An invasion of pornography

The Inquiry was told that sexually aberrant behaviour involving both boys and girls was becoming more common among even younger children. In all communities, both men and women were concerned that teenagers were becoming more violent, more sexual and more anarchic.

And young girls didn’t even know they could refuse sexual advances, the report states:

… In a more sinister development, the boys in some communities coerced girls to have sex with them and, in one community, it was reported that girls did not understand that they had a choice to refuse sex.

Exposure to pornography could be linked to a “belief in rape myths, the increased acceptance of the use of physical force in sexual relations and a lessening of compassion for child victims”.

Pornography “may play an important function for an offender in facilitating his offending … It may … lower inhibitions around offending and increase the likelihood of an assault”.

There are of course a range of offenders both within the communities and coming in from outside where neglected children make easy pickings.

Pornography gives men permission to see women and children as sexual objects, there for the taking.

The 1999 Report of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Women’s Task Force on Violence also highlighted the link between X-rated films and sexual violence against women and children:

“The incidence of sexual violence is rising and is [in] a direct relationship to negative and deformed male socialisation associated with alcohol and other drug misuse, and the prevalence of pornographic videos in some Communities,” that report stated.

The government needs not only to ban pornography in the Northern Territory but to stop it being shipped out of Canberra. If the ACT Government will not take responsibility for its porn trade, it is time for the Federal Government to show even greater resolve and override the territory’s laws.

And it’s not only members of Indigenous communities who need to be freed from this sludge.

Yes, pornography is contributing to a moral tsunami in Indigenous communities. But pornography feeds and legitimises violence against women and children of all backgrounds. Some have argued that pornography is as harmful to women as racist material is to the people it targets. The proliferation of pornography leads to increases in sexual violence against all women.