Caroline Norma, with whom I have worked closely. I am a joint Coordinator with Dr Coy and Dr Tyler of the Nordic Model Information Network, a global alliance of researchers on prostitution and the sex industry, trafficking, and other forms of violence against women and children, which supports the ‘Nordic Model’ as a step to the abolition of the prostitution system. What this means and entails is set out, in brief, in our submission to the European Parliament in support of the Honeyball motion of 2014,3 and has been developed in submissions to the UK and Scottish parliaments on proposed prostitution law reform.4 For reasons of length of the submission, I have not provided multiple sources for the claims made in this submission, either those I support or those that take an opposing point of view to mine. I would be pleased to provide to the Inquiry further detailed sources for any claim I have made or disputed. 1. Trends of Online Consumption of Pornography by Children and their Impact on the Development of Healthy and Respectful Relationships 1.1 Children’s Contact with and Access to Pornography I wish to emphasise here, with great respect, what I see as some limitations of the scope of the Inquiry’s Terms of Reference. The Inquiry’s focus on the specific area of children and pornography is timely and necessary, but I would ask that a wider context be also held in mind in the deliberations of the Committee. I say this is in line with my main recommendation of the adoption of a comprehensive strategy on VAWG that would include pornography as an area of concern about violence and abuse against women and girls. 3 European Parliament Resolution of 26 February 2014 on Sexual Exploitation and Prostitution and its Impact on Gender Equality (2013/2103(INI)) [Honeyball motion], http://www.europarl.europa.eu/sides/getDoc.do?type=TA&reference=P7-TA-2014-0162&language=EN&ring=A7- 2014-0071. Our Submission in Support of Mary Honeyball’s Report on Sexual Exploitation and Prostitution and its Impact on Gender’ can be viewed at http://spaceinternational.ie/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/FINAL-Honeyball- support-letter.pdf. 4 Nordic Model Information Network (NMIN), Submission to the Consultation on the Prostitution Law Reform (Scotland) Bill, November 2015, and Submission to the Home Affairs Committee Prostitution Inquiry, February 2016, http://catwa.org.au/?q=node/72. 3 The Inquiry limits itself to harm to children in and from online consumption of pornography. This is completely appropriate as the internet is now the most inexpensive, convenient and accessible way to access ready-made pornography for use, especially by children. However, I believe it is a mistake to consider the questions of online usage without keeping in the picture, so to speak, the way in which ‘pornography is everywhere’.5 That is, pornography is not only available from dedicated pornography sites and online social media such as FaceBook, Instagram and Twitter etc., but in traditional objects such as men’s and lads’ magazines and books, public advertising, television, music videos and so on.6 Acts and practices of sexual violence and of harassment in the street, workplace and recreational spaces like sporting and entertainment clubs also often take a pornographic form.7 Second, the limitation of the Inquiry’s scope to focus on children’s consumption of pornography should not lead us to lose sight of the way in which pornography is for the most part made, distributed, and sold for profit by adults. Although many writers have drawn attention to the growing market share of ‘amateur’ pornography, the controllers of pornography markets are for the most part adults (adult men) with connections to other parts of the sex industry. For example, the business interests of Adultshop’s Malcolm Day and Dean Shannon have spanned websites such as as well as adult sex shops, and Day’s company Delecta also had plans to expand into the running of a mega-brothel in Camperdown.8 The pornography that children commonly access on the internet is not substantially different from what adults access, and even so-called ‘amateur pornography’ is available through highly organized and money-making corporate ventures.9 The ‘harm’ done to children through or related to the consumption of pornography is not disconnected from that done to adults, in other words. Following on from this point, children do not always access pornography on their own. Adults are often responsible for introducing children to pornographic objects and practices, whether through sharing their 5 The reference is to the title of the report by Miranda A.H. Horvath, Llian Alys, Kristina Massey, Afroditi Pina, Maria Scally & Joanna R.
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