‘Porn’ Is A Human Right

Free Speech

from the let-your-freak-flag-fly dept

Accessing consensually created and distributed online pornography is a human right. Do you know why? The consensual production and viewing of porn online is a protected form of sexual expression between two or more adults. 

Laugh your asses off, sure. But there is a point to my ludicrous statement. It’s not about porn per se. Accessing content freely on the internet, including porn, is a human right in many variations.

The United Nations declared internet freedom a fundamental right for human beings years ago. It is also central to diplomatic strategies for most nations that espouse such beliefs. 

The freedom of the internet and access to its content is at risk, especially in the United States.

Religious conservatives and far-right populists wish to suspend First Amendment protections for all online content dealing with LGBTQ+ subject matter. 

They view adult entertainment content that’s consensually produced, distributed, and viewed as pure obscenity. And they wish to block a platform’s right to moderate content and stand by its user base. By no means is that freedom. And by no means is this content technically “porn.”

Countries like China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea block or heavily restrict access to the web.

These governments demonize content they view as counter-revolutionary, haram, or a product of Western supremacy over a nation’s culture. 

With the passage of the Online Safety Bill, the United Kingdom chose to wither away encryption and moderate content through a controversial “legal but harmful” doctrine. 

State legislatures and executive branches controlled predominantly by some of the hardest right flanks of the Republican Party across the United States are headed down similar paths. 

Florida, Missouri, Texas, and Utah, among other states, have chosen to levy content restrictions on public libraries and schools. 

Advocacy groups, myself, journalists, and researchers have pointed out how book bans, content restrictions, and fights against teachers have added a new dimension to the “everything is porn” belief in modern culture that several high-profile, far-right conservatives openly maintain. 

Utah and Arkansas implemented age verification mandates to access mainstream social media platforms. Utah, Arkansas, Louisiana, Texas, Virginia, Mississippi, and Montana all have age verification requirements for adult content on the books, too. And it doesn’t stop with just hard-right Republicans. Hard-left flights of the Democratic Party are not much better. 

California state lawmakers recently adopted the woefully underreported Assembly Bill 1394, which Mike Masnick characterized as a miniature version of the federal FOSTA statute. 

A lawmaker in Maine wants to implement age verification requirements after adopting the Nordic model of partial decriminalization of sex work that is overwhelmingly proven to make the profession much more dangerous. Plus, 16 states in the union still characterize pornography as a “public health” crisis while now lumping LGBTQ+ rights and content into a singular target of what these states erroneously view as “pornographic material.” This is the environment. 

Whether it’s having equitable access to social media or a middle student’s right to read a young adult novel by a queer author, the ability to access and consume information some consider to be pornographic, including legally produced porn itself, is genuinely something all human beings should have. Attempts to restrict this online material harms people of all ages, not just adults.

Michael McGrady covers the tech side of the online porn business. He is a contributing editor at AVN.com. 

Filed Under: access to porn, adult content, free speech, human rights, internet access